A different 1860s

[whiteshore]

How centralized is France-Spain by now? Are France and Iberia still nominally seperate nations or have they been formally united? Also, maybe we could see Brazil become a *Fascist regime modelled on France-Spain?

[eurofed]

Jun 17, 2016 9:09:28 GMT whiteshore said:

How centralized is France-Spain by now? Are France and Iberia still nominally seperate nations or have they been formally united? Also, maybe we could see Brazil become a *Fascist regime modelled on France-Spain?

They have been formally united in a confederation soon after formation of the personal/dynastic union (much like what happened to Scandinavia, apart from the two states' radically different political character). On paper, the union is a real one, with a system fairly similar to Austria-Hungary that grants a fair deal of autonomy in domestic matters to component nations; there are separate parliaments and ministers, one monarch, and a common government that manages issues like security, foreign policy, finance, and trade. In practice the parliaments are rubber-stamp bodies, the system has the usual high degree of centralization of fascist regimes, and power is concentrated in the hands of a ruling oligarchy. However the transnational ruling elite itself is fairly balanced in numbers and influence between its French and Iberian components, they share an informal but meaningful power-sharing agreement, and they are bound by a common far-right ideology and compatible imperial interests. France does claim the leading role to a degree due to its superior power and resources, but Iberia is far too important in demographic and economic terms to be treated like a colony. Certain regions of Iberia with a tradition of autonomy such as Portugal, Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon, and the Basque Country enjoy devolution in administrative and cultural matters, since far-right regionalists from those areas are an important component of the power base of the regime south of the Pyrenees. Of course such autonomy is never allowed to become a focus of political disloyalty to the regime or get in the way of its interests. An analogy might be if the 1939 Berlin-Rome Axis had been a HRE-style centralized confederation with a figurehead Emperor, a ruling elite made up of the combined German and Italian fascist bigwigs, and the premiers of the two nations being first among equals in an oligarchy (like Showa Japan) rather than autocratic dictators.

The Gallic empire has relatively little to fear from potential separatist threats unless they screw up really bad, since pretty much all the important political opposition to the regime is ideological rather than nationalist in character, being made up of liberals, republicans, leftists, freethinkers, etc. Many dissidents are open-minded to maintain the Franco-Iberian bond in some way (of course, they may easily change their mind if the empire suffers some military or economic disaster) and the vast majority of them wishes to preserve Iberian national unity, if in a democratic and federal form. It bears noting that due to TTL divergencies and perceived future trends, nationalism has been developing a less particularist perspective than OTL. It is increasingly thought of as something only natural, proper, and feasible for polities that have the (real or assumed) potential to be great powers or at least the high end of the middle power spectrum. Alternatively it is the last resort for peoples that perceive themselves as direly oppressed or screwed up by the status quo, cannot trust autonomy as an adequate remedy, and cannot realistically aspire to join or form a powerful large state of their own. Small nation-states are more and more seen as an outdated residue of pre-industrial times that is bound to extinction in the long term or doomed to reap a meaningless, marginal existence as the clients of some great power, or an anomaly of the wacky, fractious, and backward Balkans.   

Brazil certainly has some serious potential to become a *fascist regime in the near future, due to its social structure, the influence of the slaveholding elites and the reactionary Papal Catholic Church, and the cultural ties with France-Iberia. As one of the next updates shall describe, the unresolved slavery issue and a succession crisis drive Brazil into civil war (instead of the OTL republican revolution) by the end of the century. If the pro-slavery reactionaries that are aligned with France-Iberia win it, Brazil is going to become a *fascist regime with a Bourbon on the throne, an hybrid of France-Iberia and the CSA. This is even more likely if Britain too decides to support them as a lesser evil alternative to Brazil sliding in the US sphere of influence and/or out of budding *Entente alliance ties. It may happen if combined Anglo-Gallic support to the right-wingers somehow overwhelms American support to the antislavery liberals. Of course, such a development would be seen as a most serious security threat by the USA and Argentina, and would be one more step in the buildup to the Great War and a reason for South America to become one of its theaters.

[eurofed]

1891-1900 (part V)

In the last decade of the 19th century, a pattern of rising international tensions between the great powers (and a few ambitious or desperate middle powers) was relatively easy to discern for perceptive observers. A significant hallmark of growing imperialistic rivalry between the great powers were the recurring international crises that intermittently marked the last third of the 19th century and were getting more frequent and increasingly difficult to settle peacefully as the end of the century got closer. Often they just got frozen into unsatisfactory or instable compromises or status quo. The last one that got a somewhat adequate (but far from optimal) solution was the Balkan crisis that was settled by the Rome Conference. Pretty much the same way, the last major example of major international cooperation was the joint intervention to crush the Big Swords Rebellion, and in its aftermath the great powers proved unable to establish a stable settlement for China. The naval and land arms race that spanned and steadily intensified during the last third of the 19th century was another major manifestation of imperialistic rivalry between the great powers.

These tensions were the ultimate expression of the imperialistic competition for economic and political dominance of the world, which gripped all the great powers during the 19th century as an effect of industrialization. With few exceptions, political and strategic factors just aligned this free-for-all competition into a few relatively stable polarities, including the enmity between France-Iberia and the German-Italian alliance in Western Europe and the colonies, the ‘Great Game’ imperial rivalry between Britain and Russia in Asia, and the Anglo-American rivalry in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific. For a few decades, European colonial expansion in Africa and Asia, and American focus on settlement of North America, had acted as a powerful “safety valve” for imperial competition. As long as the great powers could grab new markets and resources, and satisfy their ambitions for glory, in a much safer and easier way by conquering the pre-colonial states and colonizing the underdeveloped areas of the Americas, Asia, and Africa, the impulse to fall on each other and rob their rivals was substantially diminished and kept in check.

The colonial outlet however could not work to defuse imperialistic hostility forever. By the end of the 19th century, the world had been mostly partitioned into the empires of the great powers. The Scramble for Africa was over and that continent has been entirely turned into European colonies, with the lone exception of Liberia, a de facto US protectorate. The partition of Africa in regional spheres of influence had produced a noticeable rationalization of European colonization and relative borders, even if some important friction remained in contact areas, especially between hostile powers. Much the same way, all of Asia but China, Turkey, Persia, and Japan had been carved into European colonies. The Japanese Empire had joined the winning side of history, absorbed Korea, and stood as an emergent power thanks to its modernization, but the Chinese and the Persians stumbled at the same task and so were hard-pressed to resist imperialist onslaught. These states only kept an increasingly precarious nominal independence because of sheer size or by lying on a fault-line of the Great Game.

The Ottoman Empire had long been trapped into seemingly terminal decline and so bound to share the same fate; only at the end of the century a modernization drive appeared to show some promise of reversing the course, but timing and external circumstances made its eventual success an open question. The other European and Latin American states basically were clients of one great power or another - typically either the USA or the British Empire in the Western Hemisphere. The only partial exception was Argentina thanks to its growth into an emergent power, although balanced by close ties with the USA. Brazil also had some potential thanks to size and natural resources but was hamstrung by backwardness, military defeats, and domestic instability.

The turn of the century was the apex of European and American imperialism and the great powers (USA, UK, France-Iberia, Germany, Italy, and Russia) dominated the world. Their infrequent consensus defined and wrote international law; their ever-present power plays shaped international politics, now and in the foreseeable future. Japan and Argentina stood as junior candidates to join their august ranks; Brazil had some long-term potential that appeared unrealized in the near future. Turkey was a fallen power that wavered between teetering on the brink of extinction and the possible promise of rebirth. China was another fallen great that faced most severe trouble in the near future and but had great potential in the long term. It had a good chance of surviving complete colonial subjugation thanks to sheer size and population, but it had already suffered brutal losses and humiliations and more of that was on the way due to its failure to modernize. India groaned under the weight of British colonialism, but might do as well as China in the long term.

The pressure to expand their own power and influence remained as high as ever for the great powers, due to the socio-economic effect of industrialization and an international order that had carved the world into a few big protectionist blocs. However their very 19th century success had left them with scarce further room to expand, short of falling on each other, or accomplishing the complete colonial partition or joint colonization of China. It was an impressive task that at the very least required more long-term cooperation than the great powers were seemingly able to muster.

