I suppose it's too much to ask for Cixi and her entire clique to be removed from power before they do any more damage to China?
Anyway, I would like to see (in no particular order):
India
Japan
Iran
Pretty much everyone with a Baltic coast.
Cinco de Mayo
- Thread starter KingSweden24
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I suppose it's too much to ask for Cixi and her entire clique to be removed from power before they do any more damage to China?
Anyway, I would like to see (in no particular order):
India
Japan
Iran
Pretty much everyone with a Baltic coast.
I'd like some cultural stuff. Do they play baseball in the USA? What's the literary scene in the CSA? Art in France?
Stuff like that.
Stuff like that.
We had this argument in 1999, we had it in 1899, and we will have it in 2099. But the Australian Federation began on the 1st day of the 20th century, 1 January 1901. It's fine for a cricketer to celebrate making a 100, but surely no one could claim he's begun his 2nd century until he's made his 101st run.
Definitely some good thoughts here on what we can do with Mexico; more of the relationship with Franz Josef as both he and Max are entering their twilights years is something I've been mulling over, too.
Thanks! We'll definitely get more of that as I'll need to robustly cover the leadup to the GAW and make the path to war airtight. And this TL finally has a proper villain in Tillman to feature! Haha.
Thank you! I've got a mental list of places we need to revisit over the next 5-6 years of content but if any in particular seem to be slipping my attention, please don't hesitate to let me know or make a request.
Shoot, Iran (or Persia at this point in time). Yes indeed, that one needs to get covered.
Baseball is planned for some featuring but I can certainly try to flesh out some of the more cultural non-US pieces for sure!
Ah yes, this old debate haha. I remember this debate around Y2K vividly
Part VI: Dawn of a New Century
Part VI: Dawn of a New Century
"...for all the tremendous change and upheaval seen in the 19th century, the 20th was only going to supercharge it; the revolution of industry, electricity, transport and communications in the preceding hundred years was but an appetizer for the incredible inventions, miracles and, yes, atrocities that mankind would release upon itself in the hundred years to come..."
- Understanding the 20th Century (Peking National University, 1999)
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In time, probably yes. I don't have a specific schedule for that plotted out, but Max is an admirer of Napoleon IV (as are most Catholic monarchs to some extent). I would say it is certainly coming sooner or later - maybe even relatively soon!
An Age of Invention: The New Technologies that Shaped the Modern Century
"...the Edison Phonographic Company was by the early turn of the century a genuine monopoly on the recording business - thanks in large part to Edison's aggressive litigation around his patents - and the Orange, New Jersey "Edison Studio" just a short train ride from investors and other notables in New York served not only as a hub for making the recordings that make his name famous but also a center for experimentation of new auditory techniques. Perhaps also as importantly, the considerable profits from the studio and the phonograph factory next door helped underwrite all of Edison's other experiments in electrical engineering (a key component in the business, after all) and other forms of "productive media" that caught his fancy, as well as helping keep his the direct current based electric companies he still owned in the Confederacy afloat, with him stubbornly pouring money into the electrical systems for which he also held patents long after most in the Union and even many down south became convinced of the inferiority of that system..."
- An Age of Invention: The New Technologies that Shaped the Modern Century (1980)
(Author's note: I'm going to experiment with shedding the italics from here on out - hopefully that makes things a little easier to read? Thoughts?)
- An Age of Invention: The New Technologies that Shaped the Modern Century (1980)
(Author's note: I'm going to experiment with shedding the italics from here on out - hopefully that makes things a little easier to read? Thoughts?)
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And so it begins. I wonder what the 20th century holds for this world.
Maybe phase it out in the subsequent updates?
Yeah I'll see what I think after a few of the updates. Might just be a cleaner read!
O Imperio do Futuro: The Rise of Brazil
"...the date of January 8th, 1900 was no accident; it had been five years, precisely, since the attempted putsch against the Emperor by the Riograndense officers and his cousin. The ensuing years of peace had inured Pedro (and his government) to the threat of "the Clique" which still existed deep within the organs of the Army, even if much of its immediate leadership had been executed or exiled. His assassination by bomb, then, was a confluence of factors; of the still-thawing tensions between the palace and the Army and between Army and Navy, of the heightened levels of political violence ongoing in Brazil, and the rudimentary automobile technology of the time, as he was touring Rio de Janeiro with Infanta Sara Isabela in a custom-designed "motorcar" hand-built for him by the Peugeot company of France and the car backfired and broke an axle when the wheel went over the bomb thrown ahead of him and spooked his cavalry escort, making his escape impossible.
