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

TastySpam · Apr 7, 2020

Empire in Texas

Throughout the 19th century, few issues united Mexicans, Americans, and most Native American tribes - the one thing that forced them to unite was a mutual loathing of the Comanche threat. Having taken to horse warfare perhaps better than any other Native American group on war, Comanche raids created hundreds of miles of no-go zones for American and Mexican settlers, while driving dozens of other Native American tribes to mere extinction. To most other groups, the Comanche were animalistic, unintelligent savages, leaving a trail of mass murder, rape, torture, and other atrocities. However, those atrocities were also a key part of the Comanche war machine, which used brutality and terror as a strategy. Only a very concerted strategy to end the Comanche reign of terror - and that was exactly what the United States prepared in the 1870's.

Greatly distracted by the Civil War, the Comanche ran wild and unchecked, using their military force to foil American settlers who sought to thin the buffalo herds in order to destroy their primary source of food. When the Comanche turned down American peace offers in late 1867, it became a political imperative to crush them. [1] The arrival of the United States Army in 1868 led to a gruesome war on both sides that eventually saw larger and larger deployments of American troops in the states of New Mexico, whereupon the Comanche were forced into fighting a campaign of assymetrical warfare. The Comanche preyed on both settlements on the American and Confederate border, but a major advantage to the Comanche was that in the immediate aftermath of the War of Southern Secession - the Confederates were exceptionally paranoid that sharing military information with the United States could lead to an American invasion. The complete inability of the two armies to cooperate mean that the Comanche could often cross the border whenever pursued by one army - particularly problematic because both armies knew that crossing into the other America could lead to a geopolitical disaster. On one hand - a mutual shared threat between the Oklahoma Indians and Confederate created far more good-will. One of the largest reasons that the Indian Country surprisingly opted to go with the Confederates was that the Confederates dispatched soldiers to fight off the Comanche during a massive 1866 Comanche raid.

By the 1880's, the Comanche had been slowly grinded down in the United States, eventually forcing them to try their luck in the Confederate States, particularly in Western Texas. Finally, in 1881, the Comanche threw in the towel, signing a peace agreement with the Confederate States under their new leader, Quanah Parker, who largely rose to power because everyone ahead of him in seniority was eventually killed in the bloody wars. Parker interestingly, immediately ingratiated himself with the Confederate elite. To protect traditional Comanche lands from American settlers...he decided to ranch those lands himself with support from the whites, becoming one of the wealthiest ranchers in West Texas and Indian Country. Although the Comanche were still greatly feared and disliked in much of Texas and Indian Country, Confederate elites quickly grew to trust Parker, who very much acted like a "civilized" white man (in fact, his mother was a white woman kidnapped by the Comanche) and most usefully, prevented Comanche radicals from reigniting the war.

Parker's biggest moment in the spotlight came during the First Confederate Civil War, when the Texas state government was taken over by Provo rebels. Gathering up a mixture of Confederate loyalists, Comanche remnants, and just generic soldiers of fortune he could use with his money, Parker declared that Western Texas was seceding from the rest of the state, establishing a loyalist pro-Confederate state named Comancheria. The name aside, the loyalist government was overwhelmingly white - he in fact soothed his white friends by telling them that the name was largely a ploy to get old Comanche veterans to mobilize for the Confederate cause. Whether it was a ploy or not, it worked, Confederate loyalists completely routed a Texas state government attempt to restore order.

The Texas State Government was not the only government routed. When the Imperial Mexican government officially reneged the movement of the Texas borders in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, they were easily able to move up towards the Nueces River. However, their claims in much of Western Texas quickly fell apart when arriving Mexican garrisons were totally massacred by Comanche raiders. Eager to not renew conflict with the Comanche, after several months of struggle that saw arriving Mexican troops take horrendous losses, the Imperial Mexican government officially signed a corollary with the Nationalist Confederates, essentially abandoning most of their claims on West Texas.

When the Provo rebellion quickly collapsed in the flames of Georgia, the new Confederate government recognized Comancheria, arguing that the 1845 Senate Resolution admitting the Republic of Texas into the United States permitted the division of Texas. Interestingly, most Texans didn't object that much since it was viewed as a way to get twice as many Senators as they had before. Moreover, public opinion in the Confederacy celebrated the Comanche (despite their previous atrocities against white settlers), because the Comanche had routed a foreign incursion when the Texas State Government rolled over and surrendered.

As a result, in 1889, Comancheria became the twelfth Confederate state as the Mahone administration sought to reward its friends. Quanah Parker himself became the politically dominant man of the hour in Comancheria, famously wealthy, closely connected with Confederate elites, and the essential father of the state. Parker would serve as the energetic Governor of Comancheria would only end with his death in 1911.

TastySpam · Apr 16, 2020

Gangs of New Orleans

In the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence, the Confederacy largely had two dueling metropolitan areas. Although far smaller than the major cities of the United States, the cities of Atlanta and New Orleans were by far the largest cities in the Confederate States of America - New Orleans the port city along the Mississippi - and Atlanta, the second largest city. However, Atlanta was largely burned down during the First Confederate Civil War. What little wealth survived the cataclysm of the Civil War only survived thanks to US expeditionary forces under General William T. Sherman helping Confederate civilians escape the blaze. As a result, New Orleans immediately became "The City" in the Confederacy, with no competitors.

New Orleans was also known as Patrick Country, both for its feverish support of Patrick Cleburne in his unsuccessful re-election attempt, but also for having the largest immigrant population (including Irish) in the Confederate States. Although the Confederacy attracted far fewer immigrants than the huge industrial cities of the North, New Orleans in particular was viewed as a relatively acceptable city for Catholic immigrants who saw the United States as culturally hostile. In addition, the entire Confederacy was generally known as one of the most welcoming countries on Earth for Jewish immigrants, with the Jewish Louisianian Judah Benjamin having earlier served as Secretary of State for Presidents Davis, Bragg, and Forrest - before being dismissed by President Morgan (in what was generally considered a terrible mistake). In a mirror image of the Confederate States, the monarchist-clerical regimes of Mexico and Brazil, although racially tolerant (towards indigenous minorities and in the Brazilian case, blacks), were seen as culturally hostile to Jews.

New Orleans quickly became the most ethnically, racially, and religious city in the Confederate States. Interestingly in most cases - poor Southern whites didn't actually move to New Orleans or other Confederate cities that often simply because unlike Jews or Chinese or blacks, they actually had better options. American factories, especially in cities like Chicago, were known to heavily favor white immigrant labor from the Confederacy, because they were very low-wage due to the general rural poverty of the Confederacy, but also white and Protestant.

In addition, New Orleans and much of the Deep South quickly became the landing ground for most Chinese immigrants forced out of the United States during World War I, but with no actual path back to China. With a large number of rural blacks hoping to escape sharecropper life also moving to the city, The rural South had a huge surplus of young black freedmen because both American and Confederate bankers actually made a severe error in the 1887 compensated emancipation scheme proferred by President Mahone. By generously paying former slaveowners for every "born-free" slave they were required to emancipate, the scheme actually encouraged slaveowners to have the adult slaves they still owned have far more children than normal. The result was a tremendous baby boom among freedmen - as well as huge government transfers towards large plantation owners. Amazing, the planter class actually profited handsomely from emancipation, as they managed to concentrate more wealth in their hands than ever. Northern banks sought to desperately get out of these arrangements as they were bleeding money to the South, but both the Confederate and US governments intervened in order to chase any attempts to declare bankruptcy and abrogate these debts just because Confederate political elites indicated that any US breach of their obligations in the emancipation program would threaten cross-border commercial relations. Eventually, several workout solutions were proposed. Eventually, a complicated fiscal scheme emerged where Confederate bankers would lend to US banks who would pay the loan proceeds to the slaveowners - then the US banks would be allowed to put a personal lien (a claim usually reserved only for property) on the slaves that persisted after emancipation, whereupon the born-frees would use a proportion of their income to pay the CSA banks enough for the CSA banks to cover interest to US bankers (with the CSA government slowly paying the principal to those US bankers).

As a result, a wave of penniless young black free youth, often with debt and no no family ties except to parents who were often still slaves, flooded most major Southern cities. Combined with a mostly low-wage immigrant population, this also created an unprecedented spike in organized crime. This spike only further exploded after the Longstreet Administration and other members of his Prohibition Party passed and signed the National Prohibition Act, prohibiting and punishing the sale and transportation of liquor. Organized crime groups exploded in New Orleans, which became quickly known for being a massive hub of organized crime, alongsides Hong Kong, Mexico City, Naples, and Rio de Janeiro.[1] Although the Confederacy was poor with sky-high income inequality, the economy rapidly grew under the Mahone, Cleburne, and Longstreet administrations, creating opportunities for many random citizens from poor backgrounds to become fabulously rich, especially Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Muslim, Chinese, or Japanese immigrants. For example, in the aftermath of the Turkish triumph over Greece in the early stages of World War I, a wave of Greek immigrants hit the Confederate States, Brazil, and Mexico, ironically followed by a wave of Turkish immigrants largely landing in the Confederacy when Turkey performed much less well in the second half of the war.

Confederate New Orleans became a city of extremes, generating massive wealth despite staggering racial and economic inequality, perhaps the best microcosm of what differentiated the Confederate States from the United States, because New Orleans was everything the placid Yankee wasn't - ostentatious, diverse, crime-ridden, cosmopolitan, unruly, chaotic, resentful, and above all, frenetic.
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[1] OTL Italian emigration is just lower across the board, so a lot of organized crime types just stay home.

TastySpam · May 22, 2020

The Filipino Revolution Begins

The Spanish Empire emerged from the Spanish-Confederate War triumphant, though unfortunately for Spain, as its triumph in the Spanish-Confederate War came after the Congress of Kiev that divided up much of Africa. That being said, the draft map floated at the Congress wasn't final in any sense, and an emboldened Spanish Empire was determined to make its mark on the world. King Guillermo I of Spain was widely popular for directly travelling to Puerto Rico to visit and support wounded Spanish soldiers. The long-standing Prime Minister of Spain, Juan Prim, had died shortly after the Spanish-Confederate War at a ripe old age of 1888, shortly after he was criticized by some for "giving up Cuba." Despite that, he was generally praised for leading Spain to war. Ironically, whereas Cuba was a constant drain on the Spanish treasury due to the rebellion, what they had received in return for Cuba, extraterritoriality in the Confederate port of Savannah and control over the Confederacy's sole colony abroad, North Borneo (which they had always claimed because of their claims on the Sultanate of Sulu), was actually profitable. In particular, the Port of Savannah became a crime-ridden, but very profitable port in the aftermath of the Confederate State's prohibition of alcohol. An incredibly number of wealthy Spaniards turned Puerto Rico and Savannah into common vacation destinations because of the high quality of life they could enjoy with Spanish purchasing power.

