Swedes did have a realistic chance during the ToT when a younger brother of GA was a viable (and welcomed) candidate to the Russian throne. They blew it and that’s it.
No GNW (or “Peter goes South”)
- Thread starter alexmilman
- Start date
I remember old Soviet joke:
"Question: how achieve prosperity?
Answer: 1) Declare war to Sweden
2) Surrender".
Going modern #2
350. Going modern #2
Harbin. After the Boxer Rebellion was crushed and the treaties with China signed, RE ended up in a possession of a part of the Northern Manchuria with a triangle formed by the Sungari River and sparsely populated (except along the river) by a mixture of the Manchu (mostly) and Chinese. The initial goal of this acquisition was predominantly strategic: to protect Vladivoskok and Khabarovsk and to provide such a border configuration which, together with the Mongolian border on the West, would make future Chinese military activities across the Amur extremely unlikely. Of course, to achieve this goal, certain actions had to be taken:
A more in-depth review of the conquered area and Russian-Japanese agreements signed soon afterwards added the additional considerations. The “triangle” included a considerable percentage of the Manchurian soybean production area and controlled even more of it to the North and immediately to the West of it. The product was of a limited interest for Russia (population there tended to use different protein sources) but was of a great importance for China and Japan. Which made it reasonable to get from the Qing government concession for a railroad going from the “triangle” North all the way to Amur River and to make an arrangement with Japan for connecting South Manchurian RR, which it was building, with the Russian railroads in and North of the “triangle”. The schema, when completed, would allow Russia to conduct direct export of the beans to Japan via Vladivostok and Japan would be able to transport the excess, together with the production of the South Manchuria southward to Dalian for exporting to Japan or by the railroad from Mukden into China to sell there.
An additional reason for going ahead with the schema was a need to import quite a few things from or through Manchuria at least until the Russian Far East becomes more self-sufficient.
Which meant that Russia needed a transportation hub within the “triangle” close to its farther point. This is how Harbin was founded. Taking into an account that creation of the city started simultaneously with the construction o the railroads, one of the first tasks was to organize a transportation river flotilla consisting of the low draft steamers and barges capable of carrying huge volumes of the construction materials and machines up the Sungari. By sea, they were delivered from Europe to Vladivostok, and from there they were transported to the Iman station of the Ussuri Railway, and then to the Red River near Khabarovsk for assembly and launching. A total of 18 steamers were assembled and launched, named from "First" to "Eighteen", 4 boats, 40 steel and 20 wooden barges and one excavator. During the construction of the road and the city of Harbin, this flotilla transported at least 650 thousand tons of various cargoes.
At first, builders of the city and railroads had big problems with the food usual for Russians. There were no basic, familiar products for Russians, as the Chinese did not grow potatoes or cabbage in Manchuria, did not keep dairy cattle, so there were almost no beef and dairy products in the markets. C. N. Veselovzorov in his memoirs published in the Harbin newspaper "Russian Voice", wrote:
"Inhabitants and the railroad workers suffered from the lack of rye bread and buckwheat porridge. Game - pheasants, goat meat, deer meat - was abundant, but it got boring, and it was almost impossible to get ordinary beef, as it was also imported. Russian cabbage, potatoes were rare during the construction of the city. They, as well as butter, were brought from Siberia. But alcoholic beverages were abundant thanks to duty-free trade and the free port of Vladivostok. For example, cognac of the best brand "Three Stars Martel” [3] cost 1 ruble 20 kopecks bottle, and a quarter of vodka cost 30-40 kopecks! For an empty bottle, the peasants gave chicken, for a hundred eggs they took a quarter (25 kopecks), and for a couple of pheasants - 20 kopecks! At the same time, shaving a hairdresser cost 2 rubles in gold."
According to the results of the first census in the history of Harbin, conducted on March 15, 1903, the population of the Harbin exclusion zone was 44.5 thousand people. By 1913 it was 68.5 thousand people from 53 countries talking on 47 languages.
The main part of the city, so-called New City, was built strictly by a plan and included the railroad station, numerous administrative buildings, schools, cathedral, etc. The Pier part, OTOH, was developed exclusively thanks to private initiative and without any construction plans. It arose in a natural, original way - from the first settlements of Russian and Chinese workers, so it was built up in a very peculiar way: here the stone two- and three-storey houses of rich entrepreneurs coexisted with wooden huts and clay fanzas. The Pier quickly turned into a large commercial and industrial settlement, so the Construction Department decided to prevent unauthorized development of the district: it drew up a special plan, broke down streets and neighborhoods and even introduced police protection. However, the life of this Harbin district could not be put into a law-abiding course. One of the striking examples of arbitrariness of the residents of the Pier was the emergence of China Street, another attraction of Harbin. Groups of Chinese and Manchus arbitrarily planned this part of the Pier and marked the plots by pegs. Despite the orders of the head of the district S. N. Khilkov "remove pegs", the huts grew row by row, creating a "Chinese" street. As a result, administration was forced to surrender and legalize the breakdown of land plots. Later, Chinese clay houses were replaced by solid stone buildings.
Vladivostok. While being Witte’s pet project, Harbin was just an important second to Vladivostok because most of the supply of the region had been still conducted by the sea. The railroad communication was strategically critical as a faster an secure way to bring troops and supplies to the area in the case of war but in a time of peace transportation by the sea from Odessa to Vladivostok was cheaper. And in the case of foreign imports, except for those coming from China, the naval route was a much cheaper option comparing to unloading cargo in one of the Russian European ports and carrying it all the way by railroad. Exception were few items, like Japanese silk, for which transportation time (during which the capital was “frozen”) had priority over transportation cost.
However, there was also a demographic aspect: within the first two years after completion of TransSib population of the region doubled and the trend continued. Which, in turn, increased a need in the products and all types of manufactured goods.
Vladivostok was founded in 1860 (the first civilian settler arrived in 1861) and its first problem were the tigers.
“January 8. The tiger spent the night 100 steps from our house, near the military warehouse where the sentry stood. I went to see the lair where he was lying. The imprint of his paw is one foot long and four inches wide. Apparently, he was approaching the cattle yard. The dogs didn't bark that night, but squeezed their tails, gathered together and howled, smelling the monster. Soldiers do not leave the barracks after dawn without guns. I just finished these lines from my diary when Martyn ran in and said that the tiger was in the bathhouse. Three shots were fired, the tiger left...”
In 1866, the post of Vladivostok was already a decent group of buildings located along the shore of the Golden Horn. On the northern and northwest shores of the bay there were two piers designed for ships of different sizes. Interestingly, the post, having a church, ten state buildings, 34 private houses and 11 Chinese fanzas , had a decent number of shops - 12. In the same year, a gang of thieves started its activities, which was reported to the top by the head of the southern ports. In the only forge for the whole post they managed to steal the entire stock of iron available in it. At the that time, the population was small.
In 1867 there was the first incident with the Manzi [4]: many of them gathered on Askold Island, where they mined gold and on this occasion two Chinese who were beating Russian sailor had been arrested. The next year there were “manzi wars”: bands of the armed Chinese had been attacking Russian military posts, looting and burned villages, and there were some casualties. Eventually the regular army won the day and surviving Manzi fled to China.
Vladivostok still remained a rather unimportant place until 1871 when the main base of the Siberian Flotilla and the headquarters of the military governor were moved from Nikolaevsk to it. The transfer of people, courts and institutions itself began the following year with the opening of navigation. From this point city started actively growing and in mid-1870s the first line of the fortifications had been built. In 1880 Vladivostok got status of the city.
Its population grew to over 9,000 and, as an indication of this progress, on January 1, 1882 there was a symbolic event importance of which can’t be overestimated, "opened in the city, at the expense of the holders of houses of tolerance, a hospital for 15 beds for sexually transmitted patients, exclusively prostitutes."
Speaking of growth, there was no plan of any sort except that some areas had been out of limits [5] . All appeals to the provincial authorities to introduce an official plan of the city development had been ignored but in 1889 city status was upgraded once more: it officially became a fortress (not that there were any serious fortifications around it).
In 1890 the city got a dry dock and railroad connection, which helped its future growth: by 1897 population was over 28,000. The city already had numerous stone buildings, a hospital (not one mentioned above), factories, business offices, etc. And, of course, it was a base of the Russian Pacific Fleet.
Transporting things. The initial expectations about TransSib substituting the naval routes proved to be optimistic, at least for a while, which does not mean that it was unimportant. Actually, in 1910 Vladivostok received 30 millions poods of goods by the sea while the TransSib brought 25 millions. In 1911 it was 35 vs. 40 but in 1912 50 vs. 30 and in 1913 52 vs. 31.
By the main categories imports into the region looked as following (military hardware not included):
Mass transportation of grain goods from abroad mainly came from China, Korea and Japan, from where, however, they carried not only grain of various kinds, but also vegetables, meat, as well as other food supplies. Local bread (and food in general) in a poorly populated and undeveloped by peasants region was critically lacking, mass delivery from Siberia was expensive and organizationally insufficiently established, as a result of which floor milling production focused on its mass imports. Import of bread necessary for the region was not subject to duty. With the increasing rural population of the region this started changing but growth of the urban population was going too fast for the local production to fully satisfy its needs. As a result, imports of this category usually amounted to anywhere between 30 and 50% of the local consumption, especially during periods of a mass arrival of the settlers from European Russia. Russian bread, which accounted for 15% of the total import for 1903-1913, came to Primorye both by sea and by rail. In the first case, peak volumes occurred in 1906 and 1911, when 1.1 million poods were transported by long-range cabotage (from Odessa), in the second case - in 1908, when 323 thousand poods of grain cargo arrived from the Siberian Railway to the Ussuri Railway.
The cheapness and availability of imported salt (from China, Japan and Germany) explains its mass import, and a significant part of it was used to salt fish, which was caught in large quantities in the Sea of Japan by domestic fishermen and sent from Primorye both for export and transit to Russia.
