Cinco de Mayo

[KingSweden24]

"...the failure of the first bomb to detonate led to the second one being thrown, and as it exploded behind the carriage, the guards ushered the Tsar's coterie forward aggressively, through a shocked and screaming crowd. It was the third bomb, this one in a suitcase, that hit home, detonating to the carriage's left and flipping it on its side. In shock and with his shoulder and hip broken, the Tsar was pulled from the smoking wreckage to the sound of gunfire as his guards fired wildly in the direction the briefcase had come from, hoping beyond hope that whoever had tried to murder Alexander was still there. [1]

Brought back to the Winter Palace in a sleigh, Alexander lay in convalescence for nearly a month as doctors did everything they could to save his life. In the end, the bad breaking of his hip left him wheelchair bound for the last five years of his life and increasingly cloistered within the confines of his two St. Petersburg palaces. He seldom traveled elsewhere in Russia, handing increasing responsibilities to his estranged Tsarevich to do so, and spent most of his time reading and entertaining his controversial wife Catherine, whom his children aggressively shunned. As for the proposals Loris-Melikov had brought him, once he had sufficiently healed to meet with his Council of Ministers again, they were proposed, but watered down ever from the relatively conservative nature of their initial ideas - in addition to a Council of Ministers, the Tsar would appoint a Council of the Commons, known colloquially as the "Duma," a purely advisory body with less power than the zemtsva or municipal dumas established in the provinces. The task of appointing the "voice of the commons for the ear of the Tsar" fell to Loris-Melikov and other ministers, and despite the Tsarevich's disapproval it was the heir who had the responsibility of meeting with the "rabble" he detested. Of course, with its appointed nature and purely advisory role, and due to the conservatism of the men appointing it, the first Duma had no legislative or operational powers and was stocked with academics, non-titled petit-bourgeoise, military officers and other "commoners" who had a substantial investment in the establishment [2]. It was hardly the constitutional body hoped for by many reformers, let alone the revolutionary organ of the Narodnaya Volya that had nearly claimed the Emperor's life.

Indeed, the failed death of Alexander II may have been counterproductive to Narodnaya Volya's goals. The Tsarevich, outraged and now empowered due to his father's continuing decline in health (the future Alexander III commented that "the bomb killed him five years late" upon his father's death in 1886), unleashed the Okhrana upon suspected "subversives and revolutionaries," and did little to discourage the wave of anti-Semitic pogroms that erupted across the Pale of Settlement in anger over the "Jewish conspiracy" to slay the Emperor. Russification efforts were redoubled even over his father's skepticism, and in a stroke of irony, the crippled Alexander II may in fact have become the constitutional figurehead many liberals had dreamed he'd one day become..."

- Alexander II, Tsar and Autocrat of Russia [3]

[1] There were three bombers on the day of Tsar Alexander's OTL assassination, but the first two did the job. Alexander's carriage was bulletproof and only sustained minor damage - had he just stayed inside and not jumped out, and had the second bomb land at his feet and blow his bottom half clean off, he probably would have survived. The third assassin had a suitcase bomb, which here knocks the carriage on its side, but doesn't destroy it entirely.
[2] Alexander II's liberalism, like Frederick III's, has been much overstated in my view, and the Loris-Melikov "constitution" was not going to just change the autocratic nature of Russian government overnight even if Alex II wanted a path to some eventual form of constitutional prescriptions upon the Emperor's authority or structure of the state
[3] The previous "reference book" I created for Russian updates suggested Alex II living until 1899 - huge retcon, that's not gonna happen.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...even as Umberto turned his eyes towards glory in the name of Italy and acquiring colonial possessions - chiefly of interest to him was the territory of Massawa on the Red Sea, where Egyptian forces had withdrawn, beleaguered, after their defeat by the Ethiopian Empire some half-decade earlier - Italy was undergoing severe changes and upheavals. It was still the poorest country in Europe, particularly the southern Mezzogiorno, where the Mafia, Comorra and 'Ndragheta held sway, making sure that deputies elected to parliament prevented the construction of new schools or infrastructure in the South to keep the populace there beholden to their feudal parallel states. Deputies could earn votes in return for a blind eye, and before long organized crime in the Italian South was a critical function of the state. The King, despite being an ardent opponent of yielding on the Maltese Question and allowing Leo XIII back to Rome unless the Pope agreed to accepting the Leonine Compromise en toto, was a reactionary more similar to Austria's Francis Joseph or the Russian Tsar than any other monarch in Europe, and his stubbornness in dealing with Parliament alienated him from his own people. In terms of foreign policy, he was brusque and fairly disliked; Friedrich of Germany and his Iron Chancellor barely tolerated him only due to their need for an ally to pressure Paris and Vienna; ultramontane France and Austria refused to countenance the behavior of his governments towards the church despite his shared conservatism, and only Spain's Leopold seemed to view a partnership with Italy as mutually beneficial in terms of checking French power in the Mediterranean [1]. As the 1880s began, so did a mass movement from the impoverished state, as over the next fifty years one of the largest voluntary migrations of people in human history would occur from Italy, as millions upon millions decamped for not only labor-tight France but the United States, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Canada, European settler colonies in Africa, and even remote Australia. The Italian diaspora would be one of the world's largest as the poor, especially the illiterate of the Mezzogiorno, left for a new and better life beyond Umberto's erratic Italy..."

- Umberto's Italy ("Dispatches from Europe" Essay Collection, University of Missouri, 2005)

[1] As was once said of Umberto I, "one is left to marvel that only three people tried to kill him."

 

[KingSweden24]

"...as further Land Reform was debated in the Commons, spearheaded largely by the "realist" faction of the Liberals who understood that Britain's agricultural policy was woefully underequipped, with its low tariffs and poor harvests in 1879 and 1880, to sustain more flooding of her markets by cheap and plentiful American grain, the situation in Ireland grew further dire. The Land Act of 1879 had been not even a panacea but indeed counterproductive, both in Dublin and London, and so Hartington's ploy was to wrap the Land War into broader agricultural and land reform for the whole of Britain as well as eliminate all tariffs on "preferential" trading partners - such as Canada, Australia, Hawaii, and other protectorates, with special reciprocal treaties pondered for Chile, Argentina and Brazil as well, major sources of British investment [1]. While some Radicals such as Chamberlain wanted a full customs union, for now Hartington merely wanted to cool the tensions with the farmers over the dire economy that had still not recovered despite the aggressive policy programme of the Commons. Land reform was unacceptable to the Tories, however, the party of the landed gentry, and Hartington pulled the Land Act from the floor of the Commons when it was clear that the Lords would defeat it without further work.

