Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood - a study in cultural changes

An AH challenge is to create the world in which by the beginning of the XXIst century the modern Western values of inalienable human rights, religious tolerance, and political correctness (in a sense it is being seen in much of EU and US) have never existed as a mainstream accepted culture. The POD should be not any earlier than the XVIIIth century, if plausible.

One such scenario is that the American and French Revolutions fail, leading to the survival of European absolutist monarchies, which in turn could turn the theoretical values of the above revolutions to become a fringe belief, eventually leading to no communism, and no theory of human rights in a structured society where some people are supposed to be a superior class due to the virtue of their birth. With the survival of absolutism, the social mobility is expected to be small or even nonexistant, and the social stratas that eventually came to dominate the cultural and social development (such as the middle class and the newly-wealthy venture capitalists) would not come into prominence, instead with the cultural and social development being still led by the old nobility or military circles.

What would be the plausibility and/or PODs to create such a world? Moreso, what kind of a world would this lead to? It is very likely that during the age of colonial imperialism the Western powers would have been much less likely to give up their possessions and/or dominions in what they would have viewed as the regions populated by the people inherently inferior to themselves. Thereafter, the world of the XXth and XXIst centuries could still have been the era of big empires shaken by occasional native uprisings and/or fringe group revolts. Any opinions/arguments?
 
Interesting

It is an interesting concept to keep the old order of governance in place.
1. If that did occur, would the same level of technological development have occured? Would that type of society allow the free-thinking need to conceptualize and develop the new 'things' that are so much a part of our way of life?
If that did not occur, what technological level would this hypothetical society be at today?
2. There would always be rebels. Maybe the American & French revolutions did not occur, but what is to say that other firebrands down the road would have tried again and again.
3. If new technologies had come on line, would it be possible to maintain the old feudal order? The working class would have to be educated just to provide the labor needed, which could fuel dissention. If computers came into existence, the concept of 'information is power' would allow more and more people including the working class to gain 'power'.
4. Would the same religious and ethnic disputes that are negatively impacting many parts of the world still be an issue?
It might be that strong, centralized leadership could control the situation (even through force) but that presumes that leadership was competent. [Yugoslavia was ruled by Tito for decades, but immediately upon his death and the absence of strong rule, the region disintegrated]
An interesting concept at any rate.
 

Faeelin

Banned
I suspect it's ASB with an eighteenth century POD. The Americans and French were both referring to ideas which had existed for decades, if not centuries.
 
IMO the main difference would be not the existence of the ideas, but rather their acceptance by the mainstream, and a notion that a republican and theoretically egalitarian society could actually work in the modern times. While the failure of American and French revolutions could be a viable POD, the real concept behind this possible AH is not as much the success or failure of revolutions, but rather what would lead to the world where society does not widely accept the concept of universal human rights as being applicable to everyone regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or creed.

In other words, the AH is the one that would eliminate "Equiality" and "Brotherhood" from the equation, either because the dominant philosophy does not accept them even in theory (let alone in practice), or because the dominant cultural/social philosophy is to accept only members of one's own society/strata/ethnicity as equals and theoretically with the same moral and social rights.

Effectively, think a more intolerant Victorian England type of society where the concept that the population of dominions/colonies could be ever granted self-rule and rights even remotely similar to the population of the mainland is unthinkable. This butterflies into no civil rights movement (or an unsuccessful civil rights movement), and a general belief of any would-be revolutionaries that their goals are not likely to be achieved by non-violent means.

Such a cultural change might not necessarily be ASB, although how plausible it is is of course a matter of personal opinion.

Faeelin said:
I suspect it's ASB with an eighteenth century POD. The Americans and French were both referring to ideas which had existed for decades, if not centuries.
 
There are any number of ways to do this. Any world in which Western culture did not exist, or was replaced by another culture with different values would do it by definition. Likewise, a world dominated by, say, an industrialized China would likely never have seen these values.

However, I am reading from your post that you want a world where as much as possible stays the same, so as to understand the impact of these ideas in OTL. That is, the latest or minimum plausible POD and TL.

I think the real key, here, is to eliminate the enlightenment entirely, without eliminating the Scientific Revolution. This is easier than it sounds. Much of Enlightenment thought grew from two main sources: the Newtonian worldview, and the secularization that followed the Thirty Years' War. In effect, science undermined much religious thought, while the Thirty Years' War discredited it. The philosophes attempted to create alternative sources of values than the Christian tradition, and the results they came up with happened to emphasize equality and freedom.

