The only true “Great Powers” are France, Russia, and China, but the others can at least involve themselves in foreign affairs and carry some weight with them. They can’t match the big 3 but they aren’t push overs. Modern technology helps.
In this country , it is good to kill an admiral from time to time
- Thread starter Antony444
- Start date
Since it was more or less forced to accept the terms France considered acceptable (though diplomats of both sides made sure this was something that would not lead to revanchist movements), becoming to believe your nation is playing in the same leagues as the superpowers of the world would need a very, very naive or stupid point of view. Just looking at a map, it's visible there's someone dominating North America, and it's not Carolina...
Thanks!
Yes...for how long?
Of course, there's people who are arguing that it would not have been a true World War, as it would have been France versus what is left of the Central Alliance, and Paris would not have been busy in Europe this time around. Nevertheless, the potential of China and Russia intervening once the French troops were sent to America couldn't be discarded entirely...
Hey Antony, I was curious, how many people does Oman have? I'm guessing a decent amount since that is the only way it could be a great power before it got spanked by France in the Great War.
I have not compiled the numbers for them, but don't forget they lost a lot between the Great War battle-losses, and the fact all their pseudo-colonies in India and Africa were lost in a very definite manner.
Well, these are two of the Great Powers and they share a very large frontier...
Would you be able to give me a rough estimate? I am also curious due to a TL I’m working on where Oman is an Empire like in this timeline. Pretty please?
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I would go for a population of 3.8 million for 1914. The Omani who wanted to be repatriated to their homelands have arrived, and the Indian and African withdrawal of the Great War is complete. And of course there's the fact that TTL Oman is Oman plus Yemen plus a good slice of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (but minus Aden).
The Perfect Plan of Roosevelt (the Republic of the Cape 1910-1914)
For many nations, the end of the Last Carolinian-Floridian War was too long in coming. Obviously, the Floridians were the most disappointed in that regard, since their Directorate was ruined, demilitarised, and fractured in three successor states. They weren’t the only ones, though. The citizens of the Mexican Empire had nearly been swallowed by the hostilities, and the UPNG’s participation in the war may have been short, but it had been too long to avoid receiving a lot of eggs in the face and suffer earth-shaking political consequences.
And then there were people and larger assemblies of men and women who wished it had lasted longer. Either because they be believed it was excellent to see potential rivals and enemies sink fortunes in blood, gold, and resources of all kinds, or because this war was quite profitable for them.
For the Republic of the Cape and Theodore Roosevelt, this was definitely the latter. The South African nation had been selling weapons to the Floridians and the New Virginian for years, including but not limited to large quantities of ammunition for light weapons.
Of course, profit had only been one side of the equation in this instance. The ambitions of Roosevelt and his main councillors were far important than the usual war trade carried under neutral flag.
For all the massive area the Cape controlled, its population wanted more, and they had been recently stymied by the Kingdom of Madagascar. Theodore Roosevelt needed a few conquests to justify the propaganda praising his name from morning to evening.
New Virginia promised to be an easy addition to the Cape sovereignty. Its elites were white, shared the opinions of the South Africans were black people were concerned, and the country was far weaker than the Republic of the Cape in all domains, be they industrially, military or numerically.
The plan had been kept simple by design: sell the maximum of weapons the Virginians could afford, and encourage the young male population to go west in a grand expeditionary force to ‘liberate’ Virginia.
This was a plan which had no drawbacks for Theodore Roosevelt. His companies producing military equipment and supplies for regular troops were able to fill their purses, the ‘advisors’ sent to North America got a return of experience how well their weapons fared in the field, the New Virginians were ripe for some old-fashioned infiltration of their society, and even a few opponents could get removed by sending them in war zones where they wouldn’t come out alive.
