https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=38171
The XYZ Affair
As the relations between the US and France worsen, news of this diplomatic insult shocks the United States. Privateer combat intensifies along with American outrage at this new act. The young nation begins to forget the lessons of Washington when France continues to attack American shipping.
The final straw comes when French privateers begin hitting US ships near major ports on the Eastern seaboard, with rumors saying there were French privateers as far out as New York.
Soon after July 7, the United States declared war on the new government of France, and began to seek British support.
RECONCILIATION AND RETALIATION
By 1799, America was rising to the new challenges of the war. Boxed in on the continent, with Spain and France on her borders to the south and west, the Federalists used the promise of new lands to entice the Democratic-Republicans into supporting the war efforts. Alexander Hamilton, the mastermind behind the Federalist Party, hopes to use the prospect of new lands as a way to build up support in the West.
And so, the American armies are quickly rallied around old Revolutionary era-commanders, though Washington himself does not reprise the role in the Whiskey Rebellion, he spends the last of his days ill and bedridden in Mount Vernon, where he dies on December 14.
But the Americans do find one particularly powerful friend across the Atlantic in Great Britain, which is eager to take a chunk out of France's holdings in North America. Though some in England are skeptical of letting the US become too powerful, negotiations throughout 1799 start to slowly redraw the future maps of America.
Hungry for new land but wary of the instability in Hispanola, the British launch attacks on Guadaloupe and the other French Carribbean possessions, while revolt starts to fester in Haiti. French troops are massed on the islands, and silently concede their continental territory in hopes of defending their lucrative island colonies.
But not all nations are happy with an American Louisiana. Spain, bound to France by treaty and their territory in Louisiana, declares war on the Americans.
But the entire war exists more on the papers and pamphlets than it does in reality. Despite the Battle of Louisiana and skirmishes with Indians as American troops push into their 'new land', the Americans' actions at the time are more of an intricate land-grab than an actual military conflict.
In Florida, American militias raid Spanish troops and forts, but America doesn't have the troops to fully annex it, and Spain doesn't have the interests to devote large amounts of troops to take it.
For these reasons, 1799 is a year of political intrigue rather than military adventure in America.
In Europe, however, the war is shaping up to be something altogether different.
France was not in a good position at home. The Second Coalition, composed of the British, the Austrians, the Russians, the Ottomans, and to a negligible extent, the Americans, was pressing on France's colonies and capable of invading the French mainland itself. With promises of French victory at home and abroad, Napoleon Bonaparte stages his coup on November 2nd (the now infamous 11 Brumaire) and plots his response to the war effort. Tired of chaos at home and weak response to threats abroad, the people of France were widely in favor of their new leader, despite his less-than-democratic ascent.
RECONCILIATION AND RETALIATION
By 1799, America was rising to the new challenges of the war. Boxed in on the continent, with Spain and France on her borders to the south and west, the Federalists used the promise of new lands to entice the Democratic-Republicans into supporting the war efforts. Alexander Hamilton, the mastermind behind the Federalist Party, hopes to use the prospect of new lands as a way to build up support in the West.
And so, the American armies are quickly rallied around old Revolutionary era-commanders, though Washington himself does not reprise the role in the Whiskey Rebellion, he spends the last of his days ill and bedridden in Mount Vernon, where he dies on December 14.
But the Americans do find one particularly powerful friend across the Atlantic in Great Britain, which is eager to take a chunk out of France's holdings in North America. Though some in England are skeptical of letting the US become too powerful, negotiations throughout 1799 slowly redraw the future maps of America.
Hungry for new land but wary of the instability in Hispanola, the British launch attacks on Guadaloupe and the other French Carribbean possessions, while revolt starts to fester in Haiti. French troops are massed on the islands, and silently concede their continental territory in hopes of defending their lucrative island colonies.
But not all nations are happy with an American Louisiana. Spain, bound to France by treaty and interest, declares war on the Americans.
But the entire war exists more on the papers and pamphlets than it does in reality. Despite the Battle of Louisiana and skirmishes with Indians as American troops push into their 'new land', the Americans' actions at the time are more of an intricate land-grab than an actual military conflict.
In Florida, American militias raid Spanish troops and forts, but America doesn't have the troops to fully annex it, and Spain doesn't have the interests to devote large amounts of troops to take it.
For these reasons, 1799 is a year of political intrigue rather than military adventure in America.
In Europe, however, the war is shaping up to be something altogether different.
France was not in a good position at home. The Second Coalition, composed of the British, the Austrians, the Russians, the Ottomans, and to a negligible extent, the Americans, was pressing on France's colonies and capable of invading the French mainland itself. With promises of French victory at home and abroad, Napoleon Bonaparte stages his coup on November 2nd (the now infamous 11 Brumaire) and plots his response to the war effort. Tired of chaos at home and weak response to threats abroad, the people of France were widely in favor of their new leader, despite his less-than-democratic ascent.
SHATTERED EUROPE
1801-1807
Napoleon, watching his naval defeats in both the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, scrapped any plans to invade England. Instead, he would focus his efforts on controlling the continent. As Britain formed its Third Coalition of Austria, Russia, and Naples, Napoleon crowned himself leader of a new French Empire, which he would rule using ‘enlightenment principles’. While it was somewhat of a morale boost to Frenchmen, it did not deter his European enemies.
Both sides geared up for war, and in 1804, the Coalition struck. With Napoleon’s forces concentrated near Bavaria and Italy, they decide to attack through Saxony and the neighboring states. A drive to the Rhine was launched, while Naples hoped to strike Italy as Napoleon shifted forces.
However, there were holes in the plan. Napoleon confronted the enemy at Gotha and struck a decisive blow against Austrian forces, cut them off again at Dresden, and left Austria’s armed forces nearly helpless to prevent his attack into Prague.
Because Napoleon had saved his European naval forces, he was able to prevent allied landings in both the Mediterranean and Germany, and when Prussia massed troops in Saxony to counterattack, Napoleon moved to encircle them near Leipzig in what many call one of Napoleon’s greatest victories. Having weakened Prussia, Napoleon battles his way into Prussia in late 1805.
Napoleon formed his ‘Confederation of the Rhine’ at great expense to Austria in mid-1805, but in the spring of 1806, his gains were under threat. Russian troops were marching into Prussia, so at Koenigsburg and Eylau, he dealt significant blows to their forces.
Negotiations dominated the remainder of 1806 and early 1807, but before the winter was over, an uneasy peace settled over Europe. Britain, which had yet to commit anywhere near the full power of its land forces in Europe, began looking for a different way to strike at the Empire and its clients.
Farther south, Muhammad Ali started his rebellion against the Ottomans, with quiet British support. The Anglo-American alliance and Eli Whitney had brought the potential of cotton to higher priority, and the merchants of England were quick to realize cotton’s new potential. Knowing the potential of the Nile’s farmlands, Britain would back Ali’s ascension to power quietly, but effectively. Though Ali didn’t want to become a foreign puppet, he knew the support of the British was not to be dismissed so lightly when his nation was at such an early and vulnerable stage. With their capital and the fervor of a new nation, Ali fought out the civil war and drew up plans for a grander, modern and prosperous Egypt.
THE BITTER END
1803-1807
While war in Europe went on in fits and starts, conflict in America was a constant, but softer drumbeat. By 1804, America had massively increased both its Navy and Army, and was the de facto ruler of Florida and much of the ‘Louisiana’ territories. Spanish forces that were supposed to arrive in relief were quickly put to the bottom of the Galician Coast, and so US forces rallied as they marched towards what is today known as the city of Pikesville in Texas, and defeated Spanish forces there, thus opening ‘a Southern corridor’ to the Pacific. With the ever-increasing power of the British fleet, Spain concedes much of its continental claims to the United States. Florida is given up, as is the northern half of Mexico, in 1805. However, when Spain continues to sink US ships in the Gulf of Mexico, the US declares war again soon after, this time seeking to take Cuba and Puerto Rico. But while the British fleet’s blockade of French and Spanish colonies helped, they were unable to lend any significant land support due to bloody, costly fighting in Hispanola.
And so in 1807, the US and Britain continued their Caribbean campaigns, neither making much progress despite naval superiority.
A CRUMBLING PEACE
1807-1811
With the nations of the European continent quaking, Napoleon watches as the British tear through his possessions in the Americas. But he has grander ideas. As he watches Ottoman attempts to retake Egypt unravel, both sides prepare for big advances. The British plot an invasion of Spanish colonies or the Netherlands, while Napoleon looks eastward for further conquests. Britain begins organizing another coalition, this time of Austria and Naples.
When fighting breaks out in 1810, Britain launches an invasion of the Netherlands, noting that Napoleon’s men are deployed mostly further south. However, the campaign falters. Napoleon begins encouraging revolutions in the Balkans and Greece, fighting skirmishes with Naples as he marches down the Balkan Peninsula. The Ottomans quickly move their army to intercept, but find their supply lines cut off by rebels and are destroyed by French forces. Greece becomes independent while Napoleon creates Balkan protectorates. In 1811, the British and Ottomans begin moving troops to the Middle East, while Russia considers shedding its neutrality.
However, Britain continues to support the independent Egypt under Ali, and begins to look for methods of funding its campaigns to not only push Napoleon out of Asia, but to snap up the colonies in South America.
THE FEAST IN THE SOUTH
1807-1811
With Simon Bolivar’s ship back to South America sunk by the British fleet, revolutions in South America do not fare quite as well. In 1808, Britain launches their first invasion of South America, into the Rio de la Plata area in Argentina. Posing themselves as ‘liberators’ rather than invaders, they establish a protectorate in Argentina, paying off locals for their support and killing those who fight the new government.
In Haiti, the slave revolt is in full swing, and the French commanders there either flee to the West or request passage back to Europe. The British allow the French to leave, and then occupy the Dominican, while the US takes Puerto Rico in 1809 and Cuba in 1811.
The United States also welcomes Louisiana into the Union in 1811, but the slave-free state controversy is already starting to grow. Pinckney, the current President, wants to keep slavery limited and encourage industrial growth, but with America’s role to a war coming to an end, a deeper domestic divide seems likely to appear.
SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES
1800-1812
Because of the lack of European-scale conflict on most of the American continent, settlement often went hand in hand with soldiering. Because the Federal Government, and not the states, was the owner of the nation’s new lands, there was a rift in the US political system over the price at which it should be sold. The Democratic-Republicans wanted land to be sold off as cheap as possible to encourage the development of their idyllic farming communities. The Federalists, however, saw the land as a source of valuable public revenue. But compromises were made. Soldiers who had traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles to fight the Spanish were rewarded with cheap real estate in the west. But the Federalist program of rewarding soldiers was controversial in many respects.
Chief among them were the formation of black units, which did much of the fighting in Florida and the Tejas area. As part of the program, which Hamilton had devised during the revolution and put into action during the Franco-American War, he (a Major General, appointed by Adams) had set up a program of buying black slaves from owners and promising them freedom for fighting, an armed version of indentured servitude.
Hamilton also railed for a restriction of slavery into the territories, which Pinckney reluctantly agreed to. As a compromise, he set up the Louisiana Act of 1809, which said that slave-state status would be determined by vote, which conflicted with the earlier precedent established by the Northwest Ordinance. Pinckney also moderated the land prices to keep backlash from the Democratic-Republicans down.
This also gave the Federalists the political capital they needed to promote their programs of industry. Congress pushed through many Hamiltonian business reforms, and the need for more warships sparked a greater interest in Fulton’s steam-powered vessels, though it would be years before the Navy put one on the open seas.
However, in many ways Pinckney was a martyr for Hamilton’s political causes. Much of his Southern appeal was lost when he began pursuing what seemed to be anti-slavery policies, and though he fared better with smaller farmers, soldiers, and the pioneers moving west, the wealth and influence of the Southern aristocracy and the hardliner anti-Federalists were bearing against him.
Fearing that government was getting too large and with many fearing that the Federalists were plotting to abolish slavery completely, Madison, a strict constructionist (though one who was not very far from the Federalists on other matters), won the election of 1812.
BLOODY BARGAINING
1812-1816
Napoleon’s ‘liberation’ of the Balkans and Greece now threatens Constantinople, and rather than trying to prop up the withering Ottoman Empire, Russia decides to take over the whole show, and Britain, knowing that if it does not fill the power vacuum from an Ottoman fall, the other nations will, decides to marshal troops from India.
In his most ambitious move yet, Napoleon blockades the Gibraltar, and wins a few lucky naval victories that prevent the British from advancing into the Sea and thwarting his plans. Marshaling troops from Greece, he puts Constantinople under siege and handily defeats the Ottoman troops.
Russia, which had been quietly waging its war in the background, expands its campaign to the Middle East, and the Ottomans, while able to prevent Napoleon from taking the capital, do so at the expense of their territory in the Middle East and Central Asia. Russia marches down the Caucasus and threatens Turkey itself in 1813, though they become bogged down in the mountains, losing many men. The entire Turkish region is virtually under siege, and the opportunistic new government in Egypt begins to pick off the Arabian territories of the old regime, while a British force lands in Mesopotamia.
The war of attrition lasts through 1815, with the Ottomans whittled down to Asian Turkey and the lands to the immediate south of it, and the Janissaries still more interested in internal power than national influence, the Ottoman Empire folds.
The great session of negotiations that follows results in the Treaty of Athens in 1815. The British and their ally in Egypt receive much of Ottoman Northeast Africa and the Red Sea Coast along with Mesopotamia, Russia receives land around the Black Sea and European Turkey (including Constantinople). To Austria goes the remainder of the Balkans, and France receives little actual territory (unless one counts the pro-French independent nation of Greece), but manages to consolidate his Empire. Britain; bled nearly white by conflict and with more conquests still to digest, decides on leaving the Napoleon situation be.
By sacrificing millions of men and a major empire, Europe had gained a blood-stained peace. Napoleon now turns himself to domestic concerns. Expanding on his role as an ‘enlightened dictator’, he hopes to build stability and loyalty in his new domain. However, as the troops return home from the East, Prussia re-arms itself for a go at what it believes is a weak Confederation of the Rhine. How long Napoleon’s peace and government will last becomes a worrying question.
PRECARIOUS EXPANSION
1812-1820
Madison, who was unable to stop the Bank’s extension in 1811, tries to reason with his party while avoiding falling too deep into Federalists policies. But almost immediately, his Presidency becomes controversial.
Unfortunately for the growing western population, Madison vetoed many transportation bills, prompting many states around the Great Lakes to organize themselves to develop a canal system. Hamiltonian policies had sped about the rise of organized corporations and industries, so in 1815 the construction of the Erie Canal began.
Madison did keep up America’s military though, and at the request of many military leaders he approved money for the development of steam vessels for the Navy. With the construction of canals and the resumption in trade, the demand for new ships only furthered the prosperity of the New England shipbuilders and Hamilton’s industrial vision.
Hamilton also encouraged the development of new military technology. Having fought against both Spaniards and Indians during his campaigns in what was now the Western United States; Hamilton took great interest in the works of John Hall and Eli Whitney, both of whom had set about working on mechanically interchangeable rifles. Hall, however, had come up with something remarkable: a breech-loading rifle. Hamilton took about to promoting the rifle as one of the ‘great triumphs of American industry’ and would use his influence in politics to push through large orders of the weapon, primarily financed by revenue from the Banks, which had yet to be used on major transportation infrastructure.
But far from America’s shores, trouble was brewing. Madison’s desire for expanded trade, especially with Europe now that fighting seemed to be coming to a close, was facing some new problems. By 1816, the Barbary Pirates were beginning their attacks on the United States once again, almost as soon as the American ships began entering harbor. Before re-election he railed that “We gave no tribute to France. We will give none to the Barbary Coast!” Despite his unpopular stance on internal improvements, Madison’s tough stance on the Pirates appealed to the nationalist fervor sweeping America, and so after his re-election, Madison dispatched the war heroes of the Franco-American conflict to fight off the pirates. Attacking Tripoli and Tunis, over the course of a year the US hammered out agreements to ensure it would never again have to pay for the safe passage of its vessels.
During this entire process, the absorption of the new territories had begun in earnest. The state of Tejas was admitted to the Union, with a significant population of free-black soldiers, and soon after came the state of Franklin. The area to the north named Oklahoma was kept as ‘Indian Territory’. Mississippi, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Maine were all admitted to the United States.
But the admission of new states had brought on new problems for the young nation. The slavery divide was more intense than ever before. While pro-Federalist commanders in the Cuba Territory had guaranteed the freedom of Cuban slaves, whether or not they would be allowed to become citizens was an entirely different question. If their citizenship, or at least freedom was not guaranteed, the current governor of Cuba, John Eager Howard, decides to grant the Cubans citizenship, though much longer than it would take a white immigrant to get it, based on an un-passed bill regarding citizenship of foreign peoples who, by virtue of some treaty signed by governments thousands of miles away, were now in US territory.
While the Supreme Court struck down the notion as unconstitutional and set equal standards, the controversy only grew. Hamilton was not only an industrialist, but one of the most progressive thinkers on race relations (outwardly) of the era. While some politicians demanded that an equal balance of slave and free states be maintained, many Federalists (and small-farmer Democratic-Republicans who did not want the competition of organized plantation labor in their new lands) spoke against it, with more moderate politicians pointing to a plebiscite, as in Louisiana, and the radicals demanding abolition.
During this time, most states moved towards ‘universal white male suffrage’, especially in the West. Black male suffrage was also prevalent in New England and other free states, as well as in Tejas. Many in the deep South feared slavery would be abolished soon, because of the prospect of an imbalance between slave and free states.
Meanwhile, the industrial revolution was starting to take off in the US. With earlier Federalist control and a moderate Democratic-Republican President, the United States had taken after Britain in a number of ways. With immigration to the US rapidly increasing (especially after the destabilizing effects of the Napoleonic wars in Germany), the US found that the only resistance to its growth would be political, not economic.
THE FEAST OF SPOILS
1816-1825
Exhausted in Europe, the powers now turned to running the territories they had bargained with and squabbled over. The power with the most new territory and influence was Great Britain. From its protectorate in Patagonia to new territory in Mesopotamia, Britain’s global reach had only been expanded by conflict. But for now, their military capital was spent. With no power both able and willing to re-colonize Spain’s former American possessions, most of them are de jure free. The new Republics of Chile, Peru, and Colombia sprung up in the aftermath and began the process of solidifying their new nations, mostly with British and American aid. Direct colonization of any of the new nations by Europe was frowned upon by the Americans, and for the British, who could not have done so anyway, it was not much of an impediment to relations. In the Caribbean, trade thrived.
In Mexico, a new government was formulated, one that attempted to satisfy the liberals and conservatives both. With a Republican legislature, but a strong executive and some protection for the aristocracy to satisfy the powerful landowners, Mexico seems to have a stable government, lead by war veteran Santa Anna.
But there is one priority that seems to dominate the Mexican ruling class’ minds: revenge against the Americans and British, who’d taken what they believed to be ‘their’ land (though their nation did not exist at the time). Seeking aid from Napoleon, who’d nearly become their enemy, Mexico rearmed itself in hoping of claiming a place in the sun among the many infant nations in the Americas.
Back in Europe, wounds were dressed and plots were hatched. Among devastated Germany, immigrants went west and Prussia marshaled new armies for a future war against France and its Rhine client. Napoleon himself was putting the finishing touches on his empire, attempting to ensure its survival after his death for his young son, the ‘King of Rome’. Passing popular reforms to please the people of France and glorifying his war victories, Napoleon also knew of the threat from Prussia and maintained his military accordingly.
Russia, emboldened by victory but still troubled, fought off an 1824 coup organized by the handful of officers that visited Western Europe. But for the most part, Russians were satisfied with their nation’s performance in the war, having finally captured Constantinople.
In Britain, more liberal MPs were slowly gaining more, though the conservatives were still dominating. The anti-slavery policies of the Federalists were supported by many of the more liberal politicians in Britain, such as the Whigs, and calls for abolition of slavery were growing, especially now that the UK and US had taken on Hispanola as a protectorate.
CLAY FEET
1824-1832
Though Americans were fairly happy with the Madison administration, westerners wanted a President that would support more internal improvements. As a result, John Quincy Adams, of the Federalist Party, won the 1824 election. Those elections also brought increasingly anti-slavery Congressmen, especially in the Senate. Westerners not only wanted federal support for infrastructure in the west, but the wanted slaveholding competition out.
Adams program helped expand roadways out farther West to aid the settlement of the Pacific coast region, and strengthened the Canal System. US steam technology, due to more cooperation with Britain, was also moving at a steady clip, and the US had begun deploying some steam-powered combat vessels and a transoceanic shipping line. Western entrepreneurs also started taking interest in a new concept of land-based steam locomotion that could make up for the canal advantage in the Great Lakes states.
But the dark clouds on the political horizon were about to burst.
Especially because of Hamilton’s policies, slaveholders were nervous about their future in the US. But things were only complicated in 1829, when American citizens in Cuba passed the 60,000 mark. Though the Senate was balanced and the House in favor of the South, a battle over the statehood of Cuba was sure to ensue. And even though the conditions of an average Cuban farm or plantation worker were not much better than his mainland counterpart, the Cuban laborers did have one thing to their credit: many were citizens under the liberal laws designed to avoid a revolt earlier. Combined with the influx of settlers and its position as a nexus of American trade, it seemed American society would soon erupt. The re-election of Adams and the Federalists wrought grumblings of secession in the South, who believed Congress was getting ‘too powerful’ with its regulation of trade through tariffs, and worries of future abolition.
When Cuba was voted into the Union after a number of Southern Congressmen walked out in 1830, Calhoun issued a scathing discourse against the centralized government of the Federalists, the excesses of Congress, and the ‘unconstitutionality’ of the restriction of territories to slavery. When parties were usually campaigning for the mid-terms, anti-Federalist radicals attempted to assassinate Adams, and militias were formed in the Carolinas and Georgia, where they vowed to ‘protect our property from Yankee Congressmen’. In the spring of 1830, Adams deploys troops to Franklin and begins marching more down through Virginia. Upon hearing this, Calhoun leads the states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama to secede and form the Confederate Republic of America. Casting themselves as ‘new American revolutionaries’, they muster troops to fight the incoming Federal troops. Entering South Carolina, the militia is beaten back for lack of organization and inferior weaponry when compared with the Whitney-Hall breechloaders in use by the Federal soldiers. US Navy steamships move to blockade the states from their vital source of income: cotton. When the CRA attempts to use clout from Britain, they find that the lack of control over other Southern states, Egypt, and India, has made their difference negligible.
Calhoun, and many other slaveholders (along with their slaves), flee to Brazil for the most part, fearing persecution by Adams and the other Federalists. At the end of the crisis in 1831 (amid a new Federalist majority aided by the lack of representation from a few states), Adams announces a program of ‘compensated manumission’ that includes a gamut of measures from the old serve-for-freedom programs of the Franco-American War to emigration programs to Liberia or Haiti.
As the entire affair unfolded, Mexico began to mobilize troops near their border, looking towards Tejas and Franklin eagerly, feeling the US is in a state of weakness. And with Napoleon and his allies looking towards increasing aid to Mexico, Adams began to hammer out the foreign policy he would become so famous for. Declaring that the Americas must remain a ‘sovereign domain’, he decided that US power would be used to prevent further re-colonization of South America, and that America would prevent coercive influence in other states in the Americas from being used against it.
Whether or not the world would heed his calls was another matter entirely.
ONE MAN'S LEGACY
1826-1835
An aging Napoleon is confronted with one final challenge when Prussia declares war and marches into the Confederation of the Rhine in 1827. Bringing together his best generals on that front, he is able to rebuff the Prussian army and fight it to a standstill within a few months. Both governments agree to revert to status quo antebellum, and many historians now regard it as the war that preserved Napoleon's empire. He would live till 1834, and his massive funeral in Paris was a testament to his greatness.
