Separated at Birth: America and Drakia
- Thread starter Ephraim Ben Raphael
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Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
"So we don't get to see the borders of the different factions in Russia?"
Because they're changing all the time!
There you go- see it's not laziness at all!
I'm glad you enjoyed it! There are people getting out of Drakia- Nationals and Honorary Whites can immigrate, and there is a sizable industry of illegal emigration by the Bonded. There are also plenty of people in-universe saying that we need to slay the dragons.
Don't worry- there's more horror and fascination to come.
You're on the mark. The next chapter will go into more detail but the period after the Anglo-Drakian was brutal for Drakia. There were rebellions across the continent with arms, funding, and advice from the United States and the Drakian government is going to have to choke down a lot of compromises and accept allies wherever they can find them to survive. The Kurds are only one symptom of that.
Drakia uses a variety of tactics- you'll recall that the men arrested along with Audrey Ratcliff were given forced labor sentences for sedition.
It does not- currently the capital is Krakow. Warsaw is still in German hands and considerably less Polish than OTL (although still a majority)- Poles were treated a lot better in Austrian Poland/Galicia than Prussian Poland and so the center of country is there.
More democratic because of the way the German Confederation formed. Prussia dominates the Confederation and the King of Prussia is first among equals, but there is no kaiser and the head of government is the Chancellor of the Bundesversammlung. The upper house appointed by the German monarchs has to okay any government formed by the elected lower, but that's no worse than the Kaiser being able to dismiss and appoint government OTL. The electorate was originally very limited, but by 1920 they have universal suffrage for men and women.
You're absolutely right- Drakia is stretched incredibly thin right now and is going to have a miserable time as a consequence. Their expansion relied on pre-existing colonial structures and the fact that they already had troops in North and West Africa from the World War. We'll go over some demographic data in the next chapter, but the white population just grew substantially in a short period of time thanks to the immigration of most of the Anglo-Indians.
Ach, good catch! I messed up, I'll get the map fixed.
Well pre-1920 Drakia wasn't totalitarian- just a deeply flawed Westminster "democracy". It does imprison political opponents- you'll note that the men arrested with Audrey Ratcliff were imprisoned- but there's a lot of pressure to maximize the number of productive white citizens and if it's possible to intimidate white Drakians into shutting up and just going on about their lives then they'll take that option.
They're having a bit of an identity crisis ATM- it's pissing the British off royally.
I'm glad you've been enjoying it.
Asian immigration is higher than OTL- driven by Russian oppression of its colonial territories in Asia, Tian Dynasty misrule, and a United States that is less hostile to non-white immigrants than OTL. There are Immigration Quotas but no equivalent of the Chinese Exclusion Act.Good idea.
Thank you.
I've been musing about having one or two of them appear at some point.Who wants to see someone roll a 20 while the Draka roll a 1
The reaction of the Draka to that would be most interesting
The reaction of the Draka to that would be most interesting
Will TTL's version of HIV be called stone dogs? The version from the books is too ridiculous to take seriously
Under current status, Drakia is doomed in any committed war unless it 1: gets allies or 2: reinvents itself as the superpower state that Stirling envisioned
Ironically, I feel like there's potential here for Drakia to actually make a version of their "Final Society" if they seize upon the colonial structures they absorbed and a broader idea of "whiteness" more in line with the US census definition of it, aka include the Arabs and other Middle Eastern peoples into it.
In other words, it would not be surprising to me if the Drakians to build their new state on two pillars: the enemy without, and the enemy within. Obviously, the enemy without is the degenerate Machine states as outlined in the Societist novel, the American world order that threatens to overthrow the "rightful" order of society with its dangerous ideas about equality of the masses. The enemy within would be black and Berber Africans who did not earn Honorary White status, as "inferior and insufficiently civilized" races that are easy to manipulate by the enemy without. Viewed through that twisted lens, the Drakians can create a mythos that allows them to accept a lot of the old colonial structures and new populations as allies against those two enemies. In particular, I could see the Arabs of Sudan and Egypt willing to get on board, given racism in those regions IOTL towards black Africans, and thus the Middle East could be changed from a source of slave labor and rebellion into one of reinforcements for the horrendously strained military. Those are some Janissarries of the most literal kind that the Drakians could employ, and their compliance would net the Dominion a metric f**k-ton of oil-wealthy regions to exploit and utilize for their own advantage. Some careful sacrifice of particularly brutal or exploitative administrators of the old colonies to the Arabs alongside Ottoman functionaries could theoretically buy a lot of loyalty, without much genuine sacrifice on the part of the Anglo-Drakians.
In other words, it would not be surprising to me if the Drakians to build their new state on two pillars: the enemy without, and the enemy within. Obviously, the enemy without is the degenerate Machine states as outlined in the Societist novel, the American world order that threatens to overthrow the "rightful" order of society with its dangerous ideas about equality of the masses. The enemy within would be black and Berber Africans who did not earn Honorary White status, as "inferior and insufficiently civilized" races that are easy to manipulate by the enemy without. Viewed through that twisted lens, the Drakians can create a mythos that allows them to accept a lot of the old colonial structures and new populations as allies against those two enemies. In particular, I could see the Arabs of Sudan and Egypt willing to get on board, given racism in those regions IOTL towards black Africans, and thus the Middle East could be changed from a source of slave labor and rebellion into one of reinforcements for the horrendously strained military. Those are some Janissarries of the most literal kind that the Drakians could employ, and their compliance would net the Dominion a metric f**k-ton of oil-wealthy regions to exploit and utilize for their own advantage. Some careful sacrifice of particularly brutal or exploitative administrators of the old colonies to the Arabs alongside Ottoman functionaries could theoretically buy a lot of loyalty, without much genuine sacrifice on the part of the Anglo-Drakians.
