katchen
Banned
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One other track that Germans can move quietly and privately on with Russia besides a railroad across Siberia is an Arctic sea route around all or part of Siberia. Better use of the Arctic Seas can only benefit Russia. The Russians already know, for instance that the Murmansk Coast is open year round and that a railroad from St. Petersburg to it would not only be profitable to a private party for grain shipments but enable Russia to build a naval base that no one could shut down. IOTL, Russia never got the railroad to Murmansk built until 1916 and then only with Allied assistance, but this is a different TL..
And in return, Russia can provide cooperation for German exploration with steam powered ships designed to survive under ice forming or ice melting conditions. Those ships will at least find that there is a regular season to the Ob and Yensei valleys making regular steamboat travel possible from Hamburg to a portage to the Lena River in the summer. Thaat greatly will improve communications with Japan.
Beyond the Yensei mouth, sternwheelers with rounded hulls that won't get caught in the ice and can draw themselves onto the ice and collapse ice from above may be able to get a lot farther. It won't happen immediately, but sometime in the near future, someone will make it to and through the Bering Strait in one season. Probably within one month. Then it will only be a matter of locating coal deposits. and a trade route will be established.
And while we are on the subject of German settlement Beer, there has always been a habitual destination for German agricultural migrants and that destination is Russia. Remember the Volga volksdeutsch?
So given the fact that the Russian-American Company that runs Alaska has been running in the red since at least the 1840s (the Russians explored the possibility of selling Alaska to the United States a few years ago under James Buchanan but it went nowhere) wouldn't a valid offer of German volsdeutsch settlers that could revitalize Alaska's economy be welcome news to that company's directors? A plan from which Ezo could be a jumping off point.Alaska has cachet and credibility for prospective immigrants --because it's in America! (And yes, the parts of Alaska those immigrants will be directed to are habitable.). Japanese settlement in Alaska also would be possible. And there will be no more talk of selling Alaska to the United States. A railroad across the Bering Strait down the line? Maybe.
Count Muraviev will also be overjoyed at the prospect of attracting volksdeutsch to the Amur Basin as well if he can't get Russian families to leave their mirs and settle new land individually. But with Volksdeutsch colonies all the way across Russia now to the Volga and the Ob and it's tributaries reachable to the Arctic Ocean in late summer by water even without a railroad, volksdeutsch colonies both settled from Germany and cloned off of existing Russian Volksdeutsch colonies can start in the Lesosteppe at Tyumen, Tobolsk, the Ishim, Omsk, Tomsk Krasnoyarsk and farther and down the Tobol, Irtysh, Ob and Yensei. Then in the Amur and Lena Basins. Rather like how the comtemporary United States and Canada are being settled.
And all of this occurring on a private basis that pulls the governments along. Now Russia has lost the Crimean War, the reactionary powers in Russia such as the streltski are in eclipse and blamed for the backwardness that enabled Russia to lose the war. Just as the conservative elements in Germany and Japan are. There is a community of interest here. And to the degree these connections run through inner Asia, those connections are largely immune to any interference by Great Britain or other seaborne European powers.
One other track that Germans can move quietly and privately on with Russia besides a railroad across Siberia is an Arctic sea route around all or part of Siberia. Better use of the Arctic Seas can only benefit Russia. The Russians already know, for instance that the Murmansk Coast is open year round and that a railroad from St. Petersburg to it would not only be profitable to a private party for grain shipments but enable Russia to build a naval base that no one could shut down. IOTL, Russia never got the railroad to Murmansk built until 1916 and then only with Allied assistance, but this is a different TL..
And in return, Russia can provide cooperation for German exploration with steam powered ships designed to survive under ice forming or ice melting conditions. Those ships will at least find that there is a regular season to the Ob and Yensei valleys making regular steamboat travel possible from Hamburg to a portage to the Lena River in the summer. Thaat greatly will improve communications with Japan.
Beyond the Yensei mouth, sternwheelers with rounded hulls that won't get caught in the ice and can draw themselves onto the ice and collapse ice from above may be able to get a lot farther. It won't happen immediately, but sometime in the near future, someone will make it to and through the Bering Strait in one season. Probably within one month. Then it will only be a matter of locating coal deposits. and a trade route will be established.
And while we are on the subject of German settlement Beer, there has always been a habitual destination for German agricultural migrants and that destination is Russia. Remember the Volga volksdeutsch?
So given the fact that the Russian-American Company that runs Alaska has been running in the red since at least the 1840s (the Russians explored the possibility of selling Alaska to the United States a few years ago under James Buchanan but it went nowhere) wouldn't a valid offer of German volsdeutsch settlers that could revitalize Alaska's economy be welcome news to that company's directors? A plan from which Ezo could be a jumping off point.Alaska has cachet and credibility for prospective immigrants --because it's in America! (And yes, the parts of Alaska those immigrants will be directed to are habitable.). Japanese settlement in Alaska also would be possible. And there will be no more talk of selling Alaska to the United States. A railroad across the Bering Strait down the line? Maybe.
Count Muraviev will also be overjoyed at the prospect of attracting volksdeutsch to the Amur Basin as well if he can't get Russian families to leave their mirs and settle new land individually. But with Volksdeutsch colonies all the way across Russia now to the Volga and the Ob and it's tributaries reachable to the Arctic Ocean in late summer by water even without a railroad, volksdeutsch colonies both settled from Germany and cloned off of existing Russian Volksdeutsch colonies can start in the Lesosteppe at Tyumen, Tobolsk, the Ishim, Omsk, Tomsk Krasnoyarsk and farther and down the Tobol, Irtysh, Ob and Yensei. Then in the Amur and Lena Basins. Rather like how the comtemporary United States and Canada are being settled.
And all of this occurring on a private basis that pulls the governments along. Now Russia has lost the Crimean War, the reactionary powers in Russia such as the streltski are in eclipse and blamed for the backwardness that enabled Russia to lose the war. Just as the conservative elements in Germany and Japan are. There is a community of interest here. And to the degree these connections run through inner Asia, those connections are largely immune to any interference by Great Britain or other seaborne European powers.
Nice scene, but it is very unlikely and needs an enormous spur. The Austrians until the end of the Donau-Monarchy never signed even when the conditions were very positive for them. But then again, in the later years, the austrian parliament was practically always stalemated, which seems to be one of the biggest factors later on.