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Canpei: Difference between revisions
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The very first attested instance of organized habitation of the Canpei plains is from an Shang dynasty imperial proclamation in 720 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. Hochi came under attack several times by previously undiscovered forest peoples, with the Viceroy's escort being attacked on their way from Brink. | The very first attested instance of organized habitation of the Canpei plains is from an Shang dynasty imperial proclamation in 720 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. Hochi came under attack several times by previously undiscovered forest peoples, with the Viceroy's escort being attacked on their way from Brink. | ||
===United Cities era=== | ===United Cities era=== | ||
Generalized unrest within the [[Corumm|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|Corumm]], 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=== | ===Imperial and Republican rule=== | ||