Dixieland: The Country of Tomorrow, Everyday (yet another Confederate TL)

In what way is it an analog to the Second Boer War? In that one, Britain had problems fighting a small force of men who had switched to a bloody insurgency, true, but unlike the CSA, Britain was this massive Great Power that was somehow getting bloodied in what was supposed to be a small police action in its own colony. It also exposed weaknesses in British military doctrine and forced the British Empire to modernize its army properly and seek allies on the global stage. The CSA isn't a major power, and while Haitian resistance is surprising, the CSA's humiliation isn't that big a deal. It's a response to getting smacked down by Spain, sure, but Spain was generally regarded as a European power, even if it's in pretty bad shape these days.

If you mean "the war that introduced the horrible, horrible concept of the concentration camp", then yeah, you're probably right. Although one can argue the Herrero genocide carried out by the Germans precedes this as a wide-scale act of ethnic cleansing.
Did the Herrero genocide happen in this timeline?
 
In what way is it an analog to the Second Boer War? In that one, Britain had problems fighting a small force of men who had switched to a bloody insurgency, true, but unlike the CSA, Britain was this massive Great Power that was somehow getting bloodied in what was supposed to be a small police action in its own colony. It also exposed weaknesses in British military doctrine and forced the British Empire to modernize its army properly and seek allies on the global stage. The CSA isn't a major power, and while Haitian resistance is surprising, the CSA's humiliation isn't that big a deal. It's a response to getting smacked down by Spain, sure, but Spain was generally regarded as a European power, even if it's in pretty bad shape these days.

If you mean "the war that introduced the horrible, horrible concept of the concentration camp", then yeah, you're probably right. Although one can argue the Herrero genocide carried out by the Germans precedes this as a wide-scale act of ethnic cleansing.
That’s fair. I also noticed that the timing for both the Boer and Haitian Wars overlapped (I think) so that’s also how I came to that conclusion.
 
It might exist. Remember in America there was a furor over the concentration camps the Spanish were using in Cuba, and Cubans were not considered "white". Although at the same time, America didn't really care when they used concentration camps in the Phillipines so it's hard to say.

As George Orwell once wrote, "All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side."

When you think only in terms of serving a nation, you can excuse and condone just about anything.
 

mial42

Gone Fishin'
This was a depressing update to read (as most things with the title "concentration camps" are), but still much less depressing then I would've expected out of Confederate Haiti.
 
Chapter 112 - Ein Volk, Ein Reich
Ein Volk, Ein Reich
Few polities disappointed its leaders as the United States of Greater Austria. By the beginning of the 20th century, the political system of the USGA was fracturing. Increasingly, fury at the system came from all corners. However, most damaging came from the Germans. In practice, only the Austrian side of Austria-Hungary had genuinely federalized. Due to the total refusal of the Hungarians to play along, Potocki and Franz Ferdinand plunged forward with just federalizing Cisleithania, whereas Transleithania remained centralized in Budapest. Ironically, this meant that the most powerful legislature in Austria-Hungary quickly became the Diet of Hungary. As intellectuals in Europe increasingly adopted biological concepts of race and nationalism, this grew to increasingly infuriate German nationalists. Opposotion to the Potocki plan coalesced itself around a talented politician, Georg Ritter von Schonerer, who preached German ultranationalism, anti-semitism, and increasingly anti-Habsburg populism. Schonerer called upon all German Austrians to leave the official Habsburg-sanctioned Avignon Church, calling on them to join the Union of Rome. Originally populated by British, German, and Italian liberals, the Union of Rome quickly grew to welcome a massive influx of German ultranationalists in what made for rather odd bedfellows. However, geopolitically, this actually made sense.

Schonerer called for German unification under one polity - and by the twentieth century, he viewed Austria as a fundamentally unfit vehicle for German nationhood, viewing the Austrians as traitors to the German race. Schonerer was wildly popular in Austria's universities, who quickly organized into secret societies to prepare for what they believed as an inevitable "liberation of Germans" by Prussia from Austria. Weirdly enough, the most effective and well-organized anti-Austrian secret society would eventually not emerge from the military academies as expected, but rather in the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, due to the tireless exhortations of one particularly charismatic student.