Taking into account the development of sugar production in the southern provinces of the Russian Empire and the ease of transportation of sugar to the Black Sea, as well as the presence of mass demand, the export of sugar through the port of Odessa on long-range cabotage ships is not surprising. The preference of the sea route to the railway seems to be due to the lower cost of transporting sugar products to the Far East by sea within the framework of specially established export tariffs - Direct Russian-Chinese Overseas and Direct South Overseas Traffic. Thus, it was calculated that the cost of transporting sugar pood from Pavlovsky Sugar Plant to the city of Sumy to Vladivostok on the TransSiberian Railway could reach 130 kopecks (excluding additional fees), while delivery of the same pood of sugar through Odessa by sea cost 64-84 kopecks per pood. Between 4 and 4.5% of that sugar was exported to Manchuria by the railroad.
Meat was brought by the sea mostly from China and, most of it, by the rail from Manchuria. By the sea it was coming either salted or frozen and by the rail, thanks to the refrigerator wagons, much fresher. The railroad meat transportation from Siberia kept growing from 10,000 poods in 1903 to 233,000 in 1912.
Coal initially was almost 100% imported from Japan and China but after in 1907 a narrow gauge railroad to the Suchan River was completed the annual local extraction of 10 million poods per year had been covering most of the needs of the local manufacturing, railroads, navy and merchant marine. Still, few million poods had to be imported from Japan annually.
The oil products had been brought to the region almost exclusively by the sea. The railroad part reached 100,000 poods (out of 1,600,000) only in 1913. Kerosine was exported to China by the railroad and to Japan both by the railroad (to Dalian) and the sea.
Unfortunately, the events in China started causing worries regarding stability of the system…
___________
[1]
“How do the ships take off?
Not like trains at all.”
[2]
“Engineer. The collar is unbuttoned.
Flask. Carabine.
"We'll build a Russian city here,
Let's call it Harbin..."”
[3] Three stars (***) is actually VS cognac, the lowest drinkable grade. But in Russia (and the SU) this was the most popular grade. Hence a habit of drinking it in a gulp rather than sipping.
[4] Chinese population of the Ussuri region.
[5] On a map it looks “regular” enough to me. At least comparing to the center of Moscow.
«Как пpовожают паpоходы
Совсем не так как поезда» [1]
old song
«Инженер. Расстегнут ворот.
Фляга. Карабин.
"Здесь построим русский город,
Назовем – Харбин"...» [2]
A. Nesmelov
“Great port! From here we’ll take possession of the East!”
N. N. Muravyov-Amursky, 1859
"Located on terraces, Vladivostok is very similar to Naples, although without Vesuvius, but with a magnificent harbor, beautiful islands and such a view of the city from the sea, which is hardly inferior in beauty to any other on the globe..."
Fridtjof Nansen, from the 1913 diary
The border cities of the East. Совсем не так как поезда» [1]
old song
«Инженер. Расстегнут ворот.
Фляга. Карабин.
"Здесь построим русский город,
Назовем – Харбин"...» [2]
A. Nesmelov
“Great port! From here we’ll take possession of the East!”
N. N. Muravyov-Amursky, 1859
"Located on terraces, Vladivostok is very similar to Naples, although without Vesuvius, but with a magnificent harbor, beautiful islands and such a view of the city from the sea, which is hardly inferior in beauty to any other on the globe..."
Fridtjof Nansen, from the 1913 diary
Harbin. After the Boxer Rebellion was crushed and the treaties with China signed, RE ended up in a possession of a part of the Northern Manchuria with a triangle formed by the Sungari River and sparsely populated (except along the river) by a mixture of the Manchu (mostly) and Chinese. The initial goal of this acquisition was predominantly strategic: to protect Vladivoskok and Khabarovsk and to provide such a border configuration which, together with the Mongolian border on the West, would make future Chinese military activities across the Amur extremely unlikely. Of course, to achieve this goal, certain actions had to be taken:
- Add a reasonably big number of the settlers from Russia into the area.
- Construct railroad(s) allowing easy communication between the far end of the “triangle” and Vladivostok and Khabarovsk.
- Extend the Amur River flotilla by a detachment operating on the Sungari.
A more in-depth review of the conquered area and Russian-Japanese agreements signed soon afterwards added the additional considerations. The “triangle” included a considerable percentage of the Manchurian soybean production area and controlled even more of it to the North and immediately to the West of it. The product was of a limited interest for Russia (population there tended to use different protein sources) but was of a great importance for China and Japan. Which made it reasonable to get from the Qing government concession for a railroad going from the “triangle” North all the way to Amur River and to make an arrangement with Japan for connecting South Manchurian RR, which it was building, with the Russian railroads in and North of the “triangle”. The schema, when completed, would allow Russia to conduct direct export of the beans to Japan via Vladivostok and Japan would be able to transport the excess, together with the production of the South Manchuria southward to Dalian for exporting to Japan or by the railroad from Mukden into China to sell there.
An additional reason for going ahead with the schema was a need to import quite a few things from or through Manchuria at least until the Russian Far East becomes more self-sufficient.
Which meant that Russia needed a transportation hub within the “triangle” close to its farther point. This is how Harbin was founded. Taking into an account that creation of the city started simultaneously with the construction o the railroads, one of the first tasks was to organize a transportation river flotilla consisting of the low draft steamers and barges capable of carrying huge volumes of the construction materials and machines up the Sungari. By sea, they were delivered from Europe to Vladivostok, and from there they were transported to the Iman station of the Ussuri Railway, and then to the Red River near Khabarovsk for assembly and launching. A total of 18 steamers were assembled and launched, named from "First" to "Eighteen", 4 boats, 40 steel and 20 wooden barges and one excavator. During the construction of the road and the city of Harbin, this flotilla transported at least 650 thousand tons of various cargoes.
At first, builders of the city and railroads had big problems with the food usual for Russians. There were no basic, familiar products for Russians, as the Chinese did not grow potatoes or cabbage in Manchuria, did not keep dairy cattle, so there were almost no beef and dairy products in the markets. C. N. Veselovzorov in his memoirs published in the Harbin newspaper "Russian Voice", wrote:
"Inhabitants and the railroad workers suffered from the lack of rye bread and buckwheat porridge. Game - pheasants, goat meat, deer meat - was abundant, but it got boring, and it was almost impossible to get ordinary beef, as it was also imported. Russian cabbage, potatoes were rare during the construction of the city. They, as well as butter, were brought from Siberia. But alcoholic beverages were abundant thanks to duty-free trade and the free port of Vladivostok. For example, cognac of the best brand "Three Stars Martel” [3] cost 1 ruble 20 kopecks bottle, and a quarter of vodka cost 30-40 kopecks! For an empty bottle, the peasants gave chicken, for a hundred eggs they took a quarter (25 kopecks), and for a couple of pheasants - 20 kopecks! At the same time, shaving a hairdresser cost 2 rubles in gold."
According to the results of the first census in the history of Harbin, conducted on March 15, 1903, the population of the Harbin exclusion zone was 44.5 thousand people. By 1913 it was 68.5 thousand people from 53 countries talking on 47 languages.
The main part of the city, so-called New City, was built strictly by a plan and included the railroad station, numerous administrative buildings, schools, cathedral, etc. The Pier part, OTOH, was developed exclusively thanks to private initiative and without any construction plans. It arose in a natural, original way - from the first settlements of Russian and Chinese workers, so it was built up in a very peculiar way: here the stone two- and three-storey houses of rich entrepreneurs coexisted with wooden huts and clay fanzas. The Pier quickly turned into a large commercial and industrial settlement, so the Construction Department decided to prevent unauthorized development of the district: it drew up a special plan, broke down streets and neighborhoods and even introduced police protection. However, the life of this Harbin district could not be put into a law-abiding course. One of the striking examples of arbitrariness of the residents of the Pier was the emergence of China Street, another attraction of Harbin. Groups of Chinese and Manchus arbitrarily planned this part of the Pier and marked the plots by pegs. Despite the orders of the head of the district S. N. Khilkov "remove pegs", the huts grew row by row, creating a "Chinese" street. As a result, administration was forced to surrender and legalize the breakdown of land plots. Later, Chinese clay houses were replaced by solid stone buildings.
Vladivostok. While being Witte’s pet project, Harbin was just an important second to Vladivostok because most of the supply of the region had been still conducted by the sea. The railroad communication was strategically critical as a faster an secure way to bring troops and supplies to the area in the case of war but in a time of peace transportation by the sea from Odessa to Vladivostok was cheaper. And in the case of foreign imports, except for those coming from China, the naval route was a much cheaper option comparing to unloading cargo in one of the Russian European ports and carrying it all the way by railroad. Exception were few items, like Japanese silk, for which transportation time (during which the capital was “frozen”) had priority over transportation cost.
However, there was also a demographic aspect: within the first two years after completion of TransSib population of the region doubled and the trend continued. Which, in turn, increased a need in the products and all types of manufactured goods.
Vladivostok was founded in 1860 (the first civilian settler arrived in 1861) and its first problem were the tigers.
“January 8. The tiger spent the night 100 steps from our house, near the military warehouse where the sentry stood. I went to see the lair where he was lying. The imprint of his paw is one foot long and four inches wide. Apparently, he was approaching the cattle yard. The dogs didn't bark that night, but squeezed their tails, gathered together and howled, smelling the monster. Soldiers do not leave the barracks after dawn without guns. I just finished these lines from my diary when Martyn ran in and said that the tiger was in the bathhouse. Three shots were fired, the tiger left...”
In 1866, the post of Vladivostok was already a decent group of buildings located along the shore of the Golden Horn. On the northern and northwest shores of the bay there were two piers designed for ships of different sizes. Interestingly, the post, having a church, ten state buildings, 34 private houses and 11 Chinese fanzas , had a decent number of shops - 12. In the same year, a gang of thieves started its activities, which was reported to the top by the head of the southern ports. In the only forge for the whole post they managed to steal the entire stock of iron available in it. At the that time, the population was small.
