Anyway, I was thinking about applying Duverger's analysis of internal party organisation to LTTW.
And I came to the conclusion modern parties will actually probably resemble OTL American ones more than European.
Duverger argues the branch-mass system usual in Europe was invented by Labour and/or Socialist parties circa 1900 as an alternative to the caucus-cadre system that was the only one up until then, and mostly still is in America, because of their need for general subscriptions for cash, and the organisation needed to do this, to be an ideological discussion group as well as a campaigning group, and to organise the working class as a whole.
Now, on first glance, the Populists in Britain and the Supremacists in America seem to be earlier inventors of this than OTL. Yet despite their (initial) success, it clearly hasn't spread to other parties, as the success of Labour/Socialist parties brought about in early 20th century Europe (generally merely formally, but very much in reality in the case of Christian Democratic, Nationalist, and to a lesser extent Agrarian parties).
The conclusion is they didn't, in fact, do this. The Populists, after all, were initially merely a subgroup of the Radicals - the best comparison may be the Anti-Corn Law Leagues, who pioneered the registration society, yet were never much more than an influence on the Liberals. They achieved more than that due to the split, but all the local groups were merely caucuses (like perhaps French left-wing parties of a similar period) and they had no real overarching structure beyond their parliamentary party. They aren't really an ideological movement once Blandford's gone, either. And it was their lack of organisation (and perhaps money) that brought about their downfall.
Now the Supremacists do have an ideology, and seem to have more of a permanent and national structure (the Pumpkin Clubs and the national convention). But maybe the comparison should be to a more working-class version of the Radical-Socialists, or perhaps more to Chamberlain's National Liberal Federation, or best of all Jackson's Democrats. Their ideology doesn't involve organising a pre-existing group with an identity in the same way, and whilst not exactly pro-establishment, they're probably more open to wealthy donors being their main source of income. Had they arisen where branch-mass parties existed, they'd probably be a nationalist one, but they didn't, and so they ended up like those other parties - groping towards that, but ultimately becoming more of a more formalised caucus-cadre party with a lot of members, extant under universal suffrage (as indeed a lot of socialist parties have become as time goes on, even more now than when Duverger was writing).
So how will they develop? Given the mentions of Mentianism's poor performance, and the fact Societism seems a lot rarer outside the Combine than socialism outside the Warsaw Pact (and also more accepting of hierarchy), I'm not convinced they will, hence what I said at the start.

And if they somehow do, I think they may come from church-led parties rather than Mentian ones.
 

Thande

Donor
Interesting analysis Owen.

Just when you think you know this forum, you do an update about battleships, and all people want to talk about is maths and paleontology :p Though I will work those into future updates given the clear interest.
 
Just when you think you know this forum, you do an update about battleships, and all people want to talk about is maths and paleontology :p Though I will work those into future updates given the clear interest.
Hurrah for maths and paleontology!
 
Interesting analysis Owen.

Just when you think you know this forum, you do an update about battleships, and all people want to talk about is maths and paleontology :p Though I will work those into future updates given the clear interest.

Trust me - as a former sailor and with an interest in naval history, it was very, very good and very plausible within LTTW's world compared to what I do know of warships in OTL.

You just spoke on it so thoroughly, what can I say besides... oh, a guess that the *Dreadnought or wonder-ship equivalent will probably be a breakthrough during the war a la the tank in WW1 armies? :D
 

Thande

Donor
Trust me - as a former sailor and with an interest in naval history, it was very, very good and very plausible within LTTW's world compared to what I do know of warships in OTL.

You just spoke on it so thoroughly, what can I say besides... oh, a guess that the *Dreadnought or wonder-ship equivalent will probably be a breakthrough during the war a la the tank in WW1 armies? :D

Thanks UM, and that's an interesting thought...
 
It was some time since I last commented (read: griped) so without further ado:
Thande, in the endnotes you write that OTL turrets' elevation limitations made barbettes used on some warships. I think you're mistaken - you can make big enough slits in the turret face that there are no such limitations. The main reason for prefering barbettes was that they (unlike turrets) protected not only the guns themselves, but also the ammo hoists and all related machinery, which in contemporary turrets had to be protected with (heavy) belt armor. Thus guns on barbettes could be placed higher without weight penalties turrets would bring.
Getting back to elevation limitations - I think you confused turrets with casemate mountings - the latter had those problems (which brought the end of their employment post-WW1, as they were useless for mounting high elevating guns).
BTW, the turrets I'm talking about previously, are Ericcson/Coles style ones (like on USS Monitor or HMS Dreadnought (1875 one)). Nowadays what is called a turret is actually an armored gunhouse placed upon a barbette (I believe that the first battleships that used modern turrets were the Centurion-class of 1892).
 