However, the Germans being unhappy didn't actually mean most other minorities were happy. The weakness of Cisleithanian government simply meant absolutely no oversight over the Hungarian government, which pursued harsh Magyarization policies that alienated most Slavs and Romanians in Hungary. The Poles, Dalmatians, Czechs, Ukrainians, and Bukovans were reasonably satisfied by Austrian autonomy, but the Slovaks, Romanians, Croats, and Transylvanian Germans were not. The only group in Austria proper left out of federalization, the Trent Italians, were also fairly unhappy with the situation.

The political paralysis of the era easily led to the rise of Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, an economist who believed that the problem of Austria was that it simply spent too much. Not going anything was an attractive political option when it was very hard to actually pass any laws, so much to his own surprise, Bohm-Bawerk was eventually appointed Imperial Chancellor. A liberal, Bohm-Bawerk continued the lenient treatment of minorities, but also as a liberal, distrusted anything that sounded like spending, whether it be public works or military spending. Austria's relatively free market meant that any decrease in public investment in railroads and other infrastructure was actually replaced an increase in private spending (which vindicated his political strategy), which helped pull Austria out of a decades long recession caused by a state-driven model in a political system that couldn't actually effectively pass policies. However, his cuts to military spending were obviously not replaced by any private sector activity, and the Austro-Hungarian Army quite frankly likely became one of the worst armies in Europe.

This situation led to the Vienna Mutiny, where troops under Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf revolted against Bohm-Bawerk's latest round of austerity cuts. Arguing that Bohm-Bawerk's policies would destroy the nation, Hotzendorf rallied troops to march upon Vienna and demand the Emperor fire Bohm-Bawerk. Although greatly supported by the Germans of Vienna, which erected barricades to support his troops, Franz Ferdinand convinced his father to turn down Hotzendorf's cries. However, the Austrian army itself was of questionable loyalty and not trusted to chase out Hotzendorf. Once again, the Austrians would call upon their allies, namely the Russians who immediately dispatched military assistance. Linking up with the Hungarians, the coup collapsed and Hotzendorf fled to Prussia.

In the end, this was viewed another triumph for Austrian liberalism. After all, the economy was prosperous, politics were paralyzed but mostly stable (with most minority groups placated), and Austria's diplomatic position seemed strong. The Prussians were a threat, but the Russians, Bavarians, French, Danes had all penned binding agreements with Austria to defend it against possible Prussian aggression. Serbia and Romania were essentially friendly, and although relations with Italy weren't exactly great, the Italians seemed more distracted with various Balkan and Mediterranean colonial games - though just to be safe, the only real public works campaign in Austria would be a network of forts built into the Alpine mountains to protect against an Italian invasion (which was viewed as unlikely due to the natural mountainous defenses). The Habsburgs had united their domains through marriage, not blood and iron, so why would those be needed to protect their domains?
 
Still really intrigued in how the whole Prussian house of cards is going to fall apart. I'm also hoping that the USGA survives the coming tumult,but I'm not expecting it to.
 
Chapter 113 - The Russo-Japanese Alliance of 1902
The Russo-Japanese Alliance of 1902
The possibility of an alliance between Japan and Russia had been first entertained during the Spanish-Japanese War, which saw the Japanese essentially beg for Russian intervention against Spain to no avail - the Russians really did not see why the war ought to include them. However, the Japanese purchase of Alaska after the war drew the two nations far closer than anyone had expected, which was one of the strategic goals the Russian foreign ministry had in selling Aljaska to Japan. Immediately, the British viewed Japan's rise in East Asia as a threat to their own interests, especially with Great Britain being the dominant investor in Qing China.

