Malê Rising

[Daztur]

Originally Posted by Ganesha

Jonathan, I'm assuming the base reasons for the Sino-Japanese War are still there, right? After all, East Asia seems to be the region least affected by butterflies in this timeline.

France and Japan were quite close during this period, especially after 1868. With greater French support, perhaps Japan is even more successful than OTL. That could mean that Japan gains Port Arthur, which could either move up or butterfly the Russo-Japanese War. On the other hand, the basic French reasons for opposing Japanese control of Port Arthur are still there, so perhaps the Triple Intervention still happens.

Cheers,
Ganesha

Well we seem to be heading to a UK/North Germany vs. France/Austria/Bavaria. I'm assuming that Japan will and Russia will come to blows but I'm not sure who will be on which side.

Also with the Sino-Japanese War, I'd guess that the run-up to the *WW I will butterfly that a good bit.

[B_Munro]

Originally Posted by Admiral Matt

Shouldn't Georgia and Armenia look more like Poland and Finland?

Is there a separate status for Alsace-Lorraine? Looks like it on the map.

Read the notes and the color labels...

Bruce

[Future8]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

Ok, first draft...sorry I took so long.

Bruce

Why is 26 written on Madagascar as well?

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by Ganesha

Jonathan, I'm assuming the base reasons for the Sino-Japanese War are still there, right? After all, East Asia seems to be the region least affected by butterflies in this timeline.

France and Japan were quite close during this period, especially after 1868. With greater French support, perhaps Japan is even more successful than OTL. That could mean that Japan gains Port Arthur, which could either move up or butterfly the Russo-Japanese War. On the other hand, the basic French reasons for opposing Japanese control of Port Arthur are still there, so perhaps the Triple Intervention still happens.

Originally Posted by Daztur

Well we seem to be heading to a UK/North Germany vs. France/Austria/Bavaria. I'm assuming that Japan will and Russia will come to blows but I'm not sure who will be on which side.

Also with the Sino-Japanese War, I'd guess that the run-up to the *WW I will butterfly that a good bit.

France is increasingly cozying up to Russia, which will be the third major partner in the Franco-Austrian alliance. At the moment, their Japan policy is somewhat confused: they want to stay friendly with Japan but not annoy the Russians. They're trying to get Russia and Japan to work out their regional spheres of influence diplomatically, which won't necessarily work.

The Sino-Japanese War in OTL occurred in 1894-95, which overlaps with TTL's Great War. The reasons for the war do still exist, but may well play out as part of the Great War rather than a separate conflict.

Originally Posted by Admiral Matt

Shouldn't Georgia and Armenia look more like Poland and Finland?

They're kingdoms in personal union with the Tsar rather integral parts of the Russian empire, and the Ottomans have a good deal to say about what goes on there, so the way he has it probably works.

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Marie-Laure Augustin, The French Empire in the Decade of Reaction (Paris: Flammarion, 2010)

… The reforms of the 1870s left many with a sense that France had gone too far too fast. The elimination of censorship, the secularization of education and public life, the expansion of French citizenship in the colonies and other liberalizing measures were popular in the cities, but in the countryside, it felt like French culture was slipping away into a detribalized modernity. At the same time, the left was increasingly disillusioned with the new order: France in 1880 was a more socially free and politically participatory country than it had been in 1870, but economic inequality was only increasing, and the social-welfare policies that many had expected to follow full democratization had not materialized. And in the background were the unresolved traumas of the transition to modern industrial society, the replacement of a life centered on a close community with anonymity and atomization.

All these came together in the election of 1881, where the parliamentary left was decimated and the parties of the right secured a commanding majority. For the next decade, a succession of right-wing figures would dominate French politics, and political debate would take place primarily among factions of the right rather than being a grand conversation between right and left.

The French right was, of course, not even close to a monolithic entity: it consisted of dozens of parties separated by doctrinal disputes and by the leaders to whom they owed allegiance. These, in turn, were grouped into three major coalitions. There were the Romantics, called by their detractors the "Petit Trianon bloc," who wished to restore the culture and values of a mostly-imagined eighteenth-century rural France. These were explicitly anti-modern, often legitimist, and anti-imperialist; they preferred an idealized “little France” to an empire that threatened to dilute and transform French identity. There was the clerical party, which sought to restore the Church as guardian of public morals and which often flirted with anti-semitism and opposition to Islam.

And there were the Populists. These, unlike the other factions, embraced industrial modernity, and supported a Bismarck-style welfare state in order to court the urban working-class voters who had deserted the left. But they too traded on the public longing for gemeinschaft community, substituting the state for the village as a focus of shared identity. The populist parties were unabashedly imperialist and militarist, emphasized service to the state and voluntarism as the foundations of citizenship, and were often (albeit not always) centered around a charismatic leader.

