5 September 2017

At its roots – literally – both agriculture and horticulture in the Commonwealth followed much the same pattern as in our own timeline. There were, however, two major differences that, over time, caused increasing divergence from our timeline: the model of land-ownership, and the advent of vinery. On land-ownership, the Agreement of the People ended…

31 August 2017

For the first century and more of the Commonwealth, the history of transport is essentially the same as in our timeline: most personal-travel is on foot, with some horse for urgent travel, and increasing use of horse-drawn carriages and wagons for group-travel light-freight carried on roads by pack-animal, or on shared-transport by wagon bulk-freight carried…

30 August 2017

The Commonwealth arose from the ashes of a particularly savage Civil War, and much of its core principles of law – as outlined in the Agreement of the People – were derived by and from the first-hand experiences of the ordinary soldiers in that war. No surprise, then, that much of its philosophy and law…

30 August 2017

The health of the general populace – rich and poor alike – in England in the mid-17th-century was as dire, by modern standards, as everywhere else in Europe and the wider world. Typical adult life-expectancy was 40 years or less; maternal mortality could be as high as 10%, and infant-mortality before five years of age…

30 August 2017

As summarised in the storyworld article on ‘Health in the Commonwealth’, the health of the general populace in mid-17th-century England, as with everywhere else in Europe and the wider world, was truly dire by modern standards. Yet within a few years of the advent of the Commonwealth, radical change was already underway. Although there were…

29 August 2017

The history of clothing-fashion in the Commonwealth does, in many key aspects, largely mirror that of our own timeline. In particular, the same fabrics become available at the same points in history, and the arrival of mass-production and, later, the sewing-machine, occur at much the same points in history. There are, however, two huge differences,…

29 August 2017

(I’ll admit I struggled for long time with this one: whether to have the Commonwealth continue onward with a watered-down, tightly-constrained version of a conventional (to our timeline…) money-based possessionist economics, or go all the way to a full ‘no-possessions, no-money’ responsibility-based economics. The former is much easier for most people to understand; but whilst…

28 August 2017

Much as in architecture, music and theatre, we can guess that the art of the Commonwealth develops in a similar fashion as in our timeline, but influenced in several ways by the egalitarian structure of its society and politics. A key difference is that all forms of art, both public and private, are much less…

28 August 2017

The architecture of the Commonwealth resembles that of our own timeline, though with certain key differences, driven primarily by technology and socioeconomic aspects of the culture. On technology, the core difference arises from the availability as an additional building-technology. In more rural regions, or wherever the soil-conditions would permit, a complete house can be grown,…

26 August 2017

Vinery is a (fictitious) plant-based technology, unique to the Commonwealth of the story. The simplest summary of vinery is ‘gene-splicing with 17th-century technology’ – though specifically gene-splicing for plants, not animals. Key elements in the technologies of that period include: plant-husbandry brewery and bulk-production of liquids milling and bulk-production of powders blacksmithery and basic mechanics…

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