Succession occurred fairly smoothly, for Napoleon's reforms and industrialization program had won him great support among workers and soldiers alike. But the nations of Europe knew that his successors were unlikely to match his military brilliance, so plans were hatched to put France 'back into its rightful place'.
Britain's William IV conducts actions in Parliament during the reform crisis that allow the Whigs to make great gains in the legislature. In the early 1830s, they begin the manumission of slavery through indentured servitude.
The Spanish also use this time to occupy much of former Ottoman North Africa, and the French take smaller parts of Algeria and Tunisia. Britain, however, ensures that its power in Egypt and the Mideast remains unchecked. At this time, the concept of a canal through the Suez becomes popular in Britain, which already enjoys good relations with Egypt because of aid and cotton trade. Russia begins to make designs on Persia, but British diplomacy staves off the war at the very least.
Life inside Russia, however, is not good for those not of the Orthodox faith. After the captue of Constantinople, a new wave of religious fervor swept Russia, and many Jews fled to Europe, especially the French client of Poland.
The US (and Britain to a good degree) made good on the promises laid out in what we now call the 'Adams Doctrine'. Britain and the US solidified their trade links with Colombia and increased them with Peru and Chile. The role of the British and US in South America at this time was actually somewhat stabilizing, with their diplomacy averting a war between Colombia and Peru over Ecuador.
Brazil, however, having secured their independence from Portugal after a series of wars in the late 1820s, established government formally under Pedro I and the 1830 Constitution. Using a mix of British and Napoleonic ideals, the so-called 'liberal empire' would be the major slaveholding nation in the Americas. Despite some controversy over his policies, Pedro I managed to hold the young nation together until his death in 1835. Pedro II, his successor, would capitalize on the infant nationalism of Brazil.
THE LURCHING JUGGERNAUT
1832-1840
Jackson won the 1832 election because of the growing power of the Western states, and the old Federalist standby of the National Bank faded quietly, its existence no longer required. Jackson’s platform was based around pro-Western policies, and expansion was one of them. So, the US in 1833 decided to resolve all border disputes with England. Giving up some of its territory in Maine and resolving the border to the Oregon country at the 49th parallel, Jackson wanted more land in the Oregon country, so in exchange for some of the revenue collected by the tariff (and a later abolishment of it to please British manufacturers), Jackson was able to claim Oregon country up to the 54-40 line in the Treaty of 1834.
However, Jackson had a new challenge to manage. Santa Anna, his army re-equipped and re-trained, was making his move, marching up to California, claiming that the Mexican government would not recognize the US claim, since Spain their ‘former colonial ruler’ had signed the treaty for it. Believing he could draw out the battle and defeat the American armies as they came, and that US sectional divisions (as evidenced by the recent insurrection in the South) would prevent an effective response, he hoped he could place Mexico among the New World powers.
General Winfield Scott, marching out of Franklin, fought his first battle at Ciudad Juarez, sweeping aside the forces Santa Anna had placed there to delay his relief to the siege he was conducting in San Francisco. Fighting continues throughout 1835, at the end of the year, Scott lifts the siege in San Francisco and Jackson decides to invade Mexico as ‘punishment’, with the Marines and Navy launching assaults into the Yucatan and Veracruz. When Santa Anna initiates his ‘war powers’ to maintain control through the tumult, two new Republics splinter off from Mexico, both with US aid and protection, one in the Rio Grande and the other in the Yucatan. The US demands the sale of Baja California as well, and Mexico grudgingly obliges. Santa Anna is removed from power in a coup, but the US-Mexican animosity remains.
Jackson is re-elected, and continues to pass pro-Western policies, though he is careful not to hurt the industrial Midwest and North too much. The campaigns in California also bring a new finding to light: gold is found in the territory, and settlers rush out. Back East, economic development is going steadily despite some shocks from the loss of the bank, but by now a significant banking system had already developed in New England and other parts of the country. The first transatlantic steamship line was established, and the US steam fleet was stronger than ever. New naval technologies, such as the Morey Engine, were being experimented with, while railroad boom opened up faster transport to the west where canals could not reach.
For the Native Americans, though, times were not as good. Jackson was planning to push them out into Oklahoma and the Dakotas, and most settlers would rather have them farther out than that. But for now, conflict had settled in North America.
THE NEW DISCONTENTS
1836-1842
Napoleon II unfortunately did not maintain the same respect among his clients that Napoleon did. The Confederation of the Rhine especially was becoming a new battlefield, not one of men as during the Napoleonic Wars, but one of ideas. While France had a semi-meritocracy based upon Voltaire’s ideals, the Confederation of the Rhine was ruled by an oligarchic collection of Princes.
Influenced by Hegel and Rosseau, the people of the Confederation had been exposed to enlightened ideas but had yet to experience them. Many thinkers of the Young Hegelian school went to the Rhine where they could avoid suppression by Prussian authorities.
1841 brought the first revolutions in the Confederation of the Rhine. While France’s enemies were eager to see this, the philosophy of the revolutionaries was seen as too radical by Prussia and the United Kingdom. They called for majoritarian policies, an end to organized religion, and increased workers rights. The quickly industrializing nations of the world were not eager to see such a philosophy spread.
Napoleon II deployed troops to the Rhine to little avail, the tactics French soldiers had practiced were not effective in counter-revolutionary campaigns. Blood and iron would not overcome what was, at its core, an ideological movement.
In Italy, the new revolutions were based on the restoration of old monarchies rather than radical philosophies. Poland, knowing that France was the only guarantor of its independence, was far more stable than the other Napoleonic clients. No major power would interfere directly other than France in the Rhine, but the consequences of the 1830s-1840s revolutions were felt across Europe. They were both spurned by a recession in the late 1830s and they fed continuing economic trouble throughout the 1840s. Labor movements in Britain and Prussia increased in fervor, while Russia suppressed any movement towards a liberal government.
Britain was however, tied up elsewhere.
Their client state in Argentina had gone to war with Brazil over the control of the Rio de la Plata, with Brazil winning most of the initial victories. Britain responded with naval force, and in the war of 1841 they not only pushed Brazil back, but instructed them to ‘abandon the slave trade’. Brazil said it would comply, but the trade continued for decades more in a somewhat more limited capacity.
Gran Colombia was also shaking up, with Ecuador attempting secession from the federation in 1836. Of the nations of South America, the United States had the most influence here through its Federalist ideals in government. Mexico only balkanized further as the semi-autonomous Central American states broke off and went into orbit around the UK-US alliance through the British client in the Honduras.
Another consequence of the revolutions in Europe was increased immigration. Germans mainly went to the United States or Argentina, while many Dutch nationalists who feared persecution by Napoleon II went to their kindred Boers in the Cape Colony, with smaller portions going to America.
TESTING STRENGTH
1840-1852
Federalist Henry Clay is elected President in 1840 on a moderate platform based primarily on unity between the interests of the sections. He pledges to keep up the slave manumission program when some thought Jackson’s followers might end it, and under his administration constitutional amendments were passed that banned involuntary servitude and slavery once and for all after 1865, though compensation continued. While Clay did lower the tariff, he did slightly increase land prices, but promised to provide more federal funding to railroads and ‘span the continent’ with iron, which appealed to the West. However, jockeying over which companies would receive the contracts continued, and a great debate emerged over the location of the route, though the predominating attitude indicated that it would travel through the Industrial Midwest to San Francisco, the largest city in the state of California.
Clay’s first term also saw the beginning of the largest wave of immigration in history thus far, kicked off by Germany. The ‘bourgeoisie’ classes of Germany, particularly devout believers and businessmen who had their fortunes ruined by revolution, crowded into the United States. Irish too came during the Potato Famine, and when Prussia invaded Poland years later, many Poles flocked to America. This brought about serious societal shifts in America, particularly in the industrialized North. While business owners in the Federalist Party encouraged immigration, for it needed the influx of labor to prevent a drain of population to the West (The constant immigration also ensured that unions and other ‘radical institutions’ did not take hold as easily in America), the Democratic-Republican Party found itself in a bind. The populist wing of the Party wanted a restriction on immigration and better conditions for ‘hardworking American laborers and farmers’, an updated version of Jefferson’s vision of the US. However, the Jacksonian wing was far more liberal on immigration, and while it liked the small-government laissez faire attitude of the original party, they believed that government interference worked both ways and that the government should promote rugged American individualism, not class-based politics. They also parted ways with the populist wing on immigration, which Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans typically discouraged. With the election of 1844 and the effective ‘shattering’ of the agrarian vision, the party split into the American Party of nativists and the Liberty Party, effectively ensuring Clay a second term. But political strife flared outside elections too. In the Midwest, WASPs tried to organize to keep out cheaper immigrant labor, much to the chagrin of big business. During the 1845-1846 period; as more and more blacks were freed, they found it difficult to get in to some of the factories in the Great Lakes industrial belt, so while some stayed, many went to work instead on the railroads and settled in the West or the lands around the railroads.
Clay also fell under the popular pressure by most to expand American power and influence through Central America to “… protect the region from [Continental] European imperialism and the Mexican dictatorship.” One of the more popular ideas circulating was one of a canal through Nicaragua, a now independent client-ally of the United States and the United Kingdom. In 1845 the two nations signed a secret agreement that any canal would be under their joint ownership or influence to prevent the expansion of foreign power in the region under the Adams Doctrine.
The rapid expansion into the West brought with it an expansion of technology and militarism. The United States Army engaged in a series of clashes with various native American groups throughout this time period, and was quite successful due to the advantage of their breech-loading rifles, where earlier settlers and soldiers were felled due to older muzzle-loading weapons. As a result, the Army and the Winchester-Hall Company began developing repeating rifles that would hold multiple rounds for cavalry use and general sale.
Another innovation was by Colt’s firearm company, previously famous for their revolver. Their proposal for the ‘Colt Rotary Gun’ in 1851 was met with some interest, as a weapon that could fire extremely large volumes of bullets and could be transported by horse. While some dismissed it as impractical for the type of warfare occurring in the West, the company continued to build prototypes in hopes that one of the European powers would adopt such a weapon later.
The Morey Engine also saw use in the West for providing power for machine shops and other engineering tasks, especially at Army forts. It was also discovered by a machine shop owner in Pennsylvania that petroleum might be able to be refined into a much more effective fuel than turpentine or kerosene for the device.
But no matter the technological innovations, the Native Americans were not easy to ‘dislodge’. Many preferred not to live in Indian Territory in Oklahoma, so another chunk of land was set aside in what is today Montana to try and prevent even bloodier conflict.
The Pacific coast was becoming quite prosperous though. San Francisco and Vancouver were becoming the centers of Pacific trade with North America, and the discovery of gold only further spurned settlement of the area. The fertile land also made California popular with farmers as well as traders, while lumber was exploited in the Northwest.
Having shrugged aside all local adversaries and set itself firmly astride the continent, not even the undercurrent of violence in the West and the immigration conflict could dull the optimism Americans had for their country.
DOWN IN FLAMES
1842-1857
Outside the Western Hemisphere, the world was a very turbulent place. The British went to war in China in a conflict that was primarily based around the trade of Opium, which, while successful, triggered massive unrest that resulted in the Taiping Rebellion of 1849, which was spurned by a mix of Christian converts and minorities, that while was considered to be some to be heretical, was brutally effective at guerilla tactics. While other Western powers were poised to intervene against the Taiping due to trade interests, new conflicts in Europe and India kept the British preoccupied and the Kingdom secure through 1857.
The amiable relations between the US and UK were ultimately a part in the loss of India to British authority. In the early 1850s, as tensions between the BEIC and the locals rose, US missionaries began to arrive in India. They were unfamiliar with Indian customs and fervent in their beliefs. There wee rumors that the ‘community meals’ they served at makeshift churches contained the forbidden foods such as pork or beef, though these were perhaps rumors. The missionaries did however raise some of those for meals for themselves, purportedly, but no matter the truth, things were not going well. Problems were only further intensified when British campaigns in Burma and attempts to stabilize the Dutch East Indies required Sepoys to ‘cross the black waters’, much to their outrage. When the Sepoys returned to their ports (nearby which most of the American missionaries were based from) in 1854, it was a deadly convergence. Rioting had already been breaking out, and as news was distorted and disseminated farther inland, the anger only intensified. Outright rebellion faced the British as a nation that was bled by the cost of foreign imperialism lashed out, with nearly 100 years of growing anger at the BEIC behind it.
Once again, the stretch of manpower throughout the empire signaled troubled for its crown jewel. Later British historians remarked that the British detachments in the conflict areas were small enough to have them present nearly everywhere, but not large enough to be effective. With the combined weight of recently conquered Muslim territories and the powerful Hindus behind it, the British began fighting an increasingly bloody and desperate campaign against the British. In the short lived unity between Muslims and Hindus, the battle-hardened Sepoys were able to deal devastating blows to the British, and problems only worsened as the Sikhs started to lose interest in what they saw as a ‘losing prospect’. While the other ethnic groups of India were carving up de facto states for themselves, some Sikh leaders agitated for their own state and revolted against the British as well.
With troops tied up in Europe as well, the British retreated to some of their earlier strongholds, leaving much of India in a power vacuum. Other European powers looked on with hungry eyes while various demagogues and military heroes tried to carve states for their own groups.
Europe did not fare much better during this ‘age of revolutions’. With 1848 came the stirrings of war as Prussia, capitalizing on the decay of the French Empire, went to war with Poland. Frederick William IV, having seen the chaos the new ‘popular revolutions’ brought to the Rhineland, would not accept a similar movement in his own country, nor did he intend to try and subdue the violent land so soon. He believed a war that strengthened Prussia in the East would spurn nationalism, and his Romanticist dreams about reuniting with the former Teutonic lands in the Baltics. Though he did not announce this aim at first, the invasion of Poland resulted in a power-grab by expansionist Russia, bringing the two powers to war. While Russia was certainly the better since the beginning of their self-proclaimed ‘Golden Age’ with the capture of Constantinople, they were not quite fit to stop the Prussian Army which had remade itself after the humiliation at the hands of Napoleon II. The war continued into 1850, with Russia agreeing to cede all of Poland and part of the Baltics to Prussia. Russia’s army was fit to fight the less sophisticated armies of Central Asia, but not the Prussian war machine. Though tensions between the two countries remained high, the war for Russia seemed to be over in Europe.
For others, it was just beginning.
The Netherlands and Flanders revolted in 1850, drawing Britain into yet another conflict. With the ‘People’s Army’ organizing to spread their ‘vile ideologies’ (as one British conservative put it) into France, the British had to move to fill the power vacuum. Coming to the aid of the new government in the Netherlands, France began to collapse under the weight of Napoleon’s conquests. Their territories in Italy also went into revolt, and blaming British agitation in both fronts, France declared war on Britain officially in 1852. Britain deployed troops to the Netherlands and fought a series of battles onto the doorstep of Paris, where Napoleon II conceded Flanders and the Netherlands as an independent ‘Greater Netherlands’ at the behest of the United Kingdom.
Internal instability was also a problem in the nations of Europe. With the Irish famine and the shockwaves of the movements in Germany unsettling the traditional class systems, labor groups and agitators bedeviled many of the nations of the West throughout this period. These trends culminated with the death of Napoleon II in 1855, with the ‘general will’ based ideology taking hold of French Republicans and causing a revolt that had taken de facto control of the government in 1856.
The Dutch East Indies were finally abandoned by the British in 1854, and left to their own devices. Splinter groups competed to form new states, and European nations finishing their wars began to consider carving up that region as well.
The South American continent remained relatively peaceful, though the economic crises precipated by all this global instability certainly manifested itself there. In Colombia, the government acknowledged the secession of ‘Orinoco’, or Eastern Venezuela as some called it, but compared with the other conflicts in the world, this shift in power was relatively bloodless.
But the nations of South America were starting to come into their own now. While it is debatable how independent they really were with all the US and British influence in the region, Central American states had established themselves against Mexico and all of the continental South American nations were rallying armies and growing their economies. Land disputes between Chile and Peru, Argentina and Brazil still persisted, but there was no conflict between nations.
Pedro II of Brazil quietly abandoned his programs for slave reform, instead choosing to restrict the trade as the internal population skyrocketed. Some of the wealthier landowners began to experiment with the idea of an industrial slave based society, and fearing reliance on Europe, Brazil instituted a system of economic protectionism that, while making it unpopular with Britain and some of the other industrial powers, helped kick-start a fledgling industrial base in Brazil. To help develop a strong army, Brazil sent officers to observe the gamut of world conflicts in Europe and Asia, hoping to learn the effective structure, tactics, and weaknesses of modern militaries.
POWER PLAYS
1857-1870
Britain’s conservatives rally after the defeat in India as evidence of the ‘ineffective’ softer policies. They demand a strengthening of the military and a stronger foreign policy to compensate. But as Britain licks its wounds and prepares to re-assert itself, other nations begin to pick up where they left off. Despite their astounding triumph, the unity that had thrown off the British yoke had dissolved as warlords and would-be rulers vied for power over the shattered subcontinent.
The Portuguese and Danes were the first to move in, a scant three years after the ‘defeat’ of the BEIC. While the British clung to Ceylon and a few key ports, the continental powers established relations with various local states, providing funding and arms in exchange for favorable trade policies. This more indirect approach would be fleeting though, once the revolutionary fervor calmed down most powers hoped to get a tighter grip on their territory.
Another newcomer to the scene was Prussia, which in the late 1860s began to colonize a smaller portion of India and some of the former Dutch East Indies. The Dutch themselves, in a burst of nationalist sentiment after decades of French Imperial rule, would set up colonies in East Africa and Madagascar. Northwestern India remained relatively stable, with some Sikh and Muslim governments setting up free from interference. British presence in Afghanistan weakened with their influence in Northern India, but the British crown was not dormant. Conservatives pursued imperialist policies, and decided to cement their control over the seas by building the ‘two canals’, one with the US in Nicaragua (A US client by this point) and another in the Suez.
Unfortunately for the British, their increased presence in Egypt was not appreciated by the local government, despite the power Britain had given it so many years ago. When workers for the Canal revolted and the Egyptian government refused to quell them, the British deposed the Egyptian government and set up a puppet over the region in 1862. The project was nearing completion in 1870. The Nicaragua Canal, however, was impeded from the start. When construction began in 1867, the problems of malaria and other jungle related illness made work nearly impossible. The commitment of both governments to the Canal, however, did spurn interest in science and would later result in medical breakthroughs. Combined with the growing popularity of the theory of evolution earlier publicized by Matthews, and the mechanical advancements that shall be discussed later, some consider this time the beginning of a great period for science.
China’s bloody civil war finally ended in a sort of stalemate in 1868, when Russia looked poised to invade and the Qing decided to focus their military efforts there. The Taiping Kingdom would encompass much of Southern China, and put pressure on the Chinese Empire to reform if it wished to survive in the face of Western hegemony.
Russia was also becoming wary of Europe, and when Alexander II came into power in 1857, he focused most of his reforms on making Russia economically and militarily competitive. Looking at the successful Prussian model along with American and British technology, his sweeping reforms were eagerly adopted by the Russian populace. He also began programs to emancipate the serfs and expanded Russia’s railroad networks. Other concerns that were not instrumental to Russia’s status as a Great Power were put off until later. Russian soldiers were soon marching farther into Central Asia, with their ultimate goal being Persia and access to the Indian Ocean that seemed to dominate colonial affairs now. Wars were fought throughout the 1860s, with the Russian Army steadily improving. By 1870 Russia was poised to move through Turkmenistan into Persia.
Prussia itself became more concerned with German reunification along with its newfound colonial interests. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Prussia moved west against the Rhine Republic, securing Kiel in 1864. But the Republic still survived and was becoming one of the intellectual hotspots in Europe, more concerned with their domestic affairs than imperialism. In France, the new French Republic was widely recognized in 1867, and the leaders of Europe breathed a sigh of relief, for decades of French military power had finally come to the end. Modeling itself partially on the Rhine Republic, France wanted to ensure ‘better living for all’ after years of neglect for the industrial base France had built itself upon.
Spain and Portugal both expanded their African colonies, with Spain particularly concerned with the Christianization of North Africa. Horrible tales, some exaggerated and some all too true, began to emerge from Algeria. Spanish troops were ruthless in their suppression of Islam in the public realm, and the local population was not eager to comply. As a result, Spain actively supported Catholic colonization, with many more conservative French fleeing the civil war settling in Algeria and Tunisia.
Meanwhile, Brazil began to enjoy success with its ‘industrial slavery’ program. Despite the disappointment of the Emperor, he could not risk angering the slaveholders, the merchants, and industrialists by pursuing a program of abolition. The elected government was quite nationalist, and the powers of South America collided in the ‘Long War’ that spanned from 1862 to 1870 in a series of theaters. Brazil and Chile fought against Peru and Argentina. Brazil launched attacks into Paraguay and southeast Peru with Chilean assistance. Both sides received weapons from the UK and US in one of the more ‘infamous’ instances of corporate greed, with both sides using the Colt Rotary Gun on a wide scale before the conflict devolved into guerilla war. The end result was a victory for Brazil and Chile, with Brazil taking Paraguay and a smaller part of Southeast Peru and Chile taking the valuable saltpeter and minerals of the Litoral and some other areas of Southeast Peru.
In this era of renewed colonial warfare following the revolutions of the previous decade or so, new technology played a vital role. By now almost all modern armies had adopted breech-loading or even repeating rifles, and modern navies likewise used advanced ironclad vessels. The power of the Colt Rotary Gun and the other rapid firing weapons used also generated interest in the concept of using the Morey Engine to power ‘battlewagons’, a ‘rail-less locomotive’ that could function as an ironclad on land, powerful enough to resist the hail of lead from small arms and the Rotary Gun. The late 1860s had the US working with Prussia and the United Kingdom on these hypothetical ‘battlewagons’ that used wider treads to traverse difficult terrain.
Not all nations enjoyed the fruits of technological advance. Nowhere was this more the case than Japan, the formerly isolated nation that, opened up in the 1840s, seemed unable to reform itself, suffering much the same problem as China. Foreigners in Japan enjoyed extraterritoriality and favorable trade contracts, and already local Japanese were calling for seclusion rather than humiliation at the hands of the trading powers.
THE AMERICAN DREAM
1852-1870
1852 brought yet another three-way election as the American Party tried to capitalize on its growing success in the agrarian West and a few other states. However, by and far the nation did not accept its agenda. The Federalists won once again, with Winfield Scott, who had been culled to gain favor with the West with younger Northerner Nicholas Frome as VP. But their victory is no indication of national consent over their policies. The industrial base of the Federalist platform is beginning to shake. The economic downturns caused by the chaos abroad converge with the populist movement by the nativist American Party. Immigrants were attacked by ‘true American workers’ and violence was common in the cities. Many would end up voting for the Liberty Party, those who moved up generally voted Federalist. Organized crime also began to take off in this era as cities began to grow and the labor violence confined immigrants to certain neighborhoods of them.
The vaunted Western frontier continued its steady retreat into history in the face of aggressive settlers and the steel of guns and railroads. However, Scott’s administration would set up many reservations in southern Utah, away from the railroad land grants.
But as the railroad grew, the abuses of the old wing of the Federalist party became clear. The problem was not worker exploitation; it was the blatant collusion between the political aristocracy and the rail and corporate barons. As much as newspapers dressed it up as a moral issue, people were angrier about others getting rich on money they paid (albeit indirectly) rather than workers. So reform minded Federalists and the Liberty Party ran on ‘anti-corruption’ platforms that promised to clean up the government budget and “remove the trough Washington lays out for the modern aristocracy”, in the words of Liberty Party Presidential candidate Howard Long. He wins in 1856 and takes more of New England and other traditional Federalist base areas than expected, though his victory is quite slim.
