Actually should have been Indiana. Edited.
But yes, Stephenson will contend for the Governorship as a Democrat proudly touting his KKK membership.
Spectre of Europe - An Alternative Paris Commune Timeline
- Thread starter Reydan
- Start date
- Status
Actually should have been Indiana. Edited.
But yes, Stephenson will contend for the Governorship as a Democrat proudly touting his KKK membership.
Chapter 125 - Crossroads: China after Dr Sun.
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Five: Crossroads: China after Dr Sun.
‘The Three Principles of the People Unite China’
Guomindang Party Slogan, 1920s.
‘China is People, China is Land, China is History’
Intertitle from the 1927 US Information Film “China: Old and New”
A Camel Park in Beijing c.1900. The scale of modernisation needed by the Republican government was vast
and still very much a work-in-progress by Sun's death.
By early 1924 it was clear that Dr Sun Yat Sen was dying. For the last three or so years the father of modern China had moved with increasing difficulty, aided by sticks, and then by an early motorcar, a gift of American admirers. ‘He was still as vital ever in mental terms’ wrote long-term associate and aide Edouard Chavannes ‘but physically his body was ailing’. Chavannes, who had accompanied Sun from the very beginning of his Chinese odyssey when the group had travelled by sealed train across Russia in 1900, put it down to the physical exhaustion of the work. ‘Who can know what strains he is under’ he confided in a letter to a long-term friend back in France ‘for who has undertaken a task such as his? Even Washington, in the 1700s, was only building a fraction of what is America now. Dr Sun is building a new continent’.
Still, the man insisted on waking at 5am every morning to exercise before looking over governmental papers. He was meticulous, aides recalled, but also idiosyncratic. Like the European socialists of the Centrist Party Dr Sun was a firm believer in the potential of railways to draw people together into larger wholes. Yet he didn’t fully understand the technology, as his god-son Kenneth Cantlie recalled. Cantlie, a locomotive engineer and designer contracted to Chinese service remembered on several occasions having to hide Dr Sun’s theoretical maps of new lines before journalists arrived; ‘so impossible were the lines’ Cantlie recalled ‘that he would have been lampooned for months in the foreign press’.
Still, the China established since Dr. Sun’s revolutions and campaigns of the 1900s was a dramatically different landscape to the Qing era that it replaced. Between 1910 and 1925, for instance, the number of factories in the Republic had increased six fold. Thousands of new co-operative societies had sprung up, fostered by the anarchist and socialist elements of the Guomindang, and peasant farmers had, since the Land Reform Law of 1917, moved closer to being freeholders on the land rather than impoverished tenants. Thousands of kilometres of railways track, hundreds of new (albeit flimsy) airlines for the well-to-do, and a huge investment in the telegraph system had all helped tie the Republic together.
Guomindang rule had a transformative effect on Chinese society. These female students at the Changsa Girl's Modern School, c.1923
were among the first to attend the new University colleges opened to women by Dr Sun's regime.
Changes were being felt socially. Cities, with their burgeoning trade unions, were at the forefront of workers’ rights campaigns, whilst peasant collectives and community banks flourished with government assistance. The number of high schools in China grew from c.350 in 1907 to 2335 in 1927 and by the time of Sun’s death in May 1924 over a million Chinese youths had progressed into secondary education out of an equally expanding system of primary schools. The effect was most dramatic on women – traditionally having a conservative place in Chinese society the “New Woman” of the 1920s was a very different creature.
“She smokes, she works in a factory or an office, she attends party meetings, goes dancing, goes to the cinema, reads, flirts, lives with other girls…” enthused one visiting female Italian socialist. Of course it was a culture centred on the cities and the more cosmopolitan areas of the coast, but more and more women were part of the social and political change sweeping the Republic.
What this meant, as the country went into mourning for its greatest hero in May, was a political fevered and uncertain climate. There were so many groups, all jostling for attention and opportunity, that politics was in turmoil. The Republic, for all Paris’s best efforts, was still more of an American Democracy than a French Communard State, and although the traditions of socialism ran deep (particularly the Centrist trend) there was political plurality.
The reality of 1920s China was one of great but uneven advances. Despite the relative socialism of the government, vast inequalities of
wealth persisted. The high fashion of these Shanghai debutantes would have been beyond the reach of most women.
Three rough factions emerged to vie for the election set for November 1924. Song Jiaoren was a fervent admirer of the parliamentary system, of Jeffersonian principles, and the rule of liberal law. His election to the Chair of the Guomindang signalled to many at home and abroad that a shift towards the centre was occurring in the party. It was the final straw for those on the left, increasingly only held in check by the magnetic reputation of Dr Sun. A more Centrist-inspired wing was formed by Cai E, the young heroic general of the Eastern March and the last great war, backed by Wellington Koo and other prominent left-wingers from the Guomindang. Despite emerging from a split they assumed the moniker of the “United Party”. Finally a more traditionalist faction, appealing to conservatives uneasy with the rapid change of Chinese society, coalesced around Sun’s erstwhile companion and seasoned Deputy in the National Assembly Lin Sen. “All three” Time Magazine informed its readers “seem poised to take the Republic in a new direction”.
‘The Three Principles of the People Unite China’
Guomindang Party Slogan, 1920s.
‘China is People, China is Land, China is History’
Intertitle from the 1927 US Information Film “China: Old and New”
A Camel Park in Beijing c.1900. The scale of modernisation needed by the Republican government was vast
and still very much a work-in-progress by Sun's death.
By early 1924 it was clear that Dr Sun Yat Sen was dying. For the last three or so years the father of modern China had moved with increasing difficulty, aided by sticks, and then by an early motorcar, a gift of American admirers. ‘He was still as vital ever in mental terms’ wrote long-term associate and aide Edouard Chavannes ‘but physically his body was ailing’. Chavannes, who had accompanied Sun from the very beginning of his Chinese odyssey when the group had travelled by sealed train across Russia in 1900, put it down to the physical exhaustion of the work. ‘Who can know what strains he is under’ he confided in a letter to a long-term friend back in France ‘for who has undertaken a task such as his? Even Washington, in the 1700s, was only building a fraction of what is America now. Dr Sun is building a new continent’.
