Look to the West Volume IX: The Electric Circus
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
The Sunrise War from what little has been previewed seems like OTL projections in the 50s for a “quick, non-apocalyptic WW3” like the TimeLife cover although the fall of Japan to societism resembles our Korean War, and Russia having its capital flattened by an enemy third power has no real precedent, assuming it’s mainly Europe + China + Alexandrines vs Russia + Italy, with a SE Asian theater in the Shan/Mon lands and Malaya of Siam vs. China and France.
324
Thande
Donor
Part #324: So Far, So Close
“‘BEST MEXICAN FOOD IN TOWN’ – Alex Clarke, The New York Register
‘A SLICE OF AUTHENTIC MEXICAN CULTURE IN THE HEART OF THE CAPITAL’ – Melissa M’Lintock, F’burg Patriot
UNA MUESTRA DEL VIEJO VERACRUZ – A TASTE OF OLD VERACRUZ – Afonso Aleman, La Linterna de Expatriado (The Expatriate’s Lantern) - Translation Authorised 04/10/20 MyCult-X122E49P21
Voted Top Mexican Restaurant in Virginia by Motext Users!
Null CCS marques![1]
Embrace and defend our neighbours’ culture today and fill your belly with a warming flame this winter!
BURRITO GONG
Gooch Street
Hamilton Avenue
Henry Boulevard
And many more locations – see Motext page 64F-102!”
– Advertising billboard in tourist stand in Foxbury Street Bus Station, Fredericksburg, ENA.
Taken and transcribed by Sgt Dom Ellis, December 2020
*
(Dr Wostyn’s note)
I have – finally – been left to tackle the next section myself. I would enlighten you at the Institute to what my colleagues are up to, but I feel it should come les deux cu— I mean, the two captains themselves.
I will say on all our behalf that it is heartening to hear that a vaccine has now been developed for the coronavirus epidemic back home. Hearing about it here has been stressful and troubling, knowing there is nothing we can do to help our loved ones. Hopefully our interdimensional quarantine can end soon and we can return home. But, ah, not perhaps, hmm, too soon…
It will make more sense when you hear from the captains. For now, in this penultimate section on the so-called Electric Circus era, we visit a land whose history has been as sadly neglected in English-speaking circles in this timeline as in our own…
*
Extract from recorded lecture on “South of the Border” by Dx María Rosario Martínez and Alfred Foster , recorded October 27th, 2020—
…but that’s enough for introductions. We need to move on.
Sí, time is of the essence. The history of Mexico in the last century, all the tumultuous events we have seen, is integral to your own identity as imperiales, ah, that is, norteamericanos as you would have it. (Audience murmurs) Though we would argue that Mexico is also part of…
Yes, yes, we must move on, Doctrix. Archaeologically speaking, Mexico and Guatemala are sometimes described as Mesoamerica – Middle America. It was settled by Tortolian peoples for thousands of years before European contact—
Sí, and there is still disagreement over just how many thousands of years. But we know that our Tortolian ancestors began to domesticate corn – maize, that is – and, along with squash and beans, the ‘Three Sisters’, it was the primary staple of people’s diets.
But those weren’t the only foods. If you think you can live your life without ever eating another tomato – or another bar of chocolate… (Audience reaction) Only then can you join those persnickety food critics who still look down on Mexican food to this day.
Eso es cierto! Not that what you call ‘Mexican food’ up here is—
Ah, well, that’s a discussion for another day. Um, Tortolian peoples like the Maya , in southern Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, were also known for developing an advanced system of mathematics and a writing system. Remember that they were wholly isolated from the Old World. Until the Maya script was discovered and deciphered, some linguists and archaeologists had claimed that all writing systems in the world were derived from a common origin, probably Sumerican cuneiform. Yes, there were claims that even Chinese logograms were derived from cuneiform…the achievements of the Maya finally punctured that theory, and were another nail in the coffin of the Societist ‘Central Origin’ hypothesis.
Sí, and we are still trying to interpret Mayan astronomy to this day. The Maya did not have a single central ruling authority, and they were already in sharp decline even before the Spanish arrived – food shortages, plagues, the full reasons are not clear. This was in contrast to the Nahua people to the north, including the fertile lands of the Vale of Mexico. Best-known among these were the people who called themselves the Mexica, giving their name to my country, but who are known to history as the Aztecs. (Audience murmurs)
Yes, the Aztecs. Can any people be less uncontroversial to the historian? Well, perhaps the Vikings of Europe or the Dahomeans of Africa… Were the Aztecs truly like the image many of us have obtained from Califilms, of brutal tyrants sacrificing thousands in the names of crude pagan gods, of imperial oppressors who sought to dominate their neighbours? Or, conversely, were they a remarkable civilisation that built the mighty city of Tenochtitlán, astonishing to the conquistadores as outstripping anything they had seen in Europe, who organised a tax-funded state with a feudal sophisticated aristocracy worthy of that same continent?
