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Updates so fast! What madness is this?



Some Westerns are going to be a bit different in this timeline.



"No, I'm doing the Revolution my way. Surely that's more important than keeping a united front."

They are already doomed. They just don't know it yet.



Poor Germans, can't get a rest in Mexico. Maybe some volunteers will come to their rescue from the Fatherland?

"Those savages are trying to eat uncle Hans alive! Me and some friends are going to Mexico, we have to help them no matter what."



I like this part a lot! Such a rousing speech, would be an epic scene in a movie. But then we have this:



"Remember Mazatlan!"
"What about Tampico and Matamoros?"
"Shut up, we are the good guys!"
"Allegedly..."

Based on what I've read of Lozada, that kind of reaction would have been super on-brand for a man as erratic, eccentric and malleable as him.

As for the Mexican Imperial Navy... well, it can't all be heroes on one side and villains on the other :p
 
I believe it was @Nivek who was curious about how the Netherlands would shake out without the House of Orange; the Nassaus becoming Dukes of Luxembourg in OTL suggested to me that they would make a straight shot to the Het Loo in such a case ITTL, rather than a new Dutch Republic
 

Ficboy

Banned
That's a thought too. I haven't totally decided what I'll do there when it becomes... a valid question, let's just say. ATM I'm leaning towards just keeping it in DC for simplicity.
Why not use the Israel example for the United States with Washington DC as the de jure capital for the legislative and judicial branches while Philadelphia is the de facto capital for the executive branch similar to the status of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for most countries.
 
Why not use the Israel example for the United States with Washington DC as the de jure capital for the legislative and judicial branches while Philadelphia is the de facto capital for the executive branch similar to the status of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for most countries.

That could work to an extent. The National Bank is already headquartered in Philly for instance
 

Ficboy

Banned
That could work to an extent. The National Bank is already headquartered in Philly for instance
Sure. Philadelphia is the only choice for the United States' capital besides Washington DC given its historical importance (Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its previous status as capital).
 
Why not use the Israel example for the United States with Washington DC as the de jure capital for the legislative and judicial branches while Philadelphia is the de facto capital for the executive branch similar to the status of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for most countries.

That could work. Then when the inevitable war between the USA and CSA happens the legislative and judicial branches move to Philadelphia for safety and then simply decides to stay there.
 

Ficboy

Banned
Insofar as the Confederacy is concerned, by the 1900s they will have achieved "Rapprochement" with the United States not to mention the transition from the plantation to the industrialization and the gradual abolition of slavery for pragmatic reasons. Much like caudillo nations such as Mexico and Brazil, the Confederacy is a middling power when compared to its more powerful neighbor.
 
The Scramble for Asia: Colonialism in the Far East in the 19th Century
"...the matter was forced when Rivière emerged from Hanoi in late March and seized the citadel of Nam Dinh with his reinforcements. The Vietnamese counterattack the next day was repulsed by French garrisons at Hanoi in the Battle of Gia Cuc, only further cementing control over Tonkin. Chinese officials were alarmed and Rivière himself was elated. The Black Flags had to meet this challenge head-on, a decision that would have profound effects on Chinese and Vietnamese history. As such, despite his campaigns having lasted for a year at that point, the ensuing Battle of Paper Bridge is regarded as the "first shot of the Sino-French War."

Liu challenged Rivière to meet his army in an open field with placards all over Hanoi and Rivière predictably took the bait, not bringing as many men with him as he ideally would have. The site of the battle was a bridge named for a nearby paper mill in the village of Cau Giay, surrounded by thick bamboo rushes and thus making it difficult for the French to gauge where the Black Flags were. Rivière was unwell that day and the primary command of the force was Berthe de Villiers, the hero of Gia Cuc only seven weeks earlier. As they were crossing the bridge, they came under intense fire, and the retreat was a debacle as Liu rapidly surrounded the French and forced them to try to break out the way they had come in hostile terrain [1]. The battle was a disaster - the Black Flags lost 50 men but were able to kill nearly 160 Frenchmen [2], including both Rivière and de Villiers, and captured all three cannons the French had brought with them for cover.

"Catastrophe at Cau Giay!" roared French newspapers once word of the disaster reached Paris. Rivière, who had been hailed as a brilliant and brave national hero only weeks forward, was now excoriated for his blunder in regime-skeptical publications (to the extent that the press could criticize the military under the Second Empire's censors) [3], and martyred in the newspapers that served as mouthpieces for the Tuileries. Naval Minister Peyron declared that "France will avenge her murdered children!" and the rubberstamp National Assembly immediately approved a six million franc allowance to the Emperor to entrench the French position in Tonkin. An expeditionary force was raised, and more Foreign Legion soldiers were called up from Algeria and Conakry to be deployed to Korea..."