The last part of the 19th century dramatically highlighted the decline of Qing China. The once proud empire was beset by a host of ever-growing problems that had been recognized for decades, including the ineffectiveness of its government, its failed policies, the corruption of the administration system, and the decaying state of the Qing dynasty. Besides the domestic problems, a paramount concern was foreign encroachment, which throughout the 19th century the Qing dynasty was unable to prevent. The sorry state of the empire prompted many patriotic Chinese in the educated elites and in the popular masses to make calls for reform and to defend China from the foreigners. The programs and solutions they advocated wavered between nationalist reactionary entrenchment in traditional Chinese systems and values, and modernist reform-minded embracement of Western ideas and solutions. The imperial ruling elites themselves were split between would-be reformers and traditionalist conservatives, even if the latter appeared to have the upper hand.

This kept the government trapped into stasis and China into its spiral of decay, as the conservatives opposed the reforms that would have threatened their privileges. The ineffectiveness of the Qing dynasty was making it more and more unpopular, and this was creating a split between the ruling Manchu elite and the Han that made up the vast majority of the Chinese people. Centuries of Qing rule had seemingly smoothed the division, but the ineptitude of the late Qing was reawakening anti-Manchu resentment among the Han. China was in dire need of action to try and solve its problems; unfortunately, it was militant xenophobes that got to enact it first.

The “Big Swords Society” was a Chinese martial-arts association that in the chaotic atmosphere of late 19th century China morphed into a millennial proto-nationalist and xenophobe secret society and eventually political movement. They opposed foreign influence and the presence of Christianity in China. Their grievances at foreigners included political invasion, economic manipulation, and missionary evangelism. There existed growing concerns in the Chinese people that missionaries and Chinese Christians could use the decline of Qing China to their advantage, appropriating lands and property of unwilling Chinese peasants to give to the Church. The Big Swords believed that they could through training, diet, martial arts, and chanting Taoist and Buddhist incantations perform extraordinary feats, such as flight and invulnerability against guns and cannon. Further, they popularly claimed that millions of ‘spirit soldiers’ would descend from the heavens and assist them in purifying China of foreign influences.

The members of the BSS consisted of local farmers/peasants and other workers that were made desperate by poverty, disastrous floods, and widespread opium addiction, and laid the blame for their problems on Christian missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the Europeans colonizing their country. They arose as a self-defense society to protect peasants from bandits, but soon expanded their activities to attacks on Christian churches, which in their perception sheltered the bandits. Differently from other secret societies, the Big Swords did not set themselves in opposition to the Qing dynasty, and that granted them a measure of benevolence from imperial officers. International tension, domestic unrest, and natural disasters fueled the growth and spread of the Big Swords movement, causing attacks towards Christians, missionaries, and other foreigners to multiply, to the growing concern of the great powers.

[eurofed]

1891-1900 (part VI)

In the late 1880s, the conservatives gained a firm control of the Imperial Court, which reversed its previous policy of suppressing the BSS, and issued edicts in their defense, causing protests from foreign powers. In the early 1890s, the Big Swords movement spread rapidly across eastern China into the countryside near Beijing. Big Swords burned Christian churches, killed Chinese Christians, and intimidated Chinese officials who stood in their way. A small military force from seven countries deployed to set up defensive perimeters around their respective diplomatic legations, with the reluctant acquiescence of the Chinese government. Increasing incidents between the Big Swords and foreign soldiers led to the killing of some foreign diplomats, a large BSS mob entering Beijing, the destruction of many Christian churches and cathedrals in the city, and nudged the Qing government toward support of the Big Swords. The Chinese government was split into two factions: the conservatives who wished to use the BSS to remove foreigners from China and the ones who were more moderate. Reflecting this division, some Chinese soldiers were quite liberally firing at foreigners under siege from its very onset. The conservative faction prevailed and drove the commanders of some Imperial Chinese forces to attack foreigners. Returning fire by foreign forces intensified the clashes with government troops.

The legations of various foreign powers, including the United Kingdom, France-Iberia, Germany, Italy, the USA, Russia, and Japan, were located in the Beijing Legation Quarter south of the Forbidden City. The Chinese government ordered the diplomats and other foreigners to depart Beijing under escort of the Chinese army. The diplomats feared they would be murdered if they left the legation quarter and they defied the Chinese order to leave. The legations were hurriedly fortified. Most foreign civilians, including a large number of missionaries and businessmen, as well as many Chinese Christians took refuge in the legation quarter. In response, the Chinese government declared war against all the foreign powers that defied its order to leave. The Chinese army and the Big Swords irregulars besieged the Legation Quarter. About 800 foreign civilians, 600 soldiers from seven countries, and 6,000 Chinese Christians took refuge there.

The defenders put an heroic resistance for a month, but suffered heavy casualties especially from lack of food, mines which the Chinese exploded in tunnels dug beneath the compound, and fires set by the besiegers near to the quarter. Eventually the Chinese resolved to use their advantage in numbers and staged a direct assault on the legation quarter that overwhelmed the defenders. An allied force had landed in China and was pressing to relieve the legations. However a defensive battle fought by a Chinese army at Tianjin and destruction of a railway by the BSS delayed them and emboldened the besiegers in attempting a direct attack. The Big Swords stormed the legations quarter and massacred the near-totality of the surviving foreign soldiers and civilians, and most of the Chinese Christians; some of them and an handful of foreigners managed to slip away in the confusion and hide in the capital till the allied army arrived. They gave news of the massacre to the would-be rescuers.

The role of the Chinese army and the Imperial government in the massacre was to become a subject of controversy: some argued that they lost control of the Big Swords and failed to contain them, while others were of the opinion they remained passive observers. Unaware of the tragic fate of the besieged, the allied army pressed on to Beijing, defeating Chinese troops and Big Swords irregulars on their way, and a month later reached the capital. Not all imperial forces cooperated with the BSS and fought the foreigners. Some generals and governors fought the Big Swords and did not implement the anti-foreign and anti-Christian policy. Others did, and about 400 foreigners and as many as 42,000 Chinese Christians were put to death in a patchwork fashion throughout eastern China. When the allied army reached and conquered Beijing, the Imperial Court fled the city. After weeks of travel, the party went to Xi'an in Shaanxi province, beyond protective mountain passes where the foreigners could not reach, deep in Chinese territory and protected by the Imperial army. The foreigners were unable to pursue, and had no orders to do so, so they decided no action should be taken. This was to change quickly, however.

When news of the massacres of foreigners reached the great powers, there was an immense wave of outrage in public opinion directed at “barbaric” China, and widespread calls for harsh punishment of the Big Swords butchers and the conniving Chinese government. The foreign powers’ governments had imperialist ambitions of their own about China and popular outrage at the massacres perpetrated by the Big Swords gave them solid support for decisive military action. The governments of America, Europe, and Japan shifted their plans from a fairly limited action to relieve the legations and deal a hash lesson to the Chinese government to a large-scale punitive invasion of China. When the siege of the legations had started and China had declared war to the foreign powers, the great powers had put their usual imperialistic bickering aside for a while and joined in a rare united front. This was the Seven-Nation Alliance (UK, USA, Germany, Italy, Russia, France-Iberia, Japan). After news of the massacres in China shifted public opinion into a crusading anti-Chinese mood, the alliance was confirmed and strengthened.

In the first phase of the war, the SNA forces built up their presence along the northern China coast and fought their way into Tianjin and Beijing. Subsequently, a large number of reinforcements were brought in from Europe, America, and Japan. They landed in the foreign-controlled port concessions and other locations across the coast of China, starting a large-scale invasion of eastern China. The Russian army massed at the border and invaded northern China. The British Indian army invaded Tibet. Imperial troops and Big Swords irregulars fought the invaders courageously, but the foreign armies had an overwhelming technological superiority and their soldiers were emboldened with a crusading spirit by propaganda that cast the Chinese as bloodthirsty barbarians that slaughtered civilians. In the following months of fighting, the European, American, and Japanese forces occupied all the major Chinese ports and fought their way into the interior to conquer the eastern provinces of China from Guangdong to Hebei. The Russian army occupied large swaths of northern China. The British Indian army invaded Tibet. Allied navies destroyed the Chinese one. The SNA expeditionary corps that had been sent to rescue the legations was reinforced by new troops and occupied Beijing, Tianjin and the Hebei province.

