Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
The update is on the previous page at post 4416.
Well, I said the world population in 2014 would begin with a 5, but I didn't say how many zeroes would be in back of it...
HIV wiping out humanity isn't on the cards, though, any more than syphilis did in OTL. At most, it will cause temporary population declines in certain countries as happened in OTL in parts of southern Africa.
Female homosexuality doesn't seem to have been thought of as threatening in the way male homosexuality was, although people did look askance at it. I'd expect the general attitude to be much the same in TTL, possibly with more tolerance of experimentation among young single women as an alternative to higher-risk behavior. They'd be expected to give it up when they got married, although not all would.
Fair enough. Your syphilis example, though, suggests that a decline in virulence might still take a long time. According to this article, syphilis seems to have evolved in two stages. The initial 15th-century epidemic, which killed its victims in a few months, burned out fairly quickly, resulting in syphilis transforming into the multi-stage disease we know today with a long period of latency between secondary and tertiary symptoms. Once that happened, though, a further decline in the virulence of tertiary syphilis didn't become notable until the 18th century. This was a period of 200 years, and it occurred in a population where sanitation and public health were much worse than even a war-ravaged 20th-century European state would be. If HIV follows a similar pattern, then it might be the 22nd century before its lethality declines to the point that syphilis has, although I certainly agree that it's something we should be looking for when studying its progress.
At this point, colonial Africa is at roughly the point it was in during the late 1940s OTL, with the imperial countries devolving more power to the colonies but not yet ready to let go. And as in OTL, this isn't happening at the same speed everywhere: Portugal is lagging behind, parts of the British and German empires are much farther along the path to independence than others, and even in the French empire, equal status doesn't always mean equal treatment.
The true independence era will begin around 1940 and last into the early 60s. In some cases, of course, independence will simply be a transition from a colonial relationship to a neocolonial one, and it might be the 1980s before the relationship between Africa and Europe is completely settled.
African states would be far too straightforward for TTL. There are plenty of ways short of statehood to upgrade the relationship, though, such as the kind of reciprocity that Australia and New Zealand have in OTL, or a more equal version of the relationship between the United States and the republics that make up the former Pacific Trust Territory.
Also it may be possible for the freedmen's republics of West Africa to get considerably closer to one state in particular than to the US as a whole.
Environmentalism did already exist at this point in OTL, and British clean-water legislation and sewage cleanup programs date back to late Victorian times. But, like early HIV, greater industrial pollution is one of the side effects of a more integrated and prosperous Global South, so environmental issues will impact the public consciousness somewhat sooner.
India will certainly play an important part in the environmental movement's development, given that it's quite a bit more industrialized than it was at this time in OTL and that industrial development will be a key part of the postwar recovery program.
They're a large and powerful family, so they're bound to have their greedy and power-hungry members. They also have their share of wastrels and playboys - they're among the ones we haven't heard about.
I'd be interested in reading that presentation, if it's in written form; I'm pretty sure my French is up to the job.
Anyway, as I mentioned fairly early on, this is a timeline in which colonialism in Africa will look a lot more like colonialism in Asia, with the early British-Malê encounters engendering a greater respect for, and willingness to rule through, state-level African cultures. One of the results is a continent with more Asian-looking social indicators.
This isn't universal, though, and pre-state cultures such as those in the Congo and Ubangi-Shari got hammered much as in OTL, or in some cases even worse. And while most of Africa is doing better - some of it considerably better - that isn't the same as being problem-free.
Latin America and the Caribbean next - the Venezuelan wars, the post-Imperial settlement in the British Caribbean, and possibly one or two things more. After that, the Ottoman world and India will round out the 1920s.
Well, I said the world population in 2014 would begin with a 5, but I didn't say how many zeroes would be in back of it...
HIV wiping out humanity isn't on the cards, though, any more than syphilis did in OTL. At most, it will cause temporary population declines in certain countries as happened in OTL in parts of southern Africa.