Thande

Donor
Part #221: The Danish-Mended Emirate

“There’s no point arguing about it now – how the hell was I supposed to know that’s not how you’re meant to hold a pint glass, you know I normally drink wine? Find something on Jocasta right now to take the press’s attention off of me or we’re sunk.”

—From the Correspondence of Bes. David Batten-Hale (New Doradist Party--Croydon Urban)​

*

From “Great Lives” by Patricia Daniels (1979)—

Claus Jensen (also, sometimes ironically, known by his official register name of Klaus Hansen) is often regarded as the greatest artist in Scandinavian history. He was certainly the most influential on the world stage for both artistic and political reasons. Born in Ålborg in 1853, popular myth says he was the first baby baptised in St Budolfi Church after General Nostitz had signed his name in the church’s register after conquering Jutland. The reality, of course, is less romantic—Claus was actually baptised three months earlier, according to official records. Nonetheless it is easy to see how the story grew up, as in many ways Jensen’s life paralleled the course of German rule in Jutland.

Although relations between Scandinavia and German Billungia were never more than coldly correct, in the 1860s and early 1870s hackles had been lowered sufficiently for trade and movement of people to resume across the Lillebælt between Billungian Fredericia and Scandinavian Middelfart on the isle of Funen.[1] Claus’ family were middle-class and reasonably well-off, his father working as a trained accountant for the Bank of Ålborg and occasionally being paid for independent consultancy work by nobles and industrialists. This enabled them to take regular trips across the Lillebælt to see family who still lived under the Scandinavian flag in Funen and Zealand. These holidays were very influential on the young Claus, not merely because they allowed him to spend time with his family away from a boarding school he had mixed feelings about, but also because of the experience of the Baltic voyage and the thrill of passing under the gaze of the mutually suspicious customs guards. Claus’ diaries about this period have influenced not only his fellow artists but also Diversitarian theorists. Prof. Maxwell Gordon of the University of Portsmouth (Virginia) most famously drew attention to the fact that Claus felt an almost transgressional excitement at the experience which went on to inform his great artistic works—whereas trading Danes born a century earlier likely regarded it as a dull slog across an iron-grey sea between two rather similar pieces of flat countryside. Of course this is to ignore the argument that Claus simply had the gift of finding wonder in what others would think of as commonplace, as is true of so many artists.

Claus is often implied in shallow triumphalist treatments to have been self-taught, which is not the case; he was influenced at a young age by his uncle, who was an amateur landscape painter in his spare time from his job as a salesman for the conglomerate Billungisk Marcipan. This company had been founded by an enterprising marzipan producer in Lübeck, the city which claimed to be the birthplace of the sweetmeat, and sought to expand its markets further throughout the world (aided by new refrigeration techniques, steamships and the Standard Crate). The Ålborg factory, which produced shipments for sale to Scandinavia, the Baltic and the British Isles, played a key role in the increasing interest in this confectionary in all of those regions at that time. Claus was also influenced by his teachers at school, though he was not always a good student in other subjects. Controversially some biographers have claimed that his style may even have been inspired in part by a teacher from Berlin named Ludwig Wolff.

Claus was already painting at the age of nineteen, although his early work is fraught with critical controversy over whether it already contains an element of genius or whether this developed later thanks to events. It was at this time, in the year 1872, that the situation in Jutland began to change for the worse. The precise origin of the Kulturkrieg remains no less debated than Claus’ paintings. Many have tried to place the blame solely on Bundeskaiser Johann Georg, which is at best an oversimplification.[2] Augustus, the first German Federal Emperor, had died in 1863 after only four years on his new throne and had been succeeded by his brilliant son, Christian (formerly Christian III Augustus of High Saxony). Christian, with the help of Max von Abick, had masterminded the inaugural WorldFest which had soothed international views of a united Germany as a threat and effectively replaced war with throwing ever bigger and impressive parties as a means of competition between nations. Already having dynamically taken charge of High Saxon industrial development, Christian proceeded to do the same with Germany as a whole and was determined to turn the somewhat ramshackle Federal Empire into a powerhouse. Europe looked on with misgivings from some quarters (this was the era of France being gripped by Alain Tourneur’s paranoia about German aggression) but generally with curiosity over just what Christian would do next. And it certainly seemed as though he had a good few years ahead of him.