It was a perfect plan. Except Florida lost too fast. The Generals advising Roosevelt had known that barring a few miracles, Carolina was going to lose this war. The Republic had gar greater resources and a better system to handle the rigours of war; the post-Great War years had also seen a far greater economic recovery on Carolina’s side than on any of the provinces ruled by Andrew III Jackson.
So no, that Florida lost wasn’t a surprise, but the Cape officers believed the Floridians could have given their enemies a run for their money, especially with the New Virginians projected to send most of their army overseas to help.
The gigantic defeat which engulfed the Directorate as the Crocodile offensive ended in disaster for both army and navy was not something they had entered in their calculations. The first wave of New Virginian reinforcements had barely the time to be debarked in North America before being overwhelmed and lost.
To give the credit where credit was due, Cape firearms and ammunition behave well when they were placed in the hands of troops which weren’t busy drinking themselves to death or trying to find an excuse to desert. Alas, the majority of the Cape stockpiles said were for light weapons, with middle-ranged mortars being the biggest purchases Floridian and New Virginian interests had made. There was nothing bigger...and certainly nothing capable to provide the perfect counter to the brand-new tanks, planes, and heavy artillery of Columbia.
The Floridians and all the troops which had been given Cape weaponry were lost in a matter of days...and the ‘perfect’ plan was derailed.
On the one hand, the war industry had filled its pockets and was now far more robust than it had been. The Generals and the Admirals had been given plenty of information about modern war, and it hadn’t involved losing tens of thousands men for the lessons to sink in. The practicality and the rusticity of Cape weapons was giving inroads to new markets, like Brazil, Peru, Oman, or the People’s Republic of Hindustan.
On the other hand, while the influence of the Cape had grown in New Virginia, it was nowhere near good enough to annex with a single word the defeated and bitter Consulate. Many regiments and politicians were obeying Theodore Roosevelt’s envoy, but not all. If the South Africans landed and raised dragon flags over the main cities of New Virginia, there would be a civil war.
The clock was ticking. Roosevelt could not afford a new war in Angola; it would certainly put his nation in direct conflict with England. Mozambique was more acceptable, since war with Madagascar was unavoidable in the long-term, but for this to be successful, they needed more than naval parity with the fleet of the black people they despised so much.
Whether they wanted to admit it or not, the upper ranks of the Republic of the Cape – which had not held an election in the period 1910-1914 – knew New Virginia was for the moment the only fruit they could grasp safely without too much risk.
And since they needed to avoid a civil war, what about providing a common enemy to the New Virginians which was not on the other side of the Atlantic?
For many nations, the end of the Last Carolinian-Floridian War was too long in coming. Obviously, the Floridians were the most disappointed in that regard, since their Directorate was ruined, demilitarised, and fractured in three successor states. They weren’t the only ones, though. The citizens of the Mexican Empire had nearly been swallowed by the hostilities, and the UPNG’s participation in the war may have been short, but it had been too long to avoid receiving a lot of eggs in the face and suffer earth-shaking political consequences.
And then there were people and larger assemblies of men and women who wished it had lasted longer. Either because they be believed it was excellent to see potential rivals and enemies sink fortunes in blood, gold, and resources of all kinds, or because this war was quite profitable for them.
For the Republic of the Cape and Theodore Roosevelt, this was definitely the latter. The South African nation had been selling weapons to the Floridians and the New Virginian for years, including but not limited to large quantities of ammunition for light weapons.
Of course, profit had only been one side of the equation in this instance. The ambitions of Roosevelt and his main councillors were far important than the usual war trade carried under neutral flag.
For all the massive area the Cape controlled, its population wanted more, and they had been recently stymied by the Kingdom of Madagascar. Theodore Roosevelt needed a few conquests to justify the propaganda praising his name from morning to evening.
New Virginia promised to be an easy addition to the Cape sovereignty. Its elites were white, shared the opinions of the South Africans were black people were concerned, and the country was far weaker than the Republic of the Cape in all domains, be they industrially, military or numerically.
