Look to the West (Thande's first proper timeline, and it's about time!)
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Admiral Matt
Gone Fishin'
Gah. Fancy lettering.
Not sure the Ottomans were quite so well off in the Caucasus. What knowledge I have of the period implies a loose overlordship over the region at best. There were parts not truly controlled by any state until Russia moved in, AFAIK.
Not sure the Ottomans were quite so well off in the Caucasus. What knowledge I have of the period implies a loose overlordship over the region at best. There were parts not truly controlled by any state until Russia moved in, AFAIK.
I too, can only wince at the font. And the map seems blurry, but besides that, it's nice to have an update on how Europe is looking at this time.
Thande
Donor
Interlude #3: Sometimes, All I Need Is The Air That I Breathe
TimeLine L Expedition Mission Log
Dr Thermos Pylos: It is at this point that we must once again turn away from the general political upheavals of this period-
Dr Bruno Lombardi: -to concentrate on the scientific developments at hand.
P.: Strictly speaking, shouldn't you say 'natural philosophical' developments?
L.: No, Thermo. The term 'scientist is anachronous at this time, but not 'scientific'.
P.: How curious! I had assumed-
Capt. Christopher Nuttall: Gentlemen?
P./L: Sorry.
~~
Man now stands like the worker in the mill who begins to realise how his work, his machine, relates to and fits in with the whole process of manufacture, in that case. Our understanding of how the universe is made - and for what purpose - is for ever increasing. We can only hope that the Creator is happier to see us do so than the mill owners.
- Joseph Priestley in 1807
~~
From - "A History of Air" by Daniel Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1966
The discovery of illuftium[1] by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1778 was enormously influential in how chemical theories developed from thereon. For some years, natural philosophers struggled with how to incorporate this new concept into the established phlogiston theory. As it was then seen, a burning object gave off phlogiston, which was visible as the flames themselves. Phlogiston's exact nature was imprecise and we should not confuse it with the modern conception of a substance with defined mass: that idea would have to wait for a few more years. Phlogiston was seen as more of a 'principle', like light and heat.
It fell to Joseph Priestley, a noted English Dissenting clergyman and political radical, to link the two ideas. Priestley drew heavily on the mid-century works of Stephen Hales, who published detailed accounts of the circulatory systems of plants and animals. As part of his conception of the Aerial Economy[2], Priestley developed the notion that air could be phlogisticated (by an item burning within it) or dephlogisticated. Dephlogisticated or 'fixed' air was vivifying when breathed. Priestley thus explained Hales' earlier observation that it was dangerous to breathe stale air: it was phlogisticated.
Scheele had made similar observations, and Priestley - who had learned Swedish due to youthful arguments about Linnaean Racialism - read his original works. Illuftium was identified with dephlogisticated air. But how did this relate directly to phlogiston?
Priestley made numerous experiments with sealed glass vessels. A mouse sealed in there alone would run out of air and die, but when a plant was also added, the mouse would live for much longer. Therefore, the plant was 'fixing' the stale air into the form that the mouse could breathe. But was the plant producing illuftium or absorbing phlogiston? It took Priestley some years, and several accidental observations, to realise that the answer was 'both'.
His work On the Nature of Phlogiston (1785) was controversial as it suggested that phlogiston, or phlogisticated air, was deadly to animal life - going against the largely philosophical arguments at the time. Priestley rapidly expanded the paradigm of the mouse and plant to envisage a great cycle of the world, with animals taking up illuftium and breathing out phlogiston, and plants taking up phlogiston and expelling illuftium. This, his 'Aerial Economy' (inspired in its terminology by Britain's eighteenth-century obsession with the stock market) purported to see a 'Necessary and Natural Union' between the different forms of life.
Priestley's major breakthrough at this stage was to use a burning glass,[3] then a new lab instrument, on a sample of calx of mercury.[4] He was able to reverse the combustion, leaving metallic mercury, and he proceeded to repeat this experiment with other calxes. At this same time, one of Priestley's lab assistants inadvertently performed the mouse-in-jar experiment when the jar was contaminated with a mixture of limestone powder and the caustic soda that Priestley used to clean his equipment. He discovered that the mouse lived for much longer than it should. After more experiments, Priestley eliminated the possibility that the chemical (soda lime) was giving off illuftium, and therefore it must instead be absorbing phlogiston. This was the first indication that the two processes could be decoupled, whereas before there was the possibility that phlogiston going from A to B was simply an artificial mathematical negative of illuftium going from B to A.
Priestley's discoveries were celebrated and debated both in Britain and on the continent, but it was at this time that French natural philosopher Charles-Augustin Coulomb threw a spanner in the works. Coulomb's major work was on quantifying things which had thought to be unquantifiable, for example human labour (slaves in the West Indies). To do this, he developed new ways of measurement, very precise torsion balances that let the tiny charge repulsion between two charged surfaces be measured in the form of a change in weight. While using this balance, Priestley's French rival Antoine Lavoisier discovered that after a substance was burned, the combined calxes actually GAINED weight, when they should have lost phlogiston.