Appearances can be deceptive. Despite many desperate conspiracy theories over the years, it seems quite certain that Christian’s illness from 1871 was a cancer of the throat caused by his stress-fuelled habit of chain-smoking Italian cigarettes. The second Bundeskaiser passed away just nine years after the first and left a power vacuum into which his eldest son stepped.

Christian had been forward-thinking enough to supply Germany with an heir and a spare, and so when he succeeded to the imperial federal throne in 1863, his eldest son had become John George VI of High Saxony while his younger son Prince Frederick Christian joined the Army—a still popular career path for younger sons of European monarchs. For the nine years Christian was reigning in Dresden, John George was running High Saxony from Leipzig—and not all his subjects liked what they saw. John George shared his father’s ambitions to make Germany more unified and effective but had not inherited all of his charisma and ability, and his political actions were often clumsier and more prone to backfiring. He was also rumoured to have crypto-Catholic beliefs, reflecting the fact that (High) Saxony had been a historical oddity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with a Catholic monarchy ruling over a mostly Protestant population (and even presiding over discrimination against their few Catholic subjects). John George’s alleged beliefs are often brought up in relation to the fact that Germany’s internal turmoil in his reign did not take the form of a Protestant majority against a Catholic minority, as many had feared.[3] However, this may simply have been pragmatisme; while all but the most fire-breathing Schmidtists had conceded that the Austro-Germans would never join Germany, in this era there remained a sense that Bavaria might one day become part of the Bundesreich and it would be ill-advised to repel Bavarian public opinion by persecuting Catholics.

In 1872 Johann Georg therefore became Bundeskaiser, with his young son Christian Augustus becoming Christian IV of Saxony with his uncle Frederick Christian as Regent. As noted above, the Kulturkrieg was not an idea Johann Georg suddenly came up with one day. There had already been difficulties under his father with attempts to institute a rotation system with regiments, trying to force Bohemians to serve in Low Saxony or Swabians to serve in Billungia with a common, standardised military code and interchangeable officers and uniforms. German unification might have been accomplished on paper (at least for a given definition of ‘Germany’) but clearly the path towards true nationhood would be long and painful. Civil service administration had parallel problems, partly because of the variety of German dialects across the Empire and there being no standardised definition of the ‘correct’ approach.

On the one hand there was therefore this ostensibly rational desire to make Germany more functional, and on the other there was the uglier side of German (or even High Saxon) supremacists who wanted all the lands under Wettin rule to conform to Dresden definitions of German culture. Despite many accusations otherwise, Johann Georg’s view probably mostly fell into the former category, as evidenced by his push for the abandonment of Fraktur script in favour of simplified Latin script as standard, upsetting many mediaeval romanticists who might otherwise have fallen into the second category. However, Johann Georg was certainly willing to cut deals with men who fell into the second group. The Bundesdiet was ungovernable following the retirement of Abick as Chancellor in 1873 (supposedly for health reasons, actually due to continued disagreements with the new Bundeskaiser). The old Saxon Radical Populist Party that Christoph Lenz had founded in the 1840s had morphed into a nationwide alliance of Populist reformers and Johann Georg’s position was too precarious for him to consider banning them (as many of his counterparts did during the Sanción Roja period of the 1880s). Instead he sought to divide them by appealing to those Populists who shared his desire for unitary German culture (and to persecute minorities who would not conform). Few of Johann Georg’s new allies were openly Neo-Jacobin but there was undoubtedly more Robespierre than Schmidt influencing their attitudes. To these German supremacist Populists, Johann Georg added a core of conservative royalists and industrial doradists who believed that commonality of law and language would spur trade and prosperity. He then attempted to govern while passing ever more radical laws aimed at bringing about these goals, often influenced as much by trying to buy these votes with audacious claims as actually achieving anything concrete. The Kulturkrieg had begun.

Back in Jutland, Claus Jensen was sent away by his father to study Law at the Sorbonne in Paris. Following the dissolution of the ancient University of Paris by the Jacobins in the Revolution and its temporary replacement by the Academy of French Latin Learning, the University had been reconstituted under a new and forward-looking faculty (much like Cambridge in Great Britain) which emphasised nineteenth-century developments in both humanities and sciences. Claus was rapidly bored by the course but intrigued by the work of some of his fellow students. He quietly dropped out and joined the always-flourishing artistic scene in Paris, something which would have outraged his father if he had known: this was the period when Lectel communications into Jutland gradually fell silent as a sinister shadow swept across any suspiciously ‘nonconformist’ parts of the German Federal Empire.

