In this timeline, the Adriatic states of Ragusa and Montenegro put their differences aside and decide to launch an expedition to potentially profit off the foretold resources found in the Americas.

Venice, looking to expand their influence in the Adriatic and develop a foothold on the Americas, would provide major funding to the expedition in exchange for partial government influence. In the 1560s. A Raguso-Montenegrin expedition lands in Lake Melville in what in our timeline is Labrador and founds the jointly owned Raguso-Montenegrin Colony of Jadranija in a city named after the patron saint of Ragusa: Saint Blaise

Over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, Jadranija would steadily expand as they would send raccoon and beaver pelts and lumber back to Europe. Since Montenegro and Ragusa didn't have the population base for such a colony. Most settlers would emigrate from the Ottoman and Austrian-ruled territories in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia looking to escape foreign oppression and to forge a better life in the Americas. It would be ruled via an administrative council made up of Rogusan (Catholic) and Montenegrin (Orthodox) representatives as well as Venetian ones.

Orthodox Christians make up a plurality of the Population but Catholics still hold a significant amount of government control in order to keep Jadranija religiously balanced between Ragusa and Montenegro. Islam has already been introduced by settlers from Bosnia and other regions of Ottoman-controlled Serbia.

By the 1660s, Jadranija has mainly consolidated control over the lake as well as other surrounding coastal regions while the interior is still comprised of rural Slavic villages and Indigenous Inuit/Innu communities

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