Free State of Haifa

Free State of Haifa
Official language	Common Tongue, Haifan
Capital	Abeis
Largest cities	Abeis, Keybir-Aviv, Jezeraah
Forum	Forum
Number of citizens	9,527,179
Date founded	1602 AN
Government	Parliamentary republic
Current leader	Ismael Todochev (founder, 1602 AN); Benjamin Meir (last, 1615 AN to 1616 AN)
Currency	Lliev

This article is about the independent republic of 1602 AN to 1620 AN. For the Hammish autonomous territory that followed it, see Hammish Haifa. For the Caputian state, see Caputian Haifa. For the present-day region administered by the Maritime Markets of the Strait of Haifa, see Haifa.

The Free State of Haifa was an independent republic on the eastern shore of Lake Morovia in central Keltia, administered from Abeis between 1602 AN and 1620 AN. It was proclaimed under Ismael Todochev after the Commonwealth of Hamland failed to secure recognition of a wider territorial claim that would have carried Haifa onto the map with it, and Todochev held throughout that union with the Commonwealth remained a matter of timing rather than of principle. At its fullest extent the republic comprised six regions and reached a population of 9,527,179, the great majority of them in the annexed territory of North Antarctica rather than in Haifa proper. The people of Haifa proper descended from Israati, Afrikaanian, and Babki settlement on the lake shore.

The state rested on diamonds, banking, and shipping. The fields south of Abeis were the largest industry, the banking houses of the capital were its second, and both traded through Hammish institutions: Haifan firms were listed on the Ham50 and the republic belonged to the SCUE, whose credit it issued under its own name as the Lliev. Foreign policy was formally neutral and extended unconditional recognition to every Micran state. Among its first agreements, the Treaty of Abeis with the Empire of the Alexandrians bound each party to treat an attack on the other as an attack on itself.

Four constitutional texts were written in eighteen years, none of them settling the length of a prime-ministerial term, and no Prime Minister after the founder completed one. Benjamin Meir, ratified in 1615 AN, governed for a single session; his ministry concluded the Treaty of St. Andre with Natopia in 1616 AN, trading the principality of Walstadt for the port city of Port St. Andre, and he resigned both the premiership and his citizenship within the month. No successor was chosen and the office stood vacant for the republic's remaining four years. The Wallis Islands left in 1617 AN, and in 1620 AN what remained of the citizenry concluded the Agreement of Dissolution, which passed Haifa proper to the Commonwealth of Hamland as an autonomous territory and named the Most Serene Republic of St. Andre its successor state.

Etymology and name

Two hypotheses account for the name Haifa. One relates it to the Haifan root CHFA, "to cover, to hide," perhaps for Lake Morovia lying hidden in the middle of the Keltian continent; the other links it to the word CHOF, "beach." The republic styled itself a Free State from the proclamation onward, and the term outlived it: Caputian administrators still used it as a nickname for their eastern state generations later, in acknowledgment of the independence that had preceded them.

Place names across the republic recorded which community had settled where. Jezeraah means "island" in the local dialect, a compound of the Israati and Babki speech of the families who took it. The capital's name and those of the mainland towns came from the Israati-descended settlers of the lake shore, while the southern and island settlements carried Afrikaanian forms.

History

Haifa spent eighteen years as an independent state. It reached its fullest extent within six of them and then lost its holdings one at a time: Walstadt by treaty, the Wallis Islands by secession, and the remainder by the partition of 1620 AN. The premiership stood vacant for the last four years.

Traditional history

Haifan tradition places the origins of the country generations before the documented record begins, and attaches no dates to the figures it names. It holds that the first Haifans were Israati families who left the Hammish region of Israat and settled in waves along the shores of Lake Morovia, coming into contact with indigenous groups already living there and mixing with them over several generations into a distinct people. The land they settled was not empty of earlier states: the Luxor Palace at Abeis and the Bungaÿo Shrine were held to be remains of feudal nations that had risen and fallen before the migrations, and both outlasted the republic itself, the palace surviving to serve as the residence of the Caputian state governor.

In that traditional account the country's first Prime Minister was Herman Wozhleweitz, who established the principles on which its government was said to rest. Haifa is remembered as an agricultural country under him and after him, until the first diamond strikes south of Abeis. Under the second Prime Minister, George Perlman, tradition holds that the proceeds of the mines built a banking and finance sector, and that the country turned from farming toward commerce and industry. Todochev founded the modern republic whose institutions are attested.

