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It's actually quite likely that Red Finland would have ended up joining the Soviet Union though that was by no means the intention of most of the leadership. It probably would have been, hmm, rather forcefully "encouraged" by the Kremlin in the early 20's. Though one wonders how this would have...

Hmm, are you being ironic? Instead of a direct hit against US targets, this would be a direct hit against dozens of countries and their leaders being relayed live on television around the world. The global impact would certainly be immense. Even in domestic terms that would be crazily effective...

I'm an anglophile and detest that militaristic uber-macho Kaiserreich, but Wilhelm was no Hitler - there was a very strong and very vibrant labour movement allowed for example, a functioning civil society. Sure the army would have been even more honoured, but we are talking about Vilhelmine...

Well, even if it's only Wikipedia this appears quite well sourced and Palmerston really does seem to have been more eager for action, but in itself it's probably not much of an indicator of his fundamental intentions...

Well, actually just a vague memory of his attitudes during the Trent crisis, to be honest - but I do seem to remember that he would have been more active but for the lack of support in the Cabinet. Certainly his initial instincts were for neutrality, that is absolutely true. Will try to dig the...

I think the most important thing is actually the public opinion within the US - Lincoln did have serious opposition and had Gettysburg and Vicksburg turned otherwise or been delayed the elections might have well gone against him. Hard to believe it now but that was the case then. So, in that...

Yep, I suppose that the fact that these states are among the most advanced and progressive societies in the world can blind them to the rather nasty undertones of Scandinavianism. Or, well, maybe not even that nasty, but in some sense quite innocently, unknowingly exlucivist ideas. It is really...

I believe what DrakoFin is aiming to say that seen in this way the term Scandinavia is not based objectively on language or geography. And this leads to rather troubling questions considering which groups can be seen as Scandinavians. Your definition based on citizenship leads to a situation...

He certainly shouldn't have been in charge of a post office not to talk about a huge empire in desperate need of modernization and reform... A good czar in that sense I guess would have been someone who would have been personally capable and intelligent and who would have begun and encouraged...

That would certainly nail it - though the Soviets might in that case claim innocence and provocation and not display him at all. To minimize the damage it would really have to be A) a totally conclusive smoking, or rather a flaming gun and B) the authorities not to go over the top as regards the...

We'll see! I would definitely expect fierce protests from a large part of the Labour Party and the trade unions. This is truly a nightmare situation and badly handled it could easily not only tar the Left but also the Right. Whatever we know of the British Labour movement is that on the whole it...

Great stuff! I wonder though how the news would have been received - in that era the Western security agencies were quite at the nadir of their reputations, and if they were extremely paranoid about their environment, the general society was equally paranoid about them. I think there would have...

Excellent stuff, as always! I think this Swedification of Finland theory might actually make sense - I believe Matti Klinge, a well known Finnish historian, once speculated that without the Russian conquest (which proved to be a very lucky thing for Finland) Swedish might have become a dominant...

That will be most interesting to see! Wales might work as a model, but its relative weight vs England was much smaller than Finland's position in this new Swedish empire and I'm also not convinced that Finnish would be diminished to the extent that Welsh did in Wales (though here earlier...

I'm getting ahead of the events, but I would be quite worried about the situation in Finland: in retrospect the Russian victory proved (quite unexpectedly) to be very lucky for us - we kept our constitution and began to build our own state structures for the very first time. Nationalism rose...

This thread made me, a longtime lurker, to register. Amazing quality and expertise, lovely stuff! As a local I'm naturally interested in the Finnish side of things and there are some fascinating parallels to the Anglo-Irish 19th century that will be interesting to discuss, but of course the gun...