Still, the man insisted on waking at 5am every morning to exercise before looking over governmental papers. He was meticulous, aides recalled, but also idiosyncratic. Like the European socialists of the Centrist Party Dr Sun was a firm believer in the potential of railways to draw people together into larger wholes. Yet he didn’t fully understand the technology, as his god-son Kenneth Cantlie recalled. Cantlie, a locomotive engineer and designer contracted to Chinese service remembered on several occasions having to hide Dr Sun’s theoretical maps of new lines before journalists arrived; ‘so impossible were the lines’ Cantlie recalled ‘that he would have been lampooned for months in the foreign press’.
Still, the China established since Dr. Sun’s revolutions and campaigns of the 1900s was a dramatically different landscape to the Qing era that it replaced. Between 1910 and 1925, for instance, the number of factories in the Republic had increased six fold. Thousands of new co-operative societies had sprung up, fostered by the anarchist and socialist elements of the Guomindang, and peasant farmers had, since the Land Reform Law of 1917, moved closer to being freeholders on the land rather than impoverished tenants. Thousands of kilometres of railways track, hundreds of new (albeit flimsy) airlines for the well-to-do, and a huge investment in the telegraph system had all helped tie the Republic together.
Guomindang rule had a transformative effect on Chinese society. These female students at the Changsa Girl's Modern School, c.1923
were among the first to attend the new University colleges opened to women by Dr Sun's regime.
Changes were being felt socially. Cities, with their burgeoning trade unions, were at the forefront of workers’ rights campaigns, whilst peasant collectives and community banks flourished with government assistance. The number of high schools in China grew from c.350 in 1907 to 2335 in 1927 and by the time of Sun’s death in May 1924 over a million Chinese youths had progressed into secondary education out of an equally expanding system of primary schools. The effect was most dramatic on women – traditionally having a conservative place in Chinese society the “New Woman” of the 1920s was a very different creature.
“She smokes, she works in a factory or an office, she attends party meetings, goes dancing, goes to the cinema, reads, flirts, lives with other girls…” enthused one visiting female Italian socialist. Of course it was a culture centred on the cities and the more cosmopolitan areas of the coast, but more and more women were part of the social and political change sweeping the Republic.
What this meant, as the country went into mourning for its greatest hero in May, was a political fevered and uncertain climate. There were so many groups, all jostling for attention and opportunity, that politics was in turmoil. The Republic, for all Paris’s best efforts, was still more of an American Democracy than a French Communard State, and although the traditions of socialism ran deep (particularly the Centrist trend) there was political plurality.
The reality of 1920s China was one of great but uneven advances. Despite the relative socialism of the government, vast inequalities of
wealth persisted. The high fashion of these Shanghai debutantes would have been beyond the reach of most women.
Three rough factions emerged to vie for the election set for November 1924. Song Jiaoren was a fervent admirer of the parliamentary system, of Jeffersonian principles, and the rule of liberal law. His election to the Chair of the Guomindang signalled to many at home and abroad that a shift towards the centre was occurring in the party. It was the final straw for those on the left, increasingly only held in check by the magnetic reputation of Dr Sun. A more Centrist-inspired wing was formed by Cai E, the young heroic general of the Eastern March and the last great war, backed by Wellington Koo and other prominent left-wingers from the Guomindang. Despite emerging from a split they assumed the moniker of the “United Party”. Finally a more traditionalist faction, appealing to conservatives uneasy with the rapid change of Chinese society, coalesced around Sun’s erstwhile companion and seasoned Deputy in the National Assembly Lin Sen. “All three” Time Magazine informed its readers “seem poised to take the Republic in a new direction”.
Oh, that looks good. Seems like China didn`t suffer for nothing, after all.
What parliamentary system does China have?
Is it a first-past-the-post system or something similar where one of the three parties can easily win a majority of seats?
Or is it proportional representation, where such a three-party combination means eternal coalition rule for the Guomindang, who can (but also: must) always choose between a centre-right coalition with the conservatives and a centre-left coalition with the United Party?
What parliamentary system does China have?
Is it a first-past-the-post system or something similar where one of the three parties can easily win a majority of seats?
Or is it proportional representation, where such a three-party combination means eternal coalition rule for the Guomindang, who can (but also: must) always choose between a centre-right coalition with the conservatives and a centre-left coalition with the United Party?
Well, I imagine it would be close to OTL's system of electors as experienced for the 1912 elections. Bicameral, with an Upper House elected by Provincial Assemblies and a Lower House voted for by "electors" who represent a set number of people. The biggest difference ITTL is that more power would be invested in the President here, as the OTL constitution was rendered more parliamentary in nature to help mute the power of Yuan Shikai. Here, with Dr Sun undisputed leader, there would be no need for that.
That said, it seems quite a ricketty system and not one I can see holding on unreformed for long...
Ah, so it looks like clear majorities could be possible, if there aren`t extremely unequal regional strongholds (which is always possible with China, though).
But - of course - there could be Cohabitation with a President from another party.
But - of course - there could be Cohabitation with a President from another party.
Chapter 126 - The Communard Steel Strike of 1924
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Six: The Communard Steel Strike of 1924.
‘I am heartened to see that the French people have not lost their passion for the fight!’
Renaud Carrete, Jardin Lecoq Speech, November 1924
“Socialism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.”
Rosa Luxemburg, 1924
To say that the Steel Strike dismayed Communard society would be an understatement. Although disputes over wages and conditions had, naturally, continued to bubble up since 1871 the Communard state had very careful ways of managing them. Worker collectives, formalised places for trade unions in political dialogue, and the reforming zeal of many Delegates had helped solve those disputes that did occur in peaceful and amiable manner.
Not so in 1924.
The Centrists believed that the ordinary rank-and-file of the steel workers were being led astray by Anarcho-syndicalist activists using the workers for their own ends. The Anarchists, for their part, saw this act of political defiance as a last ditch attempt to stave off the nationalisation they saw taking hold of the railway network. They were buoyed up by their recent victory in the battle for the mining sector and were ready for a fight. Even the veteran Jaures was full of fire – ‘We will put the Communard state back in the hands of workers’ he told an enthusiastic group of Delegates in Strasbourg. The Supreme Council sessions were stormy – Blum remembered having an almost permanent scowl on his face during meetings of the supposed ‘coalition’ government.