In 1867 there was the first incident with the Manzi [4]: many of them gathered on Askold Island, where they mined gold and on this occasion two Chinese who were beating Russian sailor had been arrested. The next year there were “manzi wars”: bands of the armed Chinese had been attacking Russian military posts, looting and burned villages, and there were some casualties. Eventually the regular army won the day and surviving Manzi fled to China.
Vladivostok still remained a rather unimportant place until 1871 when the main base of the Siberian Flotilla and the headquarters of the military governor were moved from Nikolaevsk to it. The transfer of people, courts and institutions itself began the following year with the opening of navigation. From this point city started actively growing and in mid-1870s the first line of the fortifications had been built. In 1880 Vladivostok got status of the city.
Its population grew to over 9,000 and, as an indication of this progress, on January 1, 1882 there was a symbolic event importance of which can’t be overestimated, "opened in the city, at the expense of the holders of houses of tolerance, a hospital for 15 beds for sexually transmitted patients, exclusively prostitutes."
Speaking of growth, there was no plan of any sort except that some areas had been out of limits [5] . All appeals to the provincial authorities to introduce an official plan of the city development had been ignored but in 1889 city status was upgraded once more: it officially became a fortress (not that there were any serious fortifications around it).
In 1890 the city got a dry dock and railroad connection, which helped its future growth: by 1897 population was over 28,000. The city already had numerous stone buildings, a hospital (not one mentioned above), factories, business offices, etc. And, of course, it was a base of the Russian Pacific Fleet.
Transporting things. The initial expectations about TransSib substituting the naval routes proved to be optimistic, at least for a while, which does not mean that it was unimportant. Actually, in 1910 Vladivostok received 30 millions poods of goods by the sea while the TransSib brought 25 millions. In 1911 it was 35 vs. 40 but in 1912 50 vs. 30 and in 1913 52 vs. 31.
By the main categories imports into the region looked as following (military hardware not included):
- Coal, timber, salt - almost exclusively imports from abroad. Timber was due to a shortage of the local workforce (and resulting low cost) , not absence of the trees. Salt from China and Korea was cheaper. Coal imports decreased when the local extraction kicked in.
- Grain, meat - initially, predominantly import.
- Machinery - mixed. The heavy one was usually coming by the sea.
- Metal - first, mostly import and some from the western Siberia. Then, with the metallurgy of Khabarovsk region picking up, more of the local.
- Fabrics - mostly Russian
- Construction materials - predominantly Russian
- Sugar and oil products - almost exclusively Russian. Big part of them had been exported.
Mass transportation of grain goods from abroad mainly came from China, Korea and Japan, from where, however, they carried not only grain of various kinds, but also vegetables, meat, as well as other food supplies. Local bread (and food in general) in a poorly populated and undeveloped by peasants region was critically lacking, mass delivery from Siberia was expensive and organizationally insufficiently established, as a result of which floor milling production focused on its mass imports. Import of bread necessary for the region was not subject to duty. With the increasing rural population of the region this started changing but growth of the urban population was going too fast for the local production to fully satisfy its needs. As a result, imports of this category usually amounted to anywhere between 30 and 50% of the local consumption, especially during periods of a mass arrival of the settlers from European Russia. Russian bread, which accounted for 15% of the total import for 1903-1913, came to Primorye both by sea and by rail. In the first case, peak volumes occurred in 1906 and 1911, when 1.1 million poods were transported by long-range cabotage (from Odessa), in the second case - in 1908, when 323 thousand poods of grain cargo arrived from the Siberian Railway to the Ussuri Railway.
The cheapness and availability of imported salt (from China, Japan and Germany) explains its mass import, and a significant part of it was used to salt fish, which was caught in large quantities in the Sea of Japan by domestic fishermen and sent from Primorye both for export and transit to Russia.
Taking into account the development of sugar production in the southern provinces of the Russian Empire and the ease of transportation of sugar to the Black Sea, as well as the presence of mass demand, the export of sugar through the port of Odessa on long-range cabotage ships is not surprising. The preference of the sea route to the railway seems to be due to the lower cost of transporting sugar products to the Far East by sea within the framework of specially established export tariffs - Direct Russian-Chinese Overseas and Direct South Overseas Traffic. Thus, it was calculated that the cost of transporting sugar pood from Pavlovsky Sugar Plant to the city of Sumy to Vladivostok on the TransSiberian Railway could reach 130 kopecks (excluding additional fees), while delivery of the same pood of sugar through Odessa by sea cost 64-84 kopecks per pood. Between 4 and 4.5% of that sugar was exported to Manchuria by the railroad.
Meat was brought by the sea mostly from China and, most of it, by the rail from Manchuria. By the sea it was coming either salted or frozen and by the rail, thanks to the refrigerator wagons, much fresher. The railroad meat transportation from Siberia kept growing from 10,000 poods in 1903 to 233,000 in 1912.
Coal initially was almost 100% imported from Japan and China but after in 1907 a narrow gauge railroad to the Suchan River was completed the annual local extraction of 10 million poods per year had been covering most of the needs of the local manufacturing, railroads, navy and merchant marine. Still, few million poods had to be imported from Japan annually.
The oil products had been brought to the region almost exclusively by the sea. The railroad part reached 100,000 poods (out of 1,600,000) only in 1913. Kerosine was exported to China by the railroad and to Japan both by the railroad (to Dalian) and the sea.
Unfortunately, the events in China started causing worries regarding stability of the system…
___________
[1]
“How do the ships take off?
Not like trains at all.”
[2]
“Engineer. The collar is unbuttoned.
Flask. Carabine.
"We'll build a Russian city here,
Let's call it Harbin..."”
[3] Three stars (***) is actually VS cognac, the lowest drinkable grade. But in Russia (and the SU) this was the most popular grade. Hence a habit of drinking it in a gulp rather than sipping.
[4] Chinese population of the Ussuri region.
[5] On a map it looks “regular” enough to me. At least comparing to the center of Moscow.
Interesting learning the history of Vladivostok and Russia's far east cities.
Wonder how they will change over time.
Wonder how they will change over time.
In OTL Harbin retained a big Russian emigrant population after the RCW but eventually, AFAIK, it ended up badly for those who still were there in 1945. For those who returned to the SU after railroad was sold to Manchukuo or earlier, after conflict with China in 1929, it mostly (AFAIK) ended badly earlier.
Vladivostok is the biggest Russian port on the Pacific but, as I understand, a lot of shipping goes through Nakhodka which, after being very scare place for a number of decades (“famous” camps) became something of Vladivostok port extension. That’s pretty much extent of my knowledge.
Getting modern #3
351. Getting modern #3
Revolutionary situation.
Historic reference. As was formulated in OTL by Lenin, the revolutionary situation is being defined by three main objective factors:
As you understand, I’m talking about the marriage rules for the Russian Imperial Family.
The oppressed lower class were the Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood (simple “Highness”): unlike the “top”, they were getting the order of St. Andrew (boys) or St.Cathetine (girls) not at baptism but at the age of 20 or after marriage and the financial perks were much lower. So there is no argument about them being oppressed but the oppression did not stop there: while not getting the same benefits, they were subjects to the same restrictions regarding the “equal” marriage. What was even worse, this restriction was not there at the “foundation” created by Emperor Paul I (which, taking into an account Paul’s place in the Russian history, was almost as good as “God-given”) but just an amendment unilaterally made decades later by Alexander I and could be considered a rather frivolous attempt of parroting the foreign habits while, in the opinion of Prudentov, one of the greatest Russian legal authorities [1], “due to its great size Russian Empire may serve as a legal example to the others”.
Well, anyway, it was there, the Article 188 of the Laws of the Russian Empire:
“A person of the Imperial Family who has entered into a marriage union with a person who does not have the appropriate dignity, that is, who does not belong to any reigning or equal house, cannot transfer to the offsprings from this marriage the rights belonging to the Members of the Imperial Family.” What was worse, in 1889 Alexander III himself amended this article by prohibiting such (non-dynastic) marriages to all members of the Imperial Family, i.e. such a marriage could not be considered legal at all, even in the case of a church wedding unless the Emperor personally permitted such a marriage. Article 139: “For the marriage of each person of the Imperial Family, the permission of the reigning Emperor is necessary, and the marriage, without this permission, is not recognized as legal.”
Of course, the “lower class”, with few exceptions, did not care too much about succession issue, with a big number of the “upper class” being around even after Alexander III decreased their number, its members did not have a realistic chance to the succession anyway, but the marriages were a different issue because the imperial prohibition could stay on a way of, for example, improving financial situation or just a case of a true mad love. So the unwilling lower class was there.
The upper class being being the Grand Dukes and Duchesses (addressed as “Imperial Highness”). Problem of the members of this class was that within couple generations the descendants of its current members would be automatically downgraded to a lower class so the members of this class who had (admittedly not obvious) combination of having both children and more than one functioning brain cell, were rather sympathetic to the plight of the lower class. Even worse, the ultimate arbiter, an Emperor himself, ended up being burdened with all types of applications and a need to decide which candidate can qualify and which can’t, which was not always easy.
Now, the third component, behavior of the upper class, already was there. In 1891 Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich married without permission of the Emperor and his own parents to a daughter of Prince Nicholas Wilhelm of Nassau. Alexander declared this marriage non-existed and expelled MM from Russia. In 1901 the marriage was recognized. Michael was restored in military service and left with the rights of a private person with the preservation of the title, but without the privileges of a member of the imperial house. He did not return to Russia.
What was even worse, Alexander’s own brother, Grand Duke Paul, in 1902 married (after death of his first wife, daughter of a King of Greece) to an ordinary divorcee noblewoman O.V.Karnovich.
He was expelled from Russia and his children from the first marriage had been placed in custody of Grand Duke Sergey.