Brazil was immediately plunged into mourning and an aura of tragedy. Pedro's younger brother, Dom Luis, was immediately proclaimed Emperor by the Correia Cabinet lest the surprise bombing be followed by a putsch; the city was placed under martial law for precisely that fear. Coming on the heels of the provocative coup attempt five years earlier to the day - an unmistakable message - the assassination of Pedro III led to further purges of the military and empowered the monarchist landowners, industrialists and clergy tremendously; republicanism of any stripe was hounded from polite society, and even the Liberal Party, which was quite monarchist already, took a sharp turn towards reaction as the much more politically inclined Luis I took the throne. Brazil had gone from the disinterested Emperors Pedro II and his grandson to now a much more activist monarch, who had visions for his state as a regional and perhaps even global power and intended to see them through.
The tragedy struck home at the family, too. Dowager Isabel, in France at the time, did not speak to anyone for months, barricading herself at her apartment in Paris. O Preferido was stunned and saddened at his cousin's assassination; exile of the Isabelline branch had always been his aim, after all. But it was the widow who was destroyed worst. The death of her husband and infant daughter caused Empress Maria Annunciata to miscarry her child and nearly die herself in the process; after vacating the palace later in the year, she would return to Europe and spend the rest of her life in an Austrian convent, eventually becoming its abbess, visited first mainly by her uncle Emperor Franz Josef and his successor, her half-brother Emperor Franz Ferdinand (until his abdication and self-imposed exile) [1], as well as her other half-brothers and her younger sister, Elisabeth Amalie (who would predecease her by one year), until later in life, when her presence in Prague became a curiosity to much of European and Brazilian high society. She would die in relative anonymity in 1961, aged 85, and her brief, stern and cloistered time in Brazil was not much-mourned by the public there..."
- O Imperio do Futuro: The Rise of Brazil
[1] Spoilerrrrr
Brazil was immediately plunged into mourning and an aura of tragedy. Pedro's younger brother, Dom Luis, was immediately proclaimed Emperor by the Correia Cabinet lest the surprise bombing be followed by a putsch; the city was placed under martial law for precisely that fear. Coming on the heels of the provocative coup attempt five years earlier to the day - an unmistakable message - the assassination of Pedro III led to further purges of the military and empowered the monarchist landowners, industrialists and clergy tremendously; republicanism of any stripe was hounded from polite society, and even the Liberal Party, which was quite monarchist already, took a sharp turn towards reaction as the much more politically inclined Luis I took the throne. Brazil had gone from the disinterested Emperors Pedro II and his grandson to now a much more activist monarch, who had visions for his state as a regional and perhaps even global power and intended to see them through.
The tragedy struck home at the family, too. Dowager Isabel, in France at the time, did not speak to anyone for months, barricading herself at her apartment in Paris. O Preferido was stunned and saddened at his cousin's assassination; exile of the Isabelline branch had always been his aim, after all. But it was the widow who was destroyed worst. The death of her husband and infant daughter caused Empress Maria Annunciata to miscarry her child and nearly die herself in the process; after vacating the palace later in the year, she would return to Europe and spend the rest of her life in an Austrian convent, eventually becoming its abbess, visited first mainly by her uncle Emperor Franz Josef and his successor, her half-brother Emperor Franz Ferdinand (until his abdication and self-imposed exile) [1], as well as her other half-brothers and her younger sister, Elisabeth Amalie (who would predecease her by one year), until later in life, when her presence in Prague became a curiosity to much of European and Brazilian high society. She would die in relative anonymity in 1961, aged 85, and her brief, stern and cloistered time in Brazil was not much-mourned by the public there..."
- O Imperio do Futuro: The Rise of Brazil
[1] Spoilerrrrr
Looks like Franz gives the double bird to his family and escapes with his true love. Good on him!
He’s going to have a… complex arc. Of all the major players of the soon-to-come Habsburg tragedy, he’s who I’m most excited to write
Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
"...that the Canal Commission returned a unanimous recommendation in favor of the Nicaragua route surprised nobody, least of all the dozen or so agents of the French Empire's military intelligence division (the Deuxieme Bureau) and secret representatives of the Tuileries-cozy Crédit Maritime bank who set about using cajolery, bribery, and even blackmail over the next year to attempt to derail the Senate's consideration of a formal treaty to build a canal along that route. The board of the Crédit Maritime, which had just reemerged from a decade-long malaise after the global financial crisis started on the Paris Bourse, was especially keen to kill "the American option" and make sure its investment in what was now the third iteration of the Panama Canal Company panned out. The Canal Commission Report, publicized in Washington in early February of 1900, made the Nicaraguan route not just a live possibility but seemingly an inevitability, unless the French Empire could defeat it - the future of its most prestigious bank, and securing not one but two of the world's trade chokepoints on behalf of the Marine Imperiale, depended upon it. They went to work quick, taking out anonymous advertisements in the papers of home states of potentially wavering Senators, financing a lurid public relations campaign against Nicaragua that focused heavily on its alleged volcanic activity and the depravity of its President Zelaya, and extorting a handful of Senators with knowledge of extramarital affairs or corruption which they threatened to leak to opposition press.
