The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States,

Canada, and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch.

Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting, fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling,

wonderful, and tragic stories of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders,

environment, and geography.

I invite you to come along for the ride.

History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts.

It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explain how and why we got here.

Welcome to the History and Plug podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange,

and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode.

This episode features a simple question, but nested within it is a complicated question.

The simple question is this, and it comes from listener Liam, and he asked me to do a deep dive into his hometown Montereyle,

and how he says it came to be a center for commerce and culture in North America.

And he mentions that Montereyle was a strategic and much valued city in many wars in the past.

Now to answer that simple question, I'm not going to do a framer's guide or a let's go Canada,

where I'm mentioning the nice city streets and public fountains and historical buildings in Montereyle.

Don't worry listener, it's not going to be like that.

The complicated question underneath that is this.

What happens when you have an identity, a national identity that isn't just one identity,

but it's two identities, one nested within the other, or like a double yoked egg.

...