"Fight and be Right"

[V-J]

Just a thought Ed - how does the Congo Free State setup survive Bryan's Presidency? I mean, I know it was all ratified by Foraker before Bryan becomes president, but Bryan, as a dedicated anti-imperialist, would surely try to do something pretty radical to change that kind of arrangement, especially if it was a new one, and, I suspect, not a remarkably popular one. Whether he would be able to get it through a probably Republican senate of course, would be a different matter.

If Bryan can't repudiate it all, I can see his presidency as ironically setting the standard of how the Free State is governed in many ways. Actually, with what we know now about the, uh, religious enthusiasm in the Congo, it would make a lot of sense in having some of it's distant roots under a Bryan presidency.

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Grand Prince Paul II.

Well, yes. Is not the protection of a weak ally against domestic opposition something the IOTL USA does more or less willingly if they refuse to approve the opposition?

That's not Vietnam. Vietnam means years and years of warfare for... what?

The only question is who stands in the Senate, and shouts "no blood for rubber!"

[V-J]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

The only question is who stands in the Senate, and shouts "no blood for rubber!"

It's true; Vietnam was based on a really rational assesment of US interests. ('If we don't defeat a nationalist movement with Socialist overtones in a place most people have never heard of, the WHOLE of Asia goes RED!!!!111')

In any case, why the hell does it have to be strictly about rubber, anyway? (Why for that matter do you always boil these things down to a cost-benefit economic analysis) All you need is a coup or two, an extremely ambiguous political situation, one of the parties in a nascent conflict appeals to Washington, and boom badda bing you've got a Vietnam situation in which the US is stuck in for the better part of a decade.

Perhaps Algeria would be a better analogy. But a quagmire none the less.

[V-J]

Oh, and to answer the earlier question, yes the Congo will matter because it matters. By the time of any hypothetical Vietnam-stylie, you will have had more than half a century of close human, economic, political and cultural interchange between the Congo and the US. That will create a huge sense of obligation in the US.

This is just a hunch, but I also suspect this conflict will neatly coincide with the very time that the US starts to seriously question the whole apparatus of Jim Crow; particularly with what Ed earlier said about the Democrats being quite a conservative outfit by 1940 and the Republicans being mostly progressive. Historical Republican partisanship is going to fuse with evolving progressive attitudes in the party, and I think in relation to the Congo that is going to lead to a lot of people making the argument that 'the Democrats shafted blacks in this country for 150 years and we're not going to do the same in the Congo.' I wouldn't go so far as to describe it as white guilt, but people will be aware of the racial connotations that abandoning the Congo to it's own devices would entail, and I suspect they will probably take a quite idealistic line on any problems in their 'back yard'.

[EdT]

Originally Posted by Analytical Engine

Ed, can we have a map detailing the expansion/formation of South Africa please.

PC Switaj made me something quite interesting along these lines while he was designing me flags, but it's getting on for two years old and not quite consistent with canon. So what I'll do instead if you don't mind is post the below (can't remember if I ever posted it here before) and add underneath the relevant entries in the unified timeline that I'm working on as an appendix to my book of FaBR maps, flags, articles and other cool stuff.




September 1907: Confederation of South Africa formed between the Cape Colony, Natal and Rhodesia.

January 1916: Cape to Katanga Railway is completed.

April 1921: Orange Free State and Transvaal join South African Confederation.

September 1921: Construction of new South African Capital of Orania begins.

January 1929: Zambezia joins South African Confederation. (Barotseland spun off as a seperate protectorate)

December 1936: Bechuanaland and Basutoland transferred to South African administration.

April 1938: Bophuthatswana, Barotseland and Basutoland all become associated States of the South African Confederation.

January 1940: Independent States of Gaza and Sofala proclaimed.

Originally Posted by Aracnid

By the way what are the demographics of South Africa like?

Obviously it is bigger and has more Black Africans in it suggesting the white population would be proportionately lower, but you said the Afrikaners are not a majority among whites, suggesting a lot more English speaking immigration.

Did I say that about Afrikaners? Can’t remember that offhand. I’m not sure I would go quite as far as that but there will certainly be more English speakers in South Africa ITTL, and with more of a concrete identity; I was positing, FWIW, about an extra 150,000 or so over the 1900-1940 period, the additional people being either Irish, sent as part of Unionist programmes of Imperial settlement in the 1910s and 1920s, or coming in the four years after the war, mainly for economic reasons but also political once the Revolution gets in swing.

