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Scandinavia: The Birth of Union
  • "...Bismarck was no stranger to patching together culturally similar yet independent nations into a larger entity, and for his next project after unifying Germany he saw a relatively blank slate that also served him a critical strategic advantage. Sweden and Norway already had the same King - Oscar II of the House of Bernadotte - and though they deployed separate consular services and merchant marines, Europe treated them largely as one entity. Before the First Unification War, it had indeed seemed as if Scandinavism could unite the three Nordic kingdoms under one parliament; dismay in Denmark over Sweden-Norway not coming to her defense against Germany seemed to kill that dream, and by the time of the late 1870s indeed it seemed more likely that Sweden and Norway would drift apart, perhaps even under separate crowns. Oscar II, for his part, was a staunch neutralist and not a man who cared much for the intrigues of the continent. Bismarck, of course, had other plans for him, particularly with an eye towards the potential combined weight of Sweden and Norway's navies under one flag directly to the north of Denmark, which all of Europe understood to be part of the "Iron Triangle" organized by Paris against Germany. Though Denmark alone was no particular threat against the Reich on her own and European cabinets lacked enthusiasm for a general war, Bismarck's gambling days were over. Removing a corner of Bazaine's famed Triangle was something the Iron Chancellor was determined to do to one-up the rival who had somehow not allowed France to go quietly into the night despite her loss on land to Germany's armies..."

    - Scandinavia: The Birth of Union
     
    The Sun Rises: Japan in the Meiji Era
  • "...the Satsuma Rebellion's beginning represented the final gasp of the privileged samurai class that had ruled Japan as a feudal state and the nation's emergence under Emperor Meiji as a world power. The crushing of Saigo Takamori's rebellion in 1877 effectively eliminated the samurai forever, though many former samurai would find their way to the top of the zaibatsu syndicates that would soon dominate Japan's industrial economy..."

    - The Sun Rises: Japan in the Meiji Era (University of Nanking, 1944)
     
    The Orange Sunset: The Expiry of the Netherlands' First Royal House
  • "...the marriage of King Alexander to Princess Thyra of Denmark was greeted with aplomb across the continent, especially in the two countries most responsible for helping nudge along the negotiations for the match - Britain, which had worked as hard as possible to hold a veto over any match that might pair Alexander to a Prussian or Protestant German match that would drag the indebted Netherlands even further into German influence, and France, a staunch ally of Denmark which also feared an Alexander influenced by Germany. The royal wedding in Amsterdam was a grand affair, visited by some of the most prominent dignitaries in Europe, including Napoleon IV himself, who was close in age to the young King of the Netherlands, and Prince Arthur, the Duke of Edinburgh, well understood to be representing his mother's interests and who shared the grief of Alexander of having both lost their close elder brothers to the same typhoid outbreak five years prior. Secret diplomacy occurred at the wedding, too - Crown Prince Friedrich of Germany met with Arthur and Napoleon surreptitiously to confer with them about the gathering war clouds in Southeast Europe after the Ottoman Empire had thumbed her nose at the Concert of Europe in withdrawing from the Constantinople Conference, and discussions about issues in Africa and Asia were had then too, out of concerns by Germany's client state Cambodia and pseudo-ally Siam about French encroachment in the Laos Highlands and further British expansion in Burma to her west..."

    - The Orange Sunset: The Expiry of the Netherlands' First Royal House
     
    The Land of Plenty: Southern Africa in the 19th Century
  • "...but when the cannons rang out in Europe, Britain's attention suddenly turned south - for the collapsing relationship between Molteno and Frere had set the tinderbox for a conflagration in the south of Africa. The Confederation Scheme - at first meant to consolidate the Cape, Natal, and the remaining African kingdoms under British dominion, for even Frere had come to believe that the Free Republics would need to wait - collapsed under protests from the Xhosa who lived in the eastern frontier and would make or break connections between Port Elizabeth and Durban. As the frontier war began to escalate, without British troops, another incident occurred. A misunderstanding on the frontier with Basutoland, resulting in three dead British surveyors and one dead native patrolman, caused Frere to envoke Britain's "protectorate rights" over Basutoland, which he as Governor "controlled" under a treaty from 1868.