Female homosexuality doesn't seem to have been thought of as threatening in the way male homosexuality was, although people did look askance at it. I'd expect the general attitude to be much the same in TTL, possibly with more tolerance of experimentation among young single women as an alternative to higher-risk behavior. They'd be expected to give it up when they got married, although not all would.
Fair enough. Your syphilis example, though, suggests that a decline in virulence might still take a long time. According to this article, syphilis seems to have evolved in two stages. The initial 15th-century epidemic, which killed its victims in a few months, burned out fairly quickly, resulting in syphilis transforming into the multi-stage disease we know today with a long period of latency between secondary and tertiary symptoms. Once that happened, though, a further decline in the virulence of tertiary syphilis didn't become notable until the 18th century. This was a period of 200 years, and it occurred in a population where sanitation and public health were much worse than even a war-ravaged 20th-century European state would be. If HIV follows a similar pattern, then it might be the 22nd century before its lethality declines to the point that syphilis has, although I certainly agree that it's something we should be looking for when studying its progress.
At this point, colonial Africa is at roughly the point it was in during the late 1940s OTL, with the imperial countries devolving more power to the colonies but not yet ready to let go. And as in OTL, this isn't happening at the same speed everywhere: Portugal is lagging behind, parts of the British and German empires are much farther along the path to independence than others, and even in the French empire, equal status doesn't always mean equal treatment.
The true independence era will begin around 1940 and last into the early 60s. In some cases, of course, independence will simply be a transition from a colonial relationship to a neocolonial one, and it might be the 1980s before the relationship between Africa and Europe is completely settled.
African states would be far too straightforward for TTL.
There are plenty of ways short of statehood to upgrade the relationship, though, such as the kind of reciprocity that Australia and New Zealand have in OTL, or a more equal version of the relationship between the United States and the republics that make up the former Pacific Trust Territory.Also it may be possible for the freedmen's republics of West Africa to get considerably closer to one state in particular than to the US as a whole.
Environmentalism did already exist at this point in OTL, and British clean-water legislation and sewage cleanup programs date back to late Victorian times. But, like early HIV, greater industrial pollution is one of the side effects of a more integrated and prosperous Global South, so environmental issues will impact the public consciousness somewhat sooner.
India will certainly play an important part in the environmental movement's development, given that it's quite a bit more industrialized than it was at this time in OTL and that industrial development will be a key part of the postwar recovery program.
They're a large and powerful family, so they're bound to have their greedy and power-hungry members. They also have their share of wastrels and playboys - they're among the ones we haven't heard about.
I'd be interested in reading that presentation, if it's in written form; I'm pretty sure my French is up to the job.
Anyway, as I mentioned fairly early on, this is a timeline in which colonialism in Africa will look a lot more like colonialism in Asia, with the early British-Malê encounters engendering a greater respect for, and willingness to rule through, state-level African cultures. One of the results is a continent with more Asian-looking social indicators.
This isn't universal, though, and pre-state cultures such as those in the Congo and Ubangi-Shari got hammered much as in OTL, or in some cases even worse. And while most of Africa is doing better - some of it considerably better - that isn't the same as being problem-free.
Latin America and the Caribbean next - the Venezuelan wars, the post-Imperial settlement in the British Caribbean, and possibly one or two things more. After that, the Ottoman world and India will round out the 1920s.
Well done Jonathan! You have made a West African Dominion by 1930 a plausible idea!
Something tells me that Nigerian Federation idea will become a more powerful force in the future, but I also noticed Ilorin's status 'in the present day'... A formation and falling-out phase?
Something tells me that Nigerian Federation idea will become a more powerful force in the future, but I also noticed Ilorin's status 'in the present day'... A formation and falling-out phase?
Let's hope at least one of those playboys dresses up as a winged rodent to fight crime.
In any case it would be nice to see the industrial side of the Abacars- involvement in the growing transnational corporations would be something pretty well-suited to at least some of the family's members. I don't doubt that the Abacars could occupy a place similar to the Tatas in India OTL.
