Retcon it, goes back and erase those paragraphs..if anything could be a butterfly for spain, they re vassalize or later on annex again Dominica.
Cinco de Mayo
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
- Status
Went back and made an easy Retcon to Santo Domingo - the US leases St. Thomas from Denmark instead, as there was mutual interest on that in OTL and it sets it up nicely for Denmark to eventually just sell the islands to the US, much like they wanted to do in the 1860s OTL anyways.
Maximilian of Mexico
"...the pirate ship was finally intercepted by the USS Mohican in the Boca Teacapan, where the Forward was boarded and seized under suppressing fire, and then burned lest the ship be recaptured by other pirates [1]. The event, a minor skirmish between pirates and the US Pacific Squadron - soon to be upgraded to the US Pacific Fleet - was a fairly anodyne event, had it not occurred in Mexican waters the same month the Maximilian was to christen the screw sloop Texcoco that was to be the flagship of the Mexican Imperial Navy's Pacific Squadron in Acapulco. News of the seizure of the US customs house in Guaymas and the subsequent capture of the pirates was a minor embarrassment that did little to damage Maximilian domestically, but the Emperor - who viewed the navy as his personal pet project, its importance secondary only to the expansion of railroads in his Plan Nacional - was outraged. Mexico had, in fact, ordered four sloops to serve as the keystones of their modernized fleet, ordered from French shipyards in mined silver three years prior upon the announcement of the Plan Nacional. Maximilian had expected his ships within the year, and though he understood that French attention had been elsewhere during the 1867 war with Prussia, the lengthy delay of the ship deliveries, including the French government buying the ships intended for Mexico more than once in breach of contract, had already brought his blood to boil. Here he was now, in the summer of 1870, and only one of the ships had arrived, curiously sailed around the Horn to Acapulco rather than to Veracruz as he had initially hoped.
The episode thus was the final breaking point for Maximilian, who particularly despised the French envoy to Mexico, General George Albert Bazaine [2], a nephew of the powerful Marshal Francois Bazaine who headed the Foreign Legion encampment. General Bazaine, a bright military mind and innovator respected at home, had irked the Emperor on numerous social occasions including by becoming belligerently drunk at the feast to celebrate the baptism of Prince Jose Francisco and Maximilian considered it an insult that Napoleon III continued to conduct diplomacy with Mexico via the Foreign Legion rather than a formal minister. After appointing the eldest of his adoptive sons Salvador, Prince of Iturbide, as the Admiral of the Pacific Squadron and seeing off the Texcoco, Maximilian came close to ordering the expulsion of the French Foreign Legion, but was persuaded against it only by a late intervention by Minister Vidaurri and the British envoy, Peter Campbell Scarlett. Still, the Boca Teacapan Affair would mark the end of Maximilian accepting the French view of Mexico as a client state - he would refuse to meet General Bazaine as an envoy from then on, continuing to insist on a formal diplomat to be assigned to the French embassy, a position which soured views of Mexico in France as well. As the Panic of 1870 began in the United States that same month, French direct investment in Mexico dried up considerably over the next decade, and despite both having a policy of free trade, the economic relationship of the two states - seemingly so intertwined but eight years prior after the victory at Puebla - would never be as close, leading to considerable effects down the road - most notably, in the continued pursuit by France and other powers of an alternative to the Tehuantepec Railway..."
- Maximilian of Mexico
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Boca_Teacapan
[2] Here having not taken the Hayter surname as Marshal Bazaine was never sprung from prison by that family
The episode thus was the final breaking point for Maximilian, who particularly despised the French envoy to Mexico, General George Albert Bazaine [2], a nephew of the powerful Marshal Francois Bazaine who headed the Foreign Legion encampment. General Bazaine, a bright military mind and innovator respected at home, had irked the Emperor on numerous social occasions including by becoming belligerently drunk at the feast to celebrate the baptism of Prince Jose Francisco and Maximilian considered it an insult that Napoleon III continued to conduct diplomacy with Mexico via the Foreign Legion rather than a formal minister. After appointing the eldest of his adoptive sons Salvador, Prince of Iturbide, as the Admiral of the Pacific Squadron and seeing off the Texcoco, Maximilian came close to ordering the expulsion of the French Foreign Legion, but was persuaded against it only by a late intervention by Minister Vidaurri and the British envoy, Peter Campbell Scarlett. Still, the Boca Teacapan Affair would mark the end of Maximilian accepting the French view of Mexico as a client state - he would refuse to meet General Bazaine as an envoy from then on, continuing to insist on a formal diplomat to be assigned to the French embassy, a position which soured views of Mexico in France as well. As the Panic of 1870 began in the United States that same month, French direct investment in Mexico dried up considerably over the next decade, and despite both having a policy of free trade, the economic relationship of the two states - seemingly so intertwined but eight years prior after the victory at Puebla - would never be as close, leading to considerable effects down the road - most notably, in the continued pursuit by France and other powers of an alternative to the Tehuantepec Railway..."
