Italico Valore - A more successful 1848 revolution in Italy - a TL

[Deleted member 147289]

A CHANGING EUROPE

London was, for all intents and purposes, the World's Capital between the mid 1800s and the early 1900s​

The British Empire was rocked in 1901 by the death of Queen Victoria. At her death, Great Britain possessed the largest empire in the world, extending from Ottawa to Hong Kong, which provided it with a huge amount of resources necessary to power British factories and industrialization in Canada and the Australian Federation, born from the union of the colonies of Australia and New Zealand in 1901. The Empire was known as "the factory of the world" for its high industrial production traded around the globe by the largest merchant fleet in the world and protected by the largest navy in the world, the Royal Navy, although Italy's launch of the dreadnought Italia sparked a naval arms race in which Great Britain actively participated, launching fourteen dreadnoughts between 1907 and 1916. During the Imperial Conference of 1905 the concept of "Imperial Federation" was introduced for the first time: it was a project to federate the British Empire through the military and economic integration between the British Isles and the most developed colonies, guaranteeing free internal trade and the application of duties to external products and the implementation of measures of greater self-government in the white dominions to reduce the burden on the central coffers. Although radical, the proposal was found interesting on the part of the conservative government in its proposals for imperial integration with a view to strengthening the British global power which was competing with France, Italy and Russia; therefore the creation of a committee was ordered to better study the proposal with an extensive cross empire study carried out by enthusiast proponents and various experts to advise the council, with the goal of bringing their proposal to the 1914 Imperial Conference.

British troops parade through a middle eastern city. The empire brought great pride to British People and many were employed by Britain's worldwide empire​

Russian aggression in Central Asia and the Far East forced a reassessment of the policies of the Great Game: Russian intervention in the Chinese civil war had alarmed London to such an extent that a proposal for an anti-Russian alliance was sent to the Japanese empire which, like Great Britain, viewed Russian expansionism in the area in a negative light. Japan accepted the proposal and in 1910 the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed, guaranteeing each nation against Russian aggression. Tsarist pressure on Iran had increased since the annexation of the Central Asian khanates, with the dispatch of garrisons and advisors to the shah's court in direct competition with the traditional English presence. The imperial investment was also directed towards India, seen as a pillar of the empire: funds were allocated to the creation of infrastructures such as ports and railways, but also to an initial industrialization along the coasts and the Ganges valley to create an native military industry capable of equipping the Royal India Army, a formation made up of Indians and British who had the burden of extending British influence from the Middle East to Indochina.

If London was the political capital of the world than Paris was the cultural capital of the world, concentrating in it's metropolitan area a very high number of artists, scientists and literates​

France was experiencing an era of cultural, social, economic and for the first time demographic explosion: the positioning of the French republic as a bastion of European stability, dedicated to the preservation of its interests and the maintenance of continental peace, preferring to expand overseas by encouraging, for example, the migration to Algeria, had resulted in a cultural renaissance that had placed Paris as the undisputed capital of world culture, where painters, writers, poets, philosophers and avant-gardists came in search of inspiration or fame. The demographic increase that began in the late nineteenth century had continued into the twentieth century, giving France a resource it was lacking, manpower, mitigating this hard pressing issue and allowing more men to work, furhering industrialization and the enrichment of the country but also colonial migration and military expansion. Against the backdrop of this prosperous period defined as "Belle Epoque", the events of French politics took place, dominated since 1902 by the Radical Republican party supported by their left allies including the socialists and moderate republicans within the "bourgeois-proletarian" alliance that combined a nascent welfare with great ease of trade. This alliance was opposed by the newly formed Droit, an alliance of national conservatives and monarchists, who represented the largest wing of the party, with royalist sympathies and expressly interested in a Bourbon or Orleans restoration that garnered support among the upper classes, what remained of the nobility and the countryside that saw the Radical Republicans as too interested in the city, neglecting the suburbs. Within the Droit there were also proto-legionary elements who began to gain traction especially among the industrial proletariat, creating trade unions in competition with the red ones.

The French Foreign Legion was the most well known military unit in the world, accepting volounteers from all around the globe and training them for harsh missions in the African desert or jungles of Laos​

French hegemony over Western Europe was threatened on two fronts, the Mediterranean and Central European ones. To the south was Italy, an ever-growing power with a level of military and economic power comparable to that of France, aligned with Great Britain. The launch of the Italia-class dreadnoughts upset the balance of power in the Mediterranean by forcing the French to take part in the naval arms race in an attempt to achieve parity with the Italians. To the east instead sat the North German Confederation which was experiencing an unprecedented industrial and demographic boom and was also a rising power, proposing a German unification through peaceful methods by funding pan-Germanic parties in southern Germany. German unification was seen as the greatest threat to French hegemony on the continent and its rulers were intent on preventing it at any cost, therefore in 1908 the Austro-French Entente was signed, a treaty of mutual assistance and protection of the mutual spheres of influence, but also of mutual investment and trade. French prestige was further increased with the completion of the Panama Canal in 1915, built by French money, American engineers and local labour, shortening travel distances between the Atlantic and the Pacific, beating the British who were digging around Nicaragua at that time

The Norddeutscher Bundestag was built after the creation of the North German Confederation and had acted since as the parliement of the Confederation led by Prussia​

The North German Confederation was experiencing an economic, political and commercial boom: the death of Bismarck and the succession of the new chancellor Helmut Von Görlitz ushered in a new era for Germanic politics dominated by liberals after thirty years of conservative rule. Bismarck had succeeded in achieving social peace in Germany by creating a proto welfare state by providing health care and education to the masses, as well as numerous labor rights but few political rights, in exchange for their loyalty by maneuvering political factions against each other to carry out its purposes. Content with the current state of affairs Von Görlitz decided to focus on foreign policy starting a serious rapprochement with the Italian ally who resented the Germans for Bismarck's attitude and with Great Britain which was after all the greatest empire in the world. Industrialization spread from the Rhineland to Silesia which became the main centers of production and innovation, thanks to an educated population that facilitated scientific and technological research. Particular attention was given to the colonial question, both by financing a modern navy, and by developing colonies in East Africa and concessions in China, but also by extending its sphere of influence over Morocco with the creation of a German naval base along the Atlantic coast. in direct challenge with the French who had been present in the country since before the Congress of London.

The Dual Crown of Austria-Hungary after the 1912 compromise that effectively split the Empire in two distinct entites, independent in all but name and tied together by the Habsburg emperor who ruled over both of them​

The Empire of Austria was going through a tumultuous phase of its existence. The death of Maximilian I in 1906 from illness left the imperial throne to the only son he had with Charlotte of Belgium, Joseph III. At the time of the succession, the Hungarian nobles took the opportunity to ask for more autonomy, rights and independence in the empire, to add to the privileges they had received in 1849. Inexperienced and idealistic, having grown up with his parent's liberal ideas on empire mamagement, Joseph III decided, against the advice of his council of ministers, to give the Hungarians what they wanted in exchange for their loyalty and thus the 1912 compromise was signed between Austria and Hungary, effectively splitting the empire in two distinc entities tied by their Habsburg emperor. On the matters of foreign policy, internal trade and monetary policy the two states worked together, but everything else was regulated by their national parliements in Budapest and Vienna under the "one empire, two systems" method. The appeasement of the Hungarians had the consequence that the Czechs, residing in one of the most industrialized and prosperous parts of the empire, asked to receive the same treatment from Vienna: the progress of industrialization and acculturation of the masses, combined with the reduction of poverty, had generated instability among ethnic minorities who claimed a reward for their contributions and their loyalty to the empire but the nobility was resistant to changes and an extension of democracy and the Hungarians were jealous of their privileges so the other proposals were suppressed. Despite military, technical and technological advancements, Austrian subjects remained quite poor and antiquated: electrification, higher education and industries were located in German, Hungarian and Czech majority areas thus excluding Croats, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and Slovaks from benefitting of this progress, exacerbating tensions and the growing divide between the western and eastern parts of the Empire.

Zar Alexis II inherited a rapidly developing country which was still threatened by problems from the past​

The death of Alexander II in 1898 led to the rise of Alexis II, the fourth son of the Tsar and the new autocrat of all Russia after his third son Alexander had died of illness a few years earlier. The Tsar was a man of adventure having visited Europe, the three Americas and Japan, participating in adrenaline-pumping activities and indulging in the pleasures that life offered, he had shown little interest in the direct government of the empire however, merely approving and briefly discussing the proposals of the three most important ministers: Gagarin (finance), Narishkyn (internal affairs) and Volkonsky (foreign); this triumvirate was the real force behind Russian policy, exploiting the Tsar's inadequacy in governing to put their policies into practice. Russia had modernized under Alexander II by increasing its railway coverage, establishing numerous industrial centers, increasing the literacy of the population and lifting millions of Russians from the most extreme poverty, also granting democracy to the upper classes. Despite these changes, the Russians remained among the poorest in Europe, deprived of civil and political rights, subjected to the stringent control of the Tsarist police who were constantly on the hunt for dissent, dissent that continued to grow among the masses who wanted more rights and more. freedom. Russia was modern in a structural, not a social sense, and this kept the empire from developing its maximum potential.

