The Roman Question certainly - that's an example where geopolitical realpolitik needed to win out over concerns about domestic prestige, IMO. A dead Garibaldi and a successful Mexican adventure change the dynamic here a bit, though.
Cinco de Mayo
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The Roman Question certainly - that's an example where geopolitical realpolitik needed to win out over concerns about domestic prestige, IMO. A dead Garibaldi and a successful Mexican adventure change the dynamic here a bit, though.
The Unification Wars
"The Peace of Prague may indeed have left Europe even more vulnerable to the next great war that would occur within a mere six months; France's ambitions were unsatisfied, Austria was humiliated and eager for revenge, and Prussia's longstanding goals were finally within reach. The tinder was even drier than before, needing only a little spark. Even more dangerously, Italy was left unsatisfied by the Roman Question, and with Venetia now in its hands and relations with Prussia cordial, the need for Victor Emanuel to align with France was diminishing. And in the East, Russia regarded Prussia as an ally against Polish nationalism and viewed Austria as its primary foe in her Pan-Slavic irredentism.
Prague had not brought a peace at the level of Vienna... it had merely bought Europe time."
- The Unification Wars
Prague had not brought a peace at the level of Vienna... it had merely bought Europe time."
- The Unification Wars
Seymour: Profile of a Forgotten President
"If one can say that Horatio Seymour had one enormous blind spot, politically, it was his belief that the American public was more satisfied with peace than stewing over anger at the humiliating terms of the Havana Conference. Popular discontent throwing out Abraham Lincoln had not led immediately to assent to his administration's agenda beyond Alaska. And a new power center had emerged following the war - an independent military. With tensions high with Britain, and fears of deepening ties between Mexico, the Confederacy and France, Seymour's push to wind down the military after the war had been blocked by the Republican Senate, which called for a standing army for the first time in the history of the Republic and to professionalize the armed forces to avoid the same embarrasments that had plagued the Union's war effort. To the shock of Seymour, the public was largely behind this effort, backed by the unlikely alliance of Northern newspapers and what became known as the "Naval lobby" - shipbuilders and merchants who viewed an enlarged Navy, particularly with ironclads, as an important bulwark in a world where the Great Powers, specifically Britain and France, no longer honored the Monroe Doctrine. The Russian Imperial Navy's wintering in the ports of San Francisco and New York gave many a close view to what a potential blue-water navy could look like, and many - including ardent abolitionist John C. Fremont - wanted to build a navy that could and would rival that of Royal Navy and defend both of America's coasts. The Naval Question came to dominate the 1866 elections, and the Republican Party had its new critical issue, in addition to abolishing slavery within the Union as well. Seymour's allies in Congress suffered defeats, as the Republicans grew their Senate majority once again, retook numerous state legislatures and came close to flipping the House of Representatives.
The era of national campaigns had arrived."
- Seymour: Profile of a Forgotten President
The era of national campaigns had arrived."
- Seymour: Profile of a Forgotten President
The Rapprochement Era in the Confederacy, 1863-1881
"...in his memoirs, Longstreet expressed considerable regret regarding the Battle of Raleigh and the way it wounded the Confederacy. He would consult often with Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson regarding the events of 1866, and Lee encouraged him at one point to consider seeking the Presidency in 1867; both were alarmed by Nathan Forrest's meteoric rise as a figure in the debt-crippled postwar Confederacy. "It is perhaps unwise, dear James, to see such a figure come to influence in Richmond. Napoleonic in his ambitions, it will make rapprochement all the more difficult."