I can't imagine Drakians taking a favorable position towards Muslims, really. But Middle Eastern Christians might be treated as white?
I'm not saying they'd all accept it wholesale at first glance, just that it's a reasonable compromise that they can make that fits into their burgeoning world-view. They have to pick somebody to not be enemies with, and what better way than to divide the Muslims between arabs and black Africans? If they treat all muslims the same (i.e. as enemies), they can never realistically hold anything north of the Congo as a united Islamic resistance would basically screw them over. They accepted Catholics despite British prejudice at that time, so I can see them making that leap to "proper" strains of Muslims too. We've already seen the mentions of the Sedevacantist Catholic Church, it would be interesting to see a Muslim splinter sect that the Drakians co-opt as part of their new Societist super-state as well. Really, it just makes much more sense for the Drakians to accommodate the "racially similar" Arabs, especially given their worship of Classical Civilizations, so the Draka can claim that they're helping rebuild those cultures via the "actual descendants" of that legacy.
Well throughout colonial conquest and (mis)government a lot of the Maghreb and West Africa and the Horn would being coming into a great Islamic revivalism and feverent change and growth under the Sufi lodges and marabouts. So if the Drakia tried to establish (probably ham-fistedly, being a bunch of white dudes interested in maintaining their power not in genuine interactions with their beliefs) an Arab-only Ummah... it's very likely that even the neutrality-leaning, left uncriminalized, conservative schools that would normally indifferently tolerate Drakian rule would rise to "rebellion" against these interlopers.
Plus like most Arabs might not even buy it to begin with, like OTL the Libyan Senussi/Sanusi order was super big on pan-Islamic missionary efforts and colonial resistance- all the way to Lake Chad against the French long before their more famous efforts against fascist Italy. Sure this may have came in part in from a paternistic idea of "civilizing" the black African with the correct form(tm) of Islam and Arab culture but it was also an authentic call for brotherhood and unity against the the imperialists conquering their homes. And the Senussi were far from alone in these sentiments, at one time their leader was exiled from Libya for a good number of years and was basically treated like a celebrity while chilling out in Istanbul.
Plus like most Arabs might not even buy it to begin with, like OTL the Libyan Senussi/Sanusi order was super big on pan-Islamic missionary efforts and colonial resistance- all the way to Lake Chad against the French long before their more famous efforts against fascist Italy. Sure this may have came in part in from a paternistic idea of "civilizing" the black African with the correct form(tm) of Islam and Arab culture but it was also an authentic call for brotherhood and unity against the the imperialists conquering their homes. And the Senussi were far from alone in these sentiments, at one time their leader was exiled from Libya for a good number of years and was basically treated like a celebrity while chilling out in Istanbul.
If there's one thing that racists are good at though, it's moving the goal posts and deciding on the exception of "acceptable ones" to save themselves from actually dealing with the sheer herculean task of ruling over an entirely hostile majority.
I don't remember the exact timeframe when the Drakians took over the Horn, but it was fairly long ago ITTL IIRC, so those Salafi schools might not be as strong there after decades of the Drakians breaking down potential sources of resistance. West Africa and the Maghreb, on the other hand, were always separately administered by Britain, and I see that pan-Islamic colonial resistance as far more likely and strong there as the Drakians move in to set up shop. That said, Drakia has the former colonial elites and structures on side looking to keep their power and influence, and the ready made excuse to indoctrinate other Muslims that Maghrebi are "mongrels" or some other such tripe as being "not civilized enough yet", much like how WASPs randomly decided that Spanish and Irish and Italian people weren't white out of prejudice.
None of that is to say that those groups of racist Muslims need to be a majority, I'm just thinking in terms of a shot in the arm for an otherwise horrifically understaffed military given the size of the task that they've been given. It would take time for that level of societal indoctrination to lead to a majority of Arabs thinking that way and not be tempted by pan-Islamic colonial revolt, so in the mean-time I don't doubt that the Draka will have to make some kind of accommodation with the most populous areas of West Africa (as seen in the map, where there's tons of *Bantustans and *Princely States in the Delta and around the Chad region.
I mean the Arabs did sweep the whole region once upon a time. Stamp "martial race" on their documents and kick them a few perks and that's that, although the dissonance between Egyptian Arabs vs. the Maghreb and Levantine Arabs vs martial Kurds will be a headache.
Maybe Drakia could promote Phoenicianism in *Lebanon while Pharanoism is aggressively promoted in Egypt?
I think in the Middle East you start with the Maronites,Copts,Chaldeans and other Christian sects,add in some of the other minorities that chafed under Sunni/Ottoman rule-Alawite,Druze,Yazidi,Kurd,Manchean,use favoritism and propaganda,maybe you divide and if not conquer,at least they identify with the Drakia.In northwest Africa the Drakia offer the Tauregs and other nomads bounties for runaway bonds. As far as acceptance,even racists like Goering protected Jews that were useful to him,Himmler recruited the Bosnian Muslim into the SS because he needed soldiers,people are adaptable when circumstances demand it.
Richard Drummond
Banned
I'm thinking the Drakians back the Kabyles and other Berbers in North Africa against the Arabic speaking populace. They repeat the same thing with the Copts in Egypt.
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