Unfortunately, it was a very brutal war, and atrocities on both sides were common. Chinese Imperial troops were generally recognized the rights of prisoners of war, but the foreign powers deemed the Big Swords bandits and terrorists, so they were often given no quarter or otherwise made subject to mass summary execution when caught. Even Chinese civilians suspected of being Big Swords or aiding and harboring them were subject to brutal reprisals and indiscriminate massacres. On their part, the Big Swords usually slaughtered captured foreign soldiers and civilians. The foreign armies used scorched earth tactics to quell Chinese resistance in the occupied areas. Franco-Iberian troops in particular distinguished themselves for their ferocity and bloodthirsty enthusiasm in carrying out a ruthless “crusade” against the Chinese. Extensive looting and frequent rapes by foreign troops were common in the occupied areas at the hands of expeditionary corps of all Western powers. The Japanese troops largely abstained themselves from rapes, since the Japanese had brought their own "regimental wives" (prostitutes) to the front to keep their soldiers from raping Chinese civilians. However they indulged in widespread looting and brutal reprisals the same way as their allies.

After the SNA forces had entrenched their control of eastern and northern China, the Chinese government petitioned for a beggar’s peace. The Qing dynasty had first sued for peace when the SNA took control of Beijing, but the Imperial government balked when the foreign powers notified that China would have to make onerous territorial and economic concessions. Many Qing advisers then insisted that the war be carried on; they argued that China could defeat the foreigners since it was disloyal and traitorous officers who had allowed Beijing and Tianjin to be captured by the foreign invaders, and the interior of China was impenetrable. The war had then expanded, the SNA had occupied vast swaths of China and repeatedly defeated Chinese armies, there seemed to be no hope of pushing them back, and China had no friends in the world due to the Big Swords’ atrocities. Conquest and occupation of whole China was a huge undertaking even for the SNA coalition, but the Chinese government was terrorized that the instability created by the foreign invasion could lead to the fall of the Qing dynasty. So the Imperial government accepted that China was to cede territory and pay substantial reparations. They decided that the terms were generous enough for them to acquiesce when they were assured of the continuation of the Qing dynasty’s rule after the war.

[eurofed]

1891-1900 (part VII)

The Qing court agreed to sign the Big Swords Protocol, also known as Peace Agreement between the Seven-Nation Alliance and China. The protocol ordered the execution of several high-ranking officials linked to the BSS outbreak and other officials who were found guilty for the slaughter of foreigners in China. China ceded Tibet to Britain and Greater Mongolia to Russia. Tibet became a British protectorate and another of the British Raj’s princely states. Britain and Russia also partitioned Qinghai and the western portions of Gansu and Sichuan. The coastal provinces of China proper were set up as ‘special concessions’, de facto protectorates of the foreign powers where their authority was supreme, with several ports being annexed or permanently leased by the great powers. However these provinces stayed a nominal part of China and Imperial officers were allowed to keep managing the administration in a subordinate role since the foreign powers found convenient to use them as intermediaries. Hebei was awarded to the USA, Shandong to Germany, Jiangsu to Italy, Zhejiang to Japan, Fujian to Britain, and Guangdong to France-Iberia. Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin were to be under the joint control of the foreign powers. Shanghai and its hinterland were to become an international zone governed by representatives of the powers, and open to trade and commerce of all nations. China’s major rivers were internationalized.

China was fined war reparations of 450,000,000 taels of fine silver (1 tael = 1.2 troy ounces) for the loss that it caused. The reparation was to be paid within 39 years. To help meet the payment it was agreed to double the existing tariff, and to tax hitherto duty-free merchandise. The sum of reparation was estimated by the Chinese population (roughly 450 million in the 1890s), to let each Chinese pay one tael. Chinese custom income and salt tax were enlisted as guarantee of the reparation. The indemnity of 450 million taels of silver was a large burden on the Chinese, who had to finance it with increased taxes. The Qing government was to allow the foreign powers to base their troops in Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin on a standing basis, and to deploy their forces throughout their ‘special concessions’ as needed to protect their interests and resident foreigners, and quell anti-foreign agitation. The rebuilt Legation Quarter was to be rebuilt in a defensible form as a special area protected by a strong garrison and reserved for exclusive control of the foreign powers, where the Chinese would not have the right to reside.

BSS members and government officials were to be punished for crimes or attempted crimes against the foreign governments or their nationals. Many were sentenced to execution, commit suicide, life imprisonment, deportation to remote interior areas, or suffer posthumous degradation. The Chinese government was to prohibit forever, under the pain of death, membership in any anti-foreign society. Civil service examinations were to be suspended for 5 years in all areas where foreigners were massacred or subjected to cruel treatment. Provincial and local officials would personally be held responsible for any new anti-foreign incidents. China was to maintain open trade relations in areas not otherwise governed by treaty to all civilized powers. A permanent oversight group of the seven signatory powers was to be established in Shanghai to manage enforcement of the treaty.

The great powers stopped short of finally colonizing China. This occurred part because the Big Swords rebellion made them concerned about the resistance of fiercely nationalist Han to direct foreign rule, part because they were too divided to establish a functional partition scheme. The anti-Chinese united front that had existed during the war soon dissolved in vicious squabbles that increased tensions between the powers when division of the spoils became the issue on the table. A broad principle was largely accepted to make China’s interior areas the sphere of influence of the power that controlled the closest ‘special concession’ if they were directly bordering them, or otherwise to leave them open to trade of all nations. But even so, a lot of contested areas existed and many disputes to control valuable resources still occurred. Further tensions arose between the powers when Britain and France-Iberia established a separate agreement of their own to partition Siam. The western portion of the Kingdom became a British protectorate and part of the Raj, while the eastern portion was merged with Franco-Iberian Indochina. The other powers contested this action as a violation of the spirit of their agreement about China.

In successive conflicts during late 19th century, the foreign powers annexed the islands of Taiwan and Hainan and the non-Han border areas of Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Manchuria, but they resorted to indirect rule in China proper. From the Big Swords rebellion, they learned that the best way to govern densely-populated Han China was through the Chinese dynasty and Imperial officers, instead of direct dealing with the Chinese people. As a saying went “The people are afraid of officials, the officials are afraid of foreigners, and the foreigners are afraid of the people". Eventually, as an unwritten agreement, the Qing dynasty was allowed to stay in power, since it was expected a collaborationist Qing government could use its influence to suppress Chinese anti-foreign sentiment better than direct rule by the foreign powers.

Humiliating defeat in the Big Swords conflict drove the Chinese government to reluctantly start a few reforms despite its previous conservative view. The imperial examination system for government service was eliminated; as a result, the classical system of education was replaced with a European liberal system that led to a university degree. The army was modernized, trained, and equipped according to Western standards. The modernization and professional quality of the Chinese army impressed many in the gentry class to join and introduced militarism to China. However, these efforts seemed too late to save the Qing. The revolutionaries within the Han community could not wait. The Imperial government's humiliating failure to defend China against the foreign powers contributed to the growth of nationalist resentment against the "foreigner" Qing dynasty, who were descendants of the Manchu conquerors of China.

The Big Swords Protocol was a further blow to what little integrity and prestige the Qing government possessed. Many people in China were already dissatisfied with the corrupt and inefficient Qing government, and this only proved that their sentiments were well founded. They became convinced that the Qing government was utterly incapable of ruling or protecting their country, and believed that a revolution was the only way China could be restored to peace and prosperity. Many of these would-be revolutionaries came to embrace republican sympathies, while others still showed some attachment to the traditional Imperial system, if not with the discredited Qing on the throne. The humiliating failure of the Big Swords to stem the tide of foreign invasion discredited conservative attachment to traditional Chinese social and cultural structures as a vehicle for nationalism. Many Chinese turned to look at the successful example of Japan and deemed that in order to save China from foreign domination, it was necessary to master the achievements of Western civilization.

The net effect of the Big Swords conflict on China was a weakening of the dynasty as well as a weakened national cohesion and defense. The Imperial structure was spared and partially sustained by the foreign powers, but the process further increased decentralization of power in China, from the central government to the provinces. Provincial officers came to control powerful armies with the military reforms, and the Qing central government was dependent on their loyalty to stay in power or exercise any effective control on the periphery. A serious latent rift also took form between the pro-reform monarchists more influential in Northern China and the anti-Qing republican revolutionaries prevalent in Southern China. The situation seemed ripe for China to slide into another period of chaos and division, as soon as a random spark would turn the flames of revolution ablaze.

