Victoria 3

[Syt]

Well, I added a suggestion post on the forums. Not that it'll do anything.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/make-homelands-more-fluid-for-better-assimilation-modeling.1719701/

[Syt]

At least they agree on the forum that they overcorrected with this patch

[Sheilbh]

Although also worth noting that estimates are that 3-6 million Brits are descended from black and Asian people in Britain from before the 20th century. While they may not have been "English", they got married to white English people, ran pubs etc - I wouldn't be surprised if there was similar in France. Similarly the UK had a number of non-white MPs before the 1920s and then none until the 1980s, there were British-Indian vicars in country parishes in the Church of England. Recent research indicates the first Black voter in Britain was in the 1740s (25 years earlier than thought), there were people like Nathaniel Wells who was mixed race, a landowner, slaveowner and (probably) first Caribbean heritage Justice of the Peace, county Sheriff and lieutenant of the yeomanry. I think there were plenty of similar examples in France. (FWIW I think there's a similar uncertainty on whether women were allowed to vote before the 19th century because that's when it specifies men - until then it was all to do with property and it's unclear if, for example, wealthy widows were able to vote before then.)

As Tamas says there was a lot of complexity - at the working class level there were lots of former seamen who just ended up settling and inter-marrying locally, at the elite level there were non-white students in British universities, barristers in the courts (a common background for national liberation leaders) and even officers in the British army. It was far from the norm, but I think with Britain and France the experience of the metropole of a global empire is exactly complex (and both held out, to some extent, the possibility of becoming "British" or "French" through education, religion, class etc). And the reality most of those people just inter-married and a few generations in have no idea of their heritage and probably consider themselves white and British or French..

(Rozina Visram's written about the South Asian experience and the 400 years of Indians in Britain, Hakim Adi's recent African and Caribbean People in Britain is also fantastic.)

[Tamas]

Whatever the right amount of assimilation is not the "Hungarians and Czechs are extinct by 1870" we seem to have now.

Also perhaps it'd be useful if Paradox and the community clarified what they mean by culture and by assimilation.

Hungarians adopted a lot of German words, no doubt Austrian customs (like learning how to make cakes properly), but a) how many ever switched their identity to German (statistically insignificant I recon) and b) would any of them be considered German by the Germans of the game's period? Hardly.

[Syt]

... and they released a beta patch, reverting the assimilation changes.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/victoria-3-opt-in-beta-1-8-5.1719727/

[Sheilbh]

Whatever the right amount of assimilation is not the "Hungarians and Czechs are extinct by 1870" we seem to have now.

Also perhaps it'd be useful if Paradox and the community clarified what they mean by culture and by assimilation.

Hungarians adopted a lot of German words, no doubt Austrian customs (like learning how to make cakes properly), but a) how many ever switched their identity to German (statistically insignificant I recon) and b) would any of them be considered German by the Germans of the game's period? Hardly.

Maybe. I think you're right though it'd be useful to work out what they mean because one of the big challenges of this period is that it's the time when those national identities are being created from purely parochial traditions by linguists and folklorists and political entrepreneurs etc. So In a way they need to a model that does assimilation of basically Hungarians into Hungarians too (and it varies in different bits of the world both in direction and pace of travel).

[crazy canuck]

Another good example is the Scots. 

[Syt]

Friday is work from home day, so let an observer game run on latest patch till 1907 or so. Interesting map. 

[Valmy]

Although also worth noting that estimates are that 3-6 million Brits are descended from black and Asian people in Britain from before the 20th century. While they may not have been "English", they got married to white English people, ran pubs etc - I wouldn't be surprised if there was similar in France.

Sure. But they were small-ish immigrant communities. Having the Cornish and the Welsh just disappear into Englishness in a decade or two into the game is something else.

[Sheilbh]

Sure. But they were small-ish immigrant communities. Having the Cornish and the Welsh just disappear into Englishness in a decade or two into the game is something else.

Oh yeah I was responding to Tamas' line on Indians to Englishmen.

But this is a bit like CC's point on the complexity - and a lot really really depends on what they mean by it. My instinct is almost that it should be a function of literacy - that may also help with the colonial anti-imperial side (both against European empires but also, say, Chinese perceptions v Qing).

Edit: Basically *Imagined Communities intensifies* But Cornish is an interesting example - the language was basically already extinct before VicIII starts - but its revival started during the game. While it's on the census, I don't really think it's an "ethnic" identity - or if it is it's a civic ethnicity which basically anyone who moves to Cornwall can (and does) adopt around symbols and a sense of difference rather than  anything else. It's practically not really any different than being a Yorkshireman.

Edit: And I suppose in an example of both some of Britain's oldest mutli-ethnic communities are around the docks in South Wales from about the 1830s-40s on.

[Josquius]

Cornish nationalists however, despite being of a 5 men and a dog scale, are pretty obsessive and vitrolic.
Where in Yorkshire youll get regional identarians moaning about how hard they have it, saying Yorkshire is the best, and musing wouldn't it be cool if it was independent; in Cornwall they imagine themselves to be some big proper movement to get Cornwall actually recognised as the constituent nation of the UK it legally actually is cos the duchy of cornwall is super special or something.