That’s what I’m shooting for with this project. A world as realistically brutal, silly, farcical, ugly and hopeful as OTL, but of course in different ways. I don’t believe in dystopias or utopias - I want to follow my instincts wherever they lead with the course of TTL’s history, hopefully up to present day if possible
Cinco de Mayo
- Thread starter KingSweden24
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That’s what I’m shooting for with this project. A world as realistically brutal, silly, farcical, ugly and hopeful as OTL, but of course in different ways. I don’t believe in dystopias or utopias - I want to follow my instincts wherever they lead with the course of TTL’s history, hopefully up to present day if possible
Ficboy
Banned
So is there going to be a Franco-Prussian War and World War I just like OTL. Germany so far has united itself in a war under Otto von Bismarck but at the same time France is still under a monarchy and not a republic due to winning the Battle of Puebla and keeping Mexico as a puppet state so if the Franco-Prussian War still occurs it may or may not end the same and who knows if World War I will break out with the results of OTL.
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And so far you've done, france wank nowstanding(again OTL was a france wank too), this TL have been amazing
Already Happened, France loss but didn't loss E-L as bismarck hold more political capital and was able to soothe the southern states fear with a enforcable DMZ in Eltass and colonies
Mexico was more a satellite state itl than a puppet state, and even that didn't last long. A shorter and less devastating war meant that the Imperial government was able to stand on its own legs rather quickly, and they shook off French "tutelage" as soon as they could.
Techically Mexico is already out the french orbit since TTL F-P war, is just Max is using all europeans for their money for Mexico
The Age of Questions: Britain in the Gauntlet of Change and Upheaval
"...whereas Lord Stanley was indecisive and terrified of his Cabinet, and Spencer Horatio Walpole was cynically jaded to the point of aloofness, it was Carnarvon's thirst for influence and power, efforts to push out competent rivals, and stubborn refusal to bend from his instincts even in the face of clear evidence his approach was doomed to failure that lends to his low esteem among historians, when ranked against other Prime Ministers of the 19th century. However, unlike many of his peers, Carnarvon had something of a second life in the last decade of his life (he would die only aged 57 in 1890). He scaled back his activities in the House of Lords after leaving Downing Street and would never again serve in an official government role; he declined the offer made to him by Queen Victoria to appoint him Governor-General of Canada, a country where he is still regarded highly for his role in Confederation and negotiating British Columbia's entry into the Dominion, and when the Tories briefly returned to power in the mid-1880s [1], he held no office. Instead, he made a tremendous impact with his funding of research into antiquities, a legacy continued on by his son, George Herbert, a financier who helped fund much of the excavation of Egypt's Valley of Kings [2]. Asked shortly before his death to reflect on his tumultuous - and in the eyes of his contemporaries, disastrous - premiership, Henry Herbert, the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, simply shrugged, puffed his cigar and remarked, "Well, we can't all be a Pitt or a Peel, now can we?"..."
- The Age of Questions: Britain in the Gauntlet of Change and Upheaval
[1] Flash-forward
[2] This is OTL factual
- The Age of Questions: Britain in the Gauntlet of Change and Upheaval
[1] Flash-forward
[2] This is OTL factual
Wait what? The Tories spent the last fifteen or so years driving the country into a ditch and the voters reward them with a return to power a few years later? One of three things must have happened.
1 - No/very limited electoral reform/franchise legislation between 1878 and the mid 1880s
2 - The Liberals must somehow be worse from 1878 to to the mid 1880s than the Tories were from 1870-1878.
3 - The electorate drank lead paint and it made them forget the 1870s entirely.
1 - No/very limited electoral reform/franchise legislation between 1878 and the mid 1880s
2 - The Liberals must somehow be worse from 1878 to to the mid 1880s than the Tories were from 1870-1878.
3 - The electorate drank lead paint and it made them forget the 1870s entirely.
When in doubt, assume incompetence. But it does fly in the face of this so-called Age of Liberalism.
Ficboy
Banned
KingSweden24, did you read any books for the timeline Cinco De Mayo. Reading historical books can give you a greater understanding of what might have been. Twilight of the Valkyrie and Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond had their authors read books in order to portray their scenarios as accurately as possible.