Foundation and the Hamland association

Three streams of settlement had met on Lake Morovia before the proclamation. The Israati-descended communities held the mainland. Refugees from Afrikaana settled the Northern Isles and the southern towns, bringing with them the Gorogoro religion and the DakaÏuru language; their reception was marked by the Festival of Union, kept thereafter as its anniversary. Babki families fleeing Eura took the island of Jezeraah, where their speech mixed with Israati to form the local dialect.

Haifa sought association with the Commonwealth of Hamland first, and largely for a commercial reason: access to the Hammish stock market, on which its firms expected to be listed. The Commonwealth's wider claim failed to win recognition, and Haifa could not be carried onto the map inside it. The republic was proclaimed at Abeis in consequence, and dates its founding from that proclamation. Todochev held that independence was a matter of timing and that Haifa would rejoin the Commonwealth in due course. It never did, though the two states concluded a treaty in 1606 AN and the republic's economy remained wholly interlocked with the Hammish one until the end.

Directives of the Foreign Office committed the new state to formal neutrality and to the unconditional recognition of every Micran nation, a doctrine it held to without exception. Within weeks of the proclamation Haifa concluded its first two agreements: the Treaty of Abeis with the Empire of the Alexandrians, which bound each party to treat an attack on the other as an attack on itself, and a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Republic of North Antarctica, which guaranteed that republic's neutrality. A treaty with the Republic of Mercury followed in the same period.

The Todochev republic

Todochev purchased the whaling principality of Walstadt in 1602 AN and assumed the princely title attached to it. Walstadt was an established state at the time of the purchase. It had been founded by whalers from Rossheim-Slavonia-Volksburg eleven years earlier and raised to a principality the year after its founding, and it had already lost a prince: Elijah Ayreon, who had held the Shirerithian throne before he held Walstadt, was put to death at Mandible Hill and succeeded by Sisera. Todochev took the principality from Heinrich Blutwasser and, fourteen years later, surrendered it to Nathaniel Ayreon-Kalirion, the adopted son of the prince who had died there.

The republic's first territorial claim was withdrawn when the quality of its map was rejected; a second, resubmitted with Walstadt attached as a territory, was accepted, and Haifa entered the map. Accession to the SCUE and listing on the Ham50 followed.

In 1605 AN the republic held its first contested prime-ministerial election, and Todochev was returned. By then he held the premiership, the principality of Walstadt, the chief executive's office at the Fenkel Shipping Co., and command of the army at once. He stated publicly that the republic had few citizens. Parliament annexed the Republic of the North Antarctic Peninsular Islands under the Unification Act in 1608 AN, carrying with it the autonomous region of Afrikaana and some nine million inhabitants against a hundred thousand in Haifa proper. Todochev lost the premiership in 1609 AN.

The Sarraj and Sinders ministries

Fayiz Sarraj of the Social Democratic Party formed the next government and resigned within weeks, stating that he no longer commanded the confidence of his own ministers. Erlo Sinders, governor of the Wallis Islands, took the office after him on an interim basis. Todochev accepted the defense ministry under the new government and then withdrew from Haifan politics altogether, though he remained Prince of Walstadt until the principality was transferred.

Little is recorded of the years that followed. Proposals were raised to move the seat of the republic's records to firmer ground, and a Hammish delegation visiting in the period reported that Haifa was considering adopting the Commonwealth's system of government outright, and that joining the Commonwealth had again been raised.

The Meir ministry and the Treaty of St. Andre

The republic's last general election was held in 1614 AN on a six-seat proportional count and returned the Haifan Democratic Party with four seats against two for the Social Democrats. Benjamin Meir was ratified as Prime Minister in 1615 AN. He came from the founding generation of the capital: his father had served as the first City Police Commissioner of Abeis when the city was founded, his mother had built the family's fortune in real estate, and he had been elected to the city's own government before taking the premiership.

His ministry lasted a single session, and its principal act was the Treaty of St. Andre, concluded with Natopia in 1616 AN. Under it the principality of Walstadt passed to the Natopian crown and the port city of Port St. Andre passed to Haifa, an exchange negotiated on the Natopian side by the minister who would hold that empire's chancellorship for twenty-two years from 1619 AN. Sinders judged that the exchange undervalued Haifan holdings and had pressed instead for territory in the Skerry Isles. He voted for ratification nonetheless.