- Maximilian of Mexico
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Boca_Teacapan
[2] Here having not taken the Hayter surname as Marshal Bazaine was never sprung from prison by that family
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Siam in the Colonial Age
"...1870 was an important year, for it was the year in which the young Chulalongkorn, ruling Siam as Rama V, toured first British Singapore and then, on his way home to Bangkok, stopped to meet with Generalresident Prince Luitpold in Kampot. It was there that the Siamese King, who would be as important in reforming and Westernizing his country as Meiji was to Japan, observed modern administrative practices and their advantages, and in striking up a what would begin a decade-long friendship with the older Bavarian, ensured that in Germany Siam would always have an advocate when it came to her affairs in Europe..."
- Siam in the Colonial Age (University of Bonn, 1955)
- Siam in the Colonial Age (University of Bonn, 1955)
So the King and I here are the young adventures a siamese prince(Later king) and a german counterpart?
Good reference! Yes, that would make for a good butterfly, have that be the plot of the musical instead being about Mongkut and the prince's tutor
Very interesting update!!! So Germany isn't going to bite off chunks of Siam like France did OTL. This means at the very least (assuming France and Britain take their OTL chunks) Siam keeps a good chunk of western Cambodia including Siem Reap and the Angkor Wat and maybe the Champassak region in southern Laos. Germany as an ally may even prevent certain regions being taken by the British and French or at least reduce the land lost to Siam.
I was actually just thinking about this, granted that we're still 20 years out from what you're referring to. As of right now, I am thinking that Siem Reap and Angkor Wat eventually get included in Deutsche Kambodscha (ethnic nationalism and all that) but how we get there will be different from OTL... still, too far out for me to really extrapolate. I haven't even really planned much past the end of 1871 to be honest haha, that's part of the fun
Panic: Understanding the Great Depression of the Late 19th Century
"...arguments persist to this day whether the Great Depression, generally regarded as lasting from 1870-1893, was indeed a formal depression or merely a change in the global economy so profound and radical in its scope and reach that those left behind in its wake see it as such. The overlap of this period with times of profound political change - the unification of Germany and Italy, the independence of the Confederate States and renewed geopolitical intrigues in the Americas, colonialism in Asia and Africa - with the Second Industrial Revolution, the greatest change in science, communication and transportation until the Information Age, leans more to the latter camp [1].
The beginning of the Great Depression is widely viewed as being the Panic of 1870 in the summer of that year, starting in the United States but spreading rapidly to Europe, where the Depression would be felt most critically in Britain. A number of factors caused the Panic: the US economy had never properly digested the end of the War of Confederate Independence, and a severe depression in 1863 and 1864 combined with a collapse in currency values was followed by the inflationary Presidency of Horatio Seymour, who despite his "hard money" sympathies did nothing to curtail the circulation of greenbacks in the new national banking system that was designed to cope with the needs of the war. In the immediate postwar era, in a frenzy to connect New York to San Francisco, a railroad bubble spread across the United States, driven by easy loans and dubious investors. The anticipation of the Naval Act of 1869 also drove investments in shipyards and steel factories in the latter half of the Seymour administration, so by the time his successor Salmon Chase was inaugurated and the Naval Act passed swiftly, the bubble was fully inflated [2].