Hartington: Britain's First Modern Prime Minister
"...the Liberal Cabinet that the Lord Hartington convened in the spring of 1878 was in many ways the great crop of the Liberal Party of the day. Gladstone was of course one of the grand voices of the party, but in his age and the polarized public opinion around him, Hartington feared giving him too great a platform from which to dominate government; it was thus that the Grand Old Man of the 1860s, who had lost two eminently winnable elections against the Tories (even in accounting for the restricted electorate pre-Reform Act), was made Lord President of the Council, an office that was treated as little more than a sinecure and was interpreted by the embittered Gladstone as such. It was Granville, the party's leader in the House of Lords, that the most important task of running the Foreign Office went. Hartington was convinced that in the last decade of Tory rule, Britain had squandered much of its global leadership role, especially with France and Germany's sudden rise as peer competitors on the continent. He also feared rising Anglophobia in the United States; Carnarvon's dedication to Canada, mixed with fishing and trade disputes lasting back years and memories of the Palmerston government's support for the Confederacy during the independence war, made repairing relations with the booming USA of paramount importance to the new Prime Minister [1]. The esteemed William Harcourt was dispatched to the Home Office, and as Chancellor of the Exchequer a role was found for Hugh Childers. It was a Cabinet led aggressively from the Commons, with an eye on the radical Liberals inspired by Gladstone and organized under the young National Liberal Foundation, led by former Birmingham Mayor Joseph Chamberlain. Hartington viewed Chamberlain warily, and was offended at the ambitious man's request for a Cabinet office, laced with the threat of running Radical candidates outside of the Liberal tent; Chamberlain received the Presidency of the Board of Trade [2], and his ally John Bright the Colonial Office, places where they would be satisfied yet also keep quiet and not bother the government. To oversee the restive Irish Question, with the Land War in full swing, where Hartington was torn in two directions by his sympathy for the impoverished Irishman with the political realities of the unpopularity of Fenianism in England and Wales, he dispatched his cousin Lord Spencer to be Lord Lieutenant, and appointed William Edward Forster to serve as Chief Secretary of Ireland [3]. Finally, to round out his Cabinet, he gave the Secretary of War position to his brother, Lord Frederick Cavendish [4], under the expectation that the younger Cavendish brother would be groomed for a Great Office in due time..."
- Hartington: Britain's First Modern Prime Minister
[1] I was originally going to make Gladstone the Foreign Secretary but realized that that would probably *not* be the most prudently diplomatic choice considering the man's lack of filter, strong opinions, and loud support of the Confederacy in the early 1860s
[2] As in OTL
[3] Those read in Irish history may know him instead as "Buckshot" Forster
[4] Also an important figure in Liberal relationship to Ireland IOTL, albeit for more tragic reasons
- Hartington: Britain's First Modern Prime Minister
[1] I was originally going to make Gladstone the Foreign Secretary but realized that that would probably *not* be the most prudently diplomatic choice considering the man's lack of filter, strong opinions, and loud support of the Confederacy in the early 1860s
[2] As in OTL
[3] Those read in Irish history may know him instead as "Buckshot" Forster
[4] Also an important figure in Liberal relationship to Ireland IOTL, albeit for more tragic reasons
Ficboy
Banned
Did you read any books for research when doing this timeline. You've had a reference list included.It'll be a reason not on this list
I've read some various academic articles I've stumbled across (and lots and lots of Wikipedia), but I haven't drawn any inspiration from other published works of alternate history. (I've incorporated some thoughts from various discussion threads on this site and have checked out other timelines that cover the same period I'm writing in order to see if there's any historical figures I can use that I haven't uncovered in my own research, though I try to avoid doing that as much as possible)
The footnotes on my posts are there purely as commentary, musings or justifications for the contents of my updates
Ficboy
Banned
By books I mean the ones about the Second Franco-Mexican War, the American Civil War and other conflicts and events.
I've read a fair bit on the ACW. The Second Mexican Empire is largely new territory for me only explored via writing this timeline.
Socioeconomics in Mexico: A Study
"...by 1880, between population growth and immigration, Mexico's population was over 12 million, and would grow by nearly 20% over the next decade, driven by two factors: one, continued large scale immigration from Europe, particularly Catholic states to whom the state religion of Mexico appealed, and second, by its high birth rates and burgeoning economic stability. Even the 1882-84 Caudillo War did not displace Mexico's rapid rise.