Striking workers in Toulouse. Note the provocative use of the tricolor emblazoned with a Cap of Liberty
When the strike began in February public opinion was split, often on national and regional lines. In the Ukraine, the Union’s furthest flung area, there was little interest, but elsewhere passions were stirred. Hungarian men and women reflected, generally, the position of their most prominent delegate Bela Kun – that this was all a “f—king mess”. Austrians were split, with significant steel production areas in the region, but in Wallonia the population and the steel workers favoured nationalisation. Indeed, many Belgian workers did not come out to strike despite the heavy emphasis on solidarity in society. The industrial areas of Germany, though, and parts of France and Catalonia, were radically anti-nationalisation. A legacy of their own revolution, where workers had seized control directly, many Germans were not yet ready to see a French-dominated international Government take over the running of their factories.
Ultimately neither faction came out of the dispute well. The Anarcho-Syndicalists were, eventually, pushed out of the coalition by the Centrists and public opinion that, after two months of strike, wanted resolution. But Blum and his colleagues were too battered and bloodied to be able to pursue their agenda. The status quo prevailed, Jaures’ seat on the Council being replaced by Kun as as compromise, and even the machinations of the Blanquists came to little.
Indeed the actual events of the steel strike would have been unremarkable if not for the emergence of Renaud Carrete and his Social Unionists. Carrete had been an Anarchist delegate from Clermont Ferrand in the Massif Central but, after attending a lecture on Garbism in Denmark whilst on a trade mission, became convinced of the need for a new movement in French politics. The expansion of the European Union, he came to argue, was symptomatic of the damage and neglect the Parisian government had inflicted on France. ‘Better to have cut all these other nations free’ he wrote in the first issue of what became the Social Union paper National Credit, ‘than tie them to ourselves’. Unashamedly pro-French, Carrete skilfully plundered Garbism whilst recasting it in a manner that best suited contemporary France.
Many laughed at the oddly-dressed individuals who descended on the Jardin Lecoq that mild November day in 1924. Instead of the uniforms of Scandinavian Garbism, Carrete had adopted a more idiosyncratic style. Social Unionism was based, in image at least, on an imagined idea of Native American culture derived from US pulp novels and films. Delegations were “tribes”, individuals “braves”, and the tepee, the totem pole, and a mishmash of costume from moccasins to feathered headdresses were popular. Pere Duchesne could barely contain its mirth. ‘The parks of Clermont’ it reported ‘are awash with lunatics. Pere Duschesne has met Nantes Apaches, Loire Sioux, Puy-de-Rhone Navajo, and many more. He cannot help hoping for a detachment of cavalry to sweep the savages away…’.
A Social Union Tribal Pow-wow in rural eastern France c.1926. In their early years the movement
were mocked for their seemingly eccentric customs and cultures.
But beneath the oddities of the new movement lurked the subtle genius of Carrete. He was, unlike the major parties, able to tap into the disenfranchised in the political system – the isolationist wing of the anarchist movement as well as the moderates who felt they had no home in the Strasbourg system. Of the party leaders only LaGrange had the measure of him. In an editorial in Attaque! she described Carrete as ‘a cancer, the first dark stains almost impossibly small to the naked eye but, slowly and surely, eating away at the body politic. And growing’.
‘I am heartened to see that the French people have not lost their passion for the fight!’
Renaud Carrete, Jardin Lecoq Speech, November 1924
“Socialism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.”
Rosa Luxemburg, 1924
To say that the Steel Strike dismayed Communard society would be an understatement. Although disputes over wages and conditions had, naturally, continued to bubble up since 1871 the Communard state had very careful ways of managing them. Worker collectives, formalised places for trade unions in political dialogue, and the reforming zeal of many Delegates had helped solve those disputes that did occur in peaceful and amiable manner.
Not so in 1924.
The Centrists believed that the ordinary rank-and-file of the steel workers were being led astray by Anarcho-syndicalist activists using the workers for their own ends. The Anarchists, for their part, saw this act of political defiance as a last ditch attempt to stave off the nationalisation they saw taking hold of the railway network. They were buoyed up by their recent victory in the battle for the mining sector and were ready for a fight. Even the veteran Jaures was full of fire – ‘We will put the Communard state back in the hands of workers’ he told an enthusiastic group of Delegates in Strasbourg. The Supreme Council sessions were stormy – Blum remembered having an almost permanent scowl on his face during meetings of the supposed ‘coalition’ government.
Striking workers in Toulouse. Note the provocative use of the tricolor emblazoned with a Cap of Liberty
When the strike began in February public opinion was split, often on national and regional lines. In the Ukraine, the Union’s furthest flung area, there was little interest, but elsewhere passions were stirred. Hungarian men and women reflected, generally, the position of their most prominent delegate Bela Kun – that this was all a “f—king mess”. Austrians were split, with significant steel production areas in the region, but in Wallonia the population and the steel workers favoured nationalisation. Indeed, many Belgian workers did not come out to strike despite the heavy emphasis on solidarity in society. The industrial areas of Germany, though, and parts of France and Catalonia, were radically anti-nationalisation. A legacy of their own revolution, where workers had seized control directly, many Germans were not yet ready to see a French-dominated international Government take over the running of their factories.
Ultimately neither faction came out of the dispute well. The Anarcho-Syndicalists were, eventually, pushed out of the coalition by the Centrists and public opinion that, after two months of strike, wanted resolution. But Blum and his colleagues were too battered and bloodied to be able to pursue their agenda. The status quo prevailed, Jaures’ seat on the Council being replaced by Kun as as compromise, and even the machinations of the Blanquists came to little.
Indeed the actual events of the steel strike would have been unremarkable if not for the emergence of Renaud Carrete and his Social Unionists. Carrete had been an Anarchist delegate from Clermont Ferrand in the Massif Central but, after attending a lecture on Garbism in Denmark whilst on a trade mission, became convinced of the need for a new movement in French politics. The expansion of the European Union, he came to argue, was symptomatic of the damage and neglect the Parisian government had inflicted on France. ‘Better to have cut all these other nations free’ he wrote in the first issue of what became the Social Union paper National Credit, ‘than tie them to ourselves’. Unashamedly pro-French, Carrete skilfully plundered Garbism whilst recasting it in a manner that best suited contemporary France.