Juan Prim was replaced by two dueling, but friendly rivals. First was Emilio Castelar, a moderate Republican who eventually grew to accept the Hohenzollern monarchy in Spain, largely because it wasn't actually a very strong monarchy at all (due to the King's extremely young age). Even more, by law, his regent was originally meant to be his uncle, Carol I...who was too busy being the King of Romania...and had also converted to Eastern Orthodoxy...and was just generally quite unpopular in Spain. By the time the King had reached maturity, the norm in Spain was for the Prime Minister to run the nation, which meant the only thing he could do to slowly regain political power was to engage in public ceremonies (like visiting wounded soldiers). Indeed, King Guillermo was largely focused on ceremonial matters, which enhanced his political powers, but gave him little domestic influence.

Castelar would eventually trade the role of Prime Minister with Jose Lopez Dominguez, the nephew of Francisco Serrano (the famous general who had worked with Juan Prim to overthrow Isabella II in the Glorious Revolution). Dominguez generally had the upper hand in this struggle, being closer with Juan Prim, whereas Castelar was the outsider. Furthermore, Dominguez enjoyed the support of Antonio Canovas del Castillo, who thought both men as too liberal for him (but preferred Dominguez).

The creation of the Confederacy of Cuba, a dominion of the Kingdom of Spain, brought the incredibly bloody Cuban War of Independence to an end, but it outraged others in the Spanish Empire who asked why they couldn't get a similar deal. The Spanish had agreed to reform Puerto Rico into an "overseas province" of Spain with its own legislature as headed by autonomy activist Luis Munoz Rivera, which satisfied most activists there once they also received representation in the Spanish Cortes. The colonies in Equatorial Africa and most of the Pacific islands weren't populous and developed enough to seriously strain the Spanish state or army.

However, one region quickly became a problem spot. The Spanish, having narrowed down their problematic colonies to only one through various unwanted concessions, were not in a mood to let the Philippines go. Most notably, unlike Puerto Rico (which had a mostly European, Spanish-speaking population), the Philippines was largely not European or Spanish-speaking, which caused most liberal Spaniards (who had supported representation for Puerto Rico) to reject such a possibility for the Philippines. The Liberals in particular believed that rural and religious non-Europeans would "vote like reactionary peasants., oriental Carlists." The repeated refusals of a seemingly otherwise reformist liberal Spanish government outraged Filipino intellectuals, who quickly began to organize.

In addition, although the liberal government had reformed the Spanish crminal code to highly discourage capital punishment and internment without trial (moves that went over well in Cuba/Puerto Rico), the Philippines quickly became a place to exile unwanted conservative politicians to, who generally took a very hard line on law and order. Simply to get him as far away from Puerto Rico as possible (where he was disliked), Valeriano Weyler was reassigned to be Governor-General of the Philippines in 1885. During the Spanish-Confederate War, the actually extremely popular Confederate Governor-General of North Borneo, John S. Mosby (who like the Governor-General of the Philippines, was sent there largely so that the rest of the Confederacy's politicians didn't have to deal with), accurately believed that Confederate aid would not be coming to his support anytime soon due to the obvious fact that the Confederacy had no Pacific Coast line - and a ship ride from New Orleans to Borneo was...not going to come anytime soon.

Notably, the Spanish were going to come for him - he knew, especially as the Sultanate of Sulu, a Spanish protectorate, claimed more or less the entire territory of Confederate North Borneo, while only holding the Eastern coastline. Largely because of Mosby's obsessive preparations for a possible Spanish invasion of North Borneo, Confederate troops actually won a successful and total victory when the local Confederate garrison seized the Spanish tip of North Borneo, completely destroying the slightly larger Spanish garrison (4 killed, 11 wounded, ~800 captured), while only having one man wounded after he ate a suspicious plant. Of course, the Spanish garrison in the Philippines was deployed to crush Confederate New Borneo in force. In response to his hopeless fate, Mosby took the entire Confederate garrison, commandeered several civilian ships, and sailed directly to the Philippines. Ironically, his former prisoners were put in charge of North Borneo by virtue of the Confederate garrison leaving (though they stole their weapons and uniforms), which amusingly led to Spanish troops breaking into government compounds they were surprised that they already controlled.

Landing in Zamboanga, the Mosby Army, without any orders from Confederate High Command, declared an independent "Republic of Zamboanga", run "by locals, for locals". Oddly well read about the Philippines, Mosby called on Filipinos to rise up in revenge of the Gomburza - three Catholic priests who were strangled a decade ago by Spanish colonial authorities on suspicions of promoting a mutiny against the Spanish government. Most Filipino intellectuals believed that the meddling Confederate was acting truly bizarrely...but they weren't hostile. Some in the Confederate government believed that they could actually conquer the Philippines on behalf of the CSA, but Mosby had no illusions and thus no qualms on signing a document whereas the Confederate government supposedly warranted in perpetuity sovereignty of the "Republic of Zamboanga - and any sister Republics throughout the Philippines." This inspired Paciano Rival, a former student of one of the strangled Gomburza priests, to officially endorse the Zamboanga Republic. In practice, it was never really a functional government, but rather just hundreds of Confederate and Filipinos fighting a strange guerilla war in Mindanao, with a few exception of a third source of soldiers.

Although the samurai class had never been officially abolished in Japan, in practice, the primacy of samurai in the military and society was steeply declining. The only real privilege afforded to samurai was the right to carry a sword - a right that quickly ended when they weren't given unique rights to wield actually more useful weapons, like firearms. A variety of samurai however - deeply unhappy that their services were no longer required by the Imperial Japanese Army, decided to seek glory abroad. In particular, Toyama Mitsuru, a samurai veteran of the disastrous Sino-Japanese War, founded the Black Ocean Society, a growing underground network of ex-samurai with a distinct agenda of overthrowing "European colonial regimes", namely the British, Spanish, and Qing (their own writings questionably described the Qing as European). Notably, they refused to come to the aid of pro-Qing/British monarchies, such as the Kingdom of Hawaii. Much to their own surprise, the Zamboanga Republic received a steady stream of samurai recruits from the Black Ocean Society and other disaffected Japanese samurai.

Although never defeated in battle, Mosby also wasn't actually ever able to overthrow the Spanish government in the Philippines like he had desired - and a condition of the Spanish-Confederate peace deal was for him to return home with all of his men, which he did (after conveniently leaving behind all of his weapons). Notably, the Japanese operatives did not stop. Governor-General Weyler, triumphant, believed that this was an opportunity to "cleanse" the Philippines of anti-colonial activists for good. As soon as Mosby left the Philippines, Spanish colonial authorities arrested Paciano Rival and summarily had him strangled in the public square as a "lesson" to other activists, much like Spanish authorities had once strangled the Gomburza priests. Weyler chose not to have a trial, because he accurately understood that the Spanish government in Madrid would have likely pardoned him if Weyler attempted to hold an actual trial. What Weyler incorrectly reasoned out - was the actual outcome of this act, which would only fan the flames of revolution...

TastySpam · Aug 16, 2020

It's Free Real Estate

In many ways, the end of the First World War was sought to make as few changes in the Balkans and Near East as possible. In practice, it led to a total upheaval of the power balance in the Balkans. In theory, there were no actual territorial changes. However, the Albanian vilayets were placed under the de facto administration and control of Italy, which quickly replaced Ottoman (in practice, mostly Ottoman Greek) administrators with Italian administrators. Italy notably jumped at the opportunity to occupy these regions - in contrast with Austria-Hungary, which fairly vehemently turned down an offer to take over control of most of the Bosnian vilayet - they did exercise that option for predominantly Croat regions, largely due to complex reasons to do with the Chancellor Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust's reliance on Croat legislators (as led by Karl Sigmund von Hohenwart). When Hohenwart succeeded Beust, he unsurprisingly had even less of an interest in expanding Austrian influence into predominantly non-Catholic regions of Bosnia. Hohenwart was so loathe to tack onto Austria more territory - that he agreed at the Congress of Kiev to accept Madagascar as a protectorate instead of taking Bosnia.

During the First World War, the Serbs and Montenegrins took the Italian assumption in Albania as a golden opportunity - Serbo-Montenegrin forces flooded into Bosnia almost immediately. At this point, the Ottoman Empire had no actual borders with Bosnia. Originally, there was a sea route into Albania and then through a corridor into Bosnia - but the Italian assumption of control in Albania closed that route. Completely unrestricted, Serbo-Montenegrin quickly forced the surrender of the Ottoman garrison and took whatever they wanted. In contrast with most Christian conquests of Ottoman land - the conquest of Bosnia was somewhat less bloody and had less ethnic cleansing of Muslims than the others - largely because Ottoman resistance was so feeble. At the end of the war, as part of a compromise brokered by the British, the Serbo-Montenegrins were ordered to withdraw from regions of Bosnia without a significant Christian population (this was really just a face-saving proposal - since the pro-Austrian government in Serbia had already signed an agreement to create some sort of buffer state between Serbia and Austria). Most importantly - these lands connected Serbia and Montenegro - drawing the two nations closer together and giving Serbia a sea route access. In practice, this also denied one to Bosnia. Worst of all, rump Bosnia wasn't even contiguous - with one large region in Central Bosnia around Sarajevo - and another region in northwest Bosnia around Bihac.

At his point...the Ottoman Empire really had no interest in actually controlling Bosnia anymore - it was clearly just a liability, two land-locked enclaves in a sea of hostile Christian empires. Moreover, the Ottoman Empire had reached a true political crisis scenario in the aftermath of World War I - and was unlikely to be able to administer the region even if they wanted to. As a result - the new leader of the Ottoman Empire, Prime Minister Kamil Pasha, made the sensible decision to simply sell off Bosnia. The only real goal was to ensure that the buyer was a government - because the atrocities of Leopold II's Congo Free State made global governments pretty much refuse to consider selling territory to private individuals anymore. The only problem with his plan was...there weren't many buyers. The Austrians weren't interested. The Serbians and Montenegrins weren't either. That only left nations that would have no land or sea connection to Bosnia. The selling price, as expected, was not very high.

However, at the end of the day, there was one willing purchaser - a rising power eager to construct a colonial Empire - even as their last colonial empire went down in horrific flames. As a result, in 1897, the Confederate States of America, in the lame-duck term of President Patrick Cleburne (in what was widely referred to in North American newspapers as "Paddy's Folly"), paid a rather modest sum to the Ottoman Empire in order to acquire Bosnia. In practice, dealing with Confederate Bosnia largely fell to his successor, President James Longstreet, who realized that he needed a quick way to make Bosnia profitable without engaging in any actual atrocities. He settled on a Confederate official...who had excellent ties with wealthy American families...and was actually interested in taking on an assignment that pretty much every prominent person in the Confederate States was desperately trying to avoid being appointed to. As a result, the 38-year old Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, was appointed to be the first Governor of Confederate Bosnia, where he would eventually be known as the "American Pasha."

