Teleology
Banned
This is from the "Just For Fun" version (kind of like Zorro's version of California that has waaay too many people for being still Don ruled), but the Kalifornien border should be correct (you can ignore the other geographic entities on the map if you wish, starting with SoCal including Baja):
Oh, and here is an excerpt about the literary New Western genre from this alternate world (again, while the reference to the mythical literary version of the place and period helps alleviate some problems, even the factual background at the beginning is 'just for fun' and will probably offend your senses'. Zollverein wank, early Canal, etc.):
The Neu-Westen genre reflects a deep nostalgia for a poetic version of the Ruée Pour Le Monde period in which the world powers competed in China, Africa, and the Americas during a time when the United States was suffering two devastating civil wars within a little more than twenty years of each other. A time when the Zollverein encompassed all of those European nations in competition with Britain and France (save for Spain, the rump state of Austria which lost its empire in the process, and Sweden which could not be kept under the same roof as Denmark at this time; and even including the Ottoman Empire) and leveraged itself towards world empire. Out of the powers Britain, France, and the Zollverein were surely the frontrunners; as emblemified in each controlling a third of the Nicaragua Canal; with the Swedish-Russian alliance and Japan more interested in fighting each other over Korea while the main three recieved the best concessions in China proper.
With the Nicaragua Canal in place and the US recovering from its first civil war, the Kalifornien Purchase by Prussia in 1843 was a timely endeavor indeed. At the time they thought they had only a brief while before the States became prominent again and reached the West Coast; but fortunatly a financial panic delayed the Yankees and then, as if by a cruel joke, their second civil war broke out. This freed the Western statelets (Deutsch-Kalifornien, the Southern California Bear Flag Republic, Oregon Country, and Texas) from the pressure of the United States' supposed Manifest Destiny and gave the European Powers a revived interest in meddling all throughout the Americas.
Of course the New West genre tends to blend the most exciting crises and events of the West into a single nebulous point when in fact we are talking about decades. In the historical romances, the advanced state of later Kalifornien coincides with the existence of all of the pre-California-War statelets, even though in reality by that time some of them had disappeared. No, in those novels the Royalist Mexicans are always locked in conflict with Juarez, the Bear Flag Republic is always building an army to take the North, Oregon is always a corporate fiefdom of the Hudson Bay Company (which was taken over by shareholders local to the region, who switched to timber and other materials in a timely manner when the bottom dropped out of the fur market). Similarly, the Colorado Territory is always full of Mormons and Apaches and deeply contested by all of the statelets and colonial powers; and the precise ownership of Baja is never clear either.
But who are the characters occupying this exciting world? Of course, ironic for what was technically a Prussian colony, the single most famous semi-historical man of Kalifornien was a smallholder, an independent farmer and outspoken member of the Grange, from a Bavarian family. But that great literary (and historical) figure needs no introduction. Instead let us examine another seminal character, more often a supporting cast member than the leading man, and also not a Prussian. Here is what the professor of history and literature Henry Vorbeck has to say on the subject:
"While the Elect Families had been formed from Eastern kingdom Junkers and the newly entitled early German families of Old San Francisco, who had arrived with the Russian-American Company in 1813, the bourgeoisie families they invited into the wine country with them to serve as advisers and companions came from liberal society (to be ministers and tutors) and hearty Volga German stock (to be instructors in horsemanship and to serve as cavalrymen under the command of the young men of the Elect Families). As a whole the Elect Families and their upper class attendants became known as Vinokrats, after the wonderful vineyards in the counties around the Deutsch-Kalifornien capitol of Friedrichsgarten.
Winkus Updyke, son of a Dutch liberal appointed to be a Kalifornien financial administrator, is presented in the tales as the iconic representation of the young male Vinokrat; a cocky horseman and dashing figure within the adventurous coterie of Georg von Plotzkau (a real figure, the wild second son of the Plotzkau, one of the Elect Families farther from the Governorship than some)."
Oh, and here is an excerpt about the literary New Western genre from this alternate world (again, while the reference to the mythical literary version of the place and period helps alleviate some problems, even the factual background at the beginning is 'just for fun' and will probably offend your senses'. Zollverein wank, early Canal, etc.):
The Neu-Westen genre reflects a deep nostalgia for a poetic version of the Ruée Pour Le Monde period in which the world powers competed in China, Africa, and the Americas during a time when the United States was suffering two devastating civil wars within a little more than twenty years of each other. A time when the Zollverein encompassed all of those European nations in competition with Britain and France (save for Spain, the rump state of Austria which lost its empire in the process, and Sweden which could not be kept under the same roof as Denmark at this time; and even including the Ottoman Empire) and leveraged itself towards world empire. Out of the powers Britain, France, and the Zollverein were surely the frontrunners; as emblemified in each controlling a third of the Nicaragua Canal; with the Swedish-Russian alliance and Japan more interested in fighting each other over Korea while the main three recieved the best concessions in China proper.
With the Nicaragua Canal in place and the US recovering from its first civil war, the Kalifornien Purchase by Prussia in 1843 was a timely endeavor indeed. At the time they thought they had only a brief while before the States became prominent again and reached the West Coast; but fortunatly a financial panic delayed the Yankees and then, as if by a cruel joke, their second civil war broke out. This freed the Western statelets (Deutsch-Kalifornien, the Southern California Bear Flag Republic, Oregon Country, and Texas) from the pressure of the United States' supposed Manifest Destiny and gave the European Powers a revived interest in meddling all throughout the Americas.
Of course the New West genre tends to blend the most exciting crises and events of the West into a single nebulous point when in fact we are talking about decades. In the historical romances, the advanced state of later Kalifornien coincides with the existence of all of the pre-California-War statelets, even though in reality by that time some of them had disappeared. No, in those novels the Royalist Mexicans are always locked in conflict with Juarez, the Bear Flag Republic is always building an army to take the North, Oregon is always a corporate fiefdom of the Hudson Bay Company (which was taken over by shareholders local to the region, who switched to timber and other materials in a timely manner when the bottom dropped out of the fur market). Similarly, the Colorado Territory is always full of Mormons and Apaches and deeply contested by all of the statelets and colonial powers; and the precise ownership of Baja is never clear either.
But who are the characters occupying this exciting world? Of course, ironic for what was technically a Prussian colony, the single most famous semi-historical man of Kalifornien was a smallholder, an independent farmer and outspoken member of the Grange, from a Bavarian family. But that great literary (and historical) figure needs no introduction. Instead let us examine another seminal character, more often a supporting cast member than the leading man, and also not a Prussian. Here is what the professor of history and literature Henry Vorbeck has to say on the subject:
"While the Elect Families had been formed from Eastern kingdom Junkers and the newly entitled early German families of Old San Francisco, who had arrived with the Russian-American Company in 1813, the bourgeoisie families they invited into the wine country with them to serve as advisers and companions came from liberal society (to be ministers and tutors) and hearty Volga German stock (to be instructors in horsemanship and to serve as cavalrymen under the command of the young men of the Elect Families). As a whole the Elect Families and their upper class attendants became known as Vinokrats, after the wonderful vineyards in the counties around the Deutsch-Kalifornien capitol of Friedrichsgarten.
Winkus Updyke, son of a Dutch liberal appointed to be a Kalifornien financial administrator, is presented in the tales as the iconic representation of the young male Vinokrat; a cocky horseman and dashing figure within the adventurous coterie of Georg von Plotzkau (a real figure, the wild second son of the Plotzkau, one of the Elect Families farther from the Governorship than some)."