Republic of California

**República de California**

***Republic of California***

Motto: ***Oro en Paz, Hierro en Guerra***
 **Currency:** | Californian peso

**California**, officially the **Republic of California** (In Spanish: **República de California**), is a sovereign nation constituted in the form of a presidential republic located in the Pacific Coast of North America, having its capital in the coastal city of Monterrey. California extends south of the parallel 42ºN all the way to the tip of the Baja California peninsula, and from the Pacific coast to the Colorado river and then following the Continental Divide all the way to the 42º parallel. California also has ownership over a bunch of islands in the Pacific, corresponding to the OTL islands or archipelagos of Kingman and Palmyra Atolls, Howland and Baker Islands and Tokelau.

It borders the Dominion of Columbia and the Plains Confederation to the north, Louisiana to the northeast, Texas to the east, and Sonora to the south.

## History

### Spanish and Mexican eras

The region of California was first discovered by westerners when the Spanish explorer Francisco de Ulloa reached the area in 1539, followed by Francis Drake's visit in the same century, who claimed the area for England but no settlement or garrison was ever placed. The area received the name of Queen Calafia, a fictional character who ruled an island in the Spanish novel "Adventures of Splandián" by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, and being first recorded as such in the 1562 map of the Americas by Diego Gutiérrez. Back in the time, the length of the Gulf of Cortés made most people thing that California (toponym mostly used to refer to Baja California at the time) was indeed an island, a fact that land expeditions in the following decades would correct, even if most later maps would indeed depict California as an island.

California, however, received little attention by the Spanish authorities until the second half of the 18th century, when a serious attempt at seizing Alta California was executed under the Portolá Expedition and the later stablishment of colonies and missions under Junípero Serra, fearing that either the British or the Russians would expand in the area (the Russians did in fact create a settlement north of San Francisco in 1812 which was later abandoned in 1839). The disputes with Britain would lead to the Nootka Crisis, which essentially awarded Britain with the lands draining in the Columbia river and those further north, placing the border of Alta California roughly where it stands today. In 1804 the Spanish administration split the province of California in two, Baja and Alta California (lower and upper California, respectively) following a line that separated Franciscan missions from Dominican ones.

However, at the time California could only be reached safely by sea, as crossing the Colorado river, the Algodones dunes and the Mojave desert was very complicated, which meant Spanish expansion and settling was limited mostly to the coast, with the upper limit at San Francisco Bay. This resulted in California being an isolated and essentially self-governed province of Spain and, later Mexico. When the Mexican Republic fell apart due to a combination of mismanagement, radical measures, political opposition and a massive debt crisis, California was left in the air as the northern parts of Mexico declared independence while the central and southern parts were almost reconquered by Spain, only being stopped by British, New English and Virginian pressure. In 1839, California's self-government was confirmed when governor Juan Bautista Alvarado declared the independence of Alta California, with Baja California soon joining this new republic.

### First years of independence

Mexican authority in the north never recovered from the collapse of the government, resulting in California's independence being secure, aswell as that of Texas, the Republic of Rio Grande and Sonora. Mexico would later attempt to regain a hold in the north during the 1850's but the war turned out to be another disaster, albeit one that did not involve California. The Golden Republic's first decades were ones of explosive population growth, as a local farmer discovered gold near Los Angeles in 1842, and the young and scarcely developed republic quickly capitalised on the discovery, attracting thousands upon thousands of prospectors both from hispanic and angloamerican origin.

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