Decembrist Victory Graphic TL
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USA Presidental Election, 1856
Democrats had slow evolution into a pro-Northern, slavery-skeptical, if not anti-slavery party, while Republicans became more and more pro-Southern and pro-Slavery. These processes lead to David Twiggs Presidency (1852-1856). Twiggs, War General and Hero of the Spanish-American War of 1850-1852, was driver of the Idea to admit new-conquered Cuba into USA as a Slave state. Cuba admission voting lead to split in Democratic party, with pro-slavery Democrats voted with the Republicans for the Cuban statehood, and anti-slavery part of the Party protest against the new slave state in a territory, where slavery was formally abolished by Spanish Republican Government. Finally. Cuba was admitted as a state, but political crisis lead to creation the Free Soil Democratic Party, which program was to fight the slavery expancion.
In the 1856 election, David Wilmot, the First Open Anti-Slavery Candidate, won…
Jewish Republic
The Jewish state in Eastern Europe was the result of the Great Russian Revolution of 1825 and the ensuing Civil War. Following the results of the Peace of Riga of 1829, between the Russian Republic and the Holy Alliance, a buffer Jewish state was created on the territory of parts of the Wolyn and Podolia governorates of the former Empire. Zhitomir became the capital of the new state, the president was first a Russian revolutionary, Baptized Jew Grigory Peretz, and then the famous Vilna rabbi Yosef Zundel. At first, Polish and Yiddish were proclaimed the national languages.
For the first time, the Russian authorities saw the Jewish Republic as one big ghetto. All the Jews of Kiev, Odessa and all of Ukraine and Belarus west of the Dnieper were forcibly deported to the Republic. The same thing happened in the newly formed Kingdom of Poland. The entire Jewish community of Vilno was deported to Zhitomir.
However, the project of the Jewish state was suddenly successful. The new republic received support from the Rothschilds and other Jewish enthusiasts from Western Europe. Financial support and the availability of engineers and managers from the UK, USA and France allowed the Jewish Republic to modernize and become a fairly successful nation.
For the first half century, three main forces fought for power in the republic - the Orthodox rabbis, the Hasides and the secular party "Haskalah", supported by the Rothschilds. But at the end of the 19th century the situation will change. In 1887, Yitzhak Lasker, a German Jew, who proclaimed the concept of "Yiddishism", became president. From Lasker's point of view, the Jewish Republic was to become the Ashkenazi nation state. Lasker and his successor Benjamin Straucher urged "not to look towards Jerusalem, but to build a Nation here, in Europe." A new Constitution was adopted, according to which Yiddish becomes the only state language. This led to a break with the Sephardic diaspora and an end to immigration from Western Europe. As a result, the Sephardim will begin to establish colonies in Palestine, and in the 1970s they will create their own state there - New Israel.
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Restored Democratic Party ITTL was, first of all, a populist party, party of the protest and opposition to the "Aristocratic" Republican rule. So, ticket of the Southern Populist Tyler and Nirthern Populist Dorr was logical. Tyler was killed in 1846, Dorr became POTUS, and managed to be reelected in 1848.
Really, as a President, Dorr was not so radical, as was expected. The main events of his presidency were Oregon Cession and Spanish-American War.
Napoleon III of France
Napoleon III surprised all, when during Paris conference French sided with the defeated Austria. France help Austria – now constitutional Danubian Union under the Franz II and Liberal Government – to survive and loose not so much land – only Lombardo-Venetia goes to newborn Italy and Galicia to Poland-Lithuania. Even more – after the peace was signed, France broke alliance with Russia and signed a new alliance – with the Danubian Union. Alliance was finalized by Napoleon’s marriage with Archduchess Maria Anna, Emperor Franz II nephew.
It was a part of the Napoleon’s plan. Now, when Holy Alliance and European Reactionaries were destroyed, Napoleon did not need the alliance with Russia. Danubian Union and new-created South German Union were obvious junior partners of France, and so-called “Paris-Munich-Vienna Axis” became the backbone of the French domination in Western and Southern Europe… but not for a long time.
