Canpei

Canpei, oficially the Republic of Canpei (Corummese:新都共和国) is a country in southern Alshar. It borders Rusana and Corumm to the south, Tanhai to the east and Udon Khai to the west. The name Canpei can be roughly translated as 'the broad north' as the region was known to the Corummese empires to the south, a sort of last frontier before transitioning to the barbarous, nomadic northern steppes. The capital of Canpei is the city of Nicheng, which is located roughly in the geographic center of the country, next to the Hongse river. Canpei has a population of around thirty two million people. Canpei has a mixed economy with elements of state dirigism coexisting with free market capitalism, economic inequality is one of the highest in the world. Most of Canpei's exports use Corummese ports and the nation is very reliant on remittances from Corumm. Canpei is a presidential republic consisting of six provinces. Canpei is classified by the International Liberty Index Foundation as a flawed democracy with worrying downward trends on issues such as corruption, speech and media freedoms and free and fair elections.

Canpei's history is deeply enmeshed with that of its southern Corummese neighbor as the latter began expanding into the area in the early 8th century. Expansion into the plains was slow at first but gathered pace as nomad tribes were either pushed further north or brought to heel by military or diplomatic means.

Etymology
Canpei is a bastardization of the word Guangbei, which is a Corummese term that means "broad-north". The region got its name for the seemingly endless plains and for the fact that for hundreds of years it was the northernmost limit of Corummese regional influence.

Settlement
The very first attested instance of organized habitation of the Guangbei plains is from an Shang dynasty imperial proclamation in 520 CE; granting official town status to the city of Brink which sits at the southern mouth of the Hongse river. Imperial surveyors traveled northbound along the eastern bank of the river encountering small nomadic settlements, its people probably related to the Degei confederation to the east. Imperial authorities erected five wooden forts alongside the river to serve as frontier posts, this territory would be known thereafter as the Left-Bank Frontier province with Brink serving as its first seat. Brink and its hinterlands were dominated by the Houxi clan, linked by marriage to the Imperial family by marriage to a second cousing of the Emperor Cao Mei. The Houxi were thus the beneficiaries of imperial patronage and their province received generous subventions that it otherwise would not be granted given its low population. From 803 CE onwards the Houxi held a monopoly on the office of Imperial Viceroy. It was Viceroy Chang Houxi who first ordered an expedition be mounted across to the other side of the Hongse into what is known as the Mongshe forest, where Huoxi began setting up numerous logging camps. The explotation of forested areas became an important source of revenue for the Houxi family who built a palisade and town named Hochi across the river to serve as the logistic center of the operation.

The region held special importance due to the conquests of the Oduniyyad Caliphate, which advanced to the borders of Guangbei which required the Chen dynasty to expend precious resources to garrison the border and the as of yet fairly depopulated province. The crumbling of Oduniyyad central authority in Alshar during 860 brought no respite as the new Muslim dynasties proved equally inclined to wage holy wars.

United Cities era
Generalized unrest within the Chen dynasty began in 877 with a seriers of would be usurpers, collectively known as the Four Great Impostors. The most powerful of this was a nobleman by the name of Tengu Peg-Leg who took control over the city of Heng. His rebellion spread like wildfire across the north and Brink's Huoxi clan were among the first noble families to pay him homage. Tengu's assassination marked the end of his Northern Shang state and its transformation into the confederation of the United Cities, of which Brink and its environs were a founding member. In this period Brink functioned as a mostly independent city-state and all the territory in the northwest of the United Cities was under its hegemony. The practice of slavery was imported from Heng and the Huoxi clan became one of the great slaver families of the region, taking people into bondage from far and wide. Under the loose coalition of cities, taxation was much lower than under Imperial rule, boosting the economy of the city. Brink began establishing colonies and cities across modern day Canpei to feed itself and source whatever it could not acquire locally. Over time a localized identity would emerge, with interlocking feelings of patriotism between the colonies and the mother city of Brink.

During the wars of reclamation by the Zhong dynasty, Brink and its colonies supplied a great deal of resources and manpower to the armies of the United Cities, with the Warmaster who fought the second invasion to a standstill being of Brink's Huoxi clan. The deterioration of the United Citie's ruling class into despotism and debauchery, the degeneration of its armies into mobs of armed slaves with no morale and conflict between the cities marked the entry of the confederation into a terminal spiral that would see it conquered in the third Zhong invasion. As the furthest from the frontier, Brink was the last major city to come under attack, being starved into submission in 1215. The Huoxi clan was exterminated and almost half of the city's inhabitants expelled from the city. For the next hundred years Brink would become nothing more than a frontier outpost and backwater.

Imperial and Republican rule
Reorganized as a frontier military province under the name of Guangbei, the region began to gather the renewed attention of central authorities due to the military advances of the Oduniyyad Caliphate successor states in western Alshar and fall of the reconstituted Nasrid state, which was under vassalage of the Zhong dynasty. Hundreds of thousands of settler families were moved into the province to reinforce its defenses, quickly tilting the demographic trends against the original nomad inhabitants who ended up almost wholly absorbed by the newcomers. The fall of the new kingdom of Nasrad in XXXX turned Guangbei into an active front against the Ghanim sultanate and an imperial army was stationed there on a permanent basis. Most of the province east of the Hongse was devastated in the first Zhong-Ghanim war which saw Muslim forces push east up to the river before their crossing attempts were defeated.

Modern era
Revolution of Dignity and Corummese suppression

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