In the name of the King-An aborted American Revolution

The European Crises-Reformation and Revolution Part III

Poland
The Polish-Lithuanian Constitution established a constitutional monarchy, uniting and democratising the nation in an unprecedented fashion. Its constitution would become a model for other nations like France. But not all supported the Constitution. All of Poland's neighbours felt threatened by a strengthened Poland. Prussia broke off their alliance, and a group of reactionary szlachta rose against their king and the reformed Sejm. Decades of stagnation had left Poland weak, and the nation suffered the humiliation of a Second Partition.

Poland was to rise again under Kosciuszko. He was an idealist, driven by Englightenment thought. He was lucky enough to lead Poland into rebellion at the same time that France was at its belligerent revolutonary height. France brought soldiers to Poland, as did the Batavians. They turned the tide against the Prusso-Austro-Russian onslaught, and they were forced to recognise Poland-Lithuania's independence and its new constitution. The war bound Poland and Lithuania as never before, and 1794 is usually thought of as the year of Polish-Lithuanian independence.

Spain
Spain experienced the most radical revolution in Europe. It spread across its whole empire, and shook Europe and the Americas to its core. It ha
 
The Spanish Revolution

Across Spain and its colonies in the 'Indies', unrest was brewing. King Ferdinand was a conservative and was unwilling to make reforms like other nations in Europe. 'Committees of Letters' grew across the Spanish European territories co-ordinating small acts of violence against the Bourbon establishment. In the Americas, the the Criollos felt oppressed by the Peninsulares. Natives were growing restive, and even Peninsulares felt the system disadvantaged their children who were born in the continents. New Spain kept a careful balance, playing the natives against restive lower class Criollos. The Viceroy was wise enough to recognise the difficulties that would arise ahead, and made deals with the British who promised that they would prop up the viceroyalty if there was a general revolution.

When the revolution broke out in Spain, it was unusual in that few individuals can be called leaders or focus points of the revolution. Councils or juntas proliferated across Spain, and spread into the Italian posessions. But these juntas did not lay the way for the Hispanian Republic until the Ferdinandista Conflict. They are named for King Ferdinand who ordered the army to crush the rebellion. But when the army arrived in Navarra, they refused to destroy the Basque Rebellion. _____ led the army sent there in a general revolt. The mutineers continued to be known as the Ferdinandistas because they continued to carry the trappings of the royalty.

King Ferdinand plotted an escape but all of Spain's European posessions in outright rebellion. The French refused him entry as the National Assembly did not want to take an absolutist under its wing. Instead, he fled to New Spain. Small-scale rebellions had been crushed there, with unofficial British help. But all was not rosy for Ferdinand. The more radical viceroyalties in South America were rising in rebellion against the king, and there was little that Republican Spain could do about it, as they were torn apart by differing political viewpoints.

Bolivar lead the Northern Republicans, centred around Venezuela and New Grenada and De San Martin lead the Southern Republicans, centred around La Plata and Chile. The Northern Republicans bore the brunt of Royalist resistance, due to their proximity to New Spain. The Southern Republicans had to seal with internal chaos, as Natives in Peru waged their own war, hoping to establish the Tawantinsuyu again. The La Platans broke from the more conservative Chileans, and all the while, the Portuguese looked to expand their sphere of influence into the hinterland between the competing republics.

In 1812, New Spain withdrew its troops from the newly inaugurated Republic of Gran Colombia. King Ferdinand, now Emperor Fernandez I of New Spain, raged against the break-down of the Spanish Empire. Fortunately, he had wiser lieutenants who helped hold New Spain together in the following years, guarding against revolution and rebellion. By 1831, when an uneasy peace had finally settled across Latin America, New Spain was a stable nation enrishing itself from the riches it used to export to Spain. Gran Colombia dominated northern South America, and successfully resisted Portuguese interference. Peru was divided between a resurgent Incan Empire, and Chile, and a shaky La Plata had to deal with the molestations of angry natives on their borders. The Novoincas were deep in the pocket of the Portuguse, as they relied on Portuguese arms to keep Colombian and Chilean forces off their land.