For many years following the transformation of Paris into a ‘Utilitarian’ wasteland of soulless brick by Lisieux, French artists had chosen to use the city merely as a base and to spend much of their time in the countryside seeking inspiration, something aided by the coming of the railways. The exception had always been those who were more interested in humanity than landscapes, not only portraits but scenes of busy street crowds and the ‘modern scenery’ genre also popular in London, New York and Buenos Aires at the time. This splinter of French artistic opinion had been looked down on and persecuted for some years, their work considered by society only fit to daub the lids of biscuit tins and hang in the houses of tasteless factory workers. Matters were changing at the time when Claus arrived, and Pierre Corbelier, who had patiently struggled for years to win recognition for his work, was now the respected grand old man of a school of painters taking inspiration from him. What had changed was that the dreary industrial Paris of de Lisieux was now breaking down and suffering haphazard replacement in the new Naissancist style, and it was this very degradation that Corbelier found fascinating—hence the name of his school, La déchéance. Corbelier’s paintings and sculptures captured the theme of decline and collapse. Some of his pupils tied this to the ongoing craze for ancient Babylonian and Persian art and architecture which was flooding Europe as Persia was opened up to more European traders. Others combined the two with influence from speculative romance, creating imaginary pictures of modern European or Novamundine cities lying in ruins and being picked over by explorers from a distant future.

Claus, however, was not so much interested in subject matter as in style, and Corbelier only had so much to teach him. He soon formed his own cabal of young and radical artists, which became known as the Sensualists. Throughout the nineteenth century, artists (broadly speaking) had focused on attempting to be more and more true-to-life, as though in competition with the gradually advancing asimcon technology. Particularly influential in the 1850s was the Valladolid School of Spanish artists (though many of the founders were Portuguese fleeing the Neo-Jacobin regime in Lisbon) which created new groundbreaking hyperrealistic techniques.[4] Claus argued that this was not a competition which painters could, or should try to, win. Painting, and all art, was not merely an attempt to coldly duplicate a real scene, but sought to capture the sensations that it awoke in the human heart, unique to the artist and to the time at which he observed it. For the same reason Claus was dismissive of the imaginary speculative romantic scenes of some of Corbelier’s pupils and in later life was sceptical in turn of the new school of Phantasmistry.[5] Claus believed that if it could not be encountered by a human who could record those sensory impressions, it could not be meaningfully depicted by an artist. With that in mind, he freed himself from the strictures of art at the time and radically used paints in a manner that contemporary critics regarded as slapdash or meaningless. He cared not—in fact a painting whose subject could not be recognised by one observer but was hugely meaningful to another was, he argued, the true expression of art; an asimcon that was immediately and identically comprehended by any observer was not art. (Claus was influential enough in the long run that asimconic artists had to fight a long time in turn for their contention that asimcons could be art).

If Claus had merely remained in Paris and kickstarted this movement along with fellow artists such as Iain Stewart of Great Britain/Scotland, Marie Delaurier of France and Giovanni Bertinelli of Italy, he would still have been an important figure to history. However, his ideas about the art of the Senses meant that he felt he had to expose himself to as much of what the world had to offer as possible in order for his art to explore all his senses could tell him. To that end in 1880, after selling a number of paintings to raise funds—despite an initial negative critical reception, unlike many groundbreaking artists he was enough of a showman to drum up an eager audience—he decided to take out a commission with the Scandinavian Asiatic Company in order to view some of Copenhagen’s far-flung colonies. It was at this time that Claus was exposed to the effects of the Kulturkrieg on Jutland. Attempting to cross from Mittelfart to see his family, he was subject to a far more unpleasant border crossing at a city now officially called Friedrichstadt rather than Fredericia. He was even verbally abused and slapped across the face by the customs guards when he attempted to correct the new papers they issued him in the name of ‘Klaus Hansen’. Incensed, Claus visited his family in Ålborg, or as the signs declared it, Aalburg. The Jensens (or Hansens) regarded his new fame with mixed feelings. Still, they told him horror stories about ‘the Dresden Commissioners’ banning the public use of Danish in schools and workplaces and even reportedly paying informants who would tell on those using it at home. Every public authority and an increasing number of individual households had been issued with a copy of the Wörterbuch von Standarddeutsch to ensure all would know the correct and only manner of communication. Claus’ sister told him he had been fortunate even to pass the Lillebælt, with ever-circulating rumours that Dresden would cut off trade and movement of people altogether.