Now, had the individuals that influenced the Enlightenment been different, they might have emphasized Hobbesian absolutism or some form of aristocratic ideal. The trouble with such alternate ideologies is that they will have effects of their own, separate from the absence of Enlightenment ideals. So, we need effectively a way to keep Western thought in the 17th century.

Well, suppose Gustavus Adolphus lives, and ends the Thirty Years' War before 1640. Not all that likely, actually. While Gustavus might easily have lived, with a higher probability than his death in OTL, even he probably couldn't have ended the War at a stroke. But, say, he gets lucky and does so. The Protestant Princes get a Protestant League, taking up the northern half of Germany, under Swedish suzereignty, but still within the Holy Roman Empire. Germany is spared the worst of the War's devestation. Religion is less discredited, and the Swedish succession is changed, which means that Queen Christina is not there to bail Ninon de Lanclos out of the convent, and also that the Church enjoys more prestige and is able to bring the Enlightenment's predcessors in late 17th century Paris to heel.

Positing a Royalist victory in the English Civil War, perhaps due to Swedish or French gold, which isn't being spent in Germany, thus keeping a single POD, will also have a big effect, preventing the rise of Parliament, and the type of settlement represented by the Glorious Revolution. A useful knock off effect is that this will make the career of John Locke unrecognizable, and so perhaps prevent his philosophical influence.

And so, European thought stays locked in the mode of the Great Chain of Being and the Divine Right of Kings, even while science will continue to advance.

There will still be big wars in 18th century Europe, of course. Louis XIV, or someone much like him, will still inherit the work of Louis XIII and Richeleu in building up the French monarchy. With a pro-French Sweden likely replacing Prussia, and England weaker, and perhaps also pro-French under the Stuarts, the French drive for Continental hegemony might well succeed. A Europe sewed up tight by the Bourbons will be even less friendly an environment for Enlightenment Liberalism.

There will still be gradual economic changes, a sort of rise of the middle classes, and changes in places like America, but they will be expressed differently than in OTL. Rising merchants will be more likely to try to buy their way into the nobility than to promote ideas of equality. Gradually, both the middle classes and nobility will be integrated into the model of a centralized, monarchical state.

Britain's American colonies will still grow rapidly, probably more rapidly as they fill up with defeated Puritans. Americans will gradually develop a separate sense of nationhood, but one without Enlightenment ideals, and perhaps based on Purtitanism or Noncomformist Protestantism. The French will keep their American possessions. At first, the French threat will keep the colonists loyal to England, but in the late 18th century, as the British colonies grow more powerful, and the weakness of New France becomes apparent, the British refusal to conquer New France may well become a source of friction. One could see a situation, say, around 1780 or so, where Britain wins a war in America but loses badly on the Continent, and ends up giving France's American possessions back after nearly or completely conquering them. If this went hand in hand with efforts by the Crown to centralize the administration, one could see a type of American Revolution. This will be, however, essentially a rematch of the English Civil War, in which the Puritans get their own nation across the Atlantic. This "Protestant Republic" may well then be free to conquer French colonies, especially given that France herself never set much store in them.

By the early 19th century, we would probably see a French financial crisis similar to the one of OTL, but insead of an Estates General, we would more likely see someone like Turgot given the authority to do his job properly. This would effectively complete the victory of the monarchy over the aristocracy and commons alike. The 19th century thus sees a "pax Francia" as a France with European hegemony extends its Empire over much of the undeveloped world. In a world with fewer incentives for entrepreneurship, more class barriers, more centralization, and more government control, the industrial revolution will come more slowly or not at all. Personally, I think "not at all" is very unlikely, assuming even slightly familiar institutions. More realistically, it could be delayed anything from 50 to 150 years.

If we split the difference, we have a 2004 world at an early 20th century level, pre-WWI. France still has an eroding Continental hegemony, with Sweden, Austria, Russia, Great Britain, and probably Puritan America as rivals or allies. Without the Enlightenment, I think it likely that we will not also see the development of either Romanticism or genuine Nationalism. As a result, the European empires are less challenged both at home and abroad. Christianity is also stronger, combining state support in most areas with a good deal more real belief than in OTL. People tend to see their loyalty to their country as a matter of loyalty to monarch and church, rather than to an abstract nation or an ethnic identity. Opposition tends to still take the form of competing sects, traditionalist movements in non-Western colonies, and dynastic pretenders almost everywhere.