However, industry continues to chug along even after reforms are passed, if only for the revolutions in management and technology occurring earlier. The Schmidt-Herman Process, invented in 1851 by a German immigrant scientist and a US-born businessman in the metalworking industry revolutionized the industry and made the mass production of steel much cheaper. Combined with advances in the Morey Engine and the spread of the railroads, it only furthered the power of the industrial machine in the United States.
Long largely succeeds in his anti-corruption platform, though he is careful to keep the railroads working on the Trans-American line so he does not lose favor with the West. Long continued an aggressive containment policy against American natives and increased trade and relations with Latin America. He was re-elected in 1860 where he went through a rather unremarkable Presidency save for the fact that he was the last President to preside over a nation with American slaves. Blacks were largely concentrating in the more liberal areas of the industrial belt or moving farther west, away from the racial troubles of the eastern US, though many remained working as free labor in the South, supplemented by immigrants and poor whites. As wars began to break out in Europe once more, the US remained relatively quiet. But when conflict spread to Latin America, it was US armaments that helped fuel the flames, everything from Rotary Guns to Repeating Rifles were sent to both sides of the war as it went on. Long’s Northern VP, Frome, wins the election in 1864 and largely continues his predecessor’s policies, though the sudden resurge in colonialism by the European powers leads him to adopt a ‘strong navy’ policy, much to the delight of his home region’s shipbuilders.
Frome wins again in 1868, and continues to expand the railroad and telegraph networks through pro-business policies rather than the more direct approach favored by Federalists. However, economic backlash strikes again from the European conflicts and some say the lack of government support was partly responsible for the recession. Federalists gain many seats back in the 1870 mid term elections.
THE GREAT GAME
1870-1880
In Europe at least, a lull in the fighting began, if only to re-arm for the next time. Tensions ran higher than ever though, catalyzed by the situation in Germany between the three powers of Central Europe. Emboldened by their colonial gains, many Prussians began to call for the unification of Germany and the ascendancy of Prussia to the position of dominant regional power, angered by the influence that France and Austria Hungary were exerting in the Rhineland, with some believing that both nations intended to claim some land in the weakening, leftist nation for themselves.
These events brought about a great change in the Great Power system. With both nations standing against Prussia, Austria-Hungary sided with Russia, while France, the Rhineland, and to a lesser degree Spain coalesced to form a second, if minor group. The other major alliance was between the United Kingdom and Prussia, as a classic form of British ‘balancing’ against the major continental powers. But war would not come to Europe. Instead, industrial power was converted towards a ‘Great Game’, a series of imaginary conflicts fought by politicians and generals, pins placed on maps that resulted in masses of men and war machinery being raised and deployed in an attempt to intimidate and control without provoking conflict. The British and Prussians raised a formidable force of iron: despite the lack of manpower when compared with the other nations, their technological edge was significant. Britain and Prussia were the first European nations to field the Morey Engine powered ‘Battlewagons’, armed with cannon and rotary guns that formed a small fortress on treads. Their naval technology was similarly advanced, and the collaboration between scientists and industrialists of the United States, Britain and Prussia grew during this era.
Russia and Austria Hungary, the ‘Big Two’, accelerated their efforts to industrialize on the level of their counterparts, with Russia fielding battlewagon prototypes in their suppression of the Turkmen in 1878. More importantly, Russia was uniting their country behind the ‘New Rome’ ideal, attempting to unite the many nations their empire encompassed behind the Orthodox religion and imperialist drive.
Their targets were Manchuria and Persia. Had they planned to fight solely for Manchuria, they would not have provoked too much international backlash. But in 1876 when oil surveyors from British Mesopotamia published their findings for a potential black gold-mine, Russia knew it would have to act soon.
Britain’s quest to locate oil was a bit of strategic foresight on their part. As the Suez Canal was completed and opened in 1872, the British began to look for other strategic real estate in the Middle East. After fighting a brief conflict to take over most of the Arabian Peninsula; the British dotted the region with territories and client states. While the Turks objected from their small corner of the area, it was of no use. Their dilapidated regime stood no realistic chance against the British military.
The re-colonization of India continued, but unfortunately plans to expand territorial rule met resistance from Indians, especially Muslims who were angered over Britain’s treatment of nations in the ‘Holy Land’. The status quo of client states manipulated and exploited by European powers continued.
Britain also extended its grip on Africa by colonizing its coast with the Red Sea, while the Dutch expanded their own holdings in Madagascar and Tanzania.
Meanwhile Scandinavia consolidated itself against a possible war with a revived Kalmar Union, merging Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Spain and Portugal pushed deeper into Africa, though Spain was far more fervent in its suppression of the native populations than the latter. The Spain-Italies-France group hoped to not just expand their possessions in Africa, as France began to do in Libya, but to control the Mediterranean once more, as a way to gain clout with Britain, whose Suez Canal would become an ever-more-important factor in world trade, especially with the number of nations colonizing the Indian Ocean region and the growing importance of the Middle East.
But the European powers had yet to fight each other, and few recognized the potential size of the conflict should the Generals’ and Ministers’ hypothetical scenarios ever become reality.
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
1870-1880
East Asia was not exempt from the political and military maneuvering of the era. After an abortive conflict with the Taiping, China found itself under the heel of the Tsar and his East Asian forces. Testing his strength, the Tsar launched his campaign into Manchuria early in 1875, gobbling some of the decrepit Empire’s territory.
Japan seemed in no better condition, and after hearing of the Russian invasion and subversion of Chinese rule in Manchuria, declared that it would go back to seclusion, attempting to expel the trading powers to more controllable locations. The plan did not work. Prussian, British, and American merchantmen used their superior firepower to effectively destroy the Japanese capability to carry through with its threat. Rather than conducting a coup and formally ending the Japanese government, the Treaty of Tokyo effectively divided Japan into different ‘spheres of influence’.
In South Africa, the British attempts to crack down on the strong Boer Republics met serious resistance. While the British effectively controlled the Cape, the Boers stood between them and expansion to the north. Rather than start a war and with the bitter aftertaste of the Indian Rebellion still strong, the British instead turned the Boer Republics into client states that gave them some internal autonomy but made any further expansion the task of the British government first.
The arduous and often deadly task of completing the Nicaragua canal continued throughout this decade, but Nicaraguans were starting to wonder how much the canal would benefit them when compared with the UK and US who would own the actual canal. There were some rumblings of revolution, but the presence of US troops and mercenaries would ensure (hopefully for the powers) that the ‘anglos’ would control the trade through the nation.
The Republic of the Rio Grande began to thrive, as its plentiful supplies of coal and oil ensured not only the strongest industry between Brazil and the US, but a lucrative stake in the petroleum sector. Mexico was also starting to industrialize, albeit much more slowly. Civil war erupted in 1874 when Santa Anna’s handpicked successor was killed, some Mexicans wanted a worker’s democracy similar to Rhineland or France, but there was no resolution to the conflict apparent by 1880, though it appeared the conservative elements manifested in Mexico City’s oligarchy would prevail.
Brazil reformed nearly everything but their slave laws throughout the decade, making the Emperor ever weaker and reducing the influence of social liberals in the nation. For Brazilian liberals, they were caught in a bind. While they opposed the increasing power of the slave lobby, if their fully democratic reforms were completed then the conservatives would only gain more power. The moderating power of the Emperor would be useless. Once respected, the bloody cost of Brazil’s wars and the growing power of the landowners was beginning to be disruptive to Brazil’s government. But stability was maintained.
THE BREAKING POINT
1880-1883
In 1881, Western Asia was controlled by a mere two powers. And with the discovery of petroleum and its new use, combined with the strategic location of the region, it was the new strategic prize for the late 19th Century. Both had conflicting goals and visions, both were the contenders for the greatest empire of the day. As much as Britain tried to balance the powers of the world, it had been unable or unwilling to stop Russia’s march through Central Asia since their loss of India. With an economic development they were unlikely to foresee, the consequences of that negligence were now manifested in Afghanistan.
Russian troops launched an invasion of the country and were able to push the Afghanis back easily, but the real prize remained Persia, promising a gateway to the Indian Ocean, a stake in the region’s oil wealth, and a barrier to British expansion eastward. The forces assembled were the culmination of decades of military-industrial reform and imperial exuberance. And in the spring of 1881, they marched south from Turkmenistan and Afghanistan into Persia.
The Russians were excellently prepared for the fighting, while Persia’s army was weak and outdated. Artillery and experienced mountain troops overwhelmed Persian defenders; new weapons like the machine gun were psychologically devastating to the Persian troops whose government only possessed a handful of Rotary Guns. Siege was laid to the major Persian cities, when defenses could not be broken were crushed under battlewagon treads. Such a weapon under skilled command was almost invincible in this situation. The Russians knew trench warfare well and knew how to break it with their ‘Iron Beasts’.
Britain began to supply the Persian military, or what was left of it, with arms, but they could not supply Persia with effective military leadership. Tehran fell in late 1882, and when they declared that they would make all Persia their dominion, Britain finally declared war. Anticipating this, the Mediterranean Fleet of Russia, the best in the nation attacked their British counterparts in Egypt and blockaded the Suez Canal, knowing that they would not be able to defeat the Royal Navy once its full force was arrayed against them, but stalling for time in hopes of turning Persia into a fortress against any possible aggressor.
By the time Britain had re-cleared the Suez and mobilized troops to Mesopotamia in adequate numbers, they launched a serious counter attack into the heart of Persia. Unfortunately for Britain, they were not prepared for the Russian defense. While dismissing machine guns and artillery as ‘highly overrated’ due to their ‘ingenious battlewagons and brave soldiers’ as one British commander put it, they were sadly mistaken. The British Battlewagons, better designed for Britain’s colonial campaigns than fighting in a full-out trench war, were destroyed by their Russian equivalents or modified light naval guns, the first anti-battlewagon guns to be used in combat. The Russian battlewagons were far better suited to this sort of warfare, used in devastatingly efficient combined-arms tactics to retake Persia’s border with Mesopotamia and secure it yet again against British attack. The Russians built their defenses intensively and carefully, for they believed this would be the final line of combat.
Prussia, of course, had fulfilled its obligations with Britain and attacked towards St. Petersburg, again meeting the guns and trenches of Russia. While Russia had far less battlewagons than Prussia and Britain, they were used more efficiently and they were arguably more advanced and powerful. Nevertheless, the advance stalled in the winter of 1882 and fighting was pushed back to the Baltic territories by 1883, primarily due to Austria-Hungary’s invasion of Prussia’s south.
Britain had balanced the powers perhaps too well. Russia knew its limits and turned to solidifying them rather than expanding them, and while Austria-Hungary’s invasion of Prussia was ineffective at capturing territory, it was certainly effective at grinding the European front of the conflict to a halt. A cease-fire was signed in ’83, but both sides planned on using it to re-arm instead of accepting peace.
THE FIRST ANGLO-RUSSIAN WAR
Selected Extracts from British and American newspapers
IVAN RUNS FOR THE HILLS
11/2/82
“… Our boys have crossed the Tigris and pushed on to Abadan, where Russians were dug in to make their push to Mesopotamia. But our soldiers and battlewagons turned the situation around easily. We have advanced over a mile, now that our heavy firepower is here.
Artillery has hammered down the Russki lines, and even their vaunted battlewagons are no match for Britain’s skilled gunners. With the help of the Persian Resistance we were able to pinpoint many Russian positions and blow them away with ease. With the aid of our vehicles and guns, we have captured many lines of Russian trenches. After the fighting cooled down, this reporter counted over eight hundred fifty Russian dead in this area alone, along with ten pieces of Russian artillery, and even a destroyed Russian battlewagon.
One man from the 73rd Regiment of Foot, Private Niall MacDougal showed great valor in his actions when one of our battlewagons was hit by a Russian anti-wagon gun, setting it aflame. The merciless enemy showered the wreck with gunfire as the crew inside struggled to get out. MacDougal not only used his rifle to kill and suppress an enemy machine gun position, but carried two of the crew members out of the vehicle. Tragically, there was only one other survivor, but with men like MacDougal in our forces, we are sure to march onto victory over the aggressors in Moscow.”
WHY WE MUST FIGHT
Editorial published March 1882
“… Since the incident in India, Britain has divided into several factions on foreign policy. Some would have us become like the Rhinelanders or the French and eschew real imperial drive in favor of redirecting that money towards internal improvements and services. Still others believe we should pursue imperialism, but minimize our risk because of their persistent fear of a new India. But in reality, Russia has shown us that the risks of negligence abroad. If the world were without the expansionist, megalomaniacal Russians and their allies, we would not need to be equally aggressive in our policies. But in reality, the only powers that can provide security to these lands from powers like the Russians are benevolent Empires like ours; that provide the public good of security and civilization to peoples who would otherwise not be advanced enough to do so for themselves.
Should we choose to ignore Persia’s pleas for help, we will soon see the authoritarian Russian Tsar reigning from Tehran to the Taiping border. Would we see our enlightened Western civilization be boxed in by the Russian bear? How much more land will their boots grind underfoot before we see every vestige of civilization swept off the map? Our island must be the center and purveyor of that civilization, not the last stand of it…”
THE TRIUMPH OF STEEL
1870-1884
The rest of the world seemed on the brink of war, but in the United States the situation seemed closer to that of a civil war. Almost every aspect of politics seemed to be coming apart in a frightening way. The American Party soon gave way to the ‘American Progressive Party’ in the election of 1872, realizing that without solidarity among workers they had no chance of success. But still some of the racist elements of the party persisted, and while it took a fairly good chunk of the electoral vote in 1872, the reformed Federalist Party had beaten the Liberty Party at their own game. While the Liberty Party had previously done well in the Presidential election, it was faltering in the legislature due to unpopular decisions on Western policy and military positions. The younger Liberty Party also found itself facing serious problems in terms of foreign policy; their more Jeffersonian views were not popular with a nation that was starting to feel the tug of Jingoism. Similarly, business leaders were disappointed with their reluctance to create a favorable international environment for trade. Combined with accusations of corruption during the Frome Presidency, it was Edward Marshall of the Federalist Party who took the nation’s highest office that year. Marshall would stray a bit farther left economically than the Liberty Party, believing the growing unrest lead by the American Progressive Party could be harmful to the nation’s economy as a whole. In 1873 he would allow limited coinage of silver in a weaker form of bimetallism, but overall his policies were very pro-business. He was re-elected in 1876 as the Liberty Party continued to falter.
By 1876 Indian reservations were growing smaller and smaller, while industry was dominant. Increasingly efficient systems of production and management had made business magnates as powerful as Presidents, who in turn would use their abilities to negotiate favorable trade arrangements throughout the Western Hemisphere. Public consumerism was also beginning to surface, with motorwagons growing in popularity for reaching the remote areas that the railroads had yet to reach. Favorable legislation to increase the population of non-agrarian land sales in turn helped the sales of motorwagons for businesses that set up in these areas. But by now, the allure of silver had worn off for the populist and progressive wings, who realized that limited bimetallism on its own was not a cure but a distraction. Labor riots in 1878 both energized and discredited the movement and further divided America into two economic camps. While young populist-progressives like Jon Kunitz wrote manifestos and organized local movements, the new capitalist intellectual class pumped out tracts like Neil Adams’ American Commerce that took elements of Matthew’s theories and applied them to the economy with the history of ‘American individualism’.
Organized crime rocked the cities, and to some it was the sign of the ‘moral corruption’ of America. This era of US history was marked by various moral crusades to limit drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, mostly on the state level.
In 1880, the American Progressive Party finally gets their wish and takes the Presidency. Unfortunately for them, they lack a majority in the legislature at the time, making President Harold Lieber’s first two years difficult ones. But when the free coinage of silver began in 1883, it came at a bad time. The economic downturn induced by the Anglo-Russian War and the failures of several companies and banks both in the US and abroad. While some of Lieber’s standards, such as health and safety regulations and the standard for agricultural protectionism on the international market remained, the United States returned to the gold standard in 1884 with Federalist Calvin Roberts. Americans believed that new markets and new expansion would be a lasting cure for their economic woes. Now the pre-Lieber policy of trade was becoming infused with the original Federalist tenet of expansion. The logical targets seemed to lie to the East…
THE NEW IMPERIALISM
1880-1885
The economic downturns caused by the war had started to drive some nations towards imperialistic expansion, even the more ‘peaceful’ ones. Spain continued its march through the Sahara and Western Africa, and France began to set up small ‘Republics that were colonies in all but name. While France claimed to be egalitarian, like most European nations prejudices about Africa ran high. Prussia began to move in on Central Africa after reports of diamond and gold, but their campaigns against the Kongo Empire were stalled after the war broke out with Russia.
Outside of the warring alliances though, things were outwardly peaceful on the continent. Italy was reunited at long last, but Britain began to deal with the shocks created by the war. While British citizens had been fed stories of glory and victory the fact that all of Persia was in Russian hands by the war’s end told a very different story. Labor protests and peace demonstrations began to rise, and the true cost of the wars and Britain’s lack of preparation for modern great power conflict was laid bare. Leftist movements seemed poised to take over the streets and Parliament as well, and more conservative Britons were beginning to wonder if their fate would be similar to that of France or Germany. But by 1885 news of a new threat from Russia was already emerging: stories of Canadians being killed in Alaska and the Tsar turning his attention to East Asia. Prussia’s leadership was also shrinking away from its old policies, with Wilhelm II’s ascendancy in 1884 came new policies focused more on increasing power in Germany than fighting Russia, the breakup of the alliance system Britain had worked to create was no more reassuring. Realizing that their next campaign would focus more on East Asia, the British would now have to work on creating a new power base to stop Russia there. One of the more embarrassing factors was that they could not rely on the Middle Eastern clients for support, most of them were not interested in fighting for Shiite Muslims and Britain’s memories of India meant that they wanted their own soldiers, not locals, to do the fighting.
So Britain began to pump aid to China, hoping to make it a client, with China forming new armies equipped and trained up to Western standards. In reality, Britain was very pessimistic about the chances of China standing up to Russia, but they were more optimistic about a victory in Alaska. So now the theater of conflict moved to the Pacific Rim.
In South America, Chile fought another war of expansion against Peru, while Brazil continued its program of modernization. Pedro II, however, was beginning to use his moderating power to try and restrict slavery, infuriating the conservatives. Plots were already hatching to bring about a new, conservative dominated Republic at the time of Pedro’s death.
THE BLOODY PACIFIC
1885-1895
Russia continued its aggressive policies both internally and externally. Domestically Russia enforced political unity, with the Church working to homogenize and convert Russia’s conquests. While these efforts seemed to work fairly well in Eastern Europe and the older Central Asian possessions, Russia knew it could not hope to push them on its clients in Persia and Afghanistan. However, with the Middle East ‘secured’, Russia began to push their second axis of advance further into Manchuria in 1886, sweeping aside the ‘reformed’ Chinese forces with ease. Though Russia had reinforced Alaska with additional naval and land forces, Britain declared war on the Tsar that year and launched a naval attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet, winning several victories in the Aleutians. In the spring of that year, the British attacked along with the United States, each allied to the other in name, but each also hoping to get more of the Alaskan territory than the other nation. The semi-independent Canadian Confederation was still a bit angry with the government’s strict controls on Canada. The hoped-for liberal government simply did not arrive. Britain decided that Alaska would be administered as a separate entity from Canada, angering Canadians who wanted it for the Confederation. Citing the Slavic influences in Alaska, many Eastern European immigrants in western Canada began to rail for greater political autonomy as well, and in due time so did the Quebecois. However, these movements were frowned upon by the Canadian Confederation government, which believed all of British North America should be unified and whole. During the war, the many volunteer groups of pioneer-soldiers from the States were encouraging Alaskan independence both inside their native land and in Alaska. Many Alaskans were also more interested in continuing their business interests rather than being pushed out by a hypothetical British monopoly, and they too supported the independence movement, if quietly.
The actual war went quite slowly, because with winter came an effective halt to any fighting. But by 1890 Russia had lost any vestige of control over their Alaskan colony. No treaty was signed, because Russia was still at war in Asia against China. The conflict there saw Russia gobble up Mongolia as a client and even more of Manchuria before China gave in during the fall of 1891. Russia, Britain, and China signed yet another treaty, this time to establish Russia’s gains in China (in exchange for some monetary compensation) and Russia’s loss of Alaska. However, the war did have profound political effects. It tarnished the invincible myth of the British navy when Britain took significant losses to the Russian fleet in the North Pacific later in the war. It triggered political debate in Canada and established Alaska as a jointly-occupied polity slated for independence. The experience gained in the war also helped improve the well equipped but green Chinese forces, which would later aid them in their wars to retake the Taiping Kingdom, and it consolidated Russia’s position as a major player in Asian affairs. The war also gave the final spark to bring the US into the race for imperial power by showing the strategic importance of the Pacific. The increased reliance on the West by China also sowed seeds for Chinese nationalist movements and increased hegemonic influence in China by the West itself.
THE ASPIRING POWER
1884-1896
Roberts, a somewhat more progressive Federalist, maintains some of the institutions left behind by Lieber but immediately joins in against Russia with Britain on an expansionist platform, hoping to establish Alaska as a satellite state, if not a US one. He also gave implicit approval to the corporate-backed coup by American settlers in Hawaii in 1886 and annexed the islands at the end of his second term. The election of 1888 brings in noted economist and businessman Neil Adams. While his policies bring in economic growth, some begin to worry that the poor and working class is being left behind by his adherence to classical liberalism and ‘American Individualism’. Adams also cut the tariff in his second term during the economic boom he is largely credited with. However, while some find Adam’s corruption-free, outsider politics refreshing, the hard-line Federalists are dissatisfied with his ‘lack of imperial drive’, while he carried on the war with Russia at the behest of his Secretary of War, he did not pursue further campaigns at a time when some were calling for further Pacific expansion.
One thing the Federalists at the time did near-universally was tone-down or reject the ‘morality politics’ espoused by the APP. Both the populist and progressive rings of the party supported prohibition of alcohol and to a lesser extent, women’s suffrage. Contrary to the progressive movements abroad and the Hegelian collectivists in Germany and France, the APP appeased the populist wing by promoting ‘Christian values’ and justified their welfare policies using the Bible.
In 1891 a drought and a slight recession caused by a disruption in the agrarian sector brought about an APP victory on the shoulders of the west with Illinois native Alfred Smithers rising to the office of President in 1893. However, many of his laws designed to reduce the power of trusts and tax income and the “stock tax” (an early version of the Capital Gains Tax) were undermined or declared outright unconstitutional by the strongly pro-business Supreme Court. Decrying the judicial activism by an “aristocratic elite of pro-trust mouthpieces”, there were murmurings of a Constitutional amendment not only to make the APP taxes effective, but to reduce the power of the judiciary. Naturally the political spinsters of the Federalist Party seized on the opportunity to decry the APP as ‘disrespectful to the idea of checks and balances’ and invoked their status as the “Party that forged the Constitution”. But while the APP was derailed in the other branches, they held on to the Presidency in 1896.
On the state level, the entire continental US were states by 1896, a factor partially responsible for the success of the APP in the Presidential elections. This also signaled another milestone in American history: The last of the Indian Wars had come to a tragic close. While the ‘true progressive’ wing of the APP opposed harsh treatment of the natives, the populist wing knew that Western voters would not tolerate a soft policy in this area. So the once proud peoples of North America were confined to reservations, dependent on Federal aid they rarely received enough of to subsist on.