[eurofed]

1891-1900 (part VIII)

China was far from being the only crisis area in the world that drew the attention of the great powers and increased tensions between them. In Belgium and Switzerland, ethnic French separatist groups supported by France-Iberia agitated for union with the Bourbon empire and were opposed by the Belgian and Swiss governments with the backing of Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. In the Americas, a long-standing border dispute existed between Venezuela and the British Empire about the territory of Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory. The dispute became a crisis in the 1890s when Venezuela persuaded the US government to back its claim. The US intervention forced Britain to accept arbitration of the entire disputed territory. The arbitration tribunal largely ruled in favor of Britain. However Venezuela and the USA refused to accept the verdict since they claimed (not without reason) it was the product of British bribes and pressures on the members of the board.

In Brazil, the controversial attempts of the liberals (backed by the Imperial family) to enact abolition of slavery and a succession dispute (Emperor Pedro II had no surviving son and his daughter Isabel’s succession to the throne faced strong opposition) combined with political instability that lingered since Brazil’s defeat in the War of the Pacific to unleash a civil war at the death of the Emperor. Initially the conflict was multi-sided but it gradually got simplified to a fight between abolitionist liberals and conservative monarchists. The latter grew considerably in strength thanks to the support of the slaveholding wealthy landowners, a faction of the army with ambitions of a military dictatorship, and the reactionary Papal Catholic Church. The conservative faction that became dominant aimed to turn Brazil into an authoritarian monarchy similar to the Gallic Empire with a cadet branch of the Bourbon on the throne. They eventually won the civil war thanks to the generous support of France-Iberia (that backed them out of ideological sympathy and imperialist ambitions) and to a lesser degree Britain (that regarded them as a lesser evil than the alternative of a pro-US progressive Brazil).

Much to its later regret, the USA failed to provide enough aid to the Brazilian liberals in time to compensate for Anglo-Gallic support to the conservatives, also because it was distracted by the parallel Mexican crisis closer to its borders. The new Brazilian regime reorganized the country according to the Franco-Iberian authoritarian model; it nominally abolished chattel slavery but in practice replaced it with an harsh segregation and peonage system for the Black freedmen that was pretty much the same thing. Brazilian liberals, abolitionists, republicans, leftists, and freethinkers got brutally persecuted. The example of Brazil drove Chile, which had also suffered political instability since its defeat in the War of the Pacific, into a coup that established an authoritarian regime that was organized on the same model. Both Brazil and Chile aligned closely with the Gallic and British empires in international relations. The USA and Argentina perceived this spread of Gallic authoritarianism and influence in the Western Hemisphere as a serious security threat, due to the alliance alignments and barely-concealed revanchist ambitions of Brazil and Chile.

In a broadly similar way, Mexico too fell into chaos. The country never entirely recovered from humiliating defeat of its intervention in the Anglo-American War and the resulting vast territorial losses, remaining vulnerable to recurrent bouts of political instability and factional strife. This disheartening pattern was only broken for a while by the rule of Porfirio Diaz, whose regime brought a measure of internal stability, modernization, and economic growth. This was in part due to heavy investment in mining, railways, and agriculture from American and British business. However, Díaz's regime grew unpopular due to civil repression and political stagnation. His economic policies furthermore helped a few wealthy landowners and capitalists acquire huge areas of land and control vast areas of the economy, resulting in a shortage of jobs and depressingly low wages for the Mexican peasantry. Moreover, American and British investments in Mexican economy heightened Anglo-American competition for prevalent influence in the country. Diaz’s assassination triggered a series of coups, rebellions, and counter-coups that soon degenerated into a multi-faction civil war. The USA, Britain, and France-Iberia attempted to cultivate ties with various factions and sent them supplies in order to pull the country closer to their sphere of influence; moreover the fighting caused several border incidents with the USA that alarmed and angered the American government and public opinion.

Civil war in Mexico worsened the Caste War, an insurgency of Mayan people that had been ongoing since the middle of the century in Yucatan and had caused the rebels to take over vast portions of the state. It spilled over in Guatemala and this, combined with recurrent military conflicts between the Central American nations, significantly increased instability in the region. Civil war in Mexico and Brazil, the success of the US, Argentinean, and Peruvian-Bolivian federal experiments, the secession of Panama, and the Venezuela border dispute were among the factors that persuaded the governments of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador to seek a restoration of Gran Colombia. Negotiations for federal union got successful also thanks to growing popularity of Pan-Americanism and strong support of US diplomacy. Similar attempts in Central America for a merger of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador failed because of excessive tensions between the Central American states. This persuaded the governments of Honduras and El Salvador to petition the USA for annexation under the same terms (American investment in infrastructure development of the region) Nicaragua and Costa Rica had gotten. The US government accepted since American business had developed strong interests in Honduras. Gran Colombia, Peru-Bolivia, and Argentina joined the Pan-American Conference with the USA and took a pro-US stance in international relations.

Being faced with a clear and present existential threat, the Ottoman Empire was at last driven into a serious last-ditch effort to reform and modernize to avoid its own extinction. This came thanks to the efforts of the Young Ottomans, a political reform movement that arose in Ottoman society at the end of the 19th century and favored replacement of the absolute monarchy of the Sultan with a constitutional monarchy and a series of modernizing military and political reforms across the empire. The movement arose in the aftermath of Turkey’s disastrous defeat in the Russo-Turkish war. It slowly gained strength and organization during the following two decades although at the time all its efforts to impose a constitutional reform ultimately failed. The second humiliating defeat in the war with Greece gave it irresistible momentum thanks to widespread perception the Ottoman Empire faced imminent destruction because of its own weakness and backwardness combined with the ambitions of stronger foreign powers.

The Young Ottoman revolutionaries gained the support of vast sectors of the army and were able to force the Sultan to establish a constitutional monarchy. They defeated the attempt of the conservatives to seize power and exploited the Sultan’s support of the counter-coup to depose him and put a relative on the throne that was willing to collaborate with the revolutionaries. The victorious Young Ottomans engaged in an ambitious program of modernizing reforms according to their ideology of liberalism, secularism, and positivism. However they split in two factions that respectively favored liberalism, decentralization, and autonomy for the various communities of the empire, or supported authoritarian constitutionalism, centralization, and nationalist unity. The latter faction won out and established a centralized regime that concentrated power in the hands of a small ruling clique, limited the powers of Parliament, and kept the Sultan as a figurehead.

Initially their movement supported a platform of creating a common Ottoman citizenship irrespective of ethnic and religious differences. Although it got some support from reformist members of all millets (communities) of the empire, it also faced resistance from many Muslims and members of non-Muslims millets as well. The former did not want to give up their superior position and the latter clung to their traditional privileges or had come to reject the Ottoman Empire as a lost cause. Inspired by the successful examples of the other Christian nationalities that had cast off Ottoman rule, they aspired to political autonomy of their own, either in independent states like the Balkan nationalities or under the rule of some European power, typically Russia, according to the example of the Armenians and Assyrians in eastern Anatolia.

Faced with this resistance, the Young Ottoman ruling elites kept professing some nominal adherence to liberalism and Ottoman civic patriotism as their ideology, but in practice they gradually shifted their focus to a mix of Turkish and Arab nationalism under a common Ottoman umbrella that greatly privileged the Muslims to solidify their own power base. The regime also got increasingly authoritarian in character, and often shaped many of its policies according to the Franco-Iberian model, which it came to perceive as a good template for national rebirth. However they still strongly supported secular policies since they deemed them essential to a successful modernization and strengthening of the empire. These policies granted them a sizable amount of support from the Turks and to a lesser degree the ever-fractious Arabs, but drove the non-Muslim millets into fierce opposition and serious unrest. Such a resistance drove the Ottoman government into increasingly harsh treatment of its Christian subjects and brutal repression of their agitation.

The Young Ottoman government sought support from friendly European powers for their plans to modernize their army, economy, and the empire’s communications and transportation networks. They found Britain and France-Iberia were willing to grant them a generous amount of investment and support, both because they expected to profit and since a strong Turkey would be a useful counterbalance to Russia and the German-Italian alliance. This alignment of Turkey soon drew the ire of the Russians, Germans, and Italians that picked the excuse of Ottoman mistreatment of non-Muslim communities to justify their hostility.

