Could a North American island nation willfully remain 360 years behind the times culturally?

Factual Questions
1

Well, people, I am taking a stab at some historical fiction. I came up with a scenario, whilst idly daydreaming, in which a North American island is colonized by a military expedition funded by Duke Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy in 1625, who had grand plans for the expansion of his duchy. Let’s say the island is in Northern Atlantic, say Labrador. A multi-ethnic force of Savoyards, Spaniards and German Catholic mercenaries, including nobleman from all of those nations, manages to take over the island and claim it in the name of the House of Savoy. This happens in around 1626.

Now, in my vision of the story, once the island is taken over, various factions fight amongst themselves for control of the territory. The Germans, better organized militarily, win out in the end, and the Savoyards support them out of distrust for the Spanish. The Spanish are granted some representation in the government, though to a small degree; ultimately the island becomes under joint German and Savoyard control.

After the death of Charles Emmanuel II, the government of the island takes advantage of the chaos during the reign of his successor, Victor Amadeus, and declares itself an independent kingdom. V.A., completely embroiled with conflicts involving the Spanish and French, and unable to respond with force to the island colony, concedes to their declaration. The young German commander of the military forces appoints himself King Karl I, and the nation becomes known as Karla.

Under Karl I, Karla becomes extremely powerful, due to trade with native peoples and other Europeans, in fur, timber, and other resources. They are able to build up a strong military and an excellent economy; they also welcome refugees from Catholic countries fleeing the violence of the Thirty Years’ War, especially from Catholic parts of Germany. Art, culture and science flourish in this new nation and its people become fanatically loyal to the king, who rules for almost fifty years.

Towards the end of his life the king becomes obsessed with the idea of creating an “eternal nation”, i.e. one which would never lose its cultural identity. Therefore he decrees that Karla shall adopt NO foreign trends, that it should shun all influences from the outside world, that the manner of dress, music, and art shall never change, and that a “ministry of culture” be established to strictly enforce these rules. In other words, Karla may trade freely with other nations, but only in a sanctioned area - say, a small nearby island, set up as a “trading port” similar to what happened during Tokugawa Japan. New technology could be adopted, as well as new forms of medicine, but NO elements of fashion, music, art, religious movements, or philosophy were permitted.

So for the next 360 years, the Kingdom of Karla steadfastly refuses to conform to all of the vast cultural changes in the rest of the world (and eventually in the United States.) That means they wear the same clothes, play the same music, paint the same paintings, etc, that were in fashion in Thirty Years’ War-era Europe. And, most importantly, they remain a monarchy under the rule of an autocratic king, and have no access to any of the political philosophies that develop during the Enlightenment.

However in 1990, King Karl XXII decides to allow LIMITED contact with the outside world. A very, very small group of diplomats from the US, the UK and other European countries is allowed to visit, and likewise a tiny group of noblemen from Karla are allowed to visit Europe. Both groups are utterly astonished by the complete culture shock - and this is what would make up the plot of the story I want to write.

The reason I’m posting this in GQ is - how plausible is it, exactly, that a Northern American island country could willfully stay so far behind the rest of the world culturally? What would be some of the obstacles to this goal? Would one of the Imperialist powers attempt to attack them and take them over? Would some brave souls manage to smuggle in pamphlets containing Enlightenment political philosophy? Would other countries refuse to trade with them?

In short - is this scenario completely devoid of any credibility? Or is there a chance I could write this story and make it more or less realistic? I really want to know the answer before I go ahead and try to write it. Please, please offer any suggestions, especially from the history powerhouses like Tamerlane.

2

I’m no history powerhouse, but as a reader I might buy it based on the examples of Imperial Japan and the Amish in the US, both cultures that successfully eschewed many external influences for a long time.

I might buy it even more if King Karl pulled a Henry VIII and founded a new church for his nation with himself as the head. I guess I’m more willing to believe that a group of people would do something so willfully pigheaded if their motivation for doing it is religious. Call me cynical. :wink:

Finally, if you insist on calling this kingdom Karla I will think of Rhea Perlman every time I read the name and it will pretty much totally ruin the book for me.

3

That’s somewhat upside-down given that there was nationalism among the motivation for the Church of England’s birth, but no theology. Theologically, Henry VIII was very much in agreement with the Pope; they disagreed about matters of government and bedclothes.