TastySpam · Aug 21, 2020

The Treaty of Paris in the Balkans

The strongman of Italy, Francesco Crispi, didn't have particularly much time left. For one - he was increasingly blind. The man who had entered Italy into World War I had carved out a small chunk of the Balkans for the growing power couldn't read the actual treaty memorializing his gains. However, his final legacy wouldn't be at home - it would be across the Adriatic. The Treaty of Paris formalized Italy's domination of the "Albanian vilayets", which was not a very well defined term. In common speech, this included the Kosovo, Scutari, Manastir, and Janina Vilayets (a territory that stretched from Kosovo to Thesally). However, much to the outrage of Crispi, the Serbs had seized a large portion of Kosovo and Montenegro most of Scutari - and the Serbo-Montenegrin army engaged in countless massacres and expulsion of Albanians from those territories. This sparked the formation of the League of Prizren, a coalition of Albanian beys and intellectuals calling for a revival of Albanian national consciousness - who laid claim to all four vilayets. Crispi, of Albanian descent himself, backed their demands and immediately lobbied the Ottoman Empire to unify the four vilayets. They did so, allowing Italy to lay claim on the entirety of the entirety of territory, including those territories that Serbia and Montenegro had sat on. Another clause in the Treaty of Paris allowed Serbia, Montenegro, and Russia retain "control" where their armies had set up, so this naturally created a dispute between Italy on one side and Serbia and Montenegro on the other.

The Principality of Bulgaria was allowed to become de jure independent, largely because it had been de facto independence for two decades since the Treaty of San Stefano. Prince Nikolay Ignatyev became the new Tsar of Bulgaria, the first in the House of Ignatyev. The reactionary leader was not particularly beloved in Bulgaria, but he was ultimately seen as the "winner" of Bulgarian independence, even if the man himself refused to learn Bulgarian (he spoke only Russian).

In theory, the Ottoman Empire still controlled Bosnia, Northern Green, Macedonia, and Albania - though in practice, they controlled none of those territories anymore. As a result, when the Ottoman Empire sold sold all of Bosnia to the Confederate States of America, the vast majority of Bosnia was under the de facto administration of Serbia, Montenegro, and Austria, including almost every major city and waterway, leaving only a few exclaves of impoverished countryside areas flooded with desperately poor refugees from the Serb and Montenegrin armies. As a result, the only Ottoman territories on the European continent were Salonika and Thrace.

A second humiliation after the humiliating Ottoman defeat in the Treaty of San Stefano was perhaps the last straw for the Sultan Abdulhamid II, who had risen to power during the 1877-1878 war, shut down Parliament, and took over as an absolute monarch by claiming only he could prevent another such humiliation. However, a humiliation nevertheless happened. Upon signing of the Treaty of Paris, army units in Salonika mutinied, marching towards Thrace. Most notably, the Bulgarians refused to allow the army to pass - but in a striking betrayal of Abdulhamid II, the British allowed the revolutionaries to commandeer British merchant ships. Indeed, the British were angry at the Sultan, as mainstream opinion in Britian blamed Abdulhamid II for sparking the war with the Armenian massacres. With even the British turning on him, the Sultan threw in the towel, agreeing to restore the 1876 Constitution that he had abrogated. Victorious rebels marched into Constantinople, disproportionately those friendly to the United Kingdom. General elections in the Ottoman Empire naturally returned those friendly to the revolutionaries - and the pro-British Kamil Pasha was quickly elected as an empowered Prime Minister. Kamil Pasha was hand-picked by the Prince Sabahaddin, who had seized control of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (due to the British shippers during the revolution favoring him over his more nationalist competitors - as well as the American-trained Ottoman Empire being remarkably friendly to liberal ideas).

Kamil Pasha took over what had been a severely battered empire. Although with powerful and wealthy friends in the United Kingdom, the Ottomans were surrounded by enemies. The Qajar Dynasty in Iran had openly allowed Russian troops to station themselves on the Persian-Ottoman border. The French had seized Egypt - including the Sinai Peninsula - and worst of all, were engaged in an alliance with the Russians. The Bulgarians were seen essentially as a Russian puppet state, which was not inaccurate. The new Principality of Armenia was also viewed as a de facto puppet state of the Russians. Allies were desperately needed. The obvious ally was Italy. Coincidentally, Albanians were wildly over-represented in the ruling Committee of Union and Progress - while the Albanian-descended Prime Minister of Italy was known as the patron of Albanianism in the Balkans, which helped the progress. Moreover, the Italians and Ottoman were both targets of Greek irredentism - and both mutually saw Bulgaria as a threat. The strength of Italy's navy was essentially untested, but it was genuinely viewed as the third strongest naval power in the Mediterranean after Great Britain and France. Moreover - Italian claims in Libya and Tunisia conflicted with French control of Algeria and Egypt.

In the Ottoman Empire instead, the Empire would double-down on its famous cosmopolitan nature. Although its borders had been significantly shrunken, the Ottoman Empire was still a nation of Turks, Kurds (indespensible to the survival of the empire in World War I), Albanians, Armenians (mostly in the Levant), all kinds of Arabs, and Greeks (in Cyprus, Crete, and across Asia Minor). Ottoman officers had been pumped full with American ideals during their tutelage by the American Lew Wallace and eagerly supported the administrative reforms in the Ottoman Empire that sought to decentralize government and open up the Ottoman Empire to business (in practice, mostly Italian, American, North German, and British). Under the influence of reasonably religious American-educated officers, the Ottoman Empire scrapped plans to secularize the education system, rather keeping religious clergy involved in the public education system (although vastly expanding it with revenues garnered from tariffs). This severely ham-stringed Sultan Abdulhamid II's plan to seize back control by using the Islamic clergy as his advocates. Although the majority opposed the new government, there were enough pro-government clerics to keep order stable. There were many social problems, chief among them expanding wealth inequality and increasing resentment of those cities that grew faster (they tended to be coastal), but the new government presided over relative internal peace, especially considering the last few decades of Ottoman history.

TastySpam · Sep 2, 2020

Italy Enters The Twentieth Century

By 1901, Crispi had been one of the most influential leaders in Italian history. Ruling the nation for decades, the strongman forcibly industrialized large swaths of the country, stemmed the tide of mass emigration from his homeland in Southern Italy, and centralized power in the once infamously decentralized peninsula. Moreover, he had forged something resembling a genuine foreign colonial empire, namely Albania, Macedonia, Libya, and Tunisia - the crown jewel of the Italian Empire. However, this came at a cost. Italian "democracy" had very little legitimacy with the actual populace. He had totally alienated the Catholic Church into being an implacable enemy of the Italian state, with peasants regularly spitting on small portraits of the King. And his brutal suppression of socialists and leftists in both Sicily (the Fasci Siciliani) and the North created a pandemic of anarchist and socialist terrorism in Italy.

Blind and dying, the leader still gave regular speeches - and it was during one speech when Gaetano Bresci, an Italian-American anarchist, shot at the Italian Prime Minister and King Umberto I - managing to wound Umberto and kill the already sickly Italian Prime Minister. The political struggle to regain control would immediately break out. Celebrations broke out among leftists in the street, further radicalizing a furious right, who saw that as a direct slander against the monarchy. Leftists and radicals in the streets of Milan broke out in protests, calling for universal suffrage. Alongside them were conservatives, who demanded rapprochement with the Catholic Church and an end to state support to the Union of Rome.

In parliamentary intrigues, Giovanni Giolitti climbed up on top and announced that widespread voting reforms had to be made. Namely, to grant at the very least the demands of universal suffrage and to return the Italian state to a position of neutrality between the Avignon Papacy and the Union of Rome. King Umberto I, still furious at the Avignon Papacy for denying his father last rites, dismissed Giolitti immediately. Giolitti refused to step down - and Italian troops under Luigi Pelloux gained the King's support when they launched a military takeover of Rome, gunning down protestors who clamored in the streets to oppose their "coup." With order restored, the King lauded Luigi Pelloux as a hero. The remaining MPs, at gunpoint, were forced to nominate Pelloux's choice as Prime Minister (it could not be himself since he did not want to appear like he was taking over in a coup). Reluctantly, the Parliament selected Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino, who was well-known in international circles and well-regarded.

However, Sonnino's responsibility would remain dominated by foreign affairs and now to a large extent economic policy. Sonnino threw himself into dramatically industrializing the underdeveloped Italian South, as massive factories popped up in Naples, Palermo, and other cities, employing thousands upon thousands of workers. Railroads in Southern Italy became as advanced as those in the North. In contrast, Pelloux's men would monopolize internal security, justice, and other domestic matters, where they continued a hard line against both conservatives and leftists. In many ways, these goals coincided, because the Italian Army forcibly broke up strikes across Italy, keeping industrial labor cheap. Literacy rates scored even as the wealth gap remained as large as ever (having massively spiked during the Crispi era).

The Sonnino-Pelloux ministry became increasingly concerned about Italy's military preparedness. For one, Italy was surrounded by enemies - namely both France (Enemy #1 due to the Avignon Papacy) and Austria-Hungary who sat on Italian lands). Although friends were located in the United Kingdom (Sonnino was both Protestant and perfectly fluent in English) and the Ottoman Empire, they were not seen as particularly reliable. Italian war strategy would naturally assume British aid. Significant expenditures were spent on fortifications in both the Alpine borders with Austria and France. Instead, the initial thrust of any Italian battle would be in North Africa.

Italian administration of North Africa contrasted remarkably in France. Whereas in France, under the cosmopolitan-traditional policies of the Bonapartist monarchy, the French had gained the support and loyalty of many of Algeria's indigenous leaders, the Italians were modernist and secular in a way that repulsed most of indigenous Muslim Berbers. As in the mainland, the Italian Army crushed all dissent with force, Moreover, Italian restrictions on Southern Italian emigration (as part of Crispi's Southern strategy), meant that many Italians needed somewhere else to go. In general, the easiest place to go was North Africa - where the Italian Army engaged in widespread land theft and expulsion against indigenous Berbers. This meant intense violence in Tunisia and Libya as Berber leaders effectively resisted Italian government and often launched devastating raids against the Italian Army. However, the violence also sparked many locals to flee to French Algeria - allowing their lands to be taken over by (not entirely willing) Italian settlers. These policies were continued under Pelloux - who considered the resulting violence actually pretty good training for his army in war.