- The Scramble for Asia: Colonialism in the Far East in the 19th Century


[1] As opposed to OTL, where Paper Bridge was much more muddled and Liu was not able to surround the French
[2] As opposed to 35 IOTL, among whom were in fact Rivière and de Villiers
[3] Napoleon IV is a tiny bit less heavy handed with press censorship than the old man, but it's still not exactly a free-speaking society
 
The Reshaping of the World: Innovation and Technology at the Turn of the Century
"...though it was the Brooklyn Bridge - and its ability to now connect Manhattan and Brooklyn more effectively, and open up further development of Long Island - that attracted the attention, a street lighting system installed by Thomas Edison in Roselle, New Jersey just across the Hudson was possibly even more revolutionary, as was the introduction of central power in Milan later in 1883. The Electric Age was dawning, as new companies and innovative technologies spread across the industrial world, and with them authorities meant to invest in new research to coordinate such. Such endeavors were concentrated in Europe and North America, but they were prevalent everywhere. Even in Tokyo, as experimentation in electric technology made it a pioneer compared to its Asian peers, one of the world's first electrical utilities was born..."

- The Reshaping of the World: Innovation and Technology at the Turn of the Century
 
The Grand Consensus: The Longstreet Machine, Reconciliation and the Dawn of the 20th Century in Dixie
"...six states convened the Constitutional Convention of 1883 in Nashville, Tennessee, and Longstreet was at last handed his long-sought victory on his two amendments, and just in time for his triumphant second midterm. The 1st and 2nd Amendments to the Confederate Constitution passed the convention after considerable debate but with healthy margins, and attempts to introduce other amendments were sidelined. The 1st Amendment repealed the provision disallowing nonmilitary internal improvements receive subsidy from the "national legislature," and the 2nd Amendment repealed the provision forbidding protective tariffs, allowing those to be levied along with the extant general tariff at the time set at 15%. Longstreet held a grand parade in Richmond to celebrate the "Nashville Convention" and its successful resolution. Much ignored in friendly press was the agitation by industrial workers in Nashville and nearby towns during the convention, as was generally the case during the early years of the Grand Consensus and its positive, forward-looking nationalism.

Longstreet's supporters triumphed in the midterms that fall, dismissing most opponents of the Democratic machine and helping install a new, younger generation of Senators in the Class 2 elections. By the beginning of the 12th Confederate Congress in 1884, state legislatures had impeached and removed effectively every leftover appointment from the Forrest-Harris years, and used the threat of impeachment as a tool to force every appointment of "the Party" from then on. New constitutions that benefitted the dominant party were passed en masse in the "tide of constitutionalism" that sprung out of the Nashville Convention, extending deep into the 1890s as newer, more modern-minded - and politically restrictive and authoritarian - governing documents were put into place. Gubernatorial terms were generally extended to not be unlimited two-year terms but rather non-renewable at four or five years, similar to the single six-year term of the President, and most state legislatures placed term limits or mandatory retirement ages on judicial officials within their borders as well. The spirit of the time was one of entrenchment of the Democratic elite and updating the adhoc political arrangements sprung out of the War of Secession. This, even more than the decline in paramilitary violence and economic boom times of the 1880s, was the defining feature of the Grand Consensus.

Perhaps the most prominent driver in this movement, from the Democratic Party's "Conservative" faction, was Wade Hampton III, a Senator for South Carolina who had implemented similar reforms in his home state during his gubernatorial term and now with an army of like-minded men from the planter elite who had served in the war and now were ascendant in the Senate drove their home-state parties to do the same in a coordinated approach. Though the three Presidents with whom he would serve concurrently with his Senate terms of 1880-1898 are more well-known in textbooks, after Hampton's taking of the role of Senate President Pro Tempore in 1884, "Old Snowbeard" became the effective "Cardinal of the Confederate Congress," as his less-charming nickname was, or even more ominously, "the Shadow President." The Machine, built out over several years, was now operating at what would eventually come to be seen as its peak capacity, achieving its zenith and apotheosis as the Longstreet Presidency entered its final two years..."