This was the time that Parnell chose to strike, calling for tenants to withhold their rents across Ireland to "pinch the landowners" and press for even more militant land reform than what was being proposed in Hartington's slightly more incremental building upon the 1879 reforms. Hartington was outraged at Parnell's attempts to triangulate him, and Forster from his seat in Dublin began his aggressive crackdown on not just the IRB but Parliamentarians in Ireland as well. Dozens were shot throughout the year as the crisis escalated, earning Forster his epithet "Buckshot" for his endorsement of lethal force to pacify Ireland into submission. Parnell, shortly before being sent to the gaol after being arrested by the Royal Constabulary, declared: "Tory, Liberal, Whig, Radical: it makes nought a difference here!"

There was certainly a large constituency in the Liberal caucus that reacted to this with alarm, fearing that a blossoming Irish crisis - on the heels of ugly rioting and extrapolitical violence in Canada that same summer between Orangemen and Irish immigrants - would jeopardize the government. The Home Rulers saw some new blood within their ranks, lead by Colonial Secretary John Bright, whom Hartington kept as far from Irish debates as humanly possible, at one point even informing him: "Utter a word about Ireland, and you'll be retired so fast I'll buy your train ticket to Newcastle for you!" Of course, the more Whiggish attitude prevailed, that of finding a solution to mollify Irish tenant farmers while bringing Ireland as a whole closer to London than pushing it away via either Home Rule or continued antagonism. Chamberlain again was a protagonist in this push, condemning the former Tory Home Secretary's R.A. Cross's "we shall not yield even a single blade of green Irish grass to the Fenian" speech with his declaration: "Ireland must be brought to the fold not as an enemy nor as a subject but as a constituent; would we grant Home Rule to Scotland or Wales? Would we grind the gallant Scotsman or the proud Welshman beneath our heels? No, for they are British, as Ireland is British!"

The sympathy for Ireland but skepticism of Home Rule ascendant in much of the Liberal caucus, encouraged by Hartington, only further exacerbated the crisis with Parnell's clear contempt for Cabinet and the difficult of finding a solution that would satisfy the tenancy boycott..."

- Ireland Unfree

[1] British chumminess with Chile and Brazil will become an issue for their relations with Argentina in the future, but what we're seeing here is an early form of "imperial preference," even if it doesn't pass as of right now

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Blaine's inauguration train ran through Boston, New York and Philadelphia on its way to Washington from Portland, and in each city the President-elect made a unique address to the gathered crowd. After conspicuously choosing not to address Baltimore the night before he arrived in the capitol - Maryland being a staunchly Democratic state and having given Blaine perhaps his lowest vote total out of any state - Blaine rode to the Capitol on the crisp morning of March 4, 1881 in a carriage shared with outgoing President Hendricks, whom he had only met a handful of times in the past decade despite their overlap in Washington. Blaine was shocked to see that Hendricks could not move his legs and gave condolences as to his frail physical shape.

His inaugural address, among the longest ever delivered, Blaine surprised many by effusively praising his predecessor and then combined elements of his previous "preparatory remarks," as they came to famously be known. Drawing from his speech in Philadelphia, he praised the revolutionary spirit of America and the promises of its liberal democracy; from his remarks in New York he spoke of the industrial might of the nation, of his trust in her finances and those of the National Bank, and of the commercial innovations of the new decade paired with the critical need for civil service reform; and from his speech on the Boston Commons in the shadow of the Commonwealth House, he admonished the dangers of high illiteracy and warned against the dangers of polygamy, such as that practiced by the Mormons. Then, he dove next into what can best be described as a policy platform: a proposal of "Columbia Invictus," of a robustly re-invigorated Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere and increased trade with fellow American nations as well as other "rising states of the world," of a policy of reward and counter through reciprocal tariffs, and of international arbitration, all enforced through new and expanded investments in the United States Navy, which the Liberals had seen as languishing in the Hendricks years and would soon be technologically obsolete despite its increasing size with the introduction of protected cruisers the next year. The inaugural ball was a celebration of American industry and science, and newspaper coverage of the pomp and circumstance was positive, capturing the optimism inherent in Blainism. [1]

The next challenge for Blaine would be to introduce his Cabinet, and here he inched away from the practices of patronage in prior Cabinets. As his Secretary of the Treasury he chose "the most illustrious expert of finance in our Republic," former Ohio Senator John Sherman. As Attorney General, he invited former New York Senator William M. Evarts - who had never formally disestablished his Republican identity - to serve as a capstone to his career. Regarded as among the most eminent men in America, neither was a controversial choice. Where Blaine elicited some controversy instead was in his decision to appoint Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of the former President Abraham - and one of the wealthiest attorneys in the United States and a critical supporter of Blaine's nomination and campaign - as Assistant Secretary of State to John Hay, the former private secretary to President Lincoln, a member of the Lincoln law practice, and a former diplomat, writer and financier who had married into one of the wealthiest families in America. There was some controversy over Hay's appointment - was he an Ohioan, as his career in Cleveland would attest? A resident of New Hampshire, with his grand home in the mountains there? Or an Illinoisian, from his time in Chicago and Springfield every year working with the firm of Lincoln & Herndon, of which he was a senior partner? With his Cabinet stacked with former Republicans of note, he needed an olive branch to the wing of the Liberals composed of "Tildenites," or former Democrats. The matter became difficult when his first choice for Secretary of War, Wheeler Peckham of New York, politely declined to remain in the Senate (and not add another New Yorker to an already sectionally uneven Cabinet), and Blaine was thereafter left without a clear Tildenite to name to the Cabinet, eventually settling on Alexander Ramsey of Minnesota, long out of elective politics and considered amenable to all factions within the party..."


- Titan: The Life and Presidency of James G. Blaine

[1] Many of the ideas for this inauguration are lifted from James Garfield's in the same year

 

[KingSweden24]

"...even beyond his long-desired reconciliation with his older, more conservative brother, Maximilian viewed the tour as a tremendous success. He visited eight countries, was able to observe all manner of new technological innovation, met new sovereigns face-to-face for the first time (the young Napoleon IV made a considerable impression on Maximilian in ways that would serve him well upon his return), and he was able to meet with settler societies and in many ways act as a pitchman for his country. Indeed, immigration in the 1880s only sped up compared to the two successful decades of attracting new settlers to his Empire.

However, as with so many things Maximilian, the good was balanced with the bad. Max's months-long absence for much of 1881 came at a critical juncture as relations between Chapultepec and the provincial caudillos continued to deteriorate. The careful balancing act of what is today known as Vidaurrismo, where former Juarez-sympathetic commanders and local leaders had been given personal fiefdoms in the departments to keep them quiet, happy and most importantly loyal to the regime - the so-called "Reconciliados" - was in freefall as the Rurales aggressively scoured the countryside for Zocalista bands and the caudillos angrily protested that the Rurales in their departments should answer to them, rather than to Mexico City. Maximilian had left Carlota as regent in his absence, as customary, but real power was wielded by Zuloaga, who lacked Mejia's straightforwardness or Vidaurri's deft touch in the role of First Minister and instead consolidated influence to his own office at the expense of the rest of Cabinet. For the five months Maximilian was in Europe, Mexico City bristled with intrigues between Zuloaga and his rival from the War of Reform, Miramon. Much like with his relationship with Mejia, the only thing Miramon seemed to agree with Zuloaga on was that Maximilian's dalliances with Barrios in Guatemala were dangerous and that the influence wielded over the Empress by Labastida was unbecoming.