None of the major factions was ever strong enough to form a government on its own, especially since each was riven by internal divisions and leadership disputes. The typical government during the Decade of Reaction consisted of two of them in coalition, supported by fringe parties, opportunistic centrists, or even (in the case of populist-dominated governments) pragmatic elements of the left. These arrangements were highly unstable, and rarely lasted long before succumbing to internal dissension; between 1881 and the onset of the Great War in 1893, France had seventeen governments.

The rapid turnover made it difficult for any clear policies to emerge, and Napoleon IV made frequent use of his veto power to block more extreme measures. During the 1882 parliamentary session, he vetoed attempts to restore censorship and repeal Latin Right citizenship in the colonies, although he was forced to allow the Church to resume a “partnership role” in education. In 1883, when the Populists dominated the corps législatif in coalition with the Romantics, the emperor allowed an experimental social-insurance scheme and acquiesced to a volunteer Public Service Corps under military sponsorship, but vetoed bills that would have annexed the deep Algerian desert to France and established a service qualification for the franchise…

… The Senegalese managed surprisingly well under the rule of the right. To be sure, the clerical politicians, who believed that to be French was to be Catholic, were implacably opposed to citizenship for Muslim Africans and repeatedly introduced bills to strip Senegal of its parliamentary representation. But they were never strong enough to prevail, and the other two factions found much to admire in Senegal. The Romantics found many points of agreement with the rural conservatives who made up most of the Senegalese delegation, and some of them considered Senegal a culture which had kept more of its purity than France; indeed, several prominent Romantics held up rural Senegalese poetry and literature as emblematic of the values to which France should return. And the leading Populists respected the Senegalese tradition of military service, pointing to the tirailleurs as people who had earned their citizenship rather than taking it for granted as the degenerate liberal intellectuals did. There were Senegalese in the Populist and Romantic blocs, and African veterans benefited from the added privileges that Populist governments attached to military service.

There were others, of course, who viewed the new political order differently. Neither the Tijaniyyah brotherhoods with their Abacarist emphasis on social justice, nor the aggressively modern outlook of the Mourides, meshed well with the new right, especially since the Populists, while supporting industry, disdained business. The quatre communes of Senegal, like most of the large cities in France itself, were opposition-controlled throughout the 1880s. The central government mostly left them alone, but the early part of the decade accentuated the already-existing differences between coastal Senegal and the interior.

Elsewhere in the colonies, the Decade of Reaction proved more hostile. While not all the right-wing parties were opposed to all extensions of citizenship rights – a majority of Populists welcomed African and Asian soldiers and their families into the French polity – the right-wing governments were skeptical of enlarging the franchise for reasons other than military service. The result was a markedly more stingy application of the Law of the Latin Right; while there were still variations between local governors, and while citizenship was still used as a strategic tool to seal military alliances, a majority of governors adopted a very narrow definition of the “leading men” who the law entitled to French nationality.

This trend became even more marked after the Indenié rebellion of 1884, the first major revolt among those who had already been made French colonial subjects (as opposed to those who opposed incorporation into the French empire in the first instance). The revolt was prompted by local grievances: the Indenié resented the imposition of a labor tax, felt neglected by a Grand Bassam-based government and civil service that was dominated by Frenchmen and Baoulé, and believed that the colonial authorities were failing to protect them from raids by the British Asante protectorate. But what caught the most notice in Paris was that the leaders of the rebellion included the very “leading men” who had been granted French citizenship when the Indenié kingdom was conquered. The rebellion prompted a stormy debate in the corps législatif, with Populist politicians arguing that the Law of the Latin Right had “nurtured traitors,” and after 1885, it became Colonial Ministry policy to interpret the law narrowly in the absence of factors that compelled otherwise.

It was the inland peoples’ misfortune that this coincided with a period of rapid territorial expansion. The French empire’s growth was intermittent, with occasional intervals of anti-imperialist government under Romantic-Clerical coalitions, but when the Populists were part of the majority, as they most often were, conquest and subsidiary alliance became a matter of policy. During the early 1880s, France solidified its control over Cambodia and became increasingly aggressive in its relations with the Vietnamese empire; in 1883, it seized on an attempted coup by reactionaries in the Siamese court to bring that country into its sphere of influence, ironically by siding with the reformist king against the reactionaries. In Africa, the borders of French Guinea met those of the Toucouleur empire, and those of Côte d’Ivoire met the Mossi kingdom.