Most of the contemporaries attempted to explain this by philosophical means, claiming that phlogiston was an abstract principle with negative or sub-air weight, but Priestley instead used his new theories to argue that phlogiston was simply lighter than illuftium, and the phlogiston given out by the burning substance was more than balanced by illuftium being absorbed. This was, in fact, inaccurate - phlogiston is heavier than illuftium, but there is less given out than illuftium absorbed. Priestley did not think in quantities and it fell to Lavoisier, with his Coulomb methods, to discover this later on. Between them, largely via a series of half-friendly, half-hostile letters, Priestley and Lavoisier developed the idea that animal life is fuelled by a very slow, controlled version of combustion, thus linking these new ideas to Priestley's earlier discovery of the Aerial Economy. This was not explicitly confirmed until the 1820s, when new techniques were developed.
Lavoisier and Priestley are both hotly debated by modern British and French scientists as the 'Father of Modern Chemistry'. It took, however, Priestley's successor Humphry Davy to work out the precise relationship between illuftium and phlogiston - that the act of burning incorporated illuftium into the substance that burnt, producing both the calx and phlogiston. Priestley did not need to know the exact nature of phlogiston in order to create a treatise on the Aerial Economy which found favour with King George III, a man who had grown up in rural Virginia and was choked by the smokes of industrial London.[5] Priestley argued that living in cities with their dephlogisticated air was bad for the human body and might even lead to a moral decline as the brains of men ceased to be fuelled correctly. He advocated the construction of many arboreal parks throughout towns in order to balance this out, and this was adopted by many British cities, most obviously London. As well as being chemically sensible, this was clearly also aesthetically pleasing.
Despite his good relationship with the King, Priestley's anarchist/republican leanings led to him being chased out of the country in 1791 by an angry mob, stoked by business interests Priestley had offended. He and his family emigrated to the United Provinces, which was experimenting with political liberalism, and Priestley took his final discovery with him: soda water, water impregnated with dephlogisticated air. Though the air itself might be harmful, water impregnated with the substance bubbled most delightfully and had medical applications. Thanks to Priestley, for the century to come it would be UPSA businesses that dominated the world soda water market, and all those that would be derived from it...
~~
NOTE: This process illustrates what (in OTL) Thomas Kuhn describes as 'incommensurability' - scientific theories can never be directly compared, because what Newton called 'gravity', for example, is a different concept from what Einstein called 'gravity', using different units and underlying concepts. In OTL some theories are still in the abstract thought of as 'right' (Galileo's heliocentric solar system) even though they have very little in common with current theories (Galileo had perfectly circular orbits, and still had the fixed stars with the sun at the centre of the universe). Similarly, modern evolutionary theory is described as 'Darwinian', even though it has as little to do with Darwin as it has to do with Paley. In OTL phlogiston is described as an 'obsolete theory' but in TTL it has survived simply by changing what it means by phlogiston. Instead of an abstract concept, phlogiston has become a real substance - that which we call carbon dioxide.
If this sounds unlikely, you may be surprised to learn that exactly the same thing happened in OTL: - Scheele's work never spread, Lavoisier discovered oxygen, and regarded oxygen as an abstract principle, never identifying it with a specific element with weight and other defined properties. It was only his successors who changed the meaning of the term 'oxygen' so that it now means what it does today...so Lavoisier was 'right' in OTL and Priestley, with his phlogiston, was 'wrong'. If we just used the term phlogiston instead in OTL, then Priestley would be 'right' and Lavoisier would be 'wrong'. Such is science.
[1]Recall, oxygen.
[2]In OTL this is an archaic term specific to Priestley...in TTL it is still in use and means something like 'the carbon cycle'.
[3]Magnifying glass used with sunlight.
[4]"Calx of" is eighteenth century terminology for "oxide" and in TTL is still in use. A calx or oxide is what remains after a substance is burnt.
[5]In this respect TTL's George III is like OTL's.
TimeLine L Expedition Mission Log
Dr Thermos Pylos: It is at this point that we must once again turn away from the general political upheavals of this period-
Dr Bruno Lombardi: -to concentrate on the scientific developments at hand.
P.: Strictly speaking, shouldn't you say 'natural philosophical' developments?
L.: No, Thermo. The term 'scientist is anachronous at this time, but not 'scientific'.
P.: How curious! I had assumed-
Capt. Christopher Nuttall: Gentlemen?
P./L: Sorry.
~~
Man now stands like the worker in the mill who begins to realise how his work, his machine, relates to and fits in with the whole process of manufacture, in that case. Our understanding of how the universe is made - and for what purpose - is for ever increasing. We can only hope that the Creator is happier to see us do so than the mill owners.
