Chapter 311
1865
The Congo
For six months, Armstrong Hyman Thruston had lived within a mud hut in some remote backwater. The Pygmies had little idea what to do with him but assumed that he must be a man of some power given his shocking tumor growing upon his neck. Tiny Pygmy children would poke his flesh throughout the day and the old man suffered endless indignities. While his presence was nominally explained to his servants as intending to "negotiate trade" with the Pygmy elders, Thruston gave up any pretense of this within days. Instead, he merely accepted the mud hut and food. Oddly, the Pygmies didn't press the matter and seemed to accept his new residence without further comment.
He wondered when it would be safe to return to the mouth of the Congo and flee the continent.
Manhattan
King Henry II would personally welcome King Alexei I of Russian North America when he got off the ship. Henry and his First Lord, Abraham Lincoln, would feel that the elevation of Russian North America to a Kingdom in its own right (with Alexei being a nominal vassal of his brother, the Czar Alexander III) would be a good thing for Russian and American relations as it indicated that Russia would be less likely to challenge American interests. A few jingoistic Parliamentarians had long advocated conquest of both Russian America and California but both the King and his First Lord found this naked aggression distasteful and dishonorable and refused to countenance this. However, eliminating the threat of Russian intervention in North America was still considered a good thing.
While it took some doing to find a good translator of English to Russian, the two Kings would eventually manage to communicate.
After all the effort, Henry would seem deem Alexei a vacuous idiot and his wife a shrewish hag. When the people finally boarded the transcontinental train bound for the Gulf of California (from which they would sail to Russian America), Henry breathed a sigh of relief for being rid of them.
He wondered if this was the reason why Czar Alexander was willing to grant Alexei a Kingdom on the other side of the earth? Just to get the younger sibling out of Moscow?
No, that seemed silly but odder things had happened.
The Levant
Over the course of the past decade, both Jews and Christians had been slowly filtering into the Levant. The Jewish population had increased to over 100,000 in the Holy Lands largely due to being inexorably pushed out of Poland (well over a third of the 1,000,000 Polish Jews had been expelled in the past decades and this number was only increasing by the year). While Spanish America, British North America, the French West Indies and the Berber Kingdom all accepted Jewish migration, this was not necessarily the same thing as WELCOMING Jewish migration. The European Muslims which had been resettling in the Southern Levant weren't necessarily happy with this either.
What REALLY slowed Jewish immigration to the Holy Lands was the arrival over over 25,000 Polish Catholics in the region over the past few years (the latest Christian group to migrate). Apparently, there had been a religious reawakening among the Catholics of Europe and the Papacy was now encouraging Catholic settlement of the Holy Lands in order to stake their own claim to being there. The last thing the Jews wanted was to be living with Poles again.
Therefore, by the mid 1860's, the massive wave of Jewish emigration from Poland was go almost completely to Southern Africa, where the East India Company and the Dutch Republic had opened the gates to all European settlers but especially the Jews. The lands east of the Cape Colony would rapidly become overwhelmingly Jewish.
The Congo
For six months, Armstrong Hyman Thruston had lived within a mud hut in some remote backwater. The Pygmies had little idea what to do with him but assumed that he must be a man of some power given his shocking tumor growing upon his neck. Tiny Pygmy children would poke his flesh throughout the day and the old man suffered endless indignities. While his presence was nominally explained to his servants as intending to "negotiate trade" with the Pygmy elders, Thruston gave up any pretense of this within days. Instead, he merely accepted the mud hut and food. Oddly, the Pygmies didn't press the matter and seemed to accept his new residence without further comment.
He wondered when it would be safe to return to the mouth of the Congo and flee the continent.
Manhattan
King Henry II would personally welcome King Alexei I of Russian North America when he got off the ship. Henry and his First Lord, Abraham Lincoln, would feel that the elevation of Russian North America to a Kingdom in its own right (with Alexei being a nominal vassal of his brother, the Czar Alexander III) would be a good thing for Russian and American relations as it indicated that Russia would be less likely to challenge American interests. A few jingoistic Parliamentarians had long advocated conquest of both Russian America and California but both the King and his First Lord found this naked aggression distasteful and dishonorable and refused to countenance this. However, eliminating the threat of Russian intervention in North America was still considered a good thing.
While it took some doing to find a good translator of English to Russian, the two Kings would eventually manage to communicate.
After all the effort, Henry would seem deem Alexei a vacuous idiot and his wife a shrewish hag. When the people finally boarded the transcontinental train bound for the Gulf of California (from which they would sail to Russian America), Henry breathed a sigh of relief for being rid of them.
He wondered if this was the reason why Czar Alexander was willing to grant Alexei a Kingdom on the other side of the earth? Just to get the younger sibling out of Moscow?
No, that seemed silly but odder things had happened.
The Levant
Over the course of the past decade, both Jews and Christians had been slowly filtering into the Levant. The Jewish population had increased to over 100,000 in the Holy Lands largely due to being inexorably pushed out of Poland (well over a third of the 1,000,000 Polish Jews had been expelled in the past decades and this number was only increasing by the year). While Spanish America, British North America, the French West Indies and the Berber Kingdom all accepted Jewish migration, this was not necessarily the same thing as WELCOMING Jewish migration. The European Muslims which had been resettling in the Southern Levant weren't necessarily happy with this either.
What REALLY slowed Jewish immigration to the Holy Lands was the arrival over over 25,000 Polish Catholics in the region over the past few years (the latest Christian group to migrate). Apparently, there had been a religious reawakening among the Catholics of Europe and the Papacy was now encouraging Catholic settlement of the Holy Lands in order to stake their own claim to being there. The last thing the Jews wanted was to be living with Poles again.
Therefore, by the mid 1860's, the massive wave of Jewish emigration from Poland was go almost completely to Southern Africa, where the East India Company and the Dutch Republic had opened the gates to all European settlers but especially the Jews. The lands east of the Cape Colony would rapidly become overwhelmingly Jewish.