Even if they find gold in the Free State/Witwatersrand? Would the Dutch seriously just be okay with giving it up to the British?
First that's not in Natalia, which has some coal, but that's it. And in OTL the Netherlands was sympathetic towards the boerenrepublieken, Oranje vrijstaat and Transvaal. But they didn't do much to support them, when they came in conflict with the British. A conflict that IMHO is inevitable, when gold and diamonds are found and those republics get overwhelmed by labor migrants. So yes, the Netherlands knows it's place, and will continue it's neutrality policy.
 
Would France accept a delayed conversion though? Mean, I could see some arguing that there'd be no way of forcing the issue once she's in France? You can say she's bound to her marriage contract, but if Prussia couldn't manage it with Elise of Bavaria until she agreed to it (and she wasn't even the mother to the future king of Prussia, so fuck knows why they were still insisting on it. And her conversion seems to have been "enough already" rather than any type of sincere belief), could France manage it with Russia?
Auguste Marie of Saxony thus sounds like the best variant for the Queen. She's already a Catholic, but her brother married a Mikhailovna and she was not obliged to convert. No religion based fuss involved.
 
As for the renaming of Durban, its an English name (for Benjamin d'Urban, the Governor/Commissioner of the Cape), so I can't see Willem agreeing to keep that any more than the English kept New Amsterdam.
Why not naming it Anna Paulowna, after the Queen, since there are already so many cities and towns called Willemstad.
Anton Gerhard Alexander, Ridder van Rappard,
Very well thought demands made by Rappard, it will mean a slow but firm influence from the Netherlands. And the royal encouragement to the Voortrekkers to expand might increase the influnece of the Netherlands in Southern Africa.

Antwerp remains a part of the Netherlands, the Natalia protectorate is much the result of tradres from Amsterdam. will there be some African trade adventures don by merchants from Antwerp?
 
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Why not naming it Anna Paulowna, after the Queen, since there are already so many cities and towns called Willemstad.
Would Annasbaai work? Or Annastad?
Very well thought demands made by Rappard, it will mean a slow but firm influence from the Netherlands. And the royal encouragement to the Voortrekkers to expand might increase the influnece of the Netherlands in Southern Africa.
that is my goal. After all, the Boer Republics are getting more settlers from the Netherlands/Rhineland courtesy of Frankie's deal with Bremen shipping lines. Which might also serve to water down the "God's chosen" mentality of the Voortrekkers a bit. After all, if it hadn't been for assistance from these "new arrivals", the British would've done some serious damage (as OTL). This way, even if the British do try to take over (why wouldn't they?) they're probably going to end up having to fight harder for it. Plus the Dutch in Natalia and the Portuguese in Mozambique ending up as allies (if only in local matters rather than globally) would make for a cool idea, no?
Antwerp remains a part of the Netherlands, the Natalia protectorate is much the result of tradres from Amsterdam. will there be some African trade adventures don by merchants from Antwerp?
I'd like to see the Netherlands try to hang onto what they have in Africa (on the Gold Coast and now in Natalia) and see them taking more of a role in international affairs tha OTL, although I don't know how possible/likely it is that they don't get curbstomped by the British or just sell out like OTL as @H.Flashman(VC) suggests they would.
 
I'd like to see the Netherlands try to hang onto what they have in Africa (on the Gold Coast and now in Natalia) and see them taking more of a role in international affairs tha OTL, although I don't know how possible/likely it is that they don't get curbstomped by the British or just sell out like OTL as @H.Flashman(VC) suggests they would
If you want to go in that direction they would have to search for protection and they would have to search a naval power and it would be a very fine balancing act with them focused on two different zones , it is really hard
 
@pandizzy @nandalf @John I of Brazil and other Brasilia readers: random question but given how "quickly" Auguste of Tuscany got pregnant OTL, is it unthinkable that she has her first kid by her first anniversary in Rio? And should the kid be a boy or a girl? How would Pedro II's policy look with both a pretty wife and a son straight out the gate?
 
A Serious Prophet [1]
Soundtrack: Albert Lortzing - Overture to Undine

*Dresden* *exterior* *we see people wandering through the recently dried out streets [2]* *the streets are spotted with the various rubbish - both carried out of houses flanking the street and carried from the river*