Consider - the period between the declaration of the Empire in 1862 (it would take some time for Maximilian of Hapsburg-Lorraine to be coronated and feel truly comfortable in his new land, of course) to the outbreak of the Revolt of the Caudillos was the longest period of stability and prosperity in Mexican history up until that point. Silver mining became a commodity export that drove European (and, after French military presence in Mexico declined, American) investment in the 1860s, the Tehuantepec Railway gave the New World her most efficient connection between Atlantic and Pacific in the 1870s, and after a decade of small-scale exploitation, the sophistication of the oil industry burgeoned at the end of that decade and by 1890 Mexico had the second-largest oil industry in the world, behind only the United States (where Standard Oil's monopoly under John D. Rockefeller was only increasing). Mexico had limited power projection via her Navy but from the ports of Acapulco and Guaymas had a considerably more prominent Pacific squadron than the United States at this point and by the late 1880s was establishing a fairly robust trade network with the Far East thanks to her partnership with the Spanish via Manila.
Of course, it is important to remember that despite Mexico's success with silver, rail infrastructure, light industry and petroleum, it was still a profoundly unequal country economically, culturally and geographically. European immigrants were able to join the growing middle class with ease, while mestizo families were definitively a class below, to say nothing of indigenous persons. The country's forested, Maya-inhabited south and its vast, poor north along the border with the Confederacy had seen remarkably little improvement in their state of affairs despite the abolition of peonage and Mexico's celebrated economic vibrancy in this era; departments such as Sonora, Oaxaca, Chiapas, or Nayarit were the backbone of anti-monarchist and anti-industrialist sentiment in this time, where large hacendados and the Church dominated the populace like they always had. Far from the wide European-style boulevards of Mexico City and Guadalajara, and the teeming docks of Acapulco and Veracruz, was the other Mexico; where families had as many children as they could due to infant mortality, where they still sent their children to Catholic-operated schools, often Jesuit, rather than the secular gimnasias in the Altiplano where criollo and "continentale" families sent their children to be intellectually challenged and prepare for a life in the new Mexican bourgeoisie. It was in this fertile garden that the shoots of opposition to the Imperial government began to grow again, nearly twenty years after the defeat of the Republican armies and death of liberal leader Benito Juarez..."
- Socioeconomics in Mexico: A Study
EDIT: Based on my math regarding Mexico's population in a later update, I have retcon Mexico's population to be 12 million here rather than just 9. Whoops!
Consider - the period between the declaration of the Empire in 1862 (it would take some time for Maximilian of Hapsburg-Lorraine to be coronated and feel truly comfortable in his new land, of course) to the outbreak of the Revolt of the Caudillos was the longest period of stability and prosperity in Mexican history up until that point. Silver mining became a commodity export that drove European (and, after French military presence in Mexico declined, American) investment in the 1860s, the Tehuantepec Railway gave the New World her most efficient connection between Atlantic and Pacific in the 1870s, and after a decade of small-scale exploitation, the sophistication of the oil industry burgeoned at the end of that decade and by 1890 Mexico had the second-largest oil industry in the world, behind only the United States (where Standard Oil's monopoly under John D. Rockefeller was only increasing). Mexico had limited power projection via her Navy but from the ports of Acapulco and Guaymas had a considerably more prominent Pacific squadron than the United States at this point and by the late 1880s was establishing a fairly robust trade network with the Far East thanks to her partnership with the Spanish via Manila.
Of course, it is important to remember that despite Mexico's success with silver, rail infrastructure, light industry and petroleum, it was still a profoundly unequal country economically, culturally and geographically. European immigrants were able to join the growing middle class with ease, while mestizo families were definitively a class below, to say nothing of indigenous persons. The country's forested, Maya-inhabited south and its vast, poor north along the border with the Confederacy had seen remarkably little improvement in their state of affairs despite the abolition of peonage and Mexico's celebrated economic vibrancy in this era; departments such as Sonora, Oaxaca, Chiapas, or Nayarit were the backbone of anti-monarchist and anti-industrialist sentiment in this time, where large hacendados and the Church dominated the populace like they always had. Far from the wide European-style boulevards of Mexico City and Guadalajara, and the teeming docks of Acapulco and Veracruz, was the other Mexico; where families had as many children as they could due to infant mortality, where they still sent their children to Catholic-operated schools, often Jesuit, rather than the secular gimnasias in the Altiplano where criollo and "continentale" families sent their children to be intellectually challenged and prepare for a life in the new Mexican bourgeoisie. It was in this fertile garden that the shoots of opposition to the Imperial government began to grow again, nearly twenty years after the defeat of the Republican armies and death of liberal leader Benito Juarez..."
- Socioeconomics in Mexico: A Study
EDIT: Based on my math regarding Mexico's population in a later update, I have retcon Mexico's population to be 12 million here rather than just 9. Whoops!
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