1709 Help

I'm thinking of setting a story in 1709, and wondered if my esteemed fellow AH.commers could give me their impressions of this year ?

Marlborough has fought Oudenarde, but not Malplaquet, and both he and his wife just about remain in royal favour

Charles XII is on the crest of a wave heading towards disaster at Poltava

Isaac Newton is still alive, but is he still producing? Is his mind intact ? Who are his contemporaries, rivals and associates ?

Peter The Great, Louis XIV, Eugene of Savoy populate Europe - or more accurately strive to depopulate it!

What's going on in the Americas ? In India ?

How strong is any faction in Britain supporting the Jacobites over the planned Hannoverian succession ?

Which English town or city is major but not vital, that its destruction would be felt but not devastating to the nation ?

Many other trends too! Specifically Europe and its colonies and trade routes really, since that's where events are and whilst China or Japan may be interested, they won't be able to intervene

Any other thoughts and insights ?!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Hmm...well, let's see.

A faction supporting the Jacobins? I'm not sure. William wasn't popular, but is dead now. James II has died and his son is barely 20, and as I recall the Jacobite invasions tended to a combination of French and Jacobite pretender planning, so I'm not sure you could speed up the process much before "the Fifteen" (1715 uprising). I believe the Jacobite supporters are still somewhat on the back foot, too, so I'm not convinced of the Fifteen's ability to succeed. The Forty-five has a much better chance. (Personally I'm not a fan of the Jacobite restoration meme, though :eek:).


In America it seems you have the English colonies just establishing themselves in the form we know them as. 1709 is perfect, indeed, as Carolina is in the throws of confusion over how to appoint a government (some trouble between the Anglican Church and the people apparently)
which leads it to appoint two rival governments in 1710, hence the creation of North and South Carolina. The New Netherlands were ceded to Britain a few decades back, and you have things like Delaware being made a colony in 1704. France, of course, is still in a strong position by this point, but the colonial war can and eventually will (OTL) change that. The colonies are still far more coastal by this point, not stretching off with huge claims in Appalachia and so on as the maps depict for 1775. Spain is in much the same position as it is a century later, but I think at this point the Spanish Colonies are divided into only two Viceroyalties - (New Spain - Mexico and Peru incorporating basically everything south of Panama. There are a couple of Captaincy-Generals (i.e. Cuba) but really the Spanish colonies are at this point huge and hard to administer. Also, in 1709 you've just had the failure of both the Darien Scheme, and a British attempt to overrun and annex Central America.

In India, the UK is still a marginal power - so in fact are all the Europeans. I believe Portugal is pretty well set up in Goa, and the French are about to establish themselves with a decent strip of land around Pondicherry, but really the only Indian possessions owned by Europeans are a few cities and factories here and there.

An English town you could destroy? Maybe Birmingham? Pretty big for the metalworking and gun-making industries there, but not yet a truly vital city. But then I would question how exactly you plan on destroying it.

Trade routes - the main trade route atm is around the south of Africa. For that reason, the Dutch established the Cape Colony there not long before. From there, merchants either go to India or to China - Japan I believe has by this point removed the Catholic Lords and declared itself isolationist. The Spanish send galleons full of gold from their colonies every year (in one big fleet) which the English and Dutch continually try to capture but rarely ever do. Also, the Spanish send a much small convoy, the Manila Fleet, from the Philippines to Spanish America, but that's about the only evidence of cross-Pacific trade. Otherwise, the slave triangle is in full swing.

That's about all I can think of right now.
 
Thank you for the replies

Regarding the Jacobites, I was looking at Harley/Oxford's ministry (the last of Anne's reign) and his manoevrings. Some potential there, tho the POD in the planned story comes 6 years earlier

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
I knew this year seemed familiar!

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html

In 1709 there was remarkable cold weather. I know for instance that Liselotte, wife of Philippe Duc d'Orleans, details in her letters that she felt herself to be freezing inside her palace, wrapped in furs, before a fire. Makes you wonder what it was like for the peasants in the next village over. That and similar anecdotes that pepper accounts of the time bring to mind those crazy library scenes from "The Day After Tomorrow", rendered in baroque.

My own timeline is coming up on 1709 shortly, and I'm wondering if I could manage to actually have the year's weather feature in it in some military feat, whether something like the Great Elector's "Great Sleigh Ride" or Charles X's "March across the belts."

So I don't know what else you may want to do or notice (although the War of the Spanish Succession pretty much has to be factored into your narrative somehow no matter what), but I will say you are going to want to mention the cold, somehow.

I'm thinking of setting a story in 1709, and wondered if my esteemed fellow AH.commers could give me their impressions of this year ?

Marlborough has fought Oudenarde, but not Malplaquet, and both he and his wife just about remain in royal favour

Charles XII is on the crest of a wave heading towards disaster at Poltava

Isaac Newton is still alive, but is he still producing? Is his mind intact ? Who are his contemporaries, rivals and associates ?

Peter The Great, Louis XIV, Eugene of Savoy populate Europe - or more accurately strive to depopulate it!

What's going on in the Americas ? In India ?

How strong is any faction in Britain supporting the Jacobites over the planned Hannoverian succession ?

Which English town or city is major but not vital, that its destruction would be felt but not devastating to the nation ?

Many other trends too! Specifically Europe and its colonies and trade routes really, since that's where events are and whilst China or Japan may be interested, they won't be able to intervene

Any other thoughts and insights ?!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
I'm thinking of setting a story in 1709, and wondered if my esteemed fellow AH.commers could give me their impressions of this year ?


Any other thoughts and insights ?!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
A few thoughts

1709 was an extremely cold winter.

There was famine in France.

Cassard saved Provence from Famine by prtecting a grain convoy with 2 ships against 5 attacking english ones.

There was a protestant rising against Louis XIV in France.
 
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