All this provided many new recruits for the tirailleurs, as the majority of inland peoples – largely debarred from citizenship under strict interpretations of the Latin Right, and thus not favored for civil posts – chose the military as their route to French nationality and social advancement. The Indenié, ironically, were among those who flocked to the colors, as were the Mande-speaking peoples of Guinea and the Fula of Futa Jallon. And those who had been granted French citizenship liberally, such as the Baoulé of Sakassou (the only African municipality outside Senegal which had thus far been permitted to incorporate as a commune) began organizing to protect the rights which they viewed as under assault. Clubs such as Paul Koffi’s Association of African Citizens, formed in Sakassou in 1884, sought to build alliances with Napoleon IV’s court and what remained of the French left, and in time, the sophisticated politicians who emerged from these clubs would provide France’s colonial citizens with leadership that had been missing since Abdoulaye Diouf’s death.

In addition to the internal turmoil, the French Empire’s expansion brought it into increasing conflict with the other leading colonial empire, the British. Flashpoints included Asia, where France supported Upper Burma as an independent buffer kingdom; Grão Pará, where French backing of its Brazilian client’s claims clashed with Britain’s support of the national government; but most of all, Africa. In some cases – for instance, France’s attempt to ally with Liberia as a counterweight to the British presence in Sierra Leone, or the efforts of both Britain and France to woo the Mossi kingdom to their side – the rivalry was played out by proxy, but by the mid-1880s, there was more and more direct tension along the Asante and Sierra Leone borders. And then there was the Congo…

*******

Antoine Bileka, Gateway to the Congo: The Story of Gabon (Libreville: Bioko, 1998)

... The Congo basin in the early 1880s was the Cockpit of Africa at its rawest and purest. Nearly a million square miles of land with untold natural riches, unclaimed by any European power and with the great majority of its peoples at the pre-state level: it was the ultimate imperial prize, and as colonial empires increasingly became a matter of prestige, almost everyone wanted a piece of it. Even before 1880, explorers roamed the Congo as stalking horses for imperial powers and business concerns, making treaties and trade arrangements with chieftains and village headmen: Evanson on behalf of Portugal, Alessandri for France, and de Ruyter for a consortium of German and Dutch companies.

The rapids of the lower Congo, and Portugal's claim to the mouth of the river, were initially an obstacle, but the creole traders of Gabon had long known of the overland route that reached the Congo at a point above the falls. The terrain was difficult but not impassable, and much of the trip could be accomplished by water: up the Ogoue River, portage to the Lefini or Alima, and from there to the Congo itself. In 1882, a French expedition led by Alessandri concluded treaties of protection with the local rulers along the route, and an accompanying surveying party began laying out a road to ease the portage. At nearly the same time, a German expedition established its own route, overland from the North German Confederation's outpost in the Cameroons to the Ngoko and Sangha rivers. The way was open for the exploitation of the Congo Basin's resources... and for its people's great catastrophe.

The most valuable of the Congo's riches was its abundant wild rubber. Harvesting that rubber, however, was unpleasant work that few of the indigenous people wished to do, especially for the meager wages offered by the trading companies. Even ordinary forced labor was insufficient for the companies' needs; because the rubber grew in the wild rather than being cultivated in plantations, the harvesters had to roam the jungle in search of it, and could not be organized into closely supervised gangs. The question for the companies was thus how to make the Congolese do something they didn't want to do, without supervision, and yet keep them from simply running away and re-establishing themselves elsewhere.

The solution hit upon by several was hostage-taking: holding the women and children of a village as security for its quota of rubber. They also forcibly recruited the Congolese as soldiers, both to enforce the hostage system against other villages and to battle other companies over territory. In 1885, this was still a pale shadow of the horrors that would come later, but the shape of what was to come was already apparent: corporate fiefdoms acting largely outside any normative constraints and without the balance of legal rights and protections that existed in other colonies.

The one indigenous group that had a partial exemption from this treatment was the Luba. Unlike most other Congolese peoples, the Luba had a pre-colonial state, and although their kingdom was in steep decline by the 1880s, it still had commercial networks that extended through much of the basin. The Luba were thus able to carve out a position as guides and middlemen for the European companies - a position which, in many cases, forced them to act as unwilling enforcers, but one which enabled them to keep their own culture and polity somewhat intact.

And at the same time, the seeds of resistance were also being planted throughout the Congo, by the small merchants who continued to trade up and down the river even while the companies were establishing their hegemony. Traders from the Anglo-Omani vassal kingdoms east of the Great Lakes brought word of Carlsenist pietism and Tippu Tip's ecstatic Abacarist Ibadism; those from Gabon brought their fiercely independent Bwiti candomble. The concessionaires suppressed these religions wherever they could, but the Congo basin was too big and the terrain too difficult to keep them out entirely, and their prophetic traditions would form the nucleus of many future protests and rebellions.