Qing China had left World War I feeling like a definitive victor, having essentially defeated a Western nation in the field on at least front (the Central Asian front was a catastrophe for Qing forces) by actually surging into Russia territory, briefly occupying Vladivostok, and forcing the Russians (and most importantly the Russian Navy) to withdraw from Vladivostok as a demilitarized zone. However, this cemented essentially most of Qing China's neighbors as implacable enemies. The "two Oriental Empires", namely the Ottoman Empire and the Qing Empire, became named in Russian propaganda as the enemy, as Russian propaganda quickly declared both the Ottoman Turks and Qing Manchu as part of an "ancient Tatar race fought by the Russian race since time immemorial." Unsurprisingly, this discourse only drew the Qing and Ottoman Empires much closer to each other, who saw common ground due to their mutually close relations with Great Britain and their seemingly similar attempts to imitate British-style parliamentary monarchy. For what it was worth, the Ottomans actually came much closer to emulating the British government as it stood - the Qing Government was merely a pale imitation where the Parliament had little actual power (most power in the central power was held in the the Qing Privy Council, comprised of Manchu aristocrats, while most actual power was held by predominantly Han warlord-viceroys in the various viceroyalties. Not only were Russia and Japan mutual threats, but so was France, who sat on Qing-claimed Taiwan, and worst of all, France was increasingly the primary commercial partner of Russia, with French finance sponsoring many of Russia's massive factories and railroads.

In Japan itself, the Russophile Enomoto grew to unrivaled influence after his naval ideas were seemingly vindicated by the Spanish-Japanese war. Enomoto had famously fought for the Shogunal forces in the Boshin Wars, even fleeing to Hokkaido and attempting to gain Russian support for an independent Hokkaido. Now, as the man of the hour in a unified Japan, Enomoto immediately responded to Russian overtures with glee, immediately hammering out a mutual defense treaty with the Russians. One of the agreements was to final settle the Sakhalin issue - the island had been claimed by both Russia and Japan for decades, and the two governments agreed that the land would be technically Russians, but that Japanese would have free reign to settle in Sakhalin (with appropriate autonomy granted). With the final debating point between the two nations solved, the two quickly entered into a diplomatic agreement that enshrined their respective obligations to defend each other. Most terrifyingly to the British was the informal Russo-Japanese Agreement to immediately embark on a massive joint shipbuilding program. The British were already informed of an informal agreement between Russian and French shipyards (they generally shared technology and personnel) - now, Japan had joined in.

The British, seeing three hostile navy powers aligning against them, quickly accelerated their creation of the world's first all-big-gun ship. In 1903, the HMS Dreadnought began construction, sparking a massive arms race between the United Kingdom and several powers. It quickly became the goal of the Royal Navy to outnumber the French, Russian, and Japanese fleets combined. In many ways, this would present a massive strain on the finances of France and Russia, who would also have a policy of fielding the second and first largest armies in Europe. This became a further strain once the Italians saw a French naval buildup as a possible threat against them - also joining in. However, the Italians, believing in the Alps as a proper barrier between them and France, decided not to engage in a similar land army build-up, realizing that a build-up could trigger an Austrian rearmament. The Italians spoke regularly with the North Germans, who agreed that a military build-up was undesirable. The North Germans decided to simply give up entirely on the naval race, simply selling off the products of their shipyards to the Italians, Ottomans, the Qing, and eventually the Confederates. Instead, the North Germans and the Italians simply decided to build a series of forts on their respective borders with Italy, which quickly became known as the Siegfried Line and the Pelloux Line. The North Germans, with their large industrial base but relatively low population (in 1900, under 40 million, compared to over 50 million for Austria, over 40 million for France, over 40 million for Great Britain, and over 130 million for Russia), focused on simply having more and bigger and better artillery than any other power, a fact they hoped to hide because of the relatively normal size of their army.

As a cultural phenomenon, the Russo-JApanese Alliance would cause an explosion of interest in Japanese culture in France and Russia, but it would also inspire Japanese political thinkers to look primarily towards France and Russia. Conservative Japanese landowners, who had dominated the Imperial Diet, saw much to admire in their Russian counterparts. Russian literature, including both Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (celebrated by the state), and Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (not celebrated by the state), became wildly popular in Japan. The Japanese government began work on synthesizing both "Pochvennichestvo"-style return to soil Russian ideology, with both Japan and East Korea attempting to intentionally synthesize such ideas with traditional Chinese thought. Both Japan and East Korea regularly declared themselves as the last bastion of classical Chinese civilization, explicitly comparing the Qing Dynasty as akin to the Ottomans sitting on Constantinople. Whereas Russia called itself the Third Rome, the East Koreans and Japanese each called themselves respectively the Second China and the Third China (they differed on whether the Manchu invasions of Korea 'extinguished' Chinese civilization in Korea). Chinese radicals would regularly go to Tokyo, the global center of classical Chinese philosophy, infused with exotic Russian ideas such as Narodism, which quickly grew to be a popular form of resistance against the Qing government.

