That’s a good way to describe him, yes.
That sounds about right. Depends on how you count China during the Boxer War. The British did not acquit themselves well against the Basuto/Zulu/Boer alliance in 1879 or Egypt in 1882 in more limited campaigns
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
That sounds about right. Depends on how you count China during the Boxer War. The British did not acquit themselves well against the Basuto/Zulu/Boer alliance in 1879 or Egypt in 1882 in more limited campaigns
That's ok, they're more than making up for those failures by covering themselves in glory in Ireland and India! 🙄
But isn't that about the same as OTL. The big difference is the fact that they won't be iTTL's version of WWI. I'm not sure when the last time prior to WWI that the British were nearly as committed to a war with their own people was the English Civil War, I think...
Would the British try and steer immigrants to the various colonies and dominions?
That is indeed the main and most important difference, for Britain and indeed everyone else
Yeah, probably. South Africa in particular needs to have the ratio of Afrikaners diluted
It is *entirely* possible that by OTL, 20th century standards that Spain will be the most liberal country in Europe.
I went back and looked at the discussion of Women's Suffrage earlier in the thread. While the US will get it very close to OTL. I'm wondering, other than the southern cone, what countries will get it by 1930.
The *other* thing that jumps out for me in Suffrage, is how long it may be, given they'll be on the wining side before Germany's suffrage rules get *uncomplicated*...
Also, does Russia have a National Duma yet, and if so, how much power does it have?
Spain is probably the most politically liberal, but that is checked by its considerable cultural conservatism in its north and northeast. Of course, its political liberalism exists in part by liberal leaders like Serrano, Canalejas or Romanones not provoking the conservatives. It’s an interesting place ITTL, that’s for sure.
Russia does have a Duma, since 1912 when Mikhail I promulgated a constitution. It is a profoundly weak institution, however. I think I covered it a bit under the most recent Russia thread mark
Spanish general election, 1915
Spanish general election, 1915
All 408 seats in the Cortes; 205 seats needed for a majority [1]
National Liberal (Canalejas): 193 (+4)
Conservative (Maura): 71 (-13)
PSOE (Iglesias): 62 (+14)
Radical (Alvarez): 38 (+14) [2]
Regionalist (Prat): 14 (+3)
Traditionalist Catholic (Mella) 11 (+11)
Independents (N/A): 8 (-15) [3]
Cuban Nationalist (Palma): 6 (-1)
Integrist (Olazabal): 5 (-8)
Progressive (Moret*): 0 (-17) [3]
Republican Reform: 0 (-6)
[1] Three more than in 1910
[2] Gumersindo de Azcarate stands aside for Melquiades Alvarez as Republican Reform is re-merged back into Radical.
[3] Segismundo Moret's 1913 death obliterates the Progressive Party and they eventually all become independents and then either seek re-election as such or retire; most of their voters split between PNL or the Radicals
The Statesman: The Spain of Jose Canalejas
"...powerful oratory of Alvarez. Nonetheless, the election to Canalejas represented a triumph of his moderate liberalism and he viewed it as an endorsement of the remarkable improvement of Spanish standards of living since he had taken over at the end of the postwar depression in 1910 as well as his more creative legislative proposals.
What really cemented 1915 as a landmark election was not the status quo result for the ruling National Liberals or the re-consolidation of the left wing under two parties rather than four, but rather the further splintering of the right wing as Maura's Conservatives saw further erosion, this time not just to the Integrists and Regionalists (the former indeed lost votes), but rather the emergence of Mella's Traditionalist Catholic Party, which was an explicitly Carlist Party (in contrast to Olazabal's Integrists, who were merely arch-reactionaries but reconciled to the House of Hohenzollern). Indeed, the Partido Catolico Tradicional was larger than the Integrists now and the only party of the right to have gained significant new followers, and with two ultra-right, anti-parliamentarian parties represented in the Cortes now, Canalejas made note in his diary that these developments amongst Spain's culturally powerful but politically heretofore docile Catholic lobby [1] would need further observation..."
