Ardmore
Ardmori Cooperative Republic Ardmóri Comarchun Poblach (Garán Gaelic) | |
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 Flag
 Coat of arms
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Motto: "Aonaichte ann an Obair, Aonaichte tro Eachdraidh!" (United in work, united through history!) | |
| Capital and largest city | Dunvál |
| Official language | Garán Gaelic |
| Recognized regional language | Ardmori Ænglish |
| Ethnic groups (2034) |
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| Religion (2034) |
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| Demonym(s) | Ardmori |
| Government | Unitary dominant-party syndicalist parliamentary republic |
| Duncan Hamill | |
| Kellen Melns | |
| Aloysius Rooney | |
| Legislature | Cooperative Legislative Assembly |
| Board of Labor | |
| General Assembly | |
| Establishment | |
| 908 | |
| 1277 | |
| 12 March 1927 | |
| 17 September 1931 | |
| 1 January 2000 | |
| Area | |
• Total | 73,270.76 km2 (28,290.00 sq mi) |
| Population | |
• Estimate | 18,456,607 |
• Census | 18,276,501 |
• Density | 249.44/km2 (646.0/sq mi) |
| GDP (nominal) | estimate |
• Total | $552,352,413,222 |
• Per capita | $30,222 |
| Currency | Ardmori Syndic (ARS) |
| Mains electricity | 120 V–60 Hz |
| Driving side | right |
| Calling code | +127 |
| Internet TLD | .ar |
Ardmore (Garán Gaelic: Ardmór), officially the Ardmori Cooperative Republic (Garán Gaelic: Ardmóri Comarchun Poblach), is an archipelago country off the western shore of Levantia in the Odoneru Ocean, consisting of one large island surrounded by four much smaller peripheral islands. Its two closest neighbors are the Kiravian protectorate of New Ardmore to its west, and Urcea to its east. Ardmore's government is a parliamentary democracy under the guidance of Cooperativism, which is the Ardmori form of syndicalism; its ruling party has maintained electoral dominance even after allowing for the formation of other political parties as part of its wide-sweeping Millennium Reforms in the late 1990s. Although the country is a unitary state and not a federation, the principles of syndicalism means that Ardmore is largely decentralized with economic and political power being vested in autonomous cooperatives both worker-owned and communitarian.
The people of Ardmore, known as Ardmoris, are considered members of the Garán people, sharing this identity with the people of the Urcean region of Carolina. Much of their heritage results from the blending of Gaelic and Gothic cultural traditions that occurred in Carolina and adjoining areas in the years leading up to the collapse of Great Levantia. Garáns are thought to have invaded Ardmore and settled it in the mid-6th century, though no unified Garán polity emerged on the main island of Great Ardmore; loose alliances of mainland cities and tribes were formed with the newly established Garán cities and tribes on the island. These cities and tribes were able to remain independent from the mainland Levantine powers through said powers perceiving the Ardmori Isles as being a backwater with little economic value, and soon these polities became various feudal polities before the 10th Century. These new polities frequently battled and raided against one another, often with grave consequences on its agriculture before resulting in an economic collapse in the 1140s after the end of a major power struggle between two of its major duchies.
The new kingdom was established in 1277 after the conclusion of the Council of Moear, but it would not be until 1365 and after the wide-ranging Duke's War when it would emerge as a relatively centralized power. The royal consolidation and centralization of power allowed for Ardmore to become a major colonial power during the age of exploration, with the kingdom being the patron to the famed Ænglish mariner Paul Aster when he embarked on an expedition to find the source of all gold only to come across Crona. Ardmore took great advantage in establishing various colonies in Crona in the years after Aster's first arrival to Crona, with one of its largest colonies being what is now modern-day Arcerion, itself having been a self-governing colony of Ardmore from 1890 until becoming independent after the end of the Ardmori monarchy in 1931. Largely unaffected by the sectarian disputes that caused the Great Confessional War, Ardmore became prosperous in the 16th and 17th centuries, with its colonial holdings greatly expanding due to the increased number of Protestant settlers looking to go abroad.
The uneven prosperity of Ardmore, combined with a greatly uneven period of industrial development in the 18th and 19th centuries, lead to considerable class resentment and domestic problems. The growing rifts between the parts of society lead to the Ardmori Civil War, which resulted in the establishment of a syndicalist republic in Ardmore. The Civil War resulted in the partition of the country into Ardmore and what is now New Ardmore, which existed briefly as a constitutional republic under the personal leadership of the last Prince-Regent of the Kingdom of Ardmore before subsequently becoming a protectorate and overseas region of Kiravia. Ardmore today is a relatively developed nation which is adjacent to, but not part of, the Levantine Union's political and economic sphere. Although an outspoken critic of Urcea and Levantine foreign policy in general, and despite its revolutionary socialist form of government, Ardmore has been making an effort to more closely align with Levantia in recent decades such as through token reforms.
Etymology
Ardmore gets its name from Ardmór, or in its original Garán Gaelic spelling, Ard Mór, which means "Great Ard". Although the word ard does exist in Garán Gaelic, it meaning "high", all evidence suggests that this may be just a coincidence as "ard" in fact derives from the name used to refer to the ancient Paleo-Levantine people who inhabited the islands; they were known as the Ardmen, the name of said ethnic group has its origins in sources written by the Adonerii, who spelt it as aratomen. There have been multiple debates on what "Ard" had originally meant and whether it was a Latin word that has long since been forgotten or a latinization of a word from the extinct language of the Ardmen people. Those who argue that "ard" comes from the Latin language, which is currently the accepted theory on the origins of the name of the country, have stated that "ard" is in fact an Ænglish translation of aratrum, a word which means "plough". Thus, the Latin camp have theorized that Ardmore could in fact be translated to "great plough", with aratomen meaning "to do some ploughing". Theories that suggest an origin from the long-extinct language of the Ardmen people, although popular in Ardmen revivalist communities, are nowhere near as accepted as the mainstream Latinic theories.
However, because "ard" is a word in Garán Gaelic, it also meant that Ardmór can also translate to "great heights". This is the etymological origins that the Ardmori government, having pledged itself to the protection and revival of the historically repressed Garán culture, supports. Their explanation is that the fact that the popular etymology that "ard" translates into "plough" was the result of the royalist government using multiple coincidences and false friends in an attempt to connect themselves to the powers of mainland Levantia, the long-lost Ardmen people, and the Latins. Since 1931, the government has been running a campaign to combat this misinformation in linguistics; the Ardmori Heights Campaign aims to explain that while "ard" is an Ænglish word and that it has Latinic and Istroyan origins, that still does not change the fact that "ard" also exists in the Garán Gaelic vocabulary, albeit with an entirely different definition from the Ænglish word. Because of the ubiquity of the "plough" etymology throughout much of the Occident, this has been met with some tremendous difficulty for the most part as many linguistic scholars, save for those in Urcea, have not really dedicated much time to learning about Garán Gaelic due to a lack of a major Garán presence outside of Ardmore and Urcea. Meanwhile in Kiravia, where Gaelic studies are well-established and Ænglophobia pervasive, the "great heights" thesis has always predominated, and it is the only etymology reflected in school textbooks in New Ardmore.
Geography
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Mount Mac Shuibhne, Ardmore's sole mountain and highest point. -
Balnaessie, located by the Glenblair Bay. -
A view of Con Rose River. -
View of the eastern coast of Ardmore from the Mirana Sound.
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Ardmore is a small sub-archipelago within the Ardmori Isles, an archipelago in the Odoneru Ocean that is located off the southwestern coast of mainland Levantia. The small sub-archipelago that makes up Ardmore consists of Great Ardmore, which is the largest island of both Ardmore and the Ardmori Isles and is home to the vast majority of Ardmore's population, and four small peripheral islands that surround Great Ardmore. To its east is the Mirana Sound which is sheltered by the Ardmori Isles. The four smaller islands each have names of their own, the most well-known of these names being ænglicizations of their Garán Gaelic names. The largest of the peripheral islands is named Beremore (Béaramór; "Big Bear"), and to its southeast is Bofinemore (Bófinemór; "Big Cow") which is the second-largest of the peripheral islands. The smallest two peripheral islands are closer to mainland Levantia which, respectively, are named Valentia (Ballentia; Béilinse; "Mouth Island") and Inisharan (Inisárain; "Kidney Island").
The sub-archipelago comprises just over 73,270.76km2 in land area. Being a nation that solely consists of islands, Ardmore's geography is almost entirely just above sea level, with the sole exception being on Great Ardmore which has Ardmore's only mountain and highest point Mount Mac Shuibhne, named in honor of Ardmore's first post-Civil War leader Ardghar Mac Shuibhne. Asides from being home to Ardmore's only mountain, Great Ardmore is home to a few hills which are presently unnamed due to their lack of notability compared to Mount Mac Shuibhne. None of the peripheral islands have any hills or mountains that are of particular note.