Many state governments were picking up on the morality based movements the Federal government would not. 1896 saw an ever-dryer US, in the South and Midwest, while the coasts and Middle States chose local regulations or no prohibition at all. Women’s suffrage was also expanding at somewhat slower pace; in socially conservative New England especially there was limited suffrage or no suffrage at all.
The affluent middle and upper class of America now enjoyed new luxuries. Electricity was widely available and making inroads West, and the development of both public transportation (subways and trolleys) and private vehicles (motorwagons were now becoming practical for personal use) made city and country life easy. Telephone use was growing at quick pace and newer technologies like vacuum tube based wireless telephones was one marvel among many that was intriguing the American people.
But perhaps the most remarkable new device was the wingcraft, the concept invented by a pair of motorwagon designers in the Republic of the Rio Grande and further refined with American capital. While airships had been around since the 1870s, the potential of these new machines enticed many military thinkers.
A NEW ERA
1885-1905
Despite their loss of Alaska, Russia’s successful campaigns in China were one of many factors used to boost Russian morale through the end of the 19th Century. However, in 1897 Tsar Alexander III dies, and Peter IV takes the throne. His policy is of consolidation rather than expansion, and making Russia a ‘hub’ for international relations rather than an antagonist. He envisioned a world where Russia was a center for world commerce, and as a result conducted policies that furthered Russian business and industrialization, though many accused him of installing cronies in charge of the new corporations and factories. Peter IV was also the first Russian tsar who seriously considered the ‘rights gap’ between Europe and Russia. However, his intentions were not entirely benign. Independence movements in Finland and the Ukraine especially were troubling him, though they had yet to gain much strength. He hoped by both encouraging pro-Russian settlement in these areas and instituting some semi-democratic reforms, he could calm those who claimed Russia was too oppressive, including the collectivists who were influenced by Western European governments by creating a new Duma, abolished by his namesake in the 1700s.
As part of his wish to make Russia more internationally respected nation, Peter tried to make amends with the United States and the Republic of Alaska, and to a lesser extent with Britain. Believing that the Americans were more concerned with “profits than politics”, he believed that they could be swayed, over time, from the British sphere of influence. Especially because of the imperialist aims of the Federalist Party, Russia wasn’t interested in making an enemy of what some thought could be a future great power should it be roused out of its comparative isolationism.
China looked to rebuild nationalist sentiment by fighting a war with the even more dilapidated Taiping Kingdom, and was victorious in the closing years of the 19th century. However, China was facing internal problems. Though the Taipings had been brought back under Chinese control after years of whittling away at their power, the fact that the war had made them more reliant on Western nations, and the Imperial government’s reluctance to take action against them, was troubling to many. As a result, many Chinese were entertaining ideas of a new Chinese Republic, nationalist and free from outside influence. It seemed the Imperial government’s latest victory would be its last.
In Europe, the devotion of resources to colonization rather than continental warfare kept the peace between the nations. However, within them was another matter. Austria-Hungary’s uncontested dominance of the Balkans was beginning to weaken, and in Britain, the death of Queen Victoria in 1899 brought about many new questions about Britain’s new direction. Though the new King promised to keep up the policies of his predecessor, the British people were not so sure that it was a good idea. Many already thought Britain was paying too much attention to foreign ventures rather than its own problems, and that the traditional liberal movements were closer to free market policies than pro-labor ones. As a result, in 1897 the People’s Party was formed.
However, the ‘new threat of collectivism’ was beginning to alarm Europe, as the two industrialized collectivist nations, the French Republic and the Rhineland, were accused of exporting their ideals elsewhere. Prussia’s conservative society was grappling with a growing revolutionary movement, and French-influenced Italy began to feel the tugs of collectivist influence.
Despite the calls for ‘people’s governments’, collectivist movements did little to stop the colonialist policies of the European nations. Where colonies existed, they were expanded, and Italy took it upon itself to take Lebanon, and eventually the Holy Land, from the Ottoman Empire. France, Spain, and surprisingly the Kalmars expanded holdings in West Africa.
The variety of medical advances made in studying the health problems spawned by the jungle work on the Nicaragua Canal had also begun to speed inroads into Central Africa, where previously European settlements had failed. The semi-autonomous Boer Republics, with British permission and guidance, pushed north, while the ‘Prussian Kongo’ was recognized as a legitimate territorial claim. Tales of immense resources meant that whoever could establish their power in Central Africa effectively would likely be the richer for it. But the wars to penetrate into the most independent part of Africa were fraught with danger for the European imperial powers. Despite technological advantages in arms and medicine, the tenacity of the region’s cultures and wildlife meant that it would be years before the European powers truly controlled the region.
THE GREAT EXPERIMENTS
1896-1912
Some historians will say that the election of 1896 was a greater blow to the party’s platform than any other factor. The emboldened APP was pitted against a Supreme Court and legislature balancing against it, yet Smithers was emboldened by a second victory. He called for tariffs combined with a minimum wage to keep American workers happy and began to make murmurings about the nationalization of railroads and trust breaking later in 1897, and when the National Anti-Trust Bill and the proposed 1896 Tariff passed in the House; and stocks took a serious slump. The actual effects of the two pieces of legislature will remain unknown, but what was sure was that when so many Americans had a stake in big business and their interests, it would be reflected in their votes. The Federalists gained a majority in the Senate and prevented a 2/3rds majority in the House by the APP, neither of the bills made it past the Congress. However, the initial shocks still resonated as both sides prepared for the election of 1900. Wallace Vaughn, an old guard Federalist and pro-trade advocate; took office and saw the US through a fairly uneventful period in history, marked primarily by the introduction of higher taxes on liquor and tobacco, attempting to please both the morality-oriented voters and also to deal with decreasing US revenue. But without the Trust-Acts, some Americans were appalled when the stock market picked up again and the rich industrialists were making gargantuan sums of money while many Americans were still unemployed or underpaid.
Peter Gabriel, a moderate member of the APP, won in 1904, and many moderate Federalists retained their seats. In 1905 the US Constitution was amended so that taxes on income specifically could be made without apportion. This is because in part of the efforts of Federalists, who feared that the government might institute capital transfer or inheritance taxes that were claimed to be ‘unhealthy for business’. Nevertheless, tax rates were not abused or turned into direct redistribution as feared by many hard-line Federalists. He also encourages Women’s Suffrage, and in 1907 another Constitutional amendment is passed to guarantee all American citizens over 21 the right to vote. However, things begin to shake up with European problems once again, and the wave of immigration leads Gabriel’s successor, former Vice President Zachary Johannes to institute reductions in US quotas all around during the ensuing economic troubles, claiming ‘American jobs must come first’ and believing that while Americans were unemployed, they should not allow exploitation of immigrant labor.
Further South, Mexico’s populist revolutionary government established control over the entire nation, and had even taken control of the Yucatan Republic as a ‘semi-autonomous province’. Now, their sights were set on the small but wealthy Republic of the Rio Grande, first with revolutionary propaganda in hopes of destabilizing the government.
Elsewhere in Latin America, Pedro II passed away in 1897, and in response the conservative elements of Brazil created a ‘Brazilian Federal Republic’, one that gave power towards the Federal government and the industrial, slaveholding aristocracy. This resulted in a collectivist revolt by Brazil’s free laborers and progressives, who believed only a radical ideology would save Brazil from descending into another industrial slave power state. Because of this, their main targets were the industrial, commercial, and upper-class organs of Brazil, and many elements of Brazil’s own armed forces supported the Brazilian revolutionary movement. Peru invades its former territory in Brazil as a response, while Chile and Argentina both attempt to make land and power grabs in the guise of ‘stabilization’. Both are not eager to see a strong Brazilian state either way and the European and US interests both dictate that collectivism must be stopped. In fact, US corporations hire mercenaries and, during the Vaughn administration, with US military backing, intervene in several Central American Republics (and Orinoco) to maintain their own interests, while Britain uses Argentina and the US to protect theirs.
ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
1906-1912
The trouble ultimately started when Prussia invaded the Rhineland, a reactionary effort that would, supposedly, unify the German nations and the Prussian people behind the cause of the government. Believing that ‘a good war, like strenuous exercise, keeps nations strong’, the leadership of Prussia sent battlewagons were storming across the Rhineland Republic border by 1907, justifying their war outwardly with desires for ‘unification’ and ‘containing the collectivist threat’. Hypothesizing that the values of the Rhineland would make them weak-kneed pacifists who would quickly knuckle under in a real conflict, while the Rhineland was unable to effectively hold back Prussia, their resistance was quite effective and bought enough time for the French forces to move in and defend what was once their client.
However the Prussian war seemed to have the opposite effect as planned domestically. The global economic slump in industrial nations combined with the growing popularity of radical and left wing causes had left much of Germany’s working and fighting age population disgruntled with current policies. Meanwhile, the talk of unifying the ‘German race’ was quite disconcerting to the Poles and Baltic peoples who lived under Prussian rule. Labor federations protested the war when the government tried to justify pro-production policy by strikebreaking, and the strong monarchy was called a ‘blot on the face of Europe’ by Prussian Republicans.
This menagerie of opposition groups in Prussia would be the greatest stumbling block to the war. In industrial cities, Prussian labor protests were ordered to be struck down, ironically by drafted Prussians, who themselves were wary of the government’s motives. The war stretched on, inconclusively at best. Though a complete war of attrition was avoided, neither side could dominate the Rhineland. Britain threw in their support of Prussia in 1908 when it was decided by Conservative leadership that ‘a collectivist alliance spanning the Pyrenees to Poland is unacceptable’. While British naval support was able to fend off French attempts to blockade the nation, they did little in helping to suppress the collectivist movement inside Prussia.
At this point, the Slavic territories of Prussia were in outright revolt, holding that being a Russian client was better than being a Prussian servant. By 1910, Prussia realized that their war effort was coming at the cost of the state itself, and a peace treaty was hammered out in Stockholm. But rather than ending bloodshed, it simply internalized it within Prussia’s own borders. The loyalist troops’ excesses only heightened the revolutionary fervor, and the Prussian Civil War began in earnest. France and the Rhineland (and to a lesser extent Austria-Hungary) fed support into the revolutionaries while Britain did the opposite. Though American reporters like Jon Kunitz pleaded for the APP leadership in America to intervene against Prussia, while conservative and pro-market writers and much of the business-dominated news industry favored the British position of ‘containment’. Though a few eccentrics on both sides volunteered service or support towards either faction, their efforts were ultimately negligible. In 1911 Berlin was under siege by the Republicans, who ran the gamut from classical liberal thinkers to hard-line collectivists, and by the next year the Prussian monarchy reigned only in name, having fled to England. A moderate collectivist government took power and aligned itself with the French and Rhineland for support, believing they were all victims of the old monarchy.
In other corners of Europe, different wars dominated these years. The Slavic rebellions in Austro-Hungarian territory were widely supported by the Tsar, who believed his nation’s former ally was weak. War was officially declared by Austria-Hungary in 1909 against Russia, and Russia responded by sending soldiers across the border. Two years later, when Austria-Hungary saw what war had done to Prussia, decided to give up some of its land in the Balkans, and Russia agreed.
IT CAME TO THIS: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
“It is here that the true fallacy of militarist commercialism can be found: No humane or just system will force workers to make the guns that will shoot down their brothers” (Death of an Empire, Kunitz)
“We have been given so called ‘progressive’ Presidents, and yet there is not a bit of sympathy in our government for those on the continent and in the colonial power’s conquests… Ignorance of our fellow men has become a prerequisite for American progress. Ignorance of our fellow men has soiled the meanings of our own ideas. Ignorance of our fellow men has turned our progressivism into nationalism and selfishness, and ignorance of our fellow men will take a toll on our movement. Progressivism can never be about one nation. It must take up the cause of humanity or it will fail” (Death of an Empire, Kunitz)
“This so called ‘progress’ is nothing more than a front for collectivism, and some at least have enough honor to candidly admit to that. But this nation cannot become just another pawn in the collectivist game by staying at home. The so called ‘pacifist’ compatriots of the progressives have colonized West Africa, they have stirred revolt in Brazil, and they are grinding the opposition to their new government in Prussia with twice the enthusiasm of the old Kaiser” (Sen. Jacob Maynard, F-NJ)
“… If you don’t mind, I think this nation’s gone soft. European nations are rising and falling and they are getting more vicious than ever. Barring an outbreak of good sense in this country’s foreign policy, they will be turning their sights on our hemisphere next. They don’t see to have much of a problem with fighting their military equals, and without a strong force of our own and a consolidation, we will be the experiment in liberty that was” (Gen. Horace Walden, US Army)
“The so-called great civilizations of the world are built on the backs of the wretched, the neglected, and the ignorant, told that carrying the burden is a freedom and a privilege as they are ground into the dirt” (Political activist Albert Richards)
STIRRED AWAKE
1912-1916
American businessmen were fed up with APP rule, and combined with the government’s isolationist tendencies that kept it out of South America and Central America under those administrations. And while corporate mercenaries could certainly fight in the smaller nations of the world, Brazil’s civil war was another problem entirely. The US could not pick a side, to choose the Republicans would be to choose the slaveocrats of Old Brazil, to choose collectivism would be considered by many as a betrayal of American values. Especially with the post-war European ‘Collectivist Scare’, some Americans were unwilling to support the existing sides. However, there was one moderate choice, an idea floated by the British, to create a liberal Republic in the south of Brazil where a proper mix of resources and ‘willing men’ might make it a success compared to the more conservative and resource-scarce regions. The Brazilian issue was used as a plank in the Federalist 1912 platform, and surprisingly enough it was the old President Wallace Vaughn who was re-elected by a slim margin. He put strong interventionist Edgar Fitzpatrick as Secretary of War and waited as reports of atrocities in Brazil by the ‘immoral factions’ of the collectivists and the slave-holding authoritarians dominated the presses. Less advertised was Brazil’s position as a continental power and a strategic market. The papers were also filled with reports of the scrappy, courageous liberal republican fighters in the South, though they did not mention they already had the backing of most of the other South American nations.
However, Congress would approve the US intervention in Brazil for whatever the reason, and soon American troops were deployed into Rio Grande do Sul, which was guarded by British and Argentine soldiers. The war also marked the first use of combat aircraft in the Americas, which were used by the UK and the US for scouting and ‘raiding’ missions throughout the country. While this move had garnered the support of pro-Europe Chile, Peru and Gran Colombia wanted more territory or client republics that would serve in their interest. Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of all other parties, the collectivists in the Amazon region had taken a firm grip on the nation and few were willing to expend the resources and lives to remove them. As part of the complex negotiations, Southern and Eastern Brazil was organized into the Republic of Brazil, the Guyana was granted independence and given a chunk of former Brazil to offset the creation of the Republic of Amazonas, the collectivist state in the empire, and various other regions under de facto control of other nations were given to their respective conquerors. The two year finale to the long Brazilian Civil War was over in 1914, but the stage for a new war had been set. Things within the Brazilian Republic were already going to need a great deal of management: the emancipation of the slaves and the crackdown on the hated slave-holding class would require heavy military presence for some time yet.
It was not a true peace, because the United States especially knew that they could not let collectivism become a serious force in Latin America and still maintain their new hegemony over the region. There was, in fact, an assassination attempt against Amazonas Council Leader Gilberto Covas by mercenaries believed to be in the employment of the United States in 1915.
In Mexico, the new government issued the “Declaration for Mexican Justice”, the most notable section of which called for a return of the former Mexican territories of Baja California and the Rio Grande Republic to Mexican rule. Meanwhile, Mexican guerillas launched attacks into the Republic of the Rio Grande, especially attacking the oil companies and railroads in the area. These actions resulted in a ‘unified security perimeter’ along Mexico’s northern border by both nations, and by 1914 the US was at war again, penetrating deep into Mexican territory with mechanized cavalry to rout out the guerilla forces. Mexico declared this a violation of sovereignty, but neither nation officially declared war. Around this time many US critics began to say that the Mexican government was adopting the ‘authoritarian tendencies typical of collectivist movements’ and tried to establish a link between Mexico and the ‘collectivist threat’. Many of the more radical constituents of the APP were blacklisted by the group to maintain the party’s stability, and as a result these splinter groups formed the Labor Unity Party in 1916, though their split of voters actually gave Vaughn his re-election in that year. However, the fracture within the APP voting bloc was not entirely responsible for his victory. In this time of international turmoil, many believed Vaughn was strong enough on foreign policy to stave off the myriad of threats to American interests and the ‘American way of life’, both real and imagined.
GRAND DESIGNS
1906-1920
The last few corners of the world were annexed, lost, won and bargained for in what many collectivists called ‘the final stage of imperialism’. There was, quite simply, little left to conquer on Earth that was not in the hands of another power or their ally. With the instability in Brazil came a final rush for Southeast Asia, where the British and other colonial powers established new rubber plantations there quite successfully. The British and Portuguese also made several forays into India, where two states had finally established themselves as the powers in the inland regions emerged, one, to the west, was the Hindustan Confederation, while to the East lay the Magadha Kingdom. Other significant entities included the Uttar region, which was slowly becoming more integrated with the Confederation, and the Punjab Empire. The westernmost regions of former India had been re-conquered, and with enemies seeming to press on all sides, the Hindi population of India was looking towards unification as a solution to preventing further imperial encroachment. With virtually no access to ports and reliant on colonial powers for trade, the late 1900s provided the Hindi states with an opportunity to form a prospective ‘Hindi Union’, which incidentally lead to Punjab seeking closer relations with the West, particularly Russia.
Elsewhere, the anger against imperialism was manifesting itself in a different way. The Italian invasion of the Levant and near taking of Jerusalem lead to an outbreak of Islamist sentiment in the Middle East, with many from the British clients in the Middle East volunteering to fight the Italians in their territories. The movement against colonial organizations was popular among Sunnis in Egypt and Arabia, who called for the British to remove their presence from the ‘holy land’. Though British forces themselves went nowhere near Mecca or Medina, they were the de facto rulers of Egypt, which held the two regions under its jurisdiction. Though there were occasional attacks, there was nothing serious enough to make the British truly stand up and take notice.
That changed in the 1910s when some Islamist Nationalist leaders began to meet take after collectivist radicals who had engineered and fought in the Prussian Revolution. This finally came to full attention of the British Empire in 1914, when Italian soldiers captured Arabian radical leaders along with a collectivist ‘advisor’ from Rhineland in the Levant. However, outright war after 1912 simply did not occur. Most nations instead focused on rebuilding their arsenals and keeping a firm grip on any covert or revolutionary activity provoked by the ‘other side’.
China went through periods of continuing turmoil until 1916, when surprisingly quick revolution dethroned the Emperor who had become acquiescent to the demands of Westerners, and created a highly nationalist Chinese Republic. The following year, the new government was fighting to maintain control over the Muslim populations in the west and Tibet. South Africa received independence with a Dominion status, with the various semi-autonomous republics expressing their own desires through a semi-federalist system. However, the United Republics remained largely subservient to the British.
The remnants of the conservative Prussians fled the country after scares of a ‘purge’, and the colonies of Prussia remained staunchly conservative, with the ‘Imperial Prussian Kongo’ becoming a new nerve center for the conservative Prussian movement, though life in the colony was nowhere near the quality that had once been experienced in Prussia.
The 1910s were also marked by a good deal of political intrigue, with the possession of three industrial nations in Europe and footholds in South America, the collectivist movement could no longer be taken lightly. Britain, Russia, and Austria-Hungary formed a secret alliance after Italy began to slide towards collectivism. The United States was later informed of this pact and implicitly agreed as it prepared to suppress anti-Western and collectivist movements in its own hemisphere. The Untied States also formed the Special Tasks Group, a covert branch of the military for counter-revolutionary and collectivist operations in Latin America, which worked in conjunction with, and sometimes against, their governments to ensure that they remained firmly out of the collectivist camp. It was a time of peace, overall, but a dark one as the new decade dawned.
TWILIGHT
1916-1925
In the United States, it was a time of unparalleled prosperity and unparalleled paranoia. Under Vaughn the nation was a true industrial giant, with roughly 31% of world industrial output when Vaughn left office in 1921. Vaughn was succeeded by fellow Federalist and former Secretary of State Benjamin Kramer, who worked to secure greater ties with Britain and Russia alike while continuing Vaughn’s popular domestic policies. Not being the hard-liner on economic policies like his predecessor, he discouraged explicitly anti-union policies and reminded that the government should neither help nor hinder big corporations, declaring that “Our economy is self-regulating and self-sufficient, we need only ensure opportunity and things will work themselves out equitably”.
The US, along with Rio Grande, continued the quasi-war with Mexico throughout this time period, and as Mexico began to restrict raids into the two nations, it also began to build up its own arms industry with help from Europe. Central American nations began to fall under Mexico’s sway, nowhere was this more troubling for the US than in Nicaragua where revolutionaries plotting an overthrow of the government in one of the continent’s most strategic chokepoint. The STG was involved in suppressing them there, an assassination of one of Orinoco’s more left-leaning ministers, and capturing or killing ‘collectivist spies and infiltrators’. The US kept the governments obedient, if not loyal, but the US knew it would need a stronger effort to root out anti-Western and anti-collectivist sentiment from the hemisphere.
In Asia, the Chinese Republic is able to prevent the secession movements in all regions save Korea and part of Tibet, which the Republic deemed was not worth the trouble of annexing. Instead, the Chinese would focus their efforts on rebuilding their military and industrial capacity for a war against Russia or Japan. Russia itself had designs on Korea and Japan, and as a result the change in government did little to improve prospects of stability in the region. Austria-Hungary was also beginning to experience some unrest from left-leaning worker’s groups, and it slackens its ties to the anti-collectivist alliance. This is offset by the death of Alfonso XIII in an aircraft accident during his trip to Northern Africa, resulting in his very conservative son taking the throne in Madrid. Alfonso XIV tries to strengthen ties with Britain and puts restrictions on collectivist movements and unions, angering some of the Spanish people. In 1923, the second year of his rule, there is an assassination attempt by radicals which fails, and soon what many call a ‘new Spanish inquisition’ is started to root out the radical leftists from Spain. Many are sent to the harshest reaches of Spanish Africa to do manual labor while others are simply killed after a brief, if existent, trial. A second attempt on his life succeeded, when a disaffected soldier shot him during a return from a visit to the UK in 1924. During the unrest that followed, his conservative advisors requested troop presence from the United Kingdom, enraging the leftist population of Spain. The Spanish government would not end martial law until the radical leftists had been ‘pacified’, but the leftists would not end their efforts until troops were withdrawn. After news of British soldiers oppressing the local population, the ‘Workers International Movement’, considered by some to be a puppet of the French government, said that if a referendum on Spanish government would not be held and British troops not withdrawn, they would start a campaign against the ‘reactionary’ nations and request support from the collectivist governments around the world.
Within the UK itself, in 1917 the Irish had peaceably requested, and were granted, independence, though in return they would still be a Commonwealth member and were forced to sign a guarantee that Ireland would not ally itself with any nation that was opposing British interests.
In Austria-Hungary, a crisis similar to that unfolding in Spain was beginning to occur, though it was not quite as violent as that in Spain. Slowly, the sides were formalized and the battlegrounds were laid out. Though Britain and Russia were the two single strongest nations, the collectivist nations had nearly the same industrial output and nearly equal naval tonnage. Another problem was that both of the ‘Big Two’ members were reliant on expansive, but unstable empires for their massive industrial growth, and both these empires were threatened by Islamic Nationalist and East Asian independence movements, both causes that collectivists had in fact courted. There was no single cause to the war to come; it was merely a convergence of fires ignited in the strategic flashpoints of the world. At no other time had the globe been so fully polarized, and what many historians today see as the outgrowth of the Napoleonic Wars was about to come full circle with an even bloodier result.