Alexander could ignore situation for a while but not forever so in 1911 he decided to call the meeting of the Grand Dukes to discuss some possible changes in the Institution of the Imperial Family related to the possibility of allowing previously prohibited morganatic marriages for members of the Dynasty. The first meeting was held at the Winter Palace on February 21, the second - on February 23. At the first meeting, the participants considered the proposal to supplement the Institution of the Imperial Surname with an article that would specifically stipulate that "Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood may, with the permission of the reigning Emperor, marry a person who does not have the appropriate dignity, i.e. do not belong to any Royal or sovereign house but in this case, neither the specified person nor the offspring that may arise from this marriage are granted any rights belonging to the Members of the Imperial Family.” After prolonged discussion the meeting’s members found out that this was already stated in the Article 188. So the real question was about the rights associated with these marriages. Most important, titles and families.
Some participants of the meeting, primarily Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, proposed to divide the marriages of members of the Imperial Family into three categories:
There was a proposal to deprive members of the Imperial Blood , in the case of unequal marriage, of their title and succession rights but it was pointed out by the Minister of Justice that that the members of Imperial House can be deprived of these rights only by their voluntary abdication passed through the Senate. After that, at the meeting it was decided to formulate this recommendation in a different way: to offer the Princes and Princes of Imperial Blood wishing to enter into an unequal marriage, before marriage, voluntarily renounce the right of succession to the throne. Thus, they retained freedom of choice, and the renunciation of the rights to the Throne was not a consequence, but a condition for the consent of the Sovereign to an unequal marriage.
This being agreed upon, the next big issues were the family names and titles for the spouses and offsprings of the “unqualified” marriages. This was quite complicated and some of the ideas had been shot down by the Minister of Justice as either illegal or providing advantages to which these persons are not entitled (hint to a link to the Imperial House if family contains “Romanov” as its part). As a part of promoting its own “class interests”, some meeting members proposed that the title of Grand Duke should be automatically given to an older son of a Grand Duke regardless of the distance from the throne (by the current law the title was given only to the sons and grandsons pf a reigning emperor, the proposal would make it hereditary). Then, a majority of the meeting members expressed support for morganatic marriages for the Grand Dukes.It was pointed out that some of the Grand Dukes in a line of succession could be coming after the Princes of Imperial Blood regardless their higher title. This, however, did not work out.
The final document approved by Alexander III allowed unequal marriages to the Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood (but not the Great Princes and Princesses) with the imperial agreement and with preservation of their personal titles and rights but before the marriage they’d have to repudiate their right to succession. Family name, coat of arms and the title of a wife and offsprings of a Prince of the Imperial Blood will be defined by the emperor on case per case basis. The Princesses of the Imperial Blood will take family of their husband. In each specific case the Emperor may appoint Family Council to discuss permissibility of this marriage before making the final decision. On the issue of passing the title of Grand Duke to the following generations the Emperor ordered an additional discussion.
The revolutionary situation was diffused…. Well, at least for a while because the “upper class” also wanted ..er.. “equal rights” with a resulting ability to pursuit a personal happiness. At the moment there were two potentially “revolutionary” cases:
Not troublesome or even scandalous was marriage of the Prince Felix Yusupov to Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, which took place in 1913. Besides being the wealthiest man in Imperial Russia, Felix was kind of a royalty: Yusupov family (his mother’s family, his father was permitted to adopt this last name so that family continued) descended from a Khan of the Nogay Horde [2] and included a ruler of Kazan Tsardom; so he was almost equal but not quite and Irina had to gave away the succession rights (rather theoretical) and to become a “simple” Princess Yusupov.
Neither he nor Irina appeared to have objected to the morganatic terms of the marriage. Irina wore a 20th-century dress rather than the traditional court dress in which other Romanov brides had married, as she was a princess of the Imperial House, not a Grand Duchess. She wore a diamond and rock-crystal tiara that had been commissioned from Cartier and a lace veil that had belonged to Marie Antoinette.
________
[1] Personage of “The modern Idyll” by Saltykov-Schedrin. Clerk in a district police office.
[2] Not sure if Nogay Horde, being a vassal one, had a proper “Khan” but this does not really matter.
“Prince Wellerheim: Now I’m a liberal not only in a foreign but in a domestic policy as well.”
‘Silva’, movie, 1981
“Of course, I would not give you permission to marry but I’d explain that you don’t need it.”
Leskov, ‘Russian secret marriages’
“Do you agree to live not in it but kind of in it?”
Saltykov-Schedrin, ‘The unique one’
“Many strange things can happen, it is just that I can’t marry you.”
C.Goldoni, ‘Truffaldino from Bergamo’
“You must not get married without a dowry. Getting married without a dowry is like honey without a spoon.”
“Medicine teaches that the bachelors usually die being insane, while married people die without having enough time to go insane.”
A. Chekhov, ‘Instructions for those who want to marry’
‘Silva’, movie, 1981
“Of course, I would not give you permission to marry but I’d explain that you don’t need it.”
Leskov, ‘Russian secret marriages’
“Do you agree to live not in it but kind of in it?”
Saltykov-Schedrin, ‘The unique one’
“Many strange things can happen, it is just that I can’t marry you.”
C.Goldoni, ‘Truffaldino from Bergamo’
“You must not get married without a dowry. Getting married without a dowry is like honey without a spoon.”
“Medicine teaches that the bachelors usually die being insane, while married people die without having enough time to go insane.”
A. Chekhov, ‘Instructions for those who want to marry’
Revolutionary situation.
Historic reference. As was formulated in OTL by Lenin, the revolutionary situation is being defined by three main objective factors:
- The upper classes cannot govern in the old way - the inability of the ruling class to maintain its domination unchanged.
- The lower classes do not want to live the old way - a sharp aggravation above the usual need and disasters of the oppressed classes and their desire to change their lives for the better.
- A significant increase in the activity of the masses, attracted both by the entire situation of the crisis and by the "tops" themselves to an independent historical action.
As you understand, I’m talking about the marriage rules for the Russian Imperial Family.
The oppressed lower class were the Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood (simple “Highness”): unlike the “top”, they were getting the order of St. Andrew (boys) or St.Cathetine (girls) not at baptism but at the age of 20 or after marriage and the financial perks were much lower. So there is no argument about them being oppressed but the oppression did not stop there: while not getting the same benefits, they were subjects to the same restrictions regarding the “equal” marriage. What was even worse, this restriction was not there at the “foundation” created by Emperor Paul I (which, taking into an account Paul’s place in the Russian history, was almost as good as “God-given”) but just an amendment unilaterally made decades later by Alexander I and could be considered a rather frivolous attempt of parroting the foreign habits while, in the opinion of Prudentov, one of the greatest Russian legal authorities [1], “due to its great size Russian Empire may serve as a legal example to the others”.
Well, anyway, it was there, the Article 188 of the Laws of the Russian Empire:
“A person of the Imperial Family who has entered into a marriage union with a person who does not have the appropriate dignity, that is, who does not belong to any reigning or equal house, cannot transfer to the offsprings from this marriage the rights belonging to the Members of the Imperial Family.” What was worse, in 1889 Alexander III himself amended this article by prohibiting such (non-dynastic) marriages to all members of the Imperial Family, i.e. such a marriage could not be considered legal at all, even in the case of a church wedding unless the Emperor personally permitted such a marriage. Article 139: “For the marriage of each person of the Imperial Family, the permission of the reigning Emperor is necessary, and the marriage, without this permission, is not recognized as legal.”
Of course, the “lower class”, with few exceptions, did not care too much about succession issue, with a big number of the “upper class” being around even after Alexander III decreased their number, its members did not have a realistic chance to the succession anyway, but the marriages were a different issue because the imperial prohibition could stay on a way of, for example, improving financial situation or just a case of a true mad love. So the unwilling lower class was there.
The upper class being being the Grand Dukes and Duchesses (addressed as “Imperial Highness”). Problem of the members of this class was that within couple generations the descendants of its current members would be automatically downgraded to a lower class so the members of this class who had (admittedly not obvious) combination of having both children and more than one functioning brain cell, were rather sympathetic to the plight of the lower class. Even worse, the ultimate arbiter, an Emperor himself, ended up being burdened with all types of applications and a need to decide which candidate can qualify and which can’t, which was not always easy.
Now, the third component, behavior of the upper class, already was there. In 1891 Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich married without permission of the Emperor and his own parents to a daughter of Prince Nicholas Wilhelm of Nassau. Alexander declared this marriage non-existed and expelled MM from Russia. In 1901 the marriage was recognized. Michael was restored in military service and left with the rights of a private person with the preservation of the title, but without the privileges of a member of the imperial house. He did not return to Russia.
What was even worse, Alexander’s own brother, Grand Duke Paul, in 1902 married (after death of his first wife, daughter of a King of Greece) to an ordinary divorcee noblewoman O.V.Karnovich.
He was expelled from Russia and his children from the first marriage had been placed in custody of Grand Duke Sergey.
Alexander could ignore situation for a while but not forever so in 1911 he decided to call the meeting of the Grand Dukes to discuss some possible changes in the Institution of the Imperial Family related to the possibility of allowing previously prohibited morganatic marriages for members of the Dynasty. The first meeting was held at the Winter Palace on February 21, the second - on February 23. At the first meeting, the participants considered the proposal to supplement the Institution of the Imperial Surname with an article that would specifically stipulate that "Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood may, with the permission of the reigning Emperor, marry a person who does not have the appropriate dignity, i.e. do not belong to any Royal or sovereign house but in this case, neither the specified person nor the offspring that may arise from this marriage are granted any rights belonging to the Members of the Imperial Family.” After prolonged discussion the meeting’s members found out that this was already stated in the Article 188. So the real question was about the rights associated with these marriages. Most important, titles and families.
Some participants of the meeting, primarily Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, proposed to divide the marriages of members of the Imperial Family into three categories:
- Equal (i.e. dynastic, the only one assigning the rights to the throne to the offspring),
- Non-equal but of appropriate dignity: with representatives of aristocratic families (here were called Russian families Shakhovsky, Sheremetev, Liven, and foreign from the 2nd and 3rd parts of the "Gothic Almanac")
- Not appropriate - with non-nobles, unknown nobles. In the case of marriages with completely unknown persons, it was even proposed to deprive Princes and Princes of Blood of their titles and financial support from the estates of Imperial Family.