Sulemain
Banned
Let's hope at least one of those playboys dresses up as a winged rodent to fight crime.
In any case it would be nice to see the industrial side of the Abacars- involvement in the growing transnational corporations would be something pretty well-suited to at least some of the family's members. I don't doubt that the Abacars could occupy a place similar to the Tatas in India OTL.
Abacar Batman? Make this happen JE! And the Hedley Lamarr/Marlene Deitrich expy!
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As a personal request, might we see somesort of hybrid of Marlene Dietrich and Hedy Lamarr? A bisexual beautiful German actress-scientist?
Probably not, I'm afraid. Tell you what, though - I'll give you the West African Batman-analogue as an in-universe literary character, not necessarily based on anyone from the Abacar family but bearing a suspicious resemblance to one or two of them. The 1920s were about when that type of pulp-fiction character emerged, weren't they? And in TTL, that genre could tie in with the West African vampire/supernatural stories written by a certain A.C. Doyle...
The reference to "the present day" was to Ilorin's domestic institutions, which could exist either as part of a federation or otherwise. There's also no reason why a member of a federation couldn't call itself a republic: several Swiss cantons do in OTL.
And yes, Nigeria founded from below would be pretty cool, and federalism will be a continuing force in regional politics. Whether it goes all the way... you'll see. One thing I'll say is that if it does happen, it won't be all at once.
There are certainly Abacars in the business world, and we'll see a couple of them. I'm not sure they'd be Tata-caliber, though, precisely because they were a political family when other Malê were building factories, so they missed getting in on the ground floor. They might tend to end up the way many European and American politicians' children do, as executives rather than entrepreneurs, although those who do want to start businesses could probably use their connections to get access to capital.
Addtionaly, and on a size level closer to it, so do several of the administrative divisions of Russia as well as autonomous regions of several other countries.
Crimea was as well, as a topical example. I'd like to see a Niger Confederation being a mix of kingdoms, republics and others- after all India ITTL already fits the mould somewhat.
I think that some "regional" (not necessarily regions) entities in Italy and Spain now IOTL fit such a description. Although I would be careful about any comparison with Russian entities, as the latter are components of an Imperial (as opposed to national in a strictly "Western" sense) system.
Again, modern Russia IOTL is a very strange sort of Empire (but its TTL's version is even stranger, so maybe the point is that Russia is actually a pretty unique sort of politiy anyway; interestingly, the closest relative is probably India).
Gavin Thomas, The British Constitution (London: World, 2005)
… The period between the 1921 and 1923 general elections is sometimes called the Imperial Spring, not because the party had a resurgence but because it melted away. The 1921 vote, carried out under heavy government pressure, brought 207 Imperials into Parliament, along with about twenty nominally independent allies. A year later, fewer than 150 MPs took the Imperial whip, with some losing their seats in by-elections and others crossing the floor or becoming independent. And by the time the National Government resigned and the campaign for the October 1923 poll began, the number of Imperial stalwarts stood at 108.
Not even that many would survive the voting. The 1923 election was the first truly free one since 1914, and the first since 1911 to be held under anything resembling normal conditions. Whatever appeal the Imperial platform may have had during the depression, seven years of disastrous rule ensured that it didn’t carry over to the recovery. When the votes were counted, Ulster was the only region where Imperial support held up: the party won a few seats elsewhere in the country, but finished with just 28 representatives in Westminster.