- The Statesman: The Spain of Jose Canalejas
[1] Post-1868, that is
What really cemented 1915 as a landmark election was not the status quo result for the ruling National Liberals or the re-consolidation of the left wing under two parties rather than four, but rather the further splintering of the right wing as Maura's Conservatives saw further erosion, this time not just to the Integrists and Regionalists (the former indeed lost votes), but rather the emergence of Mella's Traditionalist Catholic Party, which was an explicitly Carlist Party (in contrast to Olazabal's Integrists, who were merely arch-reactionaries but reconciled to the House of Hohenzollern). Indeed, the Partido Catolico Tradicional was larger than the Integrists now and the only party of the right to have gained significant new followers, and with two ultra-right, anti-parliamentarian parties represented in the Cortes now, Canalejas made note in his diary that these developments amongst Spain's culturally powerful but politically heretofore docile Catholic lobby [1] would need further observation..."
- The Statesman: The Spain of Jose Canalejas
[1] Post-1868, that is
I have been thinking about this. I am thinking that Jix may attempt send many 'undesirables or burdens on the state' back to their various colonies or strongly encourage them via the Police or military to move to other Dominions.
That's not something I'd considered but would seem fairly on-brand for his moralistic line of thinking. I'll add that to my notes for the 1920s content!
I wonder if, in future, the ruling branch of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen would consider changing their name to something more localised, like the Windsors did ? Or if they will be happy to keep it as a foreign-sounding name, like the Swedish do?
I understand that the Windsors had their reasons for doing it and it didn't just happen for a laugh, but I'm just trying to envision the future of the Spanish crown and its relationship to Spain in a future where the kingdom is actually doing quite well for itself.
I understand that the Windsors had their reasons for doing it and it didn't just happen for a laugh, but I'm just trying to envision the future of the Spanish crown and its relationship to Spain in a future where the kingdom is actually doing quite well for itself.
Good Q!
My instinct is to say that they wouldn't. Most ruling houses didn't change their foreign sounding names; what the Windsors did was very unique in the context of WW1 and British nationalist sentiment around it. Consider that there's a decent amount of Germanophilia in Spain just as there was IOTL, too. But it's an interesting question of the relationship between monarchy and democracy in a Spain that is actually functional internally in the 1910s/20s; for the Hohenzollerns, it should be said that the monarchist and moderate National Liberals give them the best of both worlds in terms of actual popular legitimacy (via the monarchy not supporting the freakshow Integrists/Mellists on the right) but also a party that defends their interests (via the NatLibs keeping out the freakshow Radicals on the left)
The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
"...politicians pledging their fealty to the National Alliance for Victory - after all, how could one say they were against victory?
The slogan that emblazoned every campaign stop Vardaman made across the Confederacy read "Vardaman for Victory," but nobody really dared ask, in part because they suspected he had no good answer but also because of concerns of what his rabid Red Scarves might do to them in response, what exactly he intended to do to secure such a victory. After all, September and October, the months immediately ahead of the vote, were the months in which what little remained of Confederate control in Tennessee broke apart at Tullahoma and Knoxville and Alabama became threatened for the first time, while in Virginia Lejeune was able to score a major defensive victory at Fredericksburg but his counterattacks fell short of his own stated goals. The Confederacy was struggling to keep up with the industrial production of the North, and now with the sea lanes in the Gulf of Mexico utterly unprotected a blockade that would dramatically tighten over the next year had been imposed on Confederate ports, and by the end of October Mexico would have exited the war, creating even more chaos.
Throughout this, though, the Confederate populace remained lockstep in continued support of the war, in part thanks to the sophisticated propaganda machine from the NAV that promised a slave rebellion that would dwarf the legendary Nat Turner and Jed Ford uprisings. Caricatures of white women carrying mulatto babies were particularly popular, explicitly suggesting that a future in which the Confederacy failed to repel the Yankee was one in which freedmen would impregnate "the daughters and sisters of the noble soldier at will" while implicitly insinuating via the clever use of the word "soldier" that men were fighting for the honor of white women at this point more than anything else. Other pamphlets mused that a Yankee victory would see the Confederacy annexed with Black men appointed "military governors" in perpetuity, or stood aghast in detailing the poverty that the collapse of the slave economy would bring about.