The pop, as it were, came in Chase's laudable efforts to deinflate the currency, in which the former Secretary of the Treasury - who ostensibly knew what he was doing and had indeed designed the financial system ten years earlier that was now causing rampant inflation - took a three pronged measure. One, Congress passed the Specie Resumption Act, in which Chase - otherwise a radical Republican - caved to conservative interests in setting January 1, 1879 as the date for the full and total return of the United States to the gold standard. Worried in the meantime about financial instability and war debts, he had his Treasury Secretary, George Boutwell, sell gold in monthly increments to pay down the debt rapidly in order to free up government finances for the new Navy. As his second measure, Chase - an old Whig of the Henry Clay school, despite his friendliness with Democrats - encouraged Congress to reinstate the Hamiltonian Bank of the United States as a single national bank. Of the mind that the lack of a national bank was the cause of the frequent panics of the antebellum period, Chase's idea was to consolidate the national banks established during the war into an entity with chartered branches across the country that could lend to other nationally chartered private banks in partnership with the Treasury. The passage of the Bank of the United States Charter in May of 1870 provided for a 25-year charter for a Bank of the United States to be headquartered in Philadelphia in the building the pre-Jacksonian National Bank had been in, with a Presidentially-appointed and Senate-approved Bank President who would govern with a 6-member board to be elected by the Bank's shareholders. The United States government was statutorily obligated to at minimum hold a 25% stake of shares in the BUS. The reconstitution of the Third Bank of the United States was a compromise with the soft money faction of the Republican Party that was suspicious of moneyed eastern interests, and to avoid the issues of the bank becoming a "fourth branch" unanswerable to Congress or to the shareholders, the charter set a term of 5 years for the bank's President, nonrenewable, and board terms would be six years, non-renewable, requiring a frequent turning of bank leadership to avoid corruption.
To continue with this forging on of overhauling the national financial system, Chase caved to the suggestion of his friend Senator John Sherman, a fellow Ohioan and the state's most prominent politician beyond Chase himself, and helped push the Coinage Act of 1870 through after a review the previous year by Secretary Boutwell on the potential impacts of new silver mines in the West that would endanger the gold standard and reinflate the currency during the decade-long process the Treasury would pursue to alleviate it. It was also viewed as a hedge against a future Democratic President attempting to end the gold standard late in the decade. The Coinage Act eliminated three low-denomination coins and ended the minting of silver dollars. It would be signed into law on June 23rd, 1870; a Thursday [3].
The following Monday, the gold market in New York was cornered, part of a nine-month plot by financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk and a handful of associates (including speculator Abel Corbin, a man of little fame other than his marriage to former Union General and 1864 Republican candidate Ulysses Grant, and thus a man with modest connections in Congress) to corner the gold market [4]. The so called "Gold Ring" had driven up the price of gold during the month of June and sold out on Monday June 27th, known afterwards as Black Monday. The Treasury had responded to a rise in the gold price by selling off more of their gold stock as part of their debt reduction load, and when the price corrected the value of the US currency was perceived to collapse suddenly with it, especially with the silver dollar coins being declared to be no longer legal tender within the national banking system unless tendered for other currency - gold or greenbacks, in this case, which was not on immediate supply. The sudden collapse of the US currency led to a bank run, punctuated most ironically with several banks finding angry mobs at their doors on July 3rd, immediately before the Independence Day holiday. Insufficient currency for paying bonds popped the railroad bubble and led to the failure of a number of major American banks, most prominently Jay Cooke & Company, the largest of them all [5]..."
- Panic: Understanding the Great Depression of the Late 19th Century (Harvard School of Economics, 1971)
[1] Economists to this day argue about whether it was actually a "depression" or just a structural shift in the global economy
[2] There's not much disagreement though that the Panic of 1873, here three years early ITTL, was caused by an inflationary cycle followed by a very severe deflationary cycle. See: 1990s Japan
[3] Specie Resumption and Coinage Acts were real laws - here, a former Secretary of the Treasury in the White House decides to try to package all these structural changes at once
[4] Nine months later since these assholes didn't have Corbin's brother in law in the White House to influence, so they have to take their time cornering the market. Putting the OTL Black Friday of 1869 in tandem with the real inflation bubble popping a few years early as well as tied into a sudden deflationary currency crunch made too much sense to me
[5] Real company that failed IOTL due to railroad speculation and overleveraging, essentially the biggest bank in the country failing. Think of this as Washington Mutual in 2008 failing, only without a bailout, and worse. Fails ITTL too for same reasons
The beginning of the Great Depression is widely viewed as being the Panic of 1870 in the summer of that year, starting in the United States but spreading rapidly to Europe, where the Depression would be felt most critically in Britain. A number of factors caused the Panic: the US economy had never properly digested the end of the War of Confederate Independence, and a severe depression in 1863 and 1864 combined with a collapse in currency values was followed by the inflationary Presidency of Horatio Seymour, who despite his "hard money" sympathies did nothing to curtail the circulation of greenbacks in the new national banking system that was designed to cope with the needs of the war. In the immediate postwar era, in a frenzy to connect New York to San Francisco, a railroad bubble spread across the United States, driven by easy loans and dubious investors. The anticipation of the Naval Act of 1869 also drove investments in shipyards and steel factories in the latter half of the Seymour administration, so by the time his successor Salmon Chase was inaugurated and the Naval Act passed swiftly, the bubble was fully inflated [2].
