Yet another thread from me about the relationship between the Muggle and magical state and how that relationship affects the course of history and wizarding political geography.

After some further thought, I think the best way to frame this discussion is to think about the following 2 questions:

1. Do wizards engage in colonialism themselves, or is it just Muggles that are doing it? (joint colonialism/Muggle colonialism)
   
   
2. Do magical borders change to match Muggle ones, or do they have separate territories? (divergent/parallel)

This then gives you four different possible shapes of modern magical political geography, depending on the answers.

Joint colonialism + divergent states

In this scenario, wizards and Muggles engage in colonialism together, with wizards assisting in Muggle conquests of the New World.

However, the magical societies established in the colonies are independent from the Muggle ones. Therefore, when Muggle empires fall, magical ones may continue (and vice versa).

This option gives you the most leeway to create some interesting magical political geography and to engage in all your neo-imperialistic wet dreams.

However, the biggest question it has to answer is: how were European wizards able to conquer the rest of the world so effectively? It also has to answer the question of why wizards waited to conquer the Americas, given that they knew of the Americas existence long before the Muggles did.

The other big question is how divergent political geography is dealt with. Over time, wizarding and Muggle populations would become so divergent that they might even be speaking different languages.

In terms of canon support, joint colonialism has mixed support. We know that there was a Quidditch World Cup where "New Spain" entered a team. It would be unusual for native Mexican wizards to refer to themselves as "New Spain", which implies some level of wizarding conquest of the Spanish main.

However, against that view, it seems that in the rest of North America things were quite different, with Native American wizards peacefully integrating into MACUSA.

Joint Colonialism + parallel states

In this view, joint colonialism happened as above, but when the Statute of Secrecy was signed, wizards collectively decided to put wizarding solidarity and cooperation to achieve secrecy above their nation.

In the name of secrecy, when Muggle borders changed, magical borders would follow suit. This is the basis by which wars between wizarding nations are put to an end: their borders are now dictated by parties over which they have no control. It is considered necessary because any large scale war between wizarding nations would surely be noticed by Muggles.

Thus, when Muggle empires expand, magical administrations expand with them. And when they fall, so too do their equivalent magical administrations withdraw from those territories. This ever-changing administrative geography is stabilised by international cooperation at the ICW-level, resulting in a fairly standardised approach to wizarding government around the world, with global freedom of movement and things like (after GoF) standard cauldron bottom thickness rules.

This approach delivers a wizarding political geography and demographics closest to the real world. It is also finds a reasonable amount of canon support in the fact that American and British wizards did not participate in the American Revolutionary War, with the respective governments agreeing to put kind over country.

The biggest question this approach has to answer is: would wizards really sit by and watch as their Muggle compatriots are conquered and oppressed? Would wizards really just calmly accept rule by foreign wizards in the name of secrecy?

To the extent that the answer to this is "no", however, that is not necessarily a problem: rather, it creates interesting tensions which can lead to conflict and thus good stories. And we know that on at least one occasion (World War 1), wizards were not able to just sit and watch.

Muggle colonialism + divergent states

In this situation, only Muggles would have colonised. Wizards have independent states and therefore would completely ignore Muggle colonialism. Therefore in the present day, the magical geography of the Americas would be extremely different and would be dominated by Native American wizards.

The big question this has to answer is: would wizards really sit by and calmly watch the genocide of their Muggle compatriots and the complete destruction of their societies?

Besides that, the biggest problem for this position is that it doesn't really fit well with canon. From what we see of MACUSA, native Americans are far from dominant. Magical New Spain existed, as described above.

Muggle colonialism + parallel states

In this situation, only Muggles would have colonised, but in deference to wizarding secrecy, wizards would adjust their borders to match.

This would produce a situation where borders match the Muggle ones but demographics do not - Native American wizards, having never been conquered by European wizards, would still be the dominant demographic in North America. But they would exist within an administrative framework which mirrors the Muggle world's borders.

This scenario faces the same questions as Muggle colonialism + divergent states (namely, whether wizards would really sit by and watch as their Muggle cousins were wiped up and subjugated) but also asks an additional question: would those wizards not only watch the genocide of their cousins, but then follow up with the statement "Well, I guess you rule us too now" - without ever giving fight?