For that reason, Vardaman's rallies drew hundreds if not thousands of people, with an outdoor screed in Atlanta pulling probably close to a third of the city to listen to him speak, and his rallies were often followed by riots and lynchings carried out by his Red Scarf mob that very pointedly attacked suspected naysayers. Though there was not much in the way of organized opposition to Vardaman and his coming election really a fait accompli despite a spirited campaign by Tillmanite protege Senator Oscar Underwood of Alabama, the "we shall win with the bullet box if we cannot win with the ballot box" philosophy that became pervasive amongst reactionary Confederate paramilitary organizations in the late 20th century had its origins in the Red Scarves Movement that increasingly came to inhabit their own reality and increasingly demanded that their fellow citizens inhabit it with them.
A Vardaman speech was a social event as much as a political platform, but there was a kernel of the old Vardaman in them. His speeches expounded at length upon the sacrifice that the common Confederate was making, and much of his motivation to find an "honorable conclusion" to the war seemed just as much tied up in the political realities of the 1915 Confederacy as it did his equating the loss of his son Jake at Nashville to the losses other fathers and mothers around Dixie had felt; he could, quite credibly, suggest to them that he felt and understood their pain and grief. Violent and revanchist as his movement was and cynical as his betrayal of Tillman had been, Vardaman's populist cry to continue the war at all costs did seem to have been grounded in a very real realization that as bad as the war was, whatever would follow in a defeat Confederacy was likely to be worse, a sentiment he shared with his much more sober-minded and rhetorically cautious running mate, George Patton. Thus the struggle was just as much about defeating the enemy as it was about haphazardly gluing together a quickly collapsing social order, and few realized that the Confederacy had about a year left in it until the apocalypse they had feared was upon them..."
- The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
The slogan that emblazoned every campaign stop Vardaman made across the Confederacy read "Vardaman for Victory," but nobody really dared ask, in part because they suspected he had no good answer but also because of concerns of what his rabid Red Scarves might do to them in response, what exactly he intended to do to secure such a victory. After all, September and October, the months immediately ahead of the vote, were the months in which what little remained of Confederate control in Tennessee broke apart at Tullahoma and Knoxville and Alabama became threatened for the first time, while in Virginia Lejeune was able to score a major defensive victory at Fredericksburg but his counterattacks fell short of his own stated goals. The Confederacy was struggling to keep up with the industrial production of the North, and now with the sea lanes in the Gulf of Mexico utterly unprotected a blockade that would dramatically tighten over the next year had been imposed on Confederate ports, and by the end of October Mexico would have exited the war, creating even more chaos.
Throughout this, though, the Confederate populace remained lockstep in continued support of the war, in part thanks to the sophisticated propaganda machine from the NAV that promised a slave rebellion that would dwarf the legendary Nat Turner and Jed Ford uprisings. Caricatures of white women carrying mulatto babies were particularly popular, explicitly suggesting that a future in which the Confederacy failed to repel the Yankee was one in which freedmen would impregnate "the daughters and sisters of the noble soldier at will" while implicitly insinuating via the clever use of the word "soldier" that men were fighting for the honor of white women at this point more than anything else. Other pamphlets mused that a Yankee victory would see the Confederacy annexed with Black men appointed "military governors" in perpetuity, or stood aghast in detailing the poverty that the collapse of the slave economy would bring about.