The pop, as it were, came in Chase's laudable efforts to deinflate the currency, in which the former Secretary of the Treasury - who ostensibly knew what he was doing and had indeed designed the financial system ten years earlier that was now causing rampant inflation - took a three pronged measure. One, Congress passed the Specie Resumption Act, in which Chase - otherwise a radical Republican - caved to conservative interests in setting January 1, 1879 as the date for the full and total return of the United States to the gold standard. Worried in the meantime about financial instability and war debts, he had his Treasury Secretary, George Boutwell, sell gold in monthly increments to pay down the debt rapidly in order to free up government finances for the new Navy. As his second measure, Chase - an old Whig of the Henry Clay school, despite his friendliness with Democrats - encouraged Congress to reinstate the Hamiltonian Bank of the United States as a single national bank. Of the mind that the lack of a national bank was the cause of the frequent panics of the antebellum period, Chase's idea was to consolidate the national banks established during the war into an entity with chartered branches across the country that could lend to other nationally chartered private banks in partnership with the Treasury. The passage of the Bank of the United States Charter in May of 1870 provided for a 25-year charter for a Bank of the United States to be headquartered in Philadelphia in the building the pre-Jacksonian National Bank had been in, with a Presidentially-appointed and Senate-approved Bank President who would govern with a 6-member board to be elected by the Bank's shareholders. The United States government was statutorily obligated to at minimum hold a 25% stake of shares in the BUS. The reconstitution of the Third Bank of the United States was a compromise with the soft money faction of the Republican Party that was suspicious of moneyed eastern interests, and to avoid the issues of the bank becoming a "fourth branch" unanswerable to Congress or to the shareholders, the charter set a term of 5 years for the bank's President, nonrenewable, and board terms would be six years, non-renewable, requiring a frequent turning of bank leadership to avoid corruption.
To continue with this forging on of overhauling the national financial system, Chase caved to the suggestion of his friend Senator John Sherman, a fellow Ohioan and the state's most prominent politician beyond Chase himself, and helped push the Coinage Act of 1870 through after a review the previous year by Secretary Boutwell on the potential impacts of new silver mines in the West that would endanger the gold standard and reinflate the currency during the decade-long process the Treasury would pursue to alleviate it. It was also viewed as a hedge against a future Democratic President attempting to end the gold standard late in the decade. The Coinage Act eliminated three low-denomination coins and ended the minting of silver dollars. It would be signed into law on June 23rd, 1870; a Thursday [3].
The following Monday, the gold market in New York was cornered, part of a nine-month plot by financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk and a handful of associates (including speculator Abel Corbin, a man of little fame other than his marriage to former Union General and 1864 Republican candidate Ulysses Grant, and thus a man with modest connections in Congress) to corner the gold market [4]. The so called "Gold Ring" had driven up the price of gold during the month of June and sold out on Monday June 27th, known afterwards as Black Monday. The Treasury had responded to a rise in the gold price by selling off more of their gold stock as part of their debt reduction load, and when the price corrected the value of the US currency was perceived to collapse suddenly with it, especially with the silver dollar coins being declared to be no longer legal tender within the national banking system unless tendered for other currency - gold or greenbacks, in this case, which was not on immediate supply. The sudden collapse of the US currency led to a bank run, punctuated most ironically with several banks finding angry mobs at their doors on July 3rd, immediately before the Independence Day holiday. Insufficient currency for paying bonds popped the railroad bubble and led to the failure of a number of major American banks, most prominently Jay Cooke & Company, the largest of them all [5]..."
