And now...
Part Twenty-Four: Foreign Happenings
Liberian Independence:
After the American Colonization Society relinquished control of Liberia in 1847, the government took administration of the colony with the support of some of the Society's original founders. Over the next decade, the government encouraged emigration to Liberia. However, because of the danger of disease and native uprisings as well as distaste for the Colonization Society, only about ten thousand people migrated to Liberia, mostly from Maryland and Virginia. This meager population growth made the colony an economic burden during the 1850s.
The discussions in Congress over what to do about Liberia were relatively one-sided. The Congressmen arguing to keep hold of the colony and find a way to make it sustainable were vastly outweighed by those who sought to rid the colony of American responsibility. With this backing from Congress, President Houston relinquished American control of Liberia and established its independence in 1858. While Liberia was now independent, it was still relatively dependent on the United States to maintain its economy.
The political situation in Liberia would not be much better. Despite the framing of the Constitution based on that of the United States, Americans who had migrated to Liberia would continue to dominate politics and society for the next century. The country would also be plagued by civil wars and rebellions by the natives against what was perceived (and probably rightfully) as their foreign oppressors.
The Voortrekker Republiek:
After the British took control of the area around the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch, many of the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the region began searching for a new homeland away from the British. In 1835, they went east and inland, in what is known as the Great Trek. These Voortrekkers[1], as they came to be known, were mostly farmers and settled in the sparsely populated areas around the local Zulu and other tribes. Gradually over the next decade, the Voortrekkers led by Piet Retief and Gerhard Maritz established towns in and around the Zulu lands.
Despite the attempts to coexist with the native tribes, the amount of Boers that were migrating to the area meant that tensions were inevitable. In 1846 after the death of the Zulu chief Dingane, his successor and half brother Mpande was unhappy with Dingane's concessions to the settlers and attempted to expel the Boers from Zulu lands. The Voortrekkers resisted, and in two years the technologically superior Trekkers soundly defeated the more numerous Zulu. The two most distinguished generals, Andries Pretorius[2] and Hendrik Potgieter, led the creation of a new state in the Zulu lands and the land west in what became the Natal Republic.
By 1855, the land east of the British Cape Colony was dominated by three Voortrekker states; Transvaal, Oranje, and Natal. Despite being recognized by the United Kingdom, the three states still felt diplomatic pressure from Cape Town and London. Starting in the late 1850s, the process to unify the Voortrekker states began with a free trade area among them. The process accelerated in 1859 when land disputed between different families led to a unified court system. The unification was eventually completed in 1872 with the creation of the Zuid-Afrikaanishe Republiek (also known as the Voortrekker Republiek). A weak federal government was established and Matthew Pretorius, son of Andries, was elected the country's first stadtholder. The United States was one of the first countries to recognize the republic under president Grant, along with the Netherlands.
The Ganges Revolt:
In the early 1800s as the British East India Company gradually gained control over more and more of the subcontinent, the British government took steps to regulate the company. The British East India Company not only had its commercial functions removed save for trade in tea and opium, but the Crown in London began imposing regulations on it. Championed by William Wilberforce[3], the regulations were implemented in order to increase social freedoms for the local population. Such reforms in the Charter of 1833 included assisting with the codification of the laws so the populace would more easily understand them and mandating that no candidate for office under the East India Company be disallowed due to his religion, place of birth, or his race. Shortly after the 1833 charter was passed, Wilberforce died and the Company was mostly left to its own devices.
Wilberforce's reforms inspired others to either seek further reforms through Parliament or travel to the Indian subcontinent themselves. However, Wilberforce's advocacy of combining the reforms with Christian evangelism had lasting effects in the subcontinent. The evangelism was resented by many Indians who thought that the British were trying to convert them and cause them to lose their caste, and the outlawing of local practices such as Sari angered many local leaders. Other laws such as the Doctrine of Lapse, which mandated that if a feudal lord died without a male child, the land would be forfeited to the East India Company. The resentment was unknowingly fueled by some Chartists who fled to the subcontinent after the Chartist Uprisings in the 1840s by encouraging democratic reform.[4]
The tensions continued to mount between the local populace and Company authorities during the passage of the Charter of 1853. While some reforms were enacted in London by Prime Minister Palmerston including allowing Indians to serve in the Indian Civil Service, many higher caste Indians felt that this did not go far enough. The situation exploded into rebeliion in 1858, when the ruler of Awadh, one of the autonomous princely states, died without a direct heir to the throne. As the British East India Company attempted to seize the land, the local population rose up. The rebellion soon spread to other areas, as the native soldiers in Bengal and Gwailor rose up as well.
While the Ganges Revolt as it would be later known in Britain started out well with the rebels capturing the holy site of Varanasi in the east and the outskirts of Agra in the west, the rebellion soon ran out of steam as they faced royal troops from Delhi and British forces sent from Calcutta. The main turning point was the Siege of Patna, in which over four hundred rebelling Sepoys were killed or captured. The revolt was further demoralized by the participation of some Princely states, mostly Rajputana, against the rebels and the continued loyalty of the Sepoys in Bombay and Madras to the East India Company. The revolt was finally put down in early 1859. Afterward the area around Gwailor was granted to Rajputana, Awadh was put under control of the East India Company, and the reforms that were advocated by Wilberforce were scaled back. The revolt would leave a lasting impression on the British stay in the subcontinent and the local population for the remainder of the century and beyond.
[1] ITTL Voortrekkers or Trekkers is a more popular term than Boers, at least in the United States, because the pioneer idea appeals more to the American people.
[2] The guy that Pretoria is named after.
[3] Wilberforce was a big rights advocator in the early 1800s. He ended the slave trade in Britain and set up the world's first animal rights organization.
[4] Most of the root causes of the Ganges Revolt are the same as that of the Sepoy Mutiny in OTL, although I increased Wilberforce and the Chartists' involvement a bit.