The crisis started to bloom more fully a month before Maximilian's return, when fighting broke out in Oaxaca between supporters of Matias Romero, a former Juarista who had long held informal power in the department at the behest of the government, and the department's official jefe, Ignacio Mariscal, appointed earlier in the year. The fighting turned deadly on September 20, when sixteen men were shot to death for attempting to remove one of Romero's "caciques" from a local tax assessor's office. The Rurales company in Oaxaca, on paper loyal to Mariscal, responded by arresting Romero and indulging in a string of assassinations in towns around the department, and then the police split their loyalties in half and began fighting amongst themselves. A smaller version of the same crisis blossomed in the North, where with the completion in 1880 of the Mexican Central Railroad to Paso del Norte [1] had brought a wave of new settlers, primarily Chinese railroad builders, into that department as well as its neighbor Batopilas. Luis Terrazas and Antonio Ochoa had long held de facto control over both provinces, and despite their rumored support for Porfirio Diaz in the days of the Caudillo del Norte's resistance, Vidaurri had allowed them to hold informal power under Maximilian's White Laws. New governors being appointed by Chapultepec on the six-year schedule devised in the Imperial constitution ran into friction, however, as Angel Trias and Donato Guerra - the new "jefes" of Chihuahua and Batopilas respectively - sought to bring pliable cacique bosses to heel and exert their own influence. A Sinophobic riot that killed six Chinese in early October was responded to with a brutal crackdown by the Rurales loyal to the new governors, eliciting protests across the North, even in Matamoros, where Manuel Gonzalez began to consider whether he should attempt to reason with Maximilian's triumvirate down in Mexico City again.

Upon returning, the Emperor was more excited at the news that railroads had been completed linking Paso del Norte, Chihuahua and Matamoros to the Altiplano than he was concerned at Miramon's urgent warnings that the buzz of revolt was in the air in several restive provinces. Little did either man know that the preternaturally ambitious "Tigre de Tepic" Manuel Lozada traveled that October to Sonora and Chihuahua, the most restive departments beyond his own Nayarit, to discuss the potential of an alliance, in which multiple caudillos would move as a bloc if the central government attempted to curtail any of their powers more directly..."

- Maximilian of Mexico

[1] Juarez being dead in 1862 means there's no name-change to Ciudad Juarez. Also, yay, the North finally gets its railroad connection, a year before OTL!

(Note: took me a bit to find names that could fit as both pro- and anti-Max caudillos in the coming war. If any of these names don't make sense, please let me know)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Bismarck's legacy generally revolves around his efforts in the 1860s to unite Germany, his diplomatic high-wire acts in the 1870s to keep other powers from taking advantage of the newborn and mighty empire he had forged, and then closes with his feud with the new Kaiser Friedrich leading up to his 1883 dismissal [1]. Discussions of his downfall tend to overlook his social policies, proposals that were inspired by similar legislation in France and Spain and primarily passed under his successor, although he managed to pass his tentpole Sickness Insurance Law through the Reichstag in 1883 shortly before his sacking. Late-era Bismarck should be understood as a man out of his time, then, having retreated from the Kulturkampf (a move which many historians, in thrall to the myth of the "great liberal" Friedrich, neglect to recall the Kaiser supported and which alienated him from his Chancellor), and only slowly opening himself to new moves. In an age of alliance, Germany was profoundly isolated by the Franco-Austrian partnership and Russia's retreat from Europe's alliance system; Bismarck would later regret the full-throated German support for Romania following the Bulgarian War, commenting, "We traded a friend in St. Petersburg for a vassal in Bucharest." He was in attendance for the crowning of Carol I in the spring of 1881 and spent some time speaking with Carol's younger brother, Leopoldo I of Spain; the Iron Chancellor seemed old and more weary to the Spanish sovereign, whose thorough diaries remain an incomparable primary source for both Spanish and European history of the era. Discussions of a Spanish-German alliance were touched upon there, but talks collapsed yet again, with Bismarck's hedging caution frustrating Leopold, who of course was leery of making any foreign commitments on behalf of his Cabinet in a fashion that would embarrass him yet again such as the Spanish Insult of 1878 that bloomed out of his last attempt.

The weariness, of course, can be explained by the long-running rivalry with his own sovereign. Bismarck had sparred with Wilhelm on many an occasion but in the end the old Kaiser generally deferred to him; Friedrich, deeply resentful of how Bismarck had isolated him and his wife for years, was not so deferential and wanted to chart "mein egener kurs", his own course. Whatever political truce had come out of the death of Kronprinz Wilhelm's drowning death the year before soon evaporated; indeed, Bismarck would remark that the prince's death only delayed the inevitable conflict by a few years, and that "I was not the man to console either a Kaiser or a nation; to console is not in my nature." The same fluidity Bismarck displayed in diplomacy, now to his disadvantage, suddenly sprung up on him domestically as Friedrich turned the National Liberals to his cause, wielding them against protectionism and finding a natural constituency in elective politics to array against the Chancellor. The elections of 1881 would prove the final breaking point in the relationship; the National Liberals, already with 109 seats in the Reichstag, indeed increased their majority at the expense of the Conservatives and Free Conservatives, two critical components of Bismarck's base, and in a loose alliance with the Progress Party and People's Party, which also saw substantial gains, created an effective bloc that nearly had a majority in the Reichstag [2]. The Centre Party of lay Catholics remained the only nominal ally to Bismarck to see any particular gain, and some smaller regional parties hemorrhaged some seats. It marked an effective end to the efforts of Bismarck to pass any more anti-Socialist laws, strained his ability to continue with his aggressive protectionism (though the liberal bloc was leery of touching the grain tariffs that kept the Junkers pacified, for the time being) and for the first time saw the Chancellor facing a genuinely hostile Reichstag majority (and the Centre Party, it should be noted, had a long memory of the Kulturkampf and had partnered with Bismarck primarily to ward off the Social Democrats, who also increased their seats in the watershed election).

Bismarck now needed a power base to justify his continued Chancellorship, lest he give the Kaiser any excuse to sack him. Outside of the Reichstag, of course, there were two: the Junker class, and the famed military with an officer corps populated heavily by said landholders..."