Although the Young Ottomans very much wished to regain many of the areas the Ottoman Empire had lost in the last few disastrous wars, they acknowledged it would be suicidal to pick a fight with Greece or worse Russia itself without strong military support from other great powers. So they first engaged in an effort to expand their own power base in the Middle East. This included an effort to reduce or eliminate the autonomy of Arab emirates and sheikdoms and a military campaign to crush the Saudi emirate of Nejd with the support of its Rashidi rivals of Jabal Shammar. The Saudi were defeated, their tribal power base largely destroyed, and the remnants of their clan forced to seek refuge in the British colonies of Yemen and Oman.

[eurofed]

1891-1900 (part IX)

Late 19th century Persia had been suffering pretty much the same problems (backwardness, weakness, military defeat with territorial losses, inability to counter foreign penetration and influence) of the Ottoman Empire and China. Although it enjoyed a less disunited society in ethnic and religious terms, it was burdened by crippling financial woes, also due to royal extravagance. The unsustainable situation came to an head through a constitutional revolution backed by a coalition of merchants, ulema (Islamic clergy), and radical reformers. The revolutionaries won and forced the Shah to grant a constitution and parliament to the people. However a new crisis soon surfaced due to conflicts between the conservative and radical wings of the revolutionary movement that allowed the Shah to regain part of its power base. Instability worsened because of the meddling of the British and the Russians that for all their imperial rivalry had a tacit agreement revolutionary upheavals were bad for their trade and too strong a Persian government a threat to their influence.

Thus a three-way civil war ensued between the Shah’s backers, the conservative constitutionalists, and the radical reformers. The conflict and its spillover into Ottoman territory gave Turkey a good pretext to intervene. The Ottomans invaded Persia and set up a friendly regime in Teheran with a constitution that was broadly modeled on their own political system and a collaborationist Shah on the throne. Turkey annexed Khuzestan since it was resource-rich and included a majority Arab population that had attempted to assert its autonomy during the Persian revolution and civil war. The situation was acceptable to the British since they had been cultivating their ties with Turkey after the Young Ottoman revolution. Russia, however, strongly opposed the new status quo as a serious violation of the balance of power between British and Russian interests.

Apparent resurgence of the Ottoman Empire as a regional power however could do little to prevent the Muslim world from suffering a few severe territorial losses by the end of the 19th century. Through a mix of ethnic cleansing, settlement of European immigrants, Europeanization and conversion of collaborationist natives, and expansion of neighbor autochthonous Christian communities, several regions had been torn away from the Umma and turned into largely Christian and European areas. These included Northwest Africa, the Balkans, coastal western Anatolia, Cyprus, the Caucasus, eastern Anatolia, and Russian Central Asia. Barring an radical reversal of fortunes between Muslim and European powers and a inverted pattern of vast demographic changes, these changes seemed permanent for the foreseeable future.

In India, the decades following the Sepoy Rebellion were a period of growing political awareness, manifestation of Indian public opinion, and emergence of Indian leadership at both national and provincial levels. British colonial rule stepped up its Westernization efforts after the Sepoy Rebellion, in the belief that surviving traditional social structures had been one of the main sources of support for the rebels. This took the form of a fairly extensive land reform, infrastructure development with the construction of roads, canals, bridges, and vast railroad and telegraph networks, various social reforms (e.g. allowing the remarriage of Hindu child widows), and vigorous enforcement of the “doctrine of lapse” (transfer to direct British rule of those princely states that lacked a male biological heir). The relative success of British modernization policies had other effects, too: by the 1880s a new educated middle-class had arisen in India and spread thinly across the country, with a growing solidarity among its members. Increasing self-confidence of this class due to its success in education and irritation at the limitations with Indian participation in provincial legislative councils and Indian access to civil service jobs led to the creation of the Indian National Congress. Its members were mostly members of the upwardly mobile and successful Western-educated provincial elites, engaged in professions such as law, teaching, and journalism.

At its inception, the Congress had no well-defined ideology, and during the first few years of its existence, it was primarily a debating society that passed numerous resolutions about less controversial issues such as civil rights or opportunities in government (especially in the civil service). By the 1890s, reform movements had taken root within the Indian National Congress, that criticized various aspects of British policy towards India such as unfair trade policies, the restraint on indigenous Indian industry, and the use of Indian taxes to pay the high salaries of the British civil servants in India. A rift began to appear in the Congress between the moderates, who eschewed public agitation and lobbied for legislative reform, and the new "extremists" who not only advocated agitation, but also regarded the pursuit of social and economic reform as a distraction from nationalism. The moderates saw themselves as loyalists, who wanted reform within the framework of British rule. They advocated an active role of Indians in governing their own country, albeit as part of the British Empire, to be represented in the bodies of government, and to have a say in the legislation and administration of India. The radicals resented the denial of freedom of expression for nationalists, and the lack of any voice or role for ordinary Indians in the affairs of their nation. They embraced Swaraj (self-determination) as the natural and only solution, and advocated civil agitation and direct revolution to overthrow the British Empire and the abandonment of all things British.

A somewhat far-reaching revision of administrative subdivisions in British India by colonial authorities led to a widespread row of protests, predominantly in the form of a boycott campaign of British goods, but also sporadically —but flagrantly— political violence, with bombings of public buildings, armed robberies, and assassination of British officials. The violence, however, was not effective since most planned attacks were either preempted by the British or failed. The boycott movement was rather more successful, and it also became a spur for indigenous industrial progress in India. The British authorities remained drastically opposed to any serious reform of India’s political status towards self-rule. They vigorously suppressed the activities of the radical Indian nationalists and did not flinch from ruthless use of force whenever they turned violent or seemingly threatened public order. However they failed to quell the growing popularity of Indian nationalism, also because of the negative backlash from repeated episodes of brutal British repression of unrest.

In the wake of the protest movement, the British authorities however took some token steps to appease Indian nationalists, primarily by a reform of the legislative councils. The first steps were taken toward self-government in British India in the late 19th century with the appointment of Indian counselors to advise the British viceroy and the establishment of provincial councils with Indian members. The British subsequently widened participation in legislative councils with the creation of Municipal Corporations and District Boards were created for local administration; they included elected Indian members. The new reforms gave Indians limited roles in the central and provincial legislatures, known as legislative councils. Indians had previously been appointed to legislative councils, but after the reforms a few were elected to them. At the centre, the majority of council members continued to be government-appointed officials, and the viceroy was in no way responsible to the legislature. At the provincial level, the elected members, together with unofficial appointees, outnumbered the appointed officials, but responsibility of the governor to the legislature was not contemplated.

The growing Indian nationalist movement had a predominantly Hindu character, and although the Congress had emerged as an all-India political organization, its achievement was undermined by its singular failure to attract Muslims, who felt their representation in government service was inadequate. Muslim concerns of minority status and denial of rights if the Congress alone were to represent the people of India, with the fear of reforms favoring the Hindu majority, led the Muslim elite in India to an organization effort of its own. This culminated in the founding of the Muslim League, which demanded proportional legislative representation and separate electorates for Muslims. The Muslim League insisted on its separateness from the Hindu-dominated Congress, as the voice of a "nation within a nation." The British recognized a few of the Muslim League's petitions by increasing the number of elective offices reserved for Muslims. Britain made it clear in introducing the reforms that parliamentary self-government of India was not the goal of the British government. This was regarded as wholly insufficient by the nationalist movement, and there was an increase in the activities of revolutionary groups. The British authorities were, however, able to suppress them swiftly, also because the revolutionaries lacked the support of mainstream politicians in the Congress and the League.

Anglo-Gallic cooperation to prop up Young Ottoman nationalists and Brazilian far-rightists were but two of the signs of growing closeness between the British Empire and France-Iberia during the 1890s. Despite mutual distrust fuelled by their radically different political character, the two powers gradually aligned closer and grew more friendly out of their common strong wish to get a powerful partner to stand against their established enemies. Britain wanted a strong ally to improve its standing in the two-front rivalry with Russia and the USA. France-Iberia wished to secure its back and gain British support against its German-Italian enemies. This drive eventually proved stronger than any ideological difference and the British and Gallic empires first signed a non-aggression pact combined with a trade treaty (the so-called “Entente Cordiale”) in the middle 1890s, then a military alliance by the end of the decade. The Anglo-Gallic agreement guaranteed mutual support for Franco-Iberian claims in Western Europe and British claims in Asia; a secret protocol established guidelines for the partition of the Low Countries and German-Italian colonies in case of war. Soon afterwards, the Ottoman Empire and Persia joined the Entente alliance.