This, I think, stretches the Statute of Secrecy to breaking point, and I consider it the least plausible of the 4 scenarios.

 

I personally think it seems likely that magical states had some level of international contact long before their muggle counterparts did. This falls down slightly if pre-Statute of Secrecy wizards would have helped muggles to do the across the ocean thing. But if you take the position that pre-Statute there was still distinct societies, just a bit more contact between them, then I think its reasonable to accept that things like international geography may not have been discussed between wizards and muggles.

If there was long term, historic contact between wizards of different countries, it makes sense to think that the ICW or some variant has been around for an extremely long time. Canon wise we know its been around since before the Statute. The first meeting was held in France and the first Supreme Mugwump has a French sounding name.

One clue about the age of the ICW is that the word Mugwump most likely is Old English (somebody in charge who affects to be above petty squabbles and factions). Some form of Old English was in use up until around 1170, so that might be an indication of its age.

So if the ICW had gradually been building up its membership since...say the 1200s, I think there would have been an avoidance of magical colonialism. And if all magical states were in on the decision to implement the Statute it might explain by muggle colonialism went on without magical intervention.

However, tying discussion of the founding of the ICW back to the subject of the thread. Apparently Liechtenstein boycotted the first meeting and refused to join the organisation under the first Supreme Mugwump.

Liechtenstein did not exist as a political entity until 1719. There was, however, a politically power Liechtenstein family who held huge amounts of land across Europe, and which existed as a political force of some sort since roughly 1140.

This suggests to me that there are differences between Muggle and Magical states. Magically speaking the Liechtenstein family clearly had far more political power, far earlier than their muggle counterparts did. So from your options I'd guess at Muggle Colonialism and Divergent States.

After muggle colonialism took place European wizards may have felt able to move over to the other country as well if they so desired? Hence a somewhat more western MACUSA than would necessarily be expected. Also, you have to remember muggleborns. Perhaps New Spain was founded by the muggleborn wizards born of the Spanish colonisers, perhaps with a few wizards joining them from Wizarding Spain in search of new opportunities or to flee some sort of situation back home.

 

A question that just came to mind: is it that wizards follow Muggle lines, or do they make Muggles follow wizarding lines?

E.g. when wizards had established a colony in America, they then manipulated the muggles into "finding" it and colonising it as well.

 

Or there's a Fifth option: All of the above. The muggle world and its history are a huge, frustrating, incredibly inconsistent jumble of methodologies, philosophies, and political doctrines. It stands to reason that, also being made up of humans, the Magical World wouldn't be much better.

Certain things, like the the International Statute of Secrecy require a much higher degree of cooperation and standardization, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that was the only issue the various magical nations took seriously enough to get their shit together and come up with a unified response. So my guess is the modern magical world is kept moving in the same general direction vis-a-vis the muggle world by the ICW, but there will always be differences in approach from country to country that are probably the root cause of just about all major international tensions between magical nations.

I envision the ICW as playing a similar role to the UN, but with more teeth - only when it comes to enforcing the Statute. When it comes to other issues, it's more-or-less exactly like the regular old toothless UN we all know and are vaguely disappointed by. Basically, in the event of a major international incident or outbreak of magical war, the ICW would play referee to discourage Statute violations, but wouldn't take an active part in the conflict unless one or both sides involved the muggles in some difficult-to-contain fashion (I imagine Voldemort's insurrection was a borderline situation. As bad as it got, his and his Death Eaters' atrocities never quite outpaced the British Ministry's ability to hide what was happening from Muggle Britain. If he'd been just a bit flashier and more prone to large-scale attacks on muggles, the ICW would have been forced to step in with an international team of Hit-Wizards/Aurors - magical blue-helmets - to put an end to the fighting).

As for your questions about whether or not nationalism would trump the disdain most magicals seem to feel for muggles in a war-time or occupation scenario, I think - if Britain, France and MACUSA are a good representative sample - most wizards would have no problem at all leaving the muggles to their fate. Hell, a large portion of the pureblood population are so oblivious that they probably wouldn't even notice that the problem even existed.

