The Plight of the Louisians

The Plight of the Louisians
Die Notlage der Louisen
La Détresse de la Louisiane

The cover of the Saxon-language first edition, showcasing a photograph of a Louisian woman and her child.

Author	Wolfgang Arnholtz
Country	United Principalities
Language	Common Tongue, Saxon, Louisian
Publisher	Weisenburger Freie Presse
Published	1736 AN

The The Plight of the Louisians (Saxon: Die Notlage der Louisen, Louisian: La Détresse de la Louisiane) is a political fiction novel by Weisenburger author Wolfgang Arnholtz. The novel was written to expose the extreme poverty that the nation's Louisian population lives in and the discrimination that they face.

Background

Map of the seven majority Louisian villages in the District of Neudemmin, with Saxon place names in parenthesis.

After the formation of the United Principalities in 1725 AN, seven Louisian-populated villages found themselves subsumed into the wider Duchy of Rhaetia, with all of them falling under the Bezirk of Neudemmin. Under this this regime, Louisian-speaking people were notably not granted the citizenship that was extended to both Saxon and Zandt-speaking peoples. Thus, they found themselves with the same status as refugees. However, unlike most refugees, it was near-impossible for Louisians to be granted citizenship. The Weisenburger authorities main aim was to assimilate Louisian communities by promoting Saxon language and culture at the expense of the former's identity. Educational policies put in place by the government in Weisenburg favored Saxon language instruction, and Louisian frequently either marginalized or outright banned in schools and public life. Louisian people were often barred from enrolling in universities, as many put in place Saxon or Zandt language tests that one must complete before they were allowed to register for classes.

These barriers also extended to property ownership. Louisians often barriers to property ownership as well as employment, as were not allowed to take up positions in law, academia, or government, relegating most to manual labor or agriculture. Many farmers struggled against aggressive competition from Saxon farmers who received more support from the central government. They were also often excluded from decision making processes. The United Principalities' centralized government and policies were largely dominated by ethnic Saxons, leaving almost no room for Louisians political representation.

This were the conditions that one Wolfgang Arnholtz found the Louisian community in 1734 AN. Arnholtz, a cultural anthropologist with a Doctorate from the University of Svorgas, had spent decades traveling Micras documenting the numerous societies and peoples of the planet. But when he decided to document the Louisian population, which he had been taught numbered no more than a few hundred, what saw him truly horrified him. He wrote in his diaries about the village of Saint-Étienne de Lanciers; "[The Louisians] are a broken people. The memories of their former empire are nothing but a hazy dream for them as they kill themselves working their crop fields. They live is dirty and crowded shacks, most without running water or electricity, and work as tenement farmers (as attempting to compete with the Saxons is nothing but an economic death sentence for them)." After attempting to confer with his colleagues in Weisenburg about these conditions, he was met with a general disinterest as they saw the Louisians as just another group of poor farmers. This emboldened Arnholtz to publish his findings in a tell-all manuscript in order to expose the system of discriminatory poverty that the Louisains were faced with.