- The Grand Consensus: The Longstreet Machine, Reconciliation and the Dawn of the 20th Century in Dixie
 
Frederick and Victoria: Consorts of Germany
"...Bismarck's introduction of a newer, even more draconian package of Anti-Socialist Laws into the Reichstag and Bundesrat on June 1 outraged Frederick and immediately led to a meeting at the Sanssouci where household staff were alleged to hear Kaiser and Chancellor shouting at one another from behind the office door. Von Bennigsen, for his part, spent most of June aggressively whipping not only "hards" in his own party who might be amenable to defecting to Bismarck's gathering anti-Socialist coalition in the lower house but also smaller-party members, doing everything he could to ameliorate the concerns of the Center Party, going so far as to pledge that the National Liberals would block a German-wide "new Kulturkampf" if such a thing were proposed by a future Chancellor. The fact that von Bennigsen was so openly discussing the idea that there might soon be a new Chancellor as head of the Bundesrat spoke to what was becoming an open secret in what soon came to be known as the "Hot Summer" for its political tensions: that the Kaiser was readying to cashier Bismarck and that their long-running feud had hit a point of no return. From his perch in the upper house, Bismarck had become so alienated from his ostensible Vice Chancellor von Bennigsen that the two men ceased speaking by midsummer. Members of various parties, including socialists now that the original laws had expired on July 1st with no renewal, demonstrated in city streets both for and against the Chancellor, and Bismarck, never a fiery orator so much as a canny operator, gave a well-received and surprisingly fiery address at the annual picnic for veterans of the Unification Wars at the Tiergarten. The Picnic Speech seemed to draw a line in the sand: Bismarck declared angrily, "Shall we allow Leipzig's factories to burn like those of Liege? What do we say the day that Koblenz looks like Charleroi? How many subversives must march in the streets before we say enough?" Frederick was so angered upon hearing that Bismarck had intended to originally deliver the Picnic Speech on the Reichstag floor that he remarked, "Had the old man challenged me as such, he'd have been retired that day." Empress Victoria, for her part, nudged her husband aggressively to sack Bismarck immediately and stop dithering, but Bismarck had left the throne out of his challenge implicitly, focusing his critique on enemies within the body politic, and as he often did, Frederick hesitated.

The irony of course was that Frederick, a firm classical liberal but one married to the ideals of social order, detested socialism and had been appalled by the chaos in Belgium earlier in the year. The relatively moderate Social Democrats of Germany, however, had never agitated at the level of the true radicals of "Red Brussels," where many of the German left's most aggressive members had decamped in self-imposed exile thanks to the 1878 package of Anti-Socialist Laws. Frederick was of the view that a more liberal political structure, particularly a more centralized government in Berlin and a celebration of Germanism, would satisfy many of the agitators; he had even come around to passing an eight-week sickness insurance policy like Bismarck had moved through the Landtag of Prussia across the whole of Germany, despite his earlier skepticism. He saw the laws being proposed to ban Socialism entirely as likely to exacerbate the problem rather than solve it, and anathema to a free and open liberal society. In many ways, his personal antipathy towards the Iron Chancellor but fear of angering the Junkers and military that still loved "the fat old man" left him deadlocked on what action to take; in later years, a British newspaper would quip that Friedrich III was "Hamlet on the Havel" for his indecision and procrastination in taking on the power bloc that directly challenged him.

The crisis came to an early inflection point when the Bundesrat narrowly passed the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1883, which banned meetings of "subversive organizations" for the first time and which was drawn so broadly as to potentially encompass a whole host of other political groups. The package was introduced into the Reichstag by the German Conservative Party, dominated by Bismarck's allies among the Junkers and Prussian military. For many military officers, the new package represented a just revenge, even more so than the original slate, for the murder of Kaiser Wilhelm five years earlier; Waldersee himself spoke at a rally outside the Reichstag in August angrily decrying "those who would spit on the Kaiser's grave in the name of democracy." It was clear even then that Marshal von Moltke had lost control of many of his younger officers, but Friedrich did not want to intervene in "staff matters." Before rafters full of onlookers, von Bennigsen led a raucous debate in the Reichstag over the package and eventually the temperature of the body was read to desire a much softer slate of laws, less strict even than the 1878 versions, but open to negotiation and compromise. On a narrow vote, von Bennigsen's coalition held and defeated the laws as written, with the Liberal leader pleading in his closing remarks as angry protests erupted in the galleries and outside for a new debate to be held. Democracy had, in that moment, arrived in Germany; Bismarck had suffered his first defeat at the hands of a democratically elected body (of course with the open secret of the Kaiser's acquiescence). Friedrich was pilloried in many newspapers and public opinion polarized.

A week later, the Landtag of Bavaria passed a softer Anti-Socialist Law as well as a substantial increase in subsidies for Catholic schools..."


- Frederick and Victoria: Consorts of Germany
 
Europe right now is a pressure cooker. I am curious to see which country will be the first to burst - strike-addled Belgium, declining Britain, or a Germany that has an increasingly agitated ultra-conservative faction? Or perhaps the revolts will come from somewhere else on the continent...
 