You’re quite right on Asian immigration. I think one big thing that’s been missed is that if we talk about the “Blue Diaspora” in the wake of the British revolution, in terms of raw numbers there will probably be more Indians than Whites. With that said, Indian immigration to South Africa was restricted from 1913 IOTL, and I suspect something similar would eventually happen ITTL, even if it’s only stringent restrictions rather than an outright ban. So, where do the Indians go?

Well, a lot of them are going to die, sadly- I think we’ll have a ‘Boat People’-style refugee crisis in the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean- but I can see a lot of them trying to settle in South Africa, which is not something Orania wants to see happen. I wonder if quite a few of them might be settled in Gaza and Sofala actually, safely outside South Africa proper but there as staunch anti-Syndicalists who can act as a bulwark against any subversion going on in the region. Certainly a lot of Goans would end up here, I suspect. I’m no expert on Mozambique but I suspect this will cause quiter a bit of strife down the road…

Originally Posted by Faeelin

I have to say, this seems implausible. Why would it become Vietnam?

Sorry, saying "Vietnam" was very lazy of me. Perhaps a better parallel would be Northern Ireland with a dash of the Portuguese African wars. What I meant was "unfortunate, politically-controversial foreign entanglement which becomes a running sore".

As for why, I think V-J has a point in terms of the close emotional, cultural and Governmental links between the two nations. There's also the international obligations under the Treaty of Washington with regards to safeguarding the Congo.

What I'm envisioning is a situation where the Free State Government is forced into an attempted crackdown on the Kimbanguists. Why doesn't immediately matter- disturbances after Angolan planes are allowed to bomb guerrillas across the Congolese border, an attempted coup, the takeover of Cabinda as a Kimbanguist mini-state, religious tensions spilling over into communal violence, botched political reform, strikes on the rubber plantations, whatever. If this happens, I think we would see a long-running and rather nasty conflict come out of it, and as the upper echelons of the Free State are American appointees and much of the Public Force is American, this will naturally lead to repercussions in Washington.

For a start, losing- ie turning the Free State over to the Kimbanguists- would be a political humiliation for whoever's in office at the time. Assuming civil rights are becoming an increasingly salient issue, a lot of worried Southern politicians will be busily ascribing all opposition to segregation as down to Kimbanguist subversion, and arguing that they cannot be allowed to have a safe haven from which to destabilise the US. Given half a century of intense missionary activity, there will be close links between many congregations in the US and churches in the Congo; equally, many progressives will be clinging to the dream of America's civilising, non-imperialist mission and the hope of a secular United States of Africa. And that doesn't take into account the large number of US citizens who will be living and working in the Congo.

As for rubber, I think we established earlier in the thread that Malaya is going to be something of a powder-keg ITTL thanks to Sino-Japanese intriguing and Syndicalist subversion, the DEI will be getting steadily more antsy as the locals push for independence, and I can see the Rubber Unions in the Indian and Nigerian Workers Republics having a vested interest in restricting production to maintain prices. As a result, I suspect world rubber prices would be pretty high, and so I can see a commercial interest in keeping Congolese rubber flowing.

I think that's a fairly decent laundry list of reasons to pick from- and even if intervention starts off with the lend-lease of equipment to the Public Force and an injection of volunteers from across the Atlantic, I can see that being very much the thin end of the wedge.

If the Congo's lucky, I think it can come out of the process a reasonably well-off secular democratic Republic, albeit one with communal tensions. If things go wrong it'll be rather nastier, but probably still better than OTL.

Originally Posted by V-J

Just a thought Ed - how does the Congo Free State setup survive Bryan's Presidency?

You know, I eventually came to the conclusion that Bryan wouldn't actually care that much about the Congo one way or the other, and have too much on his plate (attempted nationalisation of the railroads, bimetalism, Cuba, income tax) to actually think about it too much in the first place. While Bryan as an anti-Imperialist would have approved of getting Leopold out of the picture, he never gave much of a toss about Blacks IOTL and I can't see him doing so as President;there are just no votes in it for him.

