Late 1840s to 1850s - The Steam Revolution and the declaration of the Avathan Union.In reaction to the difficult and impassable terrain of the Americas and the danger of piracy that increasingly plagued sea fairing vessels, demand emerged for new methods of transport utilising the developing power source of steam. American merchants invested in steam research resulting in a period of excited and opportunistic invention by private inventors and entrepreneurs. This period is known as "the steam revolution".
Numerous curiosities and bizarre inventions emerged from this period, including early and crude attempts at robotics as well nearly suicidal attempts at personal jet packs. Finally, after many failed and costly experiments, the Airship was invented. As this came to the attention of governments and the nobility of foreign nations, demand increased further. Soon, Russian aristocrats began to purchase and develop the partially undeveloped technology and improved it further, turning it quickly from commodity to fashion statement. The idle rich were soon hovering among the clouds in their ostentatiously decorated vessels and toying with their steam-based accessories. By 1853 steam based airships had become common in many of the larger cities of the world, all with their own unique styles and purposes. In England, for example, lords would periodically take their ships on pleasure cruises around the countryside while Paris had become a center for airships, with even the most meagerly funded person owning a flying contraption of some sort.
However, just as the airship developed as a utility and near-toy of the wealthy so it also developed as a means of war. From it's early stages, certain inventors were keen on turning the Steam Revolution into a revolution of warfare. Steam crafts were devised that could carry huge quantities of explosives, to be dropped on cities at a great distance. Even the earliest of war orientated steamists had the foresight to develop weapons that could assist in inter-airship warfare, such as grappling hooks and missiles. As the British began to purchase and produce more and more of these war vessels tensions began to arise between them and their long-time rival, France. Believing the British to be concocting a plan of attack, the French ruling class quickly began to purchase superior weapons resulting in an arms-race between France and Britain. From 1854-1856, this arms race continued.
The initial fascination with the exotic airships quickly turned into a cold terror. Which ships were friendly, and which were enemy craft soon became a constant question playing on the minds of the paranoid Londoners and Parisians. Relief was found when an English and a French lord, old friends, met together and eventually concluded that talks must take place or both France and England would eventually destroy each other. Each appeals to their respective governments and using their high-station to find support, a movement soon came to being with the intent to quell the conflict between England and France. Initially calling simply for talks, a unionist movement soon emerged which claimed that only a joined France and Britain could put aside their ancient disputes and save one another. The airship had, after all, made the world a smaller place. The distance between London and Paris could now be traversed within mere hours and attempts to police so many private vessels was becoming impossible.
Finally, the calls for union won out when an assembly was called aboard the airship, "The Avathan" on December the 8th, 1857. British and French representatives and nobility concluded that a union was necessary and inevitable. In honour of the craft on which the talks were held, the declaration of union was referred to as "the Avathan declaration", and soon the name "Avathan" became the name of the union itself in the minds of the populace.
The English lord who initiated the unionist movement was Jacobe H. Automan and the French lord, George Salavant. Both would have a massive effect on the newly formed union in years to come.
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