The Italian strategy for any possible was to swarm Egypt - and try to crush the French from both sides with Ottoman aid. Luckily for the Ottomans, the Italians still recognized Egypt as Ottoman territory. Perhaps even the Ethiopians could be enticed into the war. Then with the British in Gibraltar and the Ottomans in the Suez, the Italians would be able to prevent the French from unifying their naval forces - and could crush the French Navy in the Mediterranean. What happened after wasn't that well-planned out - but the Italians presumed there would be assaults and blockades across Dalmatia and France, with a special eye towards Corsica.

TastySpam · Sep 3, 2020

Vague Map of Alliance System, circa 1900

Blue = Ally
Green = Friendly
Grey = It's Complicated
Yellow = Unfriendly
Red = Enemy

TastySpam · Oct 9, 2020

The Spanish Ultimatum

The tactics of Spain were perceived to have succeeded in Cuba. They would thus try them again. Spanish troops rounded up thousands of Filipino villagers in rebel-dominated areas in concentration camps, hoping to deny the rebels local support. However, this only had a radicalizing effect on the rebels, who often turned to Japanese technological and ideological tutelage. Toyama Mitsuru, the leader of the new Eastern Pearl Society, wrote extensively about the necessity of Asians to unite in the face against Western colonialism - by themselves also adopting ultranationalist and militarist structures. Unemployed samurai flocked to the Eastern Pearl Society, simply sneaking their way into the Philippines to support the Filipino rebels. Japanese aid to the rebels was generous and this caused the rebels to do far better than the Spanish had originally expected. In addition, many of these samurais had previously volunteered in World War I and were thus combat veterans, providing combat expertise to the rebels that the Spanish themselves did not have (their last war being the successful Spanish-Confederate War - which the Spanish won largely not on land, but at the sea). Ambushes, traps, and selective use of new technologies inflicted terrible losses on Spanish troops.

That besides, many Japanese did not realize they were playing with fire. Spain was widely considered a global power, having crushed the Confederate States of America and even establishing its own colonial concessions in the State of Georgia. In contrast, Japan was viewed as a third-rate power, largely because it had been defeated by the Qing Empire previously, the Qing being widely considered a second-rate power (alongside the Ottomans). However, the Qing defeat was nearly 25 years ago, and Japan had significantly developed, technologically, militarily, and economically since then. Although the Japanese Army still lagged significantly behind their European competitors (especially in artillery and machine guns), the Japanese Navy was small, but well-drilled. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, the Japanese Navy was up to par with the West, at least man-for-man. Moreover, Spanish triumph in North America did not actually reverse all economic and political stagnation at home - many gains were made, but some was simply concealed by the triumph of victory.

Thus, the world was not surprised when the Kingdom of Spain, outraged by a samurai who had attacked Governor-General Weylar at night with a katana (chopping off his right-hand before being shot by guards), demanded that Japan force its agents to withdraw. The Japanese government, largely run by civilian landowner selected by an Imperial Diet elected under limited suffrage (aka landlords), was eager to apply, condemning radical activists in the Philippines. Ever since the political reforms and the enactment of the new Constitution, Imperial Japan had steadfastly refused to enter conflicts abroad, its conservative leaders fearing any conflict would jeopardize the social hierarchy of Japan and their careful modernization program. The Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy were ordered to withdraw completely the Philippines. As the Prime Minister was supreme under the Okubo Constitution, they followed such orders and did so. Emperor Meiji, although sympathetic to the Filipino rebels, signed off on the order.

The problem for Japan was that the Spanish were still not satisfied. The Spanish government demanded that Japan withdraw all militants from Philippines, something they could not have done given the fact that they were largely private individuals. Worst of all, most of these criminal and extremists organizations were actually based in a supposed Japanese "protectorate", the Kingdom of the Ryukyus, whose internal sovereignty Japan was specifically prohibited from interfering with, as per their earlier peace treaty with the Qing, the 1877 Treaty of Peking. The Spanish simply did not believe that such sophisticated weaponry and equipment could have been acquired without the knowledge of the Japanese government, but they largely underestimated the reach and power of Japanese secret societies and criminal syndicates - and were furious that the Japanese were unable to sever the Ryukyu connection. Although Japanese diplomats ran around like headless chickens trying to dissuade their Spanish counterparts, they were not swayed. At the turn of the century, the Spanish Cortes voted to declare war on the Empire of Japan and the Ryukyu Kingdom , changing the political trajectory of three nations. Japan begged for aid from its partners in Russia and France, but both nations sat on their heels, waiting to see what would unfold.

TastySpam · Oct 26, 2020

The US Presidential Election of 1900

After the defeat in the 1896 elections, the Democratic Party quickly coalesced once again, as members of the National Democrats and former Anti-Orientals decided to put the bitter party split behind them. Unifying them was the Vice President of the United States, Richard P. Bland, who combined the anti-imperialism of the National Democrats with the progressive economic policy of the Anti-Orientals (without their strange racial fixations). A supporter of bimetallism, Bland lambasted the Hay Administration for their firm adherence to the Gold Standard, which grew increasingly unpopular in the midst of the Panic of 1899, as bank continued to flag despite American strict adherence to the gold currency. This only caused Republicans to rally the flag around Hays even harder - as a result, he faced almost no opposition in his re-election campaign within his party, despite his general unpopularity among the American public. In many ways, he was elected to "restore normalcy" - but it turns that most people didn't actually like normalcy. Industrial workers and farmers were both outraged by the seeming "do-nothing President" (although he could do little, with the Senate under Democratic control).

The only problem with Democratic unity was simple: Vice President Bland died in the middle of the Democratic National Convention. Panic quickly set in as competing factions of the party began savaging each other in hopes of putting their man in charge. In the end, the struggle was settled not by debate, but by the fist. Armed strikebreakers, employed by financial interests who wanted to see a more laissez-faire Democratic party (and who also feared an erratic warmongerer) burst into the DNC and forcibly "restored order." Although they didn't disenfranchise more populist DNC delegates, many DNC delegates, led by firebrand James Weaver, left the party, depriving the Populists of their narrow majority. The triumphant figure at the 1900 Democratic National Convention was Governor Arthur P. Gorman, who was known as Governor of Maryland to have good relations with his Confederate neighbors in Virginia. Looking for ideological and geopolitical balance on his ticket, Gorman picked Indiana's more progressive Senator, Albert J. Beveridge, as his running mate. This was however, not capable of stopping the Democratic split - partially because many Democrats concluded that if there was no electoral college majority, the majority of states had a majority-Democratic House delegation, so a Democratic President would be elected.

In the end, the 1900 election was decided on what would be more devastating for each respective party: the Panic of 1899 for Republicans or the continued party split for Democrats. Adding to the unpredictability of the race was the spectre of Eugene V. Debs's new "Socialist Party", whose performance in the upcoming election was viewed as a possible threat to both major parties.

In the end, the "run multiple candidates" strategy didn't work in 1836 - and it didn't work in 1900. The Republicans actually only narrowly won the election, by carrying Illinois by 0.3%. Notably, that Eugene V. Deb's performance in Illinois, around 1.8% (and 2.3% nationally) significantly outstripped the final margin in Illinois. Recriminations quickly spread among the Democrats, wondering why an unpopular President had just been re-elected. In Congress - little changed, Republicans held a healthy majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats an even healthier majority in the U.S. Senate due to their dominance of smaller rural states. Although Republicans eagerly envied the progress of alcohol prohibition in the Confederate States, they had not the votes to emulate it. If anything, the Republicans were to take 1900 as a sign that their long-dominance of American politics had returned - and that the strange Stanford-Pennoyer-Holmes era was merely an aberration from America's natural party of government.

TastySpam · Oct 30, 2020

The Battle of Manila

In many ways, Japan was widely expected to lose the Spanish-Japanese War fairly quickly. Once the Spanish Fleet from Europe and the Caribbean arrived, the general belief would be that the Japanese would be defeated at sea and blockaded in the same way that the Confederate States was. Japan in particular was also a food importer, predominantly from French Formosa and East Korea. An end to naval trade would prove disastrous for the Japanese. However, the Japanese has one tremendous advantage - they were much closer to the Philippines than Spain was. The Spanish Caribbean Fleet was to arrive in Europe, link up with the European Fleet, sail through Gibraltar and the Suez, and then travel to the Philippines. This was a critical aspect of Spanish war strategy, which is why Spanish battleships were just small enough to fit through the Suez Canal. However, the Suez Canal was in theory shared by the British and French. And although the Suez Agreement guaranteed free passage to both nations - it didn't stop either nation from vetoing fleets from other nations. In this case, the French declined Spanish access to the Suez and Panama, which necessitated going around the Cape of Africa. This was estimated to almost take half-a-year. In that time, Japan was in the driver's seat.

Although the Japanese government and the Tokonami cabinet had hoped to avoid the war, feeling they were unlikely to win, they realized that they had several months. The initial phase of the Spanish-Japanese War was marked by very aggressive advances by the Japanese, who went on the all-out offense. The entire Imperial Japanese Navy under Admiral Togo Heihachiro was sent straight to Manila, where they overwhelmingly outnumbered the Spanish Pacific Squadron. While some of the Spanish Pacific Squadron decided to make a last stand in Manila, the bulk of their forces were able to escape to North Borneo. Easily mopping up the Spanish Navy that chose not to flee, the Spanish garrison soon saw it flanked between members of the Philippine Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Japanese officials had ferried Emilio Aguinaldo from exile in Macau, promising him Filipino independence upon the defeat of the Spanish. With the long history of Japanese mercenaries and adventurers aiding Filipino independence fighters, Aguinaldo saw no reason to distrust the Japanese offer. The Imperial Japanese Army would land directly north of Manila and join in the Siege of Manila.

The Spanish Fleet hoped to arrive before the fall of Manila. That would not happen. The Spanish were wildly outnumbered and surrounded, on both land and sea. The formidable fortifications in Manila were unable to hold up again Japanese human wave attacks, who simply realized they could attack faster than the smaller Spanish garrison could shoot. The surrender of the Spanish garrison cut much of Spain's chain of command, especially as Governor-General Weyler died after refusing to surrender and charging Filipino-Japanese forces. The still de facto independent Republic of Zamboanga (largely run by more radical nationalists, often allied with radical Japanese pan-Asianists) took advantage of the chaos, seizing control of most of the Zamboanga Peninsula and even pushing into the rest of Mindanao. All this notably happened before the Spanish fleet had even gotten into Asia. The Spanish Army in the Pacific desperately regrouped, evading the Imperial Japanese Navy to either escape to the Visayas or North Borneo.