    The Free Republics, which had signed secret agreements insuring the independence of the "kaffir kingdoms" [1] to keep Britain off its immediate borders, raised small platoons of men to defend Basutoland and maintain her independence. Though the Zulus and Swatis were not directly involved in this conflict, their kings raised armies as well in case a general war broke out across South Africa.

    Meanwhile, in London, as news of the burgeoning crisis reached Whitehall, plans were drawn up for the British Army's deployment to the Cape immediately and for the Navy to route further reinforcements to Inhaca Island, despite being aware that Portugal would not receive this news well..."


    - The Land of Plenty: Southern Africa in the 19th Century

    [1] This word is used in its historical context
     
    Hendricks: America's 20th President
  • "...inaugurated on the heels of the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, and as the 20th man to hold the office, the new President was already thinking legacy and symbolism even before he placed his hand on the Washington Bible. The three living former Presidents - Lincoln, Seymour and his immediate predecessor and rival Hoffman - were all in attendance, and by all accounts the carriage ride to the Capitol with Hoffman was courteous but stiff. In his 2,314 word inaugural address, he spoke of the promise of the new day and of America's achievements in a century of independence, and most markedly, "today's break with the rapacious greed and centralized corruption of yesteryear, of a new Constitutional covenant enshrining self-governance and trust in the people, rather than trust in an insular capital that views the co-equal fraternity of states the way the Old World's empires view their colonies." Hendricks had, even before his inauguration, sketched out an ambitious plan - an immediate suspension of homesteading and railroad grants, a cancellation of a quarter of the Navy's ordered vessels under the 1869 Naval Act, and expanding the Silver Purchase Act's terms from a gold ratio of 4:1 to 8:1, which was still a more moderate course than that demanded by the free silver wing of the party and the Greenbackers, who wanted an entirely fiat currency. Hendricks, in his early days in office, was both a break from the past 16 years of administrative style in accordance with his Midwestern conservatism and an effort at continuity to appease various Democratic constituencies. As Attorney General he elevated esteemed Vermont Democrat Edward J. Phelps, regarded to this day as one of the 19th century's finest legal minds; in an effort to bury the hatchet with Hoffman he made former Vice President Cox the Secretary of State (lost on none that Cox's maneuvering at the convention had resulted in Hendricks' nomination and now Presidency); to replace Vice President Church on the Supreme Court, he appointed his political ally Melville Fuller, a prominent Illinois railroad attorney who had read his nominating address at the 1876 convention, and when Justice Clifford resigned in failing health later in the year, conservative Ohio Senator Allen G. Thurman was elevated in his stead. In somewhat of a break from previous Democratic administrations, however, Hendricks stepped back from executive prerogatives - though he held Jacksonian views on banks and racial matters, he was leery of executive power, a holdover from his opposition to the Lincoln administration's endeavors during the 1860s and his own experience as Governor of Indiana, and so he left many matters to the trusted and battle-hardened Speaker Sam Marshall of Illinois, and he and wife Eliza kept a fairly modest social schedule in the executive mansion. Jeffersonianism was what truly inspired Hendricks, and it seemed in the early days of his Presidency to be making a moderate comeback in Washington..."

    - Hendricks: America's 20th President
     
    Maximilian of Mexico
  • "...the funeral of Santiago Vidaurri in Nuevo Leon's capital of Monterrey was not unlike that of a king, emphasizing not only the deep respect Mexico had for its fair and competent First Minister but also the might of the local caudillos even after Vidaurri and Maximilian's efforts to centralize authority in the capital. Particularly in northern departments, Vidaurri's death was both a reminder and a warning to Mexico City that there were other forces that had been kept at bay largely through the strength of a growing economy, fifteen years of internal peace (both politically and literally), and the force of personality of El Indio Viejo.