17 May 1855 Napoleon III visited new-conquered Neuchâtel – Hohenzollern principality in Switzerland, which was annexed to France after the Liberation War. When Emperor’s cortege was passing through the city, Swiss anarchist Franz Fischer threw a bomb to the Emperor Coach. Second Emperor of France died at the age of 47.
Prince Napoleon-Jerome, Regent of France
Napoleon-Jerome Bonaparte was one of the most controversial figures in French history. On one hand, he remembered as a person., who give France liberty and restore French democracy after 15 years ot the authoritarian Napoleon III rule. But there was one problem – his activities as Regent lead to collapse of the Second Empire and, after short period of the weak Third Republic – to the Communard Regime in France. Some later historians even named Napoleon-Jerome reforms, collapse of the French Empire and collapse of the Franco-Austrian Axis as one of the causes of the Communard War, despite fact, that Boulanger ordered to invade Spain more than 20 years later.
Many historians agreed, that Napoleon-Jerome was simply not in his place. A dedicated Liberal and Republican, he would be a good President, if France was a stable democracy. But he had to become a Regent of the large authoritarian Napoleonic Empire – simply because Napoleon III died, his son Napoleon IV was only 3 years old, and Prince Napoleon-Jerome was head of the House of Bonaparte.
As Regent, Prince Napoleon-Jerome starts the reforms with the aim restore Liberty in France. Censorship has been mitigated, political parties, banned by Napoleon III, were allowed again. Final of these reforms were Constitution of 1859, which transformed Empire into a parliamentary monarchy, and the first free elections into the Corps législatif in March 1860… in which republicans and socialists suddenly took 2/3 of the mandates. Next was attempt of the Conservative Army officers, lead by Hero of the Liberation War, Marshal Aimable Pélissier, to made a coup and dissolve the Corps législatif, 2 weeks of the Civil War on the Paris streets, fail of the Pélissier, and restoration of Napoleon-Jerome to power – but now not as Regent, bu as Interim President of of France. Napoleon-Jerome presidency lasted one year, until the Presidential elections were held, and Montagnard Louis Blanc was elected the First President of the Third Republic.
Russian Japan
The main foreign policy event of the sleepy Alexey Orlov Era was start of the Russian colonisation of Japan, despite the First Japanese Expedition started as the as the last war of Mikhail Orlov.
In August 1847, after the execution of several Russian sailors, who were shipwrecked off the coast of Honshu, by the Japanese, Russia declared war on Japan. The Russian expeditionary force landed on the island of Ezo. The Mitraleses made it possible to cope with the samurai quickly enough, and by the summer of 1848 it became clear that Japan had lost the war. The shogun was forced to sign a humiliating peace, give up the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and Ezo to the possession of Russia.
Defeat in the war released a long-overdue dissatisfaction with the Tokugawa rule. The southern daimyo, who had been in a subordinate position since the 17th century, revolted. By 1851, civil war was raging in Japan. And Russia did not fail to take advantage of this.
In June 1851, the Russian ambassador to Japan, Golovin, concluded an agreement with the shogun, and Russian troops landed on the territory of the island of Honshu. Now the Russians acted as allies of the Tokugawa, quickly enough for the shogunate to turn the tide of the war in their favor. In 1852 Russia, France and Great Britain formally conclude an agreement on the division of Japan. Most of the country remains under nominal Tokugawa rule and a Russian protectorate. On the island of Kyushu, a state emerged as a separate republic of Kyushu - the state of the southern daimyo under the protectorate of France. The islands of Okinawa passed under the protectorate of Great Britain. This is how Japan entered its colonial era.
The Russian authorities saw Japan as "our India" - a developed eastern colony, a military base and a sales market. President Annenkov decided to use Japan as a source of human resources for the development of Siberia and the Far East. First of all, the Ronins - samurai, who remained without a suzerain and without work after all the wars, were resettled on Amur. By 1860, the Japanese Cossacks were created on the Amur - 10 thousand ronins (in fact, not all of them were samurai) settled on the border with China, and 4 Cossack regiments were created from them under the command of Russian officers. Later, the export of workers from Japan to Siberia began.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Japanese diaspora spread throughout Russia up to Kazan (children of Japanese daimyo study at Kazan University), but most of all in Eastern Siberia - Irkutsk, Chita, Vladivostok. Zen Buddhism, opium and yakuza come to Russia along with the Japanese. By 1900, the yakuza are operating throughout Siberia. On the other hand, Christianity is coming to Japan. Since 1860, Saint Nikolai Kasatkin has been preaching in Japan, a man, who creates the Japanese alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet and the Japanese Orthodox Church.