Formation of the Entente caused a general realignment of the alliance system for the great powers. Germany and Italy strengthened their long-standing close partnership and dropped any pretense of amicable neutrality in the Great Game. They started talks with St. Petersburg to enlarge their military alliance to Russia. The Russians too were interested in the offer and talks proceeded quickly since Russia and the German-Italian bloc had kept friendly relations for a long time. Negotiations soon led to the formation of the Triple Alliance between Germany, Italy, and Russia, which also got known as the Eastern Powers. Russia stopped short of joining the CEMU, mostly out of a wish to preserve some protection for its less developed industry from German and Italian competition. However it signed a commercial agreement with Germany and Italy that considerably increased trade with the CEMU countries as well as German-Italian investment in Russia.

The USA did not establish any alliance bonds with European powers due to its traditional policy of non-entanglement in Old World disputes. However the formation of the Entente and Anglo-Gallic encroachment in Latin America were good reasons for the Americans to pair growing hostility towards France-Iberia (already distrusted because of its repressive regime) with their long-established enmity towards Britain. The USA kept friendly relations with the Eastern powers, and everyone expected America would at best be an hostile neutral towards the Entente in an European conflict. However the British and the Franco-Iberians were confident their combined power would be enough to intimidate America into good behavior, or at least allow them to deal with the Eastern powers or the USA separately and at their convenience. Pretty soon the land and naval arms race between the great powers heightened to frantic levels, as each player either prepared for a pre-emptive war or reacted to the perceived threats of alliance system realignment and the rearmament of their potential enemies. Of course this in turn increased tensions even further.

Japan avoided any alliance entanglements and stuck to its policy of cautious neutrality, keeping the option of opportunistically supporting any side if circumstances were favorable and promised rewards good enough. Hungary and Croatia kept a solid alignment with the Eastern powers out of their close bond with the Pillar bloc. Romania and Yugoslavia officially aligned with the Eastern powers due to their ties with Russia, but their loyalty to the alliance was in serious doubt because of their ambitions on their neighbors’ territory. The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Greece were officially neutral, but everyone expected they would side with the EP in an European conflict.

Scandinavia had important economic and political ties with the CEMU bloc, but would most likely cling to neutrality because of its complex relationship with Britain, Germany, and Russia. Belgium was so divided that neutrality became the default to try and survive. The Irish and the Poles were almost certainly going to exploit a general conflict to try another bid for independence. Argentina, Gran Colombia, and Peru-Bolivia mostly aligned with the USA, while Brazil and Chile did so with the Entente powers. The Mexicans were too busy fighting each other, and China too weak and in dire need of setting its own house in order. Once they did so, however, the Chinese would side with the devil if it promised any decent hope of casting off the foreigners’ yoke.

[eurofed]

These maps show Europe, North America, and the world at the end of the 19th century. They are meant to show international borders, so internal borders may often be alt-historically inaccurate (especially in the North American map) or not shown (as for Europe). For simplicity, the world map does not show the areas of China proper that are effectively under control of foreign powers.

[whiteshore]

Maybe the Northern Reformists in China coalesce behind someone akin to Liang Qichao while the Southern Republicans coalesce behind someone akin to Sun Yat-Sen and maybe a failed Classicalist coup in Belgium could spark *WW1 where the Entente send troops to support the Classicalists while the Germans send troops to support the government?

[eurofed]

Jun 26, 2016 11:47:31 GMT whiteshore said:

Maybe the Northern Reformists in China coalesce behind someone akin to Liang Qichao while the Southern Republicans coalesce behind someone akin to Sun Yat-Sen

Something like this is likely to happen, at least for a while. In the long term, of course, both factions are going to try and re-unify China under their leadership if at all possible, given the high level of Han national consciousness. So long-term division of China is not likely unless of course the international situation drives it as it happened for post-WWII Korea. This might happen if say Neo-Imperial North China and KMT South China stabilize and get rival superpower sponsors after the Great War to prop them up. Of course, the elephant in the room is the warlords, both the ones in a position to try and seize supreme leadership of the country (like OTL Yuan Shikai) and the ones that just aim to rule their own regions. Late Qing decentralization has made potential warlords as strong as OTL, and the *Boxer War has been even more disruptive to China (being more similar to the 2nd Sino-Japanese War in impact), so the warlord problem is going to be just a troublesome. On the other hand, if China does get divided in two states for a while, this might make the work of restoring a functional central government somewhat easier in the two halves. In this regard, a silver lining for China is the great powers shall be far too busy in the near future fighting the Great War and dealing with its aftermath to pay much attention to events in China proper and enforce the status quo like they did with the Big Swords rampage. So the Chinese shall have a window to try and put their house in order w/o too much foreign interference, certainly not of the high level seen in the late Qing period. Even Japan is likely to get involved in *WWI, since both sides are going to offer too tempting territorial rewards to the Japanese for intervention for them to stay neutral.  

and maybe a failed Classicalist coup in Belgium could spark *WW1 where the Entente send troops to support the Classicalists while the Germans send troops to support the government?

More or less. Now, the possible flashpoints to start a general war are kind of piling up (Belgium, Switzerland, the Near East/Central Asia, the Balkans, Poland, China, Mexico/Central America, South America, the Pacific/Australia, Canada, etc.), beyond the ability or will of the great powers to keep all of them defused for too long. As a matter of fact, it is even entirely possible the war starts with multiple ones activating and escalating simultaneously or nearly so, kinda like the Franco-German-Italian War started with a combined Luxemburg and Rome casus belli. But it is true that Belgium is one of the easiest and most likely. The main difference with what you describe is TTL Belgium is already teetering close to internal collapse, kinda like 1990s Yugoslavia, because of serious alienation between its component nationalities (no doubt greatly fuelled by external agents and influences, but quite real nonetheless). Many Walloons support union with the Gallic Empire, just like many Flemish aspire to join the Netherlands, either as a permanent solution or a stepping stone to forming a Pan-Germanic empire. Pretty much everything it has kept the Belgian state alive so far is political inertia and the fact antagonism between the Gallic Empire and the Pillar powers is far too great to implement the natural solution of a peaceful partition managed by the international community. Even Britain stopped being invested in supporting the status quo in the Low Countries once it allied with France-Iberia. Once a coup or rebellion destabilizes or topples the Belgian monarchy and the threadbare, fraying veil of a ruling elite that still supports it, the status quo is dead and buried, and a post-Yugoslav-style widespread conflict between pro-Dutch/Pan-Germanic Flemish and pro-French Walloons becomes inevitable. Of course, this makes it very likely neighbor powers shall intervene, causing the continent to explode.

One big reason the great powers are sliding down the slippery slope to a *World War about this kind of flashpoints now instead of say 10-15 years ago when similar crises got frozen or settled peacefully is imperialist competition between the 'old', established/declining powers (Britain, France, Spain, Turkey; Austria proved too weak for this game and excluded itself by collapsing in the national-unifications period) and the 'new', rising ones (America, Russia, Germany, Italy) is coming to a reckoning. The former broadly perceive time is not on their side since global growth patterns favor their rivals, there is no more empty room in the world to expand safely through colonialism to compensate (apart from China which is a big mess all its own), so they are gearing up for a pre-emptive strike to try and cut down their rivals before it is too late. They are making a gamble not unlike the OTL Axis' one the Entente team-up combined with some serious rearmament of their own shall give them a decent strategic window to crush or bully their enemies into submission with their combined power before the other side can adapt. Broadly speaking, their grand strategy is to defeat the EP with a pre-emptive war, use their naval power to blockade Europe and neutralize the USA while they do so, then fall on America like a ton of bricks if it refuses to accept Entente terms.