There was a proposal to deprive members of the Imperial Blood , in the case of unequal marriage, of their title and succession rights but it was pointed out by the Minister of Justice that that the members of Imperial House can be deprived of these rights only by their voluntary abdication passed through the Senate. After that, at the meeting it was decided to formulate this recommendation in a different way: to offer the Princes and Princes of Imperial Blood wishing to enter into an unequal marriage, before marriage, voluntarily renounce the right of succession to the throne. Thus, they retained freedom of choice, and the renunciation of the rights to the Throne was not a consequence, but a condition for the consent of the Sovereign to an unequal marriage.
This being agreed upon, the next big issues were the family names and titles for the spouses and offsprings of the “unqualified” marriages. This was quite complicated and some of the ideas had been shot down by the Minister of Justice as either illegal or providing advantages to which these persons are not entitled (hint to a link to the Imperial House if family contains “Romanov” as its part). As a part of promoting its own “class interests”, some meeting members proposed that the title of Grand Duke should be automatically given to an older son of a Grand Duke regardless of the distance from the throne (by the current law the title was given only to the sons and grandsons pf a reigning emperor, the proposal would make it hereditary). Then, a majority of the meeting members expressed support for morganatic marriages for the Grand Dukes.It was pointed out that some of the Grand Dukes in a line of succession could be coming after the Princes of Imperial Blood regardless their higher title. This, however, did not work out.
The final document approved by Alexander III allowed unequal marriages to the Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood (but not the Great Princes and Princesses) with the imperial agreement and with preservation of their personal titles and rights but before the marriage they’d have to repudiate their right to succession. Family name, coat of arms and the title of a wife and offsprings of a Prince of the Imperial Blood will be defined by the emperor on case per case basis. The Princesses of the Imperial Blood will take family of their husband. In each specific case the Emperor may appoint Family Council to discuss permissibility of this marriage before making the final decision. On the issue of passing the title of Grand Duke to the following generations the Emperor ordered an additional discussion.
The revolutionary situation was diffused…. Well, at least for a while because the “upper class” also wanted ..er.. “equal rights” with a resulting ability to pursuit a personal happiness. At the moment there were two potentially “revolutionary” cases:
- Grand Duke Michail Alexandrovich, the third person in a succession line after Tsesarevich and his son Alexei, was deeply in love with Natalia Sheremetevskaya, who was as much “unequal” as it goes and twice divorced. They already had a son, George. Which, of course, was not a problem of its own but Michael was a honest young man with a heart prevailing over the brain and one could expect any kind of a stupidity, which could easily escalate into a major scandal.
- Second case was much less troublesome. In 1902 Matilda Kshesinskaya gave birth to a son, Vladimir. Nobody, including, seemingly, herself, could tell for sure if he was a son of Grand Duke Sergey Mikhailovich or Grand Duke Andrey Vladimirovich. However, “incomparable” Matilda was famous not only for her dancing skills but also for her brain. Both Grand Dukes involved had been seemingly quite content with the situation. Moreover, the Emperor who highly valued both he skills, granted her son in 1911 a hereditary nobility. Any problem coming from this triangle looked unlikely. Unless, of course, there was some bad example.
Not troublesome or even scandalous was marriage of the Prince Felix Yusupov to Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, which took place in 1913. Besides being the wealthiest man in Imperial Russia, Felix was kind of a royalty: Yusupov family (his mother’s family, his father was permitted to adopt this last name so that family continued) descended from a Khan of the Nogay Horde [2] and included a ruler of Kazan Tsardom; so he was almost equal but not quite and Irina had to gave away the succession rights (rather theoretical) and to become a “simple” Princess Yusupov.
Neither he nor Irina appeared to have objected to the morganatic terms of the marriage. Irina wore a 20th-century dress rather than the traditional court dress in which other Romanov brides had married, as she was a princess of the Imperial House, not a Grand Duchess. She wore a diamond and rock-crystal tiara that had been commissioned from Cartier and a lace veil that had belonged to Marie Antoinette.
________
[1] Personage of “The modern Idyll” by Saltykov-Schedrin. Clerk in a district police office.
[2] Not sure if Nogay Horde, being a vassal one, had a proper “Khan” but this does not really matter.
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You guys are picking up too fast which is, of course, flattering but I just added a small piece about the first big morganatic marriage that happen after the new regulation (ipad keeps playing its little games causing unintended postings). 😂
A series of unfortunate events #1
352. A series of unfortunate events #1
“I know the reasons for the revolution in Mexico, but I don't know anything about the reasons for the quarrel with my closest neighbor. This property of modern man is called cosmopolitanism and is developed by reading newspapers."
Karel Čapek
“Humble people like me fight for justice and for better luck.”
“Armies are the props of tyranny. There can be no dictator without an army.”
Pancho Villa
“Government or individual who delivers national resources to foreign companies, betrays his country.”
Lazaro Cardenas
“The merit of an ideology does not lie in its logic. Whether it is good or bad depends on its suitability to a certain circumstance. It is good if it is beneficial both to China and to the world, otherwise it is bad.”
Sun Yixian
“The Revolutionary Army is again ascendant… Our army constantly exchanges fire with the revolutionary army so I cannot act rashly.”
Yuan Shikai, 1911
“If we want to achieve great things, building up Guangxi and restoring China, first we need money… to get money we must rectify our finances… to rectify finances we must first get hold of opium… Opium makes up almost half our revenue, once it is controlled the rest will follow.”
Li Zongren, Guangxi warlord
The history of China should be considered in terms of China (hanguan 汉紋).
Some modern Chinese historian [1]
1910s, everywhere
A prompt legislative action helped to diffuse revolutionary situation in the Russian Empire [2] but the troubles were coming all over the world.
Mexico.
President Porfirio Diaz, who came to power under the slogan “no reelections” [3] and ruled Mexico for 30 years, finally managed to piss off everybody by doing seemingly the right things. These decades were period of socio-economic development known as El Porfiriato and on paper things looked just fine:
However, there were serious problems with this army:
To make the long story short, when a wide-spread anti-Diaz movement kicked in, its forces had been too numerous and too well-armed for the federal troops to crush them, especially in a situation when the railroads ceased to function properly. First, things went smoothly because leader of the revolutionaries, Francisco Madera (member of a very rich landowning & manufacturing family) wanted to preserve as much of a system as possible with himself and some members of his family moving to the top. He got a wide support, domestic and international, after few encounters Diaz fled, Madero made a deal with federal army and lawmakers, disbanded revolutionary armies, ignored demands of the peasants and was ready to rule happily ever after or at least until the end of his term (if he was serious about this). Unfortunately, both the peasants and the military were not happy and he was overthrown and executed by general Huerta. Huerta became a president and even implemented some progressive reforms:
Possession of the main railroads had been a critical element in the ongoing fighting greatly defining its geography and tactics. The “armies” had been routinely moving by the trains filled by the troops and all types of the “followers”. Taking into an account that this practice resulted in a wide-spread sabotage, the trains had been routinely using flat platforms hooked in front of a locomotive to prevent it being blown: forces on both sides seemingly never run short of the explosives.
And, of course, the cavalry can’t be forgotten. On more than one occasion cavalry troops of Pancho Villa performed quite remarkable fits of successfully storming the well-entrenched positions (eventually, this tactics proved to be self-defeating when he tried it against Obregon and lost his best troops).
Initially, Russian government paid little to no attention to what was going on but the ensuing mess raised the reasonable concerns regarding security of the Russian-owned property in California. Formally, it was run by Russian American Company (RAC) which had nothing to do with the original one except name. The main settlement, Fort Ross, was on a coast but the place was not suitable for any meaningful naval base and the whole enterprise was series of farms and small food-processing plants. Their produce, as well as one bought in the nearby area, had been transported to San Francisco and from here shipped to Alaska.
San Francisco had been frequently visited by the Russian naval and merchant ships and there were warehouses of RAC and some other trade companies and, while in a general schema of things scope of both the businesses and physical presence was quite limited, but security of the Russian citizens and their property was a valid consideration.
Fortunately, San Francisco area was so far almost untouched by revolutionary turmoil but who could guarantee that the ongoing mess will not spread there? So far, relations with the local administration and the neighbors were quite friendly, based upon the mutual interest but with a big part of Mexico being engaged in what was increasingly looking as a multi-sided civil war, one could not be too cautious. Just in case, a fast protected cruiser had been stationed in San Francisco Bay and shipment of weapons had been discretely sent to Fort Ross.
Rather unsurprisingly, permanent presence of a Russian warship in Mexican port caused a minor hysteria North of the US-Mexican border as a potential danger to the Monroe Doctrine and it took certain diplomatic effort to convince the US public that Russia is not planning to expand its influence on American continent beyond its existing possessions and just protecting its property and actually would be glad to see an US warship also being stationed in SF Bay as an additional security guarantor. Getting confrontational with the US did not make sense in a view of a much greater trouble developing in China.
China.
The trouble had been brewing since the death of Li Honghzang in 1901. He was replaced by Yuan Shikai, who took on Li's appointment as Viceroy of Zhili and as Minister of Beiyang. Yuan had been given command of the brigade-sized New Created Army in 1895, which had 7,000 soldiers at the time and would expand to 20,000 by 1902. By the autumn of 1905 the Beiyang Army consisted of six divisions of 10,000 men each. It was organized into infantry, artillery, cavalry, and auxiliary troops, as well as maintenance and engineering. A seventh division was established in 1907 at Jiangsu. The Army's training instructors were mostly Japanese and Germans.
The Saozhzhan camp near Tianjin became the base for the new army being created. The officer and non-coms cadres had been coming from the newly-created military schools. As a result, the Officer General Group began to form in the Tianjin area - the embryo of the future Beiyang militaristic clique led by the "father of the new army" - Yuan Shikai. Without too much noise he was steadily putting his clients into the leading positions and all of them had been Chinese. By the time Qing government figured out what is going on it was too late: the army was commanded by the Chinese and sending Yuam Shikai into retirement did not help.