- Panic: Understanding the Great Depression of the Late 19th Century (Harvard School of Economics, 1971)
[1] Economists to this day argue about whether it was actually a "depression" or just a structural shift in the global economy
[2] There's not much disagreement though that the Panic of 1873, here three years early ITTL, was caused by an inflationary cycle followed by a very severe deflationary cycle. See: 1990s Japan
[3] Specie Resumption and Coinage Acts were real laws - here, a former Secretary of the Treasury in the White House decides to try to package all these structural changes at once
[4] Nine months later since these assholes didn't have Corbin's brother in law in the White House to influence, so they have to take their time cornering the market. Putting the OTL Black Friday of 1869 in tandem with the real inflation bubble popping a few years early as well as tied into a sudden deflationary currency crunch made too much sense to me
[5] Real company that failed IOTL due to railroad speculation and overleveraging, essentially the biggest bank in the country failing. Think of this as Washington Mutual in 2008 failing, only without a bailout, and worse. Fails ITTL too for same reasons
History trully repeat at times, of course FIAT currency make 2008 very easy to avoid and yeah for some economist there was not long depression, just a shift of value from metal to species/power will take till bretton woods to happen and nixon to be defacto, still amazing update buddy, this should be studied more in economics story too
The Republicans: A History
"...the Panic of 1870 and Great Depression, coupled with the myriad corruption scandals and the subsequent collapse of the Republican Party much like the fall of the Whigs makes it hard to assess the legacy of Salmon P. Chase as President of the United States. He was the second, and last, man to represent in the White House the party that lost the South and then led the United States into a 71-month period of recessive economic growth, a record heretofore unbroken, with unemployment as high as 25% for much the rest of his term based on what limited estimates we can make about a crisis that occurred in the 19th century. The Credit Mobilier scandal the following year would implicate a number of his friends, Cabinet officers and Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax [1], tearing a gaping hole in the fabric of a party already disagreeing over federal powers, currency and protectionism that would flow over into the 1872 election. That said, Chase is the Great Abolitionist, the man who delivered the 13th and 14th Amendments in rapid succession through Congress and ended the stain of slavery in the United States once and for all, even if it had effectively been eliminated in practice. And though the Great Depression delayed or limited some of the Naval Act's expansion plans, it was with Chase as commander in chief that the United States Navy began, at least in its earliest steps, its path to supplanting Britain's Royal Navy as the world's premier blue water force. No war with the Confederacy began on his watch, and despite the Depression the settlement of the West continued unabated - and was perhaps accelerated. Though nowhere near the lion of the law that his grandson Roger Sherman Hoar would become, his one appointment of Ebenezer Hoar to the Supreme Court placed a respected legal mind on that court for a quarter century.
It is perhaps impossible to assess Salmon Chase's legacy because unlike the straightforward legacies of many of his predecessors and successors, it was full of both beauty and ugliness. He had to plunge the United States economy - and the world economy in a sense, though the house of cards would have soon fallen regardless - in order to create a sound footing for the following boom in American prospects. Despite their limitations, it was he who abolished slavery. And despite flagrant abuse of patronage powers by many of his associations, Salmon Chase was never known to have behaved corruptly himself. If he had one great flaw, as his predecessor and oft-rival Abraham Lincoln once put it: "Chase's issue is he wanted so desperately to seek high office that he never knew what to do with once he had it [2].""
- The Republicans
[1] The more things change the more they stay the same, etc
[2] Couldn't come up with anything pithier but all accounts of Salmon Chase I've found suggest that this was indeed what his biggest problem was, that and lacking any kind of ideological core (though he was by all accounts a Radical, he spent all of Lincoln's term positioning himself to potentially run for President against his own boss (which is why Lincoln stuck him on the Supreme Court, it was mostly to get rid of him once his position in '64 was secure) then suddenly ran for the Democratic and Liberal Republican noms in 1868 and 1872 IOTL despite being Chief Justice. The man just really really wanted to be President).
It is perhaps impossible to assess Salmon Chase's legacy because unlike the straightforward legacies of many of his predecessors and successors, it was full of both beauty and ugliness. He had to plunge the United States economy - and the world economy in a sense, though the house of cards would have soon fallen regardless - in order to create a sound footing for the following boom in American prospects. Despite their limitations, it was he who abolished slavery. And despite flagrant abuse of patronage powers by many of his associations, Salmon Chase was never known to have behaved corruptly himself. If he had one great flaw, as his predecessor and oft-rival Abraham Lincoln once put it: "Chase's issue is he wanted so desperately to seek high office that he never knew what to do with once he had it [2].""
