A/N: I've had a little something saved away for a rainy day. It's not the update I promised you, but I found something else I worked on a while back, and thought to myself "Y'know what? Let me fix this up a bit". I've been having serious trouble writing the Soviet Civil War update that I've promised since this past spring, but in its stead here is a view of much of the world in 1960 and the beginning of a slow decline of some places in the world for certain juggernauts.
CHAPTER 12: The First Sun Begins To Set
A new decade of uncertainty had dawned. Another decade in this weary world where freedom from want or fear was never promised by anyone nor would it be delivered to anyone. As such, many people still clamor for many different things. The people of India want independence after many years of British mismanagement, and with Mohandas Gandhi in his nineties and a few years from his deathbed, larger and larger subsections of Indian people are resorting to more militant methods to coerce the Empire to allow the masses of the subcontinent to determine their own futures as opposed to being indirectly ruled from London. The people of Europe still want a return to normalcy after the terrors of the Second World War. Americans want peace to return to the country with an increased attention paid to the struggle for civil rights and subsequent rioting and street brawling. A growing number of those following the first Abrahamic religion known as Judaism seek the establishment of a homeland for to let their people go to after the six-year Russian onslaught and the years of countless atrocities done in the name of former Romania. And naturally, Japan wishes to consolidate their gains in Russia and China, seeking to establish further control over the lands the Emperor is defending from white imperialists. This last point will, within the coming decade, be one of contention between Japan and France, the latter empire with the backing of a whole sphere of influence, the former with mixed support from the locals and a veteran army. Even with the moderate pace of social liberalization and a slower pace of political liberalization in Japan beginning this decade, the country has a syndrome where the thrills of winning remain great, and where they have not experienced large-scale defeat in many years.
[1] This would prove cumbersome in the upcoming Indochinese War of Independence from France, a multi-sided affair in Southeast Asia.
The year 1960 marked the beginning of a slow decline for the British Empire as a whole, but it didn’t mean that England, Scotland, and Wales were going down, either. To the contrary, a postwar economic boom swept the heart of the nation as well as most of Britain’s Dominions. Canadian trade helped to spark America’s economy into another boom cycle out of the late ‘50s stagnation, and European nations were once again buying American cars, providing competition to the local manufacturers and dealerships. This came with both praise and criticism from both sides of the pond, arguing about German quality over reportedly “shoddy” American craftsmanship.
[2] Either way, most people in the West outside of the Mediterranean Pact benefitted from the new postwar trading arrangements. And even in the Pact itself, things were getting better, and more people from Venice to Visegrad and Beograd
[3] to Bologna found themselves bringing home paychecks worth sums of money not seen in the possession of common folk since the mid-1940s.
Japan, to the contrary of the newborn success story known as Western Europe, began its economic and geopolitical slowdown at the dawn of this new decade, with very few people outside of the Co-Prosperity Sphere buying Japanese cars and electronics, the quality of which were noticeably higher than whatever the Soviet Union was making from 1957 onwards (and even marginally cheaper than American ones). The problem is that poor political relations, while oftentimes not getting in the way of a good deal, are nothing compared to a resurgence in racial theory in various countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and the nations of Scandinavia. In spite of this, Japanese businesses found niche success within the Mediterranean Pact, with relatively high-quality automobiles manufactured by Nissan and Mazda driving on the same Italian roads leading to Rome as the affordable Fiat and the less affordable Maserati.
[4]
Both Serbia and Illyria begin this decade on poor footing. Serbia under King Alexander II and Illyria under Comrade Tito have signed an official end to the mess that was the Balkan Conflict of 1948-1958. The “border dispute” between the two nations will still continue, even with Montenegro falling within Greater Serbia, and paramilitaries loyal to both Red Illyria and monarchist Serbia will soon begin to fight each other in the border regions, becoming problems in and of themselves for whoever de jure controls specific territory. The border is a hard one, and it is for this reason that the deadliest job in either country is to be staffed or stationed at a border checkpoint. Finally, while paramilitary activity was rampant, it was surprisingly rare to find the Illyrian Socialist Defense Forces willing to get themselves hurt over the Serbians and their differing opinions of socialism and state athiesm. This new status quo would continue into the seventies and would by that time come to be known as the “Teškoće”, or “The Difficulties”
[5].
