History of the Athenian Federation/Founding of Athens

### The Beginning (1453-1457)

As far as it is presently understood by historians, the Athenian Federation's origins begin on August 14, 1453, when a ship containing approximately 350 people of mixed English, Scottish, and Portuguese (as well as three French people) ancestry, sailing from England to Portugal disappeared - for reasons still unknown - somewhere off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, and crash-landed on the island the ship would give its name to - Joaninha. The date of this event is obtained from the diary of Francisco Duarte Salazar (1428-1504), the ship's captain, which has been maintained in the Joanhina Library to this day; most of the first few years of the Athens' region history was preserved due to his writing.

The unwitting discoverers of the region now known as Athens initially struggled to survive, likely due to many of them being middle-class in the societies of their time and having little experience with having to survive manually - additionally, a hurricane appears to have hit Joanhina in September 1453, shortly after their arrival - in the words of Salazar, "*Um grande vento soprou, seguido por uma inundação ainda maior, com mais de cinquenta varridos"* ("A great wind struck, followed by an even greater flood, with over fifty swept away"), followed by a partial famine due to poor farming skills and the effects of the hurricane, as most of the original settlers were a part of the middle-class of their respective societies - largely merchants and artisans - with only an estimated thirty percent able to farm; nearly fifty percent of the original 350 settlers died from a combination of famine, poor farming practices, and the effects of various natural disasters over the first two years of Athenian history. The name "Athens" seems to have emerged around this time as an ironic mockery of their current situation rooted in classical history - one surviving piece of writing from this era sarcastically describes the Joanhina settlement "as city as mighty as old Athens"; apparently the name originally came from an early English resident, Mary Fletcher (1423-1517). Despite what could be charitably described as a *difficult* first few years, eventually a stable foothold was gained on the northern part of the island of Joanhina; the population of the island hit a nadir of around 180 to 200 in 1456, and eventually a relatively stable, agricultural lifestyle was achieved; while far from perfect, with occasional famines, many natural disasters (such as the Great Tornado of 1459 which levelled half of Joanhina - mostly made up of wooden buildings at that time), it was also true that a stable community with real longevity and a freewheeling spirit (and, oddly, an *incredible* level of mostly Christian religiosity, possibly due to many believing supernatural intervention had delivered them to Athens, and that therefore they were on some kind of "divine mission") had emerged.

### Athens-Tortuga Split (1457-1459)

In the late 1450s, after the initial problems of basic sustenance had been solved, factions began to grow in the new community Specifically, tensions between the Portuguese residents of Joanhina (who were in the minority, as the original Joanhina ship was largely transporting English and Scottish merchants to Portugal, and more Portuguese had died during the initial "Years of Hunger") and the English, Scottish, and French residents were growing, despite initial wishes for cooperation due to the pre-existing Anglo-Portuguese alliance. These were primarily due to accusations of favoritism (in the handling of crimes, as well as claims of land theft from Portuguese settlers by the majority English), philosophical and cultural differences (one early dispute being over the construction of a church) and internal debates between exploring the areas around Joanhina and staying put, which gradually became polarised among national lines. The English also accused the Portuguese of trying to undermine their food supplies. The situation gradually escalated throughout 1458 and 59, with brawls and even at least one case of rape and murder over these issues. In June 1459, sixty-four of the sixty-seven Portuguese residents of Joanhina, including Salazar, by now the *de facto* leader of the Portuguese settlers, signed a letter to the de facto leader of the English settlers, Alfred John Appilton (1421-1490), accusing the English of "diverse crimes", including "beatings, theft, ravishment, murder, and torture", and threatening to "make our own way in this supernatural world" unless "amends" were made.

Tensions came to a head on August 14, 1459, when an argument between two men over who had the right to construct a house on a plot of land in north-central Joanhina became violent, resulting in the English Hamo de Bradford murdering the Portuguese Johane Alvarez, before travelling to his home and murdering his wife, Isabell. This incident caused rioting, with the burning of both English and Portuguese homes and farms (the same English woman who named Athens, Mary Fletcher, had her home burned down by Portuguese rioters, as well as the homes of at least twelve other residents of both groups) and three deaths. Immediately after this, Salazar - the captain of the Joanhina gathered all sixty-seven Portuguese residents, as well as three Scots and one English man, who had been ostracized for unknown reasons (but possibly due to a skin blemish or some kind of physical disability), and orally delivered the so-called Tortuga Declaration, declaring co-residence "a failure of greatest and most unimaginably bad proportions" (*uma falha de proporções maiores e mais inimaginavelmente ruins*) and stating that "in this strange world of possibly divine creation we Portuguese will lead our own way" (*neste estranho mundo de criação possivelmente divina nós portugueses seguiremos o nosso próprio caminho*) and then immediately led them all down to the centre of the island immediately south of Joanhina, christening it "Tortuga" after a tortoise he found on his way travelling there. With this, he had taken a third of the population and much of the resources (made up primarily of the cargo on the *Joanhina* when it ran aground) of the Joanhina, and Joanhina was now nearly completely English (approximately 80 percnt, 15 percent Scottish and 5 percent French). The general reaction to the incident was one of relief among the non-Portuguese residents; Fletcher wrote that "the filthy, marauding Portuguese" have "vanquished themselves from our land". Others put it in less racist terms, with one man writing that simply "the issues that heretofore have been Plauging us have been Rectified".