*cut to Vienna* *interior of Schonbrunn *
Frankie: so we have floods all the way from Heidelberg and Mainz on the Rhine, to Silesia, Moravia and Saxony on the Elbe?
Albrecht of Teschen: yes.
Leopold of Baden: *nods*
Archduke Stephan: at least Hungary has been spared this time around.
Frankie: no need to sound so smug, Pista. What we need is a solution.
Albrecht: there's the idea of an electro-magnetic telegraph between Vienna and the local areas [3]- like what Henri's doing in France-
Leopold: that's a bandage for a bullet wound. It's treating the symptoms, your Imperial Highness, not the disease. Although *looks at Stephan* perhaps his Imperial Highness is right and that we should look at how the Hungarians have managed to avoid it.
*silence at the table*
Frankie: *to Stephan* well, don't leave us in suspense.
Stephan: *points to map* the Danube, the Tisza, the Waag and the Maros...have benefited from the engineers regulating them. In some cases, as far back as 1830 already [4]. It's not always effective, but its managed to...mitigate the loss due to the flooding. I admit, that the system isn't perfect, but at least it's doing something.
Frankie: so you suggest we try to have the engineers try to regulate the Rhine?
Stephan: back in 1830 there was some contention about it though. Can't remember who the guy was but he and a few others pointed out that clearing the trees along the banks for crops and towpaths. We saw it again with the Buda flood a few years ago, some who oppposed the building of the embankments...they *dismissive tone* suggested that it's because we've put things in the river- embankments, bridge pillars, artificial islands- that the river floods more readily-
Frankie: isn't that confusing the cause and the effect? Since we put the embankments in place to stop the flooding, the embankments didn't cause the flooding?
Stephan: the argument was that the river floods because we've narrowed the bed, if I recall correctly.
Frankie: the river floods because there is more water than normal- whether it was due to more rain, more snow or because there is a blockage downstream that the river cannot pass- it's going to flood whether we narrow the bed or not, surely. There are some things that truly do not take a genius to figure out.
Leopold: there is the "straightening" that Herr Tulla [5] undertook?
Frankie: did the Rhine not still flood?
Leopold: not as badly as it could've
Gustaf Vasa: but it still flooded.
Leopold: it still flooded.
Stephan: and according to the Buda studies a few years ago argued that when there's an embankment, it takes longer for the water to drain away anyway-
Gustaf: does it?
Stephan: that's inconclusive. After all, as his Serene Highness points out, it's going to flood regardless.
Albrecht: if only there was a body of people who could investigate this.
Frankie: this isn't the Encyclopedie, Albrecht [6], we can talk about investigating whether or not Herr Tulla or Archduke Joseph's methods are more effective at a later point. For now, we are faced with the matter of how to try to...deal with this mess. Apparently some Berlin padres are already trumpeting that somehow this is God's punishment on Austria for depriving Prussia of her territories in Silesia, Saxony and the Rhineland.
Gustaf: *idly* how does that work, exactly? Because Austria took those lands, because Saxony got those lands, the weaver's revolt last year and the floods this year are divine punishment. But if we'd left those lands in Prussian hands, would it have been seen as a divine punishment because they didn't give it to us?
Frankie: I'll leave such discussion to the theologians. Unless God wishes to provide a solution to the floodings here.
Albrecht: what if we were to centralize the problem?
Frankie: the solution to a problem is seldom more government, Albrecht.
Albrecht: no...*looks at map* hear me out...this can actually go hand-in-hand with the whole telegraph idea.
*couple groans like "not this again"*
Frankie: fine...let's hear how this all ties together, Albrecht.
Albrecht: *half surprised that everyone is looking at him* *but launches in with gusto* as the situation now stands, regardless of whether you have a flood in Hungary, Silesia, the Rhineland or Venice...the response is local. You have a bunch of people all working separately to sort this problem out. West of the Danube, you have a dozen or more separate Wasserbaudirektions in each province. In Hungary, it's the property-owners, the community and there are the occasional private companies doing the same job-
Stephan: you want a Wasserbaudirektion in Hungary?
Albrecht: not exactly. What I was thinking is that there's a lot of people falling over one another's feet. This one doesn't co-operate with that one because they are arguing about where the county line stops.
Frankie: so you want a single directorate?
Albrecht: I was thinking more like a ministry, actually.
Frankie: dear Lord, first a ministry for education, now a ministry for water affairs.
Albrecht: it would ensure that no voice is higher than the emperor's regarding this matter. Prussia, England and Bavaria already have it. As I understand it, the main problem in Saxony is that the parts they recently reacquired from Prussia haven't been brought in line with the main body working out of Dresden, and there's still arguments between Dresden and Berlin over whose job it is.
Frankie: and how would the telegraph feature in this?
Albrecht: that's what the telegraph is for. We establish lines between say...Vienna and Buda...Vienna and Milan...to facilitate the easier communication- its faster than a rider with a message. These telegraph lines- say one between Buda and Vienna - Vienna can warn in Hungary of a coming flood and Hungary can respond to it faster. Then once the flood happens, we can get decisions and orders backwards and forwards faster than we do at the moment.
Leopold: it'll be a hard sell to anyone if the line only functions one way-
Albrecht: but they won't. The people in Buda can send back information to report on things like drainage outside the embankments, and whether straightening the Rhine worked or...any of that.
Frankie: how does this solve the problem of the current flood, Albrecht?
Albrecht: *sheepish* well...it doesn't., I guess-
Stephan: he has a point.
Others: he does?
Albrecht: I do?
Stephan: it's a vague, badly thought out point. But he's right that there's too many cooks spoiling the soup between start and finish. He's right that it takes too long to confirm decisions, and that people often change their mind or are relying on outdated information to make decisions. A telegraph network would improve that. A centralized body to "decide" on these type of things would "streamline" things.
Frankie: and who would be on this body?
Stephan: geologists, scientists, chemists, engineers...men who actually know what's going on. Who can take the information collected and turn it into a useful decision. And this wouldn't just be for floods and their effects, it could be used for railways, mines, roads...et cetera.
Frankie: with final decision remaining with the emperor.
Stephan: of course. Or his representative.
Frankie: and until they come up with an idea to fix floods for once and for all, I suppose the final decision remains with the emperor and his representatives on how to "fix the damage" the floods cause.[7]