Which leaves ample space for TR to get his feet under the table, get on with things and try to make the Free State as self-sustaining as he can.

[V-J]

Originally Posted by EdT

While Bryan as an anti-Imperialist would have approved of getting Leopold out of the picture, he never gave much of a toss about Blacks IOTL and I can't see him doing so as President;there are just no votes in it for him.

I'm not sure I agree with this actually - sure, Bryan was a dedicated apologist for Jim Crow, but he was also very strongly against the notion that the US should become an imperial power - this was completely seperate from racial questions. For him, the acquisition of the Congo will probably smack precisely of that kind of imperialist thin end of the wedge as the Phillipines did IOLT.

More than that, anti-imperialism was actually a big part of his platform in 1900, bigger probably than free silver - this was done partly because anti-imperialism fed into an abolitionist tradition which was popular in the North East. Bryan will doubtless stand on a similar platform here in 1896, and if he's elected then he's precisely the sort of person who would take that as a direct mandate.

So I can see Bryan putting a lot of political attention, and doubtless all counter-productive attention, into the Congo. By the end of his battles with the Senate, and with a face-saving modification of the arrangements, a lot of his supporters will be asking why he bothered. So it could be one of the reasons why he doesn't get re-elected in 1900.

[EdT]

Originally Posted by V-J

I'm not sure I agree with this actually - sure, Bryan was a dedicated apologist for Jim Crow, but he was also very strongly against the notion that the US should become an imperial power - this was completely seperate from racial questions. For him, the acquisition of the Congo will probably smack precisely of that kind of imperialist thin end of the wedge as the Phillipines did IOLT.

Oh, I agree on the anti-Inmperialist thing. But is the acquisition of the Congo really going to be seen as a clear-cut example? Remember that OTL Bryan was a supporter of the Spanish-American War at first, on the basis that it was freeing the peoples of Cuba and the Phillippines from the Spanish yoke; it was only when the US decided to stay that he turned against the adventure. In TTL, the Congo has been liberated from the arch-Imperialist Leopold himself, and acquired by the US to protect it from further colonisation- or at least that's the spin put on it. That's going to be attractive to a lot of anti-Imperialists.

Now, Bryan will definitely want to firmly confirm Congolese indepenence; the Free State is merely a friendly, and sovereign, State which happens to have the US as guarantor. This also means that very little US cash is likely to be heading across the Atlantic to the region. But cutting the Free State loose entirely? That would invite another, less enlightened power to colonise the place and repeat Leopold's despicable acts, surely? Certainly IOTL, Bryan was pretty firm on Liberian independence; despite the fact that he quite clearly despised the place he did see a role for the US in protecting it from colonial predators.

I'm also assuming that the *Spanish-American War will be diverting a lot of Bryan's attention, btw, and as that will start dominating in 1897 and Bryan only has the one term, that's going to inhibit his freedom of movement as well.

[Archangel]

Originally Posted by EdT

PC Switaj made me something quite interesting along these lines while he was designing me flags, but it's getting on for two years old and not quite consistent with canon. So what I'll do instead if you don't mind is post the below (can't remember if I ever posted it here before) and add underneath the relevant entries in the unified timeline that I'm working on as an appendix to my book of FaBR maps, flags, articles and other cool stuff.




September 1907: Confederation of South Africa formed between the Cape Colony, Natal and Rhodesia.

January 1916: Cape to Katanga Railway is completed.

April 1921: Orange Free State and Transvaal join South African Confederation.

September 1921: Construction of new South African Capital of Orania begins.

January 1929: Zambezia joins South African Confederation. (Barotseland spun off as a seperate protectorate)

December 1936: Bechuanaland and Basutoland transferred to South African administration.

April 1938: Bophuthatswana, Barotseland and Basutoland all become associated States of the South African Confederation.

January 1940: Independent States of Gaza and Sofala proclaimed.




Did I say that about Afrikaners? Can’t remember that offhand. I’m not sure I would go quite as far as that but there will certainly be more English speakers in South Africa ITTL, and with more of a concrete identity; I was positing, FWIW, about an extra 150,000 or so over the 1900-1940 period, the additional people being either Irish, sent as part of Unionist programmes of Imperial settlement in the 1910s and 1920s, or coming in the four years after the war, mainly for economic reasons but also political once the Revolution gets in swing.