Russian interest in Persia represented a great danger for the British Empire, especially for the security of India​

In foreign policy, Russia adopted an increasingly assertive and confrontational tone towards its rival, Great Britain, eager to test the military reforms undertaken after the Balkan war and the new fleet that was being built with modern ships and dreadnoughts as well Russia participated in the naval race, with the Tsar being a marine enthusiast. Russian assertiveness manifested itself in 1908 with the unilateral invasion of Manchuria during the Chinese civil war and with the intensification of diplomatic relations with Iran, seen as the access to the Persian Gulf, which led the Shah to enter the Russian orbit after expelling the British in 1913, a setback that increased tensions in the Middle East.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

62. CHINESE CIVIL WAR AND BEIYANG ERA

The causes of the Chinese civil war are to be found in the first opium war, a harsh awakening for a Qing dynasty that had always considered itself masters of the world, unaware of the developments that were taking place in the West; the consequences of the conflict such as natural disasters, the Taiping rebellion, the unequal treaties and the Wushu revolt were interpreted as the loss of the mandate of Heaven by the ruling dynasty. It was for this reason that on the death of Empress Cixi the nobles of the court, in agreement with the Beiyang army and the rising elites, prevented the coronation of Prince Chungsun in 1908 with a palace coup, called the "Jade Revolution", exiling the prince (accompanied by his guardian Zhang Min) to Europe.

A group photo of the conspirators, whch started to call themselves revolutionaries. Li Wei, head of the Beiyang Army, is in the middle of the group.​

Having achieved its purpose, the unity of the conspirators failed, not being able to choose who should take the imperial crown: the strongest candidacy among those present was that of Li Wei, general of the Beiyang army, the most modern and powerful army of all China but others feared the increase in military power fearing a complete takeover. The outbreak of hostilities occurred when Manchurian troops expelled the Beiyang delegation from Peking; when news of the clash spread among the nation, the order collapsed and numerous provincial governors proclaimed secession from the central government, as did Mongolian, Hui, Uighur and Tibetan nationalist groups. The regions fell one by one under the control of secessionists, Manchu nobles and what remained of the Beiyang army after the expulsion from the capital. The situation was exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Manchuria to secure its investments in the region threatened by escalating hostilities.

Despite being formally under China, Shanghai and it's surroundings were administred by the Internationa China Authority, leaving the flourishing city untouched by the chaos.​

The only oases of peace in the chaos of the middle kingdom were the western concessions along the coast: extraneous to the court policy of the Qing Empire these remained calm during the growing instability, protected by European ships and soldiers against any attempted conquest. Precisely for this reason they became the favorite destination of tens of thousands of refugees who tried to escape the collapse of order by taking refuge within them and soon the flow of people was so high that the individual concessions could no longer deal with them alone. The International China Authority, an international body located in Shanghai and present in all concessions, intervened in this void and began to effectively redistribute refugees, favoring the development of coastal cities with an increase in population and helping those who wanted to emigrate to the Republic of Pacifica. The rising economy and the prestige obtained by the humanitarian enterprise widely documented by the newspapers made the ICA the main foreign organization in China, so much so that in 1916 the concessions and the authorities signed a treaty to divide local administration between the civil service and organization, chaired by Lord Erringwright.

Beiyang troops marching in central China. The superiority in equipment, morale and training of the Army was unmatched by any other force, making them the most formidable armed force in all of China​

The Beiyang army, expelled from the capital, withdrew to Guangdong, subjecting most of the rebel governors in its path to its power, coming to control a large part of southern China. Li Wei established his headquarters in Canton, from which he organized the expansion, financing and arming of the Beiyang army which used the period 1909-1911 to prepare for the march north to retake the capital. What the Canton arsenal was unable to produce was procured through the ICA which had contacts with the major arms manufacturers in the world, importing heavy equipment from all over Europe. In the spring of 1911 Li Wei decided that the time was ripe to launch his own campaign against the Manchu people who were starting to be frowned upon by the population as they were considered a continuation of the Qing dynasty.The first battle of the campaign took place around Nanping where a manchu force composed of twice as many opponents it was defeated by Beiyang troops. Battle after battle Li Wei always defeated the Manchu people, being welcomed as a liberator by the population and gaining the loyalty of the northern governors, entering Beijing on May 15, 1912 after the last great battle of the war in Cangzhou, at the head of his 300.000 soldiers in a great parade.

The Great Parade of Li Wei ended in front of the Forbidden City where his troops acclaimed their heroic general.​

Having conquered the capital Li Wei spent the year consolidating his power by starting a repression campaign against Manchus, forcing those who did not want to be killed to flee to Russian Manchuria and sending the Beiyang army to restore central order to the country. In 1913 a semblance of law and order returned to China and on May 15 of the same year Li Wei was crowned emperor ushering in the Beiyang era, during which the reborn Chinese empire continued the westernization begun during the Qing era with an onset of industrialization. along the coasts and modernization of agriculture in the hinterland, the creation of a national assembly elected by 5% of the population, the damage of the civil war was repaired and western style fashion and customs started to gain traction in China. The Hui people and the Mongols submitted voluntarily to imperial power fearing the Beiyang army, but the Uighurs ended up under Russian protection while Tibet was protected by the British Empire. During this period, well-known Chinese exiled politicians such as Teng Fei Hong returned to their homeland organizing political parties and organizations to participate in various elections, introducing an embryo of democratic culture among Chinese non-noble elites.

The Beiyang flag would grow to become the most recognizable symbol of modern China​

Li Wei's death in 1920 opened a succession crisis: the emperor was left a widower and had no known surviving children, making the passage of the crown disputed between the general's two deputies, Cai Chenguang and Yu Zemin. Unable to find a solution and ready to fight it out, they were beaten by Teng Fei Hong who, together with the deputies of the national assembly, proclaimed the Republic of China. The proclamation of the republic was welcomed in the south of the country but the rest of the nation plunged back into chaos, with the Beiyang army engaged in a fratricidal struggle in support of its imperial candidates and local particularisms that tore the country apart. Teng and his supporters fled to Nanking where they started a provisional government in hopes of reclaiming all of China someday.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

63. THE CISPLATINE WAR

The economic take-off of Argentina in the early 1900s brought it into competition with the Brazilian Empire for the position of the leading nation of the South American continent: Argentine agricultural products were in great demand abroad and the intensification of trade produced an increase of wealth which resulted in continuous industrialization. The increase in prosperity and prospects for the inhabitants led to ever more consistent migratory waves directed to Argentina which boosted the local population. The increase in economic power translated into an ever greater political and diplomatic weight that Manuel Jimenez, elected in 1910 to the presidency on a Confederal platform, decided to exploit to impose Argentina as a great South American power.

Argentina was an interesting prospect for european immigrants, especially from Spain, Southern Italy and France.​

The Confederal political platform envisaged a "return to colonial origins" by establishing a political, economic and military union between Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, nations that are close and easily influenced by a great power. The success of the confederal idea in Argentina shook all over the south of the continent, galvanizing the parties adhering to the idea in other nations: the most important success occurred in 1912 in Paraguay with the election of the Confederal Conservatives who immediately entered into negotiations with Argentina to formalize the confederation of the two states, which took place in 1913 with the agreements of Paranà.

But the real prize was Uruguay: Jimenez spent a lot of money to finance the supporters of the confederal idea, leading them to electoral success in the 1914 elections which ended with the election of Luis Blanco, a friend of Jimenez, to the presidency. The newly elected president immediately entered into negotiations to confederate Uruguay with Argentina but the idea was not digested by the armed forces who feared the supremacy of the Argentines so general Lopez orchestrated a coup that overthrew the government and established a dictatorship temporary held by the anti-confederal military.