Hartington: Britain's First Modern Prime Minister
"...the consignment of Hartington's ministry to a minority government came in tandem with the continued upheavals of the Great Depression, which though by the early 1880s had alleviated somewhat still clutched Britain worse than any other industrial economy. It could be that Britain's remarkable rise to dominance in the global trade system in the first half of the Victorian Age meant it had little left to go - but even there, by modern estimates, GDP per capita shrank throughout the 1870s and grew anemically in the following decade, so that by 1889 the average Briton was only three-quarters as wealthy, adjusted for inflation and population growth, as his father had been twenty years before on the eve of the Panic of 1870. A Liberal government thus split between the Old Whigs, with the Prime Minister their most prominent spokesman, and the ascendant Radicals of Chamberlain, but lacking the ability to press many of its policies without a majority of the Commons, left little recourse for the suffering of many in the cities and even moreso the British countryside.

The Irish Question dominated newspapers, especially as Parnell used his Parliamentary bloc to stymie any act that did not deliver tenancy and land reform and the House of Lords still seemed dead-set on defeating even the mildest approaches to address the issue, but industrial action began to grow in vogue again. With trade unions legalized formally under the First Hartington Ministry and the Home Office of William Harcourt less interested in going to war with the TUC, the labour movement grew exponentially in the 1880s. Though the TUC remained nominally allied with the Radical Liberals and often had overlap with the NLF, there was still a more aggressive splinter that longed for the more violent agitations of the Carnarvon years. As Westminster remained gridlocked between Liberal, Tory and IPP feuds, a newer political force was born in the same year that Karl Marx passed in London - the Social Democratic Federation, [1] founded by Henry Hyndman and Eleanor Marx, daughter of the author of the Communist Manifesto. The SDF would of course be a forerunner of a number of left-wing British parties, but with a weak minority government in power Hyndman's first priority was to identify a way to potentially run candidates under the unequivocal banner of the left, and to achieve the previously unthinkable - placing a socialist in the House of Commons. As often the case with movements of the Left, there were anarchists and syndicalists who disavowed any parliamentarianism whatsoever and wanted to continue to press ahead for socialism by revolution; Friedrich Engels supported such endeavours, undercutting Hyndman early. But with the robustness of the trade union movement growing and some dissatisfaction rising with the incumbent Liberals' relative conservatism in the wake of the transformational 1878-82 government (a conservatism not necessarily the fault of the Cabinet), and Chamberlain looking for ways to undercut the Prime Minister, the ground was never riper for the birth of left-wing electoralism in Britain..."


- Hartington: Britain's First Modern Prime Minister

[1] ITTL Hyndman's SDF isn't quite the incompetent, flailing Judean People's Front vs People's Front of Judea mess it was OTL
 
Europe right now is a pressure cooker. I am curious to see which country will be the first to burst - strike-addled Belgium, declining Britain, or a Germany that has an increasingly agitated ultra-conservative faction? Or perhaps the revolts will come from somewhere else on the continent...

We're about to see!
 
The Lion of Edinburgh: Prince Arthur, the Empire and the Twilight of the Victorian Age
"...Arthur, who in the end made most decisions for the Prince of Wales and his brother, was given permission by his mother to split the boys up in 1883 to have their educations be unique to them. George would continue on in the Navy, and Albert Victor would head to Trinity College, Cambridge. The Naval life suited the more rigorous George much better than cramming for university did the heir, who without his more driven brother around to stimulate and focus him was soon left to his own lazy devices. It pained Arthur tremendously, who loved the two boys as much as his own young children, to see what a "lout and fool, who barely cares to read" the young Prince of Wales had been, and he laid the bulk of the blame on his tutor John Neale Dalton. Nevertheless, 1883 was a positive year for the Duke of Edinburgh; his son Arthur was born that January, and the war scares of 1882 subsided as British and French diplomats traversed the Channel aggressively to avoid a conflagration over a number of points of tension throughout the world. Arthur himself visited Paris for the baptism of the Princess Royal, Marie Eugenie, [1] and was Napoleon IV's most honored guest at the Tuileries for two weeks as both nations resolved to peacefully settle their disputes. Of all the royals, Arthur - always Victoria's favorite - had emerged as the family's most critical and respected representative to both foreign courts and to the British public, especially as his mother withdrew ever further from the public eye..."

- The Lion of Edinburgh: Prince Arthur, the Empire and the Twilight of the Victorian Age


[1] More on this in a future update
 
Hey all. Wanted to gauge a bit who is still reading this, since it’s expanded so much. I have about a million ideas for CdM now stretching into the mid 20th century but there doesn’t seem to be as much engagement with the TL as earlier. Is this something everyone wants to see continue or has it gotten too bogged down/slow paced? Would longer, more thorough updates rather than bite-sized textbook style I’ve been using work better for moving the narrative along?
 
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