In 1885, though, the companies' most immediate problem was each other, as the disputes over territorial claims intensified. Sometimes these took on the magnitude of small wars: at the Battle of Impfondo in July of that year, pitting an impromptu alliance of French and British concessionaires against the German-Dutch consortium, more than three thousand soldiers fought on each side. The scale of the fighting threatened to make the Congolese enterprise unprofitable, and it was in these circumstances that France - which remembered the way in which diplomacy had resolved the governance of Eritrea to its satisfaction - proposed an international conference to settle Africa's colonial borders...

[Cuāuhtemōc]

I enjoyed the update.

Speaking of those autonomous duchies, nothing different happened in regards to the Maronite-Druze conflict in Lebanon around the 1860s? Because with this seemingly effective approach by the Ottomans, they might consider doing the same thing to the Maronites of Mount Lebanon?

[Diez Mil Cantos]

This conference you speak of...
I can only assume it does not end well for the native african states
This TL is so captivating, please continue

[Admiral Matt]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

Read the notes and the color labels...

Bruce

IIRC, the Christians in the Caucasus retain the Tsar as head of state.... Edit: Ah, I see.

As for Alsace, I'm surprised the Napoleon is willing to compromise the otherwise overwhelming preference for centralization of the French, all as a sop to a defeated power that is unavoidably fixed as a military opponent by France's position in Germany. Also wondering how part of Lorraine ended up as part of "Elsass."

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by Cuāuhtemōc

Speaking of those autonomous duchies, nothing different happened in regards to the Maronite-Druze conflict in Lebanon around the 1860s? Because with this seemingly effective approach by the Ottomans, they might consider doing the same thing to the Maronites of Mount Lebanon?

Hmmm. The Ottomans did try to partition Lebanon during the 1840s OTL, but it didn't work, and the factors that led to it not working (including great-power meddling) would still be present in this timeline. The changes to the Ottoman Empire didn't really become noticeable until the late 1860s, so I'd guess that events in Lebanon during 1840-60 played out much the same. On the other hand, a stronger and more modernist Ottoman Empire might try again in the 1880s, including reforms to the feudal system that was partly responsible for the communal tensions. I may visit this topic during the next Ottoman update.

I also need to figure out what to do with Persia and Afghanistan. There were reformists and revolutionaries in both countries during the early twentieth century; I assume that will be at least as true here, but need to work out what ideas filter in from where, and what adaptations are made of them.

Originally Posted by Diez Mil Cantos

This conference you speak of... I can only assume it does not end well for the native african states

It might not end so well for the Europeans either - remember that West Africa will be one of the flashpoints of the Great War. And as I've mentioned before, there will be fireworks in the form of an African delegation trying to crash the party as Ho Chi Minh did at Versailles.

Originally Posted by Admiral Matt

As for Alsace, I'm surprised the Napoleon is willing to compromise the otherwise overwhelming preference for centralization of the French, all as a sop to a defeated power that is unavoidably fixed as a military opponent by France's position in Germany. Also wondering how part of Lorraine ended up as part of "Elsass."

It was a small concession to help end a stalemated war. The Germans of Alsace didn't get very much: the right to conduct business in German, the right to maintain their own schools, and the freedom to form cultural associations and have public German festivals. They didn't get any political autonomy - Alsace doesn't have its own parliament, and its officials are appointed in the same way as those in other parts of France.

Also, if anyone's interested, my take on TTL's French Right assumes that the presence of the emperor and the better outcome of the Franco-Prussian War will both be stabilizing factors, and that there won't be revanchist military officers plotting coups. The right will be more constitutionalist and democratically minded, although as can be seen, there are some nasty aspects to their ideology (and their very constitutionalism will help to make those ideologies more acceptable).

[B_Munro]

Originally Posted by Future8

Why is 26 written on Madagascar as well?

Because I have two sets of numbers: one for Africa, one for everywhere else.

Bruce

[B_Munro]

Originally Posted by Admiral Matt

IIRC, the Christians in the Caucasus retain the Tsar as head of state.... Edit: Ah, I see.

As for Alsace, I'm surprised the Napoleon is willing to compromise the otherwise overwhelming preference for centralization of the French, all as a sop to a defeated power that is unavoidably fixed as a military opponent by France's position in Germany. Also wondering how part of Lorraine ended up as part of "Elsass."

I was assuming some sort of plebescite to determine which were the bits with a large enough German-speaking population to be in the autonomous region, and that the borders wouldn't precisely map to Alsace; wasn't there a fair number of German speakers in eastern Lorraine at the time, or am I remembering incorrectly?