Meir resigned both the premiership and his citizenship within the month, saying that Haifa was to some merely a component of Hamland. No successor was chosen. The office of Prime Minister stood vacant for the republic's remaining four years.

Secession and dissolution

The Wallis Islands declared independence in 1617 AN on the signature of their governor, Sinders, alone, and were annexed by Passio-Corum thereafter. The protectorate had been the wealthiest part of the republic by output. Its departure removed both that holding and Sinders, the author of the economic model the republic ran on.

In 1620 AN what remained of the citizenry concluded the Agreement of Dissolution. It partitioned what the republic still held into three parts. Haifa proper passed to the Commonwealth of Hamland, which organized it as an autonomous territory with Abeis as its administrative capital and allocated the whole of the Commonwealth's own currency reserve, 16,762.85 obols, to it for immediate investment. North Antarctica passed to Passio-Corum. Port St. Andre became the Most Serene Republic of St. Andre, named in the agreement as Haifa's successor state, and to it passed the mutual-defense obligation of the Treaty of Abeis. Walstadt had gone to Natopia four years earlier under the treaty of 1616 AN.

Geography

Haifa lay on the Maccabi River, east of Lake Morovia, on the western and central littorals of the strait and lake system that separates central from eastern Keltia. It was a generally flat country of low relief, with hills spotting the countryside, and it held no mountains and no open sea coast. The lake basin around it was marsh dominant, with cool humid winters, mild summers, frequent radiation fogs, and extensive reedbeds and peat-forming fens; the Valley of Haifa rift belt ran through it. Though the republic was inland, it was styled and considered a seafaring nation, and its lake and river ports carried its trade.

Regions

At its fullest extent the republic comprised six regions, each split into cities and townships and all of them in close proximity but for the annexed territories. Haifa proper was administered from Abeis and took in Jezeraah, the Northern Isles, and the mining city of Keybir-Aviv.

Province	Capital	Population
Haifa	Abeis	104,136
Minab Azis	Minab Azis	20,127
Wallis Islands	Wallis Island	862
Fenkel Shipping Co.	Fenkel Shipping Co. HQ	50
Walstadt	Walstadt	47,927
North Antarctica	New Livingston	9,502,002

After 1608 AN North Antarctica held more than ninety-eight percent of the republic's recorded population, while the seat of government remained at Abeis in Haifa proper. The Wallis Islands returned fewer than a thousand inhabitants on the regional returns.

Government and politics

Main article: Constitution of the Free State of Haifa

The Free State was a parliamentary republic. Its constitutional order changed four times in eighteen years, and no two successive texts agreed on the length of a prime-ministerial term, which ran variously at three, four, and six years.

The head of state was the Governor-General, elected by Parliament from among the sitting governors of the regions. The office combined duties that were elsewhere separate, its holder serving at once as Speaker of Parliament, as Foreign Minister, and as the republic's senior diplomatic representative, and remaining neutral in partisan divisions except to break a tie. The head of government was the Prime Minister, elected through Parliament and forming a cabinet from it. Justice rested with a supreme court under a Supreme Arbiter.

The legislature was the National Parliament. Each region returned a governor, and the governors sat alongside the city officials of the towns, so that the chamber was drawn from the republic's territorial units rather than from a national roll. In its last form it seated six members elected by proportional representation; an earlier restructure had used a mixed-member proportional method with eight, and had set a five-eighths threshold for overriding a veto.

Two parties dominated what contested politics the republic had. The Haifan Democratic Party, formed from the merger of the Federation of the Natives with an earlier Democratic Alliance, campaigned in its last election on a platform it called the Open Opportunity Society for All, and won four of six seats. The Social Democratic Party, which furnished both Sarraj and Sinders, took the other two. A parliamentary code graded members' discipline on a four-class scale.

Four elections are recorded. The prime-ministerial poll of 1605 AN was decided by five votes cast, Todochev taking three against one each for Sinders and a third candidate. A parliamentary election early in 1609 AN produced the Social Democratic government. A municipal election at Abeis in 1614 AN returned Meir as city official with sixty-seven percent. The general election later that year, the republic's last, gave the Haifan Democratic Party its four seats.