The XYZ Affair
As the relations between the US and France worsen, news of this diplomatic insult shocks the United States. Privateer combat intensifies along with American outrage at this new act. The young nation begins to forget the lessons of Washington when France continues to attack American shipping.
The final straw comes when French privateers begin hitting US ships near major ports on the Eastern seaboard, with rumors saying there were French privateers as far out as New York.
Soon after July 7, the United States declared war on the new government of France, and began to seek British support.
RECONCILIATION AND RETALIATION
By 1799, America was rising to the new challenges of the war. Boxed in on the continent, with Spain and France on her borders to the south and west, the Federalists used the promise of new lands to entice the Democratic-Republicans into supporting the war efforts. Alexander Hamilton, the mastermind behind the Federalist Party, hopes to use the prospect of new lands as a way to build up support in the West.
And so, the American armies are quickly rallied around old Revolutionary era-commanders, though Washington himself does not reprise the role in the Whiskey Rebellion, he spends the last of his days ill and bedridden in Mount Vernon, where he dies on December 14.
But the Americans do find one particularly powerful friend across the Atlantic in Great Britain, which is eager to take a chunk out of France's holdings in North America. Though some in England are skeptical of letting the US become too powerful, negotiations throughout 1799 start to slowly redraw the future maps of America.
Hungry for new land but wary of the instability in Hispanola, the British launch attacks on Guadaloupe and the other French Carribbean possessions, while revolt starts to fester in Haiti. French troops are massed on the islands, and silently concede their continental territory in hopes of defending their lucrative island colonies.
But not all nations are happy with an American Louisiana. Spain, bound to France by treaty and their territory in Louisiana, declares war on the Americans.
But the entire war exists more on the papers and pamphlets than it does in reality. Despite the Battle of Louisiana and skirmishes with Indians as American troops push into their 'new land', the Americans' actions at the time are more of an intricate land-grab than an actual military conflict.
In Florida, American militias raid Spanish troops and forts, but America doesn't have the troops to fully annex it, and Spain doesn't have the interests to devote large amounts of troops to take it.
For these reasons, 1799 is a year of political intrigue rather than military adventure in America.
In Europe, however, the war is shaping up to be something altogether different.
France was not in a good position at home. The Second Coalition, composed of the British, the Austrians, the Russians, the Ottomans, and to a negligible extent, the Americans, was pressing on France's colonies and capable of invading the French mainland itself. With promises of French victory at home and abroad, Napoleon Bonaparte stages his coup on November 2nd (the now infamous 11 Brumaire) and plots his response to the war effort. Tired of chaos at home and weak response to threats abroad, the people of France were widely in favor of their new leader, despite his less-than-democratic ascent.
RECONCILIATION AND RETALIATION
By 1799, America was rising to the new challenges of the war. Boxed in on the continent, with Spain and France on her borders to the south and west, the Federalists used the promise of new lands to entice the Democratic-Republicans into supporting the war efforts. Alexander Hamilton, the mastermind behind the Federalist Party, hopes to use the prospect of new lands as a way to build up support in the West.
And so, the American armies are quickly rallied around old Revolutionary era-commanders, though Washington himself does not reprise the role in the Whiskey Rebellion, he spends the last of his days ill and bedridden in Mount Vernon, where he dies on December 14.
But the Americans do find one particularly powerful friend across the Atlantic in Great Britain, which is eager to take a chunk out of France's holdings in North America. Though some in England are skeptical of letting the US become too powerful, negotiations throughout 1799 slowly redraw the future maps of America.
Hungry for new land but wary of the instability in Hispanola, the British launch attacks on Guadaloupe and the other French Carribbean possessions, while revolt starts to fester in Haiti. French troops are massed on the islands, and silently concede their continental territory in hopes of defending their lucrative island colonies.
But not all nations are happy with an American Louisiana. Spain, bound to France by treaty and interest, declares war on the Americans.
But the entire war exists more on the papers and pamphlets than it does in reality. Despite the Battle of Louisiana and skirmishes with Indians as American troops push into their 'new land', the Americans' actions at the time are more of an intricate land-grab than an actual military conflict.
In Florida, American militias raid Spanish troops and forts, but America doesn't have the troops to fully annex it, and Spain doesn't have the interests to devote large amounts of troops to take it.
For these reasons, 1799 is a year of political intrigue rather than military adventure in America.
In Europe, however, the war is shaping up to be something altogether different.
France was not in a good position at home. The Second Coalition, composed of the British, the Austrians, the Russians, the Ottomans, and to a negligible extent, the Americans, was pressing on France's colonies and capable of invading the French mainland itself. With promises of French victory at home and abroad, Napoleon Bonaparte stages his coup on November 2nd (the now infamous 11 Brumaire) and plots his response to the war effort. Tired of chaos at home and weak response to threats abroad, the people of France were widely in favor of their new leader, despite his less-than-democratic ascent.
SHATTERED EUROPE
1801-1807
Napoleon, watching his naval defeats in both the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, scrapped any plans to invade England. Instead, he would focus his efforts on controlling the continent. As Britain formed its Third Coalition of Austria, Russia, and Naples, Napoleon crowned himself leader of a new French Empire, which he would rule using ‘enlightenment principles’. While it was somewhat of a morale boost to Frenchmen, it did not deter his European enemies.
Both sides geared up for war, and in 1804, the Coalition struck. With Napoleon’s forces concentrated near Bavaria and Italy, they decide to attack through Saxony and the neighboring states. A drive to the Rhine was launched, while Naples hoped to strike Italy as Napoleon shifted forces.
However, there were holes in the plan. Napoleon confronted the enemy at Gotha and struck a decisive blow against Austrian forces, cut them off again at Dresden, and left Austria’s armed forces nearly helpless to prevent his attack into Prague.
Because Napoleon had saved his European naval forces, he was able to prevent allied landings in both the Mediterranean and Germany, and when Prussia massed troops in Saxony to counterattack, Napoleon moved to encircle them near Leipzig in what many call one of Napoleon’s greatest victories. Having weakened Prussia, Napoleon battles his way into Prussia in late 1805.
Napoleon formed his ‘Confederation of the Rhine’ at great expense to Austria in mid-1805, but in the spring of 1806, his gains were under threat. Russian troops were marching into Prussia, so at Koenigsburg and Eylau, he dealt significant blows to their forces.
Negotiations dominated the remainder of 1806 and early 1807, but before the winter was over, an uneasy peace settled over Europe. Britain, which had yet to commit anywhere near the full power of its land forces in Europe, began looking for a different way to strike at the Empire and its clients.
Farther south, Muhammad Ali started his rebellion against the Ottomans, with quiet British support. The Anglo-American alliance and Eli Whitney had brought the potential of cotton to higher priority, and the merchants of England were quick to realize cotton’s new potential. Knowing the potential of the Nile’s farmlands, Britain would back Ali’s ascension to power quietly, but effectively. Though Ali didn’t want to become a foreign puppet, he knew the support of the British was not to be dismissed so lightly when his nation was at such an early and vulnerable stage. With their capital and the fervor of a new nation, Ali fought out the civil war and drew up plans for a grander, modern and prosperous Egypt.
THE BITTER END
1803-1807
While war in Europe went on in fits and starts, conflict in America was a constant, but softer drumbeat. By 1804, America had massively increased both its Navy and Army, and was the de facto ruler of Florida and much of the ‘Louisiana’ territories. Spanish forces that were supposed to arrive in relief were quickly put to the bottom of the Galician Coast, and so US forces rallied as they marched towards what is today known as the city of Pikesville in Texas, and defeated Spanish forces there, thus opening ‘a Southern corridor’ to the Pacific. With the ever-increasing power of the British fleet, Spain concedes much of its continental claims to the United States. Florida is given up, as is the northern half of Mexico, in 1805. However, when Spain continues to sink US ships in the Gulf of Mexico, the US declares war again soon after, this time seeking to take Cuba and Puerto Rico. But while the British fleet’s blockade of French and Spanish colonies helped, they were unable to lend any significant land support due to bloody, costly fighting in Hispanola.
And so in 1807, the US and Britain continued their Caribbean campaigns, neither making much progress despite naval superiority.
A CRUMBLING PEACE
1807-1811
With the nations of the European continent quaking, Napoleon watches as the British tear through his possessions in the Americas. But he has grander ideas. As he watches Ottoman attempts to retake Egypt unravel, both sides prepare for big advances. The British plot an invasion of Spanish colonies or the Netherlands, while Napoleon looks eastward for further conquests. Britain begins organizing another coalition, this time of Austria and Naples.
When fighting breaks out in 1810, Britain launches an invasion of the Netherlands, noting that Napoleon’s men are deployed mostly further south. However, the campaign falters. Napoleon begins encouraging revolutions in the Balkans and Greece, fighting skirmishes with Naples as he marches down the Balkan Peninsula. The Ottomans quickly move their army to intercept, but find their supply lines cut off by rebels and are destroyed by French forces. Greece becomes independent while Napoleon creates Balkan protectorates. In 1811, the British and Ottomans begin moving troops to the Middle East, while Russia considers shedding its neutrality.
However, Britain continues to support the independent Egypt under Ali, and begins to look for methods of funding its campaigns to not only push Napoleon out of Asia, but to snap up the colonies in South America.
THE FEAST IN THE SOUTH
1807-1811
With Simon Bolivar’s ship back to South America sunk by the British fleet, revolutions in South America do not fare quite as well. In 1808, Britain launches their first invasion of South America, into the Rio de la Plata area in Argentina. Posing themselves as ‘liberators’ rather than invaders, they establish a protectorate in Argentina, paying off locals for their support and killing those who fight the new government.
In Haiti, the slave revolt is in full swing, and the French commanders there either flee to the West or request passage back to Europe. The British allow the French to leave, and then occupy the Dominican, while the US takes Puerto Rico in 1809 and Cuba in 1811.
The United States also welcomes Louisiana into the Union in 1811, but the slave-free state controversy is already starting to grow. Pinckney, the current President, wants to keep slavery limited and encourage industrial growth, but with America’s role to a war coming to an end, a deeper domestic divide seems likely to appear.
SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES
1800-1812
Because of the lack of European-scale conflict on most of the American continent, settlement often went hand in hand with soldiering. Because the Federal Government, and not the states, was the owner of the nation’s new lands, there was a rift in the US political system over the price at which it should be sold. The Democratic-Republicans wanted land to be sold off as cheap as possible to encourage the development of their idyllic farming communities. The Federalists, however, saw the land as a source of valuable public revenue. But compromises were made. Soldiers who had traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles to fight the Spanish were rewarded with cheap real estate in the west. But the Federalist program of rewarding soldiers was controversial in many respects.
Chief among them were the formation of black units, which did much of the fighting in Florida and the Tejas area. As part of the program, which Hamilton had devised during the revolution and put into action during the Franco-American War, he (a Major General, appointed by Adams) had set up a program of buying black slaves from owners and promising them freedom for fighting, an armed version of indentured servitude.
Hamilton also railed for a restriction of slavery into the territories, which Pinckney reluctantly agreed to. As a compromise, he set up the Louisiana Act of 1809, which said that slave-state status would be determined by vote, which conflicted with the earlier precedent established by the Northwest Ordinance. Pinckney also moderated the land prices to keep backlash from the Democratic-Republicans down.
This also gave the Federalists the political capital they needed to promote their programs of industry. Congress pushed through many Hamiltonian business reforms, and the need for more warships sparked a greater interest in Fulton’s steam-powered vessels, though it would be years before the Navy put one on the open seas.
However, in many ways Pinckney was a martyr for Hamilton’s political causes. Much of his Southern appeal was lost when he began pursuing what seemed to be anti-slavery policies, and though he fared better with smaller farmers, soldiers, and the pioneers moving west, the wealth and influence of the Southern aristocracy and the hardliner anti-Federalists were bearing against him.
Fearing that government was getting too large and with many fearing that the Federalists were plotting to abolish slavery completely, Madison, a strict constructionist (though one who was not very far from the Federalists on other matters), won the election of 1812.
BLOODY BARGAINING
1812-1816
Napoleon’s ‘liberation’ of the Balkans and Greece now threatens Constantinople, and rather than trying to prop up the withering Ottoman Empire, Russia decides to take over the whole show, and Britain, knowing that if it does not fill the power vacuum from an Ottoman fall, the other nations will, decides to marshal troops from India.
In his most ambitious move yet, Napoleon blockades the Gibraltar, and wins a few lucky naval victories that prevent the British from advancing into the Sea and thwarting his plans. Marshaling troops from Greece, he puts Constantinople under siege and handily defeats the Ottoman troops.
Russia, which had been quietly waging its war in the background, expands its campaign to the Middle East, and the Ottomans, while able to prevent Napoleon from taking the capital, do so at the expense of their territory in the Middle East and Central Asia. Russia marches down the Caucasus and threatens Turkey itself in 1813, though they become bogged down in the mountains, losing many men. The entire Turkish region is virtually under siege, and the opportunistic new government in Egypt begins to pick off the Arabian territories of the old regime, while a British force lands in Mesopotamia.
The war of attrition lasts through 1815, with the Ottomans whittled down to Asian Turkey and the lands to the immediate south of it, and the Janissaries still more interested in internal power than national influence, the Ottoman Empire folds.
The great session of negotiations that follows results in the Treaty of Athens in 1815. The British and their ally in Egypt receive much of Ottoman Northeast Africa and the Red Sea Coast along with Mesopotamia, Russia receives land around the Black Sea and European Turkey (including Constantinople). To Austria goes the remainder of the Balkans, and France receives little actual territory (unless one counts the pro-French independent nation of Greece), but manages to consolidate his Empire. Britain; bled nearly white by conflict and with more conquests still to digest, decides on leaving the Napoleon situation be.
By sacrificing millions of men and a major empire, Europe had gained a blood-stained peace. Napoleon now turns himself to domestic concerns. Expanding on his role as an ‘enlightened dictator’, he hopes to build stability and loyalty in his new domain. However, as the troops return home from the East, Prussia re-arms itself for a go at what it believes is a weak Confederation of the Rhine. How long Napoleon’s peace and government will last becomes a worrying question.
PRECARIOUS EXPANSION
1812-1820
Madison, who was unable to stop the Bank’s extension in 1811, tries to reason with his party while avoiding falling too deep into Federalists policies. But almost immediately, his Presidency becomes controversial.
Unfortunately for the growing western population, Madison vetoed many transportation bills, prompting many states around the Great Lakes to organize themselves to develop a canal system. Hamiltonian policies had sped about the rise of organized corporations and industries, so in 1815 the construction of the Erie Canal began.
Madison did keep up America’s military though, and at the request of many military leaders he approved money for the development of steam vessels for the Navy. With the construction of canals and the resumption in trade, the demand for new ships only furthered the prosperity of the New England shipbuilders and Hamilton’s industrial vision.
Hamilton also encouraged the development of new military technology. Having fought against both Spaniards and Indians during his campaigns in what was now the Western United States; Hamilton took great interest in the works of John Hall and Eli Whitney, both of whom had set about working on mechanically interchangeable rifles. Hall, however, had come up with something remarkable: a breech-loading rifle. Hamilton took about to promoting the rifle as one of the ‘great triumphs of American industry’ and would use his influence in politics to push through large orders of the weapon, primarily financed by revenue from the Banks, which had yet to be used on major transportation infrastructure.
But far from America’s shores, trouble was brewing. Madison’s desire for expanded trade, especially with Europe now that fighting seemed to be coming to a close, was facing some new problems. By 1816, the Barbary Pirates were beginning their attacks on the United States once again, almost as soon as the American ships began entering harbor. Before re-election he railed that “We gave no tribute to France. We will give none to the Barbary Coast!” Despite his unpopular stance on internal improvements, Madison’s tough stance on the Pirates appealed to the nationalist fervor sweeping America, and so after his re-election, Madison dispatched the war heroes of the Franco-American conflict to fight off the pirates. Attacking Tripoli and Tunis, over the course of a year the US hammered out agreements to ensure it would never again have to pay for the safe passage of its vessels.
During this entire process, the absorption of the new territories had begun in earnest. The state of Tejas was admitted to the Union, with a significant population of free-black soldiers, and soon after came the state of Franklin. The area to the north named Oklahoma was kept as ‘Indian Territory’. Mississippi, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Maine were all admitted to the United States.
But the admission of new states had brought on new problems for the young nation. The slavery divide was more intense than ever before. While pro-Federalist commanders in the Cuba Territory had guaranteed the freedom of Cuban slaves, whether or not they would be allowed to become citizens was an entirely different question. If their citizenship, or at least freedom was not guaranteed, the current governor of Cuba, John Eager Howard, decides to grant the Cubans citizenship, though much longer than it would take a white immigrant to get it, based on an un-passed bill regarding citizenship of foreign peoples who, by virtue of some treaty signed by governments thousands of miles away, were now in US territory.
While the Supreme Court struck down the notion as unconstitutional and set equal standards, the controversy only grew. Hamilton was not only an industrialist, but one of the most progressive thinkers on race relations (outwardly) of the era. While some politicians demanded that an equal balance of slave and free states be maintained, many Federalists (and small-farmer Democratic-Republicans who did not want the competition of organized plantation labor in their new lands) spoke against it, with more moderate politicians pointing to a plebiscite, as in Louisiana, and the radicals demanding abolition.
During this time, most states moved towards ‘universal white male suffrage’, especially in the West. Black male suffrage was also prevalent in New England and other free states, as well as in Tejas. Many in the deep South feared slavery would be abolished soon, because of the prospect of an imbalance between slave and free states.
Meanwhile, the industrial revolution was starting to take off in the US. With earlier Federalist control and a moderate Democratic-Republican President, the United States had taken after Britain in a number of ways. With immigration to the US rapidly increasing (especially after the destabilizing effects of the Napoleonic wars in Germany), the US found that the only resistance to its growth would be political, not economic.
THE FEAST OF SPOILS
1816-1825
Exhausted in Europe, the powers now turned to running the territories they had bargained with and squabbled over. The power with the most new territory and influence was Great Britain. From its protectorate in Patagonia to new territory in Mesopotamia, Britain’s global reach had only been expanded by conflict. But for now, their military capital was spent. With no power both able and willing to re-colonize Spain’s former American possessions, most of them are de jure free. The new Republics of Chile, Peru, and Colombia sprung up in the aftermath and began the process of solidifying their new nations, mostly with British and American aid. Direct colonization of any of the new nations by Europe was frowned upon by the Americans, and for the British, who could not have done so anyway, it was not much of an impediment to relations. In the Caribbean, trade thrived.
In Mexico, a new government was formulated, one that attempted to satisfy the liberals and conservatives both. With a Republican legislature, but a strong executive and some protection for the aristocracy to satisfy the powerful landowners, Mexico seems to have a stable government, lead by war veteran Santa Anna.
But there is one priority that seems to dominate the Mexican ruling class’ minds: revenge against the Americans and British, who’d taken what they believed to be ‘their’ land (though their nation did not exist at the time). Seeking aid from Napoleon, who’d nearly become their enemy, Mexico rearmed itself in hoping of claiming a place in the sun among the many infant nations in the Americas.
Back in Europe, wounds were dressed and plots were hatched. Among devastated Germany, immigrants went west and Prussia marshaled new armies for a future war against France and its Rhine client. Napoleon himself was putting the finishing touches on his empire, attempting to ensure its survival after his death for his young son, the ‘King of Rome’. Passing popular reforms to please the people of France and glorifying his war victories, Napoleon also knew of the threat from Prussia and maintained his military accordingly.
Russia, emboldened by victory but still troubled, fought off an 1824 coup organized by the handful of officers that visited Western Europe. But for the most part, Russians were satisfied with their nation’s performance in the war, having finally captured Constantinople.
In Britain, more liberal MPs were slowly gaining more, though the conservatives were still dominating. The anti-slavery policies of the Federalists were supported by many of the more liberal politicians in Britain, such as the Whigs, and calls for abolition of slavery were growing, especially now that the UK and US had taken on Hispanola as a protectorate.
CLAY FEET
1824-1832
Though Americans were fairly happy with the Madison administration, westerners wanted a President that would support more internal improvements. As a result, John Quincy Adams, of the Federalist Party, won the 1824 election. Those elections also brought increasingly anti-slavery Congressmen, especially in the Senate. Westerners not only wanted federal support for infrastructure in the west, but the wanted slaveholding competition out.
Adams program helped expand roadways out farther West to aid the settlement of the Pacific coast region, and strengthened the Canal System. US steam technology, due to more cooperation with Britain, was also moving at a steady clip, and the US had begun deploying some steam-powered combat vessels and a transoceanic shipping line. Western entrepreneurs also started taking interest in a new concept of land-based steam locomotion that could make up for the canal advantage in the Great Lakes states.
But the dark clouds on the political horizon were about to burst.
Especially because of Hamilton’s policies, slaveholders were nervous about their future in the US. But things were only complicated in 1829, when American citizens in Cuba passed the 60,000 mark. Though the Senate was balanced and the House in favor of the South, a battle over the statehood of Cuba was sure to ensue. And even though the conditions of an average Cuban farm or plantation worker were not much better than his mainland counterpart, the Cuban laborers did have one thing to their credit: many were citizens under the liberal laws designed to avoid a revolt earlier. Combined with the influx of settlers and its position as a nexus of American trade, it seemed American society would soon erupt. The re-election of Adams and the Federalists wrought grumblings of secession in the South, who believed Congress was getting ‘too powerful’ with its regulation of trade through tariffs, and worries of future abolition.
When Cuba was voted into the Union after a number of Southern Congressmen walked out in 1830, Calhoun issued a scathing discourse against the centralized government of the Federalists, the excesses of Congress, and the ‘unconstitutionality’ of the restriction of territories to slavery. When parties were usually campaigning for the mid-terms, anti-Federalist radicals attempted to assassinate Adams, and militias were formed in the Carolinas and Georgia, where they vowed to ‘protect our property from Yankee Congressmen’. In the spring of 1830, Adams deploys troops to Franklin and begins marching more down through Virginia. Upon hearing this, Calhoun leads the states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama to secede and form the Confederate Republic of America. Casting themselves as ‘new American revolutionaries’, they muster troops to fight the incoming Federal troops. Entering South Carolina, the militia is beaten back for lack of organization and inferior weaponry when compared with the Whitney-Hall breechloaders in use by the Federal soldiers. US Navy steamships move to blockade the states from their vital source of income: cotton. When the CRA attempts to use clout from Britain, they find that the lack of control over other Southern states, Egypt, and India, has made their difference negligible.
Calhoun, and many other slaveholders (along with their slaves), flee to Brazil for the most part, fearing persecution by Adams and the other Federalists. At the end of the crisis in 1831 (amid a new Federalist majority aided by the lack of representation from a few states), Adams announces a program of ‘compensated manumission’ that includes a gamut of measures from the old serve-for-freedom programs of the Franco-American War to emigration programs to Liberia or Haiti.
As the entire affair unfolded, Mexico began to mobilize troops near their border, looking towards Tejas and Franklin eagerly, feeling the US is in a state of weakness. And with Napoleon and his allies looking towards increasing aid to Mexico, Adams began to hammer out the foreign policy he would become so famous for. Declaring that the Americas must remain a ‘sovereign domain’, he decided that US power would be used to prevent further re-colonization of South America, and that America would prevent coercive influence in other states in the Americas from being used against it.
Whether or not the world would heed his calls was another matter entirely.
ONE MAN'S LEGACY
1826-1835
An aging Napoleon is confronted with one final challenge when Prussia declares war and marches into the Confederation of the Rhine in 1827. Bringing together his best generals on that front, he is able to rebuff the Prussian army and fight it to a standstill within a few months. Both governments agree to revert to status quo antebellum, and many historians now regard it as the war that preserved Napoleon's empire. He would live till 1834, and his massive funeral in Paris was a testament to his greatness.