- Bismarck Ascendant: The Era of the Iron Chancellor

[1] Flash forward
[2] Without the Liberal Union splitting off, is the key here, and with the context

 

[KingSweden24]

"...by that standard, yes, perhaps Longstreet is indeed the delineation point between the chaotic "Rapprochement" that was anything but and the "Reconciliation" that gave the "brothers divided" two decades of peaceful, even cooperative relations. But as this text means to show, the entire concept of "reconciliation," celebrated on both sides of the Ohio River in contemporary and modern times as beginning with James Blaine's Pan-American Conference of 1881-82, was a branding exercise, a necessary fiction meant to indulge the laudable but entirely laudable Liberal project of "a hemisphere without interstate conflict," a way to blame Longstreet's successors within the Confederate Democratic Party and beyond it for the breakdown in relations, which the caciques [1] of the Dixie establishment more than happy to indulge the idea that if they had just stuck with the Longstreet-Lamar consensus, then oh, no, nothing would have gone wrong in the 1910s.

Such revisionism serves its purpose, to lionize Blaine and his brain trust and to paint a happy picture on an ugly police state built upon white supremacy. Longstreet deserves credit for a handful of achievements; his election over Jubal Early ended the violent, overt thuggery of the Forrest-Harris years, with its reliance on paramilitary violence to effect political means. His campaign to amend the Confederate Constitution improved the ability of its national government (the preferred parlance in Richmond to "federal," which to this day carries Yankee connotations in the South) [2] to connect the country for commercial and strategic purposes with internal improvements outside of wartime, and the economy of Dixie did improve by the end of his six year term, but consider that under his successor there were two famines and as many as 25% of independent small farmers - most of whom owned no slaves - lost their farms in the Great Depression and had their lands seized by the planter oligarchy.

Indeed, that is Longstreet's great sin, that the plantocracy only became more entrenched and began exporting its hateful chattel worldview more effectively, most notably to Brazil, where alliances between New Orleans and Charleston elites and the coffee planters may have delayed slavery's extinguishing by two decades or more in the Empire. Numerous states passed laws allowing freedmen to be re-enslaved under certain conditions, most prominently Longstreet's birth state of Georgia, and a number of others banished the residency of freedmen but took to action to enslave them. The number of voluntary emancipations of slaves, which had increased exponentially in the 1870s as many could not afford to maintain their slave labor, halved in the following decade and more than halved again by 1900 despite only fleeting economic improvements over that time. The Democratic Party by the end of the century controlled effectively every state legislature, in some of which they held supermajorities, and enjoyed essentially total command of the Confederate Senate in alliance with the rotating six-year Presidencies. The Longstreet years created a rubber stamp for plutocracy and chattel feudalism and yet is celebrated as a triumph of liberalism south of the Ohio only because the tensions and mistrust of previous years began to be defrosted with him and Blaine in their respective executive roles [3]..."

- The Revisionism of Reconciliation: The Real History of the Confederate Grand Consensus (Harvard University, 2004)

[1] If you're going to behave like a caudillo state you get to have caudillo state terminology used
[2] I do want to play a bit with how certain terms would change over the years
[3] TL-191 fans will appreciate the irony of this

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Istanbul first saw the Mahdist rebellion in the Sudan as a minor nuisance, though concerns about Muslim revivalism as a vehicle for ethnic Arab discontent was never far from Abdul Hamid's mind. Nevertheless, the nominally independent Tewfiq Pasha in Egypt was to deal with it, as Sudan fell within the Khedivate's purview. Of course, as Grand Vizier Mehmed Said Pasha pointed out, the Khedive had put itself in this position with its scurrilous finances, gradual reduction of forces within and outside of Khartoum as a result of its ruinously expensive wars and debts, and insistence on appointing foreigners, particularly the British, to positions of power to manage its mounting liabilities. Abdul Hamid began to ponder, then, as the Mahdi drew ever more followers to his cause, whether it was time to restrict the Khedive's authority and introduce the kinds of constitutional bureaucratic reforms that had taken flight in Istanbul and his other domans in the wake of his victory over the Russians. On this matter, as most, he consulted the French, who agreed that the deteriorating situation in Sudan warranted watching, and that garrisons on the Suez should be boosted, for there was another matter that suddenly attracted their attention beyond Sudan: the emergence of Ahmad Urabi in Egypt over the summer of 1881..."

- The Hamidian Era: The Ottoman Empire 1876-1918

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the continued flow of Chinese laborers into the New World did not come without reaction. Most prominently in Peru, where despite the Chinese having intermarried with locals (particularly indigenous), pogroms occurred throughout the years following the Saltpeter War, driving hundreds if not thousands either south into Chile or onto ships that would take them to friendlier shores. Efforts to restrict the "importation" of Chinese intensified in Canada in 1881, the same year the "golden spike" of the Canadian Pacific Railroad was driven in years ahead of schedule, where now the need for cheap coolie labor would no longer be needed. British Columbia, like California in the previous decade, attempted to expel her Chinese, before such efforts were dismissed by the Supreme Courts of both countries. Domestic politics made efforts to explicitly ban Chinese immigration flounder in both Canada and the United States; in the former, because British Columbian mining and shipping interests desired cheap labor, and in the latter, because in addition to the need for a steady supply of cheap railroad labor and a dwindling supply of Irish and blacks willing to build railroads at the wages offered by the increasingly debt-saddled railroads, there were concerns over retaliation by China for violating the Burlingame Treaty, and efforts to renegotiate it and pass a law banning the migration of women suspected to be prostitutes ran up against the Presidential election of 1880, the convalescence of President Hendricks, and a lack of desire within the new Blaine administration to revisit the Treaty in its initial years.

Sinophobia was not limited to Anglo-Saxon settler colonies. Chinese in Mexico, immediately granted citizenship upon arrival and generally quick to assimilate with Catholic marriages, intermarriage with mestizo and Indian locals and prone to granting their children Spanish given names, were often the target of ire in both the bourgeois Altiplano and in the impoverished peripheral departments, where they clashed with locals as they gradually found mining and building jobs. Zacatecas and Sonora in particular became hotspots, with an infamous lynching occurring in early 1882 in Guaymas. In Cuba, decades of coolie labor finally came to a head as the Spanish government abolished indentured servitude of any kind, even the "loan labor" so common among those departing Canton and Hongkong, and the Chinese there competed with the incompensados, or uncompensated freedmen, who a decade after emancipation often still struggled at the bottom of Cuban society as sharecroppers or day laborers for pitiful wages. Nonetheless, the flow continued, even as head taxes gaining currency in many countries as a way to arrest the constant flow of new Chinese - and disproportionately male - labor and also raise revenue off those who came..."