Nevertheless, having a Church of Karla would make it easier for the people there to stay isolated, as there would be no Papal Encyclicas to read in Church, making references to things the people of Karla have never seen or heard about before.

I think the setting is plausible, given such examples as the aforementioned Japan and Amish, but also China or the existence in the XXIst century of people in Europe who speak fluidly only a local language (Basque old folk whose understanding of Spanish and of Government Basque is limited, who only switch the TV on for huge occasions like the appointment of a new Pope and have their grandsons translate for them), or of people in both Europe and America who are happy to never have left the valley where they were born.

4

I suspect that Karla would have been too valuable a target for the Germans to leave alone in WWII, or the Russians in the Cold War. Or, if you prefer, for the US to have left alone in either conflict due to fears of such infiltration.

Nitpick: IIRC, “Labrador” is the mainland portion of the province, and the island is “Newfoundland.”

5

I didn’t mean that Karl would be religiously motivated to found his church. I meant that the citizens might need religious motivation to follow their king’s vaguely ludicrous ideas about the fixity of cultural institutions. If the Church of Karl insisted that continuing to wear knee-breeches in the 21st C. was the only way to get into heaven, the faithful might be more willing to go along with it.

After all, it’s religion that motivates the Amish to avoid some technology and most fashion, and I believe there were religious overtones to Japan’s isolation as well.

6

It also occurs to me that the OP might want to take a look at how North Korea does it. They’re pretty feudal, and terms of technology and culture no more modern than their leaders permit them to be.

The example of North Korea seems to me to feed the plausibility of this proposal. The isolation of Karla would tend to make it poor and economically backward, good conditions for maintaining a society at a 17th-century level of development well into the modern era. Hell, N. Korea was relatively modern at one time, and they’ve got a pretty good shot at being in the 10th century by this Christmas. It’s be even easier for a society that never modernized to begin with.

What if the ruling classes of Karla had access to modern technology that the peasantry believed to be magic? The nobles’ boomsticks and talking boxes would be seen as proof of the divinity and power of the Karlan church-- at least until your peasant hero, stowed away on the trade mission’s ship, found out otherwise…

7

North Korea doesn’t do it very well. Yeah, they’ve managed to keep themselves behind the times, but they haven’t exactly prospered.

I think a better example might be the modern-day Amish settlements in the United States. Instead of one central strong-arm leader like Kim John Il, the Amish culture itself enforces isolation from outsiders and an adherence to ancient cultural standards, even when its members regularly come into contact with outsiders. Take a culture like that and physically isolate it on an island, and I think the OP could have what he’s after.

8

Except, how realistic is it to assume that they would be able to maintain isolation being relatively near to the United States and Europe, both of which were expansionist especially in the 18th and 19th centuries?

It seems that you might be able to justify relative isolationism up to the 1800s, but at some point, the Black Ships will arrive and Karla will be forced to trade with the modern world.

9

Assuming they could avoid the attentions of both Britain and France as they fought for control of North America, and managed to stay isolated from major outside influence then the culture could easily stay almost constant for a long time.

A real world example is the Boers in South Africa, after they trekked into the interior of the country the average boer lost contact with european culture. They adopted some new technology but for the most part their farming culture remained the same.

10

Newfoundlands main economic activity was (Until its collapse) cod fishing. This pretty much requires guys to leave the country to go to sea and therefore nothing prevents them from visiting other places. hard to keep outside news from reaching those guys.

Also, the Brits would probably have taken over the island while colonizing the future Canada. They’d probably have done to the locals what they did to the Arcadians and ship them off to some other place if they made trouble. You will need to find a way to keep the British and French away with some kind of political maneuvers like playing the two sides against each other until a treaty is signed to garauntee independence for the Karlans.

11

See The Village.

(Of course the factual answer is perhaps that many viewers found it was not plausible…)

12

Your job as an author is to make it plausible. The background scenario is only important to you; what will be important to your readers is the story. Make that good and only a few nitpickers would have problems with it – and they can be safely ignored.