While Claus’ first and foremost driving commitment was to his art and he did not abandon his plans, he did alter them slightly. He arranged the smuggling of his family to Scandinavian North Jutland [the North Jutlandic Island] and made contact with resistance groups who were already receiving unofficial aid from Copenhagen. Claus used his skills to design prints and engravings that could be duplicated many times and distributed throughout the land (often using old disused mobile Optel shutterboxes to form temporary data transfer chains). Some of these were simple propaganda depictions, such as an allegorical female representation of Denmark or Jutland being carried away by a grotesque caricature of Johann Georg wearing a German crested helmet and carrying a club labelled ‘KULTUR’. However, Claus was often unable to resist exploring his own artistic ideas even now and some of his prints were so Sensualist that the rebels plastering them on walls were uncertain what they were meant to be. Though this could have backfired, the popularity of Claus’ art with certain forward-looking cliques throughout the continent had led to it being associated with Denmark or Jutland specifically; he was often called simply ‘the Dane’ or ‘the Jute’ by members of fashionable salons. The Jutish rebels therefore seized upon his art as an icon of their land and saw plastering it everywhere as a sign of rebellion against the Germans, whose own art was still mostly based on Valladolid School-type hyperrealism. Johann Georg indeed reacted predictably by banning Claus’ art in Germany—which of course just led to increased interest not only in Jutland but throughout the Bundesreich to find out what all the fuss was about. Bootleg prints often found their way into Germany from industrious producers in the Bernese Republic or Bavaria—in the latter case in particular, some of the ‘Jensen’ prints actually turned out to have been produced by talented local Sensualist artists, including (as observed by some Societists) one popularly regarded as being especially emblematic of Jutish culture by contemporary critics.

Meanwhile, if Johann Georg had hoped for personal revenge against Claus, he would be frustrated by the length and breadth of the terraqueous globe. The second phase of Claus’ career began in 1882 with a voyage to the small Scandinavian colonial empire. This initially took in Madagascar and Sofala; the latter had become a Scandinavian possession following the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire following the Great American War and the Revolution. Whereas most of the Portuguese empire had ended up directly or indirectly in Meridian hands (working through Brazil in the case of Angola and Senhor Oliveira’s Company in India), Mozambique was simply too far from the UPSA’s spheres of influence to have been claimed at the crucial moment. The colony had broken into three as the Portuguese administrators lost control of their territory: Gazaland in the south had been conquered by the Matetwa Emperor Phunga kaMbuyazi in 1858-60; Sofala in the centre had been claimed by Scandinavian freebooters out of Johanneshavn in Madagascar; and Mauruca in the north remained tenuously autonomous under exilic Portuguese rule out of the Isle of Mozambique for some years, before effectively being purchased by the Italian government in 1874 for colonial bragging rights alone. Claus found these exotic lands fascinating, particularly Madagascar with its unique animal and plant life. At this stage in his career he seemed less interested in the natives, and some biographers on both Societist and Diversitarian sides have pointed out the irony that he did not seem particularly moved by the fact that Scandinavian colonial administrators were forcing some of the natives to learn Danish.

Claus’ first voyage also took in Scandinavian India, the new colonies growing as the result of an accident of history—that Denmark had founded and retained trading posts in the subcontinent which fortuitously were in southern regions which had not been directly ravaged by the Great Jihad, such as Tranquebar and Calicut.[6] While the tours of the ‘new lands of opportunity’ (for Scandinavian traders if not the natives) did have some influence upon Claus, it paled into insignificance beside what was intended to be a short stopover on the way home. The engine of Claus’ steamship developed a problem off the Arabian Peninsula and rather than just pulling into one of the coaling stations which had been built up, the captain chose to go to Aden proper for repairs. The capital of the Scandinavian-backed Emirate of Yemen grabbed hold of Claus’ heart as soon as he saw it and never let go, in the words of one biographer.

Aden was, and is, an ancient port city built into the natural harbour formed by the caldera of an extinct volcano. It has been significant since antiquity and in Old Testament times is thought by some scholars to have been a part of the kingdom of Sheba. Having changed hands many times between flags, tongues and creeds, in 1883 Aden formed the keystone of Scandinavia’s colonial strategy forged after the humiliation of the Unification War. The port had suffered a Persian raid under false pirate flag during the Euxine War of the 1860s, and Constantinople’s authority had faded as it became apparent that regardless of the Ottoman Empire’s new vigour in the Mediterranean and Africa, the Turks remained on the back foot in the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf. While a new Ottoman Indian Ocean fleet had begun to take shape with the opening of the Sinai Canal in 1873, by this point the opportunity had been lost. Oman was closely tied to Persia and Yemen had become a colonial vassal of the Scandinavian Empire.