The Davis administration remained locked in a power struggle both with Congress and creditors in London that fall, aggressively resisting efforts to raise tariffs in order to produce enough revenue to pay its debts. By the end of the year, with essentially only twelve months left in his single term, Davis had ceased to carry any authority in Richmond; his greatest personal embarrassment occurred on November 30, 1866, when his veto of a small tariff was overridden by a coalition of both pro and anti-administration members of Congress. Davis would spend the next six months at home in Mississippi, allegedly sick for many of them, six months in which no legislation was signed and two vacancies on the Confederate Supreme Court went effectively unfilled - the Absent President became his nickname in his last year in office, and due to Alexander Stephens' often ill-health, it fell to Postmaster General John Reagan to often manage the affairs of government. His competency made him the ideal candidate for such a role, to the point that Senators would quip at social gatherings that one barely noticed that the President was missing..."
The Rapprochement Era in the Confederacy, 1863-1881 (Harvard University, 1967)
The Davis administration remained locked in a power struggle both with Congress and creditors in London that fall, aggressively resisting efforts to raise tariffs in order to produce enough revenue to pay its debts. By the end of the year, with essentially only twelve months left in his single term, Davis had ceased to carry any authority in Richmond; his greatest personal embarrassment occurred on November 30, 1866, when his veto of a small tariff was overridden by a coalition of both pro and anti-administration members of Congress. Davis would spend the next six months at home in Mississippi, allegedly sick for many of them, six months in which no legislation was signed and two vacancies on the Confederate Supreme Court went effectively unfilled - the Absent President became his nickname in his last year in office, and due to Alexander Stephens' often ill-health, it fell to Postmaster General John Reagan to often manage the affairs of government. His competency made him the ideal candidate for such a role, to the point that Senators would quip at social gatherings that one barely noticed that the President was missing..."
The Rapprochement Era in the Confederacy, 1863-1881 (Harvard University, 1967)
Slavery in the United States
"...efforts to abolish slavery had faltered at the national level with the losses of 1862, but the advantage to the suddenly resurgent Republicans - having reinvented themselves as a party dedicated to "defending the Union" from foreign interference as opposed to the laissez-faire Democrats still stuck in the Jacksonian Era - flowed from the admission of West Virginia, Nevada and Nebraska between 1863 and 1866, all three states returning Republican Senators to Congress and delegations favorable to the party. Another victory was scored in Missouri, where an abolitionist government dominated by German Republicans passed a new constitution in 1866 that formally abolished slavery, leaving Maryland and Delaware as the only slave states left - and Delaware, of course, had a large majority of its black population out of bondage. Despite a large wave of lynchings in Missouri in early 1867 as Confederate sympathizers who had not yet fled south fomented a minor rebellion, the stage was largely set for the de facto elimination of slavery in the United States, a mere four years after the Havana Conference had made the setback to the abolition movement seem nearly permanent..."
- Slavery in the United States (Yale University, 1972)
- Slavery in the United States (Yale University, 1972)
I'll open things up to request at this point as I plan out next steps... is there anything in particular anybody wants an update on in the world of Cinco De Mayo?
This is your TL, do what you think would be the natural butterflies, this is your idea, no others
Oh, of course! I meant more are there any countries/people that anybody wants to check in on as we proceed?
Canadian Confederation: A History
"...of strong interested to those who formed the Dominion of Canada - both its signatories such as John MacDonald as well as a Parliament that would pass the British North America Act in 1867, was a concern that the United States would have future revanchist designs on much of British North America, particularly her Western colonies. Confederation, as it came to be known, was not without controversy. The Maritime Provinces would come to be dominated by interests in Montreal and Ottawa; thriving shipbuilding industries in Halifax would collapse, and access to the American market would sharply decline as Canada's Parliament came to be as protectionist as America's Congress. Ill will over the intervention by London in the War of Southern Independence remained, too. Americans, once pursuing business opportunities in Montreal as a matter of course, ceased to do so; forts were established in Northern New York; and though a Canadian Militia existed to defend against a third American invasion, the British Army expanded its presence in a move of geopolitical realism, to the dismay of an establishment in London that preferred to keep peacetime armies small. By the end of the decade, hostilities between Britain and America would begin bubbling again to the point that the Royal Navy had to base a substantial squadron out of Halifax to protect shipping interests from the buildup of the United States' own naval forces..."