The plan had been kept simple by design: sell the maximum of weapons the Virginians could afford, and encourage the young male population to go west in a grand expeditionary force to ‘liberate’ Virginia.
This was a plan which had no drawbacks for Theodore Roosevelt. His companies producing military equipment and supplies for regular troops were able to fill their purses, the ‘advisors’ sent to North America got a return of experience how well their weapons fared in the field, the New Virginians were ripe for some old-fashioned infiltration of their society, and even a few opponents could get removed by sending them in war zones where they wouldn’t come out alive.
It was a perfect plan. Except Florida lost too fast. The Generals advising Roosevelt had known that barring a few miracles, Carolina was going to lose this war. The Republic had gar greater resources and a better system to handle the rigours of war; the post-Great War years had also seen a far greater economic recovery on Carolina’s side than on any of the provinces ruled by Andrew III Jackson.
So no, that Florida lost wasn’t a surprise, but the Cape officers believed the Floridians could have given their enemies a run for their money, especially with the New Virginians projected to send most of their army overseas to help.
The gigantic defeat which engulfed the Directorate as the Crocodile offensive ended in disaster for both army and navy was not something they had entered in their calculations. The first wave of New Virginian reinforcements had barely the time to be debarked in North America before being overwhelmed and lost.
To give the credit where credit was due, Cape firearms and ammunition behave well when they were placed in the hands of troops which weren’t busy drinking themselves to death or trying to find an excuse to desert. Alas, the majority of the Cape stockpiles said were for light weapons, with middle-ranged mortars being the biggest purchases Floridian and New Virginian interests had made. There was nothing bigger...and certainly nothing capable to provide the perfect counter to the brand-new tanks, planes, and heavy artillery of Columbia.
The Floridians and all the troops which had been given Cape weaponry were lost in a matter of days...and the ‘perfect’ plan was derailed.
On the one hand, the war industry had filled its pockets and was now far more robust than it had been. The Generals and the Admirals had been given plenty of information about modern war, and it hadn’t involved losing tens of thousands men for the lessons to sink in. The practicality and the rusticity of Cape weapons was giving inroads to new markets, like Brazil, Peru, Oman, or the People’s Republic of Hindustan.
On the other hand, while the influence of the Cape had grown in New Virginia, it was nowhere near good enough to annex with a single word the defeated and bitter Consulate. Many regiments and politicians were obeying Theodore Roosevelt’s envoy, but not all. If the South Africans landed and raised dragon flags over the main cities of New Virginia, there would be a civil war.
The clock was ticking. Roosevelt could not afford a new war in Angola; it would certainly put his nation in direct conflict with England. Mozambique was more acceptable, since war with Madagascar was unavoidable in the long-term, but for this to be successful, they needed more than naval parity with the fleet of the black people they despised so much.
Whether they wanted to admit it or not, the upper ranks of the Republic of the Cape – which had not held an election in the period 1910-1914 – knew New Virginia was for the moment the only fruit they could grasp safely without too much risk.
And since they needed to avoid a civil war, what about providing a common enemy to the New Virginians which was not on the other side of the Atlantic?
You will see. OTL sadly, being a horrible state was not a guarantee of imminent destruction.
Yes, a bit, but Angola (aka their favourite target) is unfortunately for them even more risky given how England would jump into the fray if it was attacked.
A Virginian-Spanish Quarrel (Africa 1915)
The enemy Theodore Roosevelt had in mind for the Virginians was, of course, the Holy Empire of Spain.
It wasn’t like the nominal commander of the ‘Bloody Riders’ had a lot of alternatives anyway. While New Virginia had several naval transports which could be used to ferry troops across the Atlantic, courtesy of the Floridian defeat having unfolded too quickly, a modern blue-water squadron would send them to the bottom of the ocean in a few minutes. There were no submarines or capital warships available, and the Consulate’s flagship was now a six year-old destroyer noticeable only by its obsolescence.
