Maybe I'll read it one day. I haven't finished reading so many timelines that it's outright embarassing at times.
"Fight and be Right"
- Thread starter EdT
- Start date
Maybe I'll read it one day. I haven't finished reading so many timelines that it's outright embarassing at times.
Well, just because I didn't really talk about that aspect in the TL doesn't mean there wasn't stuff going on there. Remember that as of 1890 or so Irish nationalism has had the absolute stuffing knocked out of it, first by the Parnell commission and then by Balfour's crackdown, and so there's a real generational shift from the old IPP era to new and more radical forms of nationalism. The Irish nationalist poster boy of the early 1900s is James Connolly, and ITTL and he's one of the first British Socialist Party MPs. I can see him playing a major role in the British Revolution when it comes; obviously there will be other strains of Irish nationalist thought, but given the events in the rest of the British Isles I think it's logical that the radicals get the upper hand.
Thanks, I always quite liked that myself and was surprised more people didn't pick up on it.
Glad to hear it! I'll take a stab at your questions below.
Both IOTL and ITTL Gabrielle D'Annnunzio had a brief stab at politics in the late 1890s, being elected a Deputy in 1897; but instead of losing interest six months into his term and wandering off as IOTL, ITTL Italy's war to cement its control over Abyssinia catches his interest and he becomes a major proponent of turning the colony into "Italy's India"; something that makes him an ally and protege of Ferdinandino Martini, first Italy's Colonial Minister and then the Empire of Abyssinia's first Governor.
For most of the 1900s D'Annunzio combines literary output with the odd bit of grandstanding politicking, and he's made a Minister when his patron Martini becomes Italy's Premier in the early 1910s; he then packs it all in to go and fight for the Republicans in the Portuguese Civil War. This gives him significant prestige, as does the famous film made fictionalising his exploits in 1921; by the mid 1920's he's founded the Integralists, and is Martini's natural successor. He comes to power in about 1930 or so, I'd say.
The Royals went to South Africa because Canada was a no-no (see below), Cape Town is closer than Shakespeare or Wellington and just as prestigious, and most importantly because Jan Smuts (who was Premier at the time) invited the Royals to stay. It's worth remembering that South Africa is not the problem *Dominion ITTL as it was IOTL, because there was no Boer War and no lasting legacy of Anglo-Boer bitterness.
ITTL Canada did more or less what Ireland did in WW2 IOTL, and for a lot of the same reasons; by the 1930s Ottawa is seriously unhappy with Westminster for the undemocratic way the country is being run, and has developed closer ties with the USA. One longer-term effect of the assassination of Queen Victoria and the War of the Dual Alliance was to kickstart Bourassa's 'Canadianism'; there's a much stronger movement ITTL for Canada to be a neutral nation with friendly ties to, but not military or political links with, both the Empire and the USA.
This is obviously going to come into its own when HMG gets a bit nastier in the 1920s, and it seems to me that Churchill is exactly the sort of person who would manage to infuriate an already semi-detached Ottawa into taking the deeply controversial decision to remain neutral during the Great War.
I'm pretty sure that it's mentioned somewhere that by 1940 there's a Repubic Bill about to be intorduced into the Canadian Parliament.
John Tolkein is Professor of English at Cape Town University, and does some very interesting work on the side for South Africa's Secret Intelligence Department. As of 1940 he's currently contemplating writing a national epic for South Africa in the style of Beowulf or the Kalevala.
I have no idea! I have some ideas of some of the things that might happen in the late 1940s and even early 1950s, but I deliberately haven't speculated about the long-term fate of anywhere ITTL; there's got to be a cutoff point otherwise you never stop!
Like Sulemain says, it's really worth it. Take a look!
Faeelin
Banned
Hah. I wonder if even more than OTL, Americans aren't mildly confused why Canada doesn't join the USA...
One of the cuter rouches in the Kaiserreich mod for Hearts of Iron is that he's writing a book about the Fall of Numenor from exile in South Africa. (Britain was taken over by Syndicalists).
Still waiting more from the Five Kingdoms...
Kaiphranos
Donor
EdT said:
Hmm, Secret Intelligence, eh? For some reason I'm imagining *Quenya codetalkers...
I think my issue with this is that IOTL many of the radical young nationalists ended up being strongly conservative - WT Cosgrave and Kevin O'Higgins seem to have been far more representative of the national mentality than Connolly ever was (romanticism aside there are good reasons why the Citizen Army was so small.)
That brings me to a larger problem though. By the end of the 19th century the Irish were rapidly transitioning from a peasant/tenant economy to a small landowner one. The Land Acts established a large and growing class of owner occupier farmers. These people were always socially conservative but prior to the late 1880s they were prepared to back radical agrarian movements like the Land League. Once they had their hands on their own lands they didn't become less nationalist but they did lose interest in radicalism.
So late 19th century Ireland was a country that was rapidly becoming stony ground (so to speak) for agraian socialism.
My biggest problem though is that you assume the radicalism of Irish emigre politicians (and others) in Britain could be easily transported back across the Irish Sea. That is the rub though; the Irish in Britain were consistently more radical than the ones at home due to the pattern of emigration - indeed the Scottish born Connelly is the perfect example of the diasporan come home to great fanfare and limited success.
Finally I'm a bit doubtful given the events that the Irish would grow closer to a British party, even a left wing one. The stamping out of the moderate Nationalists (by murdering the party leader and realising a crude political hatchet job on his memory) somehow makes the Irish more inclined to look to London? Surely it would drive the Irish deeper into the green and look on all Britons with more jaundiced eyes?
No matter how badly beaten up the IPP are I just have difficulty seeing Connelly achieving such success - a Connelly with strong British links no less.