While the Balkans were slowly simmering with brief but commonplace outbursts on the Serbian-Illyrian border, peace reigned in Northern Ireland. The decision to federalize the Republic of Ireland into three constituent provinces by Taoiseach William Norton in 1957 was not an obvious course of action to take, but ultimately it would pave the road for a mostly peaceful integration of Northern Ireland during the late 1960s as a result of Britain’s policies of decolonization. With Protestants on equal terms with the Catholics, and Ulster admitted as a fourth federal region, Ireland was a (complete) nation once again, and its admission to the European Entente in 1969 would be a no-brainer
[6].
While Britain under the Labour Party and the relatively brief leadership of Prime Minister Aneurin Bevan began a slow decolonization process that, in 1961, saw India gain independence as a unitary state
[7] under the popularly elected Manilal Gandhi
[8], son of the late Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi
[9]. Manilal Gandhi found himself with large sandals to fill, considering that his father, the face of India’s independence movement, was clearly showing his age in the 1950s. It is with some reluctance that he found himself as the sidekick to the increasingly influential Jawaharlal Nehru, and with even more that he became Nehru’s Vice-President, not wanting to wrangle with the debacle of Indian politics. In spite of this, after Nehru’s death in 1965, Mahatma Gandhi’s prodigal son would succeed Nehru, and would proceed to win every election he stood in for the rest of his lifetime, beloved by the people of India for his policies of “Fellowship and Harmony”
[10]. The rest of the British Empire would see a slow decolonization process over the 1960s, a more accelerated one in the 1970s, and the last African, Pacific, and South American possessions would be granted independence by 1982. To the present day, however, Hong Kong, Macau
[11], and the New Territories would remain part of the British Empire due to the massive instability in Eastern Asia, and a power vacuum which would, by the turn of the millennium, be filled by a resurgent unified China.
South America would remain mostly quiet through the decade, though some of the biggest news would come with Getúlio Vargas announcing his plans to step down after many years in power and hold free elections for the first time in many years. Vargas was a mostly popular man as the leader of a de facto benevolent dictatorship, and while a number of people were sad to see him go, there were others who were happy that he was out of their way, and these people were seeking to make a move on the government. Such individuals, whether they were officers seeking to install a military junta or leftist intellectuals suppressed under Vargas wanting to install a communist regime, failed either due to inside infiltration, terrible execution of the plot, or simply chickening out at the last second. Brazil's newest experiment in liberal democracy would not be interrupted by outside forces, and the winner of the 1962 Presidential Election, Gilberto Amado
[12], would serve one six-year term under a revised Brazilian constitution, where the 81-year old man would serve accordingly be succeeded in 1968 by Ranieri Mazzilli
[13], a member of Brazil's Social Democratic Party. Argentina is fine, and Chile's future is seemingly unaffected by the crashing of an experimental helicopter on the border with Bolivia, with the tragic deaths of all individuals on-board, including the pilot, a British advisor hired and sent to help improve the Chilean Armed Forces, and an Army Captain whose name is lost to history.
All in all, the early 1960s, aside from the collapse of central authority in the Soviet Union and the division of the country into four major factions with minor groups scattered about, was an eerily peaceful time on the planet Earth. Africa had yet to speak in words and actions on conflicting ideas of racial separation and cultural representation, as well as freedom from the shackles of European control. Japan had yet to pour manpower and resources into a Southeast Asia soon to explode into vicious proxy warfare. France had yet to do the same. The world is a mess, and it can get better, but it will take time, guts, and massive tragedy in the coming years for ideals and hopes to even begin to be realized...