Bruce

[B_Munro]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Edelstein

They're kingdoms in personal union with the Tsar rather integral parts of the Russian empire, and the Ottomans have a good deal to say about what goes on there, so the way he has it probably works.

Wasn't quite sure how to show that: perhaps keep the Ottoman vassal color, and give them a Russian colored outline?

Bruce

[B_Munro]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Edelstein

... The Congo basin in the early 1880s was the Cockpit of Africa at its rawest and purest. Nearly a million square miles of land with untold natural riches, unclaimed by any European power and with the great majority of its peoples at the pre-state level: it was the ultimate imperial prize, .

To quibble: rather the "last great imperial prize" - all the really top-flight bits, like India or North America, had been taken already...

Bruce

[Admiral Matt]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

I was assuming some sort of plebescite to determine which were the bits with a large enough German-speaking population to be in the autonomous region, and that the borders wouldn't precisely map to Alsace; wasn't there a fair number of German speakers in eastern Lorraine at the time, or am I remembering incorrectly?

Bruce

Well, define German. In broad strokes, though, no. There was a pretty clear linguistic transition between Alsace and Lorraine, but no such distinction within the latter, to my knowledge. Rather, the entire place spoke French, with virtually everyone speaking Alsatian in private life. Alsatian was closer to German than to French, but it isn't German any more than Dutch is (and IIRC it's even further off than that).

I'm sure there were many in Lorraine who spoke German as well - it would be a bit ridiculous not to given the geography and natural business connections. I don't even doubt that there'd be more of them, closer to Germany. My thinking is that the region matching the OTL A-L annexation so closely is unnecessary parallelism. Germany didn't annex what it did on the basis of self determination. It took that part of Lorraine to get a more secure border and defense-in-depth for the Rhineland. Not taking it would have allowed the French to strike directly into Germany proper - remember that both regions were governed outside the general German system, effectively acknowledging them as non-German - it was better to have the next war fought in German France than in German Germany. Conversely, the Germans held back from annexing all of Lorraine, which would have been absurd if Germanicness (not really Germaness, per se) was the real issue. They weren't interested in either governing that many Frenchmen or defending the resulting salient.

I'm not an expert here, but that's what I know, so.

[Some Bloke]

There seems to be much closer colonial integration than OTL, it would be interesting to see how this pans out in the 20th century with Africa being more developed (in some cases independently of European intervention) and many more independent (relatively speaking) polities.

[wolf_brother]

We've seen a lot about the internal politics of France & Turkey, but what about the other colonial powers (e.g. Britain, Spain, Netherlands, North Germany, Russia, America, etc.)

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

Wasn't quite sure how to show that: perhaps keep the Ottoman vassal color, and give them a Russian colored outline?

That should work.

Originally Posted by Some Bloke

There seems to be much closer colonial integration than OTL, it would be interesting to see how this pans out in the 20th century with Africa being more developed (in some cases independently of European intervention) and many more independent (relatively speaking) polities.

That will be one of the major themes once this timeline gets to the twentieth century. Keep in mind, though, that the degree of integration is uneven: Portuguese colonial policy isn't much different from OTL, German policy will be a mixed bag, and France is now going through a period in which integration is being undermined (it'll get better, but not all the damage will be undone). Decolonization will be a very varied affair in TTL, with some remarkable success stories and others... not so much.

Originally Posted by wolf_brother

We've seen a lot about the internal politics of France & Turkey, but what about the other colonial powers (e.g. Britain, Spain, Netherlands, North Germany, Russia, America, etc.)

It's a fair cop: the Ottomans are one of the focus countries, and French domestic politics has become much more intertwined with African affairs than the politics of other European countries, so I've shown them the most.

We'll be seeing some of the others fairly soon: Russia either two or three updates from now; Britain in the next family-saga update (which will involve Usman and Adeseye in London for Queen Victoria's golden jubilee); the NDB, Portugal and the United States during the run-up to the Great War. Probably the Netherlands too, given that one of the prewar interludes will involve Indonesia. Most European politics will continue to play out offstage, but now that the Malê are in Britain and vice versa, British politics will appear more regularly, especially after... well, that would be telling.

For the record, the basic assumptions I'm working from are as follows:

The United States, at the federal level, is somewhat more Republican than OTL, given South Carolina's continued GOP tilt and the earlier admission of Colorado; the Democrats are competitive in presidential elections, but the Republicans almost always control Congress. On the other hand, the federal government is less powerful due to a weaker set of postwar amendments, and the Republican Party is becoming increasingly factionalized.