Most of the rest of the Spanish Army, facing insurmountable odds against a feared enemy, simply chose to desert en masse. Although some in the Japanese Army wanted to "pursue" them, orders from Tokyo did not believe they could hold onto the Philippines. As a result, instead of taking control of the Philippines directly like many more imperialist-minded Japanese thought (and that the government itself did in fact prefer), they simply turned over control to the Philippine Revolutionary Army, figuring they could delay the Spanish. The Japanese had seriously studied what had happened to the Confederate States of America in their war against Spain - and they believed that although the Confederates won on land in Cuba, they overcommitted to winning in Cuba and neglected defending the Home Country. Rather than further support an offensive into the Philippines, the Japanese Army was given only basic supplies (food?), with the rest of the Japanese war industry almost entirely dedicated to getting more ships into fighting action. Several not-entirely completed warships to rushed to the sea far earlier than planned. When the Spanish fleet arrived, ready to fight the Japanese fleet, the Japanese fleet simply ran away - back to their ally in Ryukyu.

Japan believed that the Spanish would basically spend time and effort retaking the Philippines - which was the rationale behind turning control over to the Philippine Revolutionary Army. The Imperial Japanese Army was pulled back to the Home Islands and to a smaller extent, the Ryukyu Islands (in compliance with the maximum garrison allowed under the Qing-Japanese Peace Treaty." Shocking the Japanese, the Spanish Fleet completely ignored the Philippines. Unsurprisingly, they had also studied the Spanish-Confederate War and believed that they could not retake the Philippines unless the Imperial Japanese Navy was as conclusively defeated as the Confederate Fleet was. The Japanese also believed that the Ryukyu Kingdom being a technical tributary of the Qing Empire would prevent a Spanish attack on Japan - but the Qing Empire had secretly given the Spanish the go-ahead on attacking Ryukyu. As a result, the Spanish Navy steamed directly towards the Japanese Fleet north of Okinawa, ready to fight the decisive confrontation of the Spanish-Japanese War and the largest clash of battleships until that point in history, the Battle of Miyako.

TastySpam · Nov 16, 2020

The Canals

The first decade of the United Provinces of Central America was an era of bloody change. The dictator of the United Provinces, Justo Rufino Barrios, did not see his ambitions quenched by his successful "unification" of Centroamerico. On one hand, peasants greatly suffered as peasant communal lands were consolidated under the control of elite landowners. However, the great wealth of the military allowed the central government to educate more children than ever, with literacy (though not infant mortality) significantly down in the upcoming years. Notably, as the political situation collapsed in the Confederate States in the aftermath of the Confederate-Spanish War, Confederate aristocrats, especially many with sympathies towards the increasingly proscribed "Redeemer" movement chose to make their fortunes instead in Central America, bringing a surprising amount of human capital to the small nation. Some of the most competent Confederate officers of the War of Southern Independence lent their services instead to the United Provinces. They were soon followed by many of the defeated Provos in the First Confederate Civil War.

The great industrialization hopes of Barrios was tightly connected to Central America's geographic position - namely what would become known as the Nicaragua Canal. Contracting with primarily British and North German investors, Barrios found an almost unlimited supply of capital to help construct what was an increasingly costly project. The Nicaragua Canal was an infamous bungle of a project, costing far more than anyone initially believed and nearly bankrupting hundreds of investors. It was largely only due to the refusal of the Central American government, repeatedly bailing out the project with low-interest loans (often extracted from poorer peasants) that allowed the project to continue. In 1897, the Nicaragua Canal officially opened, bringing a flood of trade goods and funds to Central America, which charged a relatively small fee on trade.

Although the Nicaraguan Government had ludicrously inflated the currency to subsidize the canal, instead of paying off debts, the government immediately plunged newfound funds into army-run industrial projects, particularly in shipbuilding, that eventually trickled down to light industry, with most exports going towards Mexico, a huge market with relatively pro-consumption policies (low tariffs). Barrios was to pass away in 1900, but he was to leave a nation that although divided, with an impoverished countryside, and kept stable only through the tight-fisted military dictatorship, had managed to become somewhat of a small export powerhouse, albeit not one where most citizens reaped the benefits.

However, the Nicaragua Canal was not welcomed by all. The Nicaragua Canal, largely seen as a British project, was to be matched by untold French investment in Colombia. When rebels in Panama captured the local Colombian garrison and called on American intervention to protect them, the Chileans immediately were alerted, viewing the whole scheme as a Peruvian-Bolivian-American plot. When Britain refused to intervene, the Chileans called upon their next-choice power, France, which immediately deployed significant amounts of aid to Colombia to quell the rebellion. Indeed, French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had properly developed the Suez Canal, immediately embarked on constructing a similar canal in Panama. Amazingly, the project was even more of a disaster than the Nicaragua Canal - and the French Imperial Monarchy outraged many when instead of arresting de Lesseps for clear financial fraud - bailed him out instead, allowing him to finish the project. In 1903, the Panama Canal would also finish.

Immediately, the Central American-Colombian border would become one of the most heavily militarized in the world, as both nations eyed each other warily, believing that the other would try to sabotage the other canal in order to rout more global shipping through their own canal. Indeed, both nations would also plunge a significant share of their military budgets into naval forces, expecting an assault on each other, joining the already quite large American Naval Arms Race that seemed to be consuming the entire continent (both North and South).

TastySpam · Nov 17, 2020

Chapter 105: World War I (Wikibox)

TastySpam · Dec 9, 2020

The Battle of Miyako

Imperial Japan was notoriously cash-strapped. The conservative landlords who dominated the Imperial Diet were loathe to actually expend large amounts of funding for the military. The Imperial Japanese Army was notoriously funded with almost entirely outdated weaponry, usually surplus weaponry from the Great Powers. Japanese victory in the invasion of the Philippines was largely a result of massive numerical superiority, combined with an alliance with the Filipino revolutionaries. After all, Japanese high command did not view the army as their shield - they viewed the Imperial Japanese Navy as their main defense force. The IJN was also somewhat underfunded, but to a far less degree than the Army. Eventually, the IJN was able to purchase two battleships in the 1890's from the cheapest option available. While the French and British were building 15,000 ton monstrosities in an increasing naval arms race, the Japanese were forced to find bargain bin options.

The cheapest option quickly became the Italians, generally not known for their naval prowess, who were willing to construct an even cheaper version of the Ammiraglio di Saint Bon-class battleship. Nevertheless, the 10,000 ton battleships were some of the largest in East Asia, prompting the Qing Dynasty to immediately procure additional battleship orders from their naval patron, North Germany. Building two, these ships formed the nucleus of the Imperial Japanese Navy. With four 10 in guns, 250mm of belt armor, and a top speed of 18.5 knots, they were the most modern ships in the IJN.

In contrast, the Spanish had built their own ships. Their two newest ships, the Pelayo and Carlos V, probably outclassed the Japanese. The Pelayo was also 10,000 tons, but had 300mm of armor, two 12.6 in guns, two 11 in guns, 300mm of belt armor, and a top speed of 16.5 knots. The Carlos V (technically an armored cruiser, but generally considered a battleship) was 9,000 tons, had a top speed of 19 knots, two 11 in guns, and 510 mm of belt armor. Moreover, the Spanish had all of their earlier battleships from the victorious Spanish-Confederate War, namely the Cortes and Colon, which both traveled at 15.5 knots, had around 360mm in belt armor, and had four 12 in guns.

On paper, the Japanese looked doomed, but they had some advantages. Namely, the home ground advantage. The Spanish navy had sailed across the entire world, taking months to get to the Pacific. The Spanish ships were heavily fouled by months of travel and were still carrying significant coal for much of their return trip, both of which slowed some of the ships down a bit more than their model top speed. Furthermore, Japanese chemists had invented a new model of naval artillery powder in 1893, Shimose powder, which was kept a top-secret. Finally, the Spanish had grown complacent on long-distance rangefinding. Their triumph in the Spanish-Confederate War was partly based on the heavily outmatched Confederate Navy intentionally trying to get closer to the Spanish Navy. IJA doctrine, knowing the disparity in firepower, taught their officers to keep their distance. Finally, the Japanese had invested more heavily in destroyers and torpedo boats, with the understanding that any naval conflicts would be relatively close to Japan (allowing the use of more short-range ships).

The Spanish, distinctly seeking a battle of annihilation against Japan, were largely sailing to a location pre-emptively understood by the Japanese. The Japanese got the first volley off against the Spanish, which damaged but did not cripple or sink any of the Spanish ships. The IJN attempted to keep their distance, but unfortunately for them, the Carlos V was simply faster than any of the IJN ships, which allowed it to remain in shelling range of the IJN. Trading shots with the IJN, the Carlos V's armor deflected most of the shots from long distance. Breaking IJN protocol, after some period of shelling - and some distance had been inadvertently created between the Carlos V and the rest of the Spanish fleet, Admiral Ito Sukeyuki ordered the IJN to reverse course and attempt to swarm the Carlos V. This was generally pre-empted by the Spanish Navy. As the Carlos V reached into close range with the IJN, the rest of the Spanish Fleet began to catch up and shell the IJN from long-distance. The Spanish fleet largely focused on Admiral Ito's flagship, the Fuji, which took severe damage, alongside the Carlos V. Surprising the Spanish, the IJN then sailed towards the rest of the Spanish fleet, more or less ignoring the seriously damaged Carlos V (whose engines had been struck). The Fuji took the brunt of the fire and it was too late for the Spanish when they realized that the Fuji was on a suicide attack against the Pelayo. Firing against the screen ships around it instead of the Pelayo itself, the Fuji smashed into the slower Pelayo, causing its own magazine to explode, killing Admiral Ito and almost the entire crew. Amazingly, the Pelayo actually survived the suicide attack, though it was effectively out of combat.

Ito's second-in-command, Admiral Togo, took over fleet command as anticipated, rallying the IJN and pushing through to exit range of both the crippled Pelayo and Carlos V. Relentless Japanese torpedo boat attacks, supported by the IJN's last battleship, the Yashima, harried both the Cortes and Colon. Although Japanese torpedo boats took horrible losses, a torpedo eventually struck home on the Cortes, causing the ship to list. Japan's destroyers, vastly superior in numbers, more or less were able to neutralize Spain's destroyers, despite the severe damage they took from Spain's generally superior firepower. At each point when the Spanish expected the IJN to disengage, the IJN simply chose to engage again, causing losses on both sides to pile up. Eventually, it was the Spanish who would disengage. With the Cortes sunk, the Colon and Spain's remaining destroyers and cruisers left the field - though due to the relatively slow speed of the Colon, the IJN was able to continue to harrass the Spanish fleet, forcing the Colon to ultimately surrender. Interesitngly, the Yashima was simply too damaged to make it to any port and was abandoned. The Pelayo and Carlos V, both essentially crippled, scuttled themselves to avoid Japanese capture. At the end of the battle, both Spain and Japan had lost all of their flagships. Japan had also lost 14 torpedo boats, 9 destroyers, and 8 cruisers, compared to 3 Spanish destroyers and 4 cruisers.