You’re quite right on Asian immigration. I think one big thing that’s been missed is that if we talk about the “Blue Diaspora” in the wake of the British revolution, in terms of raw numbers there will probably be more Indians than Whites. With that said, Indian immigration to South Africa was restricted from 1913 IOTL, and I suspect something similar would eventually happen ITTL, even if it’s only stringent restrictions rather than an outright ban. So, where do the Indians go?

Well, a lot of them are going to die, sadly- I think we’ll have a ‘Boat People’-style refugee crisis in the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean- but I can see a lot of them trying to settle in South Africa, which is not something Orania wants to see happen. I wonder if quite a few of them might be settled in Gaza and Sofala actually, safely outside South Africa proper but there as staunch anti-Syndicalists who can act as a bulwark against any subversion going on in the region. Certainly a lot of Goans would end up here, I suspect. I’m no expert on Mozambique but I suspect this will cause quiter a bit of strife down the road…




Sorry, saying "Vietnam" was very lazy of me. Perhaps a better parallel would be Northern Ireland with a dash of the Portuguese African wars. What I meant was "unfortunate, politically-controversial foreign entanglement which becomes a running sore".

As for why, I think V-J has a point in terms of the close emotional, cultural and Governmental links between the two nations. There's also the international obligations under the Treaty of Washington with regards to safeguarding the Congo.

What I'm envisioning is a situation where the Free State Government is forced into an attempted crackdown on the Kimbanguists. Why doesn't immediately matter- disturbances after Angolan planes are allowed to bomb guerrillas across the Congolese border, an attempted coup, the takeover of Cabinda as a Kimbanguist mini-state, religious tensions spilling over into communal violence, botched political reform, strikes on the rubber plantations, whatever. If this happens, I think we would see a long-running and rather nasty conflict come out of it, and as the upper echelons of the Free State are American appointees and much of the Public Force is American, this will naturally lead to repercussions in Washington.

For a start, losing- ie turning the Free State over to the Kimbanguists- would be a political humiliation for whoever's in office at the time. Assuming civil rights are becoming an increasingly salient issue, a lot of worried Southern politicians will be busily ascribing all opposition to segregation as down to Kimbanguist subversion, and arguing that they cannot be allowed to have a safe haven from which to destabilise the US. Given half a century of intense missionary activity, there will be close links between many congregations in the US and churches in the Congo; equally, many progressives will be clinging to the dream of America's civilising, non-imperialist mission and the hope of a secular United States of Africa. And that doesn't take into account the large number of US citizens who will be living and working in the Congo.

As for rubber, I think we established earlier in the thread that Malaya is going to be something of a powder-keg ITTL thanks to Sino-Japanese intriguing and Syndicalist subversion, the DEI will be getting steadily more antsy as the locals push for independence, and I can see the Rubber Unions in the Indian and Nigerian Workers Republics having a vested interest in restricting production to maintain prices. As a result, I suspect world rubber prices would be pretty high, and so I can see a commercial interest in keeping Congolese rubber flowing.

I think that's a fairly decent laundry list of reasons to pick from- and even if intervention starts off with the lend-lease of equipment to the Public Force and an injection of volunteers from across the Atlantic, I can see that being very much the thin end of the wedge.

If the Congo's lucky, I think it can come out of the process a reasonably well-off secular democratic Republic, albeit one with communal tensions. If things go wrong it'll be rather nastier, but probably still better than OTL.




You know, I eventually came to the conclusion that Bryan wouldn't actually care that much about the Congo one way or the other, and have too much on his plate (attempted nationalisation of the railroads, bimetalism, Cuba, income tax) to actually think about it too much in the first place. While Bryan as an anti-Imperialist would have approved of getting Leopold out of the picture, he never gave much of a toss about Blacks IOTL and I can't see him doing so as President;there are just no votes in it for him.

Which leaves ample space for TR to get his feet under the table, get on with things and try to make the Free State as self-sustaining as he can.

Burma should be getting a lot of Indian Refugees. Since many of those refugees will have a better economic status, the countries that receive those refugees will benefit economically after a few years.

Keep it up, Ed!

[Dark Lord]

I've been re-reading the thread and what comes to my mind a lot is Stafford Cripps and the Mombasa Declaration. Any more information you can give? I'd love to see the actual speech someday.