All major countries have active secret police networks, that find it rather easier to hunt the kinds of dissidents this world brings than they would the kinds of movements found in OTL. While there is nothing like OTL totalitarianism, neither is there anything like democracy or freedom. Vitrually every country in the world is rigidly authoritarian. Class systems also tend to be very rigid. The poor are poorer, the rich richer than at the same technological level in OTL. This does not produce the kind of revolutionary ferment found in our own backward monarchies (eg. Czarist Russia, Qing China), but instead generates a great deal of pessimism regarding this world, and focus on the next, as, indeed, had been part of peasant and also urban tradition for many centuries in pre-industrial Europe.
 

Grey Wolf

Donor
Didn't Napoleon declare that the age of republics was over ? I think it was around the time he ate up Genoa or Venice or Dubrovnik.

I would think that there is the potential for a Napoleonic ATL here as well - he inherited the French Revolution then perverted it. If he is successful in setting up a stable and lasting European settlement, then the free reign of these ideas could be seen as discredited.

You still have the problem of the United States of America, but there are ways that the development of government could have been less free, democratic and egalitarian than today. The patrician class, the aristocrats etc could make it more of an oligarchial system then in OTL.

Britain would be an interesting conundrum. If we assume that Napoleon's victory comes at the expense of a British defeat then we can look for upheavals in Britain - upheavals and the kind of Lord Liverpool clamp down that came in OTL. With a weakened monarchy, a stronger Prime Ministership may make sense - whether this is Tokugawa or Mussolini...

Grey Wolf
 

Straha

Banned
the TL "Decades of Darkness" which diverges on New england leaving the USA has it become a a slaveholding aristocratic society that so far stretches from much of mexico to the canadian northern midwest.
 
Grey Wolf said:
Didn't Napoleon declare that the age of republics was over ? I think it was around the time he ate up Genoa or Venice or Dubrovnik.


Grey Wolf

I think by this, he meant the republic ( oligarchic, in reality ) city-states
 
Good day, I am no expert in this, so please bear with me.
I believe that changes that we are talking about may have first appeared visibly in works of philosophers, but they themselves represented their peers- even the most enlightnened person is product of society. Further I do not think people sought empowerment because they were powerless. Powerless people seek survival. No people then sought empowerment because they already had the power, but their power was not so official. At first Burgermeisters wanted to be equal to nobility, than all wealthy burgers, and as the "value"* of human life rose so more and more classes wanted to be equal. Where you see an accident I see tectonics of society- slow and unchangeable. Howg.

*man of mediaeval times was unable to be as productive as man of modern times, but modern man also needs to be invested in more.

But there is something, let some early pope with some worldly support decide that cities are "nests of sin" and declare living in cities to be sinful, such an agricultural society would for all matters cease to develop.
Regards.
Gladi
 
This world would be quite similar to "The Two Georges", by Turtledove. While the history from the POD was just sketched, I remember that there were 3 suprpowers (England, dominating all of NA; the Holy Alliance of France and Spain, dominating central/south America; and Russia). The ARW had not happened, the French Revolution was suppressed (by Napoleon!) and in general the world was not so nice, at least from our POV. There was serfdom in Russia, Inquisition in the Holy Alliance and the workers were not generally cuddled, even in the British Empire.
 
Alternatively we can have a society which does not extend its ideas of equality and liberty to anyone who is not its member. In other words, a society that would consider anyone not of their own nation (or not of the "civilized" culture) a savage and as such not deserving the basic rights and liberties. Effectively we would have a society that could work rather well with similar societies (such as early USA could work reasonably well with European powers), but would be extremely intolerant of nations and/or cultures whom it perceives as inferior in technological, cultural, and social development. An example of the latter would be the treatment of the American Indians by the US government in the 1800s. It would not be too much of a stretch to imagine a sociocultural climate where equal rights are granted only to specific part of population (i.e. Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the UK, whites of certain ethnical backgrounds - not Irish, Italian, or whatever other ethnicity was discriminated against - in the US), and which is determined to uphold the status quo.

For all practical purposes the social developments of the 1900s such as civil rights, liberalism, and even a certain extent of political correctness that came from increased immigration to the developed countries and the needs to adopt to the influx of people of different ethnicities, language, and religions would be annulled. In fact, in this ATL the Proclamation of Emancipation during ACW might have declared slavery illegal, but would have been very careful to specify the legal status of non-white Americans as being inferior to the other citizens; the civil rights movement would have been potentially suppressed by tanks and armed forces; the "melting pot" theory would have been dismissed out of hand, and forced assimilation would have been the case for any minorities. Of course the above mostly applies to the United States, but it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to imagine Europe in a similar type of a predicament.