Back in Spain, the Hispanian Republic had finally stabilised. The position of the monarchy and the aristocracy had become untenable, and most had fled to France or Austria. Hispania had neither the force of arms or stability to wage aggressive war, and so it remained ignored by the western powers. Only France showed an interest in the new situation, and what they would do about it...
 
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The Braganza Reforms

With Europe smouldering in the aftermath of the Revolutions, the Braganzas were not willing to go the way of the Oranges or the Spanish Bourbons. King John instituted a series of reforms, which established an elected bicameral legislature, integrated Brazil into Portugal after the British fashion, and created a constitution to hold the whole system together. Like a lot of countries, this Constitution closely resembled the Polish one. Portugal entered a golden age, expanding their sphere of influence all over South America, leading to the Brazilian System. The Brazilian System was the Braganza's way of maintaining the balance of power in South America. Immigration to Brazil was encouraged so that the Portuguese position there was secure, and maintaining the Brazilian frontiers. They funded and assisted the Novoincans, splitting the Hispanic Republicans in half, while keeping well out of Patagonia which kept Chile and Laplata at one anothers necks.

As well, as this, the mercantilist economic philosophy was fazed out, in favour of more free trade, in a similar fashion to their British allies. King John even went to the effort of sending his son, Prince Peter to Brazil so that he could bring Brazil closer to Portugal, and so that when Peter ascended the throne, jew puld understand Brazilian issues, in the context of the wider Portuguese Empire. Prince of Brazil has since been the title of the heir to the Portuguese throne, in a similar fashion to the British Prince of Wales.
 
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No comments? I'm coming towards the end of my pre-prepared stuff, and we'll soon enter the thick of a chaotic 19th century. Things to look forward to.
¤ A Great Game in East, not Central, Asia.
¤ An age of revolutionary conflict which will reshape Europe.
¤ A Resurgent Spain, with bells and whistles.
¤ Brutal colonial wars all over the shop.
¤ Different patterns of colonialism and some new colonial powers to boot.
¤ A buttload of 'Abyssinias'
¤ Cultists in Britain-in-America.
¤ Jules Verne...
 
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Map you wanted.

1770.PNG
 
Age of Empires: From Indies to Africa

Asia

Britain and Batavia were now the dominant powers in East Asia, and the two began to actively compete with one another. Batavia represented revolutionary fervour with its Cult of the Great Being, and its ardent patriotism, and was deeply opposed to Britain's powerful House of Lords, and the power held by the aristocracy. Since the European Enlightenment, Britain had taken a turn to the north* and had put down a series of revolts and protests in typically violent fashion.
But despite this, the two nations shared considerable economic ground. They were both largely Protestant, though the Batavians were more and more Deist, and were surrounded by Catholics. They both followed a mercantilist economic discipline, and both used merchant politics to reel in cash from the colonies to great effect.
The two states competition came out bloodily in East Asia, where unofficial wars were fought in Indochina and Indonesia. A race over southern India and Burma-Thailand broke out, as Britain and Batavia sought to manipulate various states onto their side.

Oceania

Though Captain James Cook had made land fall in Perousie, and called the land New South Wales, Britain never reinforced its claim to the dry, sandy land. France, though, saw a perfect place to dump reactionary nobles and revolutionary Jacobin terrorists. Nouvelle Hollande, and Nouvelle Sud-Pays de Galles formed the two first primary colonies in Perousie. The French named the vast island after the French explorer who landed there, Perouse.

Further south, the Dutch under Tasman had landed in the islands of what they called New Zealand. But these green islands were claimed by Cook, and they were named Austranesia and became important colonies, homes to sheep farmers and a few miners.

Hawaii was a native kingdom up until the Russians built a fort there. The British, New Spanish and French had maintained small garrisons there, but the Russians sought a trading post in the central Pacific. An army was sent, and King Kamehama bowed to superior force, bringing Hawaii into the Russian sphere as a protectorate.