- Joseph Priestley in 1807
~~
From - "A History of Air" by Daniel Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1966
The discovery of illuftium[1] by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1778 was enormously influential in how chemical theories developed from thereon. For some years, natural philosophers struggled with how to incorporate this new concept into the established phlogiston theory. As it was then seen, a burning object gave off phlogiston, which was visible as the flames themselves. Phlogiston's exact nature was imprecise and we should not confuse it with the modern conception of a substance with defined mass: that idea would have to wait for a few more years. Phlogiston was seen as more of a 'principle', like light and heat.
It fell to Joseph Priestley, a noted English Dissenting clergyman and political radical, to link the two ideas. Priestley drew heavily on the mid-century works of Stephen Hales, who published detailed accounts of the circulatory systems of plants and animals. As part of his conception of the Aerial Economy[2], Priestley developed the notion that air could be phlogisticated (by an item burning within it) or dephlogisticated. Dephlogisticated or 'fixed' air was vivifying when breathed. Priestley thus explained Hales' earlier observation that it was dangerous to breathe stale air: it was phlogisticated.
Scheele had made similar observations, and Priestley - who had learned Swedish due to youthful arguments about Linnaean Racialism - read his original works. Illuftium was identified with dephlogisticated air. But how did this relate directly to phlogiston?
Priestley made numerous experiments with sealed glass vessels. A mouse sealed in there alone would run out of air and die, but when a plant was also added, the mouse would live for much longer. Therefore, the plant was 'fixing' the stale air into the form that the mouse could breathe. But was the plant producing illuftium or absorbing phlogiston? It took Priestley some years, and several accidental observations, to realise that the answer was 'both'.
His work On the Nature of Phlogiston (1785) was controversial as it suggested that phlogiston, or phlogisticated air, was deadly to animal life - going against the largely philosophical arguments at the time. Priestley rapidly expanded the paradigm of the mouse and plant to envisage a great cycle of the world, with animals taking up illuftium and breathing out phlogiston, and plants taking up phlogiston and expelling illuftium. This, his 'Aerial Economy' (inspired in its terminology by Britain's eighteenth-century obsession with the stock market) purported to see a 'Necessary and Natural Union' between the different forms of life.
Priestley's major breakthrough at this stage was to use a burning glass,[3] then a new lab instrument, on a sample of calx of mercury.[4] He was able to reverse the combustion, leaving metallic mercury, and he proceeded to repeat this experiment with other calxes. At this same time, one of Priestley's lab assistants inadvertently performed the mouse-in-jar experiment when the jar was contaminated with a mixture of limestone powder and the caustic soda that Priestley used to clean his equipment. He discovered that the mouse lived for much longer than it should. After more experiments, Priestley eliminated the possibility that the chemical (soda lime) was giving off illuftium, and therefore it must instead be absorbing phlogiston. This was the first indication that the two processes could be decoupled, whereas before there was the possibility that phlogiston going from A to B was simply an artificial mathematical negative of illuftium going from B to A.
Priestley's discoveries were celebrated and debated both in Britain and on the continent, but it was at this time that French natural philosopher Charles-Augustin Coulomb threw a spanner in the works. Coulomb's major work was on quantifying things which had thought to be unquantifiable, for example human labour (slaves in the West Indies). To do this, he developed new ways of measurement, very precise torsion balances that let the tiny charge repulsion between two charged surfaces be measured in the form of a change in weight. While using this balance, Priestley's French rival Antoine Lavoisier discovered that after a substance was burned, the combined calxes actually GAINED weight, when they should have lost phlogiston.
Most of the contemporaries attempted to explain this by philosophical means, claiming that phlogiston was an abstract principle with negative or sub-air weight, but Priestley instead used his new theories to argue that phlogiston was simply lighter than illuftium, and the phlogiston given out by the burning substance was more than balanced by illuftium being absorbed. This was, in fact, inaccurate - phlogiston is heavier than illuftium, but there is less given out than illuftium absorbed. Priestley did not think in quantities and it fell to Lavoisier, with his Coulomb methods, to discover this later on. Between them, largely via a series of half-friendly, half-hostile letters, Priestley and Lavoisier developed the idea that animal life is fuelled by a very slow, controlled version of combustion, thus linking these new ideas to Priestley's earlier discovery of the Aerial Economy. This was not explicitly confirmed until the 1820s, when new techniques were developed.
Lavoisier and Priestley are both hotly debated by modern British and French scientists as the 'Father of Modern Chemistry'. It took, however, Priestley's successor Humphry Davy to work out the precise relationship between illuftium and phlogiston - that the act of burning incorporated illuftium into the substance that burnt, producing both the calx and phlogiston. Priestley did not need to know the exact nature of phlogiston in order to create a treatise on the Aerial Economy which found favour with King George III, a man who had grown up in rural Virginia and was choked by the smokes of industrial London.[5] Priestley argued that living in cities with their dephlogisticated air was bad for the human body and might even lead to a moral decline as the brains of men ceased to be fuelled correctly. He advocated the construction of many arboreal parks throughout towns in order to balance this out, and this was adopted by many British cities, most obviously London. As well as being chemically sensible, this was clearly also aesthetically pleasing.