- We Come From Canton: Chinese Diaspora in the 19th Century

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the death of Empress Dowaged Ci'an, beyond devastating the boy Guangxu Emperor, immediately empowered the Empress Dowager Cixi, already the dominant figure at court despite her continuous bouts of liver disease that would plague her for the rest of her life. Cixi wasted no time asserting herself now as sole regent rather than one of a tandem..."

- The Dragon Stirs: The Qing Dynasty under the Guangxu Emperor

 

[KingSweden24]

"...with such a vast pool of unemployed and embittered former army officers and soldiers in Egypt, the image of a pliable Khedive in hoc to the French and British creditors who in effect controlled not only Egypt's finances but much of its upper civil service at the behest of the Turco-Circassian European Muslim upper class, and the caustic, satirical and borderline inflammatory Abu Naddara Zar'a magazine, written not in the high Arabic or Turkish of the elites but in the ordinary Egyptian vernacular, thus consumable by the street. Into this mix in the summer of 1882 came a potent and familiar figure - the populist man of the people, seizing power in their name, and his own. Ahmad Urabi, a peasant and native Egyptian risen high in the ranks, commanded respect of military and civilians in Egypt alike and channeled the resentment of tax-exempt elites into essentially seizing power in Egypt by demanding a new assembly be seated by Khedive Tewfiq, one containing a number of his allies. By January, he would be Minister of War, and the effective ruler of Egypt in all but name..."

- The Urabi Revolt at 100 (The Economist, 1982)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...with the end of his "dilettante years" - the pseudo-exile from active politics of a wealthy dilettante experimenting in writing editorials from whatever state he was in for his political patron Reid [1], of managing his father-in-law's portfolio through the Great Depression, of his expensive and infamous social life, and even his occasional sojourns to Illinois to practice law as an amusement with the Lincolns - came a new vigor and joy for Hay, who was as shocked as anyone else that despite his vocal and spirited support for Blaine and his failure to be elected to Congress he had been chosen as Secretary of State, when he would have been merely contented with an ambassadorship to a foreign court such as London or Paris. The Blaine Cabinet, over which Hay presided in his formal duties, was not a Lincolnian team of rivals but instead a gathering of men who all had a deep and mutual respect for one another. Sherman was an idol of Hay's from their time during the war; Evarts, perhaps the most respected attorney in the nation to not serve on the Supreme Court. Even George Henry Williams, the relatively unknown Secretary of the Interior from Oregon, was held in high regard in Washington.

Hay brought to the Blaine program his enthusiasm and total belief in his role, in perfect sync with the President on the matter of a more robust and assertive role for American foreign policy, particularly as her navy expanded (though despite its larger size, the Naval Act of 1869 had run aground upon budget cuts from the Hendricks White House, being technologically outdated compared to nimbler navies, and trouble filling contracts during the Great Depression). Blaine and Hay, over cigars and brandy as was their custom, developed their vision together, of a new and liberal order in the Western Hemisphere with the Union as its north star. Rather than blunt protectionism, the United States would pursue reciprocity treaties and favored nation trading status, using a combination of carrots and sticks in setting tariff rates by country rather than by product. Nations as far-flung as Korea and Madagascar were potential markets for an American industrial base that Blaine predicted would only grow more precipitously. In addition to reciprocity, the second prong of Blainism was arbitration, building upon the previous work of Secretaries of State such as Fish and Cox. To this end, Blaine called upon Hay to organize a Pan-American Conference for that fall, with all members of the Western Hemisphere to attend, to begin discussions towards the future of the Americas. There was no part of Hay that considered such an endeavor naive - to him it was a bold vision.

Moreso than anything else, though, the arrival of Hay in Washington coincided with the emergence of a new society in the capital, for the mansion he and Clara Stone Hay built for themselves on Dupont Circle became the epicenter of all his literary friends, from Twain to James to Adams and all the rest. The circles in which Hay traveled now included not only journalists, writers and Liberal bigwigs coming to pay tribute but Supreme Court judges, congressmen, civil servants and the whole of the capital, trying to make sense of the Secretary of State who was as avid a novelist as he was a diplomat, who could not only speak on politics but read poetry to enthralled listeners..."

- The Cornerstone: John Hay and the Foundation of American Global Prestige

[1] Whitelaw Reid, that is

 

[KingSweden24]

"...despite the persecutions that followed the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1878, at the very minimum the party was not disbanded, and there were a number of loopholes for its leaders, most notably to meet in Switzerland, London or, increasingly, in Belgium, the burgeoning hotbed of socialist activity on the continent due to the laissez-faire attitude of King Leopold II and the lack of a substantial native social democratic tradition in a country riven between the rivalry of its liberal and clerical parties. While Marx and Engels chose to stay in London, with its lack of censorship and permissive government (and the growing radicalism of both its trade unions and its petit-bourgeoisie), it was "Red Brussels" in the 1880s where the intellectuals of the left gathered, where the International Workingmen's Association met twice in a row, and where dissident socialists from Germany and France could meet in between, with many of the successors of the communards of Paris '68 now writing, organizing and strategizing from Belgium's otherwise placid capital. It was in many ways a golden era for Europe's socialists of the time, safe from harassment or imprisonment but near enough to their homelands to visit friends and family as desired..."

- The Cradle: Social Democracy in Germany

 

[KingSweden24]

"...it was the former Tildenite, Wheeler H. Peckham, the man most famous in New York for his aggressive prosecution of the Tweed Ring, whom Blaine entrusted as the "tip of the spear" on civil service reform, the first item on his legislative agenda. Even among the ostensibly good-government Liberals there were many who wanted some form of patronage, and beyond Senator George Pendleton the Democrats initially closed ranks against reform in anticipation of when they might some day take power again, refusing to lend a hand to any measure that would go further than the toothless, practically sinecure Civil Service Commission established late in the John Hoffman administration. Peckham's proposal was in fact so radical that even some Liberals balked - he would have cordoned off nearly every appointable position beyond the Cabinet, including the judiciary, with strict rules for appointments and establishing the Civil Offices Board and Judicial Appointments Board to produce lists which the President would be bound to select from. Blaine himself was skeptical that such a program would hold constitutional muster, and upon consulting his friend, Vermont Senator George F. Edmunds, among the most powerful men in the body and who was close with several Supreme Court Justices, he quietly instructed Hay and Evarts to signal to Congress that he opposed the measure.