- Canadian Confederation: A History
- Canadian Confederation: A History
Gladstone, A Life
"...Lord Russell's ministry continued to be favourably [1] disposed to the Confederate States, most prominently the aging Prime Minister's likeliest successor, William Gladstone. The Liberals, the party of British capitalism arrayed against the aristocracy, saw in the Americas - now bereft of the constrictions of the Monroe Doctrine - an opportunity for the continued advancement of British interests, and in the Confederacy sat a remarkable market for British goods previously unavailable to them due to the protective tariffs insisted upon by US industrialists. It helped, too, that the aristocracy, personified in the Tories, viewed the Confederacy's plantation economy favorably as a continuation of the old Anglo-Protestant world order in the New World. By the late 1860s - long after Russell had stepped aside in Gladstone's favour - it was Britain, not France, that stood as the main benefactor of the Confederacy. It was British merchants who in the ports of Charleston and Savannah established trade house, London banks that invested in railroads winding westwards, and British textile mills that eagerly accepted bales upon bales of Confederate cotton..."
- Gladstone, A Life (Oxford University, 1950)
[1] British source, British spelling
- Gladstone, A Life (Oxford University, 1950)
[1] British source, British spelling
The Liberator: The Reign of Alexander II 1856-1899
"...having narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 1866, Alexander became considerably more conservative over the remainder of his reign. Nevertheless, the mid-1860s would serve as a time of profound change in Russia, possibly matched only by the aging Tsar's efforts to pursue a codified constitution twenty years later or his return of attention towards European matters towards the end of his life near the end of the century. Alexander pursued reforms of the judicial system, devolved authority to zemstvo (local councils) throughout Russia, and having successfully sold what he considered the "baggage" of Alaska to a United States licking its wound, began to turn his eyes both eastwards towards Central Asia. The defeat of Austria in 1866 changed his calculation somewhat, though. Harboring deep resentments towards Francis Joseph over Austria's role in the Crimean War and viewing Galicia as a "cannon of Polish nationhood" aimed at Orthodox Russia and Protestant Prussia by a Catholic Vienna, Alexander came to see Austria's postwar financial and political crisis as an opportunity to expand his western domains and reassert himself on the European sphere, a marked shift from his otherwise pacifist foreign policy..."
- The Liberator: The Reign of Alexander II 1856-1884
- The Liberator: The Reign of Alexander II 1856-1884
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The Knights of the South: Secret Societies in the Confederate States
"...the central paradox of the Confederate government in the postwar decades was the inherent weaknesses in a constitutional order designed both as a reaction to perceived encroachment on the rights of states and a government designed by and for slave power, which indulged state's rights arguments when it suited it. On the plantations in the Cotton Belt, where political and economic power in the Confederacy truly lay, one would never have known a violent war had been fought to sustain that way of life or that far away in Richmond the "confederal" government essentially existed only through the efforts of the nation's postmaster general. Here, the planter class lived as before, entertaining a romantic notion of the "chivalrous state" they had founded. Late 1866 was when the first "knighthoods" began to form across the South, secret societies that sprung up with various aims from anodyne social clubs to explicitly political. The oldest, and original, such knighthood was the Knights of the Golden Circle, an ambitiously expansionist organization that before independence had sought to project American hegemony over a "circle" of slave states to be carved out of Mexico and Central America. Those ambitions, halted by the war and simmering in the postwar debt crisis, had been a project of slave power's desire to retain its hold on the United States' government in the antebellum period... now, they were an imperial ambition, to continue to expand southwards..."
- The Knights of the South: Secret Societies in the Confederate States
- The Knights of the South: Secret Societies in the Confederate States
More on Mexico please. Seems almost criminally underrepresented in a timeline named after a major event in said country.
there’ll be quite a bit more on Mexico and it’s relationship to the Confederacy in the next few updates - rest assured that is on the docket!
