Colonial

I have a tale to tell of a place that has been the victim of repeated colonisation over millennia. This is a place that is so messed up by colonisation, that the original people are unrecognisable as a race or culture. This is a place where successive waves of colonists have swept over it in ways that it even its language is spoken in dialects so different that some of the people there now are pretty much unable to understand each other.

The story begins thousands of years ago, when people migrated from the East to this place on the westerly edge of a continent. The land bridge they used has long since become flooded. These were people in the Stone Age. No matter, people continued to come from the East in boats, bringing new technologies with them, which became the Bronze and the Iron ages. The land was settled by tribes from different areas in the East. There was the usual tangle of tribal conflict and union, raids and reprisals.

Around two millennia ago a mighty force arrived from the East, this time highly organised, literate, and with such technology that they changed the landscape. Some of the tribes variously resisted, others more easily assimilated. There was an obvious cultural divide but those of the original tribes who took on the ways of this super-power, fared well. The language and customs changed. The look of the people was never the same again. Their spiritual rituals were assimilated into a new religion. All the while traders came and went from ever more exotic places.

Around 1,600 years ago, this super-power, which had become over-stretched so vast had its dominions become, withdrew. Without them, the people left behind suffered decay to their society and wealth. A dark period ensued, but after a few generations, this changed people re-organised themselves, and trade and agriculture began to recover. There were still raids from areas that had been less affected by the super-power, and from the Northwest, new tribes came. These became so troublesome, that eventually some of the people were glad to see new tribes coming from the East who at least where able to offer some order.

These new tribes spread throughout this land, bringing new culture, language and customs. They formed themselves into larger divisions of the land and fought amongst each other, as well as formed alliances. Once again, the people of this land changed as they assimilated with these new over-lords. These tribes from the East, who had started coming in numbers around 1,400 years ago, eventually united against the North-western invaders, and the land was declared to one Kingdom. However, the attacks from the Northwest became ever more numerous and violent to the point that vast areas of the land were given over to these new invaders. Eventually, by around 1,000 years ago, the North-western invaders had become so powerful, that one of their own became King of this newly formed Kingdom. The language and customs were different in different parts of this place.

Then came a new invading force from the Southeast. These were cousins of those from the Northwest, who had raided and taken hold of lands to the Southeast, and East of this land of which I write. They claimed the Kingdom, and in one decisive battle, gained it. Now the land, and the people would change again. These new raiders would bring new, superior technology, and written laws. They would sweep over the land and build great fortified structures there, subjugating the people. Their language was kept amongst themselves, while the language of the conquered land was left to the disadvantaged people there before them. Customs and laws all changed again.

Throughout the time from the invasion of the first super-power, the language of Religion was such that hardly any of the ordinary people could speak it. Laws were written in it, that very few understood. This language was retained by this latest wave of occupiers, but they also retained their own, as a ruling class, and didn’t drop this for some 300 years after they came. Meanwhile, the ordinary people spoke a language that had been brought by the previous tribes from the East, mixed with that the North-western invaders.

All the time, the improved technology was improving the wealth of this place, but it was hoarded by rich and powerful inter-married and connected families. These families were connected all across the continent to which this place belongs. Eventually, these families from all over this continent developed technology which would see them spread all across the world, and the same kind of things happened in many places. Rich families spreading their ability to extract resources by guile, stealth, trade, even marriage. By many means.

This had been going on throughout the world, for the thousands of years of this tale. The ebb and flow of tribes and then rich and powerful families and their influence and wealth. However, the improvements in technology in the later period meant that some where better at this than others.

The land of this tale, having been first settled by wandering tribes thousands of years ago, then invaded and changed by a super-power, then underwent such subjugations and assimilations from new tribes from across the water from the East, Northwest, and finally the Southwest, and who have had language and customs, religions and laws all changed by this system of repeated technology led colonisation, eventually, developed such great technology themselves, only a couple of hundred years ago, that they themselves became the latest super-power.

This multiple-colonised place, as virtually all places have been over time, a short while ago, became the best at it. They’re not anymore, but their influence is still there in the people that are.

Who are these colonised people? The people of the British Isles. Not a race, more a product of the technological advance of humanity who speak a language imported by the various tribes and family interests that have colonised these islands. Most people just lump these people into one and call them ‘The English’.