Many laughed at the oddly-dressed individuals who descended on the Jardin Lecoq that mild November day in 1924. Instead of the uniforms of Scandinavian Garbism, Carrete had adopted a more idiosyncratic style. Social Unionism was based, in image at least, on an imagined idea of Native American culture derived from US pulp novels and films. Delegations were “tribes”, individuals “braves”, and the tepee, the totem pole, and a mishmash of costume from moccasins to feathered headdresses were popular. Pere Duchesne could barely contain its mirth. ‘The parks of Clermont’ it reported ‘are awash with lunatics. Pere Duschesne has met Nantes Apaches, Loire Sioux, Puy-de-Rhone Navajo, and many more. He cannot help hoping for a detachment of cavalry to sweep the savages away…’.
A Social Union Tribal Pow-wow in rural eastern France c.1926. In their early years the movement
were mocked for their seemingly eccentric customs and cultures.
But beneath the oddities of the new movement lurked the subtle genius of Carrete. He was, unlike the major parties, able to tap into the disenfranchised in the political system – the isolationist wing of the anarchist movement as well as the moderates who felt they had no home in the Strasbourg system. Of the party leaders only LaGrange had the measure of him. In an editorial in Attaque! she described Carrete as ‘a cancer, the first dark stains almost impossibly small to the naked eye but, slowly and surely, eating away at the body politic. And growing’.
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Uh-oh. An openly non-socialist party in Communard France. Pretty ridiculous, yes, but you never know what becomes of that.
Where do you get all these great (and sometimes hilarious) ideas and images from?
Where do you get all these great (and sometimes hilarious) ideas and images from?
I suppose the people with oddly shaped sticks may be OTL's Scouts, although more sinister possibilities spring to mind, mostly German things.
You are sort of right about the link to the Scouts, but not about the German/Nazi thing.
The gentlemen in the second picture are the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift. It was an off-shoot of the scouts that was more pacifist, more anti-nationalistic, and a little mystical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbo_Kift. Carrete's movement is based on the brainchild of the Kibbo Kift founder, John Hargreave, who created the Social Credit Party of Great Britain in the 30s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_Party_of_Great_Britain_and_Northern_Ireland.
However I wanted to give them a bit of a French twist and, instead of the celtic origins the Kibbo Kift used, I instead went for the 1900s-1910s French craze for ''Native American'' street gangs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apaches_(subculture). Although the Kibbo Kift did also use Native American [or rather what they thought was Native American] ideas for inspiration.
Mainly I know about these groups from my teaching and research, and spend a lot of time planning out the ways in which they might be reformed in this alternate timeline. Glad everyone is enjoying it so far.
Chapter 127 - American Dreams and Mexican Prayers
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Seven: American Dreams and Mexican Prayers.
“If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show progress in stable and just civilisation…all question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end”.
The proposed text of the Roosevelt Corollary which President Theodore Roosevelt failed, ultimately, to turn into coherent US doctrine.
Sam “the Banana Man” Zemurray embodied, for many, the American Dream. He was the boundless ambition and achievement of the modern market personified. Born Schmuel Zmurri in the former Russian Empire, Zemurray’s family had emigrated in the 1890s to Alabama. Drawn inexorably to the mass marketplace of New Orleans, Zemurray made his money early in life by buying already ripe bananas off of the steam ships and selling them that day to grocers along the rail lines. By the turn of the century he already had some $100,000 dollars in the bank at the age of 23.
Sam Zemurray, head of United Fruit and Central American
power-broker
By the 1910s Zemurray had bought out the struggling United Fruit Company and turned it around into a huge business concern. United Fruit (Zemurray fired the board but kept the brand name) invested heavily in Central American fruit markets. Its steamers plied the Caribbean, its fruit was in every market across America, and its plantations were a gold mine. Zemurray, who had come from nothing as a store clerk in Selma, dined with Governors, Newspaper Barons, Socialites, and the Old Money families of Louisiana and the South.
He was also, from another perspective, everything that was wrong with American capitalism in the Caribbean. As United Fruit grew so too did its appetite and its reach. A constant battle for cheap and fresh fruit for the US market saw the company pursue ever more rapacious lines of business in Latin America. His use of bribery and intimidation, strong-arming local governments into line, saw United Fruit snap up prime land and lucrative low-tax deals. As the company grew, though, fuelled by consumer demand in the US, Zemurray turned to ever dirtier tactics. The hiring of corporate mercenaries, ostensibly as “Security”, led to repeated but unproven allegations that United Fruit were forcing poorer farmers and indigenous communities off land for cultivation, breaking up trade unions, and making sure that the process of cultivation ran smoothly. He even, on a number of occasions, directly sponsored coups against sitting governments, throwing company money and resources behind General Bonilla in Honduras (1911), Emiliano Vargas in Nicaragua (1916), and General Orella in Guatemala (1921). All three established corrupt, self-serving, soft dictatorships backed up by company funds.
The region was, like Zemurray’s bananas, over-ripe and ready to be plucked. A wave of protests over wages in Guatemala gave the Mexican Government an excuse to act. The Reyists in Mexico, under the leadership of revolutionary general turned President Enrique Gorostieta had spent over a decade consolidating power since they had triumphed over the pro-Communard regime in 1911. They had done so by mixing a modernising dictatorship, ironically building on the foundations of Porfiro Diaz laid in the 1900s, with fundamentally grass-roots Catholicism. The leading lights of the intellectual side of the Reyists, the clergy led by Archbishop Francisco Jimenez, realised early on that stamping out resistance relied to some extent on pulling together the forces of traditionalism and reform. Thus the legacy of the Cristeros became an authoritarian state rooted in traditional notions of Mexican culture, religion, and community. Land was reformed, creating vast swathes of peasant landowners who the regime hoped would become good conservative believers, and a sometimes uneasy balance of reform and stability settled over the country. Garbism, in the 1920s, made some inroads in the form of the Goldshirts but generally Gorostieta’s regime remained solid.