Climate
Being an insular nation in the northern hemisphere within the northern section of the tropics, Ardmore's climate is relatively temperate and mild. Solar seasons are not as assertive as they would be outside of the tropics, but are comparatively more noticeable than they would be in countries that are much closer to the Equator. As much of the country is not too far from a coastal area, this further ensures that the average temperatures throughout the country are milder and more temperate. Indeed, winter temperatures are for the most part mild and ranging from around 0°C to 10°C with little snowfall while summer temperatures generally range from approximately 18°C to 25°C. The sole exception to the overall climate of Ardmore is Mount Mac Shuibhne and its surrounding area which experiences temperatures on average as low as -5°C as well as a greater chance of snowfall. The overall air pollution in Ardmore is kept low through the government's efforts at promoting clean, renewable energy; Ardmori air quality is among the highest in Levantia as a result.
History
Pre-Kingdom history
Prior to the arrival of the Garán people to Great Ardmore, a wide variety of people are thought to have lived on the island and the adjoining parts of the archipelago. Adonerii cities were established on the island by 600 BC, representing the furthest northern outposts of that civilization. The Adonerii cities were relatively sparsely populated compared to the rest of the Latinic world, and few historical records survive from them. From what records do exist, historians believe the islands were mostly populated by a Paleo-Levantine people likely known as the Ardmen, from which the islands get their name. Very little is known about the Ardmen, though they continued to inhabit the interior of the island when it became a tributary of Great Levantia in ca. 50 BC. Great Levantine influence on the island was limited, with the few urban centers largely sending tribute to Urceopolis with little to no Levantine military influence on the island. Like much of the area, the earliest peoples of Great Ardmore - both Latinic and Ardmen - relied on fishing. The islands were not especially prosperous and were not along the main, Crotona-based trade route between Sarpedon and Levantia, and were considered a backwater during antiquity.
As Great Levantia entered terminal decline, the region of what is today a part of Urcea known as Carolina became a pourous frontier which saw the emergence of the Garán people as a blend of invading Gothic people and local Gaels and Istroyans who had been resettled from Tromarine centuries before. Continued invasions of Goths led to many borderlanders seeking new lands elsewhere, and the first Garán warbands are thought to have arrived in Great Ardmore in the late 400s in small numbers, serving as mercenaries by the coastal cities against the Ardmen tribes in the interior. A major invasion of the island by Garáns occurred at some point in the mid-6th century, with the lightly populated island easily overcome by the numerous mainland invaders. The Ardmen and Latins, long thought by historians to have been slaughtered, were likely incorporated into the new social system, and many Ardmoris today are thought to have some descent from Ardmen.
Medieval period
Early medieval era
The early medieval era in what is now Ardmore began with the Age of Raiders when the various clans of the Ardmori Isles began to transform into feudal dynasties. These clans were under a loose cooperative organization that consisted of the chief's extended family, with each having a common set of shared values of honor and a strict code of discipline within a social hierarchy. Indeed, this organization would eventually transform into the basis for a formal feudal structure alongside the development of feudal dynasties. Due to many of these feudal dynasties not having much in terms of means to produce a sizeable amount of wealth due to the largely non-arable geography of the Ardmori Isles, the heads of these dynasties soon resorted to conducting land raids against both eastern mainland Levantia and, to a much lesser extent due to its ability to effectively fight back, Urcea. Indeed, one of Ardmore's earliest greatest heroes, Pádraig MacDowell of the House of Kilkken, was killed in 877 while conducting a raid on the Urcean coast.
The practice of raiding would soon disappear before 910 with the advent of border skirmishes, the rise of a landed gentry, and the introduction to the practice of knighthoods into the Ardmori Isles. The first major outbreak to have occurred on the Ardmori Isles was the North Island War, which started when Conn Rose, Duke of Rosmore and head of the House of Rose, began to attack the settlements of the County of Kilinmuir to capture the eastern port town of Granway and to subjugate the ruling Clan O'Coffey in 933. In response, Kilinmuir launched raids against Rosmore settlements the year after. The conflict would not escalate until the Battle of Ballyhill in 939. The Duchy of Rosmore would emerge victorious in 981, and the borders between it and Kilinmuir were delineated for the first line; Kilinmuir, however, was able to maintain its independence and would not have to swear an oath of fealty to Rosmore. The next major conflict on the isles was the South Island War which began in 944 when the Duchy of Dunval attempted to conquer the Duchy of Kilkken and fought alongside its ally the Lord Mayorship of Craignaisaig against Kilkken's ally the County of Balnaessie; the conflict ended in failure for Dunval in 962.
In 1061, Kilinmuir had formed an alliance through marriage with Rosmore, leading to the former to finally swear fealty to the latter. At the same time, Dunval had finally managed to conquer Craignaisaig as well as its ally Balnaessie. This soon led to the two growing duchies bordering each other, which due to a lack of a clear definition became a source of a major power struggle between the two duchies. This power struggle lasted for 88 years, with the Duchy of Kilkken siding with Rosmore due to its historical animosity against Dunval thanks to the South Island War. Through the use of raids and battles, the two duchies were able to maintain an equal footing until a decisive victory allowed for Rosmore to emerge victorious. This victory, however, was not to last as the constant wars and raids had impacted the economy so severely that it collapsed just months after the end of the ducal power struggle; it would not be until the 1270s when the economy of the Ardmori Isles began to significantly recover.
Formation of the kingdom
In 1277, the various heads of the many noble clans of the Ardmori Isles formed the Council of Moear to unite the many holdings under one universally-acknowledged leader, a King of Ardmore, to prevent any future power struggles from ever happening again. For a span of two months, the council had allowed for Rosmore, Kilkken, and Dunval to argue for why they should be the paramount leader of the isles. During these two months, the three factions were more often than not at odds with one another, but the council had ended with Rosmore being selected to become the paramount leader of the Ardmori Isles, a decision that was seen as highly controversial in part due to rumors that Rosmore may have bribed most of the council members in order to secure their support and because of Rosmore's plans to centralize the new kingdom. In response to these rumors, Dunval, Kilkken and its vassal Wissel declared a separate crowned republic in rebellion against the new Ardmori monarchy.
The resulting rebellion, known as the Duke's War, was a wide-ranging civil war that encompassed the entirety of the Ardmori Isles. Although the rebelling duchies held a numerical advantage, Rosmore held a tactical and strategic advantage thanks to its high centralization. Major battles during this war that were decisive Rosmore victories were the Siege of Craignaisaig in 1298 and the Sack of Balnaessie in 1364, the latter leading to the Treaty of Great Ardmore in 1365, formally establishing Rosmore as the paramount leader of the Ardmori Isles and as the royal family of the new kingdom. To ensure that there would never be another civil war to the scale of the Duke's War, one of the first edicts passed was the Clan Laws which was the first of many laws designed to repress the ancient clan system, which was a major aspect of Garán culture for many centuries and was a facet of the feudal system which had preceded the formation of the Kingdom of Ardmore.
Ardmori colonial golden age
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The Ardmori kingdom during its early centuries was a highly ambitious realm. As returning to raiding and attacking mainland Levantia was not only an impossibility but also a highly suicidal task now that many of the Levantine realms were more than capable to repelling these raids, Ardmore instead sought to explore outward to amass new wealth by finding the source of all gold; said to be a land to the far east beyond Audonia. This obsession with gold was the result of the traumas accrued with the advent of the economic collapse of the 12th Century. In 1387, Ardmore become the patron of the Ænglish mariner Paul Aster, whose hypothesis about the source of all gold greatly appealed to the Ardmori elite. The resulting expedition, despite not finding the source of all gold, led to the first time someone from the Occident had visited the continent of Crona, and by the time Aster had returned to Ardmore in 1389, he became the most celebrated person throughout the Occident; arguably even the world's first celebrity.
Ardmore was among the first Occidental nations to have entered into various trading relationships with the indigenous peoples of Crona, or rather the indigenous realms that were not hostile to the Occident. These trading relationships led to the emergence of some of the earliest Occidental settlements in Crona in the 16th Century, it being helped by the kingdom's relative stability even during the sectarian violence of the Great Confessional War. This in turn made these early Ardmori colonies expand as Protestant refugees fled the mainland in great numbers thanks to their expulsion from the Holy Levantine Empire, with a great many of these refugees being of Ænglish ancestry, some of whom have opted to even stay in Ardmore proper due to its relative religious toleration and independence from the Holy Levantine Empire. The lands in Crona that would become Arcerion and Malentina are home to the descendants of the Ænglish Protestants who have stayed in Ardmore; they migrated to Crona in the late 18th Century during the gold rush.