Succession occurred fairly smoothly, for Napoleon's reforms and industrialization program had won him great support among workers and soldiers alike. But the nations of Europe knew that his successors were unlikely to match his military brilliance, so plans were hatched to put France 'back into its rightful place'.
Britain's William IV conducts actions in Parliament during the reform crisis that allow the Whigs to make great gains in the legislature. In the early 1830s, they begin the manumission of slavery through indentured servitude.
The Spanish also use this time to occupy much of former Ottoman North Africa, and the French take smaller parts of Algeria and Tunisia. Britain, however, ensures that its power in Egypt and the Mideast remains unchecked. At this time, the concept of a canal through the Suez becomes popular in Britain, which already enjoys good relations with Egypt because of aid and cotton trade. Russia begins to make designs on Persia, but British diplomacy staves off the war at the very least.
Life inside Russia, however, is not good for those not of the Orthodox faith. After the captue of Constantinople, a new wave of religious fervor swept Russia, and many Jews fled to Europe, especially the French client of Poland.
The US (and Britain to a good degree) made good on the promises laid out in what we now call the 'Adams Doctrine'. Britain and the US solidified their trade links with Colombia and increased them with Peru and Chile. The role of the British and US in South America at this time was actually somewhat stabilizing, with their diplomacy averting a war between Colombia and Peru over Ecuador.
Brazil, however, having secured their independence from Portugal after a series of wars in the late 1820s, established government formally under Pedro I and the 1830 Constitution. Using a mix of British and Napoleonic ideals, the so-called 'liberal empire' would be the major slaveholding nation in the Americas. Despite some controversy over his policies, Pedro I managed to hold the young nation together until his death in 1835. Pedro II, his successor, would capitalize on the infant nationalism of Brazil.
THE LURCHING JUGGERNAUT
1832-1840
Jackson won the 1832 election because of the growing power of the Western states, and the old Federalist standby of the National Bank faded quietly, its existence no longer required. Jackson’s platform was based around pro-Western policies, and expansion was one of them. So, the US in 1833 decided to resolve all border disputes with England. Giving up some of its territory in Maine and resolving the border to the Oregon country at the 49th parallel, Jackson wanted more land in the Oregon country, so in exchange for some of the revenue collected by the tariff (and a later abolishment of it to please British manufacturers), Jackson was able to claim Oregon country up to the 54-40 line in the Treaty of 1834.
However, Jackson had a new challenge to manage. Santa Anna, his army re-equipped and re-trained, was making his move, marching up to California, claiming that the Mexican government would not recognize the US claim, since Spain their ‘former colonial ruler’ had signed the treaty for it. Believing he could draw out the battle and defeat the American armies as they came, and that US sectional divisions (as evidenced by the recent insurrection in the South) would prevent an effective response, he hoped he could place Mexico among the New World powers.
General Winfield Scott, marching out of Franklin, fought his first battle at Ciudad Juarez, sweeping aside the forces Santa Anna had placed there to delay his relief to the siege he was conducting in San Francisco. Fighting continues throughout 1835, at the end of the year, Scott lifts the siege in San Francisco and Jackson decides to invade Mexico as ‘punishment’, with the Marines and Navy launching assaults into the Yucatan and Veracruz. When Santa Anna initiates his ‘war powers’ to maintain control through the tumult, two new Republics splinter off from Mexico, both with US aid and protection, one in the Rio Grande and the other in the Yucatan. The US demands the sale of Baja California as well, and Mexico grudgingly obliges. Santa Anna is removed from power in a coup, but the US-Mexican animosity remains.
Jackson is re-elected, and continues to pass pro-Western policies, though he is careful not to hurt the industrial Midwest and North too much. The campaigns in California also bring a new finding to light: gold is found in the territory, and settlers rush out. Back East, economic development is going steadily despite some shocks from the loss of the bank, but by now a significant banking system had already developed in New England and other parts of the country. The first transatlantic steamship line was established, and the US steam fleet was stronger than ever. New naval technologies, such as the Morey Engine, were being experimented with, while railroad boom opened up faster transport to the west where canals could not reach.
For the Native Americans, though, times were not as good. Jackson was planning to push them out into Oklahoma and the Dakotas, and most settlers would rather have them farther out than that. But for now, conflict had settled in North America.
THE NEW DISCONTENTS
1836-1842
Napoleon II unfortunately did not maintain the same respect among his clients that Napoleon did. The Confederation of the Rhine especially was becoming a new battlefield, not one of men as during the Napoleonic Wars, but one of ideas. While France had a semi-meritocracy based upon Voltaire’s ideals, the Confederation of the Rhine was ruled by an oligarchic collection of Princes.
Influenced by Hegel and Rosseau, the people of the Confederation had been exposed to enlightened ideas but had yet to experience them. Many thinkers of the Young Hegelian school went to the Rhine where they could avoid suppression by Prussian authorities.
1841 brought the first revolutions in the Confederation of the Rhine. While France’s enemies were eager to see this, the philosophy of the revolutionaries was seen as too radical by Prussia and the United Kingdom. They called for majoritarian policies, an end to organized religion, and increased workers rights. The quickly industrializing nations of the world were not eager to see such a philosophy spread.
Napoleon II deployed troops to the Rhine to little avail, the tactics French soldiers had practiced were not effective in counter-revolutionary campaigns. Blood and iron would not overcome what was, at its core, an ideological movement.
In Italy, the new revolutions were based on the restoration of old monarchies rather than radical philosophies. Poland, knowing that France was the only guarantor of its independence, was far more stable than the other Napoleonic clients. No major power would interfere directly other than France in the Rhine, but the consequences of the 1830s-1840s revolutions were felt across Europe. They were both spurned by a recession in the late 1830s and they fed continuing economic trouble throughout the 1840s. Labor movements in Britain and Prussia increased in fervor, while Russia suppressed any movement towards a liberal government.
Britain was however, tied up elsewhere.
Their client state in Argentina had gone to war with Brazil over the control of the Rio de la Plata, with Brazil winning most of the initial victories. Britain responded with naval force, and in the war of 1841 they not only pushed Brazil back, but instructed them to ‘abandon the slave trade’. Brazil said it would comply, but the trade continued for decades more in a somewhat more limited capacity.
Gran Colombia was also shaking up, with Ecuador attempting secession from the federation in 1836. Of the nations of South America, the United States had the most influence here through its Federalist ideals in government. Mexico only balkanized further as the semi-autonomous Central American states broke off and went into orbit around the UK-US alliance through the British client in the Honduras.
Another consequence of the revolutions in Europe was increased immigration. Germans mainly went to the United States or Argentina, while many Dutch nationalists who feared persecution by Napoleon II went to their kindred Boers in the Cape Colony, with smaller portions going to America.
TESTING STRENGTH
1840-1852
Federalist Henry Clay is elected President in 1840 on a moderate platform based primarily on unity between the interests of the sections. He pledges to keep up the slave manumission program when some thought Jackson’s followers might end it, and under his administration constitutional amendments were passed that banned involuntary servitude and slavery once and for all after 1865, though compensation continued. While Clay did lower the tariff, he did slightly increase land prices, but promised to provide more federal funding to railroads and ‘span the continent’ with iron, which appealed to the West. However, jockeying over which companies would receive the contracts continued, and a great debate emerged over the location of the route, though the predominating attitude indicated that it would travel through the Industrial Midwest to San Francisco, the largest city in the state of California.
Clay’s first term also saw the beginning of the largest wave of immigration in history thus far, kicked off by Germany. The ‘bourgeoisie’ classes of Germany, particularly devout believers and businessmen who had their fortunes ruined by revolution, crowded into the United States. Irish too came during the Potato Famine, and when Prussia invaded Poland years later, many Poles flocked to America. This brought about serious societal shifts in America, particularly in the industrialized North. While business owners in the Federalist Party encouraged immigration, for it needed the influx of labor to prevent a drain of population to the West (The constant immigration also ensured that unions and other ‘radical institutions’ did not take hold as easily in America), the Democratic-Republican Party found itself in a bind. The populist wing of the Party wanted a restriction on immigration and better conditions for ‘hardworking American laborers and farmers’, an updated version of Jefferson’s vision of the US. However, the Jacksonian wing was far more liberal on immigration, and while it liked the small-government laissez faire attitude of the original party, they believed that government interference worked both ways and that the government should promote rugged American individualism, not class-based politics. They also parted ways with the populist wing on immigration, which Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans typically discouraged. With the election of 1844 and the effective ‘shattering’ of the agrarian vision, the party split into the American Party of nativists and the Liberty Party, effectively ensuring Clay a second term. But political strife flared outside elections too. In the Midwest, WASPs tried to organize to keep out cheaper immigrant labor, much to the chagrin of big business. During the 1845-1846 period; as more and more blacks were freed, they found it difficult to get in to some of the factories in the Great Lakes industrial belt, so while some stayed, many went to work instead on the railroads and settled in the West or the lands around the railroads.
Clay also fell under the popular pressure by most to expand American power and influence through Central America to “… protect the region from [Continental] European imperialism and the Mexican dictatorship.” One of the more popular ideas circulating was one of a canal through Nicaragua, a now independent client-ally of the United States and the United Kingdom. In 1845 the two nations signed a secret agreement that any canal would be under their joint ownership or influence to prevent the expansion of foreign power in the region under the Adams Doctrine.
The rapid expansion into the West brought with it an expansion of technology and militarism. The United States Army engaged in a series of clashes with various native American groups throughout this time period, and was quite successful due to the advantage of their breech-loading rifles, where earlier settlers and soldiers were felled due to older muzzle-loading weapons. As a result, the Army and the Winchester-Hall Company began developing repeating rifles that would hold multiple rounds for cavalry use and general sale.
Another innovation was by Colt’s firearm company, previously famous for their revolver. Their proposal for the ‘Colt Rotary Gun’ in 1851 was met with some interest, as a weapon that could fire extremely large volumes of bullets and could be transported by horse. While some dismissed it as impractical for the type of warfare occurring in the West, the company continued to build prototypes in hopes that one of the European powers would adopt such a weapon later.
The Morey Engine also saw use in the West for providing power for machine shops and other engineering tasks, especially at Army forts. It was also discovered by a machine shop owner in Pennsylvania that petroleum might be able to be refined into a much more effective fuel than turpentine or kerosene for the device.
But no matter the technological innovations, the Native Americans were not easy to ‘dislodge’. Many preferred not to live in Indian Territory in Oklahoma, so another chunk of land was set aside in what is today Montana to try and prevent even bloodier conflict.
The Pacific coast was becoming quite prosperous though. San Francisco and Vancouver were becoming the centers of Pacific trade with North America, and the discovery of gold only further spurned settlement of the area. The fertile land also made California popular with farmers as well as traders, while lumber was exploited in the Northwest.
Having shrugged aside all local adversaries and set itself firmly astride the continent, not even the undercurrent of violence in the West and the immigration conflict could dull the optimism Americans had for their country.
DOWN IN FLAMES
1842-1857
Outside the Western Hemisphere, the world was a very turbulent place. The British went to war in China in a conflict that was primarily based around the trade of Opium, which, while successful, triggered massive unrest that resulted in the Taiping Rebellion of 1849, which was spurned by a mix of Christian converts and minorities, that while was considered to be some to be heretical, was brutally effective at guerilla tactics. While other Western powers were poised to intervene against the Taiping due to trade interests, new conflicts in Europe and India kept the British preoccupied and the Kingdom secure through 1857.
The amiable relations between the US and UK were ultimately a part in the loss of India to British authority. In the early 1850s, as tensions between the BEIC and the locals rose, US missionaries began to arrive in India. They were unfamiliar with Indian customs and fervent in their beliefs. There wee rumors that the ‘community meals’ they served at makeshift churches contained the forbidden foods such as pork or beef, though these were perhaps rumors. The missionaries did however raise some of those for meals for themselves, purportedly, but no matter the truth, things were not going well. Problems were only further intensified when British campaigns in Burma and attempts to stabilize the Dutch East Indies required Sepoys to ‘cross the black waters’, much to their outrage. When the Sepoys returned to their ports (nearby which most of the American missionaries were based from) in 1854, it was a deadly convergence. Rioting had already been breaking out, and as news was distorted and disseminated farther inland, the anger only intensified. Outright rebellion faced the British as a nation that was bled by the cost of foreign imperialism lashed out, with nearly 100 years of growing anger at the BEIC behind it.
Once again, the stretch of manpower throughout the empire signaled troubled for its crown jewel. Later British historians remarked that the British detachments in the conflict areas were small enough to have them present nearly everywhere, but not large enough to be effective. With the combined weight of recently conquered Muslim territories and the powerful Hindus behind it, the British began fighting an increasingly bloody and desperate campaign against the British. In the short lived unity between Muslims and Hindus, the battle-hardened Sepoys were able to deal devastating blows to the British, and problems only worsened as the Sikhs started to lose interest in what they saw as a ‘losing prospect’. While the other ethnic groups of India were carving up de facto states for themselves, some Sikh leaders agitated for their own state and revolted against the British as well.
With troops tied up in Europe as well, the British retreated to some of their earlier strongholds, leaving much of India in a power vacuum. Other European powers looked on with hungry eyes while various demagogues and military heroes tried to carve states for their own groups.
Europe did not fare much better during this ‘age of revolutions’. With 1848 came the stirrings of war as Prussia, capitalizing on the decay of the French Empire, went to war with Poland. Frederick William IV, having seen the chaos the new ‘popular revolutions’ brought to the Rhineland, would not accept a similar movement in his own country, nor did he intend to try and subdue the violent land so soon. He believed a war that strengthened Prussia in the East would spurn nationalism, and his Romanticist dreams about reuniting with the former Teutonic lands in the Baltics. Though he did not announce this aim at first, the invasion of Poland resulted in a power-grab by expansionist Russia, bringing the two powers to war. While Russia was certainly the better since the beginning of their self-proclaimed ‘Golden Age’ with the capture of Constantinople, they were not quite fit to stop the Prussian Army which had remade itself after the humiliation at the hands of Napoleon II. The war continued into 1850, with Russia agreeing to cede all of Poland and part of the Baltics to Prussia. Russia’s army was fit to fight the less sophisticated armies of Central Asia, but not the Prussian war machine. Though tensions between the two countries remained high, the war for Russia seemed to be over in Europe.
For others, it was just beginning.
The Netherlands and Flanders revolted in 1850, drawing Britain into yet another conflict. With the ‘People’s Army’ organizing to spread their ‘vile ideologies’ (as one British conservative put it) into France, the British had to move to fill the power vacuum. Coming to the aid of the new government in the Netherlands, France began to collapse under the weight of Napoleon’s conquests. Their territories in Italy also went into revolt, and blaming British agitation in both fronts, France declared war on Britain officially in 1852. Britain deployed troops to the Netherlands and fought a series of battles onto the doorstep of Paris, where Napoleon II conceded Flanders and the Netherlands as an independent ‘Greater Netherlands’ at the behest of the United Kingdom.
Internal instability was also a problem in the nations of Europe. With the Irish famine and the shockwaves of the movements in Germany unsettling the traditional class systems, labor groups and agitators bedeviled many of the nations of the West throughout this period. These trends culminated with the death of Napoleon II in 1855, with the ‘general will’ based ideology taking hold of French Republicans and causing a revolt that had taken de facto control of the government in 1856.
The Dutch East Indies were finally abandoned by the British in 1854, and left to their own devices. Splinter groups competed to form new states, and European nations finishing their wars began to consider carving up that region as well.
The South American continent remained relatively peaceful, though the economic crises precipated by all this global instability certainly manifested itself there. In Colombia, the government acknowledged the secession of ‘Orinoco’, or Eastern Venezuela as some called it, but compared with the other conflicts in the world, this shift in power was relatively bloodless.
But the nations of South America were starting to come into their own now. While it is debatable how independent they really were with all the US and British influence in the region, Central American states had established themselves against Mexico and all of the continental South American nations were rallying armies and growing their economies. Land disputes between Chile and Peru, Argentina and Brazil still persisted, but there was no conflict between nations.
Pedro II of Brazil quietly abandoned his programs for slave reform, instead choosing to restrict the trade as the internal population skyrocketed. Some of the wealthier landowners began to experiment with the idea of an industrial slave based society, and fearing reliance on Europe, Brazil instituted a system of economic protectionism that, while making it unpopular with Britain and some of the other industrial powers, helped kick-start a fledgling industrial base in Brazil. To help develop a strong army, Brazil sent officers to observe the gamut of world conflicts in Europe and Asia, hoping to learn the effective structure, tactics, and weaknesses of modern militaries.
POWER PLAYS
1857-1870
Britain’s conservatives rally after the defeat in India as evidence of the ‘ineffective’ softer policies. They demand a strengthening of the military and a stronger foreign policy to compensate. But as Britain licks its wounds and prepares to re-assert itself, other nations begin to pick up where they left off. Despite their astounding triumph, the unity that had thrown off the British yoke had dissolved as warlords and would-be rulers vied for power over the shattered subcontinent.
The Portuguese and Danes were the first to move in, a scant three years after the ‘defeat’ of the BEIC. While the British clung to Ceylon and a few key ports, the continental powers established relations with various local states, providing funding and arms in exchange for favorable trade policies. This more indirect approach would be fleeting though, once the revolutionary fervor calmed down most powers hoped to get a tighter grip on their territory.
Another newcomer to the scene was Prussia, which in the late 1860s began to colonize a smaller portion of India and some of the former Dutch East Indies. The Dutch themselves, in a burst of nationalist sentiment after decades of French Imperial rule, would set up colonies in East Africa and Madagascar. Northwestern India remained relatively stable, with some Sikh and Muslim governments setting up free from interference. British presence in Afghanistan weakened with their influence in Northern India, but the British crown was not dormant. Conservatives pursued imperialist policies, and decided to cement their control over the seas by building the ‘two canals’, one with the US in Nicaragua (A US client by this point) and another in the Suez.
Unfortunately for the British, their increased presence in Egypt was not appreciated by the local government, despite the power Britain had given it so many years ago. When workers for the Canal revolted and the Egyptian government refused to quell them, the British deposed the Egyptian government and set up a puppet over the region in 1862. The project was nearing completion in 1870. The Nicaragua Canal, however, was impeded from the start. When construction began in 1867, the problems of malaria and other jungle related illness made work nearly impossible. The commitment of both governments to the Canal, however, did spurn interest in science and would later result in medical breakthroughs. Combined with the growing popularity of the theory of evolution earlier publicized by Matthews, and the mechanical advancements that shall be discussed later, some consider this time the beginning of a great period for science.
China’s bloody civil war finally ended in a sort of stalemate in 1868, when Russia looked poised to invade and the Qing decided to focus their military efforts there. The Taiping Kingdom would encompass much of Southern China, and put pressure on the Chinese Empire to reform if it wished to survive in the face of Western hegemony.
Russia was also becoming wary of Europe, and when Alexander II came into power in 1857, he focused most of his reforms on making Russia economically and militarily competitive. Looking at the successful Prussian model along with American and British technology, his sweeping reforms were eagerly adopted by the Russian populace. He also began programs to emancipate the serfs and expanded Russia’s railroad networks. Other concerns that were not instrumental to Russia’s status as a Great Power were put off until later. Russian soldiers were soon marching farther into Central Asia, with their ultimate goal being Persia and access to the Indian Ocean that seemed to dominate colonial affairs now. Wars were fought throughout the 1860s, with the Russian Army steadily improving. By 1870 Russia was poised to move through Turkmenistan into Persia.
Prussia itself became more concerned with German reunification along with its newfound colonial interests. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Prussia moved west against the Rhine Republic, securing Kiel in 1864. But the Republic still survived and was becoming one of the intellectual hotspots in Europe, more concerned with their domestic affairs than imperialism. In France, the new French Republic was widely recognized in 1867, and the leaders of Europe breathed a sigh of relief, for decades of French military power had finally come to the end. Modeling itself partially on the Rhine Republic, France wanted to ensure ‘better living for all’ after years of neglect for the industrial base France had built itself upon.
Spain and Portugal both expanded their African colonies, with Spain particularly concerned with the Christianization of North Africa. Horrible tales, some exaggerated and some all too true, began to emerge from Algeria. Spanish troops were ruthless in their suppression of Islam in the public realm, and the local population was not eager to comply. As a result, Spain actively supported Catholic colonization, with many more conservative French fleeing the civil war settling in Algeria and Tunisia.
Meanwhile, Brazil began to enjoy success with its ‘industrial slavery’ program. Despite the disappointment of the Emperor, he could not risk angering the slaveholders, the merchants, and industrialists by pursuing a program of abolition. The elected government was quite nationalist, and the powers of South America collided in the ‘Long War’ that spanned from 1862 to 1870 in a series of theaters. Brazil and Chile fought against Peru and Argentina. Brazil launched attacks into Paraguay and southeast Peru with Chilean assistance. Both sides received weapons from the UK and US in one of the more ‘infamous’ instances of corporate greed, with both sides using the Colt Rotary Gun on a wide scale before the conflict devolved into guerilla war. The end result was a victory for Brazil and Chile, with Brazil taking Paraguay and a smaller part of Southeast Peru and Chile taking the valuable saltpeter and minerals of the Litoral and some other areas of Southeast Peru.
In this era of renewed colonial warfare following the revolutions of the previous decade or so, new technology played a vital role. By now almost all modern armies had adopted breech-loading or even repeating rifles, and modern navies likewise used advanced ironclad vessels. The power of the Colt Rotary Gun and the other rapid firing weapons used also generated interest in the concept of using the Morey Engine to power ‘battlewagons’, a ‘rail-less locomotive’ that could function as an ironclad on land, powerful enough to resist the hail of lead from small arms and the Rotary Gun. The late 1860s had the US working with Prussia and the United Kingdom on these hypothetical ‘battlewagons’ that used wider treads to traverse difficult terrain.
Not all nations enjoyed the fruits of technological advance. Nowhere was this more the case than Japan, the formerly isolated nation that, opened up in the 1840s, seemed unable to reform itself, suffering much the same problem as China. Foreigners in Japan enjoyed extraterritoriality and favorable trade contracts, and already local Japanese were calling for seclusion rather than humiliation at the hands of the trading powers.
THE AMERICAN DREAM
1852-1870
1852 brought yet another three-way election as the American Party tried to capitalize on its growing success in the agrarian West and a few other states. However, by and far the nation did not accept its agenda. The Federalists won once again, with Winfield Scott, who had been culled to gain favor with the West with younger Northerner Nicholas Frome as VP. But their victory is no indication of national consent over their policies. The industrial base of the Federalist platform is beginning to shake. The economic downturns caused by the chaos abroad converge with the populist movement by the nativist American Party. Immigrants were attacked by ‘true American workers’ and violence was common in the cities. Many would end up voting for the Liberty Party, those who moved up generally voted Federalist. Organized crime also began to take off in this era as cities began to grow and the labor violence confined immigrants to certain neighborhoods of them.
The vaunted Western frontier continued its steady retreat into history in the face of aggressive settlers and the steel of guns and railroads. However, Scott’s administration would set up many reservations in southern Utah, away from the railroad land grants.
But as the railroad grew, the abuses of the old wing of the Federalist party became clear. The problem was not worker exploitation; it was the blatant collusion between the political aristocracy and the rail and corporate barons. As much as newspapers dressed it up as a moral issue, people were angrier about others getting rich on money they paid (albeit indirectly) rather than workers. So reform minded Federalists and the Liberty Party ran on ‘anti-corruption’ platforms that promised to clean up the government budget and “remove the trough Washington lays out for the modern aristocracy”, in the words of Liberty Party Presidential candidate Howard Long. He wins in 1856 and takes more of New England and other traditional Federalist base areas than expected, though his victory is quite slim.