By the 1920s, however, a decade of stability and growth had begun to morph into a desire for action. “There is a feeling”, wrote the Spanish Ambassador in 1922, “that the new Mexico must flex its muscles”. The corruption of Central American Banana Republics and the grinding poverty there had already seen Reyist groups spread in Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala and it was rural protests in the last country that tipped Gorostieta to action.
Mexican soldiers during the assault on Managua. A more modern army than any other force in
Latin America, they dominated their opponents within weeks of invasion.
Modernised with surplus equipment dumped onto the market by countries like Italy and Germany post-war through their factors in Venezuela, as well as British and American countries, the well-equipped Mexican army was far too much of a match for the underfunded parade-guard militaries of the Republics. They were welcomed with open arms by the oppressed poor of the region and as they went Mexicans nationalised the concerns of foreign companies like United Fruit. Guatemala City fell on the 13th May 1926, only seven days after the declaration of war. San Salvador was seized by rebels even before the Mexicans arrived on 22nd May and after some opposition Tegucigalpa’s resistance collapsed by mid June. The fall of Nicaragua by the end of August sent terrified alarm bells jangling through the entire US administration. Zemurray was frantically lobbying for intervention, along with dozens of other US companies, and, sitting atop a sizeable electoral majority and favourable ratings, the new President was inclined to act.
Nor, of course, was he alone. For in Communard Buenos Aires, alongside long-term exiles from Mexico itself, a small batch of Central American socialists had arrived to meet with delegates from the European Union.
“If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show progress in stable and just civilisation…all question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end”.
The proposed text of the Roosevelt Corollary which President Theodore Roosevelt failed, ultimately, to turn into coherent US doctrine.
Sam “the Banana Man” Zemurray embodied, for many, the American Dream. He was the boundless ambition and achievement of the modern market personified. Born Schmuel Zmurri in the former Russian Empire, Zemurray’s family had emigrated in the 1890s to Alabama. Drawn inexorably to the mass marketplace of New Orleans, Zemurray made his money early in life by buying already ripe bananas off of the steam ships and selling them that day to grocers along the rail lines. By the turn of the century he already had some $100,000 dollars in the bank at the age of 23.
Sam Zemurray, head of United Fruit and Central American
power-broker
He was also, from another perspective, everything that was wrong with American capitalism in the Caribbean. As United Fruit grew so too did its appetite and its reach. A constant battle for cheap and fresh fruit for the US market saw the company pursue ever more rapacious lines of business in Latin America. His use of bribery and intimidation, strong-arming local governments into line, saw United Fruit snap up prime land and lucrative low-tax deals. As the company grew, though, fuelled by consumer demand in the US, Zemurray turned to ever dirtier tactics. The hiring of corporate mercenaries, ostensibly as “Security”, led to repeated but unproven allegations that United Fruit were forcing poorer farmers and indigenous communities off land for cultivation, breaking up trade unions, and making sure that the process of cultivation ran smoothly. He even, on a number of occasions, directly sponsored coups against sitting governments, throwing company money and resources behind General Bonilla in Honduras (1911), Emiliano Vargas in Nicaragua (1916), and General Orella in Guatemala (1921). All three established corrupt, self-serving, soft dictatorships backed up by company funds.
The region was, like Zemurray’s bananas, over-ripe and ready to be plucked. A wave of protests over wages in Guatemala gave the Mexican Government an excuse to act. The Reyists in Mexico, under the leadership of revolutionary general turned President Enrique Gorostieta had spent over a decade consolidating power since they had triumphed over the pro-Communard regime in 1911. They had done so by mixing a modernising dictatorship, ironically building on the foundations of Porfiro Diaz laid in the 1900s, with fundamentally grass-roots Catholicism. The leading lights of the intellectual side of the Reyists, the clergy led by Archbishop Francisco Jimenez, realised early on that stamping out resistance relied to some extent on pulling together the forces of traditionalism and reform. Thus the legacy of the Cristeros became an authoritarian state rooted in traditional notions of Mexican culture, religion, and community. Land was reformed, creating vast swathes of peasant landowners who the regime hoped would become good conservative believers, and a sometimes uneasy balance of reform and stability settled over the country. Garbism, in the 1920s, made some inroads in the form of the Goldshirts but generally Gorostieta’s regime remained solid.
By the 1920s, however, a decade of stability and growth had begun to morph into a desire for action. “There is a feeling”, wrote the Spanish Ambassador in 1922, “that the new Mexico must flex its muscles”. The corruption of Central American Banana Republics and the grinding poverty there had already seen Reyist groups spread in Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala and it was rural protests in the last country that tipped Gorostieta to action.
Mexican soldiers during the assault on Managua. A more modern army than any other force in
Latin America, they dominated their opponents within weeks of invasion.
Modernised with surplus equipment dumped onto the market by countries like Italy and Germany post-war through their factors in Venezuela, as well as British and American countries, the well-equipped Mexican army was far too much of a match for the underfunded parade-guard militaries of the Republics. They were welcomed with open arms by the oppressed poor of the region and as they went Mexicans nationalised the concerns of foreign companies like United Fruit. Guatemala City fell on the 13th May 1926, only seven days after the declaration of war. San Salvador was seized by rebels even before the Mexicans arrived on 22nd May and after some opposition Tegucigalpa’s resistance collapsed by mid June. The fall of Nicaragua by the end of August sent terrified alarm bells jangling through the entire US administration. Zemurray was frantically lobbying for intervention, along with dozens of other US companies, and, sitting atop a sizeable electoral majority and favourable ratings, the new President was inclined to act.
Nor, of course, was he alone. For in Communard Buenos Aires, alongside long-term exiles from Mexico itself, a small batch of Central American socialists had arrived to meet with delegates from the European Union.
Chapter 128 - Be Prepared
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Eight: Be Prepared
“To sit at home, read one’s favourite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men’s doing.”
Former President Theodore Roosevelt, 1895.
Whilst President Palmer was inclined to act, and had the political impetus to do so, how to act was more difficult. The USA had not been involved in a foreign war since 1898, when a relatively small military force of regulars had been supported by volunteer units. Although the United States had observed what was becoming known as the Great Revolutionary War, studying all sides in detail, the optimistic relief of the post-war world had meant no major doctrinal change had taken place in American thinking. Nor, particularly, was a shift in hardware perceptible. Of course the United States Army had kept broadly abreast of changes but had been slow to embrace Rolleurs, handing them out in penny-packets to infantry brigades rather than concentrating them as the French did. By the 1920s the US had invested heavily in military aviation but, following the British model, much of this was naval in focus. The same small core professional army, and in many cases the same limited mentalities, existed in 1926 as they had three decades earlier.