 

I'd also posit that alot of these assumes every magical population in a location has a "state." It's just as likely, considering numbers, that htere were locations for the longest times that operated more like secret societies/families as opposed to magical governments. It's possible that's only been a thing recently for certain places.

 

The short answer, I suppose, is that the world is a large and complex place, and colonization would have happened differently just about everywhere. Wizards and muggles most likely live and work in parallel all around the world, with more interaction in pre-statute societies, but the Statute would have forbidden them from interfering in colonization, either by helping it along or fighting it. What we seem to be forgetting is that the Europeans did not invent war or empires. Advanced political units would have been steamrolling weaker, undeveloped ones from the beginning of time, and generally the wizards would be used to the idea.

This is a map from 1875, when European muggles first landed in Africa. It's not a map from so much as a hundred years earlier, when the territories that these empires, tribes, caliphates, and other entities would have looked substantially different, and these changes must have been as tolerable to the wizards as the changes that had been going on since time immemorial. At this point in history, the African political units would have already agreed to the Statute, and they would have already formed their own societies mostly independent of nonmagical parallels, though they would keep up with their own families, whatever political unit in which they found themselves. As long as their families aren't dying, they probably don't care which empire is in charge of the muggles at any given point.
If they did have some patriotic leanings, would they even be able to stop the colonization? If the French in this image wanted to establish their laws over Cayor or Jolof, would they have sufficiently developed combative magic and sufficient numbers to stop the muggles? If they did, wouldn't they ensure their own destruction by Statute enforcement? It seems doubtful that the natives without a unified force could even fight back against invasion, and to do any damage the Statute enforcement would have to be sleeping on the job. On the other side of things, the European wizards would have little reason to leave their countries except to maintain Secrecy in new lands, though it's possible the rising populations in their home countries would have overflowed, because as muggles reproduce more, there would be more wizards with one or two muggle parents in addition to the purebloods, whose population figures would be mostly unaffected.

 

I find the idea of an ICW that is so strong that it can effectively limit Wizard and Muggle interactions in most parts of the world, most of the time, inherently crazy. An effective International government-- seems wild to me.

It helps me if I assume that most Muggles and Wizards get along worse than British Wizards/Muggles did-- the British experience is atypically Wizarding/Muggle friendly.

That way, the ICW isn't so much enforcing a norm most of the time, as legitimating and reinforcing a tendency that was already nearly omnipresent in the Wizarding World.

 

I could see a couple of ways for it to work.

1. The constituent nations of the ICW all believe firmly in the purpose of the statute, therefore the ICW's role is more in coordination than enforcement, it just helps the member states implement the statute for themselves.
2. We already saw that MACUSA's relationship with muggle society in the 20s was much more distant that the UK's in the 90s. A much larger emphasis on secrecy. That ties into your concept, that Britain is atypical.
3. There is something magically binding about the statute or the ICW. If the member states are literally bound to obey, if its perhaps part of the oath that a head of state must take that they will obey the directions of the ICW as regards the statute and will help enforce the ICWs decisions on the same? That could do the job as well. I realise that strays into fanon, with magical oaths and such...but we know that magical contracts exist and there's no reason to suppose that the consequences of breaking a contract couldn't be more severe than a bad case of acne.

 

This is my new headcanon. Thanks!

 

1. yes, coordination seems more possible than enforcement

2. yes

3. Not the biggest fan of using magical contracts as an important part of worldbuilding. If contracts are widely in use, lots of consequences follow that are not seen in canon. Though maybe restricting them to government/official duties isn't the worst idea. Hmm

 

I included it in a story at some point that wizards are responsible for the existence of phantom islands like Antilla, which were enchanted to keep muggles away after their initial discovery, so that they were never found again. Permanent wizarding societies would exist on these islands with little concern about muggles or Secrecy.

 

@Garden there could be magically enforced agreements that force signatories to defer to the ICW. Unbreakable Vow/Hermione's DA membership list are canon.