A final constitutional reform was drafted in 1615 AN, proposing a federal republic with a supreme court under a chief justice, four-year terms, and the motto "Unity makes strength." It was never adopted, and its author resigned weeks after presenting it.

Military

The military of Haifa was proportionate to the size of the country and numbered about 2,000 full-time personnel. The Special Haifan Forces were its premier task force. Command rested with the Prime Minister in the republic's early years, Todochev holding the office of commanding general alongside the premiership, and the defense ministry passed to him again after he left it. No war involving the republic is recorded, and no deployment of its forces abroad appears in the surviving record. The republic's security guarantee was the Treaty of Abeis, whose mutual-defense clause survived the state itself and passed to St. Andre at the dissolution.

Economy

Haifa's economy was built on mining, shipping, banking, and research. The republic was among the leaders of the diamond industry, working the fields south of Abeis that were the source of its wealth, and it kept research facilities across the country and particularly at Keybir-Aviv. Foreign companies took offices in the Abeis Business District. Fishing and tourism grew as sectors in the republic's later years, and whaling entered the economy with Walstadt.

The state's commercial life ran through Hammish institutions from beginning to end. Haifa belonged to the SCUE, and Haifan companies were traded on the Ham50, the stock market of Hamland. The currency was the Lliev, Haifa's own denomination of the SCUE credit; the same unit was called the obol in Hamland and, later, the polis in the Pallisican sphere. The republic also adopted the bloc's economic operating system wholesale, in a model authored by Sinders, who governed its wealthiest territory while concurrently holding the finance ministry of Hamland and the presidency of the regional government that purchased Haifan firms.

Its principal companies were the Haifa Diamond Company, the largest employer, part-owned from outside the republic; the Fenkel Shipping Co., which was both a company and a region in its own right; the Wallis Islands Investment Firm, which held the islands' commercial assets; and the Walstadt Whalers. National accounts compiled under the Hammish economic model recorded the Wallis Islands as the wealthiest sector of the republic despite holding the least land.

Infrastructure and education

The cities of Haifa were connected by four major highways, H1 to H4, with a network of smaller regional roads linking the villages and towns. The Haifan Rail was the major train line of the country. The largest airport was Haifan International Airport at Abeis, which carried flights across Micras, and the secondary airport was Keybir-Aviv International, considerably smaller than its sister.

Education was compulsory from ages five to eighteen and literacy stood at ninety-six percent. The university at Abeis, known both as Haifa National University and as the University of Abeis, was the leading school in the country and drew foreign students to its campus; Meir took his juris doctorate there before entering politics.

Demographics

The recorded population of the republic was 9,527,179. That figure is dominated by a single annexation: after 1608 AN more than nine and a half million Haifans lived in North Antarctica, against about a hundred thousand in Haifa proper, twenty thousand in Minab Azis, and fewer than a thousand in the Wallis Islands. Returns compiled on different bases do not agree. The regional table totals slightly above the national figure, while national accounts drawn up under the Hammish economic model counted 3,807,715 across a narrower set of regions.

The people of Haifa proper descended from the three settlement streams that had met on the lake before the proclamation. The Israati-descended communities of the mainland were the largest and gave the republic its dominant culture. The Babki families of Jezeraah, whose ancestors had fled Eura, kept the island distinct from the mainland in speech and in faith. Haifan was spoken across the republic, and DakaÏuru among the Afrikaanian community.

Culture and sport

Haifan culture was formed from the meeting of its communities. Ethnic Haifans carried most of their customs, food, traditions, and sport from their ancestors in the Israat region of Hamland. The Afrikaanian minority kept its own, and the mixing of the two produced observances belonging to neither, chief among them the Festival of Union, kept annually to mark the day the Afrikaanian refugees were received into the country. The cuisine of the republic drew on Haifan, Afrikaanian, and foreign tastes together. A national news service and a broadcasting service operated from the capital.

No single faith held the republic. The Afrikaanian community practiced Gorogoro, a religion of vudu magic and of seven gods representing the elements, which was the official religion of Afrikaana and was found in few other places. On Jezeraah most islanders were communicants of the Temple of Keiphah, an offshoot of the worship of Zartosht carried over from Eura, which taught the unity of God, of religion, and of humanity, and held that religion was progressive from age to age.