What Palmer did have, though, was a groundswell of popular support. If it had been entirely the purview of the Whitehouse nothing may have come of the tension with Mexico – “for all his rhetoric in the campaign Palmer seems somewhat prone to inertia” recalled one senior Republican Representative – but the Stand-By movement invigorated public debate. Taking its name from a speech by former President Theodore Roosevelt, ‘Patriotism means to stand by the country’, the movement was the brain child of his son Teddy Roosevelt Jr. Theodore had not been a particularly popular president, his one term ending in electoral rout, and Teddy Jr had felt that his own career had always been overshadowed by this failure. Now was a chance to capitalize on the positive memories of his father, as the Rough Rider of the Spanish-American War who had butted heads with President Bryan’s pacifism, and secure the family destiny anew. H.L. Menken quipped that the Stand-By Movement, which found expression in parades, volunteer rifle clubs, and patriotic gatherings, had its roots in ‘a million bored office clerks looking for just enough daring-do to please the fluttering eyelashes of the receptionist’. But the movement had vast popular appeal across much of America, propelling Roosevelt to the forefront of Republican politics again and convincing Palmer he had the support to flex his muscles.
"Office Boys" lark around at a Stand-By camp in southern California, 1926. For now the movement
was as much about camaraderie and camping as it was about conflict.
Their cause came, soon enough, in the shape of Panama. The fall of Tegucigalpa in mid June 1926 had divided Mexican opinions in the army and cabinet. The majority favoured stabilizing the situation – the army was triumphant but exhausted, strung out by the poor infrastructure of central America – and not risking the wrath of the US still further. A minority though, drunk on victory, saw the job not yet complete. On 14th July a small force of Mexican cavalry probed the border with Panama but were driven off by fire from the border guards. Two days later three Mexican brigades were surprisingly routed by the small defence force of the tiny state and “PLUCKY PANAMA” became a press sensation in the United States.
More sombre veterans of the "Ever Victorious Army" are railed back north to the US border, late July 1926.
At the time these men were veterans of both the Central American campaign and years of
counter-insurgency - experience that the United States Army was sorely lacking.
There were calls for invasion and the Mexicans fanned the flames, humiliated by incident, and seized a number of American oil rigs under a nationalisation scheme. Palmer mobilized State National Guard forces along the border, amid jingoism from the right and outrage on the left. Foreign forces too, circled the situation like vultures, looking for an opening. Against the advice of many members of her party Luxemburg encouraged General Obregon, the exiled socialist leader of Mexico, to board ship with his supporters for New Orleans. Her belief was that a conflict between the US and Mexico would give the exiled socialists (and those like Zapata still fighting a guerrilla war in Mexico’s hinterlands) an opening. Finally, controversially, Pope Urban announced his intention to visit both Washington and Mexico City in the coming September.
“To sit at home, read one’s favourite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men’s doing.”
Former President Theodore Roosevelt, 1895.
Whilst President Palmer was inclined to act, and had the political impetus to do so, how to act was more difficult. The USA had not been involved in a foreign war since 1898, when a relatively small military force of regulars had been supported by volunteer units. Although the United States had observed what was becoming known as the Great Revolutionary War, studying all sides in detail, the optimistic relief of the post-war world had meant no major doctrinal change had taken place in American thinking. Nor, particularly, was a shift in hardware perceptible. Of course the United States Army had kept broadly abreast of changes but had been slow to embrace Rolleurs, handing them out in penny-packets to infantry brigades rather than concentrating them as the French did. By the 1920s the US had invested heavily in military aviation but, following the British model, much of this was naval in focus. The same small core professional army, and in many cases the same limited mentalities, existed in 1926 as they had three decades earlier.
What Palmer did have, though, was a groundswell of popular support. If it had been entirely the purview of the Whitehouse nothing may have come of the tension with Mexico – “for all his rhetoric in the campaign Palmer seems somewhat prone to inertia” recalled one senior Republican Representative – but the Stand-By movement invigorated public debate. Taking its name from a speech by former President Theodore Roosevelt, ‘Patriotism means to stand by the country’, the movement was the brain child of his son Teddy Roosevelt Jr. Theodore had not been a particularly popular president, his one term ending in electoral rout, and Teddy Jr had felt that his own career had always been overshadowed by this failure. Now was a chance to capitalize on the positive memories of his father, as the Rough Rider of the Spanish-American War who had butted heads with President Bryan’s pacifism, and secure the family destiny anew. H.L. Menken quipped that the Stand-By Movement, which found expression in parades, volunteer rifle clubs, and patriotic gatherings, had its roots in ‘a million bored office clerks looking for just enough daring-do to please the fluttering eyelashes of the receptionist’. But the movement had vast popular appeal across much of America, propelling Roosevelt to the forefront of Republican politics again and convincing Palmer he had the support to flex his muscles.
"Office Boys" lark around at a Stand-By camp in southern California, 1926. For now the movement
was as much about camaraderie and camping as it was about conflict.
Their cause came, soon enough, in the shape of Panama. The fall of Tegucigalpa in mid June 1926 had divided Mexican opinions in the army and cabinet. The majority favoured stabilizing the situation – the army was triumphant but exhausted, strung out by the poor infrastructure of central America – and not risking the wrath of the US still further. A minority though, drunk on victory, saw the job not yet complete. On 14th July a small force of Mexican cavalry probed the border with Panama but were driven off by fire from the border guards. Two days later three Mexican brigades were surprisingly routed by the small defence force of the tiny state and “PLUCKY PANAMA” became a press sensation in the United States.
More sombre veterans of the "Ever Victorious Army" are railed back north to the US border, late July 1926.
At the time these men were veterans of both the Central American campaign and years of
counter-insurgency - experience that the United States Army was sorely lacking.