For that reason, Vardaman's rallies drew hundreds if not thousands of people, with an outdoor screed in Atlanta pulling probably close to a third of the city to listen to him speak, and his rallies were often followed by riots and lynchings carried out by his Red Scarf mob that very pointedly attacked suspected naysayers. Though there was not much in the way of organized opposition to Vardaman and his coming election really a fait accompli despite a spirited campaign by Tillmanite protege Senator Oscar Underwood of Alabama, the "we shall win with the bullet box if we cannot win with the ballot box" philosophy that became pervasive amongst reactionary Confederate paramilitary organizations in the late 20th century had its origins in the Red Scarves Movement that increasingly came to inhabit their own reality and increasingly demanded that their fellow citizens inhabit it with them.
A Vardaman speech was a social event as much as a political platform, but there was a kernel of the old Vardaman in them. His speeches expounded at length upon the sacrifice that the common Confederate was making, and much of his motivation to find an "honorable conclusion" to the war seemed just as much tied up in the political realities of the 1915 Confederacy as it did his equating the loss of his son Jake at Nashville to the losses other fathers and mothers around Dixie had felt; he could, quite credibly, suggest to them that he felt and understood their pain and grief. Violent and revanchist as his movement was and cynical as his betrayal of Tillman had been, Vardaman's populist cry to continue the war at all costs did seem to have been grounded in a very real realization that as bad as the war was, whatever would follow in a defeat Confederacy was likely to be worse, a sentiment he shared with his much more sober-minded and rhetorically cautious running mate, George Patton. Thus the struggle was just as much about defeating the enemy as it was about haphazardly gluing together a quickly collapsing social order, and few realized that the Confederacy had about a year left in it until the apocalypse they had feared was upon them..."
- The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
"What should be done eventually, must be done immediately." If the post-war environment is going to blow, and everyone worth a damn realizes that, then you might as well rip the Band-Aid off now as opposed to later when God only knows how much more death and destruction will occur in the meantime. Not to mention the CSA would likely get more favorable treatment from the USA if they quit in late 1915 as opposed to late 1916.
Then again, I'm not living in a world where my entire way of life will end unless I join the Army and fight like hell.
Still haven't figured out why this is the "Bourbon Restoration" and
Gigantic Sad face on "than became pervasive amongst reactionary Confederate paramilitary organizations in the late 20th century". To me, this means that functionally, the elections from 1916 to 1990 will be less peaceful & free than the ones of the 19th century.
The Central European War
"...most surely did not subscribe to the French concept of Europe Peripherique; in October 1915 a new antagonist for France emerged in the form of Antonio Salandra, an arch-conservative ally of Giolitti who replaced the more experienced Sonnino. Salandra was openly ambitious and really wanted Giolitti's job, and though the two men often did not agree on much, the aging and increasingly embattled Prime Minister viewed a "strongman" in the mold of Salandra as his best potential successor. [1]
Italian attitudes towards Greece, Montenegro and Serbia were hardly progressive or of the view that these countries were her equal - Salandra derisively referred to his counterparts in Belgrade as "the hill people" and Italian public consciousness at the time stereotyped the Balkans as a place where siblings were married to each other - but what Rome offered was at least not strategic subservience at the level of France. By late 1915, especially after the disastrous French elections which badly damaged the Poincare government [2], Serbia in particular was starting to tire of French meddling and the Quai d'Orsay's use of loans to demand foreign policy concessions, with even King Mirko grumbling, "Serbs are not to be bought!" Mirko's closeness to his Montenegrin family swayed them as well, and while Serbia purely by necessity remained the closest of the three independent Balkan states to their longtime patrons in the Iron Triangle, Montenegro began to rapidly explore her options across the Adriatic in following Greece into ever-closer relations with Italy, punctuated by the sumptuous state visit of King Nikola I of Montenegro to Rome in December 1915.
Austria more than France reacted poorly to these developments; Greece's drift into the Italian sphere of influence had already sullied relations with the Ottomans and potentially portended a Greco-Ottoman War as soon as the following year, and now Montenegro and her crucial port at Cattoro seemed to be moving in Italy's direction, with Serbia under Nikola's son Mirko potentially likely to follow. The "Southern Flank" looked by the start of 1916 to potentially be in tatters, and with it the security that underpinned Austria's ability to aim all her guns at Germany and Italy.