The next attempt at reform came from Speaker of the House James Garfield, who along with a handful of allies from the Midwest proposed instead a "tiered" system of appointments, where lower-level bureaucratic posts would be professionalized by competitive examination, mid-level offices would be chosen from a "pool of selectmen" who were qualified by a formula of professional experience and examination, and then leave high-level offices to full Presidential appointment. Perhaps most notably, the Garfield Act would leave judges uncovered by the provisions of the reform, thus eliminating some of the thornier constitutional concerns, and leave the determination of the civil service examinations and the "appointment formula" up to a seven-member Civil Service Commission, whose members would serve staggered six-year terms [1]. The Garfield Act passed the House of Representatives in early October 200-125, with all opposition coming from Democrats. In the Senate, meanwhile, Pendleton would propose his own act that gave the Commission broader rule-setting powers in how it determined which positions to cover and left out the tiered system, and perhaps more critically, outlawed "assessments" payable to political parties by appointees [2]. Garfield had left the assessments ban out of his bill out of concern that it would so poison the Act that it would be unpassable, but several Liberals - including Peckham - made it a redline for pressing ahead in the Senate. The Pendleton Act initially covered considerably fewer federal employees as well; the only substantial similarities to what had passed the House were its outlawing on firing, demoting or punishing professional civil servants for political reasons, the use of some form of examination, and genuinely empowering the Civil Service Commission rather than having it serve as an advisory body to the President as it had, with some success, during the Hoffman and Hendricks years.

As the civil service reform effort was bogged down between the competing bills, Blaine's attention fell on other matters - the replacement of the ailing Noah Swayne on the Supreme Court. Swayne, regarded as a judicial mediocrity and the first appointment of President Lincoln to the Court, had initially refused to step down despite being infirm, only wanting to resign on the condition that his friend, Ohio attorney and close friend of former Ohio Governor Rutherford Hayes. Matthews' ties to the railroad industry, in particular financier Jay Gould of "Black Friday" fame, made his appointment an impossibility to the Liberal Party that had run for a decade on "prudency of the public purse" and bristled at accusations it was in hoc to the hated railroad barons. It fell to two unexpected sources to intervene - Treasury Secretary Sherman, an Ohioan, begged Swayne to retire rather than potentially die under a Democratic administration as he nearly had done, and secondly President Lincoln, who traveled to Washington to visit his son Robert as the Thanksgiving holiday approached and, still an imposing and virile figure even at 72 years of age, finally persuaded Swayne to step aside.

The favored choice of Blaine now fell to his friend Senator Edmunds, who had served on the Judiciary Committee of the Senate as both a Republican and Liberal and was dear friends with Chief Justice Davis and Justice Thurman. Edmunds was skeptical to leave the Senate, where he loved debating, and had mulled a Presidential run of his own once Blaine left office, now that a sitting Senator had been elected to the White House for the first time. Blaine, Evarts and Hay spent Thanksgiving in Vermont with Edmunds, persuading him to take the appointment, with Blaine assuring him that he would make him Chief Justice if and when David Davis, who was frequently in poor health and now in his late 60s, left the bench via retirement or death during his term. Edmunds suspected - and was proven right, as Blaine and Hay's private diaries would one day prove - that his appointment to the Court was meant to remove a potential rival for Blaine's proteges to the Presidency, and he oscillated for days before finally accepting the offer [3]. Swayne announced his retirement shortly thereafter, and now two battles would become one in what Hay would later describe as "the Christmas Dispute."

Edmunds had earned himself a number of enemies among Democrats over the years and his record of holding retainers from railroad companies and practicing law during his Senate years, as many of his colleagues did, became an issue. The skepticism of some Liberal reformers towards him also bogged the debate on his nomination down, a shock to Blaine who had expected him to coast through as a Senatorial courtesy. The nomination of Edmunds to the Supreme Court became intertwined with the civil service reform acts, and finally, days before the Christmas recess, Edmunds voted in favor of the Pendleton-Peckham Act, a signal to the more radical reformers that his previous reputation for slow progress or the status quo was perhaps at last melting. With the Senate act passing 32-20, with Edmunds and Senator Hearst of California abstaining, and primarily Liberals and a handful of Democrats in support, the logjam on Edmunds' nomination was broken after two weeks of debate, a considerable amount for that time. Justice George F. Edmunds' nomination was passed 42-10, with only Democrats - including all six former slave state Senators and George Pendleton - in opposition as the last act before the Senate recessed for nearly two months, and he was sworn in by Chief Justice Davis the next day. As for the competing House and Senate bills, that battle would need to wait for the spring..."

- Titan: The Life and Presidency of James G. Blaine

[1] President Garfield of course never lived to pass his vision of civil service reform, and I've never found any indication of what exactly he aspired to pass; here, I invent an idea that would probably suit the inclinations of the Liberals of TTL, where patronage reform is a much more livewire issue after the scandals of the 1870s and it being a raison d'etre for their entire political party
[2] In effect the exact provisions of his OTL bill. Ironically, IOTL leading on patronage reform so angered his colleagues back in Ohio that it effectively ended Senator Pendleton's career. He was an interesting figure, that's for sure, a fire-breathing reactionary in some respects and a canny pragmatist in others
[3] In OTL he refused a similar office to be appointed to SCOTUS

 

[KingSweden24]

"...despite her alienation from her deceased son even before his sudden death, Victoria was shattered by the affair and retreated from public life over the next few years, which neither Friedrich, out of concern for her treatment by the press, or Bismarck, who detested the sway she held with her husband, particularly minded. With the new Kronprinz Heinrich settling into a happy and content life as a young naval officer and rarely at home, her attentions fell upon Waldemar, always her favorite, whom she doted upon even more. Unlike his elder brothers, taught rigorously by Hinzpeter and sent off to schools, Victoria demanded Waldemar be kept close to home, to be tutored either in Potsdam where she spent the vast majority of her time or at a gymnasium of her choosing, a policy she implemented with his sisters as well. Prince Heinrich expressed concern to his father after a visit from his naval duties in late 1881, remarking, "She'll smother the poor boy one day if she doesn't relent." But there was no breaking Victoria's will - after the death of Sigismund at two and Wilhelm's drowning, she was determined to defend and protect those children not expected to carry Prussia on their shoulders.

Victoria's receding influence due to her attentiveness to her children released Fritz, in a sense, and for the first time left him a sovereign unshackled, for Bismarck's sun was beginning to set as well. The elections of 1881 had empowered the two parties with whom he privately sympathized - the National Liberals first and foremost, and the Progressives to a lesser extent - and gave the Kaiser a foothold in the Reichstag for the first time. Bismarck retreated from German affairs to a point - his Kartell was still ever-powerful in the Prussian Landtag - as he pondered his next maneuvers, even begrudgingly accepting Friedrich's invitation for Rudolf von Bennigsen, leader of the National Liberals in the parliament, to serve as Vice Chancellor [1], a position previously intended for Interior Minister Karl von Boetticher. Bennigsen immediately emerged as a rival of Bismarck, in no small part due to his insistence on the Reichstag's increased say in the affairs of the state.