British politics, in its broad outline, is similar to OTL: a two-party-plus system dominated by Liberals and Conservatives, with incremental progress toward universal suffrage and the middle and working classes trying to break into the circles of power. I haven't actually named any prime ministers, but I'm assuming Disraeli and Gladstone had something similar to their OTL careers. Imperial policy is different, but thus far, hasn't been a decisive factor in domestic politics. That will start to change in the 1880s, both because of the British and African labor movements becoming aware of each other and the effect of Oyo's status on the Irish question ("if a bunch of bloody [Africans] can have home rule, why can't we?"). We'll see some of that in the golden-jubilee update.

Russia is still autocratic, so there's a vast gulf between official Russia, which is revanchist, reactionary and ultra-monarchist, and the grass-roots. There are certainly nationalist groups that favor the monarchy, but there is also a broad and highly factionalized revolutionary spectrum, breaking down along urban-rural, religious-secular, Christian-Islamic and bourgeois-socialist lines. Marxists, narodniks, secular liberals, Abacarists, Central Asian mystics: they're all present just under the surface.

Spain is a limited monarchy with something similar to OTL's 1869 constitution: more democratic than Napoleon III's France, probably less so than Napoleon IV's. It's a less industrialized and developed nation than France, so I'd expect that the right wing would be more feudal-clerical and less industrial-modern, and that there would be a major town-country divide. I'm not quite sure where regional nationalisms would fit in, but I'd expect them to run up against modernist "one country, one language" notions sometime before the turn of the century.

In the North German Confederation, Bismarck is still in power, having survived the stalemated Franco-Prussian war, and regards German unification as his most important piece of unfinished business. It's still a confederation in name, but power is slowly moving toward the center through the development of common institutions (postal system, telegraph, railroads, military forces, federal courts, social-welfare schemes, etc.), and its citizens increasingly call it "Germany." Democracy is still very much a managed affair; speech and public debate are relatively free, but elections are at least as gerrymandered as they were in OTL's Wilhelmine era. The southern German states, for their part, are undergoing major conflict between ruler and ruled: pan-Germanism is popular, and a majority of the people want to join the prosperous and industrialized NDB, but the ruling dynasties emphatically don't. As I've mentioned before, Bavaria will be one of the flashpoints of the Great War.

Portugal. Got to figure out what to do with Portugal. And Italy too: the issue of Rome will be a running sore in Italian politics as long as it remains unresolved. I'm assuming that Napoleon IV is less interested in protecting the Papal States than his uncle, and would like to broker a deal between the Savoyard monarchy and the Papacy in order to rid himself of that headache, but French foreign policy is mostly out of his control by now so the solution may have to be a purely Italian one. We've discussed the possibility of Pius IX not being as radicalized if Pellegrino Rossi escapes assassination; maybe there could be a detente between the Papacy and the Kingdom of Italy during his later years, followed by some sort of federal arrangement under the next pope. If Leo XIII is still elected, I can imagine him being astute enough to pull that off; otherwise, there may be another suitable cardinal. Or maybe the Papal States become another Great War casualty.

[B_Munro]

Ok, I've made a few modifications...

Bruce

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

Ok, I've made a few modifications...

Looks just about perfect - thanks again for doing this!

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Quand nos Aïeux brisèrent leurs entraves
Ce n'était pas pour se croiser les bras
Pour travailler en maîtres les esclaves
Ont embrassé corps à corps le trépas.
Leur sang à flots engraissa nos collines,
A notre tour, jaunes et noirs, allons!
Creusons le sol légué par Dessalines:
Notre fortune est là dans nos vallons.

When our fathers broke their chains
This was not to fold their arms
And to let slaves work for them as masters
Side by side, till death.
Their streams of blood soaked our hills
But now our turn came, Brown and Black, onward!
Plough the soil of Dessalines:
Our wealth is here in our small valleys.

– Oswald Durand

*******

The Haitian consul in Paris had never seen Haiti. He was a coffee importer whose name was known in Port-au-Prince and who had accounts with the upcountry planters, a man who the Haitians in France would visit if they were in trouble, but he knew the country only from the stories his grandmother had told him. He was fifty-four, an easy man with a comfortable life, and being consul suited him well: it was little work, lent prestige to his business, and gave him a sentimental connection to his grandmother's country.

He'd never expected that it might bring him into the presence of the emperor, where he now was.

The chamberlain ushered him into a private study; it wasn't a large room or an ornate one, but it was enough to know that he was in a palace, and enough to recognize the man his own age who sat at the desk.

"Votre majesté..."

"Sit down, Charles," said Napoleon IV. "You’re wondering, no doubt, what has brought your country to my notice?”

It didn’t seem to be time to remind the emperor that Haiti wasn’t his country, so Charles nodded wordlessly.

“It has come to the notice of emperors and kings before, who have done it many wrongs. One of which,” the emperor said, lifting a sheet of yellowed paper from the desktop, “I intend to right today.