By almost every standards, the Spanish had won. The IJN ceased to exist as a serious blue-water force. Spain's remaining cruisers significantly outnumbered Japan's remaining cruisers, expanding the naval power deficit between the two nations. Although Japan retained enough cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats to seriously disincentivize a blockade of Japan proper, they had lost almost meaningful ability to exert naval power in the Philippines. However, the Japanese public treated it as a tremendous victory - it was the first time Japan had fought another nation to a stand-still - and the first time a non-Western nation had, with no outside support, fought a Western nation to a standstill with no outside assistance. Although the Qing won certain battles against the Russians in the First World War, that took place with heavy British intervention/assistance. Moreover, Spain was humiliated. The vastly superior Spanish Navy was expected to roll over the Japanese, as Spain had rolled over the Confederate States. Instead, the combined Spanish navy was shredded. At every moment, conventional naval strategy would have advised the IJN to withdraw, but Admiral Ito, in his last words, described that the Battle of Miyako was not just a battle in the Spanish-Japanese War, but it was a battle of the IJN's honor and status in Japanese society. Lauding the late Ito and Togo as heroes, the Imperial Diet immediately greenlit a massive naval expansion program in a wave of patriotic fervor. In contrast, Spanish writers bemoaned Spain's "humiliation."

The Spanish sued for peace first. Seeing that Japan had no meaningful way to intervene in the Philippines - and that Spain didn't have the naval capability to enact a blockade against Japan proper, the war seemed pointless. Better to negotiate a white peace, focus on preserving Spain's empire, and begin to rebuild Spain's navy. However, the Spanish were shocked when the answer came back - and it was a simple "no."

TastySpam · Dec 15, 2020

The Progressive Movement in the Confederate States

One can hardly discuss the 20th century history of the Confederate States of America without discussing the Progressive Movement, a rising force in politics that would eventually permanently alter the course of Confederate and world history. The aftermath of President Mahone's assassination discredited the Redeemer movement, which collapsed shortly after for a variety of political and economic reasons. However, a new force would arise to challenge the status quo in the Confederate States. A young generation of intellectuals, although originally supporting Longstreet's challenge to Cleburne in 1897, quickly grew tired of the President and abandoned him. Although Longstreet came in with bold promises, he ultimately oversaw the same racial line as Cleburne, generally tolerated corruption, and continued most of Cleburne's economic problems. Where the two differed was primarily on who would benefit from patronage and prohibition of alcohol. The Progressives quickly arose a third force, lambasting both major groupings in Confederate politics. They were quickly denounced as "Neo-Redeemers" by President Longstreet, but while they benefitted generously from ex-Redeemers, there were sufficient differences that made them a more formidable force in Confederate politics.

Both the Redeemers and the Progressives were relentlessly anti-black, often celebrating extrajudicial executions of black citizens (which were condemned at the national and state level, but sometimes tolerated by local sheriffs in certain areas). However, they justified their positions through different methods. The old Redeemers often appealed to tradition and religion, often citing religious justifications for slavery. Although many Southern clergy went along with this, this was always a flawed approach because Christian pastors and speakers in almost every other country in the world vociferously denounced slavery. Strict controls between 1865-1885 (as implemented by many states) censoring antislavery tracts and speakers threw thousands of antislavery agitators in jails across the Confederate States, but the image of local police beating clergy (especially those from Britain and the USA) severely hurt the religious justification for proslavery among many Confederates. Although antislavery was still a distinctly minority position in 1885, it had grown into a vocal minority, whereas many proslavery advocates simply became exhausted and doubtful and were willing to accept the Brazil-brokered compromise to phase out slavery.

In contrast, the Progressives found a different justification. Their justification was "science." Particularly influential was Racial Hygiene Basics, a book by North German physician Alfred Ploetz, who quickly became a celebrity in the Confederate States. Instead of being based on traditional religion that drew little respect from intellectuals, the new scientific racism categorized humans into broad racial categories, presenting the black-white difference as being a fundamental biological difference. Moreover, they posited that blacks threatened the "racial hygiene" of the "Anglo-Saxon race", demanding a strict separation of the races. By 1900, although strong social distinctions existed between blacks and whites, the fraternization of poor whites and poor blacks increasingly alarmed Southern elites, who feared for their "racial hygiene." Although the Confederate upper-classes would keep to themselves, some of the state-funded elementary schools were mixed-race. In particular, the Progressives were outraged by the repeal of miscegenation laws in most states after the First Confederate Civil War. They adopted the moniker "Progressive" to describe their key focus on "racial hygiene" (arguing that only their 'reform platform' could "progress" the "white race").

This justification gave the Progressives one new strength - significant support from abroad. Confederate proslavery was an international pariah. Confederate scientific racism drew in support from abroad. Whereas American and British clergy rejected religious proslavery, American and British intellectuals were often the staunchest advocates of scientific racism. Eugenics was on the upswing in both the USA and UK, not only the CSA. Many leading progressive intellectuals were in fact educated in the USA, such as Woodrow Wilson, who was educated at John Hopkins University in Maryland (a formative experience, as many intellectuals, both in the USA and CSA, often used Maryland's tumultuous politics as an example of "negroid corruption"). The Progressive focus on the "Anglo-Saxon race", also meant that US and UK business elites eagerly sponsored them.

Finally, although the Old Redeemers were mostly small slaveowners with ultra-reactionary views on government, the Progressives were different. They were cosmopolitan, educated, urbane, and polished. The Redeemers were often inarticulate and unable to elucidate an agenda besides negationism, against the government, against the US, against industrialization. In the New South, the Progressives presented themselves as the force for change and reform. They weren't against industrialization - they merely alleged the state-led model of the CSA was too corrupt and in fact emulated the United States. As a result, the civil war, Mahone's Nationalists were able to present themselves as energetic reformers and modernizers against a corrupt Southern political establishment and the provincial, backwards Provos. In the New South, the Nationalists were typecast both at home and abroad, as the status quo reactionaries - and the Progressives as the reforming modernizers. And they had one point: endemic political corruption in the Confederate States. Political offices were simply sold for patronage, the Confederate Congress engaged in huge amounts of pork barrel spending, and machine politics were the norm. In many ways, they were not actually always bad - much of pork barrel spending was essentially used to purchase the votes of poor communities (black and white), which often sent significant investments in the notoriously poor Confederate countryside.

But to most middle-class and upper-class Confederates, corruption was proof that their government was hopelessly backwards. In contrast, the Progressives campaigned on replacing political appointees with more experts, standardizing elections, anti-corruption laws, ethics laws, and some of them even pushed for women's suffrage, causing many reform-minded Confederates to view their agenda as serious. The Progressive promise that they could "reform" the Confederacy to resemble its much richer northern neighbor was also very appealing to many Confederates. As a result, Confederate Progressive Movement was also a "good government" movement - and it attracted many of those who were either repulsed or nonplussed about the Progressive racial agenda. Moreover - many also didn't take the racial agenda very seriously. Racial baiting wasn't exactly uncommon in Confederate politics (racism against blacks was commonplace - it was just that most nationalist politicians didn't let their own views get in the way of asking for their votes), but most politicians tended to drop the issue after taking power, the chief example being the third Confederate President himself, Nathan Bedford Forrest. However, they seriously underestimated how critical "racial hygiene" was to Confederate Progressive ideology.

The Progressives would first make their mark in Confederate politics in 1900. Calling on Progressives to abandon Longstreet for failing to deliver on his promises, Progressive Confederates organized a "third force" in the 1900 midterm elections. The results were a shock - they entered the House of Representatives by taking around 20% of the seats (mostly in upper-class districts ), grievously damaging Longstreet, whose bloc collapsed in the House of Representatives from 61% to 27% of the seats. Longstreet, furious at the Progressives, ended up cooperating more with the opposition than the third force, a perhaps fateful decision.

TastySpam · Dec 21, 2020

Canada's "Crime Without A Name"

Like their neighbors to the South, Canadian national identity was forged in political strife and bloodshed. In 1890, Canada's first major military conflict was to send a large expeditionary force to Brazil, to fight in the six-year long Brazilian Civil War on behalf of the British. The Brazilian Civil War was interestingly not that actually very bloody - each side was light on heavy artillery and emplacements, preferring to flank and destroy each other in a war of maneuver. This never actually happened, because most of the conflict took place in the interior of the country (each side's respective coastal redoubts was simply too defensible from land due to the famous Brazilian escarpment - which separated the coast from the interior - and too defensible from the sea because of friendly foreign navies). This made heavy artillery too logistically difficult - and the war was largely fought in jungle skirmishes, where disease was a greater threat than enemy forces. This was absolutely traumatic to foreign Canadian soldiers, often coming from cold regions. Canadian newspapers filled with invectives against Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier for leading Canada into "Britain's wars".

This would have been politically surviable, if not for the crisis to hit at the start of Laurier's first term as Prime Minister (having served as Secretary of State from 1889-1893) - the First World War. Immediately, with large swaths of the Canadian stranded across the world in the jungles of Brazil, Canada found itself as war with the United States. Canadian militias served directly under the British Army in its grand confrontations against the United States, in both Buffalo and Toledo. In addition, Canada was threatened by the American Autumn Offensive, which saw American troops burst into Quebec before just being barely repulsed south of Montreal, the American seizure of the Transcanadian Railroad, and most remembered of all, the Vancouver Massacre. Although Canadian soldiers and civilians suffered in the First World War far more than any other region of the British Empire, the peace conference infuriated Canadians. Canada was not invited to the conference - and the British quickly dropped the demand of war reparations against the United States for the Vancouver Massacre in exchange for more concessions in East Asia.

At the end of the war, America saw a change of government, but so did Canada. In the 1897 elections, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal Party was totally eviscerated. French voters turned against the party for the Brazilian War - while Anglophone voters had become similarly alienated from the British Empire. Amusingly, Canadian troops and American troops were essentially on the same side of the Brazilian Civil War (before the collapse of the Federalists) - which further damned the Brazilian War in the eyes of Canadians. Furthermore, Laurier had come into power originally on a platform of liberalizing trade with the United States, which was now seen as verboten. The only issue stronger than anti-British sentiment was anti-American sentiment. The Liberal Party was completely wiped out of Parliament, as first-past-the-post system elected the Conservatives in a landslide victory, propelling Mackenzie Bowell into power, an ardent pro-British Conservative. Enough "Independent Liberals" opposed to Laurier stood in races, enough to throw the election to the Conservatives. However, Bowell was loathed as "England's lapdog" by most Liberals, especially Francophones.