This meant that if the Cape wanted a war to unify the New Virginians with them, it had to be with a country they shared a frontier with, and there were only two of them now that the Great War had remodelled the map of Africa: France and Spain. Declaring war to the former would evidently be a rapid method of national suicide. Spain was a more reasonable proposition: its finances were in a lamentable state, its soldiers were underpaid, and now that the possibility of an escalation over the North and Central American conflict was clearly null, the troops which had been stationed in New Palma were repatriated to Europe or sent northwards bashing the heads of nomadic tribes refusing to swear allegiance to Madrid.
This Spanish colony was vulnerable. Or to be more accurate, it would be more vulnerable if some naval aid was provided to sink the Imperial cruiser and its escorts providing a maritime shield to the possessions of Empress Isabella. On land, things were more equilibrated: the New Virginians, bolstered by the Cape weapon shipments had managed to return to their pre-Floridian War strength with a large recruitment of Cape ‘volunteers’, giving them a three thousand-men advantage over their eastern neighbour.
Everything was ready. The date of the offensive had been chosen to begin in early January 1915, not to give a very ironic New Year’s gift to Madrid, but because until the wet season arrived in early April, this should give three good months to the New Virginians to beat the Imperial garrisons and seize as much as possible of this colony. Given the reduced forces available to New Virginia proper, the pro-South African officers imagined the garrisoning and the logistics would be more difficult than the fighting themselves.
They may have been right, if the Cape and New Virginian analysts hadn’t neglected a tiny detail. The Imperial Spanish was still nominally an ally of the Entente, and this translated in the ability to purchase weapons the Imperial French army had decided to replace by more cutting-edge forces. In addition to this, the fighting in the desert and the interior of Africa made difficult the deployment of certain units which were in dire need of heavy maintenance.
So when the Imperial cruiser received a Cape-engineered torpedo in the middle of the night and some smuggling operations became bloodbaths as the plans called, the invasion of New Palma went rapidly off script. To the great horror of some veterans of New Virginia who had survived the vicious fighting of North America, the Spanish had tanks, modern field guns, and plenty of machine guns. Not many compared to what a Carolinian or French army was able to field, but sufficiently to stop cold the first onslaught with hundreds of dead, and thousands more casualties on the third of January of the year 1915.
And then of course Madrid declared war, the population of the Holy Empire screaming for the blood of the perfidious enemy which had not even bothered to give them a declaration of war. Roosevelt had a conflict, but it was not the type he had explained to his Generals. The New Virginians had been supposed to smash their opponents in a single decisive assault, not advancing slowly in a bloody boxing match and paying for every kilometre in hundreds of bodies. Spain was hardly going to abandon its colony after such a performance, and it was giving time for reinforcements to arrive from other parts of the Spanish colonial empire. New Palma was not a territory as valuable as Southern Andalusia for Empress Isabella III, but it was a land the arms of the Spanish Empire had conquered, and they did not intend to relinquish it to a band of exilic English descendants that the religious authorities were prompt to demonise as Satan-worshipping heretics.
Obviously, it was one more plan going down in flames. This was not an unmitigated disaster for the Cape, since the Cape ambassadors protested the innocence of their master when the ‘ridiculous’ accusations of military support were made in public. And so far, Madrid appeared to give the benefice of the doubt to the South Africans, not because they believed in their innocence – the nickname ‘Snakes’ had been well-earned by 1914 – but due to the immense difficulties an invasion of the region would require. The Holy Empire was not bankrupt, but its economy had seen better days.
On the other hand, as the Cape and New Virginian-born soldiers discovered very quickly, Madrid had a lot of veterans courtesy of a previous agitated internal affairs. And when Empress Isabella III promised in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands that the volunteer soldiers would get first pick of the conquered lands of New Virginia, the recruiting offices could really pick quality over quantity. By the end of February, more than 30 000 men were sent reinforcing New Palma, and this was ‘only’ the first wave, armed with the best weapons based on French models that the Holy Empire could afford.