Argentina denounced the incident and threatened to have its army intervene if the Uruguayan military did not step aside in early June. The empire of Brazil was following the situation with great interest: the inclusion of Uruguay in the Argentine project would neutralize any buffer state between Argentina and Brazil, making an Argentine invasion of Brazil much more likely. It was for this reason that the Brazilian government guaranteed the independence of Uruguay and threatened Argentina to intervene. The carioca threats were ignored as Jimenez, aware of Argentina's military superiority (Argentina had a strong war industry as well as a lot of European material, mainly French and English such as aircraft and automatic rifles), decided to proceed anyway with the invasion that began on the 2nd May 1914 with the crossing of the Uruguay River. At the time of the ford the three nations declared war, starting the Cisplatin war.

Soldiers from Argentina cheerfully march into Uruguay.​

The Brazilian army was slow to mobilize and intervene as no one believed in the seriousness of the Argentine threats. This slowness was the death knell of Uruguay which, with an army equal to 1/10 of the Argentine one, had no hope of slowing its advance and the few battles fought on the road to Montevideo led only to heavy defeats that disintegrated morale and the unity of the Uruguayan armed forces. The fall of the capital in July 1914 left the Uruguayans to garrison the Melo-Tacuarembo-Riviera line, the last stop before the border with Brazil. The redeployment of half a million Argentines on the line took a couple of weeks, giving the first four Brazilian divisions time to arrive on the line and guard it.

Brazilian professional soldiers in position in Uruguay during summer 1914​

The war could have ended there with the restoration of the Confederal party in Uruguay and the annexation of the remaining territory to Brazil, but Jimenez preferred to continue the hostilities, convinced that the war was the perfect opportunity to deal a fatal blow to Brazil and subject it to Argentine influence, therefore ordered a new offensive to be carried out in September, with the aim of conquering the state of Rio Grande do Sul, one of the most populous and richest regions in Brazil.

The Argentine military had invested in creating an Air Force, one of the first in the world, by buying or producing planes. On the contrast, the Brazilians had no such thing at the outbreak of the war ​

The offensive began on September 14, 1914 with a long bombardment of artillery on Brazilian positions, located through the use of airplanes as scouts for the artillery. Argentine airplanes were basically untouchable: small arms had difficulty hitting them, and their enemies were equipped with few anti-aircraft guns. After the bombardment, infantry advanced equipped with French-made FAM automatic rifles which proved excellent in suppressing enemies and their rate of fire greatly increased the firepower of individual infantry squads giving the Argentines a distinct advantage over their enemies. Archieving breakthrough in multiple points, the Argentine begun advancing into Brazil, arriving in Santa Maria in early December due to a lack of infrastructure and land that had to be crossed on foot or on horseback with railways limited to connecting major cities.

Argentine heavy artillery shells Porto Alegre during Christmas 1914​

In January 1915 Porto Alegre was conquered after a hard street by street battle, giving the Argentines the control of most of Rio Grande do Sul. The Brazilian situation was getting worse by the day with the army unable to stop the Argentine advance: the years of cuts to the armed forces, little training and non-cutting edge equipment were showing. In a moment of great charisma and national unity Dom Pedro Alfonso, Emperor of Brazil, urged the population to resist the Argentine aggressor, asking every able man with no distinction of race or religion to join the armed forces to repel the invader in one of his best speeches to the nation. The economy began to be converted for war purposes while huge military orders were placed in the American Republic, Italy and the British Empire, in the hope of acquiring cutting-edge material to counter the Argentine advance.

Portrait of Dom Pedro Alfonso, Emperor of Brazil, in military uniform​

The combination of aerial reconnaissance, artillery support and automatic rifles had given the Argentines a considerable advantage in the field, as noted by the numerous military observers of the great powers present on the continent, eager to see the tools of modern warfare in operation. Until then the war had been relatively mobile with the overcoming of all static defenses and the use of new technologies seemed to confirm this style of warfare. Everything changed in April 1915 when the Argentines arrived at the Iguazu and Negro rivers during the pursuit of the Brazilian army retreating to the north: here the cariocas had decided to exploit the hilly terrain to create static defensive positions and, helped by abundance of material as any available equipment had been sent south, they managed to stop the enemy advance and prevent its ford in the bloody battle of the two rivers, which lasted until May 1915.

Brazilian soldiers rest during a break between battles on the Iguazu-Negro line​

When the Argentines realized they could not cross the rivers they dug defensive lines identical to the Brazilian ones, creating a parallel system of trenches that went from the Atlantic coast to the border with Paraguay, which remained neutral in the conflict even if confederated with Argentina. Three more times the Argentines tried to cross the river and three times they were pushed back by the Brazilians. Although these were pyrrhic victories, Brazil could afford them since it had double the Argentine population, while the Argentine losses were hardly replaceable: the high quality of the army had to be exchanged for a greater availability of men and the reserves of modern weapons soon ran out, leaving bolt action weapons for conscripts.

The frontlines at the end of 1915. Despite being confederated with Argentina, Paraguay was still an independent country and had not been called to war by Jimenez​

Both sides entrenched themselves for the rest of the year, leaving room for sporadic bursts of rifle fire across the river or for the increasingly frequent aerial combat that took place in the skies of Paranà between Argentine aircraft of national or French manufacture and Brazilian aircraft usually coming from Britain and the American Republic: these first fights took place initially between aviators who fired with light weapons and then evolved into real dogfights between aircraft equipped with machine guns (fighters) or bombs (bombers) for ground attack.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

64. THE CISPLATINE WAR II

Pedro Alfonso asked his generals to go on the offensive as soon as possible: Brazil was losing quite badly and morale at home was starting to fall as the military proved unable to stall the Argentinians. The main problem for any counterattack was the defensive line along the Iguazu-Negro system that were too strong to be forced in a direct attack that would have ended in tragedy; it was therefore necessary to find an alternative route of attack and General Justino Pinto had the solution: an attack through Paraguay.

Paraguay had remained neutral in the conflict but was formally linked to Argentina by the confederation treaty it signed in 1912, making it complicit in their neighbor's actions. It was clear that Jimenez had not called his ally to cover his flank and concentrate his troops along the coast, a mistake that would cost him dearly. Thus it was that in February 1916 Pinto and 150,000 Brazilian soldiers accompanied by artillery, airplanes and cavalry entered northern Paraguay a few hours after the formal declaration of war. The small Paraguayan army, could do little to stop the Brazilian advance: a desperate defense attempt was made in Asuncion but the Brazilians surrounded the city and continued towards the Paranà river to strike the Argentinians on the rear. The invasion of Paraguay, a formally independent and neutral nation, set a dangerous precedent.

A Brazilian gun crew enjoys a few minutes of rest during the battle of Santa Maria​

The Argentine command had no reserves to cover its flank from the surprise attack and was forced to reduce its front line to re-deploy its troops, so in March the Argentine army began to withdraw from the Iguazu-Negro system towards Rio Grande do Sul, chased by the Brazilians who had hastily given chase. Pinto's army and the main Brazilian and Argentine contingents clashed in the three month long battle of Rio Grande do Sul, in which more than 900,000 men clashed in the final battle for control of southern Brazil: heavy fighting took place in Porto Alegre, Santa Maria (who changed hands four times) and Pelotas while regular battles and ambushes took place in the countryside where Argentines were harassed by Brazilian snipers who tied down a substantial part of the army and the Air Force was virtually destroyed during the battle, suffering from Brazilian attrition and aces flying American and British aircraft. In the autumn of 1916 the Argentines were expelled from Brazil and a revolt in Uruguay forced them to establish a new front on the river of the same name, entrenching themselves and repulsing the Brazilian ford attempt.

Brazilian dreadnought Dom Pedro II was the protagonist of the battle of Punta del Este, being imprinted in the mids of Brazilians as it limped back to Rio de Janeiro​

With the army on the defensive and the air force annihilated, the Argentine navy was the only card in the government's hands: with two British-made dreadnoughts and four heavy cruisers, it could control the Rio de la Plata estuary and shell Montevideo, as happened in October 1916. The Brazilian Imperial Navy was ordered to sail and face their enemy in a decisive battle off Punta del Este. The two fleets met around 10 a.m. and the dreadnoughts began shelling each other from a distance, only to be joined by the cruisers who added their broadsides as the destroyers attempted to launch some lucky torpedoes at the enemy ships. The dreadnoughts proved invulnerable to the smaller ships, leading them to concentrate their fire on each other once the smaller ships had been sunk or driven away: by 5 p.m. the two fleets were significantly reduced in number but the Argentine one suffered the loss of both dreadnoughts, while the Brazilians lost one ship but saved another one, albeit damaged, the French-made Dom Pedro II. The Argentine navy withdrew to Buenos Aires as the fog fell but, having lost almost all of its capital ships, it was now relegated to a coastal defense force, leaving control of the seas to the Brazilians.