The agents of influence in America had an unlikely ally - Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, who while not the Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee (that distinction belonged to his friend, William Frye of Maine) was regarded as its most critical and influential member. Lodge had already made a name for himself in nearly a decade in the Senate for exercising robust Senatorial prerogatives and gleefully acting as a thorn in the side of first the Hay administration despite having once been friends with the late President and afterwards escalating his antagonism by emerging as the most aggressive proponent of naval expansion and imperialism in both the Atlantic and Pacific spheres, delaying the consideration of treaties, and demanding an effective veto on nearly every diplomatic and ministerial position that came before the committee on which he sat. [1] As negotiations began with the Zelaya administration of Nicaragua and President Rafael Castro of Costa Rica for a formal treaty now that it was plain the United States would go alone in securing a canal that it held primarily control over and that it could not nudge France out of isthmian Colombia, Lodge intervened, demanding that the Senate be allowed to shape the treaty and making plain to President Foraker that he intended to pursue the treaty's rejection as a matter of principal (despite supporting the Canal project personally) if it did not.
The French were amazed at Lodge's intransigence and could hardly believe their luck that one of the Senate's most die-hard imperialists could, potentially, be their greatest friend in torpedoing what would be a transformative legacy project for the United States, fellow Liberal Foraker in particular. Of course, that was because while they may have understood sex and money (they were French, after all), they had a poor understanding of the internal dynamics of the Liberal Party at the turn of the century and that much of Lodge's stubbornness was over a dispute for control of the party in this new age..."
- Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
[1] He was also, incidentally, a rabid nativist. Much of this type of behavior is lifted wholesale from the John Hay biography, where Lodge repeatedly shanked his former friends Hay and Roosevelt on the Panama treaties simply because he could, and of course he's quite famous for keeping the US out of the League of Nations IOTL. Lodge belongs high on the list of "worst Senators in US history," which is amazing considering how many of his peers and contemporaries in the Senate were literal ex-Confederate generals and white supremacists
The agents of influence in America had an unlikely ally - Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, who while not the Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee (that distinction belonged to his friend, William Frye of Maine) was regarded as its most critical and influential member. Lodge had already made a name for himself in nearly a decade in the Senate for exercising robust Senatorial prerogatives and gleefully acting as a thorn in the side of first the Hay administration despite having once been friends with the late President and afterwards escalating his antagonism by emerging as the most aggressive proponent of naval expansion and imperialism in both the Atlantic and Pacific spheres, delaying the consideration of treaties, and demanding an effective veto on nearly every diplomatic and ministerial position that came before the committee on which he sat. [1] As negotiations began with the Zelaya administration of Nicaragua and President Rafael Castro of Costa Rica for a formal treaty now that it was plain the United States would go alone in securing a canal that it held primarily control over and that it could not nudge France out of isthmian Colombia, Lodge intervened, demanding that the Senate be allowed to shape the treaty and making plain to President Foraker that he intended to pursue the treaty's rejection as a matter of principal (despite supporting the Canal project personally) if it did not.
The French were amazed at Lodge's intransigence and could hardly believe their luck that one of the Senate's most die-hard imperialists could, potentially, be their greatest friend in torpedoing what would be a transformative legacy project for the United States, fellow Liberal Foraker in particular. Of course, that was because while they may have understood sex and money (they were French, after all), they had a poor understanding of the internal dynamics of the Liberal Party at the turn of the century and that much of Lodge's stubbornness was over a dispute for control of the party in this new age..."
- Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
[1] He was also, incidentally, a rabid nativist. Much of this type of behavior is lifted wholesale from the John Hay biography, where Lodge repeatedly shanked his former friends Hay and Roosevelt on the Panama treaties simply because he could, and of course he's quite famous for keeping the US out of the League of Nations IOTL. Lodge belongs high on the list of "worst Senators in US history," which is amazing considering how many of his peers and contemporaries in the Senate were literal ex-Confederate generals and white supremacists
The Aspirants: The Rise of the Liberal Party of the United States
"...Foraker was constitutionally unable to avoid the fault line, though. Hay, as with all the remarkable luck he had had in his meteoric and mercurial political life, [1] had been blessed with two gifts in party management. The first, that in his patrician mores, charmed and bloodless rise to the top of American politics and esoteric literary intellectual interests, he cared little for the rough-and-tumble of internal Liberal politics and may even have regarded such as beneath him; as for the second, that he had comfortably had a foot both in the Ohio machine that he had helped build with his wife's family fortune and in "the Club," the New England Yankee aristocrats who really dominated the party. Foraker, however, had no such privileges; he had fought his way to the top of Ohio politics, no mean feat in its own, and now sat at the President's desk as the "White House," as it was in vogue to start calling the construction site on Pennsylvania Avenue, rose around him, a fresh and new building for a new century. He had driven from the field his intrastate enemies and the party in his home state was undeniably his; key allies of his "Cincinnati Boys" machine sat in the Senate, the Ohio Governor's mansion, and in his old friend William Taft even on the Supreme Court. Even more so than Illinois, it was Ohio that set the standard for Midwestern Liberals, and Foraker was their chieftain.
Of course, this mattered little east of the Hudson. Foraker had spent over five years as presiding officer of the Senate and new the intrigues of the Senate well, and the small clique of Yankees who ran it knew him well in turn; neither particularly cared for the other. The Club did not care for what they saw as uncouth machine bosses who were what they had formed the Liberal Party thirty years earlier to combat, rising out of the ashes of Salmon Chase's corrupt, patronage-driven Republican Party to pursue a new intellectual project. Never mind, of course, that New England was controlled just as much by a machine of their own making, perhaps one even worse than the urban ones; Liberal Caucus leader William Sprague IV effectively held the Rhode Island legislature as his private fiefdom to continue reelecting him (when he died in September of 1915 he would have served fifty-two-and-a-half years in the Senate continuously, a record of service that stands to today) [2], while Vermont's Redfield Proctor was the founder of a familial dynasty in the Green Mountain State that would make many Confederate, Mexican or Chinese political kingdoms blush. The Club sensed, actively, that it was losing its power; Sprague's leadership in the caucus was being questioned, it was taken for granted that former Senator George F. Hoar would not be asked to return as Secretary of State if the Liberals held the Presidency after November, Foraker had already helped push out Speaker Reed, a Mainer, and the administration in its eagerness to secure a Canal Treaty seemed keen to trod on coveted Senatorial privileges with the negotiations with Zelaya and Castro, circumventing both William Frye (also of Maine and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a rigid conservative both in politics and in deference to decorum) and, even worse, the boundlessly ambitious and easily offended Henry Cabot Lodge.
Lodge saw in the treaty negotiations an opportunity to remind Foraker that the Senate was an equal branch to the Presidency on foreign policy, though he did, in the end, want a canal secured. More importantly, though, he saw it as a method to outmaneuver his home-state rival - the earnestly idealistic Hoar, in charge of settling on an acceptable treaty, whose progressive nephew Sherman was serving concurrently in the Senate with Lodge and was a thorn in his side regarding control of their state party and the concomitant patronage. To kneecap and humiliate Hoar was to reestablish his dominance in Massachusetts, and it was an opportunity Lodge would not give up. Indeed, destroying Hoar's credibility with the Senate caucus could potentially also leave an opening for a new Secretary of State; if not Lodge himself, then perhaps elder statesman Frye, opening up the lucrative Chairmanship?
Foraker, for his part, was unamused. He had warned Hay repeatedly not to indulge Lodge over the years and had been frustrated that Lodge had nearly derailed the Spanish-American Reciprocity Treaty two years prior; that the Club's members (which included Hoar, whom Foraker did not particularly like - one rare thing besides a love for the Navy that he and Lodge had in common) seemed to care more about their personal home-state piques than a legacy-defining win for his Presidency and the Party ahead of what promised to be a tough election that fall, maddened a man who's life had been focused on delivering in the service of winning to no end..."
- The Aspirants: The Rise of the Liberal Party of the United States
[1] Besides, uh, that one thing at the very end
[2] This would beat out any OTL US Senator if we're just counting Senate service, btw. Yes, even the Robert Byrds and James Stennises of the world.