[Klisz]

Originally Posted by EdT

snip

That is a freakishly awesome map.

[EdT]

Originally Posted by Archangel

Burma should be getting a lot of Indian Refugees. Since many of those refugees will have a better economic status, the countries that receive those refugees will benefit economically after a few years.

Yes, although given the nationalist character of the Burmese regime I wonder how many refugees the Government would be willing to take in the long term. I wondered if Shanghai or Hong Kong might eventually get quite a large expatriate Indian community. The other place might be Timor, as a place for the Australians to settle Indians without letting them into the Commonwealth proper.

Originally Posted by Dark Lord

I've been re-reading the thread and what comes to my mind a lot is Stafford Cripps and the Mombasa Declaration. Any more information you can give? I'd love to see the actual speech someday.

You mus be one of the very few people who actually wants to read a Stafford Cripps speech...

Put simply, the Mobasa Declaration was issued by Stafford Cripps in February 1938. Cripps had been appointed by the Macmillan Government as Governor of East Africa, as a sop to the Left. Cripps was determined to make a mark, and on his arrival in Mombasa made an announcement proclaiming the end of colonialism, large-scale land-reform, the abolition of the legislative council and the extension of voting rights to the entire population. This caused political crises in Britain and East Africa, culminating in Cripps' assassination by the white settlers and civil war in the region, and in Britain "Red Friday" and the siezure of power by the Syndicalist Party. The rest, as they say, is (alternative) history. People ITTL see the declaration as the starting pistol for the British Revolution, much as we might see the storming of the Bastille as the beginning of the French.

Originally Posted by DCliche

That is a freakishly awesome map.

Glad you like it! As I say, PCSwitaj did the flags so really he deserves the lion's share of the credit.

[V-J]

Originally Posted by EdT

Oh, I agree on the anti-Inmperialist thing. But is the acquisition of the Congo really going to be seen as a clear-cut example?

It's an interesting point. I'm not sure, but I'd be inclined to say that Bryan would treat it more similarly to the OTL acquisitions than he would differently. Ultimately all those arguments about bringing good administration, preparing for independence, etc etc, were the exact same ones used in OTL, re: the Phillipines.

The Congo's independence, while very much there nominally on treaty paper, appears, as far as I can tell to be a complete fiction in broadly the same way that post-WW1 mandates were - it's basically a US colony in all but name; run by Americans, staffed by Americans, policed by Americans. As such, I simply cannot see Bryan accepting the idea. Maybe if it was a Liberia-style setup, clearly being an independent, broadly self-governing state, but still a protectorate of the US, yeah, but otherwise I just really can't see it.

[V-J]

Incidentally, two points:

- How did Kurdistan end up independent?

- I think I missed the Um-Bongo reference the first time around...

[Lord Douglas]

Originally Posted by EdT

You mus be one of the very few people who actually wants to read a Stafford Cripps speech...

Put simply, the Mobasa Declaration was issued by Stafford Cripps in February 1938. Cripps had been appointed by the Macmillan Government as Governor of East Africa, as a sop to the Left. Cripps was determined to make a mark, and on his arrival in Mombasa made an announcement proclaiming the end of colonialism, large-scale land-reform, the abolition of the legislative council and the extension of voting rights to the entire population. This caused political crises in Britain and East Africa, culminating in Cripps' assassination by the white settlers and civil war in the region, and in Britain "Red Friday" and the siezure of power by the Syndicalist Party. The rest, as they say, is (alternative) history. People ITTL see the declaration as the starting pistol for the British Revolution, much as we might see the storming of the Bastille as the beginning of the French.

I wonder if we could have an AH view upon your AH - do you think that if Cripps hadn't decided to create such a bang, or if he had been sent as Ambassador to the US or something such, the 'Provisional Government' would have managed to survive? Or is this Government placed in such a precarious position that anything could topple it?

[EdT]

Originally Posted by V-J

The Congo's independence, while very much there nominally on treaty paper, appears, as far as I can tell to be a complete fiction in broadly the same way that post-WW1 mandates were - it's basically a US colony in all but name; run by Americans, staffed by Americans, policed by Americans. As such, I simply cannot see Bryan accepting the idea. Maybe if it was a Liberia-style setup, clearly being an independent, broadly self-governing state, but still a protectorate of the US, yeah, but otherwise I just really can't see it.