Despite his good relationship with the King, Priestley's anarchist/republican leanings led to him being chased out of the country in 1791 by an angry mob, stoked by business interests Priestley had offended. He and his family emigrated to the United Provinces, which was experimenting with political liberalism, and Priestley took his final discovery with him: soda water, water impregnated with dephlogisticated air. Though the air itself might be harmful, water impregnated with the substance bubbled most delightfully and had medical applications. Thanks to Priestley, for the century to come it would be UPSA businesses that dominated the world soda water market, and all those that would be derived from it...
~~
NOTE: This process illustrates what (in OTL) Thomas Kuhn describes as 'incommensurability' - scientific theories can never be directly compared, because what Newton called 'gravity', for example, is a different concept from what Einstein called 'gravity', using different units and underlying concepts. In OTL some theories are still in the abstract thought of as 'right' (Galileo's heliocentric solar system) even though they have very little in common with current theories (Galileo had perfectly circular orbits, and still had the fixed stars with the sun at the centre of the universe). Similarly, modern evolutionary theory is described as 'Darwinian', even though it has as little to do with Darwin as it has to do with Paley. In OTL phlogiston is described as an 'obsolete theory' but in TTL it has survived simply by changing what it means by phlogiston. Instead of an abstract concept, phlogiston has become a real substance - that which we call carbon dioxide.
If this sounds unlikely, you may be surprised to learn that exactly the same thing happened in OTL: - Scheele's work never spread, Lavoisier discovered oxygen, and regarded oxygen as an abstract principle, never identifying it with a specific element with weight and other defined properties. It was only his successors who changed the meaning of the term 'oxygen' so that it now means what it does today...so Lavoisier was 'right' in OTL and Priestley, with his phlogiston, was 'wrong'. If we just used the term phlogiston instead in OTL, then Priestley would be 'right' and Lavoisier would be 'wrong'. Such is science.
[1]Recall, oxygen.
[2]In OTL this is an archaic term specific to Priestley...in TTL it is still in use and means something like 'the carbon cycle'.
[3]Magnifying glass used with sunlight.
[4]"Calx of" is eighteenth century terminology for "oxide" and in TTL is still in use. A calx or oxide is what remains after a substance is burnt.
[5]In this respect TTL's George III is like OTL's.
Thande
Donor
Map of Europe in 1748 (I eventually intend to make an animated version).
At the end of the War of the Austrian Succession/Second War of Supremacy, and at the start of the War of the British Succession. The Jacobite rebellion is still broiling in Scotland and Ireland.
Same as OTL: Austria gains Silesia but loses lands in northern Italy, France withdraws from the Austrian Netherlands, Russia gains eastern Finland from Sweden.
Different to OTL: As Frederick eventually becomes King and does not return Louisbourg, violating the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Spain uses this as an excuse to retain Minorca, which will remain Spanish throughout the subsequent wars. France retains its Indian conquests.
At the end of the War of the Austrian Succession/Second War of Supremacy, and at the start of the War of the British Succession. The Jacobite rebellion is still broiling in Scotland and Ireland.
Same as OTL: Austria gains Silesia but loses lands in northern Italy, France withdraws from the Austrian Netherlands, Russia gains eastern Finland from Sweden.
Different to OTL: As Frederick eventually becomes King and does not return Louisbourg, violating the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Spain uses this as an excuse to retain Minorca, which will remain Spanish throughout the subsequent wars. France retains its Indian conquests.
Thande
Donor
Map of Europe in 1759 after the end of the Third War of Supremacy and the Abolition of Prussia. Silesia is returned to Austria and Ducal Prussia is divided between Poland and Sweden.
Note that Saxony has been awarded all the western Prussian exclaves, this being a French-directed move in an attempt to secure Saxony as a future ally against Hanover (as Saxon territory now directly borders Hanover).
Saxony itself is supposed to include Liegnitz, but I'm not sure if I've drawn the border quite right.
Note that Saxony has been awarded all the western Prussian exclaves, this being a French-directed move in an attempt to secure Saxony as a future ally against Hanover (as Saxon territory now directly borders Hanover).
Saxony itself is supposed to include Liegnitz, but I'm not sure if I've drawn the border quite right.
Thande
Donor
Europe in 1772 after the War of the Polish Partition. Prussia is now in personal union with the reduced Kingdom of Poland; the Russian Tsarevich is Grand Duke of Lithuania; some eastern vojvodships are annexed to Russia, primarily everything east of the Dnieper; Sweden has been awarded Courland; and Austria, defeated in the war, has Krakow.
France has bought Corsica from Genoa, and more about that in the text...