A history of colonialism in the late nineteenth century will always be controversial (if only because the ASN demands it be so). Though many European countries will naturally claim colonial rule was a positive for their former colonies, uplifting them to a higher standard of economic development (as though that was their goal all along), Yemen is one case where Scandinavian rule is conceded by all except the most hotblooded Yemenite patriots to have been a mostly good thing. This is primarily because the Scandinavian Asiatic Company simply brought stability and defence to a place which in the previous few decades had been subject to several wars (civil and otherwise), pirate raids, bombardments by random Europeans, punitive expeditions by the Ottomans, and other chaos. Furthermore, the SAC appointed competent, coolheaded administrators (most famously Claus’ contemporary Ingmar Bergqvist) who recognised that the most valuable thing the Company got from Yemen was a staging post allowing them to build stable trade networks to exploit the re-emerging Indian markets. With that advantage already obtained, the Company could afford to take a light touch approach in Yemen and deal with the Emir as more of an equal than a subordinate. The taxes imposed on exports were fairly mild and more than made up for the new trading opportunities offered to Yemenites, who found themselves able to trade throughout the Scandinavian colonial empire and beyond. The Scandinavians began working with the Russians more closely in the late nineteenth century for reasons both close to home (Germany increasingly being seen as a mutual enemy) and concerning trade at sea. Scandinavian and Russian trade concerns in different parts of Asia and Africa barely overlapped and complemented rather than competed with each other. When Claus arrived in Yemen in 1883, the Treaty of Trondheim had already been in force for three years, Scandinavia joining the Russian-led Vitebsk Customs Union which also incorporated Lithuania, Finland, Courland, Corea and eventually Beiqing China and Gavaji.

All of this only made the boom town of Aden a more exotic and fascinating place. Not only were there native Yemenites and fellow Scandinavians mixing in the city, but Russians, Lithuanians and native Erythreans came over from Russian Erythrea, joined by traders from places as far-flung as Yapon and Povilskaja [Namibia]. For a man who had sought new sensations, it was heaven. Claus would spend five years in Aden, painting feverishly and exploiting new colours, new dyes which traders brought to him. Some were ancient secrets of the Yemenite trade routes, while others were new inventions from the industrial powerhouses of Europe or the Novamund, in particular the vast chemical research laboratories of the UPSA. Agustín Jiménez had many imitators.[7] As well as his painting, Claus took to sculpture as well and filled endless diaries with stories both encountered through traders and experienced by himself living in the city of the volcano. Though Claus was no novelist himself, his painstaking records formed the basis of The New 1001 Nights: A Romance of Modern Araby by the Belgian writer Karel Snieders in 1904.

A sunburnt Claus finally returned to Europe in 1888, gabbling excitedly about his experiences at the merest excuse, shunned as a madman by all those who did not know who he was. His new paintings set the art world alight once again and swept aside many who had filled the void of artistic fashion while he had been absent. He learned to his satisfaction that, with his help, the Jutish resistance campaign had turned the tide of the Kulturkrieg. The attempts to enforce cultural uniformity on Germany had been repeatedly defeated and the authorities humiliated, it becoming clear that their goals were unfeasible: it does not take a genius to realise that this crucial moment played a huge role in European views of Societism a few years later. This account has naturally focused on the Jutes due to the relevance to Claus, but we cannot ignore the other minorities subject to discrimination in this dark period of German history. The Lusatians [Sorbs] had suffered longest, as Johann Georg had begun some policies even when he was merely King of High Saxony. The Czechs, whose nationalism had lain largely dormant under mostly benevolent governance since the Popular Wars, had been roused into organised revolt by the demands from Dresden and only careful Austrian neutrality had prevented a war. And of course we cannot forget the Jews. Perhaps even more so than the other sledgehammer tactics of Johann Georg’s monarchy, the suppression of Yiddish had robbed Germany not only of poor working-class Jews who spoke it but of many middle-class, assimilated educated Jews who reacted to this as the first step of a slippery slope and joined them in fleeing to Poland. King Casimir VII of Poland[8] made the country open and welcome to Jewish refugees from Germany (not entirely to the delight of the Poles themselves) and enhanced his country’s economic development as a consequence. The Hapsburgs, who had been economically tied to Poland since the Unification War, approved of this and took the opportunity to offload some of their own Jews on Poland as well as some who had fled the Russian Empire after the Euxine War. This led to what is sometimes called the Golden Age of Jewry in Poland, when Jews reached 18% of the population and freely lived and worshipped, contributing to cultural and industrial breakthroughs. Sadly, it would be short-lived.