“Around the time both of us were born, we sold you your independence for a hundred and fifty million francs.” Charles had heard the story: with fourteen French gunboats in the harbor, President Boyer had agreed to pay reparations in exchange for recognition of Haiti’s nationhood. “Some millions of that, I believe, remains unpaid.”

“I wouldn’t know the figure,” Charles admitted; such matters of state never entered the petty diplomacy for which Haiti called on him.

“Nor will you need to.” Napoleon took the paper again, in both hands. “In a few months, when the new constitution takes effect, I won’t be able to do this. So I’ll do it now, when I can.” He tore the sheet in half, and in half again.

“The balance is zero. The chamberlain has prepared a certificate of discharge, which he will give you before you go. Now join me in a glass of wine, for your health and your nation’s.”

*******

“Maybe we could plant some sugar cane this year,” Madeleine said.

“Not now, no,” Lucien answered. He didn’t name the reasons. She knew them very well. Too much work, too little land, the children not old enough to help, Madeleine herself still recovering from her miscarriage. “Maybe next time.”

“So you’ll be going, then?” That was why she’d asked the question, even though she knew the answer: if they couldn’t plant sugar or coffee, then he’d have to find work on someone else’s cane fields, to earn the money to buy the things their plot couldn’t provide.

“Yes. Santo Domingo this year, I think.” He’d gone across the mountains each of the past two years. He didn’t like doing it – his great-grandfather hadn’t fought against slavery, and his grandfather hadn’t come here to escape the fermage serfdom of Christophe and Boyer, so that a Dominican field-boss could look on him as if he were a slave all over again – but the money wasn’t bad.

“You’ll stay tonight, at least?”

“I’ll leave in the morning.” He stood behind Madeleine as she stirred the pot of rice, pressed a kiss to the top of her head, massaged her tight curls. “I’ll make a few gourdes more than we need – I always do. One day Sylvain will be grown, and we’ll be able to buy the plot next to ours, and I can stay.”

“Piti, piti, wazo fe nich li,” she answered – little by little, the bird builds its nest. It would be a long time, at this rate, before their nest was built, but saying so made the day feel closer for a moment.

He looked east at the rolling hills, and the misted mountains in the distance. Then, he looked back to Madeleine. In the morning, after all, the hills would still be there.

*******

In Lysius Salomon’s long exile, Port-au-Prince had been a place of dreams. A year after his return, it still was; what was the job of a president if not to dream for his nation, and work to see those dreams fulfilled?

When he closed his eyes, he could see a Haiti of paved roads, clean running water, factories, universities, a Haiti that was a nation among nations, that would be an inspiration at the end of the century as it had been at the beginning. It had made a few small steps already: postage stamps, the telegraph to Kingston, a central bank, new secondary schools. But the rest of the journey was so long.

It helped that there was peace with the Dominicans. It helped that Haiti could spend its taxes at home, now that the French debt had been cancelled. It helped that Salomon had actually been elected to the presidency, as had his predecessor. If he kept his eyes closed, he could believe that Haiti’s prospects were better than at any time since Dessalines’ days.

But if he opened them, all he had to do was look down at his hands to see otherwise. His black hands… hands that the mulatto politicians didn’t think should hold power.

He’d been to Liberia during his exile, and he’d seen how Thomas Day had ended the squabbling between mulatto and black. But Day had been in an enviable position, compared to him. In Liberia, Day’s force had been overwhelming; once he’d put down the factions, they’d stayed down. Here, a faction out of power started plotting its return that very day, and it could always hire some cacos in the mountains to fight for it. There had been two rebellions already since Salomon’s election, and one try at a coup.

No wonder the dreams of most presidents were limited to finishing their terms…

But he’d learned something else in Liberia too, something even London and Paris hadn’t taught him. Who could blame the cacos for supporting whoever paid them, who could blame them for not caring who ruled the country, when the country had done nothing to make them part of it?

For too long, we’ve treated the state as something that only existed in the cities. What do the peasants in the mountains care if there are telegraph lines in Port-au-Prince or secondary schools in Jacmel? What good are postage stamps to people who can’t write a letter? Like the Kru and Kpelle before Day came, we’ve always done things to the people in the country, never anything for them.

It was time for that to change, time for modernizing to stop being a synonym for flashy projects in Port-au-Prince. Primary schools, rural doctors and police, farmers’ cooperatives, sugar exchanges: nothing as impressive as a central bank, but maybe, things that could help make Haiti a nation again…

The rest of the journey is so long.

*******

Lucien was away in Santo Domingo again when the teacher came. The government men had come and built a school a few months before, and now there was someone to teach there. It was close enough to send Sylvain and Marie, who were still too young to work; Thérèse wasn’t old enough to go, but she would be in another year.