I know what you mean, but as US President surely it's really Bryan's gift how independent or otherwise the Free State is? I rather assumed that he'd push as hard as he can for an arms-length approach, which would mesh well with the rhetoric about the Congo and its improvement matching reality. So a genuine international approach, no subsidies from the US Government, and so on.

Remember we see the the Congo in 1940 but not in 1900, 1910 etc, and the article on the Public Force mentioned that it was only really in the early 1920s that the international component began to erode and things started becoming more American. I see it as a gradual process; stuff like getting American blacks over to man the civil service can happen under the Cabot Lodge and Hearst administrations, and Leonard Wood as a veteran of the place is probably the President who really cements the relationship.

Originally Posted by V-J

Incidentally, two points:

- How did Kurdistan end up independent?

- I think I missed the Um-Bongo reference the first time around...

Kurdistan became independent because Germany supported nationalist groups there during its invasion and occupation of the region between 1934-1936; the Turks aren't best pleased but then again the Republic technically repudiates all non-Turkish parts of the former Ottoman Empire anyhow, and the Kurds grabbed an awful lot of surplus equipment from both sides as the fighting ended, so putting them down would be both diplomatically and militarily difficult, to say the least.

As for Um Bongo, well I couldn't concentrate on the Congo without at least one reference, could I?

Originally Posted by Lord Douglas

I wonder if we could have an AH view upon your AH - do you think that if Cripps hadn't decided to create such a bang, or if he had been sent as Ambassador to the US or something such, the 'Provisional Government' would have managed to survive? Or is this Government placed in such a precarious position that anything could topple it?

Oh, I imagine it's probably a reasonably popular one, but I suspect that taking Cripps out of the picture wouldn't change a thing; things had already deteriorated too far by then. The point of Cripps was that by February 1938 Downing St and Whitehall were pulling levers and nothing was happening at the other end; the Scottish and Welsh Home Rule Authorities were already in the hands of revolutionaries by this point, and sooner or later something was about to give.

[V-J]

I'm a little hazy, to say the least, on what actually happened in the ME during the war. Germany was in there somewhere, many of the states are now looking towards Italy, and the Rashidis, I would guess, came in and scooped up the pieces. Uh. I'm not really making much sense here am I.

If Germany was fighting in there (And why were they doing that, incidentally) then they must have pulled out very precipitately for the Rashidis to pick up the pieces. Where does the Italian influence come into this?

[EdT]

Originally Posted by V-J

I'm a little hazy, to say the least, on what actually happened in the ME during the war.

Basically, the sequence of events is something like this (from memory, don't have my notes to hand);

September/October 1932: The Ottoman Empire, which is heavily in the Anglo-Russian camp, delcares war on China and Germany.

Autumn 1933: German forces invade Thrace through Bulgaria, take Constantinople and manage to block the straits. They are aided by Turkish nationalists as well as, tacitly, ethnic Greeks who hope to see Greece take the region after the war. The Ottoman army has enough highly-placed Turkish nationalists in place to not perform as well as expected, and there are quite a few defections.

Spring 1934: Germans get a bridgehead in Anatolia and are eventually stopped in the Sakarya valley. A Turkish Republic is declared. This is when the article set in Turkey during the War takes place. The German advance stalls as increasing numbers of Russian troops are sent to the front as reinforcements.

Summer 1934: Axis launch counter-offensive aimed at driving the Germans into the sea. It fails, although there are heavy casualties on both sides. By this point a lot of Turks are deeply resentful of the Sultan, and having Arab and Russian troops stationed in the region doesn't exactly help. Partisans and desertion are an increasing problem.

Autumn 1934: Russia signs an armistice with Germany and their troops pack up and go home. The Germans are largely occupied elsewhere but this leaves enough of a hole in the Axis lines that they are able to advance further into Anatolia.

Winter 1934/Spring 1935: Inconclusive fighting. The British begin to send troops to the region but they can't spare much what with the campaign in Indochina and Burma. The Germans, for their part, outrun their supply lines. Agitation in Kurdistan leads to a major insurrection, with inter-communal fighting between Kurd and Turk. Further north, there is a power vacuum, filled, with the encouragement of the retreating Russians, by the declaration of an Armenian state.