It is not an entirely foolhardy gamble since America, Russia, and the German-Italian bloc have been long preparing for a war with Britain or France-Iberia alone, formation of the Entente alliance has caught them on a wrong foot, and they are struggling to adapt to the new strategic scenario with rearmament programs of their own, as well as by forming the Triple Alliance. Of course, it is a vision that includes a lot of hubris and overconfidence and seriously underestimates the resilience, resources, will to fight, and quickness to adapt of the Eastern powers and the USA, as well as the willingness of America to intervene on its own terms. So it may easily explode in the Entente's hands, trap them in an unwinnable total war, and drag them to destruction, much like it happened to OTL Axis. ITTL the rising powers have avoided picking fights between them as long as their established rivals still stand (of course, what shall happen once the superpower candidates are the only big guys left is another matter entirely). Therefore the old powers got the hard choice of gracefully accepting their decline and conceding the top rank to their rivals w/o a fight (OTL Britain did so with America, but ITTL it is unfeasible given the antagonistic Anglo-American relationship) or try and overturn the board by force. It seems TTL circumstances are driving them to the latter choice. Of course, if their gamble fails, they shall face a much worse fall from power. 

On their part, the rising powers too have been exhausting room for growth that does not impinge on the vital interests of the established ones, and they are not willing to sacrifice their ambitions for the sake of peace. So they are entirely willing to accept turning the global struggle for power into a deathmatch if the other side chooses so. Add to this mixture that all the great powers are as imperialist and belligerent as OTL, Classicalism is adding a measure of WWII/Cold War-style ideological polarization to a WWI-style imperialist struggle for power, and just like OTL all the great powers have enjoyed a generation or so of basic peace w/o any major wars (the Big Swords conflict was fairly big in its own way, but it was localized to China and a joint effort of the Western world, so its global impact was minimized) so memory of the ugliness of war has been fading. All of this provides a good recipe for the world to slide towards its first global war, give or take a last few years of uneasy peace and one flashpoint or the other (or multiple ones at once) to provide the spark.

[whiteshore]

Maybe the 1900s (the decade) could see a rightward swing in British politics.

[eurofed]

Jun 29, 2016 9:44:50 GMT whiteshore said:

Maybe the 1900s (the decade) could see a rightward swing in British politics.

Sure, but this is already a process happening in the 1890s, as shown by the alliance with France-Iberia, and the stonewalling of any attempt at Irish emancipation, autonomy for the settler colonies, and self-rule for India. Of course hardcore Tory political dominance is the best explanation to justify these policies, and it may easily continue up to the beginning of the war, so there shall be no Liberal welfare reforms, no Parliament Act to curb the powers of the House of Lords, and none of the above reforms. As a matter of fact, perhaps I might slightly revise the wording of the 1890s updates concerning the British Empire and do a little retcon here and there to further emphasize the point, e.g. to remark that there are no major social or political reforms in the British Empire at the end of the century, and suppression of early nationalist agitation in India is somewhat more brutal (i.e. there is a massacre or three). The issue cannot be pushed much more than that, however. Things have not gone so bad for Britain in the 19th century that a regime change would be in the cards like it happened in France, Iberia, Turkey, or Brazil (if they lose the war and the empire, of course, it would be another matter entirely), and the Indian national movement or the pro-US agitation for autonomy in Canada and Australia are not yet strong enough to stage any rebellion with their own resources. They may attempt to raise some major trouble or jump on the victors' bandwagon if things start to go really bad for the British Empire or they get a lot of external support. Likewise, the Irish are certainly pissed off enough to start another uprising just now, but after the last rebellion the British have shackled them so much they would likely need the empire to get the distraction of a major war to rise up again with some effectiveness. Even so, an Irish uprising probably won't be that successful until the Germans and/or the Americans get in the position to start smuggling them a lot of weapons.

[whiteshore]

Maybe the Entente bring US to the war on the side of the Germans with their support for neo-Confederate terrorism being revealed? Also, maybe *WW1 starts out as a series of separate wars but due to the alliance system, the different wars merge into one?

[eurofed]

Jul 10, 2016 10:42:51 GMT whiteshore said:

Maybe the Entente bring US to the war on the side of the Germans with their support for neo-Confederate terrorism being revealed? Also, maybe *WW1 starts out as a series of separate wars but due to the alliance system, the different wars merge into one?

*WW1 may well start as a series of separate crisis that escalate to the fighting point more or less simultaneously, such as say Britain and Russia clashing about Persia, and the Gallic Empire and the Pillar powers clashing about Belgium. Given the sheer amount of potential flashpoints floating around, and the diminishing commitment of the great powers to restraint, this is entirely possible and perhaps even likely. But at least as it concerns the European theater, the alliance system established in the last few years guarantees a war between two rival powers would expand to a general conflict between the Entente and the Eastern Powers within a few days at most. Much like OTL, this is the whole point of the alliance system. At most, by retrospective perception, escalation from multiple flashpoints may consolidate a prevailing viewpoint that *WW1 was more or less inevitable sooner or later and there won't be any equivalent of OTL idea that the war could have been avoided if only the Sarajevo Assassination had been prevented.

Now, as it concerns the further extension of the conflict with America's later intervention on the side of the EP, or for that matter's Japan opportunist intervention or expansion of the war to South America, things are indeed more flexible. Your idea about the British sponsoring neo-Confederate terrorism is interesting, but I fear it wouldn't be a good CB for America's intervention on its own. British intelligence might be able to recruit a few racist nutjobs and use them to accomplish a few acts of espionage, sabotage, and terrorism in America; this would certainly raise tensions between the USA and the Entente when American intelligence finds the lead, being another step on the road to intervention, but the final CB would likely be something else. The British wouldn't be able to magnify this into a widespread terrorism campaign, much less real neo-Confederate unrest in the South, because the support base for it would be too narrow. ITTL Reconstruction has been more successful, preventing Jim Crow legal segregation and causing American culture to develop a more flexible view of race issues. It also caused the formation of a sizable Black and 'poor White' middle class and a fair amount of industrialization in the South that act as a counterbalance to the influence of the would-be segregationists. Many Blacks remain an exploited underclass that is discriminated and abused by individual racism, and the latter gets widespread social tolerance, but that's the amount of slack American society is willing to give to racists.

To be reintegrated in the Union as an equal component of the nation, the South had to accept and share into a joint national narrative of the Civil War that acknowledges slavery as wicked and unsustainable, and the Confederate cause and leaders as evil and treasonous, even if it pays respect to the valor and suffering of the Southern soldiers fighting for a wrong cause out of misguided loyalty. No public expression of sympathy or nostalgia for the Confederate cause or Antebellum South is tolerated by mainstream public opinion since it looks like support for treason against America. Any equivalent of Birth of a Nation or Gone with the Wind, if they ever get shot, is going to be rather different in certain key aspects. The vast majority of the Southerners accepts this viewpoint and is loyal to American patriotism, often fervently so, 40 years after the fact. As a matter of fact, many Southerners fought for the Union in the wars against Britain, Mexico, and Spain, and this was deemed a major step in national reconciliation and the South redeeming itself. True neo-Confederate sympathies are about as welcome as neo-Nazism or neo-Communism in OTL modern Europe. There is no doubt an extremist fringe of the racist spectrum that may be willing to use violence, but it gets as much support as far-right extremism in OTL modern America. Ideology can certainly drive a few to become fifth-columnists and terrorists, but not that many, and even hardcore racists may balk at cooperating with the traditional enemy of America. So the British intelligence would likely be more or less as effective at recruiting spies, saboteurs, and terrorists among American racists as the Axis powers or the Soviets were able to find sympathizers in the USA during WWII or the Cold War. Last but not least, ITTL repression of violent segregationist groups during Reconstruction made federal law enforcement rather more organized and effective at fighting domestic terrorism than OTL at this point in history (among other things, a broad FBI/Mounties equivalent with extensive powers has existed since the 1870s).

As it concerns possible CB for America to intervene on the side of the Eastern Powers, there are a few. Most likely and importantly, a remake of the 1812 one, i.e. the USA getting pissed off at Entente blockade of its trade with Germany, Italy, and Russia, using armed convoys to force it, naval incidents with loss of life occuring, and things escalating from that. There may also be the UK and the USA getting into armed clashes about ownership of some Pacific territory, such as Samoa, or the Americans sending support to rebels in Canada, Australia, and/or Ireland, or the Venezuela boundary dispute re-activating, or even something happening in China. Quite possibly, it may be a combination of multiple flashpoints activating together, just like in Europe. Moreover, there is also the Mexican civil war and the likely coming US intervention into it, although this may act as an element to raise Anglo-American tensions but also as a reason to lull the Entente into a false sense of security about the USA being too busy in Mexico to interfere elsewhere (as a matter of fact, the USA is entirely able to fight a multiple-front war in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific if events drive it into a national-mobilization mode). There is also the likely coming new bout of South American wars, but just like the War of the Pacific they may work just as well as an Entente-American proxy war; they may raise tensions, but only expand to a direct great-powers involvement once America joins the conflict at its own pace.