On the left an Argentine soldier with an MP-17, submachine guns proved real game changers in trenches; on the right a Brazilian Char, manifactured in France, chariots were one of the most influential inventions to be tested in the war​

1917 saw the introduction of two new weapons on the battlefield, the submachine gun and the Char. The first had been requested by the Argentines in 1915 after the semi automatic rifles had proven too bulky to handle during trench sweeping and close quarters and organized a competition between the main European arms factories, a competition won by the Germans with their MP-17, but the first models began to arrive when the Argentine army was already on the defensive. The weapons were distributed to NCOs and raiders, proving very effective in clearing out enemy trenches. The Char was a French project for an armored tracked vehicle capable of crossing multiple terrains and provide fire support to advancing infantry, acting as a mobile gun; with the outbreak of the Platine War the engineers had modified the designs to make the vehicle capable of crossing the trenches and in 1916/7 the first models began to come out of the factories. The Brazilians were very interested in that type of weapon as they suffered frightening losses every time they tried to storm the Argentine trenches and the French government was interested in field testing their Chars (or Chariots in English or Carri in Italian), a sample of 20 vehicles to Brazil along with army observers and engineers. The tanks went into action in January 1917 at the city of Mercedes and proved invulnerable to Argentine fire, transforming what should have been a bloody assault into a relatively easy attack, proving the effectiveness of the new vehicle on the battlefield. The chariots led the Brazilian advance into the province of Entre Rios, forcing the Argentines to establish a new defensive line on the Parana River.

With the hopes of a Platine Confederation gone up in smoke, Manuel Jimenez ordered his commanders to plan the defense of Buenos Aires and a guerrilla campaign inland, but the generals had now realized that the war was lost and an all-out defense would only killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civillians, so on June 24, 1917, the army carried out a coup, deposing Jimenez and starting peace talks with Brazil. After more than three million deaths (mainly civilians), the Cisplatina War ended with the Treaty of Montevideo, in which Argentina renounced any claim or future attempt to build a Platine Confederation, would pay large war indemnities to Brazil and Uruguay for the damage caused by the war, limited its armed forces for the next 23 years to 200,000 men and would transfer control of Entre Rios to Brazil, which was granted moderate autonomy given the cultural difference, Paraguay ended up in the Brazilian orbit and obtained the Argentine Chaco. In 1918 the pro-Brazilian Uruguayan parliament asked the imperial government to be annexed as an autonomous province, a request that Pedro Alfonso and the Brazilian conservatives were more than happy to accept. With the victory, Brazil definitively cemented its position as hegemon. of the South American continent.

The Southern Cone after the Cisplatine War​

 

[Deleted member 147289]

65. 1917-1920: THE QUIET YEARS

With the conclusion of the Cisplatine War, the world returned to normalcy, allowing its inhabitants to continue living their lives regardless of the fact that the political, colonial, economical and military tensions between the Great Powers were about to reach a breaking point.

Allegoric map of the Imperial Federation: the British Empire and it's culture spanned four continents and shaped much of the world to it's image, the Greatest Power, but it's position would soon be challenged by powerful competitors, both foe and ally​

In 1918, the British Empire rearranged itself as the Imperial Federation, made up of Great Britain and more developed dominions (Canada, South Africa and Australasia). The federation established a single internal market protected by tariffs, the increased control of dominions over their internal affairs but still remaining closely bound to Westminster, an imperial military command and a Permanent Imperial Conference, a board made of members coming from all over the empire that managed imperial integration. The implementation of these new rules and the restructuring of the empire on a federal basis would have required some time during which Britain would have had to withdraw from international affairs and devote its attention to the internal reform of the country, the completion of which was indicated in 1924. The colonial administration remained in the hands of the British but the Canadian, South African and Australasian governments had more say in the management of the colonies on their continents, leaving to the motherland the dominion over Asia in particular India whose ruling class, which had mingled with the British to the point of being called Anglo-Indian, had made demands for limited self-government, granted in the form of open elections to upper castes in view of India's potential entry into the Federation in the indeterminate future.

Northern Germany was a center of technical, scientific and cultural innovation, but its governing structures remained archaic: the Prussian voting system was still in use in Prussia while smaller states such as Saxony and Hanover had adopted wider suffrages for the their own population, which became the reference model of the various social democratic and liberal groups that advocated for the reform of the voting system to definitively remove power from the Prussian landed aristocracy. Backed by private and state capital, the Pan-Germanist movement was back in vogue throughout the German area, spread by newspapers, university professors, radio and literal publications clamoring for a united Germany to resist French and Russian pressure. The Hohenzollern dynasty and the current Prussian king Wilhelm II made no secret of its ambitions to annex the states of southern Germany whose elites had always been opposed the Protestants of the north but whose populations were in complete agreement with the ideas coming from Prussia. In 1919 every southern German state had a Pan-German party, including Austria where the idea began to gain traction after Joseph III granted semi-independence to Hungary, leading certain intellectuals to think that the era of the Habsburg Empire was over and that the future lay in a unitary Germanic state. The broad popular support of these ideas fueled by numerous private donations (especially from northern tycoons) made the pan-Germanic parties real contenders in the elections despite the continuous attempts of the national parties to discredit them.

The rise of Pan-Germanism had created a feeling of profound insecurity in France which saw the realization of a unitary German state as a foregone consequence of the strong popular movement that accompanied it. The French knew best of all that if the popular will had not been nipped in the bud the only result would have been the revolution, that is the end of French domination on the continent: already undermined by the Italians, the rise of a united Germany would have been the gravestone for French ambitions. The French state embarked on a double offensive, diplomatic and military, aimed both at discrediting Pan-Germanism and at preparing for a possible war for the domination of the Germanic area. French weapons were some of the most advanced in the world and the population boom provided recruits and workers needed to support the war effort, but the armed forces were also fertile ground for the proliferation of monarchical ideas with many officers formally siding with the republic hiding their ideals in the scrutiny of republican security, guaranteeing the Droite a strong presence in the national security apparatus. Algeria had become the main relief valve for the French population who preferred the comfort of the Mediterranean to the far colonies of Senegal and Madagascar, filling the coast and the hinterland with French-speaking settlements to the chagrin of the natives who were becoming more marginalized and driven to the desert. Some natives chose to embrace French culture by converting to Christianity but most of the inhabitants of the Tell were opposed to European penetration and began to resist, only to be dispersed by aircraft and machine guns belonging to the Foreign Legion: the plan to Frenchize Algeria would proceed smoothly .

The gradual transition from coal to oil as a source of energy was the fortune of the Pacific Republic and Southern Confederation which with their oil fields in California and Texas became the main oil exporters by 1920, giving a significant boost to their economies which filled the industrial gap with the American Republic by increasing their wealth. The Southern Confederation's plan to create an economic empire in the Caribbean had received a major boost with the annexation of Cuba and the Confederate leaders were turning their eyes to Haiti and Central America, interested in their agricultural potential: investments in these states created gave rise to the economical predominance of Southron companies such as General Fruits and Ozark Mining, whose flow of resources was protected by the Confederate fleet which had become the main navy in the Caribbean with six dreadnoughts.

The continuous flow of Asian migrants had profoundly changed the racial makeup of the Pacific coast making whites a narrow majority within the state and creating much discomfort to the native inhabitants, therefore the political arena was divided between those who wanted to favor the integration of immigrants and a new national character and those who preferred. nativist policies aimed at preserving European culture, exacerbating the social situation to the point that in 1913 racial riots broke out in Los Angeles that saw Whites, Asians and Latinos openly fight each other on the street calling for the intervention of the army to quell the rebellion. The victory of the Progressive Party in 1916 allowed for a much fairier distribution of the oil wealth to the population, establishing the first national hospital service, founding higher education and expanding existing cities and infrastructure; this eased the racial tensions quite considerably, allowing for a more peaceful society to be slowly created.

Oil wells on Long Beach, California: the rapid growth of the oil industry sparked a massive economic boom in the south-western states, allowing their citizens to thrive​

The industrialization of Brazil and the modernization of the economies of its neighbors had thrown into crisis the industrial sector of the American Republic which, despite remaining the most prosperous nation of North America, fell into a period of economic stagnation that increased political polarization, attracting many workers to socialist and the new legionarist ideas that were beginning to spread in the western hemisphere, directed against the coastal elites seen as manipulators of the population. The Southern Confederation's alignment with France prompted the Republic to tighten its ties with the Imperial Federation in search of a sponsor for the potential reunification of the United States, an idea that was beginning to make its way into political circles and propagated in the streets between the enthusiasm of the population.