13

I’m not ruling out trading with the outside world during modern times. In the rough outline of the story I have, the nobility of Karla have rifles, tanks, video cameras, modern lighting and plumbing, etc. The “ministry of culture” would allow technological innovations to get through, but not any foreign cultural influences. The culture of Karla would remain in the early 17th century - very warlike but in a mostly ceremonial way. There would be much celebration of the king accompanied by feasts, parades, tournaments, and other armorial pageantry. There would be a large standing army, still riding horses and wearing armor, that did nothing but perform drills and participate in parades, since Karla would not have actually fought anybody. Fashion would still be very much in this style, and commanders would still wear this sort of armor.

14

I gotta say, if I’m Hitler, I’m gonna have a hard time not invading a country whose army is known to be entirely ceremonial. Not trying to be a killjoy, just being a focus group.

15

Maybe their naval power could be sufficiently well-developed to repel the Nazis? I don’t know. Or maybe they could have a “defense” mentality like Switzerland, officially neutral but capable of repelling any invaders. Maybe the Karlan government has been developing defensive weapons technology for a long time; maybe they have excellent anti-aircraft and anti-submarine measures. (Why is “Karlan” recognized by Firefox’s spellchecker? Is Karlan a word?)

16

Question: How is their military training in modern tactics if they can’t import culture (even military culture?)? And if their military isn’t training in modern tactics, then it really is pretty much a ceremonial army/navy, good for absolutely nothing against nations that have been keeping up with things.

17

I’m guessing their army is ceremonial, their navy is not. Possibly they have advisors and consultants from other countries who helped them develop a modern navy with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine defenses.

18

Bhutan is probably worth examining. It was wilfully isolated and backward until very recently.

19

Except the reason for all that armorial pageantry back in the 1600s was that armies that won wars were useful things. And all those drills and uniforms that seem silly to us now had a practical purpose. Your guys marched shoulder to shoulder because concentrated troops would defeat dispersed troops. Guys on their own would be run down by cavalry. Uniforms marked rank, and orders were given by voice, or drum, or trumpet. And bone-solid mindless courage was prized because if the unit held it would survive, but if they broke ranks and ran they’d all die.

So the “ceremonial” aspects of 17th century warfare were practical methods for winning battles. And the way to rise as an aristocrat was to win battles. If winning battles doesn’t advance your career, you won’t care about the marching and costuming, you’ll concentrate on those things that do advance your career. The reason for the military pomp and circumstance was that european countries of the time were constantly fighting each other. Without constant war the army becomes irrelevant as a method of social advancement. Without constant war the martial virtues of fearlessness, fatalism, honor, and bloodymindedness become irrelevant.

In other words, if the country is a sleepy backwater that never fights in a war, people will stop revering war. And what is the basis of the economy of the country? Newfoundland has lumber and codfish. Your country can’t have a modern service economy, or a trading economy, or an industrial economy. In the 17th century wealth was tied to land. The peasants engaged in agriculture and the aristocrats skimmed off enough to keep themselves in style. But since technological innovation was extremely slow, the only way to increase your wealth was to increase your lands. Or march over to your neighbor’s lands and carry away his portable wealth. Newfoundland today is a poor region, and it would be even poorer with 17th century technology. Unless the Karlans are raiding the United States and Canada how does the island support more than a few fishing villages and lumber camps?

20

One way you could do this, though I admit it’s pretty radical, would be to have a plague wipe out Europe (and as much of Asia as your plot requires) pretty much totally in the mid-17th century. Then your country would be free to develop in isolation, as a pretty backward place that is, nevertheless, now the most technologically advanced civilization left on the planet.

Granted, you’d have to employ the somewhat hoary ‘gateway between parallel universes’ if you want your folks to meet people like us. But that’s no harder to swallow (for the sci-fi audience, at least) than the idea of a nation remaining steadfastly isolated on America’s doorstep throughout the tumult of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries-- one with no appetite for trade or conquest, and which moreover manages to avoid being subject to others’ appetites for trade or conquest.

I recommend, BTW, a series of e-books by a genre writer named Holly Lisle. In addition to writing a bunch of novels (none of which I like, actually) she’s made a cottage industry of writing advice for sci-fi and speculative fiction writers. Google her and check out her website; she has a lot of materials and guides there. You seem like you’re at a stage that she calls “worldbuilding,” and she has some good stuff on that.