It was during the early years of the Ardmori settlements in Crona that conflicts would arise between the settlers and the indigenous peoples, escalating into the First of the Arcer Bush Wars in 1794 after an expedition of Ardmori settlers were massacred by native tribes. The Ardmori settlers retaliated by killing several small bands of indigenous peoples, who in turn retaliated by destroying the settlement of Bradford. To avenge Bradford, the Crown-Governor of the colony, John Hughes, issued a decree permitting militia captains Simon Thompson and Reginald Cole to mount an expedition to the interior for the purpose of finding and destroying indigenous settlements; the expedition was a resounding success and a tremendous shock to the indigenous leaders. Since that attack, the next several years were a series of further skirmishes and raids between the Ardmori and the indigenous tribes, ending in a resounding victory for the colonists in 1801 and allowing for the colony to expand further inland.
Industrialization and social decline
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The Industrial Revolution was a period of tremendous economic, social, and even political changes. For Ardmore, this meant further prosperity on top of the wealth already amassed from Crona. Much of the industrialization of Ardmore occurred in the southern urban areas of the island of Great Ardmore and on the peripheral islands of the Ardmori Isles, which was generally the poorer part of the kingdom and thus was full of plenty of laborers who could be cheaply employed all the while the profits were sent to the more affluent northern areas and most especially in the nation's capital of Rosmore which was where the kingdom's aristocracy and nouveau riche mostly resided in. For much of the lower classes of Ardmore, material conditions have worsened thanks to the Industrial Revolution as not only were villages demolished to make way for new industrial buildings, these new buildings were highly polluting, which meant that smoke and smog often got into people's lungs and introducing them to new health problems, as well as highly dangerous as safety conditions were practically nonexistent, meaning that multiple workers would run the risk of losing a limb or even their lives.
This new social disparity was the catalyst for the emergence of trade unions that called for the betterment of the conditions found in factories all across the southern areas of Great Ardmore and the surrounding peripheral islands; the central hub for union activity was the city of Dunvál which was, and still is, the largest city in the Ardmori Isles. Initially, many of these trade unions were focused on improving the appalling working conditions that many workers have suffered under; many still supported the monarchy, instead blaming the aristocracy for their decadence and general unwillingness to let go of even a small portion of their wealth to give back to the people under their employ. Indeed, many unions celebrated when many of these new industries were nationalized in the early 1920s as many felt that that meant that they could finally get their voices heard. However, a celebratory demonstration was heavily and brutally repressed by the armed forces under the fear that the trade unionists were aiming to overthrow the monarchy.
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As the kingdom's true colors got revealed to many of the nation's laborers, so too did support for the monarchy amongst the working classes dwindle. This, alongside the rise of new ideologies that call upon the workers to seize the means of production and take control of their destiny, radicalized the trade unionists with many now believing that the only way for them to achieve their rights is through revolutionary means. The nascent Workers' Party of Ardmore rose into prominence during this time under the leadership of shift managers Ardghar Mac Shuibhne and Ros Mac Daibhéid. Mac Shuibhne was educated in Vithinja where he learned about new political theories based around the policies of syndicalism, and Mac Daibhéid was a prominent socialist politician and labor leader who had been expelled from the Ardmori parliament after pulling many political stunts ranging from making snide remarks directed towards the Ardmori king to inviting an entourage of child laborers and victims of industrial accidents into the House of Commons.
The pair spent over a half-decade holding speeches in pubs, dance halls, and poorhouses across the Ardmori Isles with a greater focus on areas outside of the prosperous north; the armed forces have been on the receiving end of austerity measures and budget cuts. Because there was a lack of a gendarmerie and because Mac Shuibhne and Mac Daibhéid were able to find police officers sympathetic to the cause whom they could bribe, the pair were able to amass a membership count of nearly 10,000 for the Workers' Party by the end of 1926 without any interference. Mac Daibhéid, in a bold gambit to bring attention to their cause in the northern areas of Great Ardmore, held a large protest at Rosmore Cathedral during a communion service held for several princes of the Ardmori royal family. The result was a bloodbath as skirmishes broke out between the unionists and the police which resulted in not only Mac Shuibhne and Mac Daibhéid drifting apart due to differing approaches to the revolution, but also the beginnings of a massive government crackdown on far-left groups and activists.
Civil war
Despite the crackdowns, Mac Daibhéid still remained as a respectable leader of the Workers' Party and soon began to plan a labor event in early 1927, only this time diverging from his usual tactics to maintain the element of surprise. Picket lines and strike areas were set up to prevent workers from entering the factory while at the same time making the event seem more like an initiative to gain more union members than a protest like previous incidents. The intent was to encourage factory workers to join Mac Daibhéid's cause instead of allowing the upper classes to continue abusing them for much longer. The event, now known as "Red Wednesday", soon received the attention of the police after they were alerted by the factory's senior management. Over two hundred officers were sent to clear out the disturbance, leading to a clash that resulted in multiple deaths of both unionists and policeman. Unlike previous events, "Red Wednesday" became a rallying cry for the trade unionists and the lower classes of Ardmore and was a major blow for the government.
The clash also garnered international condemnation soon foreign support and weaponry began to be sent to the Ardmori Isles. During this time, Mac Shuibhne and Mac Daibhéid have opted to split up into separate groups, respectively the National Ardmori Front (NAF) and the Ardmori Liberation Army (ALA), citing major differences in their approaches that simply could not be overcome, and the government began to prepare the army for an attack on socialist cells throughout the country. By 12 March 1927, the Ardmori Civil War had begun. The first few battles were initially won by the royalists with the help of troops from their self-governing colony of Arcerion, but the tide of war soon turned in favor of the revolutionaries in 1929 as they united against an invasion force in Operation Pike; the failure of Operation Pike was a decisive victory for the revolutionaries as it led to Urcea ceasing any and all support for the royalists, soon leaving only Alstin and Arcerion as supporters of the government. The final year of the war was marked by the collapse of the Ardmori government, with the revolutionaries executing many members of the royal family as well as prominent officials, and the signing of an armistice. The armistice provided provisions in which Ardmore would be split in two. Eastern Ardmore, which included Great Ardmore, was awarded to the revolutionaries. West Ardmore was to become the Republic of Ardmore, a republican regency under the leadership of one of the few living members of the former royal family, the Prince-Regent.
Modern period
The early years of the nascent cooperative republic were marked by initial wariness from the countries of mainland Levantia; the violent overthrow of the monarch and the subsequent executions of practically the entirety of the House of Rose had left a bad taste for many of the established monarchies on the mainland. Socialist states and regimes were very sparse throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries as there was very few socialist states that would be considered significant enough to become a major power in their own right. Because of that, not very many nations were particularly willing to recognize a successful socialist revolution when there existed a non-socialist Ardmori state to the west of the cooperative republic. The first country to have recognized the syndicalist republic in Ardmore was the Kiravian Union which was essentially one of the only two or three significant socialist states to have ever existed as well as the only major socialist state, and even that would not happen until 1934, which was three years after the Civil War had ended. Having had taken over the Kiravian government through what can be described as a civilian self-coup, the nascent socialist state was more than happy to find friends in fellow socialist-aligned nations such as Ardmore. Nonetheless, one of the first measures that Ardmore took after the end of the Civil War was to build up its armed forces in preparation for a possible attack from the republican government to its west; there were fears that the Prince-Regent may try to retake the defunct Ardmori throne for himself and invade Ardmore to reestablish the kingdom.
The establishment of a socialist economy under the principles of syndicalism necessitated the decentralization of the economy through the establishment of workers' unions. However, there still remained a societal expectation amongst the populace for a wide-ranging social institution that would become a prominent aspect in the lives of many citizens. To figure out how to overcome this expectation while ensuring a loyal populace, the leaders of the Syndicalist Party, born from Ros Mac Daibhéid's Ardmori Liberation Army, formed the temporary Council of Dunvál to figure out how to incorporate the principles of syndicalism into Ardmori culture, preferably through means that would harken back to the days when the main social institution was the clan system. The solution the council came up with was rather simple, although workers' cooperatives would be established to represent the nation's syndicates, there would also be community cooperatives which would represent the local communities throughout the country and serve as a means to promote communitarian kinsmenship and solidarity much like how the workers' cooperatives are designed to promote labor comradery and solidarity. The community cooperatives would become a tremendous success and would set a precedent that Ardmore's government would work to adapt Ardmori culture to the values of syndicalism.