Many of the former Imperial seats ironically went Socialist, going from one form of radicalism to the other. The Socialists indeed emerged the largest party, winning 253 seats, with the remainder being divided between the Liberals, the Tories (now renamed the Progressive Conservatives), the True Conservatives and splinter parties. There was some discussion of another Tory-Liberal coalition, but too many people remembered how calamitous the last one had been, and by this time, a majority of Liberal MPs were Liberal-Labour, so the Liberals chose to align with the Socialists instead. On 20 November 1923, Herbert George Wells entered 10 Downing Street as Britain’s first Socialist Prime Minister…
… The Socialists had promised to give Britain a written constitution, and there was surprisingly little resistance: so thoroughly had the unwritten constitution been shredded during the Imperial era that nearly everyone agreed the rules should be codified. But the Socialists’ lack of a majority meant that the constitution would not be the sweeping document it had envisioned. The draft voted out of the House of Commons in early 1925 did guarantee universal suffrage, equal rights for women and a broad range of civil liberties, but it said little about economic rights. Several of those had already been enacted by ordinary legislation – including a bill preserving some of the Imperials’ better ideas, such as works councils and wage floors – but these would be subject to review by future Parliaments rather than being placed off limits.
The monarchy and the House of Lords also proved highly contentious. The Socialists ran on a republican platform, but no other party supported them. The most they were able to get, as part of the coalition agreement, was a referendum on the monarchy to be held before the constitution went to final draft. And although a referendum in late 1921 or even 1922 would likely have returned a majority in favor of a republic, the political environment in 1924 was very different.
The Socialists ran a strong “yes” campaign, focusing on the myriad ways that King Albert had facilitated Imperial misrule. But by this time, George V, now eighteen years old, had made a strong first impression, and the sentimental attachment that many people held for the monarchy had returned. The “no” campaign also made the more practical point that the dominions would be more likely to accept the sovereignty of a king than a British president, and that abolition of the monarchy in Britain would likely be followed by a similar move in Ireland. With Ulster again a battlefield and Ireland under a strongly nationalist Catholic government, Irish withdrawal from the empire could lead to war.
The referendum was, in other words, one of the first tests of Nils Branting’s theory of sovereignty, popularly known as “neo-feudalism.” [1] And while Branting’s arguments about monarchy as a unifying force were little mentioned during the campaign, the voters were swayed by precisely that. One of the new features of the referendum was exit polling, and of the 63 percent who voted in favor of keeping the monarchy, a majority said that “keeping the empire together” was the deciding factor.
As for the House of Lords, the Socialists strongly favored abolishing it and replacing it with a senate elected by proportional representation. They again faced opposition from much of the rest of the political spectrum, though, and they also remembered that the Lords had been the final check on the Imperial Government. By the time the horse-trading began, the party’s heart wasn’t really in the push for abolition, and while they secured significant reforms, these ironically involved expanding the number of peers.
The constitution would curb the Lords’ power over domestic affairs: they no longer had a vote on money bills, and other acts could become law without their assent if passed in three successive parliamentary sessions. No new hereditary peerages could be created, and if an existing line became extinct, its titles would be extinguished. But at the same time, the ability to create life peers was expanded – including, for the first time, allowing women to be given life peerages – and Asquith’s much-derided Imperial Lords scheme was resurrected in a form more acceptable to the Socialists.
Two categories of people from outside Britain were given the right to sit in the Lords: up to twenty judges, who would sit as Law Lords and Privy Council members and act as a final court of appeal for the empire; and up to two hundred life peers chosen by the elected legislatures of the dominions and colonies. In those colonies with partially-elected legislatures, only the elected members would participate in choosing these peers. And legislation affecting the empire as a whole would require the assent of both the House of Lords as a whole and a majority of the “imperial peers.” If any territory were to leave the British Empire, its peers would retain their titles – as the Indian peers did, notwithstanding the recognition of the Republic of India – but lose the right to vote in the Lords.