Bismarck did not entirely mind Bennigsen's rise, however, insofar as it headed off further confrontation between the growing nuisance of Adolf Stoecker and his virulently anti-Semitic Christian Social Party, which campaigned aggressively against both the Chancellor and the Kaiser from the right, opposing Judaism, liberalism, democracy and even the paternalistic state socialistic laws Bismarck had begun to endorse and would pass before his tenure's end. Friedrich and Victoria attended a synagogue in Wiesbaden later in 1881 to make clear where they stood, and after that, any notion that Jews would have their citizenship stripped - already a fringe position - died with it. The blunt involvement of the Kaiser in the matter, however, did not endear him to a young and increasingly radical cadre of officers who regarded Friedrich as soft, with an infamous name in German history chief among them: Alfred von Waldersee, second in command to von Moltke himself..."

- Frederick and Victoria: Consorts of Germany

[1] This was apparently suggested IOTL but never went through, as Bennigsen's demands to join Cabinet were never met. And after a point, Bismarck stopped needing the National Liberals - here, that's not quite the case

 

[KingSweden24]

"...though Madagascar had survived for this long by playing Britain and France off one another, French demands to establish a protectorate and to restore the Lambert Charter had grown so loud that the island kingdom now sought the best deal - and was given it by Britain. The Royal Navy had already seized the uninhabited islands of Juan de Nova, Bassas da India and Ile Europa in 1880 in the Mozambique Channel, seeking to prevent France from establishing any further footholds in proximity to the Cape Route. The easterly Cape Route, to the east of Madagascar, was similarly threatened by Reunion and barely guarded by Mauritius, so the British plan - endorsed by Granville - would be to secure the route by establishing a protectorate in Madagascar, by force in necessary. The Commons vote on the Madagascar Resolution was raucous - it was the first time that Lord Hartington had needed to rely on Tory MPs to sustain a measure, for much of his anti-imperialist wing among the Liberals rebelled. A key supporter for Hartington was Chamberlain, who endorsed the measure as "a means to prevent a second Suez to the South."

Indeed, as the British sailed to Diego-Suarez on the north coast of Madagascar [1], it was the culmination of the Indian Ocean Policy established under Granville and the Admiralty Board a year earlier. Alarmed at the rapidity with which France could deploy warships through the Suez from Marseille or Le Havre and reach India, and the possibility that they could similarly close the nominally neutral canal to British warships in a time of war despite the canal being controlled by a public company, Granville had resolved that France would need to be denied any colonial assets or allies that could serve as a "diving board above India." [2] Part and parcel of this had been projects in the Bab el Mandeb, such as the previous establishment of a substantial coaling station at Perim and the beginning of efforts to establish a naval base to rival Gibraltar at Ras Menheli only 3 miles away, both under the purview of the Resident of Aden [3]. Though the Madagascar Expedition would precede it, the formation of French Somaliland across from Perim in 1883 only caused further alarm in London and there was considerable relief that Italy was establishing territories of influence both in Eritrea and on the Horn of Africa to prevent French control of the entire Red Sea.

As for the Malagasy, though they bristled at Britain's occupation of Diego-Suarez in early 1882 and gunboat diplomacy, they were already well-tied into the British Empire through their reforms and of all the protectorates Britain would establish, this had the lightest touch - fighting in 1882 between locals and British Marines was overshadowed by tropical diseases, and beyond the use of Diego-Suarez as a Royal Navy station and coaling base, Britain did not even demand particular control over Malagasy foreign or trade policy and merely guaranteed it against occupation by any other European power, such as France or even Spain or Germany. In this endeavor, it was the first time that a native kingdom had had something the British wanted or needed, and where London had effectively acquiesced, so desperate was it to not be outfoxed by a rival power..."

- Chessboard: The Splendid Isolation and British Foreign Policy

[1] So essentially we have Britain preempting the Franco-Hova War of 1883 by a year or so
[2] The strategic realignment Britain has to undergo sans Suez is one of the more fun things to extrapolate in this timeline. Anyone is more than welcome to chip in with any thoughts on what else they can do to make sure they have routes to India and Australia only they and their proxies (like Chile ITTL) have strategic control over
[3] Britain didn't really need to do much with these two rocks IOTL due to its command of Suez - here, it absolutely needs to, in order to not make the Red Sea a true French lake in the way they've done with the Med.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...of utmost concern to Longstreet, and a focal point of his whirlwind campaign to call constitutional conventions in a sufficient number of Democratic controlled states, was the condition of the Confederate Navy. Having had most of its power projection ships sunk in 1872 during the Cuban Expedition, it had only secured one screw-steamer and two ironclads in the intervening decade and most of its river vessels were hopelessly outdated. Longstreet, through friends and spies in the Union, had learned that the delays and cuts in the visionary Naval Act of 1869 had left the Union focused primarily on countering European powers in the North Atlantic and preventing and sustaining future blockades. As he argued on his grand tour of Dixie, the Confederacy's ability to defend its vast coastline and many rivers depended on the government having substantial revenue. He was rewarded in 1881 with the elections of friendly state legislatures in most of the Deep South and even in Texas, a quirky state that tended to empower forces arrayed against whomever was in power in Richmond. To that end, in early 1882 seven states - half of the Confederacy and more than the three necessary - called constitutional conventions to end the prohibition on internal improvements. With an even friendlier Congress and Senate, Longstreet also secured his five cent export tax on all agricultural goods, specifically for funding a new Navy. The focus of his Naval Secretary Seaborn Reese [1] was less to create a blue water navy but rather a riverine one, to establish low-displacement ironclads or "patrol gunboats" that could rapidly deploy along Dixie's numerous rivers and effectively block any efforts of a potentially hostile Union from seizing crossings or river forts. The other prong of the naval strategy would be to build armored coastal defense cruisers that could quickly move along both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts as needed to prevent future raids like those suffered by Spain or break blockades such as . Anything "out of view" - out of the view of the Confederate coast, in other words - would belong to other navies out of necessity until such a time that a defensive orientation was achieved.

It came to be then that 1882 was the start of a very successful run for Longstreet - his new naval building program was financed, the constitutional conventions to at last end the self-defeating improvements clause were underway, and Justices Stephens and Benjamin, two titans of the War of Independence era, left the Supreme Court, allowing him to appoint more forward-minded Justices sympathetic to his more robustly federalist vision to the bench..."

- The Grand Consensus: The Longstreet Machine, Reconciliation and the Dawn of the 20th Century in Dixie

[1] This is just some random Georgia Representative form the 48th Congress I found but with a name like Seaborn Reese how can you not be Navy Secretary

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the First Pan-American Conference in the spring of 1882 was touted in friendly papers - most prominently the New-York Tribune of Whitelaw Reid - as a resounding success for American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. In less friendly Democratic quarters, such as the Herald and many Midwestern papers, it was considered a bizarre circus, and questions were asked - as they often would be over the next six or seven years - about James Blaine's investments and ties in foreign countries, most prominently Peru's guano industry. Nevertheless, for Hay it was an exciting opportunity to meet the foreign ministers of a whole host of nations. He broke bread several times with Lucius Lamar, the affable Secretary of State from south of the Ohio and a man widely regarded as Longstreet's likeliest successor, both of whom acknowledged their respective Presidents' support for reconciliation. In the delegates of Mexico and Brazil Hay sized up potential competitors to the United States, countries with nascent industrial bases and their own goals on a geostrategic level. The hostility between Chilean and Peruvian delegates was tangible, and Hay wrote in his diary: "We must watch the Chileans even closer than we watch the Mexicans or Dixiemen - for as few souls as they have in that country, that fleet of theirs is and will be a problem for all free nations."