Today, of course, we acknowledge that both can be true. The Aztecs were a terror to their neighbours, especially the Tlaxcallans. Cortés and his conquistadores benefited far more from internal division than any kind of technology gap. But that does not in any way justify – as some have tried to – the grotesque destruction of Mexica culture, an act worthy of the Sanchezistas—
Right, yes, well…as you were saying, about thirty years after Columbus discovered the Novamund (as they have it in Mexico), the first expeditions from the Spanish-ruled Caribbean arrived in Aztec Mexico.[2] The first two failed, but in 1519 Cortés arrived, founded the city of Veracruz, burned his ships so that his men had no escape route, and marched on Tenochtitlán. In a complicated series of events…
A tragic series of events.
That, too…as you said earlier, Cortés would have failed without the support of Tortolian allies, who saw him as the lesser of two evils to the Aztec.s In 1521 Tenochtitlán fell, a year after the death of Moctezuma II, the last real Aztec emperor.
Because Cortés had him murdered!
Not everyone agrees on that point… but it is true that the conquest of Tenochtitlán devastated the great city. One of Cortés’ soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, wrote in hindsight that he had thought the city was ‘the garden of the world’ on his earlier visit with Cortés, and now despaired that all the wonders he had witnessed were lost.
Lost it certainly was. The people were enslaved by the Spanish, and meted out to conquerors according to the encomienda system. That same system that had been used to parcel out land stolen from Jews and Muslims in the Reconquista of Spain itself, blindly transferred to another continent. Even the very name of the country was changed to Nueva España, New Spain, and Mendoza was appointed as its first viceroy.
Already there was criticism, however. Bartolomé de las Casas was appointed as the first Bishop of Chiapas, and lobbied the Cardinal-Regent back in Madrid to appoint him as Protector of the Indians – to use the term used at the time. Las Casas recorded the abuses of power meted out against the Tortolians in his book “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” in 1542. In 1550 he took part in the Valladolid Debate, the first recorded debate about the morals of European colonialism, and argued that Tortolians were free men who were no less human than the colonisers.
A good man, though his idea of remedying this was to import black slaves instead…
He went back on that position later in life when he saw what Portuguese slavery was like.
Regardless. Though his aid was valuable, he was one man. Many other Europeans, including scholars, considered Tortolians to be less than human. And it was that view that prevailed in the oppressive rule of the ensuing centuries.
Slavery of Tortolians formally ended with the so-called New Laws of 1542, in part due to Las Casas’ work. But it is true that a kind of serfdom endured nonetheless.
Sí. Even the best of the Spanish administrators were, at most, paternalistic and patronising. Many were far worse than that. Mendoza simply refused to fully implement the reform, whilst claiming he was still loyal to the Crown!
We must remember that the trip from Europe to the Novamund was weeks, if not more, at this point of history. Even supposedly absolute monarchs could only do so much to enforce their will. The law required the encomendado estates to be returned to the crown after two generations, but this was simply ignored by the colonists most of the time. Many times the powerful landowners rose up and slew bishops or governors who tried to enforce the rules. It’s that sheer ineffectiveness that always undermined Spanish attempts to rule the Novamund at arm’s length. The Council of the Indies was created in 1524 to enforce crown authority over New Spain. New state agencies were created. The Casa de contratación of 1504 regulated trade, and the consejo de hacienda of 1556 dealt with financial matters. The Audiencia, then meaning primarily a legal court, was exported early on, and so were the cabildos or town councils. Viceroyalties were created, as I mentioned, and under them, erratically, came captaincy-generals. But in practice, the average Tortolian peasant mostly witnessed authority in the form of the local corregidor, a tax collector and creator of public works whose power was often open to abuse, despite the efforts of the visitador inspectors on behalf of the crown. The nature of Spanish authority, imposed by the crown from the top down, was self-sabotaging. It couldn’t concede representation to the people, deliberately limited trade and economic development, and isolated power in a small number of royal appointees from Spain, seeing the colonies as merely a revenue stream. A revenue stream that would, ironically, cause more harm than good for the Spanish economy…
Regardless of the internal problems of Spain, it was the Tortolians who suffered, indeed often at the hands of the corregidores, all the more as the vast silver mines were opened. But the Mexican people today are not solely Tortolian, of course. The Spanish enforced their complex systems of Castas on us, as in other parts of the Spanish Empire. There was a complex hierarchy based on whether one’s blood was pure European, a mix of European and Tortolian – and what the ratio was – or, only occasionally in Mexico, black as well…
And in addition to that, political power rested only in the hands of those born in the Iberian Peninsula, the peninsulares. Second-generation colonists, criollos, were excluded from power even if they were of pure European descent.
