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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tonguez" data-source="post: 8076473" data-attributes="member: 1125">Europe definitely has a huge number of factions, knightly Orders, Merchant guilds, church sects, heresies, Hunting clubs, Fencing Schools, Public Schools, street gangs, isolated villages, pagan cults, outlaw lairs, banks and Company.The difference I think though is that Europe has a much deeper ‘Institutional tradition’ which works to constrain the work of factionalism within it - the monolithic Church and the Imperial Courts are the two (or so) most obvious institutions which defined the social boundaries of Europe.The European crusades can be viewed as factional, the 3 Musketeers was about factionalism, and of course the Protestant Reformation was creation of a new faction. In Europe pretty much every nation is a faction and then you get the rise of Mercantilism - the Company v the Crown too.I think the difference with the Americas is that those Institutions had to all be established new and they had to stake out their new territorial borders. Things like the Church and Crown had a huge advantage of course, but even rebel groups like the Puritans, Amish and Irish were able to find a place - hence the whole ‘American Liberty‘ narrative.Of course, the Crown lost ground after the American Rebellion and private institutions and Company, filled the gap staking their claim in American society creating the whole - Pioneer Individualism narrative too</blockquote>