More About UK and Spain? those are ignored and the CSA is thinking too much over their weight class with the golden circle too
Since there aren't a ton of butterflies affecting the UK - yet - I've intentionally pushed them off a bit. Spain will get much more focus once we get to 1868 and beyond, too.
And no disagreement on the CSA being out of their depth with the golden circle... stay tuned, is all i'll say...
A Diplomat in Japan
"...the removal of the Emperor from the political scene, leaving a boy of merely fourteen in his wake, is most opportune..." [1]
- A Diplomat in Japan, Sir Ernest Satow
[1] This is British diplomat Satow's actual quote regarding the ascension of Prince Mutsuhito, better known as Meiji Emperor, in 1867. Figured I might as well use it as-is.
- A Diplomat in Japan, Sir Ernest Satow
[1] This is British diplomat Satow's actual quote regarding the ascension of Prince Mutsuhito, better known as Meiji Emperor, in 1867. Figured I might as well use it as-is.
“Maximilian of Mexico”
"...the completion of the Mexico City-Veracruz railroad in early 1867 coincided with the appointment by Maximilian of Santiago Vidaurri as First Minister of the Empire at the invocation ceremony where the "golden spike" that would mark its completion was slammed into place by the Emperor. Vidaurri was a bold choice for the Emperor as Maximilian endeavored to forge ahead with his struggling reform program; a moderate liberal turned Conservative, Vidaurri had been a decentralist during the War of Reform and had been a supporter of Benito Juarez in the 1850s. Vidaurri's value lay in being the most high-profile former Liberal amnestied by the Emperor, now brought so into the fold that Maximilian trusted him to run his government. Vidaurri had other values, too - he had been a key conduit between the Mexican regime and the Confederate government during the war, and was one of the few international figures who not only could stand Jefferson Davis, but liked the outgoing Confederate presence. Vidaurri's ten-year ministry would prove to be a period of unprecedented economic growth in Mexico, as railroads were finished, foreign investment finally flowed in, and more anti-monarchist guerillas laid down their arms.
The regime had some other problems, though, despite the calming situation. Napoleon's trusted Marshal Bazaine still maintained the French Americas Legion in Veracruz, a force of 10,000 men, and the inscrutable old marshal viewed the Franco-Mexican relationship as considerably more clientelist than Maximilian and many of his Conservative supporters did. Maximilian's reluctance to hand confiscated church property back to the clergy and undo many reform laws chafed at his base, to the point that his increasingly professional military began to grumble about the Emperor being little more than Benito Juarez by another name. So on that fateful day of February 22, 1867, asked to give an address on the occasion of the completion of the railway, Maximilian announced the appointment first of Vidaurri and then, in his still-accented and broken Spanish, unveiled the Plan Nacional, an ambitious reform program building upon the labor laws and free public education based on the German gymnasia system he had already introduced. Under this Plan, all 50 of Mexico's departments - part of his governmental reform - would elect their own prefects (governors) and councils rather than be appointed by Mexico City; new railroads would continue to be built, new banks established, an independent navy to be based out of Veracruz and Acapulco carved off from the dominant army, and Mexico would "return to its position of primacy in the Americas." It was an audacious, nationalistic document, snubbing its nose at France's intention to make Mexico a puppet state and declaring its intention to enforce a "Maximilian Doctrine" - 1867 would mark the moment in which Mexico viewed its neighbors in Central America as its own sphere of influence.
But before Maximilian could begin to enforce his grand national project, there was the matter of the still-simmering rebellion in the country's sparsely populated and anti-monarchist north..."