Meanwhile, Beijing's control over troops in the South and in the Yangtze Valley was even weaker. There were many people from the old troops in the Nanyang Army, discipline was weaker. Among the soldiers and non-commissioned officers there were many members of secret societies or just opponents of the dynasty. Anti-Manchurian sentiments were organically intertwined with regionalist sentiments. Nanyang divisions and brigades became increasingly unreliable, gradually becoming a potentially anti-Qing explosive environment.
The Chinese provincial bureaucracy, especially the nomenclature of South China and the provinces of the Yangtze basin, was becoming a potential opponent of the central authorities. This silent "southern opposition" was no less dangerous for the Manchus than the threat from the "new army." "Boxer indemnity" placed a heavy burden on local treasuries and the population, dramatically increasing social tensions in the provinces. Already in 1902, there was a conflict between the dynasty and governors who refused to raise land tax rates. By strengthening their special relations with the Powers, the governors of the provinces ensured de facto independence from the center. In words, declaring their devotion to the Qing Empire, they actually became more and more independent. During the reorganization of the administrative apparatus of 1906-1907, Cixi tried to limit the omnipotence of regional rulers. However, more than 30,000 local senior, middle and lower-level officials have demonstrated their readiness to defend the old order and skillfully minimized all the efforts of Beijing. The silent battle for power of 1906-1907 formally ended in a draw, and in fact - a major defeat of the Manchu dynasty. Without strengthening its position, the Qing regime alienated the provincial bureaucracy and accelerated its own fall.
After the death of Cixi in 1908, the Manchu government (led by Prince-Regent Chun because the Emperor was two years old) laid all the costs of creating and maintaining "new troops" in the Yangtze basin and southern China on the shoulders of peripheral leaders and local treasuries. In Beijing, it was believed that these divisions and brigades would be fed by the provincial bureaucracy, and the Manchu princes would command the troops. In practice, the situation has developed differently: the divisions and brigades of the Nanyang Army, as well as the "security troops", equipped with modern weapons, were essentially subordinate to the governors of the provinces, not the center. Thus, military reform did not weaken, but strengthened the independence of local rulers from Beijing, thereby undermining the positions of the Manchus. Those of them who still had some functioning brain cells started fleeing to Manchuria expecting Japanese and Russian protection.
In an attempt to fix the situation, Qing government promised to convene a parliament in 1916, and in 1909 to organize elections to provincial advisory committees. Only about 2 million people out of 420 million Chinese residents participated in the elections. Committees could only discuss purely local issues without addressing political and legislative topics. In the autumn of 1910, the Advisory Chamber, a kind of "pre-parliament", opened in Beijing.
Not to lag behind the trend, China had its own revolutionary organizations: 兴中会, 華興會 and 光復會 [7]. The first one, led by 孙逸仙 [8], was the most popular one because its hieroglyphs were easiest to write. All of them had been engaged in (what they considered to be) the sinister plots, chanting the party slogans and other revolutionary activities. In 1905 they joined into an alliance named 中國同盟會 , which soon enough fall apart because by the time its members staging some local revolution [9] were finishing writing alliance name on their flags, the central government usually not just learned about a planned rebellion and sent the troops by the train but these troops had time to arrive to the conspirators’s headquarters which were easily identifiable because, following the venerable tradition, such a building would have a nice calligraphic placard over its door implemented in a beautiful calligraphy and explaining which secret society is preparing a revolution in this building to avoid possible confusion. After few spectacular failures prestige of the alliance and Sun Yat-sen fell almost to the same level as one of the government, which was really low. What can one expect if within just two years he managed to organize 9 failed uprisings [10] and kept trying with the same result.
Anyway, in 1911 the government nationalized a joint-stock company for the construction of Huguang Railways (it was a giant project for the Chinese to create the Chengdu-Hankou-Guangzhou railway), which hit millions of taxpayers in four provinces [11] and s—t hit the fan in the Southern China with the troops located there joining the rebellion. Strengthened by the volunteers they had been expanding area under their control killing in a process the local Manchus by the tens of thousands.
An independent republic had been proclaimed with its leaders being smart enough to immediately recognize all unequal treaties. The Qing government sent part of the Beiyang army to crush the rebellion and assembled “pre-parliament” which immediately demanded a constitution and removal imperial family members from the government. The loyal Beiyang troops kept beating the crap of of Nanyang troops and inexperienced volunteers burning the rebellious cities and executing their population but results were opposite to the expected, just as the following political concessions. The Powers declared their neutrality and the only solution was to invite Yuan Shikai back. To make the long story short, he became a Prime Minister (and got immediate support from London and Washington). After arrival to Pekin at the head of 2,000 loyal troops and removal the last Manchu from the command positions he intensified advance against the rebels while making it clear that he is not against making a deal with their liberal leadership. Balancing between the monarchy and the republic, between revolutionaries and liberals, between the dynasty and revolutionaries, Yuan Shikai did everything to ensure that neither of these sides strengthened to the detriment of his ambitious plans. Yuan Shikai intimidated the Manchus with a possible massacre by revolutionaries, and at the same time blackmailed the Republicans with the possibility of his deal with the dynasty. In order to force the Republicans to make concessions, Yuan Shikai stubbornly defended the idea of a constitutional monarchy under the nominal power of the emperor. With the assistance of British diplomats, on December 3, a truce was concluded in Wuchang, which, in fact, confirmed the division of China into two states.
A republic was formed in the South, a monarchy with a Manchu emperor at the head was preserved in the North. At that time, neither the republican South nor the monarchical North wanted civil war. The only reasonable way out was to compromise on the basis of unification around a "strong personality", that is, Yuan Shikai, who was "our SOB" for both monarchists and Republicans. Soon enough he was in a complete control of the North, which gave him an advantage in negotiations with the South with its 14 provincial governments and numerous political groups. South was ready to declare Yuan Shikai President of the Republic but he was, for a while, sticking to the idea of a constitutional monarchy so the South invited Sun Yat-sen who, quite conveniently, just returned from Japan. He was made a provisional President with no power and on condition of an immediate removal iv Yuan Shikai accepts an offer.
Finally, Yuan Shikai decided that enough is enough and presented the Empress-Regent with an ultimatum. The emperor abdicated on February 12 1912 but preserved a “honorary” title, big annual income, palace complex of the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, all personnel and security of the imperial property. In exchange he recognized a constitutional republic. By the last imperial decree Yuan Shikai was ordered to form a republican government. The South kicked Sun Yat-sen out and elected Yuan Shikai President of the Republic of China. Sun Yat-sen declared “the second revolution”. Predictably, it failed and he fled to Japan.
Russian Empire remained rather indifferent toward these events but when the dust settled there were, seemingly, two ticking time bombs:
_____________
[1] An attempt to find spelling of his name in English failed. Just as an attempt to understand all depth (width, height, weight, etc.) of the quoted statement. But hieroglyph looks cute, which was the main reason for quoting.
[2] Well, there were also some labor laws but they are rather irrelevant to the revolutionary situation described in the previous chapter and can be omitted (at least for now).
[3] His predecessor wanted to run for the second term, which was unconstitutional.
[4] Which means that in some it was lower but why to quote the pessimistic data which I don’t have anyway?
[5] And El Paso became the major point of the weapons smuggling from the US.
[6] The leftovers were then turned into dynamite and glycerin. Things that proved to be quite handy: as you understand, glycerin (among other applications) was used for making soap and personal hygiene is important.
[7] “Alliance of rebirth of China”, “Alliance of renewal of China”, “Alliance of rebirth of glory of China”
[8] Sun Yat-sen.
[9] List of only the later major revolutionary events on wiki is excruciatingly long so probably the earlier minor ones was not possible to record.
[10] To avoid misunderstandings about him being a lucky SOB to escape, after leaving China in the early 1890s he was making funds raising trips around the world (the British press promoted him to a hero status and he got a fake birth certificate in Hawaii to bypass the Chinese Exclusion Act and to do fundraising in the US) and finally settled in Japan from where he kept directing the uprisings. His political program was beautifully simple: 1. Expel the Tatars (Manchu), 2. Establish the republic and 3. Distribute land equally among the people.
[11] I have no idea how exactly.
“I know the reasons for the revolution in Mexico, but I don't know anything about the reasons for the quarrel with my closest neighbor. This property of modern man is called cosmopolitanism and is developed by reading newspapers."
Karel Čapek
“Humble people like me fight for justice and for better luck.”
“Armies are the props of tyranny. There can be no dictator without an army.”
Pancho Villa
“Government or individual who delivers national resources to foreign companies, betrays his country.”
Lazaro Cardenas
“The merit of an ideology does not lie in its logic. Whether it is good or bad depends on its suitability to a certain circumstance. It is good if it is beneficial both to China and to the world, otherwise it is bad.”
Sun Yixian
“The Revolutionary Army is again ascendant… Our army constantly exchanges fire with the revolutionary army so I cannot act rashly.”
Yuan Shikai, 1911
“If we want to achieve great things, building up Guangxi and restoring China, first we need money… to get money we must rectify our finances… to rectify finances we must first get hold of opium… Opium makes up almost half our revenue, once it is controlled the rest will follow.”
Li Zongren, Guangxi warlord
The history of China should be considered in terms of China (hanguan 汉紋).
Some modern Chinese historian [1]
A prompt legislative action helped to diffuse revolutionary situation in the Russian Empire [2] but the troubles were coming all over the world.
Mexico.
President Porfirio Diaz, who came to power under the slogan “no reelections” [3] and ruled Mexico for 30 years, finally managed to piss off everybody by doing seemingly the right things. These decades were period of socio-economic development known as El Porfiriato and on paper things looked just fine:
- By the start of his rule Mexico had 893 kilometers to the railroads and by 1910 more than 19,000.
- Population of Mexico increased by 25 percent between 1885 and 1900 and in some of its states this rate was much higher [4].
- By 1911, the yearly average cargo crossing the border between Mexico and the US reached 776 million pounds. [5]
- Mexican cattle export increased from 10,000 in 1887 to 310,000 in 1897.
- The Laguna region started importing cotton into the US [6].