If the New Virginians had been able to inflict some decisive victories, then the situation could have been salvageable. But they had not. The attackers were still advancing in New Palma, but the defending forces had proved all too adept at avoiding the kind of decisive engagement their enemies wanted. Furthermore, the support of the local men and women who didn’t manage to flee in time was non-existent. White men and women, the colons of Imperial Spain, thought the New Virginians were heretics and treacherous backstabbers. Among the black population, it was worse: the Spanish converted by force, but at least they didn’t put you in chains and branded you with the terrible brands of slavery. A few massacres of villages when drunk Virginians rampaged to ‘celebrate’ their ‘victories’, and the damage was done: the invaders were hated and most of the cooperation possibilities buried with the fallen soldiers.
Theodore Roosevelt was thus in front of a dilemma. On the one hand, the New Virginians had made some impressive gains, close to one hundred kilometres of advance at the tip of the ‘offensive’, and added some new slaves to exploit in their plantations and other ‘un-Virginian’ activities. On the other hand, given what was coming for them, it was clear that the window of opportunity was closing, and it was closing fast. The dry season was almost over, and new warships were coming from Europe to replace the ones the Cape activities had put out of commission. New Richmond and all the cities of the Consulate were soon going to be under a naval blockade, it was a reality impossible to deny. And once this was done, defeat was only a question of time, with the Spanish bringing army after army to land on the New Virginian shores as the anvil to the hammer of their forces in New Palma.
Only the open intervention of the Republic of the Cape could save their ‘allies’. But was it wise to do so?
The enemy Theodore Roosevelt had in mind for the Virginians was, of course, the Holy Empire of Spain.
It wasn’t like the nominal commander of the ‘Bloody Riders’ had a lot of alternatives anyway. While New Virginia had several naval transports which could be used to ferry troops across the Atlantic, courtesy of the Floridian defeat having unfolded too quickly, a modern blue-water squadron would send them to the bottom of the ocean in a few minutes. There were no submarines or capital warships available, and the Consulate’s flagship was now a six year-old destroyer noticeable only by its obsolescence.
This meant that if the Cape wanted a war to unify the New Virginians with them, it had to be with a country they shared a frontier with, and there were only two of them now that the Great War had remodelled the map of Africa: France and Spain. Declaring war to the former would evidently be a rapid method of national suicide. Spain was a more reasonable proposition: its finances were in a lamentable state, its soldiers were underpaid, and now that the possibility of an escalation over the North and Central American conflict was clearly null, the troops which had been stationed in New Palma were repatriated to Europe or sent northwards bashing the heads of nomadic tribes refusing to swear allegiance to Madrid.
This Spanish colony was vulnerable. Or to be more accurate, it would be more vulnerable if some naval aid was provided to sink the Imperial cruiser and its escorts providing a maritime shield to the possessions of Empress Isabella. On land, things were more equilibrated: the New Virginians, bolstered by the Cape weapon shipments had managed to return to their pre-Floridian War strength with a large recruitment of Cape ‘volunteers’, giving them a three thousand-men advantage over their eastern neighbour.
Everything was ready. The date of the offensive had been chosen to begin in early January 1915, not to give a very ironic New Year’s gift to Madrid, but because until the wet season arrived in early April, this should give three good months to the New Virginians to beat the Imperial garrisons and seize as much as possible of this colony. Given the reduced forces available to New Virginia proper, the pro-South African officers imagined the garrisoning and the logistics would be more difficult than the fighting themselves.
They may have been right, if the Cape and New Virginian analysts hadn’t neglected a tiny detail. The Imperial Spanish was still nominally an ally of the Entente, and this translated in the ability to purchase weapons the Imperial French army had decided to replace by more cutting-edge forces. In addition to this, the fighting in the desert and the interior of Africa made difficult the deployment of certain units which were in dire need of heavy maintenance.