[1] You familiar with the term "victory disease"? Japan caught it recently, and they won't be shaking it off for a while.
[2] A parallel to Americans complaining about the quality and/or flooding of the automobile market of Japanese cars and electronics, particularly in the 1980s where it looked like Japan would dominate the world economically. It's not as big a thing here as it is OTL but it still exists through most of the '60s up until the early '70s
[3] Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Slovenian name for Belgrade, the capital of Greater Serbia. The Turkish people, the Macedonians in Bulgaria, and even the Bulgarians themselves, call it “Belgrad”. For some more useful useless knowledge, the Italian/Dutch/Spanish/Portuguese name for the city is “Belgrado”.
[4] Unlike their tanks, Italian cars don’t have multiple reverse gears, as the joke (about the tanks, of course) commonly goes. Japanese-made cars will still have a cult following in Italy even after the horrific collapse of the Empire of Japan.
[5] Yeah, that’s right. The Troubles find a rough analogue in the Balkans, with the ex-Chetnik United Volunteer Forces (Ujedinjene Volonterske Snage, UVS) of Serbia, the Provisional Illyrian Red Army (Privremena Ilirska Crvena Armija, PICA), and various minor paramilitary groups with different causes ranging for independence from either of the two nations, or both of them. The non-communist Bosnian separatists would end their campaign by the decade's end, but the more zealous militants join the UVS or the PICA, mostly on poorly-defined ethnic lines. This state of events will be over by ATL 1980.
[6] This might not be the most realistic or plausible way to butterfly away the bulk of The Troubles, but here the Republic of Ireland makes quite a few concessions to the region of Northern Ireland, the largest one being additional autonomy from Dublin. Not all violence is magically stopped, of course, and numerous small-scale problems will pop up over the rest of the twentieth century, but it will be much less… uh, vehicularly explosive, and it won’t be ingrained into the culture of the region like it is in our world.
[7] No partition ITTL. This has its benefits (millions of people are not displaced from their homes), its risks (sectarian conflict), and its downsides (Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Buddhists fighting, diplomatically at first, for influence in Parliament and over the country as a whole). For now it’s somewhat stable with each religious group, region, and ethnicity having no extra power over the others, and the Gandhis being such unifying figures helps tremendously.
[8] Butterflies bring this man back to the British Raj during the fifties on top of averting his stroke, pushing for Indian independence alongside his slowly ailing father, and ultimately taking his place in most public events. His last year of editing the Indian Opinion is 1955. It might not be overly realistic for him to assume power in India, but a lot can happen in thirty to forty years, and stranger things have indeed happened.
[9] The good news is that Gandhi gets to live to see India’s freedom, his own assassination butterflied away along with an earlier Indian independence in 1948. The bad news is that he passes away a week after the fact from old age.
[10] A very suspiciously direct analogue to another similar slogan utilized by another neutral nation in a geopolitical conflict from our world that decided to go its own way from both of the major power blocs.
[11] Macau’s garrison agreed to allow Britain to take control of Macau following the unification of Socialist Iberia. As of the year 2000, the city’s population predominantly speaks Cantonese (around 80%), followed by English (12%), Portuguese (7%), and the remaining one percent being made up of other languages. The larger Portuguese-speaking community in Macau ITTL stems from anti-leftist refugees from Iberia who avoided Brazil, followed by the poor in Brazil seeking work during the Second Great Depression in the 1970s.
[12] This man goes into politics ITTL. His presidency in this world is mostly uneventful but his foreign policy brings some more stability to South America. I won't go into further detail simply because I'm not an expert on Brazilian politics and I'm just taking a few liberties. The link above, if you haven't clicked it, is in Portuguese, so I imagine he's a bit obscure outside of the Lusophone world.
[13] Appointed in OTL as a caretaker president, here he's elected in his own right to the Presidency of Brazil.
