Blood and Ice: The New Mercian Civil War

Introduction

Following recontact with the Core in the last years of the 2170s, New Mercia possessed a growing industrial economy, an expanding and wealthy middle class, a stable, organised, democratic and fairly efficient government structure (as compared to many other Expanse and Rim worlds, at least) and a military that showed few signs of disloyalty. Barring the probably unavoidable - and, in the grand scheme of things, very minor - campaign of terrorism by the Mercian National Liberation Front, which was very loud and visible, but failed to become as effective as the guerilla war waged by the anti-European National Patriot Front in the 2140s, it appeared the the colonial government had a firm grip on it's world. All indications were that New Mercia was set to become one of the 'Big Three' economies of ZOCU, alongside Londenium and Hampshire, at least assuming that ZOCU was not destroyed by Europe and the PACT.

Today, in contrast, New Mercia is an impoverished, heavily militarised autocratic dictatorship - under Queen Margaret - with a truncated, if still considerable industrial base and a population that is somewhere between half and two thirds the size of the pre-war kingdom. Additionally, modern New Mercia, while not quite a rogue state, is explicitly antagonistic towards the EU in general and EU-backed Albion in particular, a very different situation to the strained but also generally amicable situation immediately post-contact and the current intention of most ZOCU states to atively try and build bridges with the Core.

This article will attempt to outline, in brief, the way in which the New Mercian Civil War in general and certain specfic events in particular, effected those changes, and how the legacy of the war continues to shape current New Mercian economic, military and diploamtic strategy.

Background

The Pre-War Situation

As I mentioned in the introduction, New Mercia between 2177 and 2180 was in the middle of an economic rennaisance that was unprecedented in the history of the colony. During the period of direct EU administration before the Breakdown, New Mercia was treated and managed entirely as a resource colony. What industry did exist was intended and designed for the purpose of supporting a colony in a relatively unpleasant but ultimately non-leathal planetary environment. Given that the planners of the original colony mission had decided to test their own pet ideas abotu the proper way to build entirely self-contained and self-sufficient settlements - that's arcologies to you and me - that industry was somewhat more developed than one might have expected, but there was very little spare capacity to devote to competing with any of the big EU commercial interests that were involved in eploiting the moon's mineral wealth and massive dust deposits.

The New Mercians, predictably, took exception to the Europeans exploiting them so openly and effectively, and by the time the Breakdown hit, they had themselves a nice little guerilla war going. It wasn't anything like the situation on Haraway - the EU was the legal authority on the planet, for a start - and the guerillas showed no signs of winning, up until the failure of FTL travel left the colony isolated. The colonial administration, rather sensibly, decided to compromise with the pro-independence groups, and the result was the Kingdom of New Mercia. A report on the actions they took to survive the Breakdown could - and has - filled books. Large ones, I might add, so I'll skip that. Suffice it to say taht, by the time they were recontacted, they had an industrial economy that was probably unsustainably large given the limitations on the volume of their shipping to the rest of ZOCU. In fact, it was probably the largest economic base in the region, even if it was less capable of building complex things like starships than Londenium. Since it relied on government subsidy for support, though, it wasn't an especially prosperous economy, and it was basically spinning it's wheels as part of a huge employment programme to stop people from starving, while slowly bankrupting the government.

EU recontact changed that, though. For a start, it was the New Mercians that built their system catapults, under EU supervision. that sounds pretty unbelievable today, but you have to remember that, at the time, the intention of both sides was to find a workable way to reconcile. New Merica needed the work, and the EU wanted to take advantage of a more-or-less developed industrial base and the huge dust supply right there in the system, so both of them got soemthing out of the arrangement. That's one of the big reasons it only took a year or so to connect the system to the catapult network; the EU didn't have to ship everything from Earth. Once the catapult was built, of course, New Mercian firms had access to the wider markets of the Core, and there was plenty of demand for industrial muscle that far out; the Earth based corporations had better kit and more money to throw about, but they were a month or two away from places like Lylat, whereas New Mercia (and, for that matter, Outremonde and Neue Silesia) were right next door. The result was that all that superfluous, job-programme industry suddenly became a real money-maker, and the laws and organisational quirks intended to make sure that everybody had enough to eat and live on meant that a lot of the new wealth ended up spread over the entire population, rather than concentrated at the top, which created a rapidly expanding market of domestic consumers as well.

That sort of situation usually creates stability, rather than discord, but it turned out that (predictably enough) not everybody was all that happy about being cut free from the EU. Enter the MNLF.

(TBC)