*fade to black*

[1] "a serious prophet on predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer"
[2]
Elbe-Flood-Map-1845-Karte-des-Elbstromes-des-Koenigreiches-Sachsen-mit-Angabe-des-durch.png

map of the extent of the water damage to Dresden in the ice flood of March-April 1845
[3] this was proposed in November 1845
[4] from the Pressburger Zeitung after the flood of 1830
[5] Johann Gottfried Tulla, responsible for straightening the upper Rhine. Tulla was a founder of the Karlsruhe Engineering School that later became Karlsruhe University
[6] there's an anecdote that, after Louis XV had banned the publication of the Encyclopedie, he went to a dinner with Madame de Pompadour. There, the talk turned to how they made gunpowder, but none of the guests - learned though they were - knew exactly what went into the making of gunpowder. La Pompadour used it as a vehicle to remark "oh, if only there were a book that we could consult to tell us what went into the making of gunpowder". Cue the Encyclopedie being unbanned. Frankie's remark to Albrecht is that "wishing there was a body doesn't mean there is a body available"
[7] the Imperial Academy of Sciences was established in 1847 to do exactly what Albrecht is suggesting, actually. And in 1851, Franz Joseph approved plans for the Imperial-Royal Central Institute for Meteorology and Earth Magnetism (ZAMG). These were both in response to the floods in 1847 and 1849, here, since Austria is "less diplomatically isolated" than OTL, the Ice Floods of March 31 1845 have provoked a "quicker" response. Heidelberg and Mainz are not in Austrian territory, but there were floods all down the Elbe and Rhine river as well as in Moravia at the time. Ergo, Frankie's not really "eager" to change for the sake of change, but this actually falls into his (minister of education), Stephan and Albrecht (both of whom OTL had interests in the sciences and geology) wheelhouses, plus the telegraph line was being proposed around this time OTL as well. And Stephan is mentioned (by his sister) as being interested in that too. The "falling over one another's feet" was actually a problem until 1868 (in Austria) and in the Országgyűlés in the 1870s when Gyula Nary proposed Law XXXIX and established the Gátépitési Társulatok. So Frankie "sort of agreeing" to this is anything from two to twenty years ahead of schedule (although, from what I can make out, there was no reason why someone couldn't have cottoned onto this idea twenty years ahead of schedule)


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Good to see all of them putting in the work together to fix the issue at hand.
Smart decision

I'd like to think so. Frankie is maybe a bit slow on the take-up less because he's against the idea than he's probably come to the realization in the last year that ideas cost money. And on the heels of the weaver's revolt in Silesia, he's probably a bit less "gung ho" about making these big changes (after all, his wanting an imperial supreme court barely squeaked by, he had to settle for a "compromise" with the Prussian thaler as far as imperial currency is concerned [1] and he's faced opposition in his pushing other useful reforms - like smallpox vaccination and education - through because of his surname). So I could actually see him letting Albrecht and Stephan run with the ball here. Not saying that they'd have a better sales pitch to the German princes, but their surname gives them a punch. Even if Albrecht for instance seems to have good ideas, he has sort of "handwaived" problems out of existence - in his defense, him finally getting a seat at the "big boy table" probably makes him a bit nervous/excitable because he might be subbing for his dad. Hopefully he'll grow into it (as will Stephan).

But these are three young men (Frankie, b.1811, and Stephan and Albrecht, both b.1817) occupying positions that were given to men in their 60s OTL. So hopefully that will reap some rewards TTL, even if they're a bit "excitable" and the closest thing to adult supervision is Gustaf Vasa (b.1799) and Leopold of Baden (b.1790) who are trying to muddle through this.
 