EDIT: Added the HRE border in red now it's not matched by political borders.
France has bought Corsica from Genoa, and more about that in the text...
EDIT: Added the HRE border in red now it's not matched by political borders.
Last edited:
Thande
Donor
Part #15: Two Great Men
"A disturbing number of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived, were foreigners"
~~
From - "England's Captain, France's Saviour" by Albert Harrison (Oxford University Press, 1940):
Having spent oceans of blood and failed to gain an inch of new territory in Europe in the 1740s and 50s - largely thanks to Louis XV's unpopular policies - it is perhaps appropriate that in the 1760s France gained considerable new lands with the death of only one man. When the Duke of Lorraine died without male heirs in 1763, his lands defaulted to France and were annexed to the Kingdom. These were the last remnants of the once-great state of Lotharingia, now reduced to a few scattered enclaves throughout the region. By assuming control over Lorraine, France completed the path that it had been originally set upon by Louis XIV, and now unquestionably dominated that region.
The impact upon history of the end of Lorraine was slight. Its only direct effect was to remove the Duke, a former King of Poland, from any consideration of restoration. This served to quicken the Russo-Prussian ambitions to divide the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the rest is history.
A far more influential acquisition by France was that of Corsica. The island was theoretically possessed by the Republic of Genoa, but in practice rebels had held the island since 1755. Corsica had become a republic in all but name, with the Virgin Mary as titular monarch of the presumed kingdom. Unlike the venerable republics of Genoa, Venice and the Netherlands, the new republic in Corsica was constructed on Enlightenment principles. Its leader was Filippo Antonio Pasquale de Paoli, who had served in the Neapolitan army and now commanded the rebel military forces as well as being effective head of state of the republic.
During the thirteen-year existence of the Republic, an Enlightenment constitution was drafted and the state received praise from contemporary thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau. James Boswell, a companion of Samuel Johnson, wrote an account of the Republic which made Paoli and the constitution famous or notorious throughout Europe in the 1760s. It was this account which helped inspire the revolution in La Plata twenty years later.
In 1767 the Genoese lost the island of Capraia to the Corsican republic and decided that they had little chance of ever subduing the rebels. Furthermore, the Genoese treasury was almost exhuasted. To that end, the Genoese signed the island over to France in exchange for financial reparations. The vast and experienced French army invaded in 1768. Paoli's republicans fought hard before being defeated in 1769. Paoli and numerous other republican leaders and soldiers fled to Britain, which was at the time thought of as the most liberal country in Europe. In the 1760s, radical republicans were treated as amusing and entertaining curiosities by the British government, which did not see them as a serious threat until later on, and the Corsican refugees formed a community in London not unlike the Huguenots before them.[1]
Among the Corsicans was Carlo Buonaparte, a young supporter of Paoli[2]. A law student prior to fleeing the island with his wife and two-year-old son Napoleone[3], he decided to complete his studies, switching to English law. Buonaparte converted to Anglicanism to escape the anti-Catholic laws and changed his name to the anglicised Charles Bone. He received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 1774 and eventually became well-known for his skilful seeking of loopholes in the anti-Catholic laws, getting many English Catholics out of legal trouble. Very few knew that he was himself Catholic in origin, though many made accusations (without evidence).
Bone became an enemy of the ultra-Tory faction opposed to Catholic rights, then, but he was popular with radicals who supported Catholic emancipation, including Charles James Fox who became a close friend. Bone would eventually become an MP towards the end of the century.[4]
Though an interesting character in and of himself, Charles Bone is necessarily overshadowed by his eldest son, Napoleone, known as the "less foreign sounding" Leo. Charles enrolled his son as a midshipman in the Royal Navy at the age of thirteen, as was customary at the time[5] and served on HMS Ardent from 1777 onwards.[6] Mister Leo Bone passed his lieutenant's examination in Malta in 1783. He was transferred to HMS Raisonnable, during which time he served alongside the slightly senior Lieutenant Horatio Nelson.
The Raisonnable scored several victories against the French and Spanish in the Second La Platan War, and the British losses at Trafalgar meant that several new captaincies were open: thus first Nelson and then Bone were made master and commander, with Bone taking over the almost obsolete 28-gun frigate HMS Coventry in 1786. He was noted for a concentration on rapid gunnery and weight of fire, a strategy that he had developed in connexion with Nelson[7], and grew to command a great loyalty from his men. Boswell met him in 1788 and Bone makes a then-overlooked, but today well known, brief appearance in one of his accounts. Boswell described him as being the epitome of the Royal Navy commander whose men will follow him into the jaws of hell rather than face the shame of being left behind.
Bone was made post in 1791, taking command of the newly built frigate HMS Diamond - taking a great deal of his former crew with him, as the now outdated Coventry was paid off - and immediately making a name for himself with an action against Algerine pirates off Malta in 1793. But it would be with the coming of war in 1795 that Bone's story becomes one not merely of history, but of legend...