There were calls for invasion and the Mexicans fanned the flames, humiliated by incident, and seized a number of American oil rigs under a nationalisation scheme. Palmer mobilized State National Guard forces along the border, amid jingoism from the right and outrage on the left. Foreign forces too, circled the situation like vultures, looking for an opening. Against the advice of many members of her party Luxemburg encouraged General Obregon, the exiled socialist leader of Mexico, to board ship with his supporters for New Orleans. Her belief was that a conflict between the US and Mexico would give the exiled socialists (and those like Zapata still fighting a guerrilla war in Mexico’s hinterlands) an opening. Finally, controversially, Pope Urban announced his intention to visit both Washington and Mexico City in the coming September.
Funny: a universe where the US don't get along with right-wing autocracies from Latin America.
I just hope the Pope won't be abl to reconcile. Keeping the US and Mexico involved in a struggle against each other keeps them from bothering with e.g. Argentina...
I just hope the Pope won't be abl to reconcile. Keeping the US and Mexico involved in a struggle against each other keeps them from bothering with e.g. Argentina...
Ah but the question is, can a Pope called Urban who's already urged for a crusade against socialism is going to be moderate enough to reconcile the two sides!
Ah, that gives me hope that he`ll simply and undiplomatically embrace the Mexican position and create a communication breakdown in Washington. A more decidedly anti-Reyist US sounds like less of a threat to the Communard world. Would be natural for them to team up with Britain again in spite of the Venezuelan crisis and everything, forming a transatlantic axis of liberal democracies with a Protestant cultural background.Ah but the question is, can a Pope called Urban who's already urged for a crusade against socialism is going to be moderate enough to reconcile the two sides!
Chapter 129 - In the Shadow of Two Gunmen
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Nine – In the Shadow of Two Gunmen
“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship”
George Bernard Shaw
“Assassination has never changed the history of the world”
Benjamin Disraeli
The Papal visit, which began on a rainy Thursday in early September, did not have a fortuitous opening. The Temperance Hall of the Order of the Sacred Heart in Boston, expecting to host the city’s best and brightest grandees to receive the Holy Father on his first night in America, was struck in the small hours by lightning and burned to the ground within two hours. Scudding clouds and sheets of rain drove all by the severely faithful inside the following morning as the ocean liner carrying Pope Urban pulled into the harbour.
The final week of August was, by contrast, gloriously hot in Russia. Muscovites thronged the parks and riverbanks of the city, desperate to beat the seasonal highs that reached well into the 30 degrees mark. Ice-cream sellers and those who worked the crowds with the sickly sweet cherry juice popular across Eastern Europe, did roaring business. The doors of the Duma, moved to the city from St Petersburg in 1921, had to be jammed open to allow for a free-flow of fresh air. The chamber, although purged of those socialist deputies judged “extreme” by Kyril’s government in 1922 as the regime cemented its centrist populism, struggled to get through a packed agenda in the heat.
The weather had cleared up by the time the Papal delegation boarded the train from New York, where the Pope had received a tumultuous reception from Irish and Italian migrants especially, south towards DC. Clear enough for the Holy Father to see the burning crosses that lined the route. A public embarrassment for both the President and Governor Edwards, who spent considerable energy and resources in tearing them down and punishing those caught erecting new ones, the burning crucifixes were a visible demonstration of right-wing distaste for the Papal visit and the growing tensions with Catholic Mexico. In fact, the Klansman newspaper set up a defence public for those prosecuted by NJ authorities, receiving a steady stream of donations.
For Kyril it was a mixed summer – one of pleasure spent at Dachas on the lakes and swirling parties with almost Tsarist elements of extravagance but also one of plodding pressure and political strife. Since 1923 his government had been locked in a growing state of tension with Turkey – both sides jockeying for position in the small fragments of the Caucuses states. Likewise tensions on the Chinese borders were rising as Russia once again found itself stable enough to invest in the Manchurian regime that rivalled the Republic. At home Kyril’s increasing centrism has seen leading Christian Socialists like Trotsky (always more socialist than Christian) increasingly side-lined in favour of a coterie of generals and businessmen. Even Sergey Bulgakov, Party Chairman and Kyril-faithful, was starting to chaff as the purported programme of reform was slowed at every turn. Gone were the grandees and the autocrats of the Romanov era but in their place, as the Socialist Revolutionary Paper ACTION! (now driven underground) put it “are a thousand greedy businessmen, foreign investors, factors, middle-men, and nouveau-riche. There is something more socialite than socialist about the Red Tsar”.
‘President Palmer’, one aide noted years later, ‘was not best pleased about the prospect of meeting the Pope’. Palmer himself, although thoroughly invested in his Americanism rhetoric, was not particularly anti-Catholic. Riding the wave of jingoistic fever sweeping the nation and sabre-rattling at Mexico suited his administration fine, however, particularly as it ably distracted the press from the growing rumours of Federal mismanagement and corruption around petroleum reserves for the Navy. He was stung into a meeting, though, by a speech Pope Urban gave in Newark which, in arguing that if “King of Peace” was a good enough title for Christ then it should be good enough for a President, essentially called Palmer out. So it was with great reluctance that Palmer and his Vice President agreed to a public meet-and-greet at the railway station before travelling through the crowded streets of DC on September 23rd.
Kyril had returned to Moscow on the afternoon of 24th September, during a heat-wave that saw thousands of Muscovites try to escape into the countryside to cool off. His motorcade, for the Red Tsar hated traveling by train, was caught up in throngs of people and it wasn’t until late afternoon that it finally made its way through the suburbs and into the centre. He was, subsequently, running late for a performance at the Bolshoi that evening, arriving well after the well-dressed crowd of attendees had pushed inside. Crossing the square in the gathering darkness Kyril was, along with his little knot of aides and family members, a clear target to the rifleman concealed on the roof of the Muir and Mirrielees Co. Department store across the road. Six shots were fired in quick succession as bodies hit the cobbled floor and the knot of people broke apart amid screams and panicked flight.