Under the 1927 Constitution, Ardmore had no head of state but rather a collegiate executive known as the Board of Labor which doubled as the nation's legislative upper house. Because of its position according to the constitution, that also meant that the Chairman of the Board of Labor, who was almost always the head of the Syndicalist Party, often acted as the Ardmori head of state and chief executive. The first Chairman of the Board of Labor was Ardghar Mac Shuibhne, who won a surprise electoral victory against his former ally Ros Mac Daibhéid; modern historians have attributed Mac Daibhéid's loss to his fiery temper which, while it was helpful during the Civil War and the months leading up to it, simply did not translate well into peacetime politics unlike Mac Shuibhne's more congenial mannerisms. Under Mac Shuibhne, Ardmore was put through a widespread series of reforms that were designed to reopen factories that were shuttered during the Civil War, allow women to participate in not only the workforce but also in political and social affairs for the first time in Ardmori history, and to fundamentally restructure Ardmori society to prepare for the establishment of the cooperatives as promised in the constitution.
With the advent of the Occidental Cold War in the 1950s, Ardmore played a strictly neutral role as it saw the period of geopolitical tension as nothing more than a series of needless contests between two imperialistic powers. For the most part, Ardmore's biggest concern was the nearby republic to its west as well as internal matters with only Kiravia and later Vithinja maintaining any kind of formal diplomatic relations. After Mac Shuibhne's retirement in 1960, his successor was Rowan Breen whose leadership was responsible for designating Ænglish as a recognized regional language, citing that the language is still used by the descendants of the Ænglish Protestants who have stayed in Ardmore instead of migrating to Crona. It was also at this time when further attempts at adapting Ardmori society into the syndicalist ideology, most notably the creation of a so-called "workers' sport"; cumasball incorporates elements of volleyball, and association football and the new sport was primarily intended to replace baseball as Ardmore's most popular sport, seeing as an "imperialist sport" from the mainland.
Breen retired in 1995 and was succeeded by Nevan Foley. Unlike his predecessors, who were committed syndicalists who feared that any deviation from what the constitution has laid out would just lead to the collapse of the syndicalist republic, Foley felt that reforms were necessary. With the Prince-Regent having long since passed away and his half of Ardmore becoming a protectorate of Kiravia, which had already abandoned socialism in the 1980s, there was no longer an existential threat to Ardmore and thus Foley felt that it was high time to reform the government for the new millennium and to help in fostering relations with non-socialist countries. Foley had proposed a series of sweeping reforms that would decentralize the executive between a chief executive and a head of government, establish a ceremonial presidency, and even drop the enforcement of one-party rule. These reforms, known as the Millennium Reforms and were partly inspired by Castadilla's Velvetine Socialism, made up the framework for the current Ardmori constitution which was put into effect on New Year's Day of the year 2000.
Since 2000, Ardmore has began to soften its isolationist stance towards non-socialist countries, particularly its neighbors in mainland Levantia. This means that, for example, while Ardmore is still remaining critical of Urcea's foreign policy, it will still strive towards good relations with Urcea; this being particularly pertinent to Ardmore as it aims to pursue relations with countries that have a significant Garán population such as Urcea.
Government
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The government of Ardmore functions as a unitary parliamentary republic under a syndicalist dominant-party system governed by the Popular Left Coalition, itself governed by the Co-operative Party of Ardmore (formerly the Syndicalist Party before 2000). The Ardmori political structure is based upon the fundamental principles of cooperative ownership, direct democracy, and workers' control of the means of production. These principles line up with the constitution's adherence to the principles of syndicalism which has officially governed Ardmore since 1931; syndicalism decentralizes economic and political power into the hands of autonomous cooperatives. These cooperatives, whether they be a workers' cooperative or a community cooperative, serve as the foundational baseline for local governance in both the realms of politics and economics within Ardmore. Since 2000, the Ardmori political sphere has opened as the country moves away from its revolutionary phase and begins to establish formal diplomatic relations with non-socialist countries; the nation's head of state since that year is the President of Ardmore who serves a ceremonial role with no powers and instead serves an exclusively diplomatic role.
Executive
The Chairman of the Board of Labor is elected by the members of the Board of Labor and serves for a three-year term with no term limits nor reelection restrictions. Before the year 2000, the Chairman also served as the president of the Syndicalist Party and functioned as the de facto semi-presidential head of state even though the previous constitution had never designated anyone to serve as head of state; the main purpose of the Chairman was to serve a presiding and minor administrative role on a first among equals basis within the Board, but in practice was the most powerful office in Ardmore because of its presiding role and close association with the leadership of the Syndicalist Party. Since 2000, the current constitution explicitly designates the Chairman of the Board of Labor as the nation's chief executive and officially divorces the office from the role of president of the newly-renamed Co-operative Party. The Chairman is accountable to the Board of Labor and may be removed if two-thirds of the total membership of the Board of Labor vote to replace him with a new Chairman.
The President of the General Assembly is the main presiding officer of the General Assembly, and is always the president of the nation's largest political party, which has always been the Co-operative Party and the preceding Syndicalist Party since even before the reforms of the year 2000. The General Assembly President is also guaranteed a seat in the Board of Labor. According to the current constitution, the General Assembly President is the Ardmori head of government and serves for a three-year term between legislative elections; as party leader he serves for two years with no term limit and is directly elected by all members of his party regardless of rank. He is responsible for formally proposing executive bills to the General Assembly, and he serves as the primary liaison between the Board of Labor and the General Assembly and is often asked questions by members of the General Assembly pertaining to the performance of the executive. Like in most parliamentary systems, the General Assembly President is accountable to both the members of the Board of Labor and the members of the General Assembly; failure to maintain the confidence of a simple majority of either will trigger the removal of the General Assembly President from office in preparation for a snap election.
Both the Board of Labor Chairman and the General Assembly President serve as the collective head and chair of the Board of Labor, and thus are considered to be the final decisionmakers in Ardmore with equal executive power. Both have veto power which they may independently invoke as needed; should either of them raise a veto then the chances of the vetoed bill getting passed are considered to be highly slim as most laws are contingent on the approval of both of them in order to pass. Both are the two foremost representatives of the Board of Labor, and are thus given top precedence when receiving foreign dignitaries before the rest of the Board of Labor is able to receive them. This arrangement is partly based upon the role played by the Consuls of Lucrecia, save for some modifications that make it more suitable to the socialist political structure of Ardmore, as well as being the probable main inspiration behind the role played by the Qhapaqs of Kelekona. Indeed, the constitution states that this equal relationship is designed to ensure that power no longer falls into the hands of a single leader and to serve as part of Ardmore's commitment to decentralized leadership.
The Board of Labor is the highest administrative authority in Ardmore and the main executive cabinet in the Ardmori government. The Board of Labor consists of representatives who are elected by their respective syndicates, which are labor councils governed by workers' cooperatives, across the nation. Although the Board of Labor Chairman and the General Assembly President are the final decisionmakers, the Board of Labor has the right to vote on whether or not to approve the decisions of the two before they are made legally-binding. The main executive responsibilities of the Board of Labor is to oversee the implementations of policies that have been approved by all levels of national government, coordinating the different sectors of the economy with the syndicates, and to represent Ardmore in international affairs (being second in precedence after the Board of Labor Chairman and the General Assembly President).
Legislative
The Cooperative Legislative Assembly serves as Ardmore's legislative branch. Since 1931, the Cooperative Legislative Assembly is a bicameral legislature; the Board of Labor is the upper house, and the General Assembly is the lower house. The Cooperative Legislative Assembly makes use of fusion of powers much like most other systems of government that use a parliament. Prior to the year 2000, the fusion of powers was even more apparent as there was no well-defined delineation between the executive and the legislative; the Board of Labor, as such, became the upper legislative house even after the reforms implemented in the year 2000. The exact responsibilities that the Board of Labor has in the legislative branch include the ability to propose legislator bills (bills proposed by either of the head and chair of the Board of Labor are considered executive bills), and the ability to debate and vote on whether or not a given bill should become a law; responsibilities that are commonly expected in the legislative branch. There are 125 members in the Board of Labor, which includes the Chairman and the General Assembly President, with 124 of the members each representing a syndicate from which they are elected by to serve a three-year term.