~~~
From - "John Company: The Life of Pitt of India" by James Rawlings (University of Edinburgh, 1974)
In 1760 or so the situation in India looked bleak for Britain. The great French victories of the 1740s had been built on in the 1750s, with the British East India Company failing to retake any of their former strongholds in the Carnatic, and finally losing Cuddalore. A betrayal by the Nawab of Bengal had resulted in much of the BEIC's effort being focused on fighting the Bengalis and installing a more pliable nawab. This was eventually accomplished, and Britain kept the rich trading post of Bombay on India's western coast, but the south and much of the interior was closed to British influence.
In the Mysore-Haidarabad Wars of the 1770s and 80s, it was clear that the British had far less influence with Haidarabad than the French did with Mysore. This war did, however, result in the Nizam withdrawing the Circars from French control and the BEIC moved in to defend them from any FEIC attempt to retake them. A French siege of Masoolipatam, the chief town in the region, failed in 1786.
It is worth noting that the conflicts between the FEIC and BEIC often had little or nothing to do with the wider wars between Britain and France in Europe and the New World, and when Britain and France were supposedly at peace with each other, fighting continued in India.
The FEIC remained under the able leadership of Joseph François Dupleix until his death in 1770. The post of gouverneur général was taken up by Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, who lacked Dupleix's unique genius but was nonetheless competent and dutifully became versed in Indian matters.[8] The BEIC struggled to find one equally capable who could lead them back to a position of power. They would not find him for some years.
William Pitt had been an able Prime Minister to King Frederick I for many years and had led Britain through the Third War of Supremacy, but he had never managed his finances very well and when he died, he left his family in debt. Furthermore, in order to retain his image as the Great Commoner, he had never taken a title, limiting the income of his eldest son John.[9] John decided that in order to restore the family finances, he would have to imitate his great-grandfather, Thomas "Diamond" Pitt, who had made his fortune from the diamond trade in India. The elder Pitt had eventually become Governor-General of Madras, now lost to the French, and had once saved it by buying out the Nawab of the Carnatic...
John Pitt enlisted in the East India Company in 1773 and travelled to India. He became a cornet of cavalry, just as his father had started, but saw rather more frontline combat. He achieved a colonelcy by 1786 and fought at the Siege of Masoolipatam against the French (as well as in many earlier conflicts with native states). Pitt received a wound to the leg at the siege from a French musket ball, ending his career on the front line as it forced him to walk with a cane, but by this time, at the age of 30, he had already made his fortune and paid off his family's debts. Nonetheless, Pitt had developed a love of India and chose to remain. He became Governor-General of the Presidency of Calcutta in 1790, and so was the pre-eminent British official in India at the time of the greatest, most unpredictable upheaval since the fall of the Mughal Empire...
[1]More or less as OTL, but there are more Corsican refugees than OTL. This is because the French forces in Corsica were led by a different general to the OTL Comte de Vaux, who used harsher measures against the populace suspected of collaboration with the rebels.
[2]In OTL Buonaparte verbally attacked the French invasion early on but later switched sides; here he stayed with the rebels, again because the French invaders were seen as more ruthless compared to OTL.
[3]Not OTL Napoleone Buonaparte, but his elder brother. In OTL he died young and our Napoleone was named for him. In TTL he survives, and is in some ways similar to our Napoleone, but not all.
[4]In OTL Carlo Buonaparte died in his early forties, but in TTL he is able to live a richer lifestyle, avoids disease and lives longer.
[5](This is true in both OTL and TTL). Interestingly in OTL even the Carlo Buonaparte who stayed in Corsica wanted to enrol the (younger) Napoleon in the RN at one point.
[6]In OTL HMS Ardent was captured by the French in 1779 during the American Revolutionary War, which doesn't happen in TTL.
[7]Ironically, in OTL Nelson's tactics at sea are quite similar to those of Napoleon on land: emphasis on artillery, using concentrated, well-trained forces driven by personal charisma to overcome much larger but poorly motivated enemies, and the like.
[8]In OTL, Rochambeau's opponent in the American Revolutionary War, Lord Cornwallis, became Governor-General of (British) India: in TTL the situation is reversed.
[9]OTL William Pitt's eldest son was also called John, but this John Pitt was born a few years earlier and has some characteristics of our William Pitt the Younger. We now see direct changes from the POD: in OTL, Pitt the Elder spent many years working with Prince Frederick and so, as Frederick was in America all those years in TTL, his life is one of the most immediately changed by the POD. Therefore, his children are also different.