Football was the main sport. The Haifa League 1 was the premier domestic division, the Haifa national football team played its home fixtures at Hapoel Field in Abeis under the trigramme HAI, and its first recorded international was a defeat by Hamland by three goals to none. Rugby league was the second sport. The Haifan Rugby League was founded with eight clubs: the Abeis All-Golds, the Abeis City Wolves, the Fonseca Jets, the Kaing Thunderstorm, the Keybir Devils, the Ku'agalo Victory, Minab-Azis RLFC, and the Wallis Generals. The Haifa national rugby league team won its first international by twenty-two points to fourteen and entered the inaugural Keltian Cup.

The republic did not centralize sporting membership. Walstadt, North Antarctica, and Afrikaana each kept separate international membership after annexation, competing under their own colors while belonging to Haifa. The arrangement outlasted the state: Haifan sporting bodies retained their own international membership under Hammish rule, and the territory kept its own football and rugby competitions for a further generation.

Legacy and successor states

The Agreement of Dissolution named the Most Serene Republic of St. Andre the successor of the Free State, and the obligations of the Treaty of Abeis passed to it. St. Andre took a different road from the rest of the partition: independent from 1620 AN, later under Natopian protection, and annexed by Natopia in 1652 AN. One of its cities carries the founder's name, the demesne is held by Maria Meir as Princess of Saint Andre, and a college and a review there carry her father's name.

Meir himself went to Natopia within the year and rose further there than he had at home, serving as Chancellor of Natopia for two non-consecutive terms. No record of Todochev's later life survives beyond the defense ministry. A house at Abeis was built bearing his name after his disappearance, and a great-nephew of his was among the founders of the Maritime Markets of the Strait of Haifa.

Haifa proper passed through three administrations in turn. It was administered as an autonomous territory of Hamland from 1620 AN, passed with the rest of the Commonwealth into the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia in 1653 AN as the state of Haifa, and after the fall of that kingdom came under the administration of the Maritime Markets, which holds the region today. The republic's institutions did not long survive the first of those transitions: within five years of the dissolution, members of the Commonwealth were proposing to renew Haifan institutions on the reasoning that little of the old apparatus was still running.

Haifan remained a recognized language of the states that ruled the territory afterward, and Haifan was later listed among the official languages of Anglia & Israat, the region the settlers had come from. The Festival of Union continued to be kept. Haifan descent stayed a distinct category through the Caputian period and after it: the volunteers who raised the Israati-Haifan Defense Force in 1716 AN were recruited as Haifans and Israatis together, by the two names the republic's own settlement streams had carried.

Timeline

1602 AN: The republic is proclaimed at Abeis under Ismael Todochev.
1602 AN: The Treaty of Abeis is concluded with the Empire of the Alexandrians, and a treaty of friendship with North Antarctica.
1602 AN: Todochev purchases the principality of Walstadt.
1605 AN: First contested prime-ministerial election; Todochev is returned.
1606 AN: The first treaty with the Commonwealth of Hamland is ratified.
1608 AN: North Antarctica is annexed under the Unification Act, carrying Afrikaana into Haifa.
1609 AN: Todochev loses the premiership; Fayiz Sarraj resigns within weeks; Erlo Sinders takes office on an interim basis.
1614 AN: Last general election; the Haifan Democratic Party takes four seats to the Social Democrats' two.
1615 AN: Benjamin Meir is ratified Prime Minister; a final constitutional reform is drafted and never adopted.
1616 AN: The Treaty of St. Andre trades Walstadt to Natopia for Port St. Andre; Meir resigns and no successor is chosen.
1617 AN: The Wallis Islands declare independence and are annexed by Passio-Corum.
1620 AN: The Agreement of Dissolution partitions the republic between Hamland, Passio-Corum and St. Andre.

Events not placed on the calendar

The premierships of Herman Wozhleweitz and George Perlman and the first diamond strikes are placed by tradition before the documented record, and carry no dates.
The settlement of the lake shore by Israati, Afrikaanian and Babki communities, and the first Festival of Union, precede the proclamation and are undated.
The founding of the Wallis Islands settlement is recorded in the Wills reckoning as the year 729, for which no conversion to the Norton calendar is documented.
The first territorial claim, withdrawn, and the second, accepted, fall between the proclamation and the accession to the SCUE without separate dates.
The Foreign Office Directives, the treaty with the Republic of Mercury, and the accession to the SCUE and listing on the Ham50 are attested without a year.