The Shogunate of Japan was experiencing a period of great national prosperity now that the benefits of industrialization had begun to be evident, sparking a feeling of national pride that strengthened the Japanese ideal and the foundation of the Shogunate, now ruled by Tokugawa Ieasu, heir by Yoshinobu. The annexation of the Philippines in 1905 and Korea in 1912 had shifted the army's focus from the country to the colonies that were being pacified, allowing the Shogun to begin a process of decentralization and democratization of the Japanese state by implementing suffrage for literate males. over 25 and breaking the power base of the old Daymo by creating a system of prefectures run by one of the best bureaucracies in the world. Great conglomerates like Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Yasuda were the backbone of the national economy, each producing a multitude of industrial and consumer goods, in particular Japanese shipbuilding and motor works were quite appreciated. Workers' rights began to receive attention after the four bombings of 1915 to strangle the popularity of the nascent Japanese socialist party which was having luck among proletarians subjected to exploitation for the past century: shorter working hours along with safety regulations, pensions and primary health care did the job, restoring social peace. For the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the Rising Sun would take on more responsibility in Asia, starting with the expansion of its navy in an anti-Russian perspective: in 1922 the Japanese navy could deploy 12 dreadnoughts against the 7 Russian ones anchored in Vladivostok.

In 1917 the Russian Empire under the leadership of the triumvirate had initiated a naval expansion program destined to be completed in 1927 producing 12 dreadnoughts and dozens of capital and minor ships, signaling to the world the Russian intention to bridge the naval gap with the Imperial Federation to compete for the title of pre-eminent world power. The extension of the railway network in Siberia and the colonization of the region had made Asian Russia a source of raw materials destined to feed the growing hunger for resources of the industries that had developed along the St. Petersburg-Moscow-Tzaritzyn line, the latter a planned city for which the government did not spare rubles by envisioning it a as the center of a future industrial zone on the Volga connected to the industry of southern Ukraine. A duma elected by the upper middle classes guaranteed a minimum of representation to the population that could be said to be satisfied with the level of democracy, which had never been higher in Russia and extended to Belarus, Finland and the Ukraine; certain regions were excluded from the democratic process such as the Baltic, Poland, Central Asia and the Caucasus, except in the Russian enclaves due to the intense Russification process which had been most successful in Kazakhstan, where about 60% of the population was now of Russian origin. Resentment towards Russians was increasing among non-Slavic populations who saw them as oppressors: after all, the progress that had affected the empire had never reached these areas except in the form of improved military infrastructure and oil facilities; this led part of the population to agitate following independence leaders, increasing the workload of the Okhrana, already engaged in the suppression of the socialists.

The civil and military technological evolution did not slow down and the global increase in wealth led to the spread of conveniences such as electricity, telephone, radio, cars and airplanes with the flight assuming the status of the icon of the end of the decade, with the organization of numerous competitions and airshows that captured the attention of the public and the state, especially the military who saw infinite possibilities in a weapon like the plane, leading to an acceleration in the development of both aircraft and airships. The first skyscrapers were built in the Americas while the cities of Europe and Asia adopted new urban renewal and enhancement measures necessary to accommodate the growing population on the line of the Haussmanizations of the late 19th century, creating metropolis with streets for tram cars and illuminated by electricity. The Western population was increasingly educated thanks to widespread literacy programs and the continuous construction of universities and technical institutes that prepared the new generations to continue the work of their parents. The increase in individual wealth and national prosperity led to a three-year period of good feelings for the future, somewhat detached from the reality of the facts.

From an ideological point of view, the political class made up of conservatives, liberals and socialists (now institutionalized as social democrats) was undergoing targeted attacks from right and left: the breaking of the most extremist wings of socialist parities, seen as moderates by now, had led to the foundation of the communist parties, more extremist and militant than their former colleagues who aimed at the definitive upheaval of society through revolution, as indicated by Marx. These, to coordinate their global revolutionary efforts, founded the Third International (1920), expelling the social democrats and moderate socialists seen as collaborators of the capitalists. Opposite from all over the political spectrum, communism had difficulty spreading. outside the factories where he competed with social democrats and legionaries.

The Ouroboros is the main symobol of legionarism, representing the eternal movement of society as the new eats the old to be eaten again in a perpetual cycle of action, movement and renovation, much to the delight of Avant-Garde movements​

From the right, the assault came from the adherents of legionarism, a right-wing ideology theorized at the beginning of the 1900s and then codified in the "Manifesto of the Legion" published in Milan in 1919 by Salvatore de Angelis, Mathieu Aubert, Hans Gallwitz and Olivia Reed: an eclectic mix of nationalism, syndicalism, corporatism, feminism, futurism, militarism and progressivism, Legionarism aimed to lead the march of mass society in a new era of progress and nationalism that would be inaugurated by the end of the traditional power structures and by breaking down social order to rebuild it to give a makeover to society. Many intellectuals from all over the world theoretically adhered to the manifesto and the proliferation of legionary parties began in 1920, gathering adherents from the working and middle classes. Although theorized in Europe, legionarism had its maximum diffusion in the American Republic which was plagued by economic stagnation and the lack of a serious workers' movement.

 

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66. UMBERTINE AGE IV

Seventy years after the fateful moment when Carlo Alberto decided to ford the Ticino to lead the Piedmontese armies to liberate Lombardy-VenetIA, the Italian peninsula had gone from being "a geographical expression" to one of the main world powers: the value of its people was undisputed in international circles, as was their resourcefulness and ingenuity, signs of the great respect that the Italians had accumulated among the European peoples but unfortunately Italy was plagued by an archaic government structure that prevented access to the modern age.

The idea that had emerged over the last thirty years on how to solve the problem was that of federalism that had found expression in the Italian Federal Party: Prime Minister Riva was a great supporter of the idea and his deputy Levi was a theorist of the project, commissioned by the government to study a federal structure for the nation that was presented to the king and the council of ministers in 1916. What should have been a simple law took on the character of a constitutional reform of proportions never seen before in Italy, going to replace the Statuto Albertino. Umberto I was now approaching the end of his years and decided that a similar reform was necessary to cement his legacy to the Italian people, as well as to honor the memory of his grandfather, so it was that on February 1, 1918 the Umbertine Constitution was promulgated.

The official flag of the Federation; each state had it's own flag which consisted in a tricolor with a national symbol​

It's main points were:

• The Italian Confederation would transform in the Federal Kingdom of Italy, whose crown would have belonged to the king of Piedmont who would ruled from Rome
• The Federation would have been composed of 8 states: Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, Republic of Venice, United Provinces of Emilia, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Principality of Adria, Roman Republic, Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sicily, all subordinated to Piedmont through political, historical and cultural ties.
• Legislative power would belong to two federal chambers, the Chamber and the Senate, the first elected on a national basis with universal male suffrage to give representation to the citizens of the Federation while the second would have been elected on a state basis. The Prime Minister will be expressed by the majority of the Chamber and is the head of government, receives the position with blessing from the king and has legislative initiative; the Senate is composed of a number of members proportional to the population of the individual states and legislates on matters indicated as state competence, the areas of competence of the two chambers do not overlap except in some cases where the approval of both is required, otherwise the approval of a single chamber is enough, the President of the Senate is chosen by the Prime Minister and is usually his deputy. Elections for both chambers are held every 5 years.
  
• Every single state will elect a national parliament every 4 years whose head is either the president or the local monarch, in the second case it will appoint the head of the majority as Prime Minister and order him to govern in his or her place. The states will decide independently the criteria for the election of their own government.
  
• National defense belongs to the federation, the king is the head of all armed forces that swear undisputed loyalty to him, the maintenance of public order is left to the individual states who will have to set up a national police and maintain a contingent of no less of 20,000 men as a national guard. The Carabinieri are the federal gendarmerie with authority in all states.
  
• The Federation is committed to maintaining, preserving, promoting and developing Italian culture together with the states: the official language is standard Italian developed by the Accademia della Crusca and taught in schools, but individual states strive to protect their unique cultural identity. inserted in the larger fabric of the common Italian identity that unites all the inhabitants of the Federation
  
• Trade between states will take place without the imposition of customs barriers or other methods of discouraging trade, the Federation will regulate trade between itself and foreign states with non-binding opinion of individual states, private property is the basis of the economy, freedom of enterprise is guaranteed as well as the protection of workers from the worst abuses as the first national productive engine. Taxes are collected by the states and then given to the federation that oversees the entire process
  
• The right to education would be granted to all citizens as well as the right to dignified health and hygiene conditions, which the federation together with the individual states would provide.
  
• The king holds the legislative initiative and the power of veto over the laws of both chambers, he can grant a pardon and the Prime Minister answers to him.