Africa

The British needed a southern trading post in Africa to link India to west Africa. But the internal issues of the Empire meant that the British needed a native go-between to run things while the government in Westminster writhed. To this end, an alliance was forged with the Zulu people. The British promised to protect and arm these people in return for them co-coperating with British foreign policy. By the end of the 19th century, the British East India Company was co-ordinating the British relationship with the Kingdom of Quazulu.

The Batavians maintained their Cape Colony, and Southern Africa became an area of British-Batavian antagonism, and dragged Batavian attention more intensely onto the African continent. The Batavians became less willing to relinquish their African trade posts in the face of British aggression.

As Hispania stabilised and it looked to reclaim Spain's place as greatest of European nations, it took a deep interest in Morrocco and Algeria. Algeria harboured Barbary pirates, and Hispania thought it could justify a war of conquest by claiming they were fighting pirates, while at the same time smoothing over Spanish-Italian tensions within Hispania.
*North-TTL's word for right in the political sense. At first was applied to the Hard Tories under Lord North, later became used in the sense that the less revolutionary, more conservative states in Europe were in the north, and the republicans and revolutionaries were in the south. North is Right, South is Left.
 
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A United Republican Ireland is never something to look forward to

Maybe so by modern standards, and there is the possibility of religious violence later on, but this was a cross-Ireland revolution, drawing upon Catolics, Protestants, Irishmen of every colour and desription to take arms against the Royalists. For now, they are too caught up in revolutionary optimism to collapse into civil war.
 
American Revolution: Blood on Cotton

Since 1775, each of the Continental Congresses had diverged, taking their own path, and developing their own regional cultures within the Kingdom. The South became a region of pro-rural, anti-industrial, upper-class land of gentry, quiet reserve, good manners, racial superiority and inefficient slave agriculture. The Middle became a land of gritty industrial towns and hard-nosed, hard-handed men and loud-mouthed children, with an air of subservience to their Quaker god. New England became a land of divisions, divided between rich bankers and poor dock-workers, English-speaking city-dwellers and Francophone frontiermen, the quiet Puritan farmsteads and the loud bawdy houses of the cities, the new migrant Britons and the ancient Native kingdoms.

But this divisions, though providing three new constituent nations for Great Britain, bred discontent. The South was unhappy about the power of the abolitionist north, and in the 1830s this abolitionist sentiment was steam-rollering through Parliament. The Home Shires were as abolitionist as New England and most of the Middlers. A new Whig ministry swept aside the institution of slavery, and ushered in new legislation redistributing constituencies and increasing the electorate.

But these reforms did little to sate the rage of the South. The voting men of the South had lived quite happily with their outmoded form of agriculture for decades, and any removal of their cheap labour force now would leave the economy crippled and would take years to recover. Various politicians, like Benjamin Jackson, petitioned Parliament to allow more leniency in allowing the South to pursue their 'unique enterprise'. When no leniency was forthcoming, these men took their geivances to their CC instead, and found a fertile bed for resistance against the Abolition Act. When the British sent soldiers to forceably free slaves who had been kept picking cotton, contravening the acts, a militia fought them outside Charleston.

This was the first of a series of acts of violence on both sides. On November 6th 1837, the Southern Continental Congress declared independence as the United States of America.
 
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The seeds of another wat were lain in 1837. The British army sent to crush the rebellion was woefully unprepared and ill-trained. Future armies would be better but not by much. The Americans engaged in brutal undercover warfare, and the British regulars could do little but contain the marauding warbands. Auxiliaries from the New England and Middler Shires performed much better, and such units as the Rhode Island Rifles, Lincoln's Irregulars and Ohio Highlanders became legends of the time. Perhaps unfairly, blame for the regular army's failure was laid firmly at the foot of the House of Lords.

