Arquien

Arquien 阿尔基安 (Ā'ěr jī'ān)
Laeralian Province
The University of Arquien campus, located in Pierrefort, La Monseil township.
Establishment	1804
Accession to Laeral	1855
Capital	Galline
Largest city	Saint-Saury
Demonym(s)	Arquienans
Government
• Governor	Martine Louvet Conservative
Legislature	Arquien Assembly
Postal	AQ

Arquien is a Laeralian province located in the Peninsular region of Laeral, bordering Bethune to the south, the Xianhai Gulf to the west and the Albarine Sea to the east. It is the smallest province in Laeral by population and the second-smallest by area. It is divided into La Monseil township in the north and Saint-Saury township in the south.

History

Precolonial Arquien is recorded as the domain of largely fishing and farming communities prior to its conquest by the Hoon kingdom, a peninsular state, in the early 16th century. Sparsely populated through much of its existence, Arquien was conquered by colonial forces in the Condat Valley War of 1815 after facing armed resistance from Prince Tong-hwen, a local ruler. The rocky and mountainous terrain of northern Arquien was ill-suited to the plantation agriculture system dominant in Bethune and southern Arquien, leading northern Arquien to produce pine, pitch, and tar for use in ship-building and upkeep, while southern Arquien produced crops such as tobacco and rice. Arquien was among the Laeralian provinces to pursue war with Libertas Omnium Maximus in the War of the Seven Provinces.

Politics and Government

Politics in Arquien since its foundation has revolved around the north-south divide between small farmers and lumberjacks in the north and large commercial planters in the south. Under the First Allied Provinces, plantation interests dominated the province's politics, and the province's rightward bent continued during the Republican Era, with the province supporting the Laeralian National Congress by the 1940s, due in part to the local Social Democratic machine being relatively disorganized. Although a swing province during the 1960s and 70s, since the 1980s the province has been reliably right-wing.

As La Monseil and Saint-Saury townships are both in the bottom 20% of Laeralian townships by population, the proposal was advanced in the late Republican era to combine the two townships into one, a proposal which was stalled by the Bloody Summer. Revised in the 1980s by the Presidential Commission on Local Government Reform, the reform proposal was quite unpopular and has never gone into effect. Saint-Saury township was renamed to Galline township under the Republic, and reverted to Saint-Saury, its traditional name, in 1973.

Economy

La Monseil township pitches itself as the furniture capital of Laeral for its historic role in producing lumber for furniture, which grew to prominence in the province with the end of wooden shipbuilding. Agriculture and ranching are both viable industries in southern Arquien, where the meatpacking industry is the largest employer.

Regular ferry service connects Arquien to Corday in continental Laeral. Proposals for a tunnel between Arquien and Corday have existed for decades yet have never been seriously pursued due to the tremendous distance and relatively limited commercial potential.