An administrative map of the federal states​

New elections were set for autumn 1920 as indicated by the constitution and were won with a large majority by the Federal party reconfirming the Riva-Levi duumvirate at the helm of the country, respectively as Prime Minister and President of the Senate. Levi was the most powerful Jew in Italy, assuming the third most important position in the civil administration, reflecting the increasingly high engagement of the Israelites in Italian life due to their growing numbers due to the attrctiveness of the boot which was one of the most Jew friendly states in Europe

A project shared by the Federal and Liberal parties was the Italianization and integration into the federation of Tunisia and Libya, now firmly under Italian control, which with their favorable climatic conditions were the perfect outlet for the ever-growing Italian population ( exceeding 50 million at the end of the 1910s): migrants from the south and the north poured into the “fourth shore” colonizing the hinterland that lent itself to modern agriculture and the coasts were industrialized. The local population became a minority in its territory but, due to the low numbers especially in Libya and many chose the path of assimilation also because the Italians did not impose stringent criteria as in France. The colonization effort was reserved for the Mediterranean shores, having Eritrea (the other main African colony) reached parity between Italians and indigenous people, to consolidate the control of the two shores: the central Mediterranean became an area of exclusive Italian competence except for Malta.

By the 1920s Tripoli was an Italian city, much like Tunis or Benghazi. ​

Italy had a reliable ally in Northern Europe in Northern Germany: the dynastic ties created through the marriage of Emanuele of Savoy and Viktoria of Prussia were just one of the many aspects of the cooperation between the two countries that extended on a commercial, scientific and military level.. The worsening of the geopolitical situation prompted the two great powers to sign the Double Alliance in Berlin in 1915, affirming the mutual intention to help each other in the event of an external attack and to support each other diplomatically in the pursuit of their objectives. The Imperial Federation was also an important Italian ally even if their relationship was not formalized by any treaty; from the British point of view Italy was a fundamental ally to contain the Russian advance in the Mediterranean since the Ottoman Empire was subjected to strong ethnic pressures, especially in the Balkan area

The development of new locomotives and the ever wider diffusion of motor vehicles was the opportunity that the Italian government was waiting for to undertake a project of expansion and restructuring of the existing infrastructures; the progress in construction techniques had made the once inaccessible landscape of the peninsula accessible to any railway line through the construction of bridges and tunnels that crossed the Apennines, especially in the South which had now reached a comfortable standard of living. New ports were built and the existing ones were enlarged, dams and power plants were built and above all the first highway in Italy and Europe was built between 1918 and 1921 connecting Milan with Lake Como. This, together with the autodrome built outside Monza, was synonymous with the growing fascination of Italians with motor vehicles produced by the first car manufacturers: LAS, Vaccari, Adami and Dutto became recognizable vehicle brands all over the world.

The Autostrada dei Laghi was the first of it's kind in Europe and was entered by paying a fare at the checkpoint when entering and exiting the highway​

The personal pride of Umberto I were the armed forces, admired as per the tradition of the Savoy kings who saw in the army and its loyalty a fundamental component of their power.

The Royal Italian Federal Army had three million troops deployed all over the globe, from China to the Horn of Africa, from Savoy to Friuli, charged with protecting Italian borders and interests: The army was built on the Prussian model, seen as the most effective, with a universal male conscription system and the maintenance of about two million reservists; the special units were expanded including the Bersaglieri, the elite light infantry, the Lagunari, marine infantry specialized in landings and green light was given to Colonel Roberto Maino to experiment with the launch of men equipped with parachutes from an airplane Innovations such as tanks, armored cars, heavy artillery and SMGs were viewed with great interest by the military which in the last decade had shifted its continental focus from defensive to an aggressive one

The Royal Federal Navy was the single largest naval force in the Mediterranean, with 10 dreadnoughts in the region and another 6 around the world, for a total of six fleets accompanied by hundreds of minor support vessels such as tankers, coalers, destroyers and cruisers; the fleets protected Italian trade and provided security to colonies far from the motherland. The construction of new naval bases in Africa and Asia, as well as the expansion of the ports of Genoa, Livorno, Palermo, Taranto and Tunis to accommodate the increasingly large infrastructure required for ships. The larger capital ships began to embark on reconnaissance seaplanes even though many visionary officers looked with interest to England where the first ships entirely dedicated to the transport of aircraft were being built, a revolutionary idea.

Aviation was the newest force but unlike some countries it was already an independent weapon framed as the Royal Federal Air Force, its development was favored by the proliferation of aircraft production plants that made Italy one of the leaders in the production of civilian and military planes, producing fighters, bombers and transport and racing aircrafts, experimenting with new designs in an attempt to abandon biplanes for monoplane, which promised well in testing.

A flight of Sforza-Minetti I-21 seaplanes. The I-20 was protagonist of a trip around the world under the command of Colonel Gabriele Luce, starting from Italy then going to Brazil, the former USA, Japan, India, the Ottoman Empire, North Germany, England and France. The flight captured global imagination making the Italian aviators global heroes and launching the era of comfortable local seaplane travel especially in the Caribbean, Japan and the Mediterranean​

 

[Deleted member 147289]

A TROUBLED LAND

The Balkans had remained quiet after the Balkan War of 1872-77, a business as bloody as it was destructive that left no choice for the smaller nations involved other than to rebuild and prepare for the future showdown that Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece knew that was coming against their ancestral enemy: their differences with the Ottomans were irreconcilable, stemming from four centuries of Turkish rule and repression on the Balkan Peninsula. A diplomatic solution was impossible to find, not among the inhabitants of the Balkans, for this reason the states, once they reached a satisfactory economic and social situation, channeled all their resources into militarization and support of the resistance to the Turkish occupation, especially in Bulgaria and Greece.

The Ottoman Empire, for its part, was perhaps experiencing the first era of peace, without riots and revolts, in many years: the Tanzimat reforms and the race to modernization, inspired by both European and Japanese neighbors, had given solid civil and economic foundations. to the empire: the codification of Ottoman law, combined with the strengthening of the judicial, administrative and security apparatus (with the creation of the Imperial Gendarmerie) had spread the word and the will of the sultan to the four corners of the empire; industrialization was confined to the major cities of the Anatolian peninsula such as Istanbul, Smyrna and Ankara while the rest of the Empire lived on agriculture and extraction, increasing the gap between Turks and non-Turks. The most profitable extraction was certainly that of the oil found in Iraq, near the Persian fields. When Persia left the English orbit to enter the Russian one, the Anglo-Persian oil company was expelled from the country and, starving for oil, turned to the Ottomans (who in the meantime had made an agreement with the Italian AIP and the German PPG ) for the exploitation of the fields, an offer that the Porte was happy to approve in exchange for a substantial percentage of the profits.

Costantinople was a multicultural city, a representation of what the Ottoman Empire might have been, but unfortunately wealth remained in the hands of the Turks who let other nationalities live in poor conditions.​

Despite modernizations, liberalization, education, growing secularism in the Turkish-speaking area, the granting of a constitution in 1911 by the Sultan and the election of a representative body for the population, most of the empire remained underdeveloped and seen as a Turkish colony in the general resentment of the population, especially in the Balkans and Arabia: harsh repression, violence, taxes and incompetence generated only ethnic and social tensions in the multicultural empire that was under assault by the nationalist ideas that were spreading.

By the spring of 1920 the Ottomans were tired of the continuous guerrilla and passive resistance put in place by the Balkan Christians, especially the Bulgarians of Rumelia; traditional military action was impossible and the Turkish army did not have much experience in guerrilla warfare, but had many bloodthirsty commanders: frustrated, they decided to cut off manpower sources for the partisans by carrying out a harsh repression against the civilian population by looting, stealing , raping and killing indiscriminately. Together with the Turkish troops was British photographer William Marlcaster, who was doing a report on life conditions in the Balkans; when he saw the atrocities perpetrated by Ottoman irregulars he immediately began to document them by taking photos of mass graves, executions and raids which were sent to his he publishers in London; from there the photos went around the world and turned public opinion against the Ottomans.

When the survivors of ethnic cleansing fled their villages, they spread the word of the atrocities committed by the rulers on the population, increasing popular resentment that erupted in the Great Balkan Revolt during the spring of 1920 when tens of thousands of Bulgarians, Greeks and Macedonians rose up against Ottoman rule, expelling the Turkish garrisons from the countryside and taking control of some inhabited centers such as Plovdiv, Skopje and Thessaloniki, starting an activity of systematic ethnic cleansing and revenge against the Turks who settled in the region as a revenge for four centuries of abuses. The rebels received support from the neighboring countries of Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, happy to provide weapons, explosives and training to the guerrillas.

