The Welthshires

The Welthshires in 1920

**The Halfling Republic of the United Welthshires**, also referred to as the **Halfling Republic** or most commonly the **Welthshires**, was a halfling-majority state that existed in North Aloysia from AT 1807. A federal state, by 1912 Welthshires consisted of 33 shires, an overseas district, and hundreds of Wildfolk reservations. A great power since the early 19th century, the Welthshires became the largest and most powerful country on the continent of North Aloysia by the turn of the 20th century.

Though the Welthshires declared independence from Great Norlannia in 1795 and was recognized by most of the world as an independent state upon the end of the Welthfoot War of Independence and the signing of the Treaty of Dremont in 1800, the Welthfoot state did not take its long-term form until the adoption of the Constitution of the Halfling Republic in 1807, which enshrined as the basis of Welthfoot law Enlightenment principles such as natural rights and political liberalism. During the first decades of the 19th century Welthfoot politics would be defined by a debate over how these principles were to be applied, with the Conservatives - while accepting constitutional government and most natural rights - challenging secularism, tolerance, and the notion of progress as they were defined in the Constitution and defended by the Democratic-Republicans, who themselves were divided into an agrarian proto-socialist faction led by Greta Goodbarrel and an industrial capitalist faction led by Harold Banks. Following the premature deaths of most of the nation's Founders in the 1830s and 1840s, the Welthshires briefly entered a period of political unity known as the Sunshine Era, which saw a prevailing consensus that accepted both the industrial and market-oriented interests of Banksians and the social traditionalism of the Conservative Party.

The 1800 Treaty of Dremont left the boundaries of the Welthshires unclear, but the 1820 Treaty of Nrothfren saw most of the great Eylonian powers recognize Welthfoot claims from coast to coast. Over the course of the 19th century the Welthshires would slowly bring these claims to full enforcement by subjugating, exterminating, or displacing indigenous tribes (called "Wildfolk" by the Welthfoots) through various wars and treaties. The resources brought by this expansion, combined with industrialization in the Northeast during the Sunshine Era, quickly gave the Welthshires one of the world's largest economies, both in agriculture and manufacturing. The tensions between these economic spheres as well as between workers and employers led to the rise of the People's (or Populist) Party in the 1840s. Led by Madeline Hayward, the Populists shifted the focus of Welthfoot politics to the debate between Banksian and Goodbarrelian/traditional economies, though this new focus would soon be overshadowed. The prosperity also drew in great numbers of immigrants, both halfling and non-halfling, from Eylonia and elsewhere, leading the country to be consumed by a debate over the rights of "tallfolk" (non-halflings) during the 1850s. Opposition to tallfolk rights was strongest in the South, where a prevailingly rural society discouraged multiculturalism and tallfolk immigrants were not needed for agrarian labor. In 1867, 11 Southern shires seceded from the Union in fear that tallfolk would be enfranchised and fought the remaining Northern shires during the Welthfoot Civil War. The Union's victory in 1869 coincided with the passage of an amendment to the Welthfoot constitution which guaranteed the full rights of citizenship to tallfolk born and naturalized in the Welthshires. However, efforts at Reconstruction in the South ultimately failed, allowing shires to pass laws that effectively kept tallfolk disenfranchised.

Having been comprised the main political leadership of the Union during the Civil War apart from Mayor Elizabeth Goodbarrel, the initially pro-tallfolk rights Libertarian Party enjoyed a period of uninterrupted dominance over Welthfoot politics from 1872 to 1892. During this time it would largely abandon its founding mission in favor of supporting big business; leading to rapid industrialization, widespread political corruption, and widening income inequality. Though these changes would allow the Welthshires to grow even more powerful - purchasing the islands of Kiliona from Raeli and Great Norlannia and militarily intervening in favor of the Rinchuguoan imperial house during the Meisho Restoration in the Welthshires' first foreign war - they would also cause political and social shocks that united Southern traditionalists with Northern social liberals under the banner of the leftist Progressive Party, which became the main opposition party to the Libertarians in the early 1890s. Progressive Mayors Stephanie Greyburrow and Theodore Puddlefoot as well as Libertarian Mayor Stephen Brewster would subsequently oversee the transition of the Welthshires from laissez-faire capitalism to social democracy, though the country would remain dominated by Lyenist halflings at the expense of other races and religions.

Progressives would also bring an end to the Welthshires' relative diplomatic isolation, with the country emerging during the early 20th century as a uniquely anti-imperial great power. Under Stephanie Greyburrow the Welthshires unsuccessfully fought a war against Adina for the liberation of the Durraimur islands. Under Theodore Puddlefoot, the Welthshires entered the Great War on the side of the Entente, and despite being involved in the war for only its final weeks played a major role in shaping the peace settlements. At Puddlefoot's insistence, an Assembly of Nations was established to prevent future wars through international cooperation and self-determination was granted to several minority ethnicities and colonies within the defeated Eastern Powers. The movement toward internationalism fostered by the end of the Great War faced significant resistance in the Welthshires, however, and in 1920 the election of William Bramble saw the country retreat back into relative isolation, though its hegemony over and military involvement in its North Aloysian neighbors remained.