The General Assembly is the lower house of the Cooperative Legislative Assembly, and is legally required to have a minimum of 250 members, each representing the communitarian collectivities throughout the country and are elected for a three-year term. However, the Constitution stipulates that there is no specified maximum membership count for the General Assembly, the 250 members are only there to form the basis of a legislative quorum. Indeed, the General Assembly allows for any member of the general public to not only enter the General Assembly while it is in session at any given time but also to actively participate in said session, serving as the basis for Ardmore's commitment to direct democracy and consensus-building. On average, just over one thousand people actively participate in the General Assembly each day. Like the Board of Labor, the General Assembly may propose legislator bills and debate and vote on said bills to determine whether or not it should pass, but the General Assembly reserves the exclusive right to veto any new laws that have been approved by the head and chair of the Board of Labor; the grace period for a General Assembly veto is four weeks. The General Assembly is also the only legislative house that has multiple non-socialist parties represented, but to ensure that these parties are unable to dismantle the current co-operative syndicalist system there are partisan quotas set up to ensure that at least two-thirds of the General Assembly are seated by members of any of the member parties in the Popular Left Coalition.
Judiciary
The Ardmori judicial system operates on the fundamental principles of conflict resolution with a heavy emphasis on community involvement and democratic justice. Disputes that occur are typically resolved through the use of local judicial assemblies or even specialized tribunals; these organizations are composed of representatives directly elected by the affected communities. The primary purpose of the Ardmori judicial system is to interpret laws, mediate disputes, and to ensure the fair administration of the rule of law in accordance with the preamble of the constitution which espouses the values of equality and cooperative solidarity. There is no established force for policing; the Ardmori police force was abolished in 1931 due to it being seen as nothing more than a tool for the royalist government and thus was deemed to be irredeemable. Instead, law enforcement is a community-based approach where the citizens of the community are expected to remain vigilant, and the right to make a citizen's arrest is a constitutional guarantee.
Local governance and collectivities
Although a unitary state, Ardmore is highly decentralized on the subnational level, with the primary form of local governance coming from the community cooperatives. Groups of community cooperatives are known as communitarian collectivities, of which there are 250. The primary representative of a given communitarian collectivity is elected by the entirety of the citizenry of the collectivity, and these representatives make up the entirety of the required membership of the General Assembly. They are considered the civic equivalent to the largely economic and labor-related syndicates, all the way down to both entities serving as the main constituency for one of Ardmore's legislative houses. However, although these representatives are the foremost political figures of their respective collectivities, they do not hold a monopoly on representation in the General Assembly as the Constitution guarantees that the citizenry has the right to participate in General Assembly sessions with the same rights and privileges as the collectivity representatives.
Political Parties
Since 2000, Ardmore has allowed for the formation of opposition political parties that may compete in legislative elections with no restrictions. However, there is a quota enforced that ensures that the opposition parties can not win more than one-third of the 250 representative seats in the General Assembly; this measure is intended to prevent aspiring right-wing populists from gaining political dominance as well as to ensure that the current socialist form of government will not be so easily dismantled. The other two-thirds of the representative seats in the General Assembly are reserved for parties that are committed to the retention of the socialist form of government. This means that Ardmore is under an enforced dominant-party system where the socialist parties are allowed to win any seat in the General Assembly without any of the quota restrictions that the opposition parties are under.
The main leading political coalition in Ardmore is the Popular Left Coalition, an alliance of three socialist parties that have agreed to a perpetual electoral and parliamentary partnership. The coalition is derived from the idea of a popular front model that was often supported in left-wing democratic circles. Members of the Popular Left Coalition are among the socialist parties that are thus not subjected to the limitations implemented for non-socialist parties. The Popular Left Coalition was established in 2000 with the express purpose of uniting all likeminded socialist parties against the forces of reaction. To maximize their electoral efforts, the member parties have agreed to not complete against each other in seats that are guaranteed to be won by one of them and to instead focus their efforts on seats that are reporting a high amount of support for an opposition party. Through these efforts, the Popular Left Coalition have been able to win roughly three-quarters of the representative seats allotted in the General Assembly.
Governing parties
The dominant party in Ardmore, and leading party in the Popular Left Coalition, is the Co-operative Party of Ardmore (PCA). Founded in 1921 as the Workers' Party of Ardmore (POA), it is the oldest continuously-operating party in Ardmore. Initially a catch-all socialist mass movement, the POA quickly turned towards syndicalism as the party's initial leading members were largely educated in Vithinjan socialist thought which called for a decentralized form of government run by groups of largely autonomous workers' councils; the party would soon be renamed as the Syndicalist Party of Ardmore (PSA) in 1927 as its ideological framework became formalized. From the end of the Civil War in 1931 until the reforms of the year 2000, the PSA operated as Ardmore's sole legal political party; any other political organization could only existed as a faction within the PSA. The current name of the party was registered in 2003 to reflect the changes in Ardmore's political sphere and to match the party's name to the country's official name to reflect its historical legacy as Ardmore's longtime ruling party which it still lives up to to this day.
The second-largest member in the Popular Left Coalition is the Labor Party of Ardmore (PLOA). Initially an internal faction of the Syndicalist Party that was formed in 1947 under the name "Democratic Front of the Revolutionary Vanguard", the PLOA was spun out as an independent political party in 2000. The PLOA is a revolutionary social democratic party that claims to be the heirs to the truest forms of social democracy back when the ideology was seen as advocating for a "revolution by the ballot" rather than merely advocating for a reformed form of a capitalist economy that most social democratic parties have shifted towards for the past several decades. However, because the revolution has already been achieved, the PLOA has opted for a populistic approach and supports the slight centralization and rationalization of government to transform Ardmore into a robust socialist republic in the vein of Castadilla's form of socialism. It is most often associated with urban technocrats and intellectuals. The PLOA prides itself in being the party of "red professionals" and young entrepreneurs.
The smallest member in the Popular Left Coalition is the Borbonist Workers' Party of Ardmore (POBA). As the name implies, POBA is a communist party based upon the tenets espoused by Castadillaan revolutionary hero Vito Borbon. The party was founded in 2001 by radical members of the Syndicalist Party who felt largely inspired by the revolutionary zeal found in both the Ardmori Civil War and in Castadilla's Velvet Revolution, and the pre-feudal society that governed the Ardmori Isles. The POBA advocates for the immediate transition to communism as well as gradually converting Ardmore into a confederation of semi-independent labor councils. The official ideology of POBA is described by members as being "Ardmori-Borbonism" which most political scholars have a difficult time describing it with some calling it anarcho-syndicalism, others calling it anarcho-communism, and more calling it libertarian socialism. Most members of POBA are generally in their young adulthood, but there exists a sizeable amount of members who are beyond that particular demographic.
Opposition parties
Ardmore's opposition parties have partly descended from the political establishment parties that have existed during the latter years of the former kingdom. As much of these current incarnations of those old parties have not been established until the year 2000, very few opposition parties actively support the restoration of the deposed Ardmori monarchy; not much is known about the remaining members of the House of Rosmore as many have either passed away or have had their lines extinguished through marriage. As such, royalist parties are generally considered to be on the far-right due to their intense anti-socialist rhetoric and desire to avenge the fallen monarchy. The more mainstream opposition parties have accepted republicanism even if they do not agree with the current structure of the cooperative republic. As noted above, no opposition party may hold more than one-third of the representative seats in the General Assembly.
The largest opposition party in the General Assembly is colloquially known as the Left Party, though its official name is "Left, Ardmore's Liberal Party" (CPLA). Despite the party calling itself "left", it is in fact a center-right party that espouses classical liberalism with a heavy lean towards agrarianism and libertarianism. The CPLA decries the cooperatives as nothing more than the state's tool of coercion and believes that the individual laborer should be free to refuse to join a cooperative, something which is not possible under existing Ardmori law. At the same time, the CPLA calls for the immediate privatization of the means of production, the introduction of tax cuts, and the reduction of social welfare. Ultimately, the CPLA is unique in that it has no pre-Civil War predecessor as the modern form of libertarianism that it advocates for did not emerge until the 1970s in opposition to the increasing "statism" of established liberal political parties.
The second-largest opposition party in the General Assembly is the Conservative Democratic Party (PDC). A Christian democratic party with its origins in the pre-Civil War Ardmori Social Party, the PDC calls for a "moral republicanism" in Ardmore. Although a supporter of liberal conservatism, the PDC wishes to maintain a moderate social safety net as well as a limited form of economic intervention to curb the worst excesses of a market economy. The PDC makes no preference towards whether it supports enshrining the Catholic faith or the Ænglican faith into the constitution; most PDC politicians have only states that the party only wishes to enshrine Christianity as the religion that defines Ardmore's national character. Of all the opposition parties, it is the only mainstream opposition party to call for a referendum on whether the Ardmori monarchy should be restored, a fact that has often led to PDC members being put under investigation due to possible foreign interference though there have been no conclusive results over whether or not the PDC is indeed subject to foreign interference.