With chaos spreading across the European part of the Ottoman Empire, the great powers of Russia and the Imperial Federation called a European conference on the state of the empire, which was held in St. Petersburg in July. All participants agreed on the need to expel the Ottomans from the Balkans, as they were no longer able to manage or integrate the local population and genocide was not the solution, but not all agreed on the borders that the new Balkan states should have: Russia asked for a shore on the Aegean Sea for its Bulgarian ally while the Imperial Federation claimed those territories for Greece, strong of the Greek minority that inhabited the Aegean coasts. Two distinct camps of European powers emerged at the conference, the Imperial Federation, Italy and the NGF against Russia, France and Austria-Hungary, and both factions were unwilling to concede. The conference would have failed had it not been for the news of the joint declaration of war by Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece against the Ottoman Empire, guilty of persecuting and slaughtering its people.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

WAR OF BALKAN LIBERATION

The first shots of the war were not fired by Bulgarian or Serbian troops but by the Greek Navy's Task Force 4, led by the heavy cruiser Hecate (built by the Livorno shipyards), which accidentally encountered a small Turkish squadron off the coast of Ios. The confrontation was short but the Greeks sunk two Turkish ships losing none; it was the first Balkan victory of the war and provided a needed morale boost for the Greek navy.

With the Balkans in more than total revolt, chaos reigned in the region making it difficult to organize the Ottoman army, caught off guard by the insurrection: the partisans cut telegraph wires, intercepted runners and destroyed supply convoys, sabotaging the few railway lines that crossed the region. The Bulgarian First Army led by Nikola Petrov entered Plovdiv greeted by a cheering crowd without firing a shot and Dimitri Borisov's Second Army conquered the port of Burgas without too much difficulty. The Bulgarian army had not yet encountered serious Turkish resistance except for a few isolated units and troop morale was very high given the initial successes.

The situation in the Serbian-Montenegrin sector was quite different: although Skopje had been liberated by the insurgents, the Turks still had a sizable military presence in the mountains of Macedonia and the Albanian Muslim clans had rushed to help the Ottomans, fearing the advance of the Orthodox Serbs, allied with Christian clans. The mountainous and hilly terrain of Macedonia forced the fighters to concentrate their forces in strategic passages giving an advantage to the defenders but the Serbs, thanks to the partisans and their tenacity, managed to defeat the Ottoman forces in the battle of Veles. Despite this, the Turks retreated to the center of the region, establishing hidden fortifications in the mountains which considerably slowed down the advance of the Serbs who had to clear them one by one.

While modern, the Ottoman army had many structural problems that hampered it's performance​

The Ottoman Empire was caught unprepared by a revolt of such proportions in the Balkans, convinced of the truthfulness of its intelligence data that during the war will prove inadequate to support the war effort. On paper the Turks had 800,000 regular soldiers and a million reservists, but the Ottoman command led by Erim Pasha refused to concentrate their forces in the Balkans fearing a Russian invasion in support of their proteges and preferred to split the army in two: one side would defend the border on the Caucasus, the other would go to the Balkans to reinforce local garrisons while reservists were recalled. The problem of the Ottoman army, however, was the cohesion of the units: the exclusively Turkish ones fought with professionalism, but the mixed ones (Arabs, Christians, Turks) lacked cohesion and shattered under enemy fire as demonstrated by the Bulgarians in the battle of Haskovo, during which two Bulgarian divisions had breached the Ottoman lines, held by a Turkish division and three mixed, annihilating a mixed division and putting the rest to flight with artillery that was becoming an increasingly decisive weapon.

The happy period of the Bulgarian army ended on June 17th when the First Army encountered prepared fortifications near Bansko: here the advance was stopped for five days by Mustafa Pasha (commander of the Turkish fourth army part of the Balkan Army) who thanks to an expert use of his forces and his few guns was able to inflict heavy casualties on the Bulgarians before having to retreat. The time he gained allowed the consolidation of the Ottoman defense line along the Balkan mountains and Thrace.

Greece had a dual role in the Balkan strategy: its navy was to prevent trade and shipping of Ottoman personnel and material to the Balkans while the army advanced to Thessaloniki and Epirus. Both were succulent targets for little Greece but, being Thessaloniki in the hands of the insurgents and resupplied from the sea, it was decided to send the bulk of the army to Epirus under the command of Dimosthenis Kontallis who expected a rapid campaign against the Albanian irregulars. Once in the region, however, the Greek troops did not have the easy victory they expected: their enemies knew the terrain well and practiced a merciless guerrilla warfare to demoralize and make the enemies withdraw, bogging down the Epirus campaign. The 70,000 men who marched to Thessaloniki were more successful: after a week of fighting on 12 July they defeated the Ottomans in the battle of Mount Olympus, fought at high altitude, paving the way for Chalkidicia.

Serbian troops during the campaign of Central Macedonia: despite losses, morale remaied quite high​

In mid-July the Serbian army reached Kavadartsi after fighting two weeks in central Macedonia suffering considerable losses, but never greater than their enemies: the Serbian soldiers were experts in counter-guerrilla actions and carried out their task with ferocity, soon becoming the bane of the Albanian irregulars. The fall of Kavadartsi had virtually detached Albania from the rest of the empire. The Serbian armies then split: half the army would support the Montenegrin effort in subduing Albania while the other half would rejoin the Bulgarians who had liberated Sandansky on the 16th.

The Bulgarians, despite the losses suffered, were getting closer and closer to completing their goals. After a week of preparation, the First Army launched a devastating offensive along the Rhodope Mountains, using gas shells for the first time in combat. The Bulgarian soldiers were equipped with rudimentary gas masks, but the Ottomans were completely vulnerable to this type of attack which with one volley wiped out the Ottoman front line on the first day, killing the Turkish commander Ali Yildiz (Ali Pasha), forcing General Mustafa Pasha to take control of the entire Balkan front and order a retreat to the Aegean. Foreign observers accompanying the Bulgarians took note of this new tactic and how to counter it.

With the retreat of the Turks in Thrace, Central Macedonia was almost empty of Ottoman presence except for a few isolated units which were easily surrounded and annihilated by the Greeks who reached Thessaloniki and Chalkidiki on July 28 and on August 4, the Greek and Bulgarian armies met in Serres. Having reached their eastern objectives, the Greeks reorganized their forces to continue the campaign in the Aegean, aiming for the invasion of Crete towards which blockade runners had already sailed to deliver weapons to the Greek rebels on the island, and to the submission of Epirus .

With Serbs and Greeks about to overrun Albania and begin a campaign of subjugation, Italy took advantage of the chaos to land an infantry division in Vlore, disarming the few remaining Ottomans and establishing a military base in the city. . The move was not contested by the small Balkan nations, but the Ottoman Empire and Austria protested the Italian aggression, the former because it was an unprovoked attack, the latter because with the occupation of Vlore the Italians had acquired control of entry into the Adriatic Sea, bottling in the Austrian navy in case of war.

Greek ships debark soldiere bound for Crete​

On August 16, the inhabitants of Chania, Crete, awoke to the sight of the Greek fleet on the horizon. The most ambitious naval operation of the war was already underway early in the morning with Greek soldiers being hauled ashore using old transport ships, rowboats and fishing boats to meet the fleet. The Turks were caught off guard and the small garrison of Crete, made up of two divisions, preferred not to contest the landing, opting to take defensive positions around Heraklion. The island's population predictably rose up as news of the Greek landing spread and, as on the mainland, Greek irregulars began harassing the Ottoman troops converging on the capital. The Greek army arrived in sight of the city on the 18th and, together with their partisans, began a very bloody hand-to-hand fight for control of the capital in which Muslim civilians who feared reprisals from the Orthodox population had taken refuge.

After the July successes, the Bulgarians had expelled the Ottomans from what could be considered Bulgaria proper, continuing their advance into Thrace; if the advance along the Aegean shores proceeded well until the Turkish resistance became too strong in Kesan, the Second Army was blocked at the gates of Adrianople, defended by the new commander of the Balkan Army, Hasan Pasha. The city had great symbolic significance for the Turks as it was the first Ottoman capital and they were unwilling to surrender it without a fight: two concentric lines of defense had been built and filled with casemates, machine guns, artillery and trenches in which about ten divisions were entrenched, including Mustafa Pasha's veterans, who also was Hasan's second-in-command. After the first two attacks ended in failure, Dimitri Borisov prepared to besiege the city by bringing out his own guns to weaken Ottoman morale.