So when the Imperial cruiser received a Cape-engineered torpedo in the middle of the night and some smuggling operations became bloodbaths as the plans called, the invasion of New Palma went rapidly off script. To the great horror of some veterans of New Virginia who had survived the vicious fighting of North America, the Spanish had tanks, modern field guns, and plenty of machine guns. Not many compared to what a Carolinian or French army was able to field, but sufficiently to stop cold the first onslaught with hundreds of dead, and thousands more casualties on the third of January of the year 1915.
And then of course Madrid declared war, the population of the Holy Empire screaming for the blood of the perfidious enemy which had not even bothered to give them a declaration of war. Roosevelt had a conflict, but it was not the type he had explained to his Generals. The New Virginians had been supposed to smash their opponents in a single decisive assault, not advancing slowly in a bloody boxing match and paying for every kilometre in hundreds of bodies. Spain was hardly going to abandon its colony after such a performance, and it was giving time for reinforcements to arrive from other parts of the Spanish colonial empire. New Palma was not a territory as valuable as Southern Andalusia for Empress Isabella III, but it was a land the arms of the Spanish Empire had conquered, and they did not intend to relinquish it to a band of exilic English descendants that the religious authorities were prompt to demonise as Satan-worshipping heretics.
Obviously, it was one more plan going down in flames. This was not an unmitigated disaster for the Cape, since the Cape ambassadors protested the innocence of their master when the ‘ridiculous’ accusations of military support were made in public. And so far, Madrid appeared to give the benefice of the doubt to the South Africans, not because they believed in their innocence – the nickname ‘Snakes’ had been well-earned by 1914 – but due to the immense difficulties an invasion of the region would require. The Holy Empire was not bankrupt, but its economy had seen better days.
On the other hand, as the Cape and New Virginian-born soldiers discovered very quickly, Madrid had a lot of veterans courtesy of a previous agitated internal affairs. And when Empress Isabella III promised in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands that the volunteer soldiers would get first pick of the conquered lands of New Virginia, the recruiting offices could really pick quality over quantity. By the end of February, more than 30 000 men were sent reinforcing New Palma, and this was ‘only’ the first wave, armed with the best weapons based on French models that the Holy Empire could afford.
If the New Virginians had been able to inflict some decisive victories, then the situation could have been salvageable. But they had not. The attackers were still advancing in New Palma, but the defending forces had proved all too adept at avoiding the kind of decisive engagement their enemies wanted. Furthermore, the support of the local men and women who didn’t manage to flee in time was non-existent. White men and women, the colons of Imperial Spain, thought the New Virginians were heretics and treacherous backstabbers. Among the black population, it was worse: the Spanish converted by force, but at least they didn’t put you in chains and branded you with the terrible brands of slavery. A few massacres of villages when drunk Virginians rampaged to ‘celebrate’ their ‘victories’, and the damage was done: the invaders were hated and most of the cooperation possibilities buried with the fallen soldiers.
Theodore Roosevelt was thus in front of a dilemma. On the one hand, the New Virginians had made some impressive gains, close to one hundred kilometres of advance at the tip of the ‘offensive’, and added some new slaves to exploit in their plantations and other ‘un-Virginian’ activities. On the other hand, given what was coming for them, it was clear that the window of opportunity was closing, and it was closing fast. The dry season was almost over, and new warships were coming from Europe to replace the ones the Cape activities had put out of commission. New Richmond and all the cities of the Consulate were soon going to be under a naval blockade, it was a reality impossible to deny. And once this was done, defeat was only a question of time, with the Spanish bringing army after army to land on the New Virginian shores as the anvil to the hammer of their forces in New Palma.
Only the open intervention of the Republic of the Cape could save their ‘allies’. But was it wise to do so?
Oh, I cannot wait to see the fate that is in store for New Virginia. For once Spain is the good guy!