- The Republicans
[1] The more things change the more they stay the same, etc
[2] Couldn't come up with anything pithier but all accounts of Salmon Chase I've found suggest that this was indeed what his biggest problem was, that and lacking any kind of ideological core (though he was by all accounts a Radical, he spent all of Lincoln's term positioning himself to potentially run for President against his own boss (which is why Lincoln stuck him on the Supreme Court, it was mostly to get rid of him once his position in '64 was secure) then suddenly ran for the Democratic and Liberal Republican noms in 1868 and 1872 IOTL despite being Chief Justice. The man just really really wanted to be President).
A little early for same-sex marriages in the US, isn't it?
Yes, later posts clarify what you meant to say, but you might want to find a home for the word "sister" somewhere in that sentence?
A little early for same-sex marriages in the US, isn't it?
Yes, later posts clarify what you meant to say, but you might want to find a home for the word "sister" somewhere in that sentence?
Ha! Good catch! Who knew the South seceding would make us so much more progressive so soon
Gonna do a *slight* retcon on the British Cabinet...
As of mid-to-late 1870:
Prime Minister - Lord Stanley
Foreign Secretary - Lord Salisbury
Colonial Secretary - Lord Carnarvon
Home Secretary - Spencer Horatio Walpole
Chancellor of the Exchequer - George Ward Hunt
Lord President of the Council - Richard Temple, the Duke of Buckingham
Chief Secretary of Ireland - John Wilson-Patten
Viceroy of Ireland - James Hamilton, the Duke of Abercorn
As of mid-to-late 1870:
Prime Minister - Lord Stanley
Foreign Secretary - Lord Salisbury
Colonial Secretary - Lord Carnarvon
Home Secretary - Spencer Horatio Walpole
Chancellor of the Exchequer - George Ward Hunt
Lord President of the Council - Richard Temple, the Duke of Buckingham
Chief Secretary of Ireland - John Wilson-Patten
Viceroy of Ireland - James Hamilton, the Duke of Abercorn
The Great Depression in Britain
"...the Stanley ministry was beset by the same issues that befell many Cabinets of the 19th century, particularly Tory governments, in that it was composed of men in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, who oft found themselves at cross-purposes. Stanley, a former Foreign Secretary most interest in the matters of the Empire, had appointed two of his chief rivals - Salisbury and Carnarvon - to portfolios close to his heart so he could work to keep an eye on the two ambitious young conservatives who had helped scuttle Disraeli's reform act three years prior and, for that reason, the two men he largely owed his Premiership to. The domestic ministries were largely in the hands of men of the Commons, an intentional recommendation on Stanley's part, hoping to keep the talented Chancellor Hunt in power especially as concerns over the Treasury emerged following the sudden panic across the Atlantic.
Events evaded Stanley, however. The man who helped end the Third Unification War and bring peace to the continent was utterly unprepared to deal with violence closer to home. In September of 1870 the Vienna Stock Exchange crashed [1] after the fiscal crisis affecting postwar Austria finally came to a head, the contagion of bank runs soon spreading across the continent until it arrived in London. Two of the continent's great powers - Austria and France - having been beaten and forced to pay indemnities had stretched their treasuries thin, and Germany's decision to suspend the minting of silver thaler coins that same year marked a remarkable deflationary event. On both sides of the Atlantic, money was suddenly contracting before bankers' very eyes, even in the wealthy, well-capitalized City of London, the center of world finance even in 1870. Throughout the fall, Stanley seemed to be rudderless as protests spread across the United Kingdom demanding a voice in public affairs as unemployment grew. Despite lobbying for protectionist tariffs to defend British industry, the government held fast. Though the Suez Canal's opening was too fresh to be a cause of the crash, the change in methods of trade - going through the canal rather than around the Cape of Good Hope, and the type of ships used - would exacerbate the Great Depression in Britain, damaging her entrepot status and requiring a long-term shift in logistics [2].
Worst for Stanley came that Christmas, though, when the Boxing Day Riot broke out in Dublin. Agitated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the anti-rent protest spiraled out of control and was cracked down on upon the orders of Irish Chief Secretary John Wilson-Patten, resulting in seven deaths as the Royal Irish Constabulary fought to drive the protestors from the vicinity of Dublin Castle. A fire broke out that burned a large swath of the city, killing an additional fourteen people. The Boxing Day Riot outraged the Irish community and once again invigorated the political opposition. The English press alternated between calling for a "tough response" to the Irish Question and mocking Stanley's incompetence. Though Wilson-Patten offered his resignation from the Cabinet due to the embarrassment it caused the government, Stanley refused it after heavy pressure from the duo of Salisbury and Carnarvon, who had formed the most reactionary bloc in the government, consistent in their opposition both to electoral reform and to any concessions whatsoever to Ireland, both out of personal opinion and their fears of a public backlash, with memory of Prince Alfred's assassination still fresh, strong enough to dislodge the Conservative majority..."