This was a compromise that left no one very happy, but like many such compromises, it would last for some time. And even many of the Socialists became reconciled to the scheme when they learned who some of the new life peers would be: Mary Obioma, hero of the Igbo Women’s War; the Madras communist Mohanraj Neelakandan; Trinidad trade-union leader Samuel Butler; and Xolile Nyusile of the All-South Africa Reform Congress. Another, somewhat embarrassed, new peer was Funmilayo Abacar, who became Baroness Touré of Ife at the same time that she sat as a socialist deputy in the French parliament…
*******
Mary Lynch, The Irish Question and the Formation of the Commonwealth (London: Macmillan, 1988)
… Ireland and Jamaica were the two most intractable problems facing the post-Imperial empire, and the former was closer to home. In the wake of the Imperial Government’s fall, many Catholics who had been driven out of Ulster made their return, some of them with arms provided under the table by the Irish government. In Donegal and Cavan, especially, they ran into the Scottish and Northern English farmers who had settled there under Imperial land grants, and who were in no mood to leave their new farms and return to being landless tenants in Britain. The indecisiveness of the National Government, which had agreed to put off most controversial matters until the 1923 election, led the settlers to form militias, and by the time peace was made in India, the Second Donegal War had begun in northern Ireland.
The Socialist-Liberal coalition was divided on how to respond. Many of the Socialists wanted to return all of Ulster to Ireland and wash their hands of the matter, but the Imperial MPs who made up the great majority of the Ulster declaration vowed to declare independence if that happened. The prospect of a full-scale war between Ulster and Ireland, which would inevitably drag in the rest of the empire, was profoundly unpalatable. Others favored a massive military presence in Ulster to quash both nationalist and settler militias, with some sort of restitution for the Catholics who had been displaced, but the army detachments quickly became targets for both groups and many of the former refugees refused to accept compensation. Matters became worse when Catholic militiamen assassinated a Liberal junior minister who was touring Omagh, and the gun used to carry out the killing was found to be of Irish army issue. There were calls both within and without the coalition for punitive measures against Ireland, with some even clamoring for war.
This was the state of affairs when the 1924 Imperial Conference met in London. The dominions and the imperial peers, which had contributed heavily to Britain’s financial recovery and had no stomach for another round of warfare, took charge of brokering a deal. Their final proposal was to cede Donegal, Cavan, Tyrone and Fermanagh, where the greatest number of Catholic refugees had come from and where they had succeeded most in re-establishing themselves, to Ireland, while the remaining five counties would become a separate Dominion of Ulster. Catholics who had owned farms in Ulster would have the choice of accepting compensation or free land in Australasia, as would the settlers in the counties that reverted to Ireland. The cession, and the land exchanges, would be carried out in stages over a period of two years.
Britain, wishing to be rid of the Ulster problem for good, accepted almost gratefully. Ireland was more reluctant, but like the government of the Imperial era, it realized that it couldn’t win a fight against both Britain and the dominions, and that it could still claim victory for winning back much of what its predecessor had lost. The agreement was signed with minor revisions, and a special master from the International Court of Arbitration was appointed to hear claims and fix compensation. Many of the settlers and refugees themselves were dissatisfied but, realizing that their respective patron governments wouldn’t support them, few resisted forcefully. Ulster and northern Ireland would be the scene of low-level violence for years to come, but never at the level of the Donegal Wars, and many of the Catholic Irish and Protestant Scotsmen who chose to emigrate to Australasia would find that they had become neighbors.
With the Irish Settlement, Britain’s attention now turned to Jamaica, which had taken full advantage of London’s distraction, and to a Caribbean adventure that would prove costly…
_______
[1] See post 3545.
Speaking for the last two updates, they were both great! Starting with the one of West Africa, glad the Abacar 'pretender' is out, but sad the idea of a Nigerian Federation is dead once again. At least an environmental movement is picking up wind.
Now the Coaster's custom's union looks really fascinating, and I wonder, if it happens, what it will look like; and will Canada get in on it with their connections through the descendents of the Black Loyalist communities in Nova Scotia?
And will the Malê retain a separate ethnic identity in the future?
(And sorry if these were already addressed)
Onto the Britain update. The socialist presence in Parliament is nice in keeping with TTL's tradition of their integration into politics without being seen as an 'alien invader' like much of OTL. Though a Republican Britain is seldom explored, IMHO, the empire would rally better around a figurehead monarch rather than a president. I've heard such things echoed in OTL. The House of Lords looks even more interesting; but how does this compare to OTL, a bit hazy on the details of that House?