The growing power of the Commons threatened the quiet order that monarch and Lords had grown used to. The Whiggish domination of the 20s and 30s had widened the franchise, and banned slavery. These were two legs of aristocratic domination and an embittered Lords stunted every attempt to reform the armed forces, and carry out the war in an efficient manner.

When the French, New Spanish and Batavians declared war on Britain, in support of the rebels which could knock Britain off its pedestal, Parliament found itself in an impossible situation. If they carried on against two of the worlds pre-eminent powers, and a powerful North American empire they could only worsen the situation. Reluctantly, Great Britain recognised the independence of the United States of America in 1841.

But any hope for a lasting peace to heal their wounds would be unfounded...
 
Fire in Albion: The British Revolution

The failure to properly act on the American rebellion, a war which many Whigs saw as one which could have been easily won if the Tories hadn't castrated their war effort, lead to a massive backlash against the Tories, the House of Lords and even the Crown. King George V was terrified of the House of Commons which loudly called for certain members of Parliament to be impeached. In a panic, the King appointed several new peers, creating a strong Tory majority in the House of Lords. Parliament went into political civil war, Commons fighting Lords.

But on the street, it was relatively calm. There was no sign of the bloodshed that would come. A few men (and even women) would profess their sympathise for the Whigs or the Tories. But they did it quietly, with little fuss. This changed in 1845. In 1845, a strike at a colliery in Lancashire took a turn for the worse. The local judiciary panicked. They sent in the cavalry to deal with a 'Whiggish riot'. The Massacre of St Peters would set the nation alight. Survivors did actucally riot, and it wasn't long before the political fighting manifested itself in bodies on the streets of Liverpool, Manchester and York. The North had become the centre of a revolution, the like of which had not been seen since Cromwell's time.

Scotland joined in on the side of the revolutionaries, and the Shires of Britain-in-America needed little convincing to pull them into the Whig camp. Meanwhile, the South, Midlands and North Wales remained Tory. South Wales attempted a rising, but this was swiftly crushed. The Colonial Corporations like the East Indian, Royal African, and the _____ Companies remained neutral, maintaining themselves and watching the unfolding chaos from afar.
 
The British Civil War came to an end in 1848. A second revolt in South Wales came at the same time as a revolt by East Anglian farmers. The Tory army was split and the Whigs routed the Tories. Revolts across England broke out from beleagured yeomen and workers against the toffs in London. By December, the Colonial Corporations had officially shifted their allegiance onto the Whig revolutionaries. The King was placed under house arrest, and the Second British Commonwealth was declared.

The King escaped from house arrest, and fled to Hanover, where he was recognised as King by Prussia and Austria. A significant section of the Royal Navy also defected to Hanover, and formed the backbone of Hanover's armed forces for sevaral years to come. Hundreds of nobles and peers followed their king to Germany, and a pidgin German-English became the speech of the Hanoverian upper crust. The Royal Africa Company decided it didn't want to become an arbiter of a revolutionary, anarchist government and also took off to Hanover, the West African colonies becoming colonies of the new state.
 
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The Springtime of Europe

The British Revolution precipitated rebellions across Europe in 1849, espousing the kind of radical republicanism which had established itself in Britain. Paris suffered riots, as demand for the removal of the power of the aristocracy reached fever pitch. Germany was overtaken by a wave of discontent as German liberal unionists demanded a German Republic. Portugal found itself struggling against mutinies, as their own soldiers joined the rebels they should have been fighting. Even Switzerland found itself fighting a war, as patriots from its various minorities either sought to join France, Germany or Italy.

Italy

Italy experienced the most change of all, with most of Southern Italy, including the Papal States being annexed by Hispania, at the behest of Neapolitans who wanted more Italians to balance the Hispanian Cortez. The north overthrew their various dukes, princes etc, and formed independent republics, before uniting into the Federal Republic of Italy. The Republic soon found itself at war, as Swiss-Italians and Hapsburg Italians called for their integration, and the Hispanians crashed northwards, threatening the heart of the Republic, Venice. The states finally came to an accord in 1852, allowing the Hispanians to annex Dalmatia.