However, industry continues to chug along even after reforms are passed, if only for the revolutions in management and technology occurring earlier. The Schmidt-Herman Process, invented in 1851 by a German immigrant scientist and a US-born businessman in the metalworking industry revolutionized the industry and made the mass production of steel much cheaper. Combined with advances in the Morey Engine and the spread of the railroads, it only furthered the power of the industrial machine in the United States.
Long largely succeeds in his anti-corruption platform, though he is careful to keep the railroads working on the Trans-American line so he does not lose favor with the West. Long continued an aggressive containment policy against American natives and increased trade and relations with Latin America. He was re-elected in 1860 where he went through a rather unremarkable Presidency save for the fact that he was the last President to preside over a nation with American slaves. Blacks were largely concentrating in the more liberal areas of the industrial belt or moving farther west, away from the racial troubles of the eastern US, though many remained working as free labor in the South, supplemented by immigrants and poor whites. As wars began to break out in Europe once more, the US remained relatively quiet. But when conflict spread to Latin America, it was US armaments that helped fuel the flames, everything from Rotary Guns to Repeating Rifles were sent to both sides of the war as it went on. Long’s Northern VP, Frome, wins the election in 1864 and largely continues his predecessor’s policies, though the sudden resurge in colonialism by the European powers leads him to adopt a ‘strong navy’ policy, much to the delight of his home region’s shipbuilders.
Frome wins again in 1868, and continues to expand the railroad and telegraph networks through pro-business policies rather than the more direct approach favored by Federalists. However, economic backlash strikes again from the European conflicts and some say the lack of government support was partly responsible for the recession. Federalists gain many seats back in the 1870 mid term elections.
THE GREAT GAME
1870-1880
In Europe at least, a lull in the fighting began, if only to re-arm for the next time. Tensions ran higher than ever though, catalyzed by the situation in Germany between the three powers of Central Europe. Emboldened by their colonial gains, many Prussians began to call for the unification of Germany and the ascendancy of Prussia to the position of dominant regional power, angered by the influence that France and Austria Hungary were exerting in the Rhineland, with some believing that both nations intended to claim some land in the weakening, leftist nation for themselves.
These events brought about a great change in the Great Power system. With both nations standing against Prussia, Austria-Hungary sided with Russia, while France, the Rhineland, and to a lesser degree Spain coalesced to form a second, if minor group. The other major alliance was between the United Kingdom and Prussia, as a classic form of British ‘balancing’ against the major continental powers. But war would not come to Europe. Instead, industrial power was converted towards a ‘Great Game’, a series of imaginary conflicts fought by politicians and generals, pins placed on maps that resulted in masses of men and war machinery being raised and deployed in an attempt to intimidate and control without provoking conflict. The British and Prussians raised a formidable force of iron: despite the lack of manpower when compared with the other nations, their technological edge was significant. Britain and Prussia were the first European nations to field the Morey Engine powered ‘Battlewagons’, armed with cannon and rotary guns that formed a small fortress on treads. Their naval technology was similarly advanced, and the collaboration between scientists and industrialists of the United States, Britain and Prussia grew during this era.
Russia and Austria Hungary, the ‘Big Two’, accelerated their efforts to industrialize on the level of their counterparts, with Russia fielding battlewagon prototypes in their suppression of the Turkmen in 1878. More importantly, Russia was uniting their country behind the ‘New Rome’ ideal, attempting to unite the many nations their empire encompassed behind the Orthodox religion and imperialist drive.
Their targets were Manchuria and Persia. Had they planned to fight solely for Manchuria, they would not have provoked too much international backlash. But in 1876 when oil surveyors from British Mesopotamia published their findings for a potential black gold-mine, Russia knew it would have to act soon.
Britain’s quest to locate oil was a bit of strategic foresight on their part. As the Suez Canal was completed and opened in 1872, the British began to look for other strategic real estate in the Middle East. After fighting a brief conflict to take over most of the Arabian Peninsula; the British dotted the region with territories and client states. While the Turks objected from their small corner of the area, it was of no use. Their dilapidated regime stood no realistic chance against the British military.
The re-colonization of India continued, but unfortunately plans to expand territorial rule met resistance from Indians, especially Muslims who were angered over Britain’s treatment of nations in the ‘Holy Land’. The status quo of client states manipulated and exploited by European powers continued.
Britain also extended its grip on Africa by colonizing its coast with the Red Sea, while the Dutch expanded their own holdings in Madagascar and Tanzania.
Meanwhile Scandinavia consolidated itself against a possible war with a revived Kalmar Union, merging Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Spain and Portugal pushed deeper into Africa, though Spain was far more fervent in its suppression of the native populations than the latter. The Spain-Italies-France group hoped to not just expand their possessions in Africa, as France began to do in Libya, but to control the Mediterranean once more, as a way to gain clout with Britain, whose Suez Canal would become an ever-more-important factor in world trade, especially with the number of nations colonizing the Indian Ocean region and the growing importance of the Middle East.
But the European powers had yet to fight each other, and few recognized the potential size of the conflict should the Generals’ and Ministers’ hypothetical scenarios ever become reality.
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
1870-1880
East Asia was not exempt from the political and military maneuvering of the era. After an abortive conflict with the Taiping, China found itself under the heel of the Tsar and his East Asian forces. Testing his strength, the Tsar launched his campaign into Manchuria early in 1875, gobbling some of the decrepit Empire’s territory.
Japan seemed in no better condition, and after hearing of the Russian invasion and subversion of Chinese rule in Manchuria, declared that it would go back to seclusion, attempting to expel the trading powers to more controllable locations. The plan did not work. Prussian, British, and American merchantmen used their superior firepower to effectively destroy the Japanese capability to carry through with its threat. Rather than conducting a coup and formally ending the Japanese government, the Treaty of Tokyo effectively divided Japan into different ‘spheres of influence’.
In South Africa, the British attempts to crack down on the strong Boer Republics met serious resistance. While the British effectively controlled the Cape, the Boers stood between them and expansion to the north. Rather than start a war and with the bitter aftertaste of the Indian Rebellion still strong, the British instead turned the Boer Republics into client states that gave them some internal autonomy but made any further expansion the task of the British government first.
The arduous and often deadly task of completing the Nicaragua canal continued throughout this decade, but Nicaraguans were starting to wonder how much the canal would benefit them when compared with the UK and US who would own the actual canal. There were some rumblings of revolution, but the presence of US troops and mercenaries would ensure (hopefully for the powers) that the ‘anglos’ would control the trade through the nation.
The Republic of the Rio Grande began to thrive, as its plentiful supplies of coal and oil ensured not only the strongest industry between Brazil and the US, but a lucrative stake in the petroleum sector. Mexico was also starting to industrialize, albeit much more slowly. Civil war erupted in 1874 when Santa Anna’s handpicked successor was killed, some Mexicans wanted a worker’s democracy similar to Rhineland or France, but there was no resolution to the conflict apparent by 1880, though it appeared the conservative elements manifested in Mexico City’s oligarchy would prevail.
Brazil reformed nearly everything but their slave laws throughout the decade, making the Emperor ever weaker and reducing the influence of social liberals in the nation. For Brazilian liberals, they were caught in a bind. While they opposed the increasing power of the slave lobby, if their fully democratic reforms were completed then the conservatives would only gain more power. The moderating power of the Emperor would be useless. Once respected, the bloody cost of Brazil’s wars and the growing power of the landowners was beginning to be disruptive to Brazil’s government. But stability was maintained.
THE BREAKING POINT
1880-1883
In 1881, Western Asia was controlled by a mere two powers. And with the discovery of petroleum and its new use, combined with the strategic location of the region, it was the new strategic prize for the late 19th Century. Both had conflicting goals and visions, both were the contenders for the greatest empire of the day. As much as Britain tried to balance the powers of the world, it had been unable or unwilling to stop Russia’s march through Central Asia since their loss of India. With an economic development they were unlikely to foresee, the consequences of that negligence were now manifested in Afghanistan.
Russian troops launched an invasion of the country and were able to push the Afghanis back easily, but the real prize remained Persia, promising a gateway to the Indian Ocean, a stake in the region’s oil wealth, and a barrier to British expansion eastward. The forces assembled were the culmination of decades of military-industrial reform and imperial exuberance. And in the spring of 1881, they marched south from Turkmenistan and Afghanistan into Persia.
The Russians were excellently prepared for the fighting, while Persia’s army was weak and outdated. Artillery and experienced mountain troops overwhelmed Persian defenders; new weapons like the machine gun were psychologically devastating to the Persian troops whose government only possessed a handful of Rotary Guns. Siege was laid to the major Persian cities, when defenses could not be broken were crushed under battlewagon treads. Such a weapon under skilled command was almost invincible in this situation. The Russians knew trench warfare well and knew how to break it with their ‘Iron Beasts’.
Britain began to supply the Persian military, or what was left of it, with arms, but they could not supply Persia with effective military leadership. Tehran fell in late 1882, and when they declared that they would make all Persia their dominion, Britain finally declared war. Anticipating this, the Mediterranean Fleet of Russia, the best in the nation attacked their British counterparts in Egypt and blockaded the Suez Canal, knowing that they would not be able to defeat the Royal Navy once its full force was arrayed against them, but stalling for time in hopes of turning Persia into a fortress against any possible aggressor.
By the time Britain had re-cleared the Suez and mobilized troops to Mesopotamia in adequate numbers, they launched a serious counter attack into the heart of Persia. Unfortunately for Britain, they were not prepared for the Russian defense. While dismissing machine guns and artillery as ‘highly overrated’ due to their ‘ingenious battlewagons and brave soldiers’ as one British commander put it, they were sadly mistaken. The British Battlewagons, better designed for Britain’s colonial campaigns than fighting in a full-out trench war, were destroyed by their Russian equivalents or modified light naval guns, the first anti-battlewagon guns to be used in combat. The Russian battlewagons were far better suited to this sort of warfare, used in devastatingly efficient combined-arms tactics to retake Persia’s border with Mesopotamia and secure it yet again against British attack. The Russians built their defenses intensively and carefully, for they believed this would be the final line of combat.
Prussia, of course, had fulfilled its obligations with Britain and attacked towards St. Petersburg, again meeting the guns and trenches of Russia. While Russia had far less battlewagons than Prussia and Britain, they were used more efficiently and they were arguably more advanced and powerful. Nevertheless, the advance stalled in the winter of 1882 and fighting was pushed back to the Baltic territories by 1883, primarily due to Austria-Hungary’s invasion of Prussia’s south.
Britain had balanced the powers perhaps too well. Russia knew its limits and turned to solidifying them rather than expanding them, and while Austria-Hungary’s invasion of Prussia was ineffective at capturing territory, it was certainly effective at grinding the European front of the conflict to a halt. A cease-fire was signed in ’83, but both sides planned on using it to re-arm instead of accepting peace.
THE FIRST ANGLO-RUSSIAN WAR
Selected Extracts from British and American newspapers
IVAN RUNS FOR THE HILLS
11/2/82
“… Our boys have crossed the Tigris and pushed on to Abadan, where Russians were dug in to make their push to Mesopotamia. But our soldiers and battlewagons turned the situation around easily. We have advanced over a mile, now that our heavy firepower is here.
Artillery has hammered down the Russki lines, and even their vaunted battlewagons are no match for Britain’s skilled gunners. With the help of the Persian Resistance we were able to pinpoint many Russian positions and blow them away with ease. With the aid of our vehicles and guns, we have captured many lines of Russian trenches. After the fighting cooled down, this reporter counted over eight hundred fifty Russian dead in this area alone, along with ten pieces of Russian artillery, and even a destroyed Russian battlewagon.
One man from the 73rd Regiment of Foot, Private Niall MacDougal showed great valor in his actions when one of our battlewagons was hit by a Russian anti-wagon gun, setting it aflame. The merciless enemy showered the wreck with gunfire as the crew inside struggled to get out. MacDougal not only used his rifle to kill and suppress an enemy machine gun position, but carried two of the crew members out of the vehicle. Tragically, there was only one other survivor, but with men like MacDougal in our forces, we are sure to march onto victory over the aggressors in Moscow.”
WHY WE MUST FIGHT
Editorial published March 1882
“… Since the incident in India, Britain has divided into several factions on foreign policy. Some would have us become like the Rhinelanders or the French and eschew real imperial drive in favor of redirecting that money towards internal improvements and services. Still others believe we should pursue imperialism, but minimize our risk because of their persistent fear of a new India. But in reality, Russia has shown us that the risks of negligence abroad. If the world were without the expansionist, megalomaniacal Russians and their allies, we would not need to be equally aggressive in our policies. But in reality, the only powers that can provide security to these lands from powers like the Russians are benevolent Empires like ours; that provide the public good of security and civilization to peoples who would otherwise not be advanced enough to do so for themselves.
Should we choose to ignore Persia’s pleas for help, we will soon see the authoritarian Russian Tsar reigning from Tehran to the Taiping border. Would we see our enlightened Western civilization be boxed in by the Russian bear? How much more land will their boots grind underfoot before we see every vestige of civilization swept off the map? Our island must be the center and purveyor of that civilization, not the last stand of it…”
THE TRIUMPH OF STEEL
1870-1884
The rest of the world seemed on the brink of war, but in the United States the situation seemed closer to that of a civil war. Almost every aspect of politics seemed to be coming apart in a frightening way. The American Party soon gave way to the ‘American Progressive Party’ in the election of 1872, realizing that without solidarity among workers they had no chance of success. But still some of the racist elements of the party persisted, and while it took a fairly good chunk of the electoral vote in 1872, the reformed Federalist Party had beaten the Liberty Party at their own game. While the Liberty Party had previously done well in the Presidential election, it was faltering in the legislature due to unpopular decisions on Western policy and military positions. The younger Liberty Party also found itself facing serious problems in terms of foreign policy; their more Jeffersonian views were not popular with a nation that was starting to feel the tug of Jingoism. Similarly, business leaders were disappointed with their reluctance to create a favorable international environment for trade. Combined with accusations of corruption during the Frome Presidency, it was Edward Marshall of the Federalist Party who took the nation’s highest office that year. Marshall would stray a bit farther left economically than the Liberty Party, believing the growing unrest lead by the American Progressive Party could be harmful to the nation’s economy as a whole. In 1873 he would allow limited coinage of silver in a weaker form of bimetallism, but overall his policies were very pro-business. He was re-elected in 1876 as the Liberty Party continued to falter.
By 1876 Indian reservations were growing smaller and smaller, while industry was dominant. Increasingly efficient systems of production and management had made business magnates as powerful as Presidents, who in turn would use their abilities to negotiate favorable trade arrangements throughout the Western Hemisphere. Public consumerism was also beginning to surface, with motorwagons growing in popularity for reaching the remote areas that the railroads had yet to reach. Favorable legislation to increase the population of non-agrarian land sales in turn helped the sales of motorwagons for businesses that set up in these areas. But by now, the allure of silver had worn off for the populist and progressive wings, who realized that limited bimetallism on its own was not a cure but a distraction. Labor riots in 1878 both energized and discredited the movement and further divided America into two economic camps. While young populist-progressives like Jon Kunitz wrote manifestos and organized local movements, the new capitalist intellectual class pumped out tracts like Neil Adams’ American Commerce that took elements of Matthew’s theories and applied them to the economy with the history of ‘American individualism’.
Organized crime rocked the cities, and to some it was the sign of the ‘moral corruption’ of America. This era of US history was marked by various moral crusades to limit drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, mostly on the state level.
In 1880, the American Progressive Party finally gets their wish and takes the Presidency. Unfortunately for them, they lack a majority in the legislature at the time, making President Harold Lieber’s first two years difficult ones. But when the free coinage of silver began in 1883, it came at a bad time. The economic downturn induced by the Anglo-Russian War and the failures of several companies and banks both in the US and abroad. While some of Lieber’s standards, such as health and safety regulations and the standard for agricultural protectionism on the international market remained, the United States returned to the gold standard in 1884 with Federalist Calvin Roberts. Americans believed that new markets and new expansion would be a lasting cure for their economic woes. Now the pre-Lieber policy of trade was becoming infused with the original Federalist tenet of expansion. The logical targets seemed to lie to the East…
THE NEW IMPERIALISM
1880-1885
The economic downturns caused by the war had started to drive some nations towards imperialistic expansion, even the more ‘peaceful’ ones. Spain continued its march through the Sahara and Western Africa, and France began to set up small ‘Republics that were colonies in all but name. While France claimed to be egalitarian, like most European nations prejudices about Africa ran high. Prussia began to move in on Central Africa after reports of diamond and gold, but their campaigns against the Kongo Empire were stalled after the war broke out with Russia.
Outside of the warring alliances though, things were outwardly peaceful on the continent. Italy was reunited at long last, but Britain began to deal with the shocks created by the war. While British citizens had been fed stories of glory and victory the fact that all of Persia was in Russian hands by the war’s end told a very different story. Labor protests and peace demonstrations began to rise, and the true cost of the wars and Britain’s lack of preparation for modern great power conflict was laid bare. Leftist movements seemed poised to take over the streets and Parliament as well, and more conservative Britons were beginning to wonder if their fate would be similar to that of France or Germany. But by 1885 news of a new threat from Russia was already emerging: stories of Canadians being killed in Alaska and the Tsar turning his attention to East Asia. Prussia’s leadership was also shrinking away from its old policies, with Wilhelm II’s ascendancy in 1884 came new policies focused more on increasing power in Germany than fighting Russia, the breakup of the alliance system Britain had worked to create was no more reassuring. Realizing that their next campaign would focus more on East Asia, the British would now have to work on creating a new power base to stop Russia there. One of the more embarrassing factors was that they could not rely on the Middle Eastern clients for support, most of them were not interested in fighting for Shiite Muslims and Britain’s memories of India meant that they wanted their own soldiers, not locals, to do the fighting.
So Britain began to pump aid to China, hoping to make it a client, with China forming new armies equipped and trained up to Western standards. In reality, Britain was very pessimistic about the chances of China standing up to Russia, but they were more optimistic about a victory in Alaska. So now the theater of conflict moved to the Pacific Rim.
In South America, Chile fought another war of expansion against Peru, while Brazil continued its program of modernization. Pedro II, however, was beginning to use his moderating power to try and restrict slavery, infuriating the conservatives. Plots were already hatching to bring about a new, conservative dominated Republic at the time of Pedro’s death.
THE BLOODY PACIFIC
1885-1895
Russia continued its aggressive policies both internally and externally. Domestically Russia enforced political unity, with the Church working to homogenize and convert Russia’s conquests. While these efforts seemed to work fairly well in Eastern Europe and the older Central Asian possessions, Russia knew it could not hope to push them on its clients in Persia and Afghanistan. However, with the Middle East ‘secured’, Russia began to push their second axis of advance further into Manchuria in 1886, sweeping aside the ‘reformed’ Chinese forces with ease. Though Russia had reinforced Alaska with additional naval and land forces, Britain declared war on the Tsar that year and launched a naval attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet, winning several victories in the Aleutians. In the spring of that year, the British attacked along with the United States, each allied to the other in name, but each also hoping to get more of the Alaskan territory than the other nation. The semi-independent Canadian Confederation was still a bit angry with the government’s strict controls on Canada. The hoped-for liberal government simply did not arrive. Britain decided that Alaska would be administered as a separate entity from Canada, angering Canadians who wanted it for the Confederation. Citing the Slavic influences in Alaska, many Eastern European immigrants in western Canada began to rail for greater political autonomy as well, and in due time so did the Quebecois. However, these movements were frowned upon by the Canadian Confederation government, which believed all of British North America should be unified and whole. During the war, the many volunteer groups of pioneer-soldiers from the States were encouraging Alaskan independence both inside their native land and in Alaska. Many Alaskans were also more interested in continuing their business interests rather than being pushed out by a hypothetical British monopoly, and they too supported the independence movement, if quietly.
The actual war went quite slowly, because with winter came an effective halt to any fighting. But by 1890 Russia had lost any vestige of control over their Alaskan colony. No treaty was signed, because Russia was still at war in Asia against China. The conflict there saw Russia gobble up Mongolia as a client and even more of Manchuria before China gave in during the fall of 1891. Russia, Britain, and China signed yet another treaty, this time to establish Russia’s gains in China (in exchange for some monetary compensation) and Russia’s loss of Alaska. However, the war did have profound political effects. It tarnished the invincible myth of the British navy when Britain took significant losses to the Russian fleet in the North Pacific later in the war. It triggered political debate in Canada and established Alaska as a jointly-occupied polity slated for independence. The experience gained in the war also helped improve the well equipped but green Chinese forces, which would later aid them in their wars to retake the Taiping Kingdom, and it consolidated Russia’s position as a major player in Asian affairs. The war also gave the final spark to bring the US into the race for imperial power by showing the strategic importance of the Pacific. The increased reliance on the West by China also sowed seeds for Chinese nationalist movements and increased hegemonic influence in China by the West itself.
THE ASPIRING POWER
1884-1896
Roberts, a somewhat more progressive Federalist, maintains some of the institutions left behind by Lieber but immediately joins in against Russia with Britain on an expansionist platform, hoping to establish Alaska as a satellite state, if not a US one. He also gave implicit approval to the corporate-backed coup by American settlers in Hawaii in 1886 and annexed the islands at the end of his second term. The election of 1888 brings in noted economist and businessman Neil Adams. While his policies bring in economic growth, some begin to worry that the poor and working class is being left behind by his adherence to classical liberalism and ‘American Individualism’. Adams also cut the tariff in his second term during the economic boom he is largely credited with. However, while some find Adam’s corruption-free, outsider politics refreshing, the hard-line Federalists are dissatisfied with his ‘lack of imperial drive’, while he carried on the war with Russia at the behest of his Secretary of War, he did not pursue further campaigns at a time when some were calling for further Pacific expansion.
One thing the Federalists at the time did near-universally was tone-down or reject the ‘morality politics’ espoused by the APP. Both the populist and progressive rings of the party supported prohibition of alcohol and to a lesser extent, women’s suffrage. Contrary to the progressive movements abroad and the Hegelian collectivists in Germany and France, the APP appeased the populist wing by promoting ‘Christian values’ and justified their welfare policies using the Bible.
In 1891 a drought and a slight recession caused by a disruption in the agrarian sector brought about an APP victory on the shoulders of the west with Illinois native Alfred Smithers rising to the office of President in 1893. However, many of his laws designed to reduce the power of trusts and tax income and the “stock tax” (an early version of the Capital Gains Tax) were undermined or declared outright unconstitutional by the strongly pro-business Supreme Court. Decrying the judicial activism by an “aristocratic elite of pro-trust mouthpieces”, there were murmurings of a Constitutional amendment not only to make the APP taxes effective, but to reduce the power of the judiciary. Naturally the political spinsters of the Federalist Party seized on the opportunity to decry the APP as ‘disrespectful to the idea of checks and balances’ and invoked their status as the “Party that forged the Constitution”. But while the APP was derailed in the other branches, they held on to the Presidency in 1896.
On the state level, the entire continental US were states by 1896, a factor partially responsible for the success of the APP in the Presidential elections. This also signaled another milestone in American history: The last of the Indian Wars had come to a tragic close. While the ‘true progressive’ wing of the APP opposed harsh treatment of the natives, the populist wing knew that Western voters would not tolerate a soft policy in this area. So the once proud peoples of North America were confined to reservations, dependent on Federal aid they rarely received enough of to subsist on.
