The Capital Cities of Beringia
The Dominion of Beringia has gone through a few capital cities over the years, ever since the capture of the Far East and Outer Manchuria following the Crimean War. Once a sparsely-peopled region disputed between Russia and China, the area steadily expanded - and the capital moved with it.
From September 1854 to mid-1859, the capital of the so-called Far East Territory - later the Colony of Beringia - was situated at Petropavlovsk itself. The old Russian settlement has steadily been subsumed into the larger city of Priceport, named for the British officer who spearheaded the settlement's capture. You can see the old colonial administration on the waterfront, just north of the old Church of All Saints: the so-called Colonial House is now a museum.
The capital didn't stay in Priceport for long - the fort, on the Kamchatka Peninsula, was basically in the middle of nowhere relative to more southerly lands ceded to the British in various treaties with Russia and China. Nevertheless, the city developed over the years into both a major port and services hub. It is the easternmost major city in the country now, with a bustling central business district.
Distance and geography always made the former Petropavlovsk a forbidding choice for capital. For one, the Kamchatka Peninsula is far removed from just about anything, with a brutal northern climate and few lands around it worth settling. For another, the port is situated in a rugged volcanic region on Avacha Bay, and while it's possible to farm the river itself, the rest of the region is cold and hilly. The city winds through volcanic valleys and along black volcanic sand beaches, sustaining itself with countless little ports - fisheries, resource ports, military bases, et cetera.
Even in its short time as capital, Priceport held value, though: It was a useful early hub of fur trading and mining, and a Royal Navy detachment remained stationed there in perpetuity. These days the Royal Beringian Navy keeps ships on station, seen above. Sadly the city itself isn't the most wealthy: It's cold, it's remote, and it smells like fish a lot of the time.
Priceport has no shortage of historic spots. The Petropavlovsk Battery is one of them. The British installed these guns after the First World War, but they were silent until the Second World War, when the city's defenders duelled attacking Japanese ships in one of the northernmost attacks of the war. But their history goes back further: It was this battery that the Russians manned against the British during the Crimean War. The Siege of Petropavlovsk is honoured by a series of plaques mounted on the equestrian statue.
By 1859, the sheer remoteness of Petropavlovsk and the need to secure the more productive and hospitable lands in Outer Manchuria saw the British administration hunting for a better capital than modern Priceport. They turned their attention to what is now the city of Chaddea.
The Chaddea-Sagicha metro region is built around a multi-inlet bay opening up onto the Tartar Strait. The body of water, known to the Russians as Imperatorskaya Gavan, was the site of a small fort, which was burned by British ships in 1854. The area was renamed Barracuda Bay in honour of HMS Barracouta, the lead ship involved in the attack. In fact the native name for the region, in the tongue of the local Orochs, is Khadzhi or Khodyo - a name that has been bastardized into Chaddea over the years. Either way, its excellent natural harbour and sheltered location made it a place of interest for the British Empire, who moved the colonial administration here and set up what was then called Fort Eastern. The village of Chaddea developed around it and came to subsume it.
The city of Chaddea has today rounded into an important port on the eastern seaboard and a key cargo and passenger rail terminus. Pictured here is the downtown, much of which emerged in the early 1900s.
The heritage St. Justus Cathedral, built in the 1880s, is a key landmark in downtown Chaddea, located just south of Chaddea Grand Station. The original church has since been added onto by a large rectory, which itself backs on to the 1880s Queen Victoria Hotel, one of the oldest and most luxurious buildings in town. Across the rail line sits the 1868 building known as Britannia Hall, once the centre of colonial administration in Chaddea.
Colonial administrators never truly loved assignment to Beringia. The towns were small and cold, requiring buildings to be constructed with brick and stone. The old governor's house still survives in central Chaddea, overlooking part of Barracuda Bay and perched above one of the rail lines feeding the city's many port facilities.
For all that Chaddea remains in use today - indeed, even absorbing the nearby Sagicha Inlet to form a major eastern port serving Sakhalin Island - the city was rapidly overtaken in importance. British fortunes steadily turned to the Amur River and the more prosperous and promising farmland opened up along the river's lower reaches. As British explorers and settlers pushed inland and the local Tungusic peoples signed treaties of recognition with the Crown (many of them in bad faith on perfidious Albion's part), a new capital was needed, one closer to the action.
Britain finally designated its new capital in 1887: Bolliton. The region was then a small village known to the locals as Boli or Buri, but held potential as a transit hub between promising farmlands on the Amur River and ports open to the Sea of Japan and the Tartar Strait. By the 1890s, administration had moved to the top of Chapel Crest in what is now the Bolliton borough of Georgetown, just north of New Amurside.
These days, Chapel Crest has a tunnel boring under it and an expressway barreling past, but much of the hill itself has been set aside as a national heritage site. Burroughs Hall, once the site of the colonial legislature, is today home to the National Library of Beringia. The smaller building next door was once the Superior Court of the Far East Colony. It remained in use as a courthouse for years but is today part of the National Library and a common site for wedding photos. Weddings in fact still take place at the church here, though the cemetery's considered full.
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