    The death of the First Minister set off the scramble at Chapultepec to designate his successor, timed almost exactly with the "expiry" of the aspirational Plan Nacional. In two senses, the plan had been a spectacular success under Vidaurri's concurrent ten years as the Emperor's hand. Mexico's railroad capacity had nearly quadrupled in size, particularly in the central Altiplano, and immigration combined with foreign trade had buffeted the Mexican economy, along with lack of civil conflict, expanding the country's urban middle class, establishing formal banking, bringing many Maya natives into mainstream society through improved and regulated labor, and connecting Mexican institutions to other nations in the Americas and Europe to bind it more fully into the burgeoning, nascent globalist trade network. It had fallen well short of the Emperor's original goals in terms of education - perhaps a quarter of the gymnasium-style schools Maximilian had dreamed of had been built, almost none of them outside of the core central Mexican region - and the Church, still under the guiding hand of reactionary ultramontanist Labastida, still held considerable sway in the day to day life of much of rural Mexico. Nevertheless, the coinciding years of Vidaurri's ministry and the Plan Nacional had been one of the most peaceful and successful in the history of Mexico, years that the Emperor would in effect have to "bank" as storm clouds rose on the horizon, for Vidaurri was one of a kind, a centrifugal force in Mexican politics able to balance centralism against provincialism, liberalism against conservatism, and national interest against the personal ambitions of a growing cadre of figures at Court..."

    - Maximilian of Mexico
     
    The Eastern Question
  • "...the Budapest Convention effectively sealed Russia's mobilization. Austria agreed to benevolent neutrality, but that it could occupy Bosnia at any time of its choosing (of course, this would occur only if the war went in Russia's favor, which all of Europe suspected it would). Russia agreed to establish a network of sovereign states in the Balkans rather than any large Slavic state that could disrupt the balance of power. In return for this, all stipulations heavily skewed towards Vienna, Greece would be expanded and it was even thought that there was a path towards a Neo-Byzantine restoration not unlike Catherine the Great's Greek Plan [1]. Skeptical of the Ottomans and wary of growing French influence in the Near East, the British Foreign Office under Salisbury was made aware of this arrangement by Russia and gave its silent, secret acquiescence, but warned Russia not to advance any more than within 100 miles of the Turkish Straits or the Royal Navy would respond. The stage was set, and so on April 27th, Russia declared war on behalf of the persecuted Slavic peoples of the Balkans and Orthodox Christendom, also citing Istanbul's difficulties in the Constantinople Conference as a cassus belli [2]. In mid-April, Romania gave permission for Russian troops to advance through Romanian territory to attack the Ottomans and in that same moment declared its independence from Ottoman suzerainty. The response was Ottoman bombardment of Romanian border towns, the destruction of vessels on the Danube that could be used to cross it and the immediate mining of the river and destruction of bridges to buy Istanbul time [3], with Istanbul gambling that Russia would try to circumvent its more heavily fortified roads near Kostence. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877 had begun."

    - The Eastern Question

    [1] There is some indication Alexander II hoped for something along these lines.
    [2] Three days later than OTL
    [3] This was undertaken by Russia and Romania in OTL - here, a more aggressive Ottoman Empire thanks to experienced Defense Minister Huseyin Pasha (see told you he was important) surviving makes this move first, correctly taking into account the possibility Russia doesn't attempt to thrust through Dobruja
     
    The Land of Plenty: Southern Africa in the 19th Century
  • "...Cape commandos were generally held in reserve by the Molteno government as the feud between he and Frere deepened, and the High Commissioner decided to put down the restive Basutoland via Natal instead, deploying the Natal Field Force from Durban in late April. The advantages lay almost entirely with the Basutos and their Boer advisors; King Cetshwayo, who had zero interest in the British confederation plans, had dispatched a force of 5,000 of his rifle-armed impis to Basutoland to assist, the British had to attack into the Drakensberg Mountains which held geographic and familiarity advantages for the locals, and the British were internally divided, with the war being largely an endeavor of London rather than the Cape government, which was leery of her Boer neighbors. Further complicating matters was Portugal's staunch neutrality in the matter and stubborn refusal to allow Britain use of Lourenco Marques to launch potential attacks into the Transvaal..."

    - The Land of Plenty: Southern Africa in the 19th Century
     
    Youth and Vigor: The Presidency of John T. Hoffman
  • "...Hoffman's early retirement was spent in Ossining practicing law, an endeavor which made him profoundly wealthy and until his sudden death [1] led to suggestions that the former President potentially have a swansong as a Justice - perhaps even the Chief Justice - of the Supreme Court. In his spare time he wrote several books on the law, the Constitution, the history of the United States and also published one of the most thorough autobiographies of any President until that time, a primary source document used heavily both for this text and countless others.