Many state governments were picking up on the morality based movements the Federal government would not. 1896 saw an ever-dryer US, in the South and Midwest, while the coasts and Middle States chose local regulations or no prohibition at all. Women’s suffrage was also expanding at somewhat slower pace; in socially conservative New England especially there was limited suffrage or no suffrage at all.
The affluent middle and upper class of America now enjoyed new luxuries. Electricity was widely available and making inroads West, and the development of both public transportation (subways and trolleys) and private vehicles (motorwagons were now becoming practical for personal use) made city and country life easy. Telephone use was growing at quick pace and newer technologies like vacuum tube based wireless telephones was one marvel among many that was intriguing the American people.
But perhaps the most remarkable new device was the wingcraft, the concept invented by a pair of motorwagon designers in the Republic of the Rio Grande and further refined with American capital. While airships had been around since the 1870s, the potential of these new machines enticed many military thinkers.
A NEW ERA
1885-1905
Despite their loss of Alaska, Russia’s successful campaigns in China were one of many factors used to boost Russian morale through the end of the 19th Century. However, in 1897 Tsar Alexander III dies, and Peter IV takes the throne. His policy is of consolidation rather than expansion, and making Russia a ‘hub’ for international relations rather than an antagonist. He envisioned a world where Russia was a center for world commerce, and as a result conducted policies that furthered Russian business and industrialization, though many accused him of installing cronies in charge of the new corporations and factories. Peter IV was also the first Russian tsar who seriously considered the ‘rights gap’ between Europe and Russia. However, his intentions were not entirely benign. Independence movements in Finland and the Ukraine especially were troubling him, though they had yet to gain much strength. He hoped by both encouraging pro-Russian settlement in these areas and instituting some semi-democratic reforms, he could calm those who claimed Russia was too oppressive, including the collectivists who were influenced by Western European governments by creating a new Duma, abolished by his namesake in the 1700s.
As part of his wish to make Russia more internationally respected nation, Peter tried to make amends with the United States and the Republic of Alaska, and to a lesser extent with Britain. Believing that the Americans were more concerned with “profits than politics”, he believed that they could be swayed, over time, from the British sphere of influence. Especially because of the imperialist aims of the Federalist Party, Russia wasn’t interested in making an enemy of what some thought could be a future great power should it be roused out of its comparative isolationism.
China looked to rebuild nationalist sentiment by fighting a war with the even more dilapidated Taiping Kingdom, and was victorious in the closing years of the 19th century. However, China was facing internal problems. Though the Taipings had been brought back under Chinese control after years of whittling away at their power, the fact that the war had made them more reliant on Western nations, and the Imperial government’s reluctance to take action against them, was troubling to many. As a result, many Chinese were entertaining ideas of a new Chinese Republic, nationalist and free from outside influence. It seemed the Imperial government’s latest victory would be its last.
In Europe, the devotion of resources to colonization rather than continental warfare kept the peace between the nations. However, within them was another matter. Austria-Hungary’s uncontested dominance of the Balkans was beginning to weaken, and in Britain, the death of Queen Victoria in 1899 brought about many new questions about Britain’s new direction. Though the new King promised to keep up the policies of his predecessor, the British people were not so sure that it was a good idea. Many already thought Britain was paying too much attention to foreign ventures rather than its own problems, and that the traditional liberal movements were closer to free market policies than pro-labor ones. As a result, in 1897 the People’s Party was formed.
However, the ‘new threat of collectivism’ was beginning to alarm Europe, as the two industrialized collectivist nations, the French Republic and the Rhineland, were accused of exporting their ideals elsewhere. Prussia’s conservative society was grappling with a growing revolutionary movement, and French-influenced Italy began to feel the tugs of collectivist influence.
Despite the calls for ‘people’s governments’, collectivist movements did little to stop the colonialist policies of the European nations. Where colonies existed, they were expanded, and Italy took it upon itself to take Lebanon, and eventually the Holy Land, from the Ottoman Empire. France, Spain, and surprisingly the Kalmars expanded holdings in West Africa.
The variety of medical advances made in studying the health problems spawned by the jungle work on the Nicaragua Canal had also begun to speed inroads into Central Africa, where previously European settlements had failed. The semi-autonomous Boer Republics, with British permission and guidance, pushed north, while the ‘Prussian Kongo’ was recognized as a legitimate territorial claim. Tales of immense resources meant that whoever could establish their power in Central Africa effectively would likely be the richer for it. But the wars to penetrate into the most independent part of Africa were fraught with danger for the European imperial powers. Despite technological advantages in arms and medicine, the tenacity of the region’s cultures and wildlife meant that it would be years before the European powers truly controlled the region.
THE GREAT EXPERIMENTS
1896-1912
Some historians will say that the election of 1896 was a greater blow to the party’s platform than any other factor. The emboldened APP was pitted against a Supreme Court and legislature balancing against it, yet Smithers was emboldened by a second victory. He called for tariffs combined with a minimum wage to keep American workers happy and began to make murmurings about the nationalization of railroads and trust breaking later in 1897, and when the National Anti-Trust Bill and the proposed 1896 Tariff passed in the House; and stocks took a serious slump. The actual effects of the two pieces of legislature will remain unknown, but what was sure was that when so many Americans had a stake in big business and their interests, it would be reflected in their votes. The Federalists gained a majority in the Senate and prevented a 2/3rds majority in the House by the APP, neither of the bills made it past the Congress. However, the initial shocks still resonated as both sides prepared for the election of 1900. Wallace Vaughn, an old guard Federalist and pro-trade advocate; took office and saw the US through a fairly uneventful period in history, marked primarily by the introduction of higher taxes on liquor and tobacco, attempting to please both the morality-oriented voters and also to deal with decreasing US revenue. But without the Trust-Acts, some Americans were appalled when the stock market picked up again and the rich industrialists were making gargantuan sums of money while many Americans were still unemployed or underpaid.
Peter Gabriel, a moderate member of the APP, won in 1904, and many moderate Federalists retained their seats. In 1905 the US Constitution was amended so that taxes on income specifically could be made without apportion. This is because in part of the efforts of Federalists, who feared that the government might institute capital transfer or inheritance taxes that were claimed to be ‘unhealthy for business’. Nevertheless, tax rates were not abused or turned into direct redistribution as feared by many hard-line Federalists. He also encourages Women’s Suffrage, and in 1907 another Constitutional amendment is passed to guarantee all American citizens over 21 the right to vote. However, things begin to shake up with European problems once again, and the wave of immigration leads Gabriel’s successor, former Vice President Zachary Johannes to institute reductions in US quotas all around during the ensuing economic troubles, claiming ‘American jobs must come first’ and believing that while Americans were unemployed, they should not allow exploitation of immigrant labor.
Further South, Mexico’s populist revolutionary government established control over the entire nation, and had even taken control of the Yucatan Republic as a ‘semi-autonomous province’. Now, their sights were set on the small but wealthy Republic of the Rio Grande, first with revolutionary propaganda in hopes of destabilizing the government.
Elsewhere in Latin America, Pedro II passed away in 1897, and in response the conservative elements of Brazil created a ‘Brazilian Federal Republic’, one that gave power towards the Federal government and the industrial, slaveholding aristocracy. This resulted in a collectivist revolt by Brazil’s free laborers and progressives, who believed only a radical ideology would save Brazil from descending into another industrial slave power state. Because of this, their main targets were the industrial, commercial, and upper-class organs of Brazil, and many elements of Brazil’s own armed forces supported the Brazilian revolutionary movement. Peru invades its former territory in Brazil as a response, while Chile and Argentina both attempt to make land and power grabs in the guise of ‘stabilization’. Both are not eager to see a strong Brazilian state either way and the European and US interests both dictate that collectivism must be stopped. In fact, US corporations hire mercenaries and, during the Vaughn administration, with US military backing, intervene in several Central American Republics (and Orinoco) to maintain their own interests, while Britain uses Argentina and the US to protect theirs.
ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
1906-1912
The trouble ultimately started when Prussia invaded the Rhineland, a reactionary effort that would, supposedly, unify the German nations and the Prussian people behind the cause of the government. Believing that ‘a good war, like strenuous exercise, keeps nations strong’, the leadership of Prussia sent battlewagons were storming across the Rhineland Republic border by 1907, justifying their war outwardly with desires for ‘unification’ and ‘containing the collectivist threat’. Hypothesizing that the values of the Rhineland would make them weak-kneed pacifists who would quickly knuckle under in a real conflict, while the Rhineland was unable to effectively hold back Prussia, their resistance was quite effective and bought enough time for the French forces to move in and defend what was once their client.
However the Prussian war seemed to have the opposite effect as planned domestically. The global economic slump in industrial nations combined with the growing popularity of radical and left wing causes had left much of Germany’s working and fighting age population disgruntled with current policies. Meanwhile, the talk of unifying the ‘German race’ was quite disconcerting to the Poles and Baltic peoples who lived under Prussian rule. Labor federations protested the war when the government tried to justify pro-production policy by strikebreaking, and the strong monarchy was called a ‘blot on the face of Europe’ by Prussian Republicans.
This menagerie of opposition groups in Prussia would be the greatest stumbling block to the war. In industrial cities, Prussian labor protests were ordered to be struck down, ironically by drafted Prussians, who themselves were wary of the government’s motives. The war stretched on, inconclusively at best. Though a complete war of attrition was avoided, neither side could dominate the Rhineland. Britain threw in their support of Prussia in 1908 when it was decided by Conservative leadership that ‘a collectivist alliance spanning the Pyrenees to Poland is unacceptable’. While British naval support was able to fend off French attempts to blockade the nation, they did little in helping to suppress the collectivist movement inside Prussia.
At this point, the Slavic territories of Prussia were in outright revolt, holding that being a Russian client was better than being a Prussian servant. By 1910, Prussia realized that their war effort was coming at the cost of the state itself, and a peace treaty was hammered out in Stockholm. But rather than ending bloodshed, it simply internalized it within Prussia’s own borders. The loyalist troops’ excesses only heightened the revolutionary fervor, and the Prussian Civil War began in earnest. France and the Rhineland (and to a lesser extent Austria-Hungary) fed support into the revolutionaries while Britain did the opposite. Though American reporters like Jon Kunitz pleaded for the APP leadership in America to intervene against Prussia, while conservative and pro-market writers and much of the business-dominated news industry favored the British position of ‘containment’. Though a few eccentrics on both sides volunteered service or support towards either faction, their efforts were ultimately negligible. In 1911 Berlin was under siege by the Republicans, who ran the gamut from classical liberal thinkers to hard-line collectivists, and by the next year the Prussian monarchy reigned only in name, having fled to England. A moderate collectivist government took power and aligned itself with the French and Rhineland for support, believing they were all victims of the old monarchy.
In other corners of Europe, different wars dominated these years. The Slavic rebellions in Austro-Hungarian territory were widely supported by the Tsar, who believed his nation’s former ally was weak. War was officially declared by Austria-Hungary in 1909 against Russia, and Russia responded by sending soldiers across the border. Two years later, when Austria-Hungary saw what war had done to Prussia, decided to give up some of its land in the Balkans, and Russia agreed.
IT CAME TO THIS: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
“It is here that the true fallacy of militarist commercialism can be found: No humane or just system will force workers to make the guns that will shoot down their brothers” (Death of an Empire, Kunitz)
“We have been given so called ‘progressive’ Presidents, and yet there is not a bit of sympathy in our government for those on the continent and in the colonial power’s conquests… Ignorance of our fellow men has become a prerequisite for American progress. Ignorance of our fellow men has soiled the meanings of our own ideas. Ignorance of our fellow men has turned our progressivism into nationalism and selfishness, and ignorance of our fellow men will take a toll on our movement. Progressivism can never be about one nation. It must take up the cause of humanity or it will fail” (Death of an Empire, Kunitz)
“This so called ‘progress’ is nothing more than a front for collectivism, and some at least have enough honor to candidly admit to that. But this nation cannot become just another pawn in the collectivist game by staying at home. The so called ‘pacifist’ compatriots of the progressives have colonized West Africa, they have stirred revolt in Brazil, and they are grinding the opposition to their new government in Prussia with twice the enthusiasm of the old Kaiser” (Sen. Jacob Maynard, F-NJ)
“… If you don’t mind, I think this nation’s gone soft. European nations are rising and falling and they are getting more vicious than ever. Barring an outbreak of good sense in this country’s foreign policy, they will be turning their sights on our hemisphere next. They don’t see to have much of a problem with fighting their military equals, and without a strong force of our own and a consolidation, we will be the experiment in liberty that was” (Gen. Horace Walden, US Army)
“The so-called great civilizations of the world are built on the backs of the wretched, the neglected, and the ignorant, told that carrying the burden is a freedom and a privilege as they are ground into the dirt” (Political activist Albert Richards)
STIRRED AWAKE
1912-1916
American businessmen were fed up with APP rule, and combined with the government’s isolationist tendencies that kept it out of South America and Central America under those administrations. And while corporate mercenaries could certainly fight in the smaller nations of the world, Brazil’s civil war was another problem entirely. The US could not pick a side, to choose the Republicans would be to choose the slaveocrats of Old Brazil, to choose collectivism would be considered by many as a betrayal of American values. Especially with the post-war European ‘Collectivist Scare’, some Americans were unwilling to support the existing sides. However, there was one moderate choice, an idea floated by the British, to create a liberal Republic in the south of Brazil where a proper mix of resources and ‘willing men’ might make it a success compared to the more conservative and resource-scarce regions. The Brazilian issue was used as a plank in the Federalist 1912 platform, and surprisingly enough it was the old President Wallace Vaughn who was re-elected by a slim margin. He put strong interventionist Edgar Fitzpatrick as Secretary of War and waited as reports of atrocities in Brazil by the ‘immoral factions’ of the collectivists and the slave-holding authoritarians dominated the presses. Less advertised was Brazil’s position as a continental power and a strategic market. The papers were also filled with reports of the scrappy, courageous liberal republican fighters in the South, though they did not mention they already had the backing of most of the other South American nations.
However, Congress would approve the US intervention in Brazil for whatever the reason, and soon American troops were deployed into Rio Grande do Sul, which was guarded by British and Argentine soldiers. The war also marked the first use of combat aircraft in the Americas, which were used by the UK and the US for scouting and ‘raiding’ missions throughout the country. While this move had garnered the support of pro-Europe Chile, Peru and Gran Colombia wanted more territory or client republics that would serve in their interest. Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of all other parties, the collectivists in the Amazon region had taken a firm grip on the nation and few were willing to expend the resources and lives to remove them. As part of the complex negotiations, Southern and Eastern Brazil was organized into the Republic of Brazil, the Guyana was granted independence and given a chunk of former Brazil to offset the creation of the Republic of Amazonas, the collectivist state in the empire, and various other regions under de facto control of other nations were given to their respective conquerors. The two year finale to the long Brazilian Civil War was over in 1914, but the stage for a new war had been set. Things within the Brazilian Republic were already going to need a great deal of management: the emancipation of the slaves and the crackdown on the hated slave-holding class would require heavy military presence for some time yet.
It was not a true peace, because the United States especially knew that they could not let collectivism become a serious force in Latin America and still maintain their new hegemony over the region. There was, in fact, an assassination attempt against Amazonas Council Leader Gilberto Covas by mercenaries believed to be in the employment of the United States in 1915.
In Mexico, the new government issued the “Declaration for Mexican Justice”, the most notable section of which called for a return of the former Mexican territories of Baja California and the Rio Grande Republic to Mexican rule. Meanwhile, Mexican guerillas launched attacks into the Republic of the Rio Grande, especially attacking the oil companies and railroads in the area. These actions resulted in a ‘unified security perimeter’ along Mexico’s northern border by both nations, and by 1914 the US was at war again, penetrating deep into Mexican territory with mechanized cavalry to rout out the guerilla forces. Mexico declared this a violation of sovereignty, but neither nation officially declared war. Around this time many US critics began to say that the Mexican government was adopting the ‘authoritarian tendencies typical of collectivist movements’ and tried to establish a link between Mexico and the ‘collectivist threat’. Many of the more radical constituents of the APP were blacklisted by the group to maintain the party’s stability, and as a result these splinter groups formed the Labor Unity Party in 1916, though their split of voters actually gave Vaughn his re-election in that year. However, the fracture within the APP voting bloc was not entirely responsible for his victory. In this time of international turmoil, many believed Vaughn was strong enough on foreign policy to stave off the myriad of threats to American interests and the ‘American way of life’, both real and imagined.
GRAND DESIGNS
1906-1920
The last few corners of the world were annexed, lost, won and bargained for in what many collectivists called ‘the final stage of imperialism’. There was, quite simply, little left to conquer on Earth that was not in the hands of another power or their ally. With the instability in Brazil came a final rush for Southeast Asia, where the British and other colonial powers established new rubber plantations there quite successfully. The British and Portuguese also made several forays into India, where two states had finally established themselves as the powers in the inland regions emerged, one, to the west, was the Hindustan Confederation, while to the East lay the Magadha Kingdom. Other significant entities included the Uttar region, which was slowly becoming more integrated with the Confederation, and the Punjab Empire. The westernmost regions of former India had been re-conquered, and with enemies seeming to press on all sides, the Hindi population of India was looking towards unification as a solution to preventing further imperial encroachment. With virtually no access to ports and reliant on colonial powers for trade, the late 1900s provided the Hindi states with an opportunity to form a prospective ‘Hindi Union’, which incidentally lead to Punjab seeking closer relations with the West, particularly Russia.
Elsewhere, the anger against imperialism was manifesting itself in a different way. The Italian invasion of the Levant and near taking of Jerusalem lead to an outbreak of Islamist sentiment in the Middle East, with many from the British clients in the Middle East volunteering to fight the Italians in their territories. The movement against colonial organizations was popular among Sunnis in Egypt and Arabia, who called for the British to remove their presence from the ‘holy land’. Though British forces themselves went nowhere near Mecca or Medina, they were the de facto rulers of Egypt, which held the two regions under its jurisdiction. Though there were occasional attacks, there was nothing serious enough to make the British truly stand up and take notice.
That changed in the 1910s when some Islamist Nationalist leaders began to meet take after collectivist radicals who had engineered and fought in the Prussian Revolution. This finally came to full attention of the British Empire in 1914, when Italian soldiers captured Arabian radical leaders along with a collectivist ‘advisor’ from Rhineland in the Levant. However, outright war after 1912 simply did not occur. Most nations instead focused on rebuilding their arsenals and keeping a firm grip on any covert or revolutionary activity provoked by the ‘other side’.
China went through periods of continuing turmoil until 1916, when surprisingly quick revolution dethroned the Emperor who had become acquiescent to the demands of Westerners, and created a highly nationalist Chinese Republic. The following year, the new government was fighting to maintain control over the Muslim populations in the west and Tibet. South Africa received independence with a Dominion status, with the various semi-autonomous republics expressing their own desires through a semi-federalist system. However, the United Republics remained largely subservient to the British.
The remnants of the conservative Prussians fled the country after scares of a ‘purge’, and the colonies of Prussia remained staunchly conservative, with the ‘Imperial Prussian Kongo’ becoming a new nerve center for the conservative Prussian movement, though life in the colony was nowhere near the quality that had once been experienced in Prussia.
The 1910s were also marked by a good deal of political intrigue, with the possession of three industrial nations in Europe and footholds in South America, the collectivist movement could no longer be taken lightly. Britain, Russia, and Austria-Hungary formed a secret alliance after Italy began to slide towards collectivism. The United States was later informed of this pact and implicitly agreed as it prepared to suppress anti-Western and collectivist movements in its own hemisphere. The Untied States also formed the Special Tasks Group, a covert branch of the military for counter-revolutionary and collectivist operations in Latin America, which worked in conjunction with, and sometimes against, their governments to ensure that they remained firmly out of the collectivist camp. It was a time of peace, overall, but a dark one as the new decade dawned.
TWILIGHT
1916-1925
In the United States, it was a time of unparalleled prosperity and unparalleled paranoia. Under Vaughn the nation was a true industrial giant, with roughly 31% of world industrial output when Vaughn left office in 1921. Vaughn was succeeded by fellow Federalist and former Secretary of State Benjamin Kramer, who worked to secure greater ties with Britain and Russia alike while continuing Vaughn’s popular domestic policies. Not being the hard-liner on economic policies like his predecessor, he discouraged explicitly anti-union policies and reminded that the government should neither help nor hinder big corporations, declaring that “Our economy is self-regulating and self-sufficient, we need only ensure opportunity and things will work themselves out equitably”.
The US, along with Rio Grande, continued the quasi-war with Mexico throughout this time period, and as Mexico began to restrict raids into the two nations, it also began to build up its own arms industry with help from Europe. Central American nations began to fall under Mexico’s sway, nowhere was this more troubling for the US than in Nicaragua where revolutionaries plotting an overthrow of the government in one of the continent’s most strategic chokepoint. The STG was involved in suppressing them there, an assassination of one of Orinoco’s more left-leaning ministers, and capturing or killing ‘collectivist spies and infiltrators’. The US kept the governments obedient, if not loyal, but the US knew it would need a stronger effort to root out anti-Western and anti-collectivist sentiment from the hemisphere.
In Asia, the Chinese Republic is able to prevent the secession movements in all regions save Korea and part of Tibet, which the Republic deemed was not worth the trouble of annexing. Instead, the Chinese would focus their efforts on rebuilding their military and industrial capacity for a war against Russia or Japan. Russia itself had designs on Korea and Japan, and as a result the change in government did little to improve prospects of stability in the region. Austria-Hungary was also beginning to experience some unrest from left-leaning worker’s groups, and it slackens its ties to the anti-collectivist alliance. This is offset by the death of Alfonso XIII in an aircraft accident during his trip to Northern Africa, resulting in his very conservative son taking the throne in Madrid. Alfonso XIV tries to strengthen ties with Britain and puts restrictions on collectivist movements and unions, angering some of the Spanish people. In 1923, the second year of his rule, there is an assassination attempt by radicals which fails, and soon what many call a ‘new Spanish inquisition’ is started to root out the radical leftists from Spain. Many are sent to the harshest reaches of Spanish Africa to do manual labor while others are simply killed after a brief, if existent, trial. A second attempt on his life succeeded, when a disaffected soldier shot him during a return from a visit to the UK in 1924. During the unrest that followed, his conservative advisors requested troop presence from the United Kingdom, enraging the leftist population of Spain. The Spanish government would not end martial law until the radical leftists had been ‘pacified’, but the leftists would not end their efforts until troops were withdrawn. After news of British soldiers oppressing the local population, the ‘Workers International Movement’, considered by some to be a puppet of the French government, said that if a referendum on Spanish government would not be held and British troops not withdrawn, they would start a campaign against the ‘reactionary’ nations and request support from the collectivist governments around the world.
Within the UK itself, in 1917 the Irish had peaceably requested, and were granted, independence, though in return they would still be a Commonwealth member and were forced to sign a guarantee that Ireland would not ally itself with any nation that was opposing British interests.
In Austria-Hungary, a crisis similar to that unfolding in Spain was beginning to occur, though it was not quite as violent as that in Spain. Slowly, the sides were formalized and the battlegrounds were laid out. Though Britain and Russia were the two single strongest nations, the collectivist nations had nearly the same industrial output and nearly equal naval tonnage. Another problem was that both of the ‘Big Two’ members were reliant on expansive, but unstable empires for their massive industrial growth, and both these empires were threatened by Islamic Nationalist and East Asian independence movements, both causes that collectivists had in fact courted. There was no single cause to the war to come; it was merely a convergence of fires ignited in the strategic flashpoints of the world. At no other time had the globe been so fully polarized, and what many historians today see as the outgrowth of the Napoleonic Wars was about to come full circle with an even bloodier result.
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