Ireland seems like a good compromise for now, and looks like it's avoided OTL's Troubles. That little quip at the end about the opposing factions of Ulster being neighbors down under sounds like it's going to work out in the end for at least some folks getting past their differences, at least that's what I'm hoping.
A Jamaican adventure...I'm hoping this doesn't resemble a certain adventure in OTL's Iraq. Just saying.
Now the Coaster's custom's union looks really fascinating, and I wonder, if it happens, what it will look like; and will Canada get in on it with their connections through the descendents of the Black Loyalist communities in Nova Scotia?
And will the Malê retain a separate ethnic identity in the future?
(And sorry if these were already addressed
)Onto the Britain update. The socialist presence in Parliament is nice in keeping with TTL's tradition of their integration into politics without being seen as an 'alien invader' like much of OTL. Though a Republican Britain is seldom explored, IMHO, the empire would rally better around a figurehead monarch rather than a president. I've heard such things echoed in OTL. The House of Lords looks even more interesting; but how does this compare to OTL, a bit hazy on the details of that House?
Ireland seems like a good compromise for now, and looks like it's avoided OTL's Troubles. That little quip at the end about the opposing factions of Ulster being neighbors down under sounds like it's going to work out in the end for at least some folks getting past their differences, at least that's what I'm hoping.
A Jamaican adventure...I'm hoping this doesn't resemble a certain adventure in OTL's Iraq. Just saying.
Sulemain
Banned
Glad to see Northern Ireland ended well-ish.
And a written Constitution for the United Kingdom is another interesting point; I suspect that it'd end up looking like a monarchical version of the German Basic Law, adapted for circumstances.
I wonder what the Caribbean Adventure could entail? The RN has naval superiority, the Afro-Jamaicans would be on side... I'm missing something, aren't I?
And a written Constitution for the United Kingdom is another interesting point; I suspect that it'd end up looking like a monarchical version of the German Basic Law, adapted for circumstances.
I wonder what the Caribbean Adventure could entail? The RN has naval superiority, the Afro-Jamaicans would be on side... I'm missing something, aren't I?
Hmm... if I can remember from the previous updates, the Imperials and the Jamaican planter class have stratified Jamaican society so much that said island had an underclass uprising during the Imperial period.
I'm guessing that with London and the Dominions being busy cleaning up Northern Ireland, the Jamaican planter class have turned the island into a Natal-lite state or at least created from of heavy-discriminatory governance there. I expect there to be strange bedfellows between the Planters and the exploitative American fruit companies while the underclass became allied with the Afro-Atlantic trading network. Oy.
On another note, glad to see the Northern Ireland question settled in a more moderate way, though the term "moderate" might not be the correct term for the events there.
I'm guessing that with London and the Dominions being busy cleaning up Northern Ireland, the Jamaican planter class have turned the island into a Natal-lite state or at least created from of heavy-discriminatory governance there. I expect there to be strange bedfellows between the Planters and the exploitative American fruit companies while the underclass became allied with the Afro-Atlantic trading network. Oy.
On another note, glad to see the Northern Ireland question settled in a more moderate way, though the term "moderate" might not be the correct term for the events there.
One tiny nitpick regarding the very fascinating Britain update: Looking on maps showing the Irish counties, the Dominion of Ulster would only cover 4 (Londonderry, Antrim, Armagh and Down) instead of 5 counties. Unless of course Belfast is the implied fifth county as a county borough (which it historically was together with Derry and some other non-Northern Irish cities).
Also alt-H.G. Wells as Socialist PM... Sweet! Let's see how he handles the troublesome situation on Jamaica.
Also alt-H.G. Wells as Socialist PM... Sweet! Let's see how he handles the troublesome situation on Jamaica.