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This just rolled off my brain. Which is probably good, because it means my brain is finally capable of writing again. I'd probably want to poke around it and edit a few things if I were going to make it a bit more viable, but I really need to get some breakfast and get back into my thesis paperwork, so that's all free and clear by the time I leave for the United States next week.
Someone on Facebook was saying (in less polite terms) that he was having trouble getting his head around how Māori could fit into Steampunk. I started thought-experimenting, and it didn't stop for a while. Here's the result.
Initial European settling happens a little earlier, and in smaller numbers initially. Māori still adapt quite well to the musket and a few other pieces of British technology, and a more modern style of education is propagated by settlers, missionaries and eventually by the Māori tribes themselves.
The inter-tribal musket wars are settled internally, and The United Tribes of New Zealand form a stronger confederacy. As European settlement pressures start to heat up, there's still a Treaty of Waitangi, but the tribes manage to play the British and the French off against each other and get better terms. They're also proficient enough in English language and law by now that there's no argument over the terms of sovereignty and governorship they are agreeing to. Banks Peninsula is declared a French enclave and Lyttelton a free port, ensuring that the Māori continue to have a non-British European trading partner. They're also better able to capitalise on the mid-19th Century gold rushes, and import more industrial technology of their own.
Land sales still happen, but on fairer terms. There's no Tohunga Suppression Act. The Land Wars still happen, as settlement pressures build in Europe and the demand for new land to cultivate rises. This time it's a bit less lopsided, with the British and their Māori allies fighting against the United Tribes with the surreptitious backing of French merchants and Irish partisans. British war shipping is disrupted and major ports blockaded using Fenian Ram submarines. The pā and trench warfare becomes more frustrating for the British, as the Māori now have the benefits of improved resources and logistics as well as terrain experience and mobility.
Eventually hostilities cease in stalemate, and it's been an uneasy, compromising peace since then. The British, French and the Fenian Brotherhood all want to consolidate their interests and push the others out. Not all Māori tribes are part of the United Tribes, and not all tribes who are trust each other either. New Zealand as a nation is trying to reconcile its identity from fractured parts, while also coping with the influx of new technological innovations spurred both by the wars and by scientific progress overseas.
Someone on Facebook was saying (in less polite terms) that he was having trouble getting his head around how Māori could fit into Steampunk. I started thought-experimenting, and it didn't stop for a while. Here's the result.
Initial European settling happens a little earlier, and in smaller numbers initially. Māori still adapt quite well to the musket and a few other pieces of British technology, and a more modern style of education is propagated by settlers, missionaries and eventually by the Māori tribes themselves.
The inter-tribal musket wars are settled internally, and The United Tribes of New Zealand form a stronger confederacy. As European settlement pressures start to heat up, there's still a Treaty of Waitangi, but the tribes manage to play the British and the French off against each other and get better terms. They're also proficient enough in English language and law by now that there's no argument over the terms of sovereignty and governorship they are agreeing to. Banks Peninsula is declared a French enclave and Lyttelton a free port, ensuring that the Māori continue to have a non-British European trading partner. They're also better able to capitalise on the mid-19th Century gold rushes, and import more industrial technology of their own.
Land sales still happen, but on fairer terms. There's no Tohunga Suppression Act. The Land Wars still happen, as settlement pressures build in Europe and the demand for new land to cultivate rises. This time it's a bit less lopsided, with the British and their Māori allies fighting against the United Tribes with the surreptitious backing of French merchants and Irish partisans. British war shipping is disrupted and major ports blockaded using Fenian Ram submarines. The pā and trench warfare becomes more frustrating for the British, as the Māori now have the benefits of improved resources and logistics as well as terrain experience and mobility.
Eventually hostilities cease in stalemate, and it's been an uneasy, compromising peace since then. The British, French and the Fenian Brotherhood all want to consolidate their interests and push the others out. Not all Māori tribes are part of the United Tribes, and not all tribes who are trust each other either. New Zealand as a nation is trying to reconcile its identity from fractured parts, while also coping with the influx of new technological innovations spurred both by the wars and by scientific progress overseas.
