Rongaduan

Rongaduan, officially The Rongaduan Federated Republics of the not-Chams, not-Paiwans and Cagayans, is a sovereign state located to the Northwest of the South Kesh Bay, sharing land borders with the Heiban State to its Southwest and Cagayan Republic to its Northeast. The country itself is characterised by a distinction between a mountainous northern interior and a southern floodplain, giving rise to the federated nature of the nation. It is also from this divide that gave rise to two capitals, Placeholder as the northern capital and Ajiulok as the southern capital.

The territories that would comprise Rongaduan in the modern day has attested to have seen human activity since the Middle Paleolithic. In between various petty kingdoms and migrations of people, a distinct contrast the states of the southern floodplains and the mountain country would emerge. In the 13th century Zhou advisors would thus be invited to the courts of the various southern state to counteract the mountain polities, in the process also exposing the general South to gradual vassalisation and cultural homogenisation by the Zhou, a process which would continue up until their collapse in the 15th century.

The genesis of the Rongaduan federation stems from the immediate aftermath of Zhou capitulation, when a confederation of the not-Paiwans and not-Cham polities jointed to resist an uprising of the not-Qiangs in Upper Rongaduan, and an expanding Zhou pretender in modern-Heiban. Later this federation will be swelled by the inclusion of Cagayan princes of the Northern Valley, seeking allies from the increasingly disruptive incursions of Tiberican settlement. The Tibericans in particular would hold the Insertname Peninsula as part of the Viceroyalty of Cagayan until their eventual expulsion by Royal Title Alauchit during 1760.

Etymology
Scholarship regard the origins of the name "Rongaduan" as a synthesis of not-Qiangic "Rorn" (dry) and Plains Austronesian "gadu" (mountain/uplands), referring to the preeminent geography that dominates the country. The Chou-Zhou transliteration of the name 晾乾墩 (lit. dry mound) somewhat reflects this, although critics argue this was a retroactive name given in more recent decades

Prehistory
Compared to its neighbours in the bay region, scholarship generally agree that that human arrival to the area was rather late, with H. Sapiens entering the Lower Rongaduan Plains approximately 120,000 to 100,000 BCE. Midden sites along the breadth of the Rongaduan coastline would generally suggest for an extensive period the early settlers focused mainly on intensive fishing and shellfish collection.

Leading up to 6000 BCE purported descendants of these early coast cultures would move further into the upper reaches of the floodplains, turning to slash and burn agriculture as evidenced by pollen analysis of sites along the Ajiu River. Concurrently sites also attest to a separate megalith building cultures existing in the foothills northwest of the country circa 5000 BCE

Antiquity to Pre-Zhou
Over the course of the 5th century BCE to the 13th century the political landscape would be dominated by various petty kingdoms both north and south of the country, very often of non-intelligible ethno-linguistic groups. The not-Seqalu Kingdom would unite a large swathe of modern Rongaduan very briefly in the 2nd century BCE before their capitulation, signaling a return to the norm of various disparate polities dotting the country.

Early polities
5th century BCE-2nd century BCE

The not-Seqalu Kingdom
2nd century BCE-1st century CE

River states & not-Cham Hills Kingdoms
1st century CE-13th century

Zhou Influence (1268 -1534)
13th century-1540s The political climate leading up to the early 13th century would be characterised by increasing contest over the water resources of the Ajiu river, with the not-Cham Hills Kingdoms and River-States engaging in a tense standoff over allocation of water to their respective farmlands and the bear of burden for river piracy along the whole stretch of the Ajiu. Coincidentally the period would also be marked by the growing Kodeshi naval expeditions and trade under the expansive Zhou dynasty, thus as according to the Records of the Red River, Zhou advisors were invited to the various courts along the Ajiu to mediate the matter. The Zhou in furthering their imperial project in South Kesh would foster the following policies:


 * Instatement of a Zhou-style bureaucracy, with ministries and an examination system, by effect also elevating the status of the Zhou language
 * Promoting Xuanism amongst the various courts to foster more affinity for the Zhou state
 * Cultivating deeper ties with the Gangyou state, an already existing Zhou vassal to the south-west
 * Establishment of garrison towns straddling the foothills of the Upper Rongaduan and the Western Reaches as an anti-piracy measure and a guarantor of peace
 * Encourage Kodeshi settlement to influence demographics in Rongaduan

With the River-States and not-Cham Hills Kingdoms now being nominal vassals of the Zhou, other inland polities in the Western Reaches, now surrounded by Zhou-friendly states, gradually were forced to send tributary envoys to pledge their allegiance to the Zhou court. Even then the imperial hold on the Western reaches were tenuous, and hostilities were not uncommon. In response to this the building of garrison towns would also intrude into the hinterland with the Western polities, but with this burgeoning manpower requirement the lackluster Kodeshi settlement policy served to be inadequate and subsequently abandoned in 1276. It would be until campaigns against the Red Qiangs in the Kodeshi Highlands (赤羌之亂) during the 1310s when the Zhou administration rationalised that the significant number of displaced Qiangs, being hill peoples with a martial culture, would be better adjusted to the mountainous terrain of Upper Rongaduan and thus resumed their settlement policy. This steady stream of Qiang resettlement would continue up to the fall of Zhou.

Post-Zhou
With the fall of Zhou into seven constituent kingdoms in 1531, Kodeshi naval domination and by extension influence would also gradually wane in the South Kesh Bay. The regional vacuum from the weakening of the Zhou hegemony would eventually cascade into various events in the region, not least general unrest and conflict.

The Qiang Uprising (1541 - 1551)
Throughout the period of Zhou dominion in the region, the growing Qiang population increasingly got into land disputes in Upper Rongaduan. Being viewed as direct Zhou subjects than vassals however, they would be subject to official Zhou policy of appeasement with the mountain states. The Qiangs thus, by and large, would have their claims overruled. Even after Zhou influence has waned in the region they continued to be treated with exclusion, and this antagonism gave rise to a phenomenon of communal violence and vigilantism as the Qiangs formed into Righteous Militias (義民兵) where local quarrels arose. It will reach a boiling point when the core area of Qiang settlement along the Cham hinterland in Upper Rongaduan eventually breaks out into open rebellion in 1541, followed by other separate risings in the Western Frontier and the Southeast. On the floodplains the rebellion would eventually force states on both sides of the Cham hinterlands to pool their resources together to combat the Qiang rebel state, and eventually enter into a confederation, finally suppressing the remaining pockets of rebellion by 1551. Concurrently Zhouguo will in 1548 also march on the Rongaduan states on pretense of subjugating the rebelling Zhou subjects, precipitating a long running hostility until the fall of Zhouguo.

Conflict with Zhouguo
1550s-1600s

Conflict with the Viceroyalty of Cagayan
1660s-1760s