Traditionally, Canadian political parties chose their leaders in an internal vote of the caucus. However, the Liberal Party only had four MPs remaining in Parliament, which meant that this was not really possible, as they clearly split into factions of two each. Eventually, it was agreed that a leadership convention would be held in Quebec City, where registered dues-paying Liberal Party members could vote on their next leader. The surprise winner of the convention was a Western Independent MP by the name of Frank Oliver, who blamed the disastrous war on "British transracialism." Campaigning on a platform of "Canada for Pure Canadians", Oliver electrified the convention and was also supported by many businessmen in both Toronto and Montreal who believed that he was a "modern, forward-thinking leader." Quickly reuniting the Liberals, they easily swamped the Conservatives in the 1901 elections, who fumbled around confused, unable to both satisfy their pro-British impulses and keep Quebec not enraged.

At home, Oliver quickly reshaped the Canadian political spectrum, describing him as a "progressive pragmatic nationalist." His ethnic animus was distinctly pointed away from Quebecoise, but namely at the British, Americans, and ethnic minorities (from First Nations to Asian immigrants to blacks). In the same breath as their racist eugenics advocacy, the Canadian Liberals would also implement a variety of good government reforms, basic social services, regulations (such as a minimum wage and 8-hour workweek). In this sense, Canada quickly became a model for intellectuals in the Confederate States, especially because their brand of progressivism treated religious minorities (namely Catholics) with a degree of pragmatism that Protestant American Moralism largely did not. Especially for Catholics, Canadian Progressivism seemed like a model for intra-faith relations, driven partly by the fact that the Quebecoise had loathed the Brazilian War - but had gladly flocked to the Red Ensign in defense of Canada during World War I during the American Autumn Offensive. In contrast to what seemed like hopelessly dysfunctional politics in the United Kingdom itself, a variety of British lauded the "Canadian model." Not only were parties advocating "annexation" into Canada growing in strength in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick to seize local majorities, but parties advocating annexation into Canada even broke onto the political scene in far-away reigons like Queensland, New South Wales, and even the Cape Colony in Southern Africa.

Canadian and Confederate inellectuals similarly bonded over their historical treatment of indigenous peoples - Oliver and the Liberal Party celebrated the Indian Removals as a model for Canada. Oliver, a Westerner himself, was particularly interested in "culling" indigenous peoples which he called an "inferior race doomed by the inexorable laws of biological science and morality." The 1902 Amendments to the Indian Acts gave any white settler (including immigrants from abroad, so a serious number of poor white Confederates moved to Canada) homesteader rights over indigenous lands outside of an even narrower band (roughly only 17% of the original reservations) as long as they could "reorient the land towards productive force". Massacres in Western Canada of indigenous peoples (as well as deaths from being driven from their lands into the harsh Canadian winter) became a regular occurrence as the Canadian government openly incentivized private corporations to simply hire private armies to ethnically cleanse indigenous Canadians and establish massive agricultural corporations, promising them protection courtesy of the newly formed Royal Canadian Army if any indigenous people's existed. Winston Churchill, the highest ranking surviving British officer in the Vancouver garrison of the First World War famously described Oliver's policies as the "crime without a name", judging that "massacre" and "atrocity" were insufficient terms, despite sharing many racial prejudices against the victims.

Oliver's next target might not have been immigration from East Asia, but an event in global history was to send his priorities immediately spiraling in that direction...

TastySpam · Dec 23, 2020

Enomoto's Folly

The Japanese Minister of the Navy, Enomoto Takeaki, had lived a storied life. One of the loyalist anti-Imperial forces in the Boshin War, Enomoto had taken remnants of the Shogunal Army to establish the Ezo Republic in Hokkaido, where he hoped to resist the Imperials with Russian aid. That had never actually happened because Imperial forces ultimately arrived and defeated him. Although he was arrested for treason, he ultimately escaped the death penalty and due to the nature of Japanese politics at the time (which grew to respect those on the losing side of the Boshin War), slowly became rehabilitated in public eyes. Enomoto easily won a seat in parliament and became one of the most forceful advocates for a larger navy. The Japanese "triumph" at the Battle of Miyako gave huge public support to Enomoto, who quickly became a hero overnight in Japan, as even the surviving admirals credited their relative success only to Enomoto's fierce advocacy for funding the navy.

Enomoto himself also had foreign policy views. He was a fierce advocate of Japanese settlement abroad. Not necessarily imperialism (since he encouraged Japanese emigration to nations in Latin America where Japan had no hopes of exerting political control upon), though the two sometimes went hand-in-hand. The famous Japanese "no" to the Spanish peace offering was authored by Enomoto after he was promoted to Foreign Minister, who became a further hero in Japan as a result. His actual reply was a bit longer and elucidated on why Japan was rejecting the deal. He did not believe Spain would be amenable to Japanese immigrants, but he believed an independent Philippines aided by Japan would be. His letter set forth the Japanese position that Japan was not willing to accept a peace settlement that did not "satisfactorily settle the issue of Filipino independence." Interestingly, Enomoto cited the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro in his response, arguing that the Confederate States of America secured Cuban autonomy even though they had decisively lost the naval war. At the bare minimum, a similar arrangement had to be outlined for the Philippines.

The response blindsided Spanish diplomats, who believed that Japan would be unable to exert influence on the Philippines even if independence were secured. However, Enomoto's mindset was simply too different from colonial powers. He was less interested in expanding Japanese territory or gaining access to natural resources - he wanted land for Japanese to emigrate too (Japan was undergoing a large population boom). As such, he cared little what kind of regime took power in the Philippines, as long as they were friendly to Japan and perhaps even leased out a naval base.

A surge of nationalism enveloped Japan, as common citizens signed up in droves, donating pots, tin cans, and cash in order to quickly support a rapid naval rearmament. When the Japanese began acquiring around for anyone who would be willing to sell old navy ships, the Spanish were alarmed at how quickly they were beginning to rearm. The Spanish began harrassing Japanese trade and fishing ships (coastal batteries doomed plans for an actual blockade) and found incredible resistance even from merchants. Enomoto himself had turned to old friends - the Russians immediately agreed to sell two older battleships to Japan in exchange for also buying the "unsellable" colony. For decades, the Empire of Russia had been trying to sell a money pit colony in Aljaska, their largest, least populated, and least profitable territory. By 1899, the population was probably already plurality Japanese - and it was continuing to bleed money. The deal was mocked abroad as "Enomoto's Folly", but he saw it as a perfectly fine price to pay, especially since he could also encourage further Japanese emigration.

The possible arrival of two Russian battleships quickly turned the tide. Spain threw in the towel, agreeing to negotiate over the political sovereignty of the Philippines. However, that became increasingly challenging because at Japanese insistence, Filipino representatives were invited. And worst of all - none of the Filipino revolutionaries agreed with each other. They were often fiercely opposed to each other. Andres Bonifacio and Emiliano Aguinaldo had fallen out of favor with each other. The whole conference became a mess - and the Treaty of Ensenada became one of the most overly negotiated peace agreements in history. Ultimately, a "Confederacy of the Philippines" based vaguely on the Constitution of the Confederacy of Cuba would be a self-governing dominion of Spain, but the various states of the Philippines would also have their own constitutions, drawn vaguely based on the Confederate constitution.

Ultimately, the representatives of Bonifacio totally abandoned the peace talks, which divided the colony into various self-governing states. Aguinaldo, with Japanese pushing, accepted being relegated to Luzon. Spanish authorities were totally wiped out in Luzon - and Aguinaldo had no real way to expand further. The Free State of Luzon and Free State of Zamboanga, both unfriendly to Spain, were established - and in a quick bid to prevent either from claiming Palawan, the Spanish cleverly transferred all of those territories to the Sulu Sultanate. The Visayas had remained largely loyal, so the Dominion of the Visayas was the only Filipino state that openly, rather than begrudgingly, recognized the Spanish monarchy. Furthermore, the Filipino states were prohibited from restricting Japanese immigration, fulfilling Enomoto's goal. Finally, to maintain parity, the Japanese were required to sell one of the newly purchased Russian battleships to Spain, for a price that was only 73% of what the battleship was purchased for (all Spain could raise) in hopes of maintaining "balance" in the Pacific.

The Treaty of Ensenada immediately led to continuing warfare in Luzon, as forces siding with Bonifacio rejected the Treaty, immediately sparking the Luzonian Civil War. In addition, the Aljaska purchase quickly inflamed a political crisis in one nation: Canada. Canadian newspapers quickly ran omnipresent articles about the "Yellow Peril on our doorsteps", radicalizing many Canadians. Omnipresent anti-Japanese sentiment quickly inspired Canada's parliament to reform the Canadian Militia into a standing army - and the obsession of an invasion from the South (which in fact did happen less than a decade ago), were replaced almost overnight by an obsession with a war against Japan.

TastySpam · Jan 13, 2021

The Schlieffen Plan

Bismarck's death was mourned in North Germany, but few knew what to think of the man. Many blamed what was seen as a truly disastrous foreign policy situation on Bismarck. But others alleged that if his plans had succeeded, he would have crushed the French, unified all of Germany, and established a global superpower. Moreover, Bismarck was a constant thorn in the North Germany government, appearing almost constantly in opposition through the ages. His constantly shifting loyalties and coalitions made him the enigma of North German politics. He had earlier placed his deputy, the archconservative Hans von Kanitz as Prime Minister of North Germany, but quickly found out to his chagrin that Kanitz was actually too conservative for Bismarck. In particular, Kanitz's insistence on agricultural tariffs annoyed the tariffs, and Bismarck viewed him as a reflexive Anglophobe, which seemed terrifying when the United Kingdom was one of the only countries not to have a grudge against North Germany. It was on Kanitz's government where the North German government failed to jump to Great Britain's support in World War I - which was to prove to be the end of the Kanitz government.

Bismarck, forging a new coalition largely based around the national liberals, eventually out-maneuvered his rival. Toppling the Kanitz government, Bismarck amusingly became celebrated by German liberals, especially when he declared that he was too ill (being confined to a wheelchair and nearly blind) to actually lead the new government. The National Liberals quickly selected the Hanoverian Rudolf von Bennigsen, who solidified the political path of the North German Confederation - vaguely nationalist, vaguely liberal, and trying to walk a tight-rope between liberal industrialists and conservative Prussian junkers. Moreover, relations immediately improved between North Germany and the United Kingdom from lukewarm to extremely warm. The British were also happy to see Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz resign from the German government, in protest of the North German government's refusal to greenlight additional funds for the navy. Some liberals were unhappy with what was essentially seen as a political and social truce (the Prussian three-class system remained), but most went along with the program, as ideas of Social Darwinism had rapidly proliferated among German liberals - and it was easy to argue that North Germany was in a "fight for survival" whereupon "all classes and political groupings must unite."