~~
Comments? Thande
"A disturbing number of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived, were foreigners"
- John Spencer-Churchill (in a speech from 1921)
~~
From - "England's Captain, France's Saviour" by Albert Harrison (Oxford University Press, 1940):
Having spent oceans of blood and failed to gain an inch of new territory in Europe in the 1740s and 50s - largely thanks to Louis XV's unpopular policies - it is perhaps appropriate that in the 1760s France gained considerable new lands with the death of only one man. When the Duke of Lorraine died without male heirs in 1763, his lands defaulted to France and were annexed to the Kingdom. These were the last remnants of the once-great state of Lotharingia, now reduced to a few scattered enclaves throughout the region. By assuming control over Lorraine, France completed the path that it had been originally set upon by Louis XIV, and now unquestionably dominated that region.
The impact upon history of the end of Lorraine was slight. Its only direct effect was to remove the Duke, a former King of Poland, from any consideration of restoration. This served to quicken the Russo-Prussian ambitions to divide the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the rest is history.
A far more influential acquisition by France was that of Corsica. The island was theoretically possessed by the Republic of Genoa, but in practice rebels had held the island since 1755. Corsica had become a republic in all but name, with the Virgin Mary as titular monarch of the presumed kingdom. Unlike the venerable republics of Genoa, Venice and the Netherlands, the new republic in Corsica was constructed on Enlightenment principles. Its leader was Filippo Antonio Pasquale de Paoli, who had served in the Neapolitan army and now commanded the rebel military forces as well as being effective head of state of the republic.
During the thirteen-year existence of the Republic, an Enlightenment constitution was drafted and the state received praise from contemporary thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau. James Boswell, a companion of Samuel Johnson, wrote an account of the Republic which made Paoli and the constitution famous or notorious throughout Europe in the 1760s. It was this account which helped inspire the revolution in La Plata twenty years later.
In 1767 the Genoese lost the island of Capraia to the Corsican republic and decided that they had little chance of ever subduing the rebels. Furthermore, the Genoese treasury was almost exhuasted. To that end, the Genoese signed the island over to France in exchange for financial reparations. The vast and experienced French army invaded in 1768. Paoli's republicans fought hard before being defeated in 1769. Paoli and numerous other republican leaders and soldiers fled to Britain, which was at the time thought of as the most liberal country in Europe. In the 1760s, radical republicans were treated as amusing and entertaining curiosities by the British government, which did not see them as a serious threat until later on, and the Corsican refugees formed a community in London not unlike the Huguenots before them.[1]
Among the Corsicans was Carlo Buonaparte, a young supporter of Paoli[2]. A law student prior to fleeing the island with his wife and two-year-old son Napoleone[3], he decided to complete his studies, switching to English law. Buonaparte converted to Anglicanism to escape the anti-Catholic laws and changed his name to the anglicised Charles Bone. He received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 1774 and eventually became well-known for his skilful seeking of loopholes in the anti-Catholic laws, getting many English Catholics out of legal trouble. Very few knew that he was himself Catholic in origin, though many made accusations (without evidence).
Bone became an enemy of the ultra-Tory faction opposed to Catholic rights, then, but he was popular with radicals who supported Catholic emancipation, including Charles James Fox who became a close friend. Bone would eventually become an MP towards the end of the century.[4]
Though an interesting character in and of himself, Charles Bone is necessarily overshadowed by his eldest son, Napoleone, known as the "less foreign sounding" Leo. Charles enrolled his son as a midshipman in the Royal Navy at the age of thirteen, as was customary at the time[5] and served on HMS Ardent from 1777 onwards.[6] Mister Leo Bone passed his lieutenant's examination in Malta in 1783. He was transferred to HMS Raisonnable, during which time he served alongside the slightly senior Lieutenant Horatio Nelson.
The Raisonnable scored several victories against the French and Spanish in the Second La Platan War, and the British losses at Trafalgar meant that several new captaincies were open: thus first Nelson and then Bone were made master and commander, with Bone taking over the almost obsolete 28-gun frigate HMS Coventry in 1786. He was noted for a concentration on rapid gunnery and weight of fire, a strategy that he had developed in connexion with Nelson[7], and grew to command a great loyalty from his men. Boswell met him in 1788 and Bone makes a then-overlooked, but today well known, brief appearance in one of his accounts. Boswell described him as being the epitome of the Royal Navy commander whose men will follow him into the jaws of hell rather than face the shame of being left behind.
Bone was made post in 1791, taking command of the newly built frigate HMS Diamond - taking a great deal of his former crew with him, as the now outdated Coventry was paid off - and immediately making a name for himself with an action against Algerine pirates off Malta in 1793. But it would be with the coming of war in 1795 that Bone's story becomes one not merely of history, but of legend...
~~~
From - "John Company: The Life of Pitt of India" by James Rawlings (University of Edinburgh, 1974)
In 1760 or so the situation in India looked bleak for Britain. The great French victories of the 1740s had been built on in the 1750s, with the British East India Company failing to retake any of their former strongholds in the Carnatic, and finally losing Cuddalore. A betrayal by the Nawab of Bengal had resulted in much of the BEIC's effort being focused on fighting the Bengalis and installing a more pliable nawab. This was eventually accomplished, and Britain kept the rich trading post of Bombay on India's western coast, but the south and much of the interior was closed to British influence.