    It is the vast annals of writing from Hoffman himself and his contemporaries that shed so much light on his Presidency and his led to its evaluation and re-evaluation throughout history. For decades he was known mostly as the "young President" and tainted by his association with Tammany Hall, leading to the still-prevalent view that he was personally corrupt. Later historians elevated his standing in the pantheon of Presidents due to his efforts to create a civil service office, his peaceful foreign policy with all of the United States' neighbors, and his early moves towards accepting and legalizing laborism, three policies that all survived him into his successor's administration despite their strongly different backgrounds and worldviews. Of course, in recent years, Hoffman has been reassessed for the worse again - not due to Tammany, but due to the years of his Presidency coinciding with the genocide of the Plains Indians, easily the most brutal and atrocity-filled half-decade period of any of the wars between Washington and the indigenous peoples of the lands. Though it was the future President Custer [2] who has truly had his legacy reframed as Native rights groups in recent years have demanded apologies and recognition for their treatment at the hands of the Indian Office, a Lakota chief in 1965 said succintly: 'it was Hoffman who took the leash off the Wolverine...'"

    - Youth and Vigor: The Presidency of John T. Hoffman


    [1] IRL Hoffman died at age 60 in 1888
    [2] I'm still pretty excited about this
     
    From Borodino to Bulgaria: Russian Military History in the 19th Century
  • "...purely from a perspective of numbers, Russia should have had a critical advantage in the manpower and resources they themselves possessed - this was already history's largest land empire, after all - even before taking into account Rumanian forces that buffeted their efforts. 300,000 men were mobilized for the Russian invasion, against 200,000 Ottoman soldiers, half of whom were committed to fortified garrisons. The fortified nature of the Ottoman forces offset whatever advantage the Russians may have enjoyed, as did the more modern German and American artillery possessed by Ottoman forces, and their repeating rather than single-shot rifles. This disadvantage was compounded by the fact that the reconstituted Black Sea Fleet was essentially coastal monitors built in short order and impressed merchant vessels outfitted with cannon, against the third largest Navy in the world. The Russian offensive strategy was reliant on Ottoman passivity and thrusting into Bulgaria near Nikopol, far west of the fortified Ottoman positions in Dobruja, but also stretching Russian supply lines further through Romania and requiring a more difficult Danube crossing. Critically, the number of men earmarked to cross the river - 185,000 - were fewer than the Ottomans had stationed in the Balkans prewar.

    The first such attempt to cross the Danube near Shvishtov, in June, was an outright disaster for Russia thanks largely to the Ottoman's command of the river, resulting in Russia having to retreat from its efforts to seize the south shore at four times the casualties of the Ottomans. Istanbul deployed Osman Pasha and his 30,000 men from Vidin in the far west - still stationed there due to the recently-ended war with Serbia - to the central Danube, at Nikopol. From Istanbul, Defense Minister Huseyin Pasha also redeployed men from the Middle East, particularly elite Circassians, to defend the mountain passes and even withdrew some men from the Dobruja fortifications to prevent any potential Russian incursions through the Balkan Mountains.

    In mid-July, the Russians were able to finally cross the Danube with a successful sinking of Ottoman monitors with Romanian torpedo boats, deploying their own mines, and constructing a pontoon bridge near Nikopol. In bloody fighting they were able to cross the river, taking once again nearly three times the casualties of the Ottomans..."


    - From Borodino to Bulgaria: Russian Military History in the 19th Century
     
    The Eaglet Takes Flight: The Reign of Napoleon IV 1874-1905
  • "...the constitutional referendum was a resounding success for the new Emperor, in one move decentralizing power in many respects away from Paris as part of a liberal vision to re-empower the common Frenchman while also defanging the republicans and radicals in the National Assembly by dramatically changing the composition of the body. The Constitution of 1877 would remain in place through the end of the Second Empire [1], easily one of Napoleon IV's great achievements on the domestic front in addition to his forthcoming efforts to create one of the world's first genuine general welfare programs and safety nets for workers..."

    - The Eaglet Takes Flight: The Reign of Napoleon IV 1874-1905


    [1] Bit of a flashforward...
     
    The Eastern Question
  • "...Huseyin Pasha's strategy relied heavily on a two-pronged strategy, both making heavy use of the Ottoman Navy. The first prong was to bleed the Russian-Romanian army as it attempted to cross the Danube, with mines and river monitors. Though the Ottomans accepted that the Russians would eventually cross the river, they wanted to exact as heavy a price as possible upon the Russians for earning that strategic win, and to effectively "choose" the route the Russians would take through central Bulgaria. In early August, Osman Pasha withdrew from Nikopol under heavy fire towards Plevna, a key city that had been heavily fortified and which the Russian force critically required if it was to move on the mountain passes in the south. With the Russian Caucasus Army being bogged down near Kars as well, it seemed that the war was headed for a stalemate.