The rest of the opposition parties in the General Assembly are simply far too small to warrant much public attention in most elections. The largest of these fringe parties is the Ardmori People's Party (CPA), a national conservative and monarchist party that claims to be the heir of the political beliefs espoused by the former Prince-Regent of New Ardmore and is immensely pro-Urcea in its foreign policy and supports reunification with New Ardmore. The least fringe of the Ardmori fringe parties is the social liberal Renewal Party of Ardmore (PAA), which aligns itself with the PDC in most elections due to their shared support for a moderate welfare state and a mild state interventionism in the economy even if both parties differ on key social stances. To the right of the CPA is the Social Credit Party (PCS), which as its name implies supports the theory of social credit which has had its greatest popularity in various overseas Kiravian possessions; social credit in Ardmore is seen as an alternative to socialism to a small minority of Ardmori voters. To the furthest right is the United People's Party (PPA), which was banned in 2006 due to its extreme far-right views and a strong anti-Ænglish sentiment; the current party leadership lives in exile in Kelekona.
International Relations
Until 2000, Ardmore's foreign policy was largely isolationist with the country exclusively establishing formal diplomatic relations with other socialist countries such as the Socialist Republic of Kelekona, the Kiravian Union, Puertego, and Castadilla. Likewise, Ardmore has refused to maintained diplomatic relations with any of the nations it saw as being imperialistic during this time; this being out of fear that diplomatic relations with capitalist nations could lead to the eventual infiltration and overthrow of the socialist republic, or worse a reunification with the Prince-Regent's republic. Nonetheless, Ardmore joined the League of Nations in 1955 in hopes of forwarding the cause of international socialism. In the 1980s, Ardmore began to tone down its isolationism, and most especially when the Prince-Regent passed away and the neighboring republic became an overseas possession of Kiravia, with formal diplomatic relations being established with various non-socialist nations that the Ardmori government did not deem to be an imperialistic power.
In the late 1990s, Ardmore's foreign policy had experienced a major change when the socialist republic established formal diplomatic relations with Urcea after many decades of refusing to do so. In an effort to appease the powers on mainland Levantia, Ardmore launched the Millennium Reforms project which among other reforms dropped Ardmore's long-time isolationist foreign policy. Through these reforms, Ardmore hoped to seek closer relations with its neighbors on the mainland while still remaining critical of their foreign policies. Thus, Ardmore refuses to join the Levantine Union and instead prefers to support movements that support the causes of social and economic justice regardless of the scope of these movements. Modern-day Ardmore seeks to establish relations with other nations based on the ideals of mutual respect, non-interference, and preferably the promotion of international socialism. Ardmore is a founding member of various anti-imperialist organizations dedicated to advancing the cause of global socialism and challenging the dominance of capitalist and neo-colonialist imperialism.
Demographics
With a population of 18,276,501 in the 2034 census, which is an increase of 6% over the past five years since the 2029 census, Ardmore's birthrate far exceeds its immigration rate with 5.72 births per woman on average every five years. In 2034, more than 1,096,000 live births have occurred compared to 556,696 in deaths, while immigration to the country has only accounted for 0.4% of the total population growth. Historically, this high birthrate has existed since the 1970s. The average life expectancy for men in Ardmore is 80.2 years, while for women it is 84.5 years. The median age for Ardmore in 2034 was 25.5 years, which was a decrease from the median age of 28.2 years in 2029. A stable economy with a robust and easily accessible universal healthcare system has allowed for the high birthrate to happen without a need for immigration; detractors, however, have claimed that immigration rates are low due to tight border controls which were not relaxed until the year 2000. As of 2034, the immigration rate for Ardmore has remained stagnant as a result with a very minimal rate of growth in the past three decades.
Ethnic groups
Self-reported ethnicities in Ardmore (2034)
A largely homogeneous country throughout most of its history, approximately 93.1% of the population of Ardmore identify as being of Ardmori ancestry. However, Ardmori is not exactly an ethnic group, but rather a national identity that consists of everyone whose grandparents have unanimously identified as being of Ardmori ancestry. As such, most censuses have had an additional question asking what is a given citizen's predominant ethnicity with the choices being between Garánic, Ænglish, and other; the latter being used by people who are either unsure of their ethnic origins, or self-identify as being of either Ardmen or Istroyan ancestry. The exact ethnic origins of an Ardmori citizen is irrelevant for the most part beyond basic recordkeeping.
Of those who identify as Ardmori, about three-quarters of Ardmori people identify as being of Garán ancestry. The Garán people are a Gaelo-Istroyo-Gothic ethnic group that originated from the region of Carolina and currently reside in both Ardmore (western branch) and Urcea (eastern branch); the first of the Garán people to have permanently settled in the Ardmori Isles have arrived in the mid-6th Century and by the 9th Century became the predominant ethnic group in the archipelago. It is through the Garán people that much of the aspects of modern Ardmori culture have originated from. The most notable of which being the Garán clan system which, although it was suppressed in the 14th and 15th Centuries after the Duke's War, serves as the basis for the modern-day community cooperatives. The next-largest ethnic identity within the Ardmori people are the Ænglish, making up approximately 17% of the Ardmori population, typically the direct descendants of Protestant refugees from mainland Levantia. Due to Ardmore's relative tolerance towards Protestants, a sizeable amount of Ænglish people have opted to stay in Ardmore instead of moving to Crona; it is through the Ænglo-Ardmori that the Arco people, the main ethnic group of Arcerion, descend from with the first permanent Ænglo-Ardmori settlements being established in the late 18th Century. The remaining 8% of the Ardmori people identify as being of different ethnic origins, the two largest being Ardmen and Istroyan; although both ethnic groups have had little known impact in the history of Ardmore, the two groups are most popular amongst cultural revivalist communities.
Languages
Ardmore is a monolingual state, meaning that it has only one official language on the national level. Ardmore's official language is Garán Gaelic, the Gaelic tongue of the Garán people. Like most Gaelic tongues, Garán Gaelic is an indigenous Levantine language, specifically a member of the Caroline branch of the Gaelic languages. However, the Garán Gaelic language does make use of Istroyan loanwords as a result of the close contact the Celtic ancestors of the Garán people had with the Istroyan people in the frontiers of the Holy Levantine Empire, both groups having been in slavery during that time. Throughout much of Ardmore's history, the Garán Gaelic language has been the primary language of much of the Ardmori Isles, and today approximately 70% of the population of Ardmore speak Garán Gaelic as their primary language and a further 19% speak it as a secondary language.
The Ardmori vernacular of the Ænglish language is the second-most spoken language in Ardmore. Ænglish was first introduced to the Ardmori Isles during the 16th Century when Ænglish Protestants first arrived as refugees escaping persecution on mainland Levantia. Because of Ardmore's relative tolerance of the Protestants, a sizeable amount of these Ænglish Protestants have opted to stay in Ardmore instead of migrating to Crona where the many settlements of the Pharisedom were located at. In the 17th and 18th Centuries, Ænglish became the predominant language of the Ardmori elite as the monarchy clamped down on the Garán culture as part of an effort to prevent a repeat of the Duke's War. The preeminent position of the Ænglish language would persist until the end of the monarchy in 1931 after the victory of the pro-Garán socialists in the Civil War. From then on until the 1960s, there were efforts to gaelicize the remaining Ænglish population which were soon stopped when the Ardmori government declared that the Ænglish language would receive official recognition as a regional language, allowing for the language to be taught in schools and for Ænglish language programs to be funded by the state. Approximately 16% of the population in Ardmore speak Ænglish whether as a primary language or as a secondary language.
Both Garán Gaelic and Ænglish use the Latin-based alphabet like most other Levantine languages, though Istroyan revivalist groups have been making use of a modified version of the Istroyan alphabet for their own istroyacized vernacular of Garán Gaelic. This form of Garán Gaelic is not recognized on either the regional or national level.
Religion
Self-reported religious affiliations in Ardmore (2034)
Christianity is the predominant religion in Ardmore, divided into several different types and denominations. For most of its history, up through the Ardmori Civil War, Ardmore was an almost exclusively Catholic country. The establishment and subsequent victory of the Cooperative Republic in 1931 led to uneasy relations between the new revolutionary government and the Catholic Church, the unease soon culminating in 1934 when the state began to take possession of Church lands, which in turn resulted in condemnations from both the Pope and from most other Catholic nations. In response to these condemnations, the Ardmori government established the Ardmori State Fellowship Church, which, though not the official religion of the state, was the "officially sanctioned, state-sponsored Christian community" for the country. Catholicism was banned shortly thereafter. The bans remained in place until 1945 when tensions began to ease up. The State Fellowship Church gradually became the largest Christian denomination in Ardmore through forced conversions and nominal renunciations of Catholicism, and today it remains the largest denomination even with the advent of the Millennium Reforms which have largely toned down the push towards Fellowism.