Although North Germany had somewhat of a colonial empire and a modest navy, the threat would come from land. The North German General Staff openly admitted to themselves that they believed the survival of the nation was at stake. Namely, North Germany had to deal with enemies in every direction - namely, the Danes, Austrians, Russians, French, and Bavarians. The Danes were the easiest to deal with - Danish nationalists raged when North Germany signed an agreement whereupon the North Germans would be allowed to base their ships at the British island of Heligoland - and the two were to coordinate "commercial and naval policy in the North and Baltic Seas." This was viewed an implicit threat to the Danes, who took the message, albeit unhappily.

Although German foreign policy had believed they could pull Bavaria and France apart based on German pan-nationalism, the ruthless Kulturkampf in North Germany as well as North German support to the widely unpopular Union of Rome alienated many Bavarians, who saw in the French shared Catholicism and resistance to "Prussianism." Baden and Wurttemberg remained diplomatic toss-ups who were furiously wooed, but Bavaria quickly became a lost cause. Alongside unwavering Austrian hostility to North Germany (and also increasingly close Austro-Bavarian relations), that region seemed like a diplomatic bust.

The only remaining diplomatic wild card was Russia. However, the Franco-Russian Alliance signed as a result of World War I (aimed primarily at the United Kingdom) seemed to force North Germany into hostile relations with Russia that it did not want. King Wilhelm II contacted his cousin Nicholas II extensively, but the North German General Staff was pessimistic. However, at the very least, war with Russia didn't seem guaranteed, and hopes were had it could be stopped.

Assuming Austrian hostility and an attempt by the Austrians to avenge the 1866 war, General Moltke the Elder drew up war plans against Austria, which under General Schlieffen, quickly developed into a grand war plan in case of a continental war. France was presumed hostile in any war against Austria - and Russia was most likely hostile based on the Franco-Russian Alliance. Although many North Germans viewed a three-front war as a death sentence, the Schlieffen plan sought to neutralize those fronts. One of those powers had to be knocked out as soon as possible - and it was decided that the Austrians were the best target. In one German general's argument "whatever the Austrians promise the Hungarians, we can promise them double." The North German strategy was to promise Hungarian independence, whatever territory they wanted, and more or less anything they could ever demand in exchange for the Kingdom of Hungary simply sitting the war out. The same deal was not extended to the Czechs due to a large ethnic German population in Bohemia that the North Germans sought to integrate, rather inconvenient for the North German General Staff given their plans of sweeping from Silesia and Saxony into Prague, largely in a repeat of the Austro-Prussian War (but more successful, as Saxony was aligned with North Germany this time).

The North Germans also believed that the Austrians could also be facing a possible second front thanks to Italy, especially after the North Germans and Italians penned a secret agreement whereupon the North Germans wouldn't object to Italian aims on many mixed German/Italian regions such as the Tyrol, as well as most of the Trieste region. The Schlieffen plan was motivated by the optimistic belief that the Austrian Empire would collapse as soon as North German forces swept into Vienna.

In contrast to the Austrians, the French with their infamous focus on elan and superior numbers, were expected to attack. The North Germans began the construction of the famous Siegfried Wall, a set of fortifications between the North German Saarland on one side and the French Alsace and Bavarian Palatinate on the other side. The North Germans believed that the French had two ways to go around the wall - namely an invasion through neutral Belgium (as guaranteed by the United Kingdom) or Baden and Wurttemberg. Both were seen as diplomatic triumphs for North Germany, since a French violation of any of those neutral states would either push them into the hands of Prussian-led Germanism or pull the United Kingdom into the war. Hopes were also given to bringing in Spain (with its fellow Hohenzollern monarch) into the war, but the North Germans weren't exactly sure why the Spanish would join. Regardless, Spain was helpful in one sense - a vengeful Spain quickly rebuilt its navy after the Spanish-Japanese War by paying North German shipyards that weren't making any ships for the North German Navy. Ironically, despite a rather modest navy, North Germany had world-class shipyards - they were just making battleships for foreign countries instead (in order to fund further North German army expansions).

With Austria neutralized and France kept busy, the North Germans believed they could then grind down the Bavarians with superior industry and numbers. The biggest problem however with this war plan was they didn't have a good contingency if Russia entered the war. Russia was increasingly becoming the industrial powerhouse of Europe simply due to its large size. Unlike the Austrians, the Russians had a lot of ground they could give up. Eventually, it was settled that the only way to win was to keep Russia out of the war. And they believed the only way to keep Russia out of the war was to keep it busy elsewhere. German technological missions were basically deployed to every single country that could conceivably keep Russia busy. Namely, Sweden (which had a notoriously Germanophile royal family), the Ottoman Empire, Qing Empire, and Afghan Emirate. Regardless, Schlieffen himself had no real good answers in case Russia entered the war. Wilhelm II didn't really bother ever asking, since he just assumed he was such a charming person, he could charm his cousin, the Tsar, into either staying neutral or even supporting North Germany in violation of its treaty obligations. Little did Wilhelm II himself know that the Hohenzollerns themselves were the ticking time bomb that would bring Europe to its knees.

TastySpam · Apr 19, 2021

Concentration Camps

The midterms were brutal for President Longstreet, seeing both a resurgence in Cleburne's Nationals as well as Tillman's Progressives, costing Longstreet any semblance of a congressional majority. Prohibition had become wildly unpopular once it was actually implemented (both due to actual opposition to Prohibition and a dislike for crime, which distinctly increased after the implementation of Prohibition). Furthermore, the war in Haiti continued to drag on. At home, Longstreet had been an energetic reformer, using the power of the presidency to clear the way for extensive infrastructure developments and education investments. Indeed, Longstreet's civil service reform was viewed as remarkably successfully, helping install an entire generation of young Confederate bureaucrats on the basis of merit. However, neither of those issues was enough to improve his popularity. In response, Longstreet's cabinet settled on two separate solutions to both the crime and war issue.

First, many policymakers quickly came to believe that regardless of what states' rights rhetoric would imply, the national crime wave and the increasing strength of organized crime (such as now world-renowned Confederate Mafia groups) in the Confederate States implied that a national solution was necessary, one that could operate across state borders. After public outcry grew after a gang war shootout in Baton Rouge which killed several bystanders (including children), a tripartisan group ultimately passed an act establishing the Confederate Bureau of Interstate Security (CBIS), the comparatively humble predecessor of the internationally notorious CMIS. At first, the CBIS saw itself vastly underfunded in the fight against organized crime, but the creation of a national policing agency did reassure many Confederates and was largely popular. Tropes of undersupplied police officers fighting against powerful and decadent Confederate organized crime groups quickly became a mainstay in North America and the British Commonwealth.

Second, the Confederates were making some progress in Haiti, but at a pace far slower than they had hoped. Longstreet had inherited a war he thought somewhat foolish, but he was determined to end it. Although the initial conquest of Haiti was successful and largely restored Confederate confidence in the strength of their armed forces and nation (after the Cuban debacle), the resulting guerilla war seemed to continue to drag on. The Confederates were aware of historical precedent - many of those skeptical of the war reminded their countrymen that the French were thrown out of Haiti despite initial victories against the Haitian revolutionaries. The Confederate Army, heavily reliant on British advisors, sought to emulate the strategy of the Anglo-Ottoman forces under General Kitchener in World War I, albeit in a much more radical form. Whereas Kitchener interned what were largely seen as possibly disloyal minorities, the Confederates sought to apply this strategy to an entire nation.

With Haitian guerillas almost impossible to clear out of the Haitian highlands and countryside, the Confederate Army adopted a scorched earth campaign, burning almost any farmland and arable land they could find. Civilians located were forced at gunpoint into "concentration camps" set up to hold them. In theory, the camps would be safe havens for the civilian population while the Confederate Army focused on destroying the rebels. In practice, widespread malfeasance and popular prejudice meant that the camps were almost as squalid as ironically Confederate POW camps in the War for Independence were. The conditions in the camps only became worse as Haitian rebels deliberately targeted supply lines headed towards the camps. Disease and starvation were rampant - although Confederate documents do not evidence a deliberate plan to inflict mass death, many officers were less than entirely attentive to the conditions of the camp based on racial prejudice. Out of a prewar population of roughly 1.6 million, an estimated 260,000 Haitian civilians either died inside or outside of the camps from famine and disease, compared to roughly 60,000 Confederate soldiers and 80,000 Haitian guerillas (both groups mostly from disease).

The mass deaths of the Confederate concentration camps was largely ignored by the international community - unlike the Congo crisis, the Confederates didn't seem to be intentionally killing large swaths of people (even as they embarked on a military strategy that would obviously lead to massive civilian casualties) - and foreign audiences in North America and Europe were generally not moved by the plight of non-European children, besides a famous Mark Twain essay excoriating the camps (interestingly, the pragmatic Longstreet administration actually reached out to Twain to help organize fundraisers to relieve camp inhabitants, which he did). The bulk of horror seemed to mostly come from within the Confederate States itself, especially from radical leftists inclined to criticize the established system. One Confederate Independence war veteran, Albert Parsons, quickly became famous for his regular demonstrations against the war.

The scorched earth policy ultimately did break the back of the Haitian resistance. However, the strategy also ruined the Haitian economy, heavily dependent on the export of agricultural goods. The Confederates were increasingly likely to have won a prize that was essentially economically worthless. Haiti in fact became a bit of conundrum for the Confederacy insofar that they did not actually want it anymore - but it was also widely believed that if the Confederates left, a vehemently anti-Confederate government would eventually take power (humiliating the Confederates in the process). Interestingly, the Confederates found that the most willing collaborators weren't the pre-war mulatto elite (who saw the Confederate invasion destroy everything), but rather ambitious members of the poor black majority. Longstreet was actually incredibly receptive to their ambitions, hoping that they could help create a stable order. Moreover, he felt that black collaborators could probably weaken widespread anti-black prejudice, which he saw as a contributor to the socioeconomic status of Confederate freedman (which he saw an impediment to national strength).

Against furious protests by the Progressives, it was decided to admit Haiti as a territory, which would quickly shift the Haitian economy towards not only being an agricultural exporter, but a convenient location for Confederate business to offshore low-skill manufacturing towards. In addition, although scientific racist thought was increasingly widespread among the Confederate intelligentsia, other Confederates softened their racial attitudes, having been exposed to a war that did not neatly fit into racial categories (with the Haitian mulatto elite being the most fiercely opposed to the Confederate States and largely emigrating to France and several black Confederate soldiers serving well alongside white soldiers). One result of the Haitian War was that white Confederates started becoming more polarized based on race. All of this would come to a head in the upcoming 1903 elections...

TastySpam · May 2, 2021

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?

TastySpam · May 12, 2021

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.

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

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