@Fehérvári @Tibi088 is it too late for Kossuth to emerge on the scene in Hungary in 1845? Or is it unlikely (given the changes there) that he is able to have much effect and it would be better to go with another bête noir for the Habsburgs in Hungary?
 
@Fehérvári @Tibi088 is it too late for Kossuth to emerge on the scene in Hungary in 1845? Or is it unlikely (given the changes there) that he is able to have much effect and it would be better to go with another bête noir for the Habsburgs in Hungary?
Kossuth is a bit of a special case. He was not from the upper nobility and what really marked him out as someone really important (he was important before but not nearly top tier) was his debate with István Széchenyi. Széchenyi is - rightly - credited to be the starter of the reform age of Hungary, he was one of the richest aristocrats and spent a lot of time, energy and money to improve the Kingdom. He was already very important and it was his singling out Kossuth and attacking him in a political debate (which is a fascinating read between two truely incredible people) in 1841 that really led to Kossuth's rise to the leadership of the opposition. So can you delay or avoid Kossuth's rise? Yes, easily. Though that would drastically change the political situation in Hungary, the implication of which will take a lot of considering.
 
Kossuth is a bit of a special case. He was not from the upper nobility and what really marked him out as someone really important (he was important before but not nearly top tier) was his debate with István Széchenyi. Széchenyi is - rightly - credited to be the starter of the reform age of Hungary, he was one of the richest aristocrats and spent a lot of time, energy and money to improve the Kingdom. He was already very important and it was his singling out Kossuth and attacking him in a political debate (which is a fascinating read between two truely incredible people) in 1841 that really led to Kossuth's rise to the leadership of the opposition. So can you delay or avoid Kossuth's rise? Yes, easily. Though that would drastically change the political situation in Hungary, the implication of which will take a lot of considering.
Well, the political situation in Hungary has already been altered some re: railways and serfdom. And Hungary's fledgling industries got a boost during the war when Bohemia and Silesia were under threat and a lot of those industries were either unable to operate or ruined by the war.
 
@Fehérvári @Tibi088 is it too late for Kossuth to emerge on the scene in Hungary in 1845? Or is it unlikely (given the changes there) that he is able to have much effect and it would be better to go with another bête noir for the Habsburgs in Hungary?
Aside from what @Tibi088 wrote, Kossuth's popularity benefitted greatly from his imprisonment(1837-'40) too. Was censorship lessened by that point ITTL? If yes, then combined with the fact that some key reforms passed early ITTL, Kossuth might avoid his prison time completely (maybe he doesn't even get arrested in the first place?). Without being seen as a political martyr, he won't be able to reach the same kind of popularity as OTL. Another reason for his (and other radical's) lesser popularity would be the previously mentioned early passing of some reforms. The moderate reformers took the wind out of their sails.
 
Aside from what @Tibi088 wrote, Kossuth's popularity benefitted greatly from his imprisonment(1837-'40) too. Was censorship lessened by that point ITTL? If yes, then combined with the fact that some key reforms passed early ITTL, Kossuth might avoid his prison time completely (maybe he doesn't even get arrested in the first place?). Without being seen as a political martyr, he won't be able to reach the same kind of popularity as OTL. Another reason for his (and other radical's) lesser popularity would be the previously mentioned early passing of some reforms. The moderate reformers took the wind out of their sails.
I guess he would still end up an editor and get some popularity through journalism (though not nearly OTL level). He was also preferring a way more democratic change than Széchenyi, and way to anti Habsburg to support the government. So maybe he would still be an important figure, maybe leader of a more liberal opposition (that will be significantly weaker than the OTL one of course).

Also: I think sometime in the near future I will take the time to read this TL (it seems interesting).
 
Aside from what @Tibi088 wrote, Kossuth's popularity benefitted greatly from his imprisonment(1837-'40) too. Was censorship lessened by that point ITTL? If yes, then combined with the fact that some key reforms passed early ITTL, Kossuth might avoid his prison time completely (maybe he doesn't even get arrested in the first place?). Without being seen as a political martyr, he won't be able to reach the same kind of popularity as OTL. Another reason for his (and other radical's) lesser popularity would be the previously mentioned early passing of some reforms. The moderate reformers took the wind out of their sails.
I think we could look at relaxing censorship going forward (not just in Hungary) since it would be a good way for both Frankie (and Leopold of Baden in Germany) to counteract accusations of them just being "Metternich by another name"

I guess he would still end up an editor and get some popularity through journalism (though not nearly OTL level). He was also preferring a way more democratic change than Széchenyi, and way to anti Habsburg to support the government. So maybe he would still be an important figure, maybe leader of a more liberal opposition (that will be significantly weaker than the OTL one of course).
So Széchenyi would be big in the Hungarian government going forward
Also: I think sometime in the near future I will take the time to read this TL (it seems interesting).
Thank you for the compliment, looking forward to it
 
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