Elite Qing society took a totally different intellectual turn. Although many Chinese intellectuals looked to Russia and Japan as their source of intellectual inspiration, the government at least looked towards their great benefactor, Great Britain. Hume, Locke, Burke, and other names quickly became a household name at Chinese universities. Many top officials in the Chinese government, such as Kang Youwei, began as members of the Fabian Society, eventually forming the soon-to-be-influential Fabian Circle of Qing politicians. Ironically, because the Qing Empire was so heavily dominated by aristocrats, aristocrats adopting Fabianism as a sign of erudition became better at implementing its ideas than the actual parliamentary British government. In theory, the Qing Empire became one of the first nations to establish universal social security and a minimum wage (even if in practice the minimum wage rapidly became lower than most jobs due to high rates of inflation and most people died before being old enough to collect social security). The most important introduction was the Imperial Health Service (IHS), which provided free albeit extremely low quality public health counselling to most of rural China, a public reform that actually first began under the viceroy Li Hongzhang based on British donations and quickly spread as the other viceroys sought to outcompete him. Although extremely rudimentary and low-budget, this maneuver quickly reconciled much of the Qing peasantry to the new government, which quickly grew to be supported by a strange circle of close-knit Manchu aristocrats around the Emperor, a large peasantry, a close set of Han viceroys (de facto warlords), and pretty much nobody else, as the government still refused to make genuine political reforms or invest in technological advances, alienating much of the middle-class and intellectuals.
 
However, the Japanese purchase of Alaska after the war drew the two nations far closer than anyone had expected, which was one of the strategic goals the Russian foreign ministry had in selling Aljaska to Japan. Immediately, the British viewed Japan's rise in East Asia as a threat to their own interests, especially with Great Britain being the dominant investor in Qing China.

The purchase of Alaska would be Japan's greatest asset, except for the threat that it's proximity to British North America and the US brings.

If Alaska is now Japanese, would that mean that the name would be changed to Arasuka (アラスカ) or Aruyasuka (アルヤスカ)?

It's a mostly unpopulated land full of resources, though some resources like oil weren't found in Alaska until the 1950s and 1960s OTL, and it was acquired through a purchase rather than having to fight for it.

Even before that, it gives them a lot of space to grow into and gives them a large Exclusive Economic Zone for fishing.

I would see key figures in Japan, probably with connections to the IJA, who would want to establish Japanese hegemony over East Asia and double down on Japan's efforts in Korea.
 
The purchase of Alaska would be Japan's greatest asset, except for the threat that it's proximity to British North America and the US brings.

If Alaska is now Japanese, would that mean that the name would be changed to Arasuka (アラスカ) or Aruyasuka (アルヤスカ)?

It's a mostly unpopulated land full of resources, though some resources like oil weren't found in Alaska until the 1950s and 1960s OTL, and it was acquired through a purchase rather than having to fight for it.

Even before that, it gives them a lot of space to grow into and gives them a large Exclusive Economic Zone for fishing.

I would see key figures in Japan, probably with connections to the IJA, who would want to establish Japanese hegemony over East Asia and double down on Japan's efforts in Korea.
The IJA got so badly wrecked in the 1876 Qing-Japan War, that it actually wrecked their prestige. Conservative landowners who hate paying taxes and pushed out the post-Meiji oligarchs in a "democratic" movement have since actually kept the IJA pretty underfunded.

To the extent that Japan wields influence, it's primarily economic and demographic (think mass Japanese emigration to Sakhalin and the Philippines and the Pacific Islands).
 
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