This was a fairly strong misreading of the strategic situation in the Balkans - Montenegro in particular was in no condition to go to war with Austria in the 1910s on behalf of Italy - but the developments of 1915, starting with the Greek Naval Act and ending with Nikola's visit at the behest of Giolitti and Salandra, upended longstanding thinking in both Paris and Vienna, and neither reacted particularly pragmatically. France, in particular, doubled down on her policy of using financial support as both diplomatic carrot and stick, only worsening Francophobic sentiments in Podgorica and Belgrade, while also making a series of bellicose notes to Greece that only further convinced Athens that its own naval deterrent was necessary to perhaps counteract French ambitions in the region. To Paris, it was a nightmare scenario - the Ottoman relationship fraying just as Montenegro and Serbia began having their own independent ideas and joining a Greco-Italian alignment that threatened their access to Suez and suzerainty in the Mediterranean. Peripheral as the Balkans may have been to European affairs, and to the Central European War once it actually broke out, the region was fairly central to the insecurities that set France on a path of continued and escalated confrontation over the coming years..."
- The Central European War
[1] Consider this a prelude to an Italy-specific entry
[2] Ditto for France - here we're just tying it all together in context
Italian attitudes towards Greece, Montenegro and Serbia were hardly progressive or of the view that these countries were her equal - Salandra derisively referred to his counterparts in Belgrade as "the hill people" and Italian public consciousness at the time stereotyped the Balkans as a place where siblings were married to each other - but what Rome offered was at least not strategic subservience at the level of France. By late 1915, especially after the disastrous French elections which badly damaged the Poincare government [2], Serbia in particular was starting to tire of French meddling and the Quai d'Orsay's use of loans to demand foreign policy concessions, with even King Mirko grumbling, "Serbs are not to be bought!" Mirko's closeness to his Montenegrin family swayed them as well, and while Serbia purely by necessity remained the closest of the three independent Balkan states to their longtime patrons in the Iron Triangle, Montenegro began to rapidly explore her options across the Adriatic in following Greece into ever-closer relations with Italy, punctuated by the sumptuous state visit of King Nikola I of Montenegro to Rome in December 1915.
Austria more than France reacted poorly to these developments; Greece's drift into the Italian sphere of influence had already sullied relations with the Ottomans and potentially portended a Greco-Ottoman War as soon as the following year, and now Montenegro and her crucial port at Cattoro seemed to be moving in Italy's direction, with Serbia under Nikola's son Mirko potentially likely to follow. The "Southern Flank" looked by the start of 1916 to potentially be in tatters, and with it the security that underpinned Austria's ability to aim all her guns at Germany and Italy.
This was a fairly strong misreading of the strategic situation in the Balkans - Montenegro in particular was in no condition to go to war with Austria in the 1910s on behalf of Italy - but the developments of 1915, starting with the Greek Naval Act and ending with Nikola's visit at the behest of Giolitti and Salandra, upended longstanding thinking in both Paris and Vienna, and neither reacted particularly pragmatically. France, in particular, doubled down on her policy of using financial support as both diplomatic carrot and stick, only worsening Francophobic sentiments in Podgorica and Belgrade, while also making a series of bellicose notes to Greece that only further convinced Athens that its own naval deterrent was necessary to perhaps counteract French ambitions in the region. To Paris, it was a nightmare scenario - the Ottoman relationship fraying just as Montenegro and Serbia began having their own independent ideas and joining a Greco-Italian alignment that threatened their access to Suez and suzerainty in the Mediterranean. Peripheral as the Balkans may have been to European affairs, and to the Central European War once it actually broke out, the region was fairly central to the insecurities that set France on a path of continued and escalated confrontation over the coming years..."
- The Central European War
[1] Consider this a prelude to an Italy-specific entry
[2] Ditto for France - here we're just tying it all together in context