- Besides cotton, rubber production also boomed in La Laguna from an abundant desert shrub known as guayule.
- There were considerable investments into the mining industry.
- The railroads construction resulted in a massive redistribution of a land, predictably not in a favor of the peasants who found themselves at the mercy of the big landowners in serf-like status. Situation was made worse by the fact that the native Indian tribes owned their land since well before the Spaniards came and did not have any papers proving their ownership. Even worse, they had been sticking to a communal model and succession of the progressive liberal presidents was not approving of such an anachronism and tried to get rid of it.
- The railroad workers were unhappy with the fact that the companies (predominantly American) had been hiring American nationals on the better positions, paid them more than the Mexicans and conducting all operations in English. Contrary to the idea of international solidarity of a working class, the American unionized force had been quite supportive of these attitudes. Eventually, Diaz caved to the demands for “Mexicanization”, and nationalized most of the railroads. Under the pressure from now unionized Mexican workers, most of the Americans left. Not that this ended turmoil on the railroads because the issues of salaries, working conditions, etc. still were there and bargaining with a government was an activity less productive and more dangerous than with their former employers.
- The rubber thingy resulted in a protracted conflict between owners of huge latifundia including the desert areas in which the plant grew and the peasants who were illegally collecting it.
- Increased production caused water shortages thus hurting the peons on their small plots.
- The provincial caudillos were not too happy with the government’s easy access to their provinces.
- The wealthy latifundia & factory owners wanted a greater freedom for their business and, understandably, a bigger piece of a political pie.
- The foreign investors (mostly those North of a border) were unhappy with the Mexicanization which forced some of them to get out of a profitable railroad business. Those in agriculture & mining were doing OK (in Baja California more than two thirds of a land had been owned by the American companies) but one can always wish a better business deal.
- The educated class was generally unhappy by definition.
However, there were serious problems with this army:
- It was quite small, something around 25,000.
- Being used to the modern conveniences of transportation, its operations greatly depended upon properly functioning railroads and this could easily became a big problem both because the railroad workers could be hostile or intimidated by opposition and because sabotage of a railroad was an extremely easy thing.
- Morale of rank-and-file was low. They mostly consisted of Indian and mestizo conscripts, forced into service under the random leva system. Some were enlisted as a means of punishment or because of social discrimination, and a number of future revolutionary leaders received their initial military experience in the ranks of the Federal Army.
To make the long story short, when a wide-spread anti-Diaz movement kicked in, its forces had been too numerous and too well-armed for the federal troops to crush them, especially in a situation when the railroads ceased to function properly. First, things went smoothly because leader of the revolutionaries, Francisco Madera (member of a very rich landowning & manufacturing family) wanted to preserve as much of a system as possible with himself and some members of his family moving to the top. He got a wide support, domestic and international, after few encounters Diaz fled, Madero made a deal with federal army and lawmakers, disbanded revolutionary armies, ignored demands of the peasants and was ready to rule happily ever after or at least until the end of his term (if he was serious about this). Unfortunately, both the peasants and the military were not happy and he was overthrown and executed by general Huerta. Huerta became a president and even implemented some progressive reforms:
- Spending on education, which was 7.2% under Diaz and 7.8% of the budget under Madero, was increased to 9.9%.
- The Huerta government has started developing programs to help Indians - medical specialists and teachers were sent to their villages.
- An employment agency was established, the regime did not suppress economic strikes, and the state actively participated in arbitration proceedings.
- In April 1913, 78 Yaqui and Mayo Indian communities were returned to the lands taken under Diaz.
Possession of the main railroads had been a critical element in the ongoing fighting greatly defining its geography and tactics. The “armies” had been routinely moving by the trains filled by the troops and all types of the “followers”. Taking into an account that this practice resulted in a wide-spread sabotage, the trains had been routinely using flat platforms hooked in front of a locomotive to prevent it being blown: forces on both sides seemingly never run short of the explosives.
And, of course, the cavalry can’t be forgotten. On more than one occasion cavalry troops of Pancho Villa performed quite remarkable fits of successfully storming the well-entrenched positions (eventually, this tactics proved to be self-defeating when he tried it against Obregon and lost his best troops).
Initially, Russian government paid little to no attention to what was going on but the ensuing mess raised the reasonable concerns regarding security of the Russian-owned property in California. Formally, it was run by Russian American Company (RAC) which had nothing to do with the original one except name. The main settlement, Fort Ross, was on a coast but the place was not suitable for any meaningful naval base and the whole enterprise was series of farms and small food-processing plants. Their produce, as well as one bought in the nearby area, had been transported to San Francisco and from here shipped to Alaska.
San Francisco had been frequently visited by the Russian naval and merchant ships and there were warehouses of RAC and some other trade companies and, while in a general schema of things scope of both the businesses and physical presence was quite limited, but security of the Russian citizens and their property was a valid consideration.
Fortunately, San Francisco area was so far almost untouched by revolutionary turmoil but who could guarantee that the ongoing mess will not spread there? So far, relations with the local administration and the neighbors were quite friendly, based upon the mutual interest but with a big part of Mexico being engaged in what was increasingly looking as a multi-sided civil war, one could not be too cautious. Just in case, a fast protected cruiser had been stationed in San Francisco Bay and shipment of weapons had been discretely sent to Fort Ross.
Rather unsurprisingly, permanent presence of a Russian warship in Mexican port caused a minor hysteria North of the US-Mexican border as a potential danger to the Monroe Doctrine and it took certain diplomatic effort to convince the US public that Russia is not planning to expand its influence on American continent beyond its existing possessions and just protecting its property and actually would be glad to see an US warship also being stationed in SF Bay as an additional security guarantor. Getting confrontational with the US did not make sense in a view of a much greater trouble developing in China.
China.
The trouble had been brewing since the death of Li Honghzang in 1901. He was replaced by Yuan Shikai, who took on Li's appointment as Viceroy of Zhili and as Minister of Beiyang. Yuan had been given command of the brigade-sized New Created Army in 1895, which had 7,000 soldiers at the time and would expand to 20,000 by 1902. By the autumn of 1905 the Beiyang Army consisted of six divisions of 10,000 men each. It was organized into infantry, artillery, cavalry, and auxiliary troops, as well as maintenance and engineering. A seventh division was established in 1907 at Jiangsu. The Army's training instructors were mostly Japanese and Germans.
The Saozhzhan camp near Tianjin became the base for the new army being created. The officer and non-coms cadres had been coming from the newly-created military schools. As a result, the Officer General Group began to form in the Tianjin area - the embryo of the future Beiyang militaristic clique led by the "father of the new army" - Yuan Shikai. Without too much noise he was steadily putting his clients into the leading positions and all of them had been Chinese. By the time Qing government figured out what is going on it was too late: the army was commanded by the Chinese and sending Yuam Shikai into retirement did not help.
Meanwhile, Beijing's control over troops in the South and in the Yangtze Valley was even weaker. There were many people from the old troops in the Nanyang Army, discipline was weaker. Among the soldiers and non-commissioned officers there were many members of secret societies or just opponents of the dynasty. Anti-Manchurian sentiments were organically intertwined with regionalist sentiments. Nanyang divisions and brigades became increasingly unreliable, gradually becoming a potentially anti-Qing explosive environment.
The Chinese provincial bureaucracy, especially the nomenclature of South China and the provinces of the Yangtze basin, was becoming a potential opponent of the central authorities. This silent "southern opposition" was no less dangerous for the Manchus than the threat from the "new army." "Boxer indemnity" placed a heavy burden on local treasuries and the population, dramatically increasing social tensions in the provinces. Already in 1902, there was a conflict between the dynasty and governors who refused to raise land tax rates. By strengthening their special relations with the Powers, the governors of the provinces ensured de facto independence from the center. In words, declaring their devotion to the Qing Empire, they actually became more and more independent. During the reorganization of the administrative apparatus of 1906-1907, Cixi tried to limit the omnipotence of regional rulers. However, more than 30,000 local senior, middle and lower-level officials have demonstrated their readiness to defend the old order and skillfully minimized all the efforts of Beijing. The silent battle for power of 1906-1907 formally ended in a draw, and in fact - a major defeat of the Manchu dynasty. Without strengthening its position, the Qing regime alienated the provincial bureaucracy and accelerated its own fall.
After the death of Cixi in 1908, the Manchu government (led by Prince-Regent Chun because the Emperor was two years old) laid all the costs of creating and maintaining "new troops" in the Yangtze basin and southern China on the shoulders of peripheral leaders and local treasuries. In Beijing, it was believed that these divisions and brigades would be fed by the provincial bureaucracy, and the Manchu princes would command the troops. In practice, the situation has developed differently: the divisions and brigades of the Nanyang Army, as well as the "security troops", equipped with modern weapons, were essentially subordinate to the governors of the provinces, not the center. Thus, military reform did not weaken, but strengthened the independence of local rulers from Beijing, thereby undermining the positions of the Manchus. Those of them who still had some functioning brain cells started fleeing to Manchuria expecting Japanese and Russian protection.
In an attempt to fix the situation, Qing government promised to convene a parliament in 1916, and in 1909 to organize elections to provincial advisory committees. Only about 2 million people out of 420 million Chinese residents participated in the elections. Committees could only discuss purely local issues without addressing political and legislative topics. In the autumn of 1910, the Advisory Chamber, a kind of "pre-parliament", opened in Beijing.
Not to lag behind the trend, China had its own revolutionary organizations: 兴中会, 華興會 and 光復會 [7]. The first one, led by 孙逸仙 [8], was the most popular one because its hieroglyphs were easiest to write. All of them had been engaged in (what they considered to be) the sinister plots, chanting the party slogans and other revolutionary activities. In 1905 they joined into an alliance named 中國同盟會 , which soon enough fall apart because by the time its members staging some local revolution [9] were finishing writing alliance name on their flags, the central government usually not just learned about a planned rebellion and sent the troops by the train but these troops had time to arrive to the conspirators’s headquarters which were easily identifiable because, following the venerable tradition, such a building would have a nice calligraphic placard over its door implemented in a beautiful calligraphy and explaining which secret society is preparing a revolution in this building to avoid possible confusion. After few spectacular failures prestige of the alliance and Sun Yat-sen fell almost to the same level as one of the government, which was really low. What can one expect if within just two years he managed to organize 9 failed uprisings [10] and kept trying with the same result.