“The teacher speaks French like a mam’zelle,” Marie whispered, but she was coming along well enough in Creole; in fact, she’d asked the children to teach her Creole words in exchange for French. Madeleine had met her once or twice, and she wasn’t a bad sort; she was happy enough to spend an evening telling stories and sharing recipes.

Her name was a strange one, of course. Alimatou. She was from Africa, someplace where they spoke French and ate rice but had never heard of loa. She'd heard of Toussaint and Dessalines, though - in fact, if she was to be believed, they'd inspired one of her great religious teachers.

She’d come here after ten years as a nurse in the French army. That wasn’t a bad thing – it meant she could treat fevers and patch up injuries as well as teach, and she could tell stories of all the places she’d seen. By now, Marie and Sylvain were talking more about that than about her posh French.

She’d have to tell Lucien when he returned. He wouldn’t be the only one who could tell stories of foreigners now. But she’d have to go to the mambo first; Alimatou was almost thirty, and it wouldn’t do for her to stay too long unmarried.

*******

“The constitution,” said Salomon, “won’t allow me another term.”

Across from him, in the darkened study, Oswald Durand nodded. He was one of the president’s main supporters in Congress, and he’d spent the last months quietly politicking to see if that part of the constitution might be amended, but the votes just weren’t there.

“I still wonder if I should have changed it myself, like Day did,” the president continued, “but you were right about that. Better to leave than to be driven out… and I’m a seventy-year-old man with a three-year-old daughter. So I’ll leave next year, as the law requires.”

Salomon laced his fingers together and looked down, lost in thought. Durand listened to the clock ticking behind him – twenty after two in the morning – and waited for him to collect himself.

“You will succeed me,” the older man said at last.

“I? I’m a teacher, a deputy in my first term… I, succeed you?”

“Yes, a teacher. And a poet. A dreamer. You know what I want for this country much better than the politicians do. And you’re someone who the men from Senegal and South Carolina respect. You will succeed me.”

Durand’s mind raced, making calculations of another kind. With Salomon’s support among the black professionals in the cities, and the alliances he’d made with the rural caciques: yes, he didn’t have the votes to change the constitution, but he probably did have the votes to name his successor. Which meant…

“We’ll have to watch the foreigners,” he said. Haiti had made several tries at recruiting black American settlers, and all of them had failed. Recruiting American freedmen and Senegalese veterans as teachers and investors seemed to be working better, but he’d have to be careful lest they come to own Haiti in the process of enriching it.

“No. You’ll have to watch them,” Salomon corrected. “You and Firmin, and even that bastard Boisrond-Canal: you’ll need him too.” The president and his immediate predecessor had never got along, but Boisrond-Canal’s canniness and sense of the possible could not be denied.

“Who’ll watch him, then?”

“Dye mon, gen mon” – beyond the mountain is another mountain. “You’ll figure it out. Take care of this country. Remember why our fathers broke their chains.”

*******

The Charleston dock workers always cheered when the Haitian ships came in. They cheered for the ones from Liberia and Sierra Leone too, but they shouted loudest for Haiti. They knew the Haitians had done what they did, and done it before them.

Lucien cheered with them, and why shouldn’t he? He’d gone much farther than before to find work this time, but Haiti was still home. He’d be unloading those ships, and one day he’d return on one; he had a right to cheer.

It was the teacher who’d told him about this job. Dock workers here could make twelve dollars a week: sixty of the new gourdes, as much as he’d earn in a whole season in Santo Domingo. He’d had to spend some of it – everything was more expensive here, and you couldn’t just sleep in the fields – but even so, the sums he sent back to Madeleine on the mail boats were staggering.

He wasn’t the only one who’d thought so. There were three thousand Haitians in Charleston now, whole neighborhoods where people spoke Creole and the houngans held court. The street where he lived might as well be in Port-au-Prince. Charleston called itself Africa’s westernmost port; it was becoming Haiti’s northernmost as well.

For all that, Lucien was more comfortable with the Americans on his crew; he was easier with South Carolina country people than Haitian city people, they listened with respect when he told of his great-grandfather who’d fought with Toussaint, and they had stories he’d never heard before. One of them had taken him home to St. Helena Island for a week; he’d shared stories with the root-doctors, come back with a sweetgrass basket and some charms. He’d send them to Madeleine the next time he’d sent money; she’d like them, and with the new room on the house, she’d have someplace to put them.

Before he’d left, Madeleine had her eye on the patch of land next to theirs. She’d have enough to buy it now, and Sylvain was old enough to help out.

Maybe they’d plant some sugar cane next year.