As it concerns the time schedule of *WW1 and American intervention into it, there are story reasons for it to happen no later than early-mid 1900s (the decade). I want TTL Teddy Roosevelt to have an alt-historical role that is a combination of his OTL self and his cousin: first the successful domestic reformer, then the victorious war president that leads America in a *World War. I dislike the 22th Amendment and I prefer no equivalent of that is ever written into the US Constitution. So I need to take care TR doesn't stay in power long enough to cause a serious political backlash in favor of it. ITTL Lincoln and Grant shattered Washington's two-term precedent (what St. Washington can establish, St. Lincoln can amend) and replaced it with a three-term one, and wartime continuity of leadership can certainly justify a fourth term, but likely not much more than that. Just like OTL, TR's first term after he succeeded an assassinated President has been almost a full one, so the wiggle room about that is not that big. Among other things, this TL was also meant to make Lincoln and TR, whom I greatly admire, even greater and more successful American heroes, and give Grant a good place in the Presidential pantheon. All of them shall show up on Mt. Rushmore with Washington and Jefferson - a bit slanted in favor of the GOP, but unavoidable given the circumstances. Conversely, you may expect Wilson and FDR, whom I loathe, shall be consigned to obscurity ITTL.

By the way, as I promised, I made a few slight edits in the last few updates concerning the British Empire to highlight the conservative character of British policies and its repressive attitudes towards colonial unrest.

[whiteshore]

Maybe the Reformist Monarchists in China could rally behind either the Duke Yansheng or the Marquis of Extended Grace? And maybe ITTL, the American political system is "Liberal Republicans, Conservative Democrats"?

[eurofed]

Aug 15, 2016 10:18:04 GMT whiteshore said:

Maybe the Reformist Monarchists in China could rally behind either the Duke Yansheng or the Marquis of Extended Grace? And maybe ITTL, the American political system is "Liberal Republicans, Conservative Democrats"?

About the former issue, they might but I don't see it as a really necessary or especially likely occurence. As a rule, the Chinese notion of monarchical legitimacy was much less grounded in having the right kind of bloodline than the European or Japanese ones. The theory of 'Mandate of Heaven' entirely allowed for a talented and successful commoner to seize the Imperial throne and start a new dynasty, as it happened several times in Chinese history, including the Han, Tang, and Ming. So it is entirely possible the most talented, charismatic, powerful, and popular leader in the Reformist Monarchist movement would pull a Napoleon, seize the throne himself, and be seen as a legitimate Emperor. Yuan Shikai tried and failed IOTL but someone else more capable and lucky might well succeed (at least for North China).

About the latter issue, the situation is a little more complex but your assessment isn't really wrong. During the Reconstruction Era indeed the parties alignment was "progressive GOP, conservative Dems" in civil rights and economic issues. During the Gilded Age new social issues arose from industrialization which both parties failed to address. This caused the rise of new reformist movements which acted part as independent parties, part as the liberal wings of the main parties (Progressives for the GOP, Populists for the Dems). Then there are the far-leftists that are significant but rather more isolated and less infuential. So at different times and in different circumstances, the US mainstream party system during the Progressive Age includes 2-3 or 4-5 elements.

The political situation is fluid due to this division and might evolve in various ways. However if we assume the political gravitational pull towards a two-party system holds in the postwar near future (which would require the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and FPTP electoral system are not abolished soon; it might well happen in TTL more progressive USA), the influence of Teddy Roosevelt, his domestic reforms, and his successes as a war president may well cause the liberal faction to become entirely dominant in the GOP. This would likely drive most conservative Reps to seek shelter in the Democratic party and most liberal Dems to join the Republicans. This would indeed solidify the Republicans as the liberal party and the Democrats as the conservative party again as in the Reconstruction Era. Only this time it would be about the social issues of the Industrial age instead of the civil rights ones. It bears noting ITTL the political alignment of the Southern section is not so rigid as IOTL, due to a more successful Reconstruction that prevented segregation and allowed the rise of a Black and 'poor white' middle class to counterbalance the racist conservatives.

This alignment would basically be TTL inverted equivalent of the OTL New Deal one. As a matter of fact, I do expect a (more extensive since it would also include stuff such as universal health care) equivalent of the New Deal reforms would occur ITTL in the postwar period, both as the continuation of the prewar Progressive reforms and as the compensation the masses would successfully claim for their wartime sacrifices. The same reformist pattern would also occur in the European victor powers (esp. Germany and Italy). It thus would also be TTL equivalent of the G.I. Bill and post-WWII welfare systems. ITTL the economic situation has been somewhat more favorable since the Long Depression has been butterflied away (due to a different US monetary policy and the existence of the Central European economic union). And TTL overall post-*WWI situation is going to be different enough in many regards that any equivalent of the Great Depression may be easily averted as well and hence any strict equivalent of the OTL New Deal. Broadly speaking, ITTL Teddy Roosevelt is going to be the historical amalgam equivalent both of his OTL self and his cousin.  

[whiteshore]

Maybe there could be a power struggle between the intellectuals who champion the idea of the Duke Yansheng or the Marquis of Extended Grace as the Emperor and the generals who see themselves as the new Emperor of China?

[eurofed]

Sept 9, 2016 14:53:23 GMT whiteshore said:

Maybe there could be a power struggle between the intellectuals who champion the idea of the Duke Yansheng or the Marquis of Extended Grace as the Emperor and the generals who see themselves as the new Emperor of China?

It might happen, although I see the generals faction to win the power struggle without too much effort since they would have the greatest power base and more actual legitimacy according to the Mandate of Heaven system. The notion of putting these nobles on the throne due to their 'special' blood despite not having kept the throne for several centuries or ever would be a serious innovation for Chinese political thought. As a matter of fact, the only serious argument for this option to be taken seriously at all would be intellectuals imitating European and Japanese notions of kingship and grasping for straws in a time of desperation. But in the end the Mandate of Heaven way of putting the most successful general on the throne would likely look like the most natural and time-honored option.

[whiteshore]

Maybe, like how the full horrors of the "Final Solution" were only revealed when the Soviets took the death camps, the full horrors of the Congo Free State analogue are only revealed when the Germans (or Italians) take it in *WW1?

[eurofed]

Jan 14, 2017 0:31:29 GMT whiteshore said:

Maybe, like how the full horrors of the "Final Solution" were only revealed when the Soviets took the death camps, the full horrors of the Congo Free State analogue are only revealed when the Germans (or Italians) take it in *WW1?

As a matter of fact, this is higly probable to happen since France-Iberia is an authoritarian state with ample means to suppress unwanted news and counter it with propaganda. Although its regime in all likelihood doesn't reach the totalitarian levels of control of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia (other kinds of authoritarian regimes are likely a better analogy here, such as Tsarist Russia or the South American dictatorships, in terms of efficiency of the security apparatus), colonial Africa was still a very remote place for Europeans and Americans in the late 19th century, so it would be relatively simple for the regime to control the information flow about the colonies. Probably some leakage happens nonetheless thanks to dissidents and foreign journalists, but not enough to make the regime's reputation much worse than it would be from its being an authoritarian chauvinist regime. When the regime is defeated in *WWI, the full picture of its atrocities is going to emerge and considerably worsen its posthumous reputation, even if it is never going to be anywhere as bad as the same kind of crimes being done against White people. For Western public opinion in this period, life and suffering of 'darkies' are much less important than the ones of European folks. In this regard, the war crimes France-Iberia is likely going to committ in Europe during *WWI, assuming it gets a chance to occupy a significant amount of foreign territory for any long, are probably going to be even more effective to paint them as monsters. Kaiserreich's treatment of Belgium during our WWI would likely look quite gentlemanly in comparison to what France-Iberian troops are likely to do. And of course American, German, and Italian propaganda is going to have its day with it.