After all this self-destructive behaviour, the German voters proved they had had enough and elected a majority Populist Alliance government which reversed most of the Kulturkrieg laws, imposed Schmidtist policies and robbed Johann Georg of his power base. The monarch was not cathartically overthrown or forced to abdicate but lived out the next twenty years through peace and war in an eternal sulk. Though his son Christian IV Augustus attempted to repair the damage when he came to the throne in 1908, the fact that modern Germany is a republic can likely be traced to this period.

Claus was glad he and his family were finally able to return to Jutland and speak Danish openly, and indeed now his work was legally sold throughout Germany he was more popular than ever before. The complex mix of influences which Aden had had on him was a worthy match for his Sensationist style; in his absence many had copied it or taken it to new places, but none could adequately duplicate his unique new subject matter. Though many tried.

Despite his success, Claus soon became bored again. At the age of just 38 he already felt as though his life was over. After a frenzied few years painting feverish Yemenite scenes while surrounded by the incongruously cool damp plains of Aalburg/Ålborg (now with bilingual signs) he decided he was ready for another adventure. But where now? He decided to scorn the Scandinavian possessions and try for a place he had heard much about from traders in Aden. Antipodea! The most mysterious continent of all. He would go to Cygnia initially, he decided, and then head north into the desert lands ruled rather theoretically by the Batavian Republic (and therefore the UPSA). He had heard travellers’ tales of the native Indiens, their unique painting style and worldview based on the Droomtijd primordial age of creation. He was determined to expand his sensory experiences once again...

The tale of Claus’ later life in Antipodea could fill a book in itself. His later work would never be as influential as his Yemenite Period, but he paved the way for many other artists both Indien and European in origin to bring Indien-influenced art to the world. He encountered James Patmore, the explorer who discovered the ‘Jiqpin’ tribe who may be descended from those Jacobins who fled Fort Surcouf and the escaped slaves of the Virginian slaveholders who later inhabited parts of New Virginia. He was even one of the first to see Le Rocher d’Ouleureux, the great isolated red rock in the deep in the arrière-pays of Pérousie.[9] And, in 1897, he was surprised to find himself suddenly at the centre of a global political shift as representatives of Cygnia and Pérousie met to decide how to partition their northern neighbour...




[1] For clarity, Funen is an anglicised version of the Danish name Fyn (and later Zealand is one for Sjælland). English names exist for the larger Danish islands and Copenhagen but not much else.

[2] Note that the names of the kings of High Saxony remain in an anglicised form but those of the German Emperors are left in German and not anglicised. The precise reason for this convention having developed in unclear in-timeline but possibly because after the 1850s the German Emperors were the ones whom Anglophone newspapers wanted to make sound scary and foreign rather than their subordinate kings.

[3] And indeed happened in OTL with the Kulturkampf. Note that TTL’s Germany does not include Bavaria (though this is a smaller area than OTL modern Bavaria) and parts of the Rhineland, but it does include Bohemia and Swabia, so there are still a fair number of Catholics in the Bundesreich.

[4] Ironically enough, the rough equivalent to this in OTL would be the Danish Golden Age school kicked off by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, who wasn’t born in TTL.

[5] Loosely equivalent to Surrealism in OTL. Claus’ Sensualism is similar to Impressionism in OTL.

[6] OTL Tranquebar was always the most significant part of Danish India, but the factory in Calicut never became dominant—this is different in TTL due to Christian VII’s colonial policies coupled to the Dutch collapse in India after the formation of Belgium meaning the colony effectively fell into Scandinavian hands. Note the Danish factory at Christiansnagore (OTL Frederiksnagore) in Bengal is not mentioned as it is surrounded by Anglo-American Bengal and thus not in a position to capitalise on the chaos in India.

[7] Agustín Jiménez was the discoverer of tyrine dye [mauvine in OTL] as described in part #111.

[8] The grandson of Casimir V, AKA Rainaldo IV of Lucca.

[9] AKA Ayers Rock / Uluru in OTL; the French name is just a French rendering of ‘The Rock of Uluru’. Arrière-pays means ‘outback’ or ‘hinterland’.
 
Last edited:

Thande

Donor
Yes, I thought I would do an update now as the board is going down for transition this week.

I've been waiting for an excuse to use this title pun for about five years so I thought why not now to celebrate :p

Oh, and this wasn't intentional, but literally as I wrote this post, Not An English Word went live on Sea Lion Press, so please do check that out if you like resurrected Victorian Prime Ministers causing chaos here and now (and who doesn't?) The other writers in the stable have some fantastic stuff out too.