Scholars have suggested that the vast majority of Fellowites, as they are called, are either crypto-Catholics or de facto atheists, but the relative importance of Fellowship adherence and affiliation continues to give it a predominant role in Ardmori society. Much of Fellowism's liturgy and theology is based upon that of the Levantine Rites and of the Catholic Church, albeit with some key differences in the latter aspect; Fellowism makes great use of liberation theology which as the name implies is a form of theology that emphasizes the socio-economic and political emancipation of the oppressed. Another difference between Fellowism and the Catholic Church is that Fellowism is not governed under an episcopal form of ecclesiastical polity but rather it is governed under the congregational form of ecclesiastical polity. What this means is that there is no formal clerical hierarchy in Fellowism; all Fellowite congregations are autonomous and operate independently from one another and each community cooperative is almost guaranteed to have at least one Fellowite congregation. The presiding bishop of the Ardmori State Fellowship Church is the Archbishop of Dunvál, which is regarded as the first among equals within the Ardmori State Fellowship Church, and is currently held by Thomas Connally.
Catholicism remains the second-largest denomination with about a third of the population even though it is subject to significant cultural and government pressures and discrimination. Much of the suspicions and discrimination towards Catholics in post-Civil War Ardmore are primarily stemmed from the fact that the Catholic primate of the Ardmori Isles is the Archbishop of Rosmore, whose see is located in New Ardmore, and because of the Church's stance towards the revolutionaries as well as its royalist sympathies. The College of Levantine Churches also has a small foothold in the country with about five percent of its population. Collegiate adherents are primarily overlooked by the Ardmori state not just due to its low amount of adherents, but also because it was never perceived as being as much of a threat to the revolution as the Catholic Church was.
The religious upheaval of the revolution has led to a significant amount of people disaffiliating and renouncing religion altogether, with irreligion being the third largest religious demographic group. Many cultural tastemakers and trendsetters, cooperative leaders, and major political figures are avowedly irreligious. Irreligion is largely tolerated in Ardmore mostly due to socialism's baseline indifference towards religion, but it is not necessarily encouraged; the state's focus on promoting Fellowism as the official Christian denomination in Ardmore having long been a national priority for many decades.
Culture
Cooperatives
Cooperatives serve a major and defining role in the daily lives of Ardmori citizens as well as the cultural identity of Ardmore in general. As Ardmore's form of socialism is rooted in syndicalism, the principles of solidarity, egalitarianism, workers' self-management, and even community empowerment play a major role in the primary role of cooperatives, allowing it to shape many aspect of Ardmori society whether it be in the field of economics, social relations, and even cultural practices. There exists two types of cooperatives in Ardmore: workers' cooperatives, and community cooperatives; both types are not merely economic or localist entities, but rather they play a predominant role in the daily lives of Ardmore's citizenry. Through the encouragement of active participation in their given cooperatives, individual citizens hold a direct stake in the means of production and local governance, and are thus allowed to directly participate in the democratic process of Ardmore because of it.
Workers' cooperatives serve as the economic backbone of the cooperative republic. They are primarily small, localized, workers' councils that are affiliated with a nationwide trade union. Each workers' cooperative is a member of a syndicate, a self-managed and socially-owned business or enterprise that almost always consists of more than one workers' cooperative. Through workers' cooperatives, workers are not only employees of their given syndicates, but are also co-owners and executive decision-makers within their given syndicates. Thus, workers' cooperatives allow for the worker to innovate, collaborate, and to take collective responsibility alongside their fellow workers both within their cooperative and within their syndicate, which in turn allows for economic growth and prosperity to occur while at the same time fostering an "ethical economy" where all workers are fairly compensated for their labor. Although the general idea of syndicates may give the impression that it only applies to factories and manufacturing plants, that is not necessarily the only instance of syndicates in Ardmore; workers' cooperatives can be an agricultural cooperative, a retail cooperative, a credit union cooperative, or any other form of workers' cooperative for a given economic sector.
Community cooperatives make up the lowest-tiered level of governance in Ardmore, serving as the mainstay for governance at the local level. Although community cooperatives are not considered to be an integral part of the principles of the primarily labor-focused ideology of syndicalism, they were established as part of the cooperative republic's commitment to revitalizing the long-neglected culture of the Garán people which was suppressed by the former monarchy for many years. The idea of establishing community cooperatives was based upon the ancient pre-feudal societal mainstay that was once common throughout the Ardmori Isles, that being the former clan system. Like the former clan system, the primary purpose of the community cooperatives is to promote communitarian kinsmenship and solidarity and to serve as vital hubs of community life where groups of people are brought together without any expectation or requirement that members of a given community must be of a certain background or have a specific interest. Individuals are expected to denounce and disavow any and all traditional hierarchies and divisions and form strong social ties with their fellow community members. Community cooperatives allow for community members to address common challenges in a collective manner where all are invited to come up with ways to solve these challenges, and they, through the effective use of community based arts-and-crafts initiatives and communitarian cultural centers, have served as the incubators for the cultural rebirth of the Garán people in ways that have astounded foreign observers that have thought that such a rebirth was an impossibility. In recent years, it has also served as a vehicle for Ardmen and Istroyan revivalist communities in certain areas of the country, complete with attempted linguistic and artistic revivals.
Education is the primary responsibility of the community cooperatives, wherein students are taught through a curriculum that has been agreed upon by the people of the community through a consensus vote; a given community curriculum is designed to provide students the knowledge and skills that are required in order to become an active member of a workers' cooperative. Such a curriculum may be taught in schools, training programs, and even educational initiatives; successful curriculums are able to teach not only schoolchildren, but also anyone else regardless of age or background. Indeed, a student should be able to acquire technical skills, critical thinking abilities, leadership qualities, and a deep understanding of the principles that make up the democratic processes of Ardmore and the ideals of social justice. To ensure that all citizens of Ardmore are able to effectively learn such qualities and abilities, the education system in Ardmore allows for formal instruction, experiential learning, peer mentorship, and even hands-on activities.
Religious status
Ardmore has been a secular state ever since the abolition of the Ardmori monarchy in 1931 after the Civil War. Prior to that point, Ardmore's state religion was Catholicism. However, despite the secular nature of the Ardmori state, both the original and current socialist constitutions have explicitly established the Ardmori State Fellowship Church as the "national church" of Ardmore due to its explicitly pro-socialist attitude. Such provisions have stated that the Ardmori state supports the Fellowship Church, effectively giving it preferential status in the nation. This is in vast contrast to Ardmore's approach towards the Catholic Church, where the faith was banned during the early years of the cooperative republic until 1945 and was still subject to state oversight and community-based investigations as well as being on the receiving end of programs designed to reduce Catholic presence until the enactment of the Millennium Reforms. Otherwise, other religions were not given as much attention compared to Fellowism and Catholicism.
Sports
Since the 1940s, the Ardmori government has pursued a policy of the encouragement of athleticism; the government supposed that sports would encourage inter-cooperative solidarity and provide their people with a constructive way to make use of their leisure time. However, in the 1960s, the Ardmori Board of Labor approved the funding necessary to formulate a new "workers' sport" in hopes of siphoning popularity from established so-called "imperialist sports"; the results were a new sport known as cumasball which was the amalgamation of various elements of volleyball, and association football. Cumasball involves two teams, each consisting of four players, and the main goal is to either ground the ball on the opponent's side of the field or for the ball to wind up inside the opponent's net. The amount of points given to a team depends on the type of goal being made: football touch goals score only one point like in most football games; volleyball touch goals can score either two or three points depending on where the ball's second bounce lands on (if the second bounce lands on the inner part of the opponent's side it is worth three points; otherwise it is worth two points); volleyball touch goals that also result in a football goal (bouncing into the opponent's net) is worth five points. The team that scores gets to serve the next point, and a set ends when either one team scores 21 points or if time is up (a set in cumasball is allotted thirty minutes, a fifteen-minute intermission is allotted in between sets, and there are three sets in a Cumasball match).
The primary intent for cumasball was to supplant baseball, one of Levantia's most popular sports, as Ardmore's favorite pastime. Although there was initial success for cumasball throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when Ardmore began to tone down its isolationist foreign policy thus allowing for baseball to return to its preeminent spot in the country. Indeed, the re-popularization of baseball in Ardmore, alongside the implementation of the Millennium Reforms, has coincided with a continental trend of recruiting Ardmori players into major league teams on the mainland, with baseball teams from Urcea having the greatest tendency in recruiting Ardmori players with many of them, such as Donal Higgins and Simon Kenny, quickly becoming major sports celebrities in their own right. This trend of foreign athletic recruitment continues to this day as Ardmore continues to establish formal diplomatic relations with the member states of the Levantine Union.