Aleksander II of Poland (1854-1868)
Death of the childless Polish King August V lead to a dynastic crisis in Poland-Lithuania. Normally, August V Wettin would be sucessed by his brother Johann/Jan, former King of Saxony, deposed during German Revolution. German President Hecker protest this proposal and declared, that Germany would invade Poland, if Johann Wettin took the Polish Throne. France and Russia both did not want new war in Europe. Finally, Russian President Ivan Annenkov, French Regent Napoleon-Jerome and German President Friedrich Hecker agreed to a compromisse – Wettis would be officially deposed from the Polish Throne, and changed by the new dynasty. All Great Powers agreed to a compromise candidate to the Polish Crown – Napoleon's illegitimate son and former French diplomat, Count Alexander Colonna-Walewski. He stared the Bonaparte-Walewski dynasty rule in Poland.
USA Presidental Election, 1860
David Wilmot presidency was remembered due Treaty of Alexandria, suddenly allowed 8 southern states – South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Fredonia, and Cuba, along with Native American Protectorates, known as Five Civilized Tribes – to secede and create their own Nation, the Confederated Republics (Cuba did not join the CR and remaines independent Nation). Wilmot in his memoires later wrote, that his decision save USA fome the Civil War, but historians explained his motives another way. In fact, the Secession was a way to create the Wilmot dreamed “free soil for (white) free man” Nation, effectively expelled not only the most active slavers, but also the most of the American Black population out of the Union. This the policy was continued by infamous “Trails of Tears”, when black slaves were mass sold to CR, Guiana of Brazil, and free Blacks were transported to Haiti or Liberia. In 2020, remaining black population make up 2% of the total US citizens number. USA was divided into the White northern Union, and (demographically, and to 2020s politically too) Black-Dominated Southron republics (to 2020, in a former CR, only Georgia, Fredonia and Florida has a White Majority). Treaty of Alexandria was supplemented by Corwin Amendment, which protected slavery in remaning slave states: Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Baudo [OTL Oklahoma], and Free Soil Act, which prohibited slavery in all Western Territories and started the Era of the colonization of the West.
Wimot Presidency was a political disaster for his newborn Free Soil party. Liberas and Abolitionists separated from him, and create their own Radical party, with Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as Presidental Candidate. Finally, in 1860 election, Former Democratic votes were divided between three candidates – President Wilmot, Radical Hamlin and Conservative Dickinson, which allower Republicans to vin and return to the White House.
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Chinese Time of Troubles (1850-1871)
Events in China in 1850-1871 now is often called the mos important revolution of the Age of Revolutions, despite the fact that European сontemporaries, fully occupied with the consequences of the Libertation War, the German Unification and the Communard revolution in France, hardly noticed these events. Started as the more or less usual for China peasant rebellion, Taipings - radical Christian Communists - managed to took Beijing in 1855, and to kill the last Manchu Emperor, Xiangeng, with all of his family. But radical Taiping regime falls to took control over the country, and, after 15 years of the bloody War, lose to the Army of the Western Provincies, lead by the harismatic General Zheng Guofang, who recaptured Beijing in 1867, tooke the Throne as the Emperor Bohan, and and proclaimed a new Empire - the New Ming (really, few people called it that outside the China, usually use the term "Chinese Empire").
Bohan vins mostly with the help of the European advisers (majority of whome were the White French Emigrants, flee the Communard Regime), who help to create the new European-style Chinese army. And Emperor Bohan understood, that reforms need to be continued. In 1871, China adopted its first Contitution - on the model of the Constitultion of the Second French Empire. China was entering an era of change, but the Europeans had not yet noticed it.