    In came the second prong, in which the Ottomans took offensive action and established their Naval supremacy. The Navy shelled the port of Odessa and sank much of the Russian merchant marine there - when the middling Black Sea Fleet responded, the Ottomans lured them south to the Danube Delta, where they engaged in the Battle of Kilya, sinking essentially every ship Alexander II had outfitted to contest the coast in a matter of hours. It decisively ended any Russian threat to the Ottoman Navy and once again gave them total control over the river. As the Russians besieged Plevna in the south, the Ottomans launched a daring assault on the city of Galatz with a force of 10,000 men recruited from the Middle East, primarily Egypt and the Sudan, burning much of the city, twisting her railroads into "Turkish ties" and essentially severing the connection of the Danube Army from the rest of Russia. Men from the Dobruja fortifications were rotated out of their fortresses to hold Galatz shortly thereafter as Suleiman Pasha's 30,000-strong force marched through the Balkan passes to reinforce Plevna in late August..."

    - The Eastern Question


    (Much of Turkey's problem in this war was that they sat back and let the Russians dictate the pace of the war and failed to take advantage of numerous instances of Russian incompetence and poor-planning. Here, we have them be slightly more aggressive/flexible, to their advantage. It helps that there's five whole years less of Russian naval investment before the war, too)
     
    The Giant of Kentucky: John C. Breckinridge and the Dawn of the Confederate States
  • "...beyond his unique legacy of having served as Vice President of both the Union and the Confederacy, and the strange circumstances of his elevation to and loss of the Presidency, the Gentleman from Kentucky emerged as a titanic figure in the emerging Democratic Party that was quickly being reconstituted south of the Ohio. Yes, the passing of Breckinridge [1] left a gaping hole in the anti-Harris factions of the Confederacy, but nevertheless, a new era was dawning. As the country slowly recovered from the effects of the Depression, the patrician planter class came to view the late Breckinridge as the ideal gentleman and President, strongly unlike the more brusque, corrupt Forrest-Harris duo that had ruled the country for a decade. As Harris - grievously unpopular both in the states and in Congress, and with his Klan machine marred by infighting - retreated from public appearances and began down the road that would eventually lead to his slide into obscurity and memory as one of the worst Confederate Presidents, the next election was very much on the horizon - and with the election by the Virginia Legislature of famed General James Longstreet to the Governorship, the Breckinridge faction of government would have her next champion..."

    - The Giant of Kentucky: John C. Breckinridge and the Dawn of the Confederate States


    [1] Delayed two years due to lack of as many war wounds
     
    Maximilian of Mexico
  • "...Mejia [1] cut a very different figure than Vidaurri, immediately taking to aggressively overhauling the Council of Ministers. Despite a reputation for pragmatism, Mejia viewed his personal rivals at Court as enemies of the Emperor, to whom he was devoted, and sought to rapidly consolidate power in Mexico City. Of course, a broader issue for Mejia was growing tensions between the central government and the caudillos who in effect ruled the various departments of Mexico, particularly in the north and west of the country. Here, the industrialization of the last fifteen years had not penetrated; peonage may have been abolished, but the people - many of them more indigenous in their descent than European - still ground out difficult existences on haciendas in utter poverty. Maximilian's Mexico, that of operas in Nahuatl and light industry in cities such as Queretaro and Puebla, did not exist in places such as Mazatlan, Sonora, or Tamaulipas. Despite the gains made in the Altiplano since the Empire's founding, the peripheral departments of the country only seemed to grow poorer and more restless.

    The Emperor himself had, at this point, become remarkably blind to the brewing issues in the poor rural north. Mexico City was still transforming into a semi-European capital; industry thrived in the other major cities in the vicinity, and besides, he had his rocky marriage to Carlota and his numerous mistresses to distract him. It fell to Mejia then to navigate the thorny matters presented not just by restive caudillos like Manuel Lozada, a mercurial figure known as the "Tiger of Alica" who effectively ran Nayarit as a personal fiefdom [2], but also the ambitions of Miramon and the hyper-reactionary ultramontanism of Archbishop Labastida..."