In the Mysore-Haidarabad Wars of the 1770s and 80s, it was clear that the British had far less influence with Haidarabad than the French did with Mysore. This war did, however, result in the Nizam withdrawing the Circars from French control and the BEIC moved in to defend them from any FEIC attempt to retake them. A French siege of Masoolipatam, the chief town in the region, failed in 1786.
It is worth noting that the conflicts between the FEIC and BEIC often had little or nothing to do with the wider wars between Britain and France in Europe and the New World, and when Britain and France were supposedly at peace with each other, fighting continued in India.
The FEIC remained under the able leadership of Joseph François Dupleix until his death in 1770. The post of gouverneur général was taken up by Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, who lacked Dupleix's unique genius but was nonetheless competent and dutifully became versed in Indian matters.[8] The BEIC struggled to find one equally capable who could lead them back to a position of power. They would not find him for some years.
William Pitt had been an able Prime Minister to King Frederick I for many years and had led Britain through the Third War of Supremacy, but he had never managed his finances very well and when he died, he left his family in debt. Furthermore, in order to retain his image as the Great Commoner, he had never taken a title, limiting the income of his eldest son John.[9] John decided that in order to restore the family finances, he would have to imitate his great-grandfather, Thomas "Diamond" Pitt, who had made his fortune from the diamond trade in India. The elder Pitt had eventually become Governor-General of Madras, now lost to the French, and had once saved it by buying out the Nawab of the Carnatic...
John Pitt enlisted in the East India Company in 1773 and travelled to India. He became a cornet of cavalry, just as his father had started, but saw rather more frontline combat. He achieved a colonelcy by 1786 and fought at the Siege of Masoolipatam against the French (as well as in many earlier conflicts with native states). Pitt received a wound to the leg at the siege from a French musket ball, ending his career on the front line as it forced him to walk with a cane, but by this time, at the age of 30, he had already made his fortune and paid off his family's debts. Nonetheless, Pitt had developed a love of India and chose to remain. He became Governor-General of the Presidency of Calcutta in 1790, and so was the pre-eminent British official in India at the time of the greatest, most unpredictable upheaval since the fall of the Mughal Empire...
[1]More or less as OTL, but there are more Corsican refugees than OTL. This is because the French forces in Corsica were led by a different general to the OTL Comte de Vaux, who used harsher measures against the populace suspected of collaboration with the rebels.
[2]In OTL Buonaparte verbally attacked the French invasion early on but later switched sides; here he stayed with the rebels, again because the French invaders were seen as more ruthless compared to OTL.
[3]Not OTL Napoleone Buonaparte, but his elder brother. In OTL he died young and our Napoleone was named for him. In TTL he survives, and is in some ways similar to our Napoleone, but not all.
[4]In OTL Carlo Buonaparte died in his early forties, but in TTL he is able to live a richer lifestyle, avoids disease and lives longer.
[5](This is true in both OTL and TTL). Interestingly in OTL even the Carlo Buonaparte who stayed in Corsica wanted to enrol the (younger) Napoleon in the RN at one point.
[6]In OTL HMS Ardent was captured by the French in 1779 during the American Revolutionary War, which doesn't happen in TTL.
[7]Ironically, in OTL Nelson's tactics at sea are quite similar to those of Napoleon on land: emphasis on artillery, using concentrated, well-trained forces driven by personal charisma to overcome much larger but poorly motivated enemies, and the like.
[8]In OTL, Rochambeau's opponent in the American Revolutionary War, Lord Cornwallis, became Governor-General of (British) India: in TTL the situation is reversed.
[9]OTL William Pitt's eldest son was also called John, but this John Pitt was born a few years earlier and has some characteristics of our William Pitt the Younger. We now see direct changes from the POD: in OTL, Pitt the Elder spent many years working with Prince Frederick and so, as Frederick was in America all those years in TTL, his life is one of the most immediately changed by the POD. Therefore, his children are also different.
~~
Comments? Thande
Thande
Donor
That's where I got the idea from.
I actually just looked into the names of frigates of the period, saw HMS Diamond and thought 'well, it's just got to be that'G.Bone said:
And now I've had an idea about the French Revolution...
Thande
Donor
Thanks P, although that seems a rather random area to ask about Have you just been reading about it in a wargame sourcebook or something?
I now present, as the Spanish (don't) say: El Mappo!
There may be some areas up Asia way and the extent of colonial control in the New World is debatable, of course...
Have you just been reading about it in a wargame sourcebook or something? I now present, as the Spanish (don't) say: El Mappo!
There may be some areas up Asia way and the extent of colonial control in the New World is debatable, of course...
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Yes, but for how long? Corrected me if I am wrong, but I think I saw a mention "pre-Bonaparte(sp?)" France in a previous post.Nice to see Boney for the English
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