 

Just came across some canon (if you accept things from outside the main books as canon) that is relevant to this. The 1473 Quidditch World Cup was played between the Flemish and Transylvanian teams. Neither of these was an independent muggle country in 1473, but in the wizarding world they were fielding national quidditch teams. In fact Transylvania also played in the 1994 world cup (defeated England apparently), and they weren't an muggle country in the 90s either.

On the colonialism question, apparently only European teams played in the Quidditch World Cup until the 17th century. It was only the 1600s (no specifics given of when) that quidditch reached North America and New Zealand. That would tie in with European colonisation dates. So there must have been some link, and my previously stated theory of greater contact between wizarding nations of the world seems unlikely.

 

We have the reverse situation to Liechtenstein, Transylvania and Assyria within the UK though. "England" is a team, yet its not totally clear if the England/Scotland/Wales political distinction ever had much meaning for British wizards. My understanding is that wizarding britain comes from Uther Pendragon Britain, not Queen Anne Britain.

 

Yeah, there's apparently English, Scottish, and Welsh teams all separate from each other, despite being under a single political regime. No real way to extrapolate a reason for that in canon, unless its due to the muggle cultural differences.

It actually occurs to me...the answer to the original question perhaps depends on the prevalence of muggleborns. If 80% of all wizards are muggleborn or raised partially in the muggle world then the influence of muggle society of wizarding society will be much bigger than if only 10% are muggleborn or raised. @Taure is there any indication that you know of how many wizards are muggleborn?

 

Of the 40 Students In Harry Year Rowling bothered to create we know of 2 muggleborn (Hermione and Justin) and 2 muggle raised Half-Bloods(Dean and Harry).

 

Yeah, we were just figuring that out on discord. So likely the total number of muggleborn and muggle raised is no higher than 20% of the population. Some of the rest will have a bit of interaction with a muggle grandparent, or an aunt/uncle, but that'll be holidays and high days rather than regular enough to really be influenced by muggle culture.

 

What makes that even more confusing is that the Quidditch League (from QTtA) includes English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish teams; and then one from the Republic of Ireland. So it would be the League of the British Isles (does it include Man, Hebrides, and so forth?), rather than the UK or Great British League.

Going on from that though, Ireland is obviously an area where people are just amazing at Quidditch. They have either just on (or two) home teams, but can field the best overall team in the world.

 

The page that you linked does say its the British and Irish Quidditch League, rather than the British Quidditch League.

 

Yeah, so there's definitely a split there, but can it narrow down the historic split? We've got a bit more information on that location (due to their placement in the QWC; and Seamus).

In OOTP, Seamus says he supports Kenmare, which is the team from the south of Ireland. I couldn't find my copy of QTtA, so I don't know if it has league tables, but a HP Wiki puts Kenmare at fifth, with Ballycastle (the team from the North of Ireland) placing first; and being historically one of the best teams. To me (not a sports fan) it seems likely that Seamus is from muggle area of the Republic of Ireland - most friends who cared about football supported one of the most local big teams, rather than a further away one.

In muggle sports, Lichtenstein plays football in the Swiss league, rather than having their own; and Andorra plays in the Spanish league - because otherwise they'd only be able to have one or two teams play, which probably isn't very exciting for the fans.

In GOF, the QWC top-box seats the Bulgarian minister, and Fudge. There's no Irish minister there. That would imply Fudge is the minister in charge. In fact, Seamus states "The Ministry's not too happy", when Harry and co bump into him in the camps, which would imply he's under the same

The same HP Wiki page puts the formation of the B&IQL being formed in 1674, at which point Ireland was (according to Wikipedia) a client state of England, although still a distinct country. Someone with better knowledge of Political History/EU4 would probably be able to set out exactly what it means, but a quick scan makes it look like Ireland had a separate legal system at this time, with a different direct ruler (still reporting to the Crown of England though)

(Semi-interestingly, this was before the Statute of Secrecy.)

For the British Isles, at least, it looks like there's a divorce between the Muggle and Magic states. Although BTT's suggestion that Wizards compel Muggles to try and copy magical borders could well be "true" in that they need little extra, with the repeated attempts from Great Britain to settle or conquer Ireland.