Anyway, in 1911 the government nationalized a joint-stock company for the construction of Huguang Railways (it was a giant project for the Chinese to create the Chengdu-Hankou-Guangzhou railway), which hit millions of taxpayers in four provinces [11] and s—t hit the fan in the Southern China with the troops located there joining the rebellion. Strengthened by the volunteers they had been expanding area under their control killing in a process the local Manchus by the tens of thousands.
An independent republic had been proclaimed with its leaders being smart enough to immediately recognize all unequal treaties. The Qing government sent part of the Beiyang army to crush the rebellion and assembled “pre-parliament” which immediately demanded a constitution and removal imperial family members from the government. The loyal Beiyang troops kept beating the crap of of Nanyang troops and inexperienced volunteers burning the rebellious cities and executing their population but results were opposite to the expected, just as the following political concessions. The Powers declared their neutrality and the only solution was to invite Yuan Shikai back. To make the long story short, he became a Prime Minister (and got immediate support from London and Washington). After arrival to Pekin at the head of 2,000 loyal troops and removal the last Manchu from the command positions he intensified advance against the rebels while making it clear that he is not against making a deal with their liberal leadership. Balancing between the monarchy and the republic, between revolutionaries and liberals, between the dynasty and revolutionaries, Yuan Shikai did everything to ensure that neither of these sides strengthened to the detriment of his ambitious plans. Yuan Shikai intimidated the Manchus with a possible massacre by revolutionaries, and at the same time blackmailed the Republicans with the possibility of his deal with the dynasty. In order to force the Republicans to make concessions, Yuan Shikai stubbornly defended the idea of a constitutional monarchy under the nominal power of the emperor. With the assistance of British diplomats, on December 3, a truce was concluded in Wuchang, which, in fact, confirmed the division of China into two states.
A republic was formed in the South, a monarchy with a Manchu emperor at the head was preserved in the North. At that time, neither the republican South nor the monarchical North wanted civil war. The only reasonable way out was to compromise on the basis of unification around a "strong personality", that is, Yuan Shikai, who was "our SOB" for both monarchists and Republicans. Soon enough he was in a complete control of the North, which gave him an advantage in negotiations with the South with its 14 provincial governments and numerous political groups. South was ready to declare Yuan Shikai President of the Republic but he was, for a while, sticking to the idea of a constitutional monarchy so the South invited Sun Yat-sen who, quite conveniently, just returned from Japan. He was made a provisional President with no power and on condition of an immediate removal iv Yuan Shikai accepts an offer.
Finally, Yuan Shikai decided that enough is enough and presented the Empress-Regent with an ultimatum. The emperor abdicated on February 12 1912 but preserved a “honorary” title, big annual income, palace complex of the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, all personnel and security of the imperial property. In exchange he recognized a constitutional republic. By the last imperial decree Yuan Shikai was ordered to form a republican government. The South kicked Sun Yat-sen out and elected Yuan Shikai President of the Republic of China. Sun Yat-sen declared “the second revolution”. Predictably, it failed and he fled to Japan.
Russian Empire remained rather indifferent toward these events but when the dust settled there were, seemingly, two ticking time bombs:
- More than 250,000 Manchu fled from various parts of China into Manchuria. Most of them ended up in the Southern Manchuria but sizable numbers went all the way to a North and quite a few even asked to be admitted into the Russian-owned Sungari “triangle”. They were welcomed as a balance to the local Chinese but there was a broader issue: with its nationalist program the new government of China failed to specify its position regarding the Manchu in Manchuria over which it was still claiming a sovereignty. Formally, a principle of the Five Races Under One Union had been proclaimed but so far the Manchu massacres were not quite encouraging in the terms of brotherly love. During the revolution Manchuria remained calm but influx of the fleeing Manchu brought a clear possibility of a military action by the new government and this would not be good for the Russian and Japanese business.
- While there were, so far, no clear indications that a new government is going to try to denounce the territorial concessions of Qing regime, there was no clear proof to a contrary, either. And Inner Mongolia looked as a perfect target, geographically and demographically, for an action of a government stressing a national idea. Mongolian Empire itself was too weak to defend it and it was far away from Russia for a fast reaction. So the defensive measures had to be taken well in advance with a need of a permanent significant Russian military presence there. Which, in conjunction with an ongoing strengthening of the Russian military and naval buildup on the Far East, may produce one more round of the American-British hysteria.
_____________
[1] An attempt to find spelling of his name in English failed. Just as an attempt to understand all depth (width, height, weight, etc.) of the quoted statement. But hieroglyph looks cute, which was the main reason for quoting.
[2] Well, there were also some labor laws but they are rather irrelevant to the revolutionary situation described in the previous chapter and can be omitted (at least for now).
[3] His predecessor wanted to run for the second term, which was unconstitutional.
[4] Which means that in some it was lower but why to quote the pessimistic data which I don’t have anyway?
[5] And El Paso became the major point of the weapons smuggling from the US.
[6] The leftovers were then turned into dynamite and glycerin. Things that proved to be quite handy: as you understand, glycerin (among other applications) was used for making soap and personal hygiene is important.
[7] “Alliance of rebirth of China”, “Alliance of renewal of China”, “Alliance of rebirth of glory of China”
[8] Sun Yat-sen.
[9] List of only the later major revolutionary events on wiki is excruciatingly long so probably the earlier minor ones was not possible to record.
[10] To avoid misunderstandings about him being a lucky SOB to escape, after leaving China in the early 1890s he was making funds raising trips around the world (the British press promoted him to a hero status and he got a fake birth certificate in Hawaii to bypass the Chinese Exclusion Act and to do fundraising in the US) and finally settled in Japan from where he kept directing the uprisings. His political program was beautifully simple: 1. Expel the Tatars (Manchu), 2. Establish the republic and 3. Distribute land equally among the people.
[11] I have no idea how exactly.
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Sometimes I forget that Mexico still retains most of the north of the country. I think you still have New Orleans, right?
You know what is more ironic, that Mexico keeping most of the north only makes the west of the USA only have more Mexicans. So the south may end up receiving immigration from Mexico.
But that would be in the future.
You know what is more ironic, that Mexico keeping most of the north only makes the west of the USA only have more Mexicans. So the south may end up receiving immigration from Mexico.
But that would be in the future.
One day China will be secure enough for Russia to be happy about their border, but I doubt that day will come for many years. I do wonder how Manchus are going to evolve as time goes on with a possible get out of China free card on the table nearby.
Mexico's doing better than the OTL but is going to face rough patch for a while.
Mexico's doing better than the OTL but is going to face rough patch for a while.
This is more an issue of the perception rather than a pure geography. ITTL the border is “natural” but, short of the massive deportation/genocidal activities preached by the adherents of “yellow danger”, is demographically unreliable. OTOH, while a new government of China at the moment sticks to the Qing treaties, with the pressure from nationalistic circles and certain encouragement from certain Powers, it may be tempted or forced to reconsider some of them. In OTL this happened with eliminating the Mongolian autonomy in 1919 and conflict(s) on East China RR in 1929. In both cases China counted upon the Russian weakness caused by the RCW. ITTL there may be some other perceived weakness or just a distraction by some other major event (not revolution 😉 ).
This is a very good question (must be so because I’m thinking about myself 😂). There are couple of none-ASB options which are close to a reality:
- Government, within its unity program, allows the Manchu to live in peace in Manchuria. The obvious question is for how long ITTL the Manchu will be satisfied with living under Chinese regional administration backed up by the Chinese military force? After all, formally, both in the Southern and Northern Manchuria Japan and Russia are directly controlling only the narrow stretches of land along the RRs and (in the case of Japan) some limited plots around the mines with a very limited military presence.
- Eventual creation of the Manchuria state sponsored by Japan and Russia. This most probably had to be preceded by a crap being beaten out of the Chinese army (again). A potential problem is not with the Chinese but with a fact that in an absence of wwi Britain is in a much better financial & economic shape than in OTL and may try to do something stupid. The US is more problematic as well (OTOH, perhaps without being “saviors of Europe” and a massive naval buildup of wwi perhaps we are not as self-assured as in OTL?).
Anyway, I’m considering some big but limited European conflict triggered by a sequence of the idiotic incidents. Taking into an account that ITTL a big-scale land war would require active interference of the ASBs, the conflict had to be predominantly of a naval nature. This would “save” a lot of lives but not money: the active and protracted involvement of big numbers of the floating scrap metal will cause a need of its replacement during the war and, together with the general losses of a merchant marine, disruptions on the sea routes, etc., it is going to cause a huge burden upon the combatants’ economies making them much less cocky in the years to follow.
What do you think?
Why not February 1917? Anyway, this is Russia-wank, not Russia-screw so neither date is relevant.😜
Could see it happen, to be honest only medium land conflicts on Europe I can see otherwise happening would be either Poland getting someone a bit crazy in power or it facing some revolts from the poor/socialists and it dragging some ''friends'' with ideas on how to exploit it getting into fights with other friends and that seems unlikely.
So some tiff that results in a ''small'' war that inflicts a lot more damage than any of the imperial powers thought would happen given how interconnected they are with each other and makes them reconsider would make sense, maybe with a radical or two cheering it on hoping to exploit the aftermath.
I myself think the idea of Manchurian state, after some more attempts at keeping a status quo of unitary state dragging in the imperial powers into a limit war would make sense. For better or worse Britain's been paranoid and hyping it's populace up on the threat of Russia to India and talking itself into a fight would strike hoping both to show it's superiority and a limited engagement of its pride and joy the navy would workout well.
Of course once fighting happens it tends to escalate as people get crazier ideas and demands so could easily drag in others wanting to cash on it.
Great Britain would be screwed if for some reason India ended up declaring itself independent.