- Gustavo Reyes, “Maximilian of Mexico”
The regime had some other problems, though, despite the calming situation. Napoleon's trusted Marshal Bazaine still maintained the French Americas Legion in Veracruz, a force of 10,000 men, and the inscrutable old marshal viewed the Franco-Mexican relationship as considerably more clientelist than Maximilian and many of his Conservative supporters did. Maximilian's reluctance to hand confiscated church property back to the clergy and undo many reform laws chafed at his base, to the point that his increasingly professional military began to grumble about the Emperor being little more than Benito Juarez by another name. So on that fateful day of February 22, 1867, asked to give an address on the occasion of the completion of the railway, Maximilian announced the appointment first of Vidaurri and then, in his still-accented and broken Spanish, unveiled the Plan Nacional, an ambitious reform program building upon the labor laws and free public education based on the German gymnasia system he had already introduced. Under this Plan, all 50 of Mexico's departments - part of his governmental reform - would elect their own prefects (governors) and councils rather than be appointed by Mexico City; new railroads would continue to be built, new banks established, an independent navy to be based out of Veracruz and Acapulco carved off from the dominant army, and Mexico would "return to its position of primacy in the Americas." It was an audacious, nationalistic document, snubbing its nose at France's intention to make Mexico a puppet state and declaring its intention to enforce a "Maximilian Doctrine" - 1867 would mark the moment in which Mexico viewed its neighbors in Central America as its own sphere of influence.
But before Maximilian could begin to enforce his grand national project, there was the matter of the still-simmering rebellion in the country's sparsely populated and anti-monarchist north..."
- Gustavo Reyes, “Maximilian of Mexico”
The Wizard: The Life of Nathan Forrest
"...four years spent in the north of Mexico had surprisingly not taken its toll on Diaz's small but substantial army, which controlled a wide swath of the arid north and much of the highlands of the Sierra Madres. This was the land of El Caudillo del Norte, as he came to be known, a folk hero standing against the Imperial throne and continuing the War of Reform long after it had been ended in the monarchy's favor in the south. Young, swaggering and handsome, Diaz led raids against the small expeditions Maximilian I would send north to find him. Little more than a nuisance for much of the early Empire, by early 1867, however, Diaz had begun to regroup and amass serious forces again. Escaped slaves from the Confederacy, especially from Texas and Louisiana, had sought shelter in Mexico, a land that had abolished slavery decades earlier. Indigenous Mexicans and poor mestizos were drawn to his championing of land reform and the unfinished Juarez project; while most liberals, moderate and radical, had since 1863 accepted Maximilian and taken amnesties, Diaz and his supporters had not. "The foreign crown shall be driven from Chapultepec while I still draw breath!" Diaz declared in a fiery speech in Chihuahua on Christmas Day 1866, the day after his forces had surprised the garrison there at night and seized the city. It was the boldest move made by the suddenly reenergized rebels since Juarez's death.
Alarmed, Emperor Maximilian dispatched in early January a force from Mexico City to head north and retake Chihuahua, and immediately sent additional forces to reinforce northern cities, particularly the crucial and booming port of Matamoros at the mouth of the Rio Grande and on the border with Texas. Well aware that Diaz's men had conducted raids into Texas and the Arizona Territory over the last few years as well, and with Mexican newspapers suddenly shrieking with alarm that the war might bloom again after four years of relative peace in the south, the Emperor's men began putting out feelers to foreign mercenaries, hoping to not have to dispatch the still-reforming and developing Mexican Army, in the midst of a grand overhaul to professionalize in the mold of Prussia or Austria's forces, northwards until it was absolutely necessary.
It fell then to Forrest, who in January of 1867 gathered a surprising force in New Orleans, to set sail to Matamoros and then ride inland - two hundred veterans of the Memphis Massacre, known as the Tennessee Templars; forty Cherokee volunteers recruited from the Indian Territory; and three hundred additional volunteers, all veterans of the War of Independence from Louisiana and Mississippi, short on pay and eager for glory when a grand purse was offered by Mexico for Diaz's capture or execution. Upon arriving in Matamoros, they were greeted by an additional three dozen German Texan volunteers, some of whom had been robbed by Diaz's "bandidos," twenty Texas Rangers, and well over a hundred Mexicans, some of them criminals and one or two escaped slaves. In all, Forrest's force numbered over 700, and became dubbed "the Great Posse." Westward they rode, at rapid pace, Forrest back in his element in the saddle, hoping to find Diaz before any of the other mercenary bands setting out or the Mexican Imperial Army did. The Sierra Madre War had begun."