Traffic in DC was lighter but the going still slow. Klansmen had blocked off the route to Pennsylvania Avenue and the Police Commissioner was having trouble shifting them in a way which didn’t attract press attention. As horses and coppers milled about and the pros and cons of using gas to break up the rally were discussed, the Presidential car sat humming in the street. A loose ring of Secret Service personnel surrounded the vehicle, but as the Pope asked President Palmer something he gestured to an aide riding in the car behind. The White House staffer, John Greaves, climbed down from the car and crossed to approach Palmer’s open-top vehicle and as he did he created an opening into which a great bear of a man pushed. In shirt sleeves and a straw boater he looked like just another member of the crowd but as he approached, shouldering Greaves out of the way, he fired five rounds from a revolver into the car’s interior. Dragged to the floor by the Secret Service, all of them sprayed with blood, the man shouted incoherently as aides and onlookers rushed forward to help the stricken passengers.
As men and women in both the USA and Russia learned of both the dead and the survivors of the two attacks, the true impact may not have been immediately clear. But as the dust settled it became terrifyingly abundant that after only a few years of relative peace the world again faced the proverbial “interesting times”.
“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship”
George Bernard Shaw
“Assassination has never changed the history of the world”
Benjamin Disraeli
The Papal visit, which began on a rainy Thursday in early September, did not have a fortuitous opening. The Temperance Hall of the Order of the Sacred Heart in Boston, expecting to host the city’s best and brightest grandees to receive the Holy Father on his first night in America, was struck in the small hours by lightning and burned to the ground within two hours. Scudding clouds and sheets of rain drove all by the severely faithful inside the following morning as the ocean liner carrying Pope Urban pulled into the harbour.
The final week of August was, by contrast, gloriously hot in Russia. Muscovites thronged the parks and riverbanks of the city, desperate to beat the seasonal highs that reached well into the 30 degrees mark. Ice-cream sellers and those who worked the crowds with the sickly sweet cherry juice popular across Eastern Europe, did roaring business. The doors of the Duma, moved to the city from St Petersburg in 1921, had to be jammed open to allow for a free-flow of fresh air. The chamber, although purged of those socialist deputies judged “extreme” by Kyril’s government in 1922 as the regime cemented its centrist populism, struggled to get through a packed agenda in the heat.
The weather had cleared up by the time the Papal delegation boarded the train from New York, where the Pope had received a tumultuous reception from Irish and Italian migrants especially, south towards DC. Clear enough for the Holy Father to see the burning crosses that lined the route. A public embarrassment for both the President and Governor Edwards, who spent considerable energy and resources in tearing them down and punishing those caught erecting new ones, the burning crucifixes were a visible demonstration of right-wing distaste for the Papal visit and the growing tensions with Catholic Mexico. In fact, the Klansman newspaper set up a defence public for those prosecuted by NJ authorities, receiving a steady stream of donations.
For Kyril it was a mixed summer – one of pleasure spent at Dachas on the lakes and swirling parties with almost Tsarist elements of extravagance but also one of plodding pressure and political strife. Since 1923 his government had been locked in a growing state of tension with Turkey – both sides jockeying for position in the small fragments of the Caucuses states. Likewise tensions on the Chinese borders were rising as Russia once again found itself stable enough to invest in the Manchurian regime that rivalled the Republic. At home Kyril’s increasing centrism has seen leading Christian Socialists like Trotsky (always more socialist than Christian) increasingly side-lined in favour of a coterie of generals and businessmen. Even Sergey Bulgakov, Party Chairman and Kyril-faithful, was starting to chaff as the purported programme of reform was slowed at every turn. Gone were the grandees and the autocrats of the Romanov era but in their place, as the Socialist Revolutionary Paper ACTION! (now driven underground) put it “are a thousand greedy businessmen, foreign investors, factors, middle-men, and nouveau-riche. There is something more socialite than socialist about the Red Tsar”.
‘President Palmer’, one aide noted years later, ‘was not best pleased about the prospect of meeting the Pope’. Palmer himself, although thoroughly invested in his Americanism rhetoric, was not particularly anti-Catholic. Riding the wave of jingoistic fever sweeping the nation and sabre-rattling at Mexico suited his administration fine, however, particularly as it ably distracted the press from the growing rumours of Federal mismanagement and corruption around petroleum reserves for the Navy. He was stung into a meeting, though, by a speech Pope Urban gave in Newark which, in arguing that if “King of Peace” was a good enough title for Christ then it should be good enough for a President, essentially called Palmer out. So it was with great reluctance that Palmer and his Vice President agreed to a public meet-and-greet at the railway station before travelling through the crowded streets of DC on September 23rd.
Kyril had returned to Moscow on the afternoon of 24th September, during a heat-wave that saw thousands of Muscovites try to escape into the countryside to cool off. His motorcade, for the Red Tsar hated traveling by train, was caught up in throngs of people and it wasn’t until late afternoon that it finally made its way through the suburbs and into the centre. He was, subsequently, running late for a performance at the Bolshoi that evening, arriving well after the well-dressed crowd of attendees had pushed inside. Crossing the square in the gathering darkness Kyril was, along with his little knot of aides and family members, a clear target to the rifleman concealed on the roof of the Muir and Mirrielees Co. Department store across the road. Six shots were fired in quick succession as bodies hit the cobbled floor and the knot of people broke apart amid screams and panicked flight.
Traffic in DC was lighter but the going still slow. Klansmen had blocked off the route to Pennsylvania Avenue and the Police Commissioner was having trouble shifting them in a way which didn’t attract press attention. As horses and coppers milled about and the pros and cons of using gas to break up the rally were discussed, the Presidential car sat humming in the street. A loose ring of Secret Service personnel surrounded the vehicle, but as the Pope asked President Palmer something he gestured to an aide riding in the car behind. The White House staffer, John Greaves, climbed down from the car and crossed to approach Palmer’s open-top vehicle and as he did he created an opening into which a great bear of a man pushed. In shirt sleeves and a straw boater he looked like just another member of the crowd but as he approached, shouldering Greaves out of the way, he fired five rounds from a revolver into the car’s interior. Dragged to the floor by the Secret Service, all of them sprayed with blood, the man shouted incoherently as aides and onlookers rushed forward to help the stricken passengers.
As men and women in both the USA and Russia learned of both the dead and the survivors of the two attacks, the true impact may not have been immediately clear. But as the dust settled it became terrifyingly abundant that after only a few years of relative peace the world again faced the proverbial “interesting times”.
- Status