I would also imagine that immigration to the first world countries would be severely impeded, delaying the population growth, economic growth, and potentially the development of technology (with lesser population size, the need for new technologies that historically developed in OTL as the means to provide for larger populations on the same territory would not be necessary). In fact, it might result in an earlier decline of the traditional "first world" countries due to the lessened manpower to keep their colonial empires, and due to other nations potentially developing at the faster rate due to less immigration, and eventually less impact from the traditional world powers whose relative intolerance of any minorities could result in those minorities not willing to participate in the country's military, social, and political institutions, knowing they would be severely impeded in their careers.

This could even have a later POD in the XIXth century, keeping something like Victorian system alive.

Grey Wolf said:
Didn't Napoleon declare that the age of republics was over ? I think it was around the time he ate up Genoa or Venice or Dubrovnik.

I would think that there is the potential for a Napoleonic ATL here as well - he inherited the French Revolution then perverted it. If he is successful in setting up a stable and lasting European settlement, then the free reign of these ideas could be seen as discredited.

You still have the problem of the United States of America, but there are ways that the development of government could have been less free, democratic and egalitarian than today. The patrician class, the aristocrats etc could make it more of an oligarchial system then in OTL.

Britain would be an interesting conundrum. If we assume that Napoleon's victory comes at the expense of a British defeat then we can look for upheavals in Britain - upheavals and the kind of Lord Liverpool clamp down that came in OTL. With a weakened monarchy, a stronger Prime Ministership may make sense - whether this is Tokugawa or Mussolini...

Grey Wolf
 
Aedh Rua said:
There are any number of ways to do this. Any world in which Western culture did not exist, or was replaced by another culture with different values would do it by definition. Likewise, a world dominated by, say, an industrialized China would likely never have seen these values.

However, I am reading from your post that you want a world where as much as possible stays the same, so as to understand the impact of these ideas in OTL. That is, the latest or minimum plausible POD and TL.

I think the real key, here, is to eliminate the enlightenment entirely, without eliminating the Scientific Revolution. This is easier than it sounds. Much of Enlightenment thought grew from two main sources: the Newtonian worldview, and the secularization that followed the Thirty Years' War. In effect, science undermined much religious thought, while the Thirty Years' War discredited it. The philosophes attempted to create alternative sources of values than the Christian tradition, and the results they came up with happened to emphasize equality and freedom.

Now, had the individuals that influenced the Enlightenment been different, they might have emphasized Hobbesian absolutism or some form of aristocratic ideal. The trouble with such alternate ideologies is that they will have effects of their own, separate from the absence of Enlightenment ideals. So, we need effectively a way to keep Western thought in the 17th century.

Well, suppose Gustavus Adolphus lives, and ends the Thirty Years' War before 1640. Not all that likely, actually. While Gustavus might easily have lived, with a higher probability than his death in OTL, even he probably couldn't have ended the War at a stroke. But, say, he gets lucky and does so. The Protestant Princes get a Protestant League, taking up the northern half of Germany, under Swedish suzereignty, but still within the Holy Roman Empire. Germany is spared the worst of the War's devestation. Religion is less discredited, and the Swedish succession is changed, which means that Queen Christina is not there to bail Ninon de Lanclos out of the convent, and also that the Church enjoys more prestige and is able to bring the Enlightenment's predcessors in late 17th century Paris to heel.

Positing a Royalist victory in the English Civil War, perhaps due to Swedish or French gold, which isn't being spent in Germany, thus keeping a single POD, will also have a big effect, preventing the rise of Parliament, and the type of settlement represented by the Glorious Revolution. A useful knock off effect is that this will make the career of John Locke unrecognizable, and so perhaps prevent his philosophical influence.

And so, European thought stays locked in the mode of the Great Chain of Being and the Divine Right of Kings, even while science will continue to advance.

There will still be big wars in 18th century Europe, of course. Louis XIV, or someone much like him, will still inherit the work of Louis XIII and Richeleu in building up the French monarchy. With a pro-French Sweden likely replacing Prussia, and England weaker, and perhaps also pro-French under the Stuarts, the French drive for Continental hegemony might well succeed. A Europe sewed up tight by the Bourbons will be even less friendly an environment for Enlightenment Liberalism.

There will still be gradual economic changes, a sort of rise of the middle classes, and changes in places like America, but they will be expressed differently than in OTL. Rising merchants will be more likely to try to buy their way into the nobility than to promote ideas of equality. Gradually, both the middle classes and nobility will be integrated into the model of a centralized, monarchical state.