Nevertheless, disputes over Hay's Presidency of the meeting and Blaine's support for compulsory arbitration soon made more substantive matters run aground. That all countries there were equals in the eye of international law was more or less agreed upon, but notions that military victories should carry no territorial concessions was laughed out of the room, embarrassing Hay. Peru's delegates angrily shouted him down and pointed out that Chile had just "stolen" theirs and Bolivia's land south of the Cabarones; Mexican delegates huffed that the United States had taken nearly half their country's territory in 1848 and that the Confederacy had brazenly attempted to seize Cuba by force in an undeclared war a decade earlier, a declaration that caused Lamar and his fellow Dixiemen to walk out for the next two days and would spend their nights in Alexandria rather than accommodations in Washington for the rest of the conference. Suspicions of a Zollverein-like customs union made the subject a plain nonstarter for many South American nations, particularly Britain's trading partners in the Southern Cone, with only the Confederacy moderately in favor of "reconciling" with the vast American market again and ending tariffs levied against them.

Though compulsory arbitration and the customs union collapsed, progress was made on agreements to settle disputes diplomatically before wars occurred; in this regard, Spain volunteered to use Havana as a permanent seat for disputes as a neutral ground, being a European power rather than an American one. Hay and Blaine bristled at this suggestion, recalling Havana as the site of the treaty that "stole the South at gunpoint," but acquiesced to the suggestion. If nothing else, the First Pan-American Conference allowed many diplomats and men of stature to meet in person and confer for the first time, establishing personal trust, and perhaps more importantly, growing mutual respect among the various powers and an agreement that nobody wanted to see the New World descend into the kinds of feuds and bickering of Europe..."

- The Cornerstone: John Hay and the Foundation of American Global Prestige

(No footnotes; I'll just note that this basically goes how the real First Inter-American Conference in 1890, also James Blaine's brainchild, went, only with the wrinkles of an intact Brazilian and Mexican empire, CSA, and it being so soon after the Saltpeter War that tempers have yet to cool)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...though unsanctioned by Paris, the seizure of the Hanoi Citadel by Rivière on April 25 [1] was met with alarm in Viet Nam and outrage in the Qing court, where Li Hongzhang's concern over the expansion of European and Japanese presences in Korea began to stir conversation about a response being necessary. Though Rivière would surrender the citadel before long, Tonkinese officials went scrambling to the Black Flag Army of Liu Yongfu to help fend off the French as they had done a decade before. Experts at irregular warfare against unsuspecting forces [2], the Black Flag campaign erupted, keeping Rivière in Indochina rather than resulting in his cashiering and now attracting the attention of French ministers and the Foreign Legion..."

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

[1] As in OTL, though the chain of events set off here will be markedly different
[2] I mean this is Vietnam we're talking about

 

[KingSweden24]

"...alarmed by the sudden assassination of the Kaiser and aware of his own advanced age, von Moltke had begun elevating a younger cadre of officers in the wake of Wilhelm's death and quietly notifying his longtime ally Bismarck that he intended to retire by the age of 85, if he was so blessed to live that long. A hero of the Third Unification War, Alfred von Waldersee, was in 1879 made his Quartermaster General and effective second-in-command on the General Staff, a position of tremendous prestige, signaling enormous trust by von Moltke in his young protege. Also brought into the General Staff at this time was a young major named Alfred von Schlieffen, who quickly became a key deputy to Waldersee, and Wilhelm von Hahnke, a friend to Schlieffen thought to be eyed as a potential head of the Military Cabinet.

Schlieffen and Hahnke were mainstream, doctrinaire soldiers of the Prussian aristocratic class, hungry and ambitious as they might have been. Waldersee, a magnetic personality who wielded considerable influence over both, was of a different breed - he was attracted to the fiery Stoecker sermons, referring to the rabid anti-Semite as a "Second Luther," and saw conspiracies everywhere he looked. In his view, Germany was arrayed against a vast enemy controlled by global Jewry, which in turn held sway over both Catholics, whom he detested, and liberals, who he viewed as a weak fifth column within Prussia. Waldersee's diaries, published after his death [1], reveal a man with grandiose designs on an apocalyptic "last war" against France and Austria, and perhaps even her nominal ally Russia, to secure the place of Germany forever. He detested the Kaiser first and foremost, viewing him as a "fleshy bag of a man, a puppet on strings held by the British whore," and as a bloc of liberals surged to power in the Reichstag, the lay Catholic Zentrum grew in influence and socialists still proselytized without being lined upon and shot, the man began to see his beloved Germany slipping away. His antidote was the deposition and execution of the Kaiser, the exile or death of Empress Victoria, suspension of suffrage to the Reichstag and de-emancipation, if not deportation and perhaps even liquidation, of the Jewish community. The notion of civilian control of the military and the Junkers losing their position was wholly alien to Waldersee, and the Kaiser returned his hatred.

Nevertheless, Friedrich - always indecisive and reluctant to act, and having been dissuaded by Victoria of turning his attention away from boxing out Bismarck [2] - decided not to demand Waldersee's dismissal in 1882 as the Quartermaster elevated more friends to attache positions in foreign embassies. He was particularly leery of making a move that would seem to second-guess Moltke, who was so respected that he was referred to as the "Kaiser of the army" by some despite his advanced age and declining faculties. Bismarck, for his part, was suspicious and leery of Waldersee, but began to see the man as a useful pawn to be played, particularly as he started to turn his attention less from German matters to specifically Prussian ones and look to the Landtag as the vehicle for his political maneuvers, seeing as Prussia's army formed the core of Germany's military, the Junkers were the cream of the elite, and there were not nearly so many liberals and Catholics to muddy things up for him in the three-franchise Prussian Parliament.

And so the stage was set for one of Germany's most infamous tragedies, all thanks to three men - Friedrich, Bismarck and Moltke - who with their own cross-purposes and agendas ignored a bubbling reactionary undercurrent within the armed forces..."

- Frederick and Victoria: Consorts of Germany

[1] This is all a little ahead of schedule, mind
[2] As I've said before, I think Freddy was less an ardent liberal hero like he's been mythologized as and more of just a wishy-washy guy who was easily bossed around by his wife