    - Maximilian of Mexico


    [1] Credit due to pathfinder and Capibara for suggesting to me that Tomas Mejia take on a larger role in this TL
    [2] Interesting guy, Manuel Lozada. Still alive at this point obviously as Diaz wasn't President and ordering his execution
     
    The Age of Questions: Britain in the Gauntlet of Change and Upheaval
  • "...it can be said with absolute certainty that in the "Age of Questions," as Prime Minister Walpole so famously termed it, every time a question was asked of Her Majesty's Government, particularly when the Earl of Carnarvon resided at Downing Street, the answer was always not only insufficient but wrong. The 1870s found the Cabinet caught flatfooted by nearly every development, both foreign and domestic; in perilously few cases did the Government react with prudency, either grotesquely overreacting (such as on domestic matters in Ireland, which in 1877 represented more the Thirteen Colonies in the pre-Revolution days than an integral part of the United Kingdom, or against trade unionists and suffrage campaigners, and in Carnarvon's insistence on gambling and wasting British blood and treasure on his failed campaign to subdue South Africa) or underreacting (such as Britain's somnambulant response to the Eastern Crisis and replacement by France as the world's preeminent trading and financial power in the last quarter of the 19th century). It is no wonder that modern historians consider the Carnarvon ministry to be one of Britain's worst - it was a time when the government squandered the Royal Navy's global hegemony and allowed the other great powers of Europe to catch up and pose genuine threats to the Crown's interests, and a time when the government would sow the seeds not only of Irish nationalism but also socialist agitation and reactionary police action..."

    - The Age of Questions: Britain in the Gauntlet of Change and Upheaval
     
    From Borodino to Bulgaria: Russian Military History in the 19th Century
  • "...the third attempt to seize Pleven, in late September, was the most disastrous one. Prince Carol of Romania had withdrawn a substantial piece of his army by this point to retake Galatz and defend against a feared Ottoman offensive against Bucharest, and General Gourko's attempts to seize the Shipka Pass had all failed. When General Skobelev's latest attempt to break the Ottoman defenses collapsed on the morning of September 28th, the counterattack by Osman Pasha's forces caught the Russian Army entirely flatfooted. The ensuing rout on the plains north of Plevna remain one of the worst defeats in Russian military history, a double-embarassment thanks to the death of Skobelev in the field and the subsequent capture not only of Grand Duke Nicholas, head of the Danube Army, but also Tsar Alexander II himself, who was there in a pavilion with his brother to observe the siege. With not only the head of the scattered Danube Army but also his brother the Tsar now held hostage, Russian morale collapsed. Matters became worse in early October when the Ottoman river monitors, with full command of the Danube, sank the pontoon bridges that would have allowed a Russian retreat back into Romania. Tsarevich Alexander, the Tsar's son in the western end of the Bulgarian theater, was a practical man and saw the writing on the wall - Russia had been not just defeated but humiliated, an outcome he had predicted before the war when he criticized the lack of equipment and preparation. "We have underestimated the Turk," he would later remark. "We shall underestimate no enemy ever again." With the central corps of the Danube Army broken and largely captured, and separated from Gourko's divisions by most of Bulgaria, the Tsarevich took command and sent signals to the Ottoman forces that he was interested in a ceasefire..."

    - From Borodino to Bulgaria: Russian Military History in the 19th Century
     
    The Land of Plenty: Southern Africa in the 19th Century
  • "...the Basuto War was effectively a long, ugly stalemate, one marred by atrocities carried out by both sides. In the end, it resulted only in combining Natal and the Cape into British South Africa, a unitary state to be ruled from the Cape. Though Frere had dismissed the Molteno government and ruled the Dominion personally, when the war ended in late 1877 he was recalled to Britain, crestfallen and humiliated by not only the Natal Field Force's defeat and evisceration at the hands of Boer commandos and African warriors but also the struggle of the Royal Marines dispatched to Natal who also "ran aground," in the parlance of the First Sea Lord, Sir George Wellesley. The Drakensberg Mountains proved difficult terrain, and the complex pastiche of South African politics a vipers nest. Critically, of course, was the British mistake in trying to blockade the Delagoa Bay - the Inhaca Crisis that September nearly destroyed the Anglo-Portuguese alliance and the withdrawal of the Royal Navy's presence there was just a further embarassment to Cabinet..."