Of course, this mattered little east of the Hudson. Foraker had spent over five years as presiding officer of the Senate and new the intrigues of the Senate well, and the small clique of Yankees who ran it knew him well in turn; neither particularly cared for the other. The Club did not care for what they saw as uncouth machine bosses who were what they had formed the Liberal Party thirty years earlier to combat, rising out of the ashes of Salmon Chase's corrupt, patronage-driven Republican Party to pursue a new intellectual project. Never mind, of course, that New England was controlled just as much by a machine of their own making, perhaps one even worse than the urban ones; Liberal Caucus leader William Sprague IV effectively held the Rhode Island legislature as his private fiefdom to continue reelecting him (when he died in September of 1915 he would have served fifty-two-and-a-half years in the Senate continuously, a record of service that stands to today) [2], while Vermont's Redfield Proctor was the founder of a familial dynasty in the Green Mountain State that would make many Confederate, Mexican or Chinese political kingdoms blush. The Club sensed, actively, that it was losing its power; Sprague's leadership in the caucus was being questioned, it was taken for granted that former Senator George F. Hoar would not be asked to return as Secretary of State if the Liberals held the Presidency after November, Foraker had already helped push out Speaker Reed, a Mainer, and the administration in its eagerness to secure a Canal Treaty seemed keen to trod on coveted Senatorial privileges with the negotiations with Zelaya and Castro, circumventing both William Frye (also of Maine and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a rigid conservative both in politics and in deference to decorum) and, even worse, the boundlessly ambitious and easily offended Henry Cabot Lodge.
Lodge saw in the treaty negotiations an opportunity to remind Foraker that the Senate was an equal branch to the Presidency on foreign policy, though he did, in the end, want a canal secured. More importantly, though, he saw it as a method to outmaneuver his home-state rival - the earnestly idealistic Hoar, in charge of settling on an acceptable treaty, whose progressive nephew Sherman was serving concurrently in the Senate with Lodge and was a thorn in his side regarding control of their state party and the concomitant patronage. To kneecap and humiliate Hoar was to reestablish his dominance in Massachusetts, and it was an opportunity Lodge would not give up. Indeed, destroying Hoar's credibility with the Senate caucus could potentially also leave an opening for a new Secretary of State; if not Lodge himself, then perhaps elder statesman Frye, opening up the lucrative Chairmanship?
Foraker, for his part, was unamused. He had warned Hay repeatedly not to indulge Lodge over the years and had been frustrated that Lodge had nearly derailed the Spanish-American Reciprocity Treaty two years prior; that the Club's members (which included Hoar, whom Foraker did not particularly like - one rare thing besides a love for the Navy that he and Lodge had in common) seemed to care more about their personal home-state piques than a legacy-defining win for his Presidency and the Party ahead of what promised to be a tough election that fall, maddened a man who's life had been focused on delivering in the service of winning to no end..."
- The Aspirants: The Rise of the Liberal Party of the United States
[1] Besides, uh, that one thing at the very end
[2] This would beat out any OTL US Senator if we're just counting Senate service, btw. Yes, even the Robert Byrds and James Stennises of the world.
The normal, non-italicized font is easier to read for larger updates like the last one. And yes, Lodge was an absolute disaster. Don't get me wrong, Wilson botched the hell out of the League of Nations negotiations (inviting a token Republican to go with him to Versailles would have smoothed a lot of feathers but Wilson was nothing if not headstrong and stubborn) but Lodge was a special combination of short-sighted and obstinate in his own right.
Always struck me as a bit sad that very few of the architects of WWI and the Paris Peace Process died before they could see the complete failures their efforts caused. Lodge, Wilson, Clemenceau, Ludendorff, Hindenberg, Foch and many more all died before they could see WWII. Would have been more fitting if they were still alive to see how completely and utterly they screwed up. But, as is usually the case, it is the next generation who has to clean up the messes of the past generation.
Love how the Liberals are basically knifing each other in the dark...yet they'll still win the Presidency and Senate in 1900 and dominate politics until at least 1920 🙄🙄
Anyway, speaking of crusty, long-tenured, turn of the century politicians...what's Uncle Joe Cannon up to?
Always struck me as a bit sad that very few of the architects of WWI and the Paris Peace Process died before they could see the complete failures their efforts caused. Lodge, Wilson, Clemenceau, Ludendorff, Hindenberg, Foch and many more all died before they could see WWII. Would have been more fitting if they were still alive to see how completely and utterly they screwed up. But, as is usually the case, it is the next generation who has to clean up the messes of the past generation.
Love how the Liberals are basically knifing each other in the dark...yet they'll still win the Presidency and Senate in 1900 and dominate politics until at least 1920 🙄🙄
Anyway, speaking of crusty, long-tenured, turn of the century politicians...what's Uncle Joe Cannon up to?
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