Economy
Ever since the end of the Ardmori Civil War, the economy of Ardmore has largely been structured around the principles of socialism, specifically the ideology of syndicalism which makes use of workers' self-management, decentralized control over the mains of production, collective decision-making through direct democracy, and trade unionism. Thus, the economic system of Ardmore has, for many decades, been designed so as to prioritize the needs and interests of the common man in the name of socio-economic egalitarianism. Ardmori workers on average have very high levels of income equality as well as a very high quality of life, but its median income still lags far behind the median income of most Levantine Union member states on the mainland.
The basic and lowest tier of the Ardmori economy is in the hands of the workers' cooperatives, which both serve as the primary units of production and distribution, and as small, localized councils that are both affiliated with a national trade union and a member of one of the nation's syndicates. The workers' cooperatives are organized in a manner to suit any industry and sector of the economy such as agriculture, manufacturing, services, technology, and even retail. As councils, workers' cooperatives are managed and operated in a democratic manner by its members, who in turn make collective decisions in regards to production, investment, wages, and the distribution of profits. The workers' cooperatives are members of a syndicate, which is the official term to refer to a business or an enterprise in Ardmore, wherein the members of each of the member workers' cooperatives have direct control over its management and make executive decisions based on a cooperative decision-making process. Each syndicate or groups of syndicates elect one of their members to serve as their representative in the Board of Labor which determines the economic policies on the national level.
Because direct democracy has become one of the major aspects in workers' self-management in not just syndicalism, but also in the cooperative republic overall. The interest of the workers are greatly prioritized over the interests of corporate entities, and decisions are made with the collective interest of both community and workers' cooperatives in mind. Workers may elect their own representatives or even stand as their own representative in certain cases, establish workplace policies, and participate in the strategic planning of the local economy so as to enhance productivity and efficiency. As a baseline, the Ardmori economy aims for a form of participatory democracy, which combines elements of direct and representative democracy wherein all cooperative and syndicate members have an equal voice in the voting process when it comes to shaping economic policies and priorities. Certain major decisions, such as strategies in investment, production targets and quotas, and the allocation of resources, are made through consensus-building and open debate within the syndicate or even cooperative assembly for smaller syndicates. This inclusive form of the decision-making process ensures that each syndicate is co-owned by the workers themselves, and thus the workers are directly responsible for the management of their given syndicate; successful syndicates foster a sense of solidarity amongst their workers, and thus allowing for greater efficiency and innovation.
Resource allocation in Ardmore makes use of the principles of equitable distribution under a socialist lens and the ideals of social justice. Workers' cooperatives collaborate with each other within and without the syndicates as well as with community cooperatives to ensure that resources are efficiently, effectively, and fairly allocated, with consideration being taken into account in terms of the needs of both present and future generations in a given locality. Economic planning is largely decentralized and is guided by the principles of sustainability, self-sufficiency, and environmental stewardship, with a focus on the promotion of utilitarian economic development so as to benefit all of Ardmori society. Social welfare and citiens' well-being is a high priority to the Ardmori government, with basic necessities such as healthcare, education, housing, and food being fundamental and constitutionally-guaranteed rights that are to be provided to all residents at no cost. This also meant the establishment of a social safety net complete with unemployment benefits, old-age pensions, and disability support so as to ensure that each and every citizen has unrestricted access to a livable and decent standard of living, regardless of their economic status.
Energy
Prior to the early 1970s, Ardmore's energy production was entirely coal-driven. The power grid was even worse prior to the 1930s as, due to Ardmore's relative backwater status compared to the rest of Levantia despite being one of its wealthier countries, it was not that well-developed. Only major cities and select nearby settlements as well as settlements populated by Ardmore's high society had a power grid. The haphazard layout of these power grids meant that there were differing standards between settlements, and some grids were under direct current which often led to mass amounts of confusion as appliances that were designed for alternating current grids often did not work correctly due to the lower voltage in direct current grids. When the Ardmori Civil War ended with a socialist victory in 1931, the new cooperative republic had set to work unifying and standardizing the power grid, dismantling any and all direct current grids while also dismantling non-compliant alternating current grids. Ardmore's national power grid was to make use of the 120V and 60Hz electrical standard and all outlets were to make use of the Type-A and Type-B connectors. The standardization of the Ardmori power grid was part of the socialization of Ardmore that lasted from 1931 until 1945, with any and all elements of society that were deemed to be a facet of the former monarchy being either removed or adapted as needed.
During the Second Great War, despite Ardmore being strictly neutral and at no risk of getting attacked for the most part, the Ardmori power grid experienced a major coal shortage as much of the coal that would've been imported to Ardmore were largely redirected by their originating countries for the war effort. During this time, brownouts and blackouts were a common occurrence, leading to the Ardmori government ordering planned ten-hour-long blackouts after eight at night so as to conserve the coal that they still had. It was also during this time when the government began to embark on initiatives to lessen the dependency on coal. This would culminate in the opening of small, temporary, water-based power plants to help in somewhat alleviating the looming energy crisis. These power plants were eventually dismantled after the end of the Second Great War in 1943 once coal imports returned to normal pre-war levels. The Second Great War period in Ardmore has been known as either the Brown years or the "great test" in reference to the fact that this period was seen as a test on whether or not the socialist government in Ardmore would survive being a neutral nation during a major conflict.
In the years immediately after the Second Great War up until the late 1950s, the Ardmori government began to work on trying to figure out how to ensure energy self-sufficiency and to put an end to the dependency on coal imports which have resulted in the near-energy crisis that was experienced during the Second Great War. The atomic bombing of Cavosia had introduced to Ardmore the idea of nuclear power. Because of Ardmore's disinterest in getting involved in the affairs of the imperialistic powers, the government had no interest in nuclear weapons but rather in the peaceful application of nuclear power. This was further spurred by the discovery of uranium ore close to the nations' sole mountain which helped in convincing the Board of Labor towards the idea of nuclear power being used to ensure energy self-sufficiency. In 1958, construction began on the nation's first nuclear power plant, the Dunval Nuclear Power Plant, which was eventually completed in 1972 after multiple delays due to lack of material thanks to Ardmore's isolation. The Dunval power plant was nonetheless a tremendous success, with the vast majority of coal-based power plants getting phased out throughout the 1970s. The final coal power plant in Ardmore was eventually closed in 1997 after the opening of Ardmore's third nuclear power plant.
International Trade
Prior to the Millennium Reforms, Ardmore was largely pursuant and committed towards full economic autarky, with international trade being limited to fellow socialist countries. Since the 1980s and especially with the enactment of the Millennium Reforms, however, Ardmore has opened up international trade beyond just socialist countries so long as trade is done in a manner that satisfies the following principles: mutual benefit, where goods and services are voluntarily exchanged for the common benefit of all parties; solidarity, where all parties involved are united under shared interests and sympathies; and fair exchange, where all parties perceive an equal value or benefit from a trade. However, Ardmore still retains a preference towards establishing cooperative relations with both fellow socialist nations and nations that are committed to the opposition of what they deem to be capitalist imperialism; the Ardmori government places a significant priority on partnerships that promote socio-economic justice on a global scale. All trade agreements are to be negotiated transparently and democratically, with great emphasis being placed on protecting the interests of workers and safeguarding Ardmore's sovereignty and independence.
Workers' Force
The royalist armed forces of Ardmore was formally abolished after the end of the Ardmori Civil War in 1931, it being replaced with the Ardmori Workers' Force. The Workers' Force is not a formal or an organized armed forces as traditional armed forces are deemed by syndicalism to be nothing more than means of reactionary coercion, but rather it is more akin to a military reserve force in that members may be called up for service as needed but are otherwise able to lead lives not unlike that of regular civilians. Membership in the Workers' Force is mandatory as is the accompanying training program; all Ardmori citizens who are able-bodied must complete the training program when they reach the age of eighteen. The training program lasts for 26 weeks, or approximately six months, and all members are compensated equally for each day of training completed. Those who do not wish to take part in the training program for reasons of conscience are instead required to apply for either the Ardmori Civil Force, which is the nation's civilian service, or the Ardmori Civil Defense, which is the nation's civil protection service. The goal behind these programs is to help instill a sense of civic national pride and to ensure that all able-bodied citizens are able to defend their country when called into service. The compulsory training program in the Workers' Force, alongside the alternative and yet also compulsory Civil Force and Civil Defense units, are exceptionally popular, with the proposed constitutional provisions that would abolish these programs as part of the Millennium Reforms being soundly defeated.