Britain's American colonies will still grow rapidly, probably more rapidly as they fill up with defeated Puritans. Americans will gradually develop a separate sense of nationhood, but one without Enlightenment ideals, and perhaps based on Purtitanism or Noncomformist Protestantism. The French will keep their American possessions. At first, the French threat will keep the colonists loyal to England, but in the late 18th century, as the British colonies grow more powerful, and the weakness of New France becomes apparent, the British refusal to conquer New France may well become a source of friction. One could see a situation, say, around 1780 or so, where Britain wins a war in America but loses badly on the Continent, and ends up giving France's American possessions back after nearly or completely conquering them. If this went hand in hand with efforts by the Crown to centralize the administration, one could see a type of American Revolution. This will be, however, essentially a rematch of the English Civil War, in which the Puritans get their own nation across the Atlantic. This "Protestant Republic" may well then be free to conquer French colonies, especially given that France herself never set much store in them.

By the early 19th century, we would probably see a French financial crisis similar to the one of OTL, but insead of an Estates General, we would more likely see someone like Turgot given the authority to do his job properly. This would effectively complete the victory of the monarchy over the aristocracy and commons alike. The 19th century thus sees a "pax Francia" as a France with European hegemony extends its Empire over much of the undeveloped world. In a world with fewer incentives for entrepreneurship, more class barriers, more centralization, and more government control, the industrial revolution will come more slowly or not at all. Personally, I think "not at all" is very unlikely, assuming even slightly familiar institutions. More realistically, it could be delayed anything from 50 to 150 years.

If we split the difference, we have a 2004 world at an early 20th century level, pre-WWI. France still has an eroding Continental hegemony, with Sweden, Austria, Russia, Great Britain, and probably Puritan America as rivals or allies. Without the Enlightenment, I think it likely that we will not also see the development of either Romanticism or genuine Nationalism. As a result, the European empires are less challenged both at home and abroad. Christianity is also stronger, combining state support in most areas with a good deal more real belief than in OTL. People tend to see their loyalty to their country as a matter of loyalty to monarch and church, rather than to an abstract nation or an ethnic identity. Opposition tends to still take the form of competing sects, traditionalist movements in non-Western colonies, and dynastic pretenders almost everywhere.

All major countries have active secret police networks, that find it rather easier to hunt the kinds of dissidents this world brings than they would the kinds of movements found in OTL. While there is nothing like OTL totalitarianism, neither is there anything like democracy or freedom. Vitrually every country in the world is rigidly authoritarian. Class systems also tend to be very rigid. The poor are poorer, the rich richer than at the same technological level in OTL. This does not produce the kind of revolutionary ferment found in our own backward monarchies (eg. Czarist Russia, Qing China), but instead generates a great deal of pessimism regarding this world, and focus on the next, as, indeed, had been part of peasant and also urban tradition for many centuries in pre-industrial Europe.


Wow! very thoughful post. As one who has on occasion opined that the Enlightenment may have been at least partially a mistake, I take it all back! Modern society, with all its secularism and rampant individualism appears to be much better than your alternative.
 
I cam across this deciding to partake in a challange relating to Midgard's farwell. I will research and come up with a reasonable timeline to this AH challange... as to prehaps to regain his attention on this site.
 
A different Enlightenment is probably the key.

It had two distinct social elements, one emphasising individual rights and the other collective rights. These were kept in balance by the existence (or invention) of the nation state. If there had been less emphasis on collective rights then the only people who could ever achieve any individual liberty would be those who had the power and money in the first place.

Discredit religion among the population and invent a system other than the nation state that people identify with but gives them no collective consciousness. Monarchy is just that. Especially when it is absolute and encompasses different language and cultural groups in an empire. the gluethat holds it together, in the absense of a strong religious element, is the personal 'magical' powers of the king. This is starting to sound like a Stuart Empire!

Todays world is heading down this path with all emphasis on indiviual choice and no collective rights or responsibilities. So perhaps a slightly earlier 'sixties' would do. How about no WWI or a roaring twenties that did not collapse because of depression? Individual rights predominate and so there are no collective labour rights or rights for blacks as a group or rights for the poor etc.
 
Straha said:
so the "earleir 60's" coudl lead to a massive authoritarian backlash? Ouch.

Not exactly a backlash. After every social movement there is a period where the next generation(s) identify themselves as a distinct group. So after the roaring twenties the next generation was more socially conservative while after the sixties this generation is far more socially conservative. With no collective memory preserved by groups then the individuals simply do not know where their society came from or how their rights were won. They seem to believe they dropped from the sky one day!
 
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