- The Great Depression in Britain
[1] Much like OTL, only three years earlier
[2] A shift in warehousing practices was indeed a major structural change that Suez caused that Britain struggled initially to adapt to
Events evaded Stanley, however. The man who helped end the Third Unification War and bring peace to the continent was utterly unprepared to deal with violence closer to home. In September of 1870 the Vienna Stock Exchange crashed [1] after the fiscal crisis affecting postwar Austria finally came to a head, the contagion of bank runs soon spreading across the continent until it arrived in London. Two of the continent's great powers - Austria and France - having been beaten and forced to pay indemnities had stretched their treasuries thin, and Germany's decision to suspend the minting of silver thaler coins that same year marked a remarkable deflationary event. On both sides of the Atlantic, money was suddenly contracting before bankers' very eyes, even in the wealthy, well-capitalized City of London, the center of world finance even in 1870. Throughout the fall, Stanley seemed to be rudderless as protests spread across the United Kingdom demanding a voice in public affairs as unemployment grew. Despite lobbying for protectionist tariffs to defend British industry, the government held fast. Though the Suez Canal's opening was too fresh to be a cause of the crash, the change in methods of trade - going through the canal rather than around the Cape of Good Hope, and the type of ships used - would exacerbate the Great Depression in Britain, damaging her entrepot status and requiring a long-term shift in logistics [2].
Worst for Stanley came that Christmas, though, when the Boxing Day Riot broke out in Dublin. Agitated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the anti-rent protest spiraled out of control and was cracked down on upon the orders of Irish Chief Secretary John Wilson-Patten, resulting in seven deaths as the Royal Irish Constabulary fought to drive the protestors from the vicinity of Dublin Castle. A fire broke out that burned a large swath of the city, killing an additional fourteen people. The Boxing Day Riot outraged the Irish community and once again invigorated the political opposition. The English press alternated between calling for a "tough response" to the Irish Question and mocking Stanley's incompetence. Though Wilson-Patten offered his resignation from the Cabinet due to the embarrassment it caused the government, Stanley refused it after heavy pressure from the duo of Salisbury and Carnarvon, who had formed the most reactionary bloc in the government, consistent in their opposition both to electoral reform and to any concessions whatsoever to Ireland, both out of personal opinion and their fears of a public backlash, with memory of Prince Alfred's assassination still fresh, strong enough to dislodge the Conservative majority..."
- The Great Depression in Britain
[1] Much like OTL, only three years earlier
[2] A shift in warehousing practices was indeed a major structural change that Suez caused that Britain struggled initially to adapt to
Yeah France overborrow with banks to paid the indemity, that accelerated everything, maybe back to spain soon?
funny you being up Spain! That was going to be one of my updates tomorrow
The Glorious Revolution: 150 Years of Democracy in Spain
"...the fall elections of 1870, the first held under the Constitution of 1869 and with Leopoldo I as sovereign, brought to power the National Liberals, a liberal-conservative and nationalist party headed by Juan Prim [1]. For all its flaws - far too centralist in a country as diverse as Spain yet still electing its Cortes indirectly by province - one of the innovations was set Parliamentary terms, a novelty outside of the Americas at that time. Elections were to be held every five years, in the autumn, and it was profoundly difficult for a government to be dissolved either by the Cabinet or the sovereign in the interim (no matter that this would cause more than one constitutional crisis in later years). This new democratic government set about with its five-year mandate immediately, passing a national wage law (a first of its kind in Europe), establishing a law regulating railroads, and most importantly, establishing a commission sponsored by both the unicameral Cortes and the Crown to study the abolition of slavery and reform of the colonial empire. The Cortes also increased the military's budget and committed itself definitively to ending the war in Cuba..."
- The Glorious Revolution: 150 Years of Democracy in Spain
[1] Not assassinated, as you can see. The National Liberals are essentially a fusion of the Progressive Party and the Liberal Union which worked together in the post-Glorious Revolution years as a coalition
- The Glorious Revolution: 150 Years of Democracy in Spain
[1] Not assassinated, as you can see. The National Liberals are essentially a fusion of the Progressive Party and the Liberal Union which worked together in the post-Glorious Revolution years as a coalition
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- Status