    - The Land of Plenty: Southern Africa in the 19th Century
     
    The Eastern Question
  • "...the Conference of Berlin sought to find a peace accord between the humiliated Russians and the Ottomans, who despite their reputation as the "sick man of Europe" had fended off the Bear and indeed decisively controlled the entire pace of the war. In the end, it was a status quo ante settlement, with one major caveat insisted upon by Germany; the end of the "legal fiction," in the words of Bismarck, that Serbia, Montenegro and Romania were "part" of the Ottoman Empire. This was placed in the final treaty signed in Berlin with the acquiescence of the other Powers at the table largely as a measure for Russia to save face at minimal losses to Istanbul. As such, in return for Europe accepting the Constitution of 1876 and neither the Ottomans nor Russia requesting any war indemnity, the three principalities were given total and formal de jure independence. The idea was that these three small states, which received no additional territory, would join the conference of powers in Europe as minor players - in reality, each became a plaything for a larger power. Montenegro almost immediately became a French client; Francois Bazaine was in Podgorica within days of the Berlin Conference's conclusion to negotiate basing rights out of Kotor. Serbia, with the Austrophile Obrenovic dynasty already in charge and situated on the Danube, slid cleanly into being an Austrian sphere of influence [1]. Romania, while initially Russia's sole ally in the conflict, quickly became a close friend of Germany. It had a Hohenzollern sovereign and irredentist interests in Transylvania, and Russia's failures in the conflict had made her much less of a reliable partner moving forward.

    Of all the parties at Berlin, it was Britain and Russia - enemies in Central Asia - who came out worst. Russia was of course the laughingstock of the Great Powers, and in the next two decades turned both inwards and eastwards in her interests. But it was Britain that now had lost her ability to hold sway with the Porte and had gained nothing in the Balkans for her neutrality. It was the fallout from Berlin, and the plain advantages the settlement gave both France and Germany, that moved Britain to substantially overhaul her foreign policy approach in the years to come..."

    - The Eastern Question


    [1] Yes I see the irony in this, but the Obrenovic dynasty *was* generally pretty pro-Austria
     
    Ireland Unfree
  • "...Britain's sluggish defeat in South Africa led to the Brotherhood wondering if perhaps this war their hour, and so in the shadow of the Crown's embarrassment on the other side of the world, the Irish Land War kicked off that autumn. As 1877 drew to a close, the agitation by tenant farmers against their English landlords was reaching a crescendo, and even the deployment of the British Army to the rolling emerald green hills of Eire [1] to force the peasantry back to their land failed to quell the unrest..."

    - Ireland Unfree


    [1] Decided to make this textbook pretty bluntly biased
     
    Part IV: The Liberal Ascendancy
  • Part IV: The Liberal Ascendancy
    "...if the 1860s were defined by nationalism and the redrawing of the world's maps, and the 1870s were defined by politics of reaction to the new political order and the Great Depression that consumed that decade, then the next two decades were defined by liberalism, prosperity and peace. Indeed, the period from the 1877-78 Conference of Berlin that ended the brief Russo-Turkish War to the crises of the early 1900s would mark almost exactly the most peaceful period in European and, frankly, global history, as expanding trade networks, more sophisticated industrial economies and the interconnectedness of every continent - even Antarctica! - led some world leaders to wonder if the age of war had ended entirely.

    Of course, as reactionary governments and leaders gave way to reformists and dreamers, as universities became populated with the propagators of liberal nationalism [1] and populist measures, there were darker forces at play beneath the sunny surface of what would later be known as the Belle Epoque. Colonialism and imperialism were as exploitative as rampant laissez-faire capitalism; the politics of radicals, whether proponents of anarchism or communism, became ever further inflamed; and the crises of legitimacy and discontent as the modern era and modern technologies reshaped the world many times over only deepened and the challenges to the peaceful world order began to slowly, one by one, emerge until the pillars holding up the great liberal era of the late 19th century were riven with cracks..."

    - Liberalism in the Old World and the New: A History (Mark Taylor, University of California-Berkeley, 1997)


    [1] Nationalism was of course through WW1 more of a liberal ideology than a conservative one, as conservatives were more attached to monarchy/aristocracy
     
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