It was some time since I last commented (read: griped) so without further ado:
Thande, in the endnotes you write that OTL turrets' elevation limitations made barbettes used on some warships. I think you're mistaken - you can make big enough slits in the turret face that there are no such limitations. The main reason for prefering barbettes was that they (unlike turrets) protected not only the guns themselves, but also the ammo hoists and all related machinery, which in contemporary turrets had to be protected with (heavy) belt armor. Thus guns on barbettes could be placed higher without weight penalties turrets would bring.
Getting back to elevation limitations - I think you confused turrets with casemate mountings - the latter had those problems (which brought the end of their employment post-WW1, as they were useless for mounting high elevating guns).
BTW, the turrets I'm talking about previously, are Ericcson/Coles style ones (like on USS Monitor or HMS Dreadnought (1875 one)). Nowadays what is called a turret is actually an armored gunhouse placed upon a barbette (I believe that the first battleships that used modern turrets were the Centurion-class of 1892).
Thanks for that - it's certainly not an area I'm an expert in so I will try to fix that up when I get a chance.
 
Now that is fascinating. You're still being very oblique as to whether Scandinavia eventually retakes Jutland, but it does seem that they'll be leaning towards Russia in future.

I'm also very interested by the future hints that European Societism will take a very different approach to that in South America.
 
The last update makes me hope that, ITTL, the vast past of Yemen, with its rich and unique art, architecture, writing and technical skill, will receive the attention it deserves. "Sheba" (the most likely name, but a slightly incorrect one) might be regarded as an ancient civilazition with about as much dignity as, say, Assyria or Carthage, as opposed to the virtual blank spot for everyone except specialists and Yemenis IOTL.

EDIT: the remark about Persia also makes me hope that the same holds for Elam, which is likewise a highly underrated culture. Maybe cultures like Jiroft will be known earlier here, giving them a chance to feature into mainstream historical narratives?
 

Thande

Donor
The last update makes me hope that, ITTL, the vast past of Yemen, with its rich and unique art, architecture, writing and technical skill, will receive the attention it deserves. "Sheba" (the most likely name, but a slightly incorrect one) might be regarded as an ancient civilazition with about as much dignity as, say, Assyria or Carthage, as opposed to the virtual blank spot for everyone except specialists and Yemenis IOTL.

EDIT: the remark about Persia also makes me hope that the same holds for Elam, which is likewise a highly underrated culture. Maybe cultures like Jiroft will be known earlier here, giving them a chance to feature into mainstream historical narratives?

Thanks for those suggestions. What I'm going for here is basically that due to the No Napoleon in Egypt thing, the Near East civilisations will get some of the European interest which in OTL went on Ancient Egypt. Though Egypt won't be neglected altogether of course, it'll probably just come back into fashion later.
 
Lovely new update! A work of art, one might say...

Part #221: The Danish-Mended Emirate

Is Gavaji an Indian state?

A history of colonialism in the late nineteenth century will always be controversial (if only because the ASN demands it be so).

I just realized that if colonialism is mostly seen as a bad thing, Diversitarian ideology insists that pro-colonialism voices get a fair hearing as well. :eek:

This led to what is sometimes called the Golden Age of Jewry in Poland, when Jews reached 18% of the population and freely lived and worshipped, contributing to cultural and industrial breakthroughs. Sadly, it would be short-lived.

Well, that's not ominous at all.
Societist cultural rather than physical genocide ahead?

And, in 1897, he was surprised to find himself suddenly at the centre of a global political shift as representatives of Cygnia and Pérousie met to decide how to partition their northern neighbour...

Really hope we get a "just before the Pandoric War" world map. :)

best,
Bruce
 

Thande

Donor
Lovely new update! A work of art, one might say...
Thanks very much!


Is Gavaji an Indian state?
No, it's the Russian spelling of Hawaii (it's come up a couple of times before).


B_Munro said:
Really hope we get a "just before the Pandoric War" world map. :)
Yes, I've just started thinking about that.

Possibly a somewhat obscure reference to these fellows; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danishmends

Indeed, as I just mentioned at the meetup, I like to make references and puns so obscure even I barely get them ;)
 
Yeay, the famously great (well, not really) Scandinavian colonial empires make their appearances in another timeline! :D Glad to see someone else knew about Frederiksnagore (my Bengali friend was entirely unaware of that the Danes too once attempted to establish colonial outposts in India).
 
Top