The Artaria Foundation
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Shit We Do
- trading
- prospecting
- phezzamery
- organised crime
History
Through the economic booms of the middle colonial period, the innumerable individual interests in the New World gradually coalesced into of very large stock-issuing corporations. These entities, variously billed as "prospector's banks", "insurance", and "East Nyamerica trading companies" became the engines of colonial development and it didn't take long for the established, land-owning, politically powerful nobility to take an interest in them. In some parts of early modern Atlantis, commerce and mercantilism became as proper a venture for nobility as fighting or owning land, and the nobility became remarkably successful both in acquiring and managing these large commercial empires.
During the late 16th century, the noble family of Artaria (a ducal family of one of the original Atlantean states carved out by the Conquista that had since been defunct and partitioned) began an aggressive acquisition of these assets through both old fashioned intermarriage and the novel discipline of financial cut-and-thrust. Gradually, the house of Artaria developed into a family of transnational nobility with obligations and holdings in more than one state, not to mention more financial clout than the average king. This uncomfortable situation became quite convoluted during the incessant warfare of the 17th century. The Treaty of Suno (1660) devoted a subsection to dealing with this; the countless disparate holdings of Artaria and its tree of vassals, holdings, and treaties were merged into the Artaria Foundation, which gained legal backing for its neutrality and divided loyalties to various thrones of Atlantis. Holding crown lands in trust for numerous states, the Artaria Foundation became by far the largest private land owner in the world, with nominal control over gigantic stretches of Vespuccia that the states didn't yet care to directly administer and in which entire nations of natives continued to mind their own business.
The Great War brought over three centuries of "interested neutrality" to an end when the Clovian Empire illegally nationalised Artaria's holdings in imperial territory to bolster the war effort. Although initially intended as a temporary wartime expediency that could be recompensated when convenient, the emperor perhaps misjudged the the political acumen of his adversaries, whose refusals to follow suit pushed the foundation permanently onto the Triumvirate side.
Military
- mercenaries
- arms dealing
- superweapons