- The Wizard: The Life of Nathan Forrest (University of Mississippi, 1927)
Alarmed, Emperor Maximilian dispatched in early January a force from Mexico City to head north and retake Chihuahua, and immediately sent additional forces to reinforce northern cities, particularly the crucial and booming port of Matamoros at the mouth of the Rio Grande and on the border with Texas. Well aware that Diaz's men had conducted raids into Texas and the Arizona Territory over the last few years as well, and with Mexican newspapers suddenly shrieking with alarm that the war might bloom again after four years of relative peace in the south, the Emperor's men began putting out feelers to foreign mercenaries, hoping to not have to dispatch the still-reforming and developing Mexican Army, in the midst of a grand overhaul to professionalize in the mold of Prussia or Austria's forces, northwards until it was absolutely necessary.
It fell then to Forrest, who in January of 1867 gathered a surprising force in New Orleans, to set sail to Matamoros and then ride inland - two hundred veterans of the Memphis Massacre, known as the Tennessee Templars; forty Cherokee volunteers recruited from the Indian Territory; and three hundred additional volunteers, all veterans of the War of Independence from Louisiana and Mississippi, short on pay and eager for glory when a grand purse was offered by Mexico for Diaz's capture or execution. Upon arriving in Matamoros, they were greeted by an additional three dozen German Texan volunteers, some of whom had been robbed by Diaz's "bandidos," twenty Texas Rangers, and well over a hundred Mexicans, some of them criminals and one or two escaped slaves. In all, Forrest's force numbered over 700, and became dubbed "the Great Posse." Westward they rode, at rapid pace, Forrest back in his element in the saddle, hoping to find Diaz before any of the other mercenary bands setting out or the Mexican Imperial Army did. The Sierra Madre War had begun."
- The Wizard: The Life of Nathan Forrest (University of Mississippi, 1927)
The Lion in Latin America: Britain's Role in the Spanish New World
"...Britain still viewed itself as the lender of choice to industrial and infrastructure projects in the New World, and no project earned its attention quite like the Tehuantepec Railway in Mexico. Though sharing a common interest in Maximilian's continued rule from the Chapultepec Palace with France, Parliament was famously skeptical of Napoleon III's political acumen and reliability and were well aware that the French, much like in Suez, wanted to build yet another canal somewhere on the American Land Bridge. The solution, as proposed by Maximilian to British investors over a lavish dinner to discuss his ambitious Plan Nacional, was instead to find a meeting of interests on Mexican soil. An American company had mulled building a rail line in southern Mexico to connect the Gulf to the Pacific before the War of Southern Independence had broken out, and the concern went insolvent. But rail transport was Maximilian's obsession, imported from Europe where he had seen the impact the nascent Industrial Revolution had made and well aware from missives from his family in Vienna about how Prussia had used its rail system to rapidly mobilize and grind down Austrian forces over the Ten Week War. The core of Plan Nacional was not government reform or an expanded navy, though those were benefits within - no, the spine of Maximilian's plan to make Mexico a regional power that could compete with the United States the way France and Austria could compete was a network of railroads, with the recently-finished Veracruz-Mexico City line but the first stone laid. In this context, the Plan Nacional - spoken of romantically as "the Empire's founding document" was less of a Declaration of Independence and more of a business proposal, meant to attract European investors, especially the eager British. Maximilian knew his audience well; with his new Premier Vibaurri at his side, every pitch he made, first to British and then to French, German and even American businessmen, he laid out the advantages of a route through Mexico against one in Nicaragua or even further south - and further from Europe and North America - in Colombia's isolated Panama isthmus..."
- The Lion in Latin America: Britain's Role in the Spanish New World (University of Illinois, 1977)
- The Lion in Latin America: Britain's Role in the Spanish New World (University of Illinois, 1977)
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