Summer 1935: The Germans pour resources in and launch a major offensive, which is successful. The British decide to withdraw to the Taurus Mountains and Cilician Gates. By this point Anatolia is essentually under the control of the Republic of Turkey, and regular military operations are generally restricted to the coastal areas. Everywhere else is rival bands of partisans.

Winter 1935: Turkish troops have largely crushed Armenian resistance. The British are struggling in Kurdistan. With the Ottoman Sultan completely marginalised, they increasingly depend on Arabs, such as the Amir of Ha'il, Abdul Aziz bin Mithab al-Rashid, for political leadership in the region. There is a general acceptance that the Ottoman Empire is dead, but no agreement over what to replace it with.

March 1936: Germans force the Cilician gates in a major (and bloody) battle, and advance on Alexandretta.

April 1936: Armistice signed with Britain. German forces occupy Damascus and Mosul. A Kurdish state is proclaimed under German auspices.

Summer 1936: Arabs and Turks fight a vicious campaign over Syria. The Turks are badly overstretched but the Germans give them tacit support and equipment, while formally remaining neutral. The British, broadly speaking, do the same for the Arabs. Abdul Aziz bin Mithab al-Rashid assumes leadership, and when the Turks are forced back to Wadi Khaled, he declares himself King of Syria and Palestine. While all this is happening, his distant cousin Sultan bin Hamud pops up in Mesopotamia and gets himself crowned King there. Abdul is unable to do much but seethe and plot his revenge.

September 1936: Treaty of Brussels is signed. This deliniates the borders of the new Republic of Turkey, recognises Kurdistan as independent, enables a British sphere of influence over Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia, and effectively recognises the status quo in the region. Being over-extended enough as they are, the Germans begin to withdraw their troops.



As to where the Italians come in, King Abdul wants to be an independent player, not a British satelite. Like Ibn Saud King Farouk of Egypt IOTL, he encourages links with Italy, which he regards as too weak and far away a patron to compromise his freedom of action. This link comes into its own after the British Revolution, and the Italians see Abdul as a valuable ally should military action be needed in Egypt. It should be stressed that the Arabians are more of a wild card than in anyone's pocket, though.

Hope that clairifes things somewhat!

[Arachnid]

Very clear thank you. Any chance of a similar tl for the rest of the war?

[Leistungsfähiger Amerikan]

Originally Posted by Aracnid

Very clear thank you. Any chance of a similar tl for the rest of the war?

I'd love that.

[Dark Lord]

Originally Posted by EdT

You mus be one of the very few people who actually wants to read a Stafford Cripps speech...

Is he as inspiring a Brother Dutt?

Originally Posted by EdT

Put simply, the Mobasa Declaration was issued by Stafford Cripps in February 1938. Cripps had been appointed by the Macmillan Government as Governor of East Africa, as a sop to the Left. Cripps was determined to make a mark, and on his arrival in Mombasa made an announcement proclaiming the end of colonialism, large-scale land-reform, the abolition of the legislative council and the extension of voting rights to the entire population. This caused political crises in Britain and East Africa, culminating in Cripps' assassination by the white settlers and civil war in the region, and in Britain "Red Friday" and the siezure of power by the Syndicalist Party. The rest, as they say, is (alternative) history. People ITTL see the declaration as the starting pistol for the British Revolution, much as we might see the storming of the Bastille as the beginning of the French.

Originally Posted by EdT

Oh, I imagine it's probably a reasonably popular one, but I suspect that taking Cripps out of the picture wouldn't change a thing; things had already deteriorated too far by then. The point of Cripps was that by February 1938 Downing St and Whitehall were pulling levers and nothing was happening at the other end; the Scottish and Welsh Home Rule Authorities were already in the hands of revolutionaries by this point, and sooner or later something was about to give.

Ok that pretty much Jossed my guesswork over what happened between the war and the Revolution, thinking that Mombassa Declaration->Red Scotland and Wales (and Ireland?)->Enter Macmillan-> Red Friday. So I must ask what happened with Wedgwood-Benn's premiership?

And it also looks like my homework is to read up on some Czech history

Originally Posted by Leistungsfähiger Amerikan

I'd love that.

Thirded