Germany

All over Germany, revolutionaries and liberals rose up, calling for German unification, Societism and a British-style Radical State. The Hanoverians in particular would have none of this. King George, already forced from Britain, felt no pity when he authorised lethal force. With the anarchists extracted from Hanover, he moved into neighbouring states, abolishing ecclesiastic cities and Free Cities as he went. Prussia and Austria could not risk war with Hanover, with its outsize Navy and formidable Marines, but they could try to prevent Hanover from dominating Germany. So they too, invaded neighbours, uprooting revolutionary sentiment wherever they found it. When the dust finally settled, Germany was safe. The aristocratic old order was safely established. But the Holy Roman Empire was at an end. The last remnants of Imperial authority, in the prince-bishoprics, and in the Free Cities were dead. And the rationalisation of boundaries by the Three Kingdoms in an attempt to streamline the running of the new system further crippled the old system. The three great realms of Hanover, Austria, and Prussia formed the Germanic Confederacy to replace the Empire, and the lesser states were made unofficial protectorates of each Kingdom. At the same time, German cantons in Switzerland rose in rebellion, seeking to join the renewed Reich.

Turkey

Riots broke out across the Balkans, starting in Greece and spreading to Romania and Bulgaria. Russia annexed Crimea. The usual heavy-handed tactics failed spectacularly, and Turkish rule in the Balkans collapsed. The eye of the Ottoman sultans turned away from Europe, and towards Africa and Asia, looking to create a new Ottoman Empire, a union of the disparate peoples under the Sultan.

Portugal

The King of Portugal failed to contain rebellions across his nation, and when Hispanian aid, followed by Hispanian armies arrived, his realm began to collapse. By 1851, the Kingdom of Portugal was ended, and Portugal entered the Hispanian Republic. Overseas, the Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil which also collapsed into civil war, though that is a story for another time.

In Russia and Batavia, these 'anarchist' uprisings were brutally crushed. Batavia took a violent turn to the north during these years, and the Elector (a more democratic title than that of the princelings of Germany) became a virtual figurehead, dominated by reactionary military advisors. The Scandinavaian states were more unique. Denmark overthrew its monarchy, which fled to Norway and took control of Danish overseas holdings from there. The Swedes reformed themselves in the French fashion, and became a constitutional monarchy. In France, the violence extended to a single riot in Paris, easily restrained by the police, and answered by reforms in 1850.
 
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The Revolutions in America

Just as the dust began to settle in Europe in 1852, chaos burst out in the American colonies. The British Revolution had ushered in a new order in North America, and inspired rebellions in North America, and in South America the arrival of the King of Portugal brought controversy and violence. The tenuous peace that had held since the First Enlightenment would end, and disorder would reign over the New World.

North America

Alaska


It wasn't long before Russia was using Alaska to dump rebels, particularly Polish rebels from the Partitioned Land, Enlightenment republicans and Caucasian rebels. This lead to the Alaskan project going at least partly well. The Russian American Company used this influx of migrants to exploit Alaskan land. A Russian-Athabaskan mixed group came to control the less accessible interior, and these groups mixed with the Metis along the British border. However in 1853, this frontier burst into violence. The Alatchniks (The Russian-Athabaskans) along with the Metis were upset about their mistreatment at the hands of the Russian aristocrats, and their Navy lackeys. Their alliance took control of the frontier and the icy north, but this rebellion would not have been important if the Poles and Lithuanians of Southern Alaska had not also rebelled. These penal colonists lead a grim life, most of the fruits of their labour being poured into the hands of the Russian American Company's shareholders. The rebellion occurring in Mother Russia did not allow troops to freed up, and the native auxiliaries joined the rebels. By the time that a naval force had been sent to quash the rebellion, only a small rump of loyal Alaska remained in Russian hands, and the British recognised the Alaskan Unified Republic as an independent entity. Russia was forced to recognise the independence of their colony and the new state became a British puppet state.
 
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