Bulgarian troops outside Adrianople, the city's mosque is clearly visible from the distance​

The Ottoman Empire was in retreat on all fronts but Erim Pasha still refused to send the 400,000 men stationed on the Caucasus to Europe, always convinced of a possible Russian attack. However, he gave permission to conduct a relief operation in Crete, sending six reserve divisions escorted by the bulk of the Ottoman fleet to the island. Through informers in the Turkish command, the Greeks learned of this plan and prepared a surprise for the enemy: on th 2nd of September in the Dodecanese archipelago the Greek navy set a trap for the Ottoman fleet in transit towards Crete: around noon two destroyers, a frigate and light cruiser Heracles were sighted by the Ottomans off the island of Astypalaia, along the route of the fleet. Believing an easy victory against an inferior enemy, the Turkish admiral, Osman Pasha, ordered half of his battleships to pursue and destroy the enemy. Unbeknownst to him, the rest of the Greek fleet, escorted by the cruiser Hecate, was hidden behind Astypalaia and, when the Heracles signaled that it had distracted the enemy capital ships, it exited behind the Turkish fleet, sinking the transport ships and the light ships left, together with the Turkish flagship, to then reach the bait ships and finish the Ottoman fleet that was pursuing them. In face of the loss of four minor ships, the Greeks had sunk 20 Turkish ships, eliminating all hope for the defenders of Crete.

As the siege of Adrianople continued the Bulgarian First Army achieved a breakthrough in three points along the Ottoman lines; managing to concentrate overwhelming numbers of infantry and covering them with artillery and gas, the Bulgarians beat their enemies with relatively light casualties, closing two Ottoman divisions on the Gallipoli peninsula and pulling back the front at Luleburgaz; with the collapse of the Ottoman line, Borisov's troops launched the third attack on Adrianople, attacking the city from three directions. In the chaos of the fighting Mustafa Pasha and three divisions managed to escape from the cauldron but Hasan Pasha and the remaining defenders of the city were annihilated. Mustafa Pasha, now the most senior general on the front, withdrew his troops at Cerkezoy and took command of the retreating survivors, established a new defensive line favored by proximity to Constantinople, and received about 200,000 reinforcements. The two Bulgarian armies combined into a Combined Army and tried to launch the final attack and get to Constantinople, but with their backs to the wall the Turks fought with tenacity and in the face of heavy losses, they did not yield by repelling the Bulgarian attack.

For the rest of October the defensive lines did not change much, apart from the methodical conquest of Aegean islands by Greeks, but behind them the revenge of the Balkan peoples against the Turkish colonizers was taking place: after 400 years the population was intending to make its enemies pay by starting a systematic manhunt protected and supported by the liberating armies who shared the ideas of the local population. With the end of the fighting and the stabilization of the lines, Prime Minister Riva offered the diplomatic services of the Italian Federation to end the conflict, inviting the participants to Rome to discuss a solution to the conflict.

 

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THE TREATY OF ROME

On October 15th, delegates from the belligerent powers and observers from the great powers invited by Riva and Umberto I met in Rome to negotiate a satisfactory conclusion to the war still formally underway in the Balkans. Each great power had its own aims and clients in the region but to avoid turning a small war into a much bigger conflict, the powers decided to adopt the principle of popular self-determination mixed with military conquests.

The Ottomans immediately tried to correct the front lines by demanding the withdrawal of the Bulgarians from Thrace and the Greeks from the Dodecanese and Rhodes but, given the sinking of most of the Turkish fleet and the stalemate in Thrace, the Italian diplomats preferred not to sacrifice benevolence. of the Balkan nations to restore Turkish control over lost territories. The Ottoman demands were turned down as the losing side and the empire was forced to accept the outcome of future negotiations. The first issue resolved was that of the port of Vlore and the surrounding area which was ceded to Italy in exchange for a small monetary compensation.

The parties involved soon reached an agreement that the borders were placed where the armies had arrived: this would have created a large Bulgaria with a shore on the Aegean Sea but the lack of developed port infrastructure and the control of numerous islands by the Greeks convinced the British that the Russians could not fully exploit Bulgaria, of which they were theoretically allies. The Rome agreements on the borders would have been submitted to the local populations who would have expressed themselves through a plebiscite, but not before having organized a population exchange: the massacre of Turks and Muslims had demonstrated the impossibility of a multicultural nation in the Balkans and Riva convinced the belligerents to accept the transfer of populations whose ethnicity did not belong to that of the nation they were in, for example the Greeks who were in Bulgaria were transferred to Epirus and the Aegean islands and the surviving Turks and Muslims (less than 200,000 ) were repatriated to the Ottoman Empire. Italy was the guarantor of peace in the Balkans and of the borders currently established by the treaty along with Russia, Austria and the Imperial Federation

The last knot to solve was that of Albania: the region was underdeveloped and in revolt, but it was located in a strategic position between the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. Through secret negotiations with the Great Powers, Riva was able to isolate Austria and collect the support of Russia, Great Britain and the NGC in calling for an independent Albania under Italian influence, a proposal that was accepted by the conference participants. The Kingdom of Albania was established under Charles of Savoy, the third son of Umberto I, who signed an alliance with the Christian clans against the Muslims to dominate the politics of the small state, in the meantime binding it to Italy.

A map of the Balkans after the Rome Treaty​

 

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ORIENTAL SPARK​

When the Russian Empire had occupied Manchuria in 1908 as a reaction to the Chinese civil war, it had done so mainly to secure the Harbin-Changchun-Shenyang lines which from the Trans-Siberian and Vladivostok led to Port Arthur, the only Russian port in the Far East free from ice. The move had not gone unnoticed by the international community but only Japan protested the occupation of Manchuria which was justified as securing the imperial borders from Chinese chaos and that "the region would be returned to its rightful owner at the end of the civil war" but with the consolidation of the Beiyang imperial government Emperor Li Wei made a request to Russia to regain Manchuria but the Empire denied the Chinese request, saying that it was made to the Qing Empire, making it void. The Russians had an ulterior motive to keep Manchuria as and the region was involved in a frenzy of investments aimed at developing its infrastructures and a moderate colonization effort, especially near Harbin and the border with Outer Manchuria. The Japanese occupation of Korea had raised tensions in the region as the two powers found themselves sharing the Yalu River as their main frontier.

Harbin was the Jewel of Manchuria: highly developed and with quite a large portion of inhabitants bein Russian it was the prime candidate for industrialization and modernization, creating an attractive prospect for imperial subjects who wished to leave European Russia​

As Tokugawa Ieasu's civilian government democratized and further developed the mother islands, the army was free to independently manage the Korean peninsula by strengthening its security apparatus and making increasingly aggressive moves towards the Russians such as reconnaissance flights over the Yalu which often risked being shot down. After the third shooting occurred in 1919 the Korea Army (the main Japanese formation) responded with an artillery barrage on Weiwon which apart from destroying the city caused several deaths among the Russian troops; the Weiwon incident was only the first of a steady escalation of aggression that in two years grew into full-fledged border conflict.

On June 18, 1921 an artillery exchange along the Tumen River escalated into a real battle when the commander of the 55th Japanese division decided to cross the river to hit the Russians guilty of having won the cannonade the day before: the Japanese infantry exploited the cover of the night to wade and catch the Russians off guard, putting them on the run from the village of Yingandao. The next day the Russians returned in force and evicted the Japanese inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. News of the defeat spread rapidly in Japan and the people clamored for revenge against the Russians who did not respect the position of great power obtained by Japan.

A depiction of the Yingdao incident which, more than an incident, was a full battle with more than 5000 casualties on both sides and proved a point of no return​

The Shogun's cabinet was divided: three votes in favor of peace and four in favor of war made Ieasu's decision very important for the future of the country. The military convinced the Shogun of their ability to dislodge the Russians from the Yalu with swift and decisive action and this was enough to win the leader's approval. On June 26, a sizeable Japanese force of 50,000 men crossed the Yalu River under cover of artillery and air force, taking control of the river mouth. The Russians had been humiliated and put to flight, so the Shogun proposed a peace treaty to permanently cease hostilities in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian forces within 20km of the Yalu River.

For the triumvirate and the Tsar these were unacceptable conditions: Asian barbarians had pushed the imperial army back into its territory with an unprovoked action and now demanded unfavorable peace conditions. On paper the Russian Empire was superior in every respect to the Japanese: it had a bigger army and stronger economy, more population and resources, but it lacked a navy large enough to control the Far East, limited to 6 dreadnoughts against the Japanese 12. Ignoring the naval question so dear to the Tsar, the triumvirs were sure that the industrial might of Russia would crush the Japanese, so an ultimatum was sent in response, calling for the restoration of the pre-war situation within 24 hours. The consequence of the non-acceptance of the applications would have been the war that was declared by Russia on Japan on June 29 on the basis of border provocations.