How tragic for them. As you just said, so many of those people were the ones ignoring what limited orders the Spanish government did give to lift the boot from the neck of the Tortolian a little…
Ahem, yes. But we must move on. Separating the history of Mexico from that of Guatemala is tricky because the status of the different colonies changed over time. The Spanish also tried expanding to the north, quite early on, but not always very successfully. The Apache and Comanche peoples provided a barrier. The explorer Vázquez de Coronado ventured north in 1540 in an attempt to find some legendary seven wealthy cities, only to find a perfectly ordinary Tortolian village in what’s now Verdigris.[3] Around the same time, Hernando de Soto was probably the first European to cross the Mississippi, exploring much of what’s now Carolina, as well as parts of Old Virginia, Westernesse and more – though he died in the process. Spanish control did extend to the Floridas and the Hamiltons, but expeditions farther north started to run out of steam when it became clear there was no easy way across the continent to find that shortcut to Asia that Columbus had hoped for. The city of Monterey was founded, by some definitions, as early as 1584, but California remained largely out of central control for years for that reason. The Jesuit missions had practically free reign for a time, and it was more than a century before the last Tortolian peoples of the region were subdued.
Sí…serious colonisation of California only began in the eighteenth century, in response to Russian and American – or English, at the time – encroachment.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. The Viceroyalty of New Spain, as it then was, had the first university in the Novamund, back in 1551, long before Harvard or William and Mary, and the first printing press. The education system…
Was frequently denied to the Tortolians.
True, but some benefited from it. Mexico would not be where it is today without those early educational foundations. Having instructed the Tortolians in their Roman faith, the Spanish found them used it against them. In 1531, a Tortolian peasant named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin claimed he saw visions of the Virgin Mary in the form of the darker-skinned Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadeloupe. (Politely sceptical reaction from audience) Whether one believes the tale or not, an image of legitimacy for Mexico and its people in their own right, not merely as second-class Spaniards, had been created.
Our Lady would be a rallying cry for patriots in later years. For now, the people remained nothing more than dollar signs to Madrid.
It is true that primarily, the colony was merely treated as a source of wealth. Not only for its own sake, but as the nexus of the annual Manila Galleon trade.
Sí. From around 1565, the trade was firmly established, finally building that link to Asia that the accursed Columbus had wanted so much. Treasure fleets of galleons brought silver from the Tortolian-worked silver mines from Acapulco to Manila in the Philippine Islands – which were then a Spanish colony formally ruled from the City of Mexico – where they were traded to the Chinese in exchange for goods like spices and porcelain. These were then brought back to Acapulco – not for our benefit, of course, but tocross the isthmus to Veracruz and then be sent on to Spain.
It was an early moment in capital ecumenism [globalisation], with silver Mexican dollars even forming the basis of Chinese currency for a while. It was also a move which led to the sharing of cultures and the development of hybrid ones, a gain for the world’s diversity…
At the cost of the lives of the Tortolian miners and the Filipino esclavos – indentured slaves, effectively – who were brought to Mexico.
Yes, sadly that was one way Spaniards and Criollos in New Spain got around the ‘New Laws’ about slavery. Well, the Spanish Empire reached its zenith under the man after whom the Philippine Islands were named, King Philip II, who reigned from 1556 to 1598. You may remember him from your schooldays as the one who tried to invade England in 1588 with the Spanish Armada. I always remember the mnem onic rhyme we were taught for exams – ‘the Spanish Armada’s special date is fifteen hundred and eighty-eight’. Bit strange really, I mean surely you could misremember any event to fit that rhyme…
Ahem. No matter how much of the map the Spanish managed to colour in, things went from bad to worse for the Tortolian people of Mexico, labouring in the fields – the Bajio became the colony’s breadbasket – and in the mines. By 1650, their numbers had been reduced to one-twelfth of what they had been before Cortés. (Shocked reaction from audience)
That’s an extreme estimate – nobody really knows – but it’s certainly true the demographic collapse was catastrophic. Though things were certainly rough for the Tortolians, they at least benefited from one factor not present to the Tahuantinsuya people of Peru. (A rather solemn pause) Both Peru and Mexico were major silver-producing regions, but by the 1670s Mexico’s production was outstripping Peru’s. Furthermore, Mexico’s mines were located far from population centres, which favoured wage labour over forced labour. This led to a more equitable distribution of wealth…
It certainly did not seem that way to the people at the time.
No, I am talking relatively here. The Spanish crown reserved its right to take twenty percent – the Royal Fifth – of silver mined in the colonies and maintained an isolationist, protectionist trade model. More than half the Spanish Empire’s taxes came from Mexico, brought across the Atlantic in the treasure fleets.
Something that would be increasingly targeted by others, especially the English.
Yes. As I said, the Spanish Empire peaked under Philip II and then declined throughout the seventeenth century. Spain lost half of Belgium to the Protestant Dutch revolt, led Mediterranean Roman states to victory over the Ottomans at Lepanto but failed to capitalise on it, failed to conquer England, and lost control of Portugal, which Philip had secured in a personal union. France, under the leadership of Richelieu and Mazarin, became increasingly prominent at the expense of Spain – quite deliberately. And, of course, both England and France began to settle North America, along with other nations like the Belgians, Scandinavians and Scots.[4] Jamestown was founded in 1607 (Cheers and a few boos from the audience) and from that seed, this Empire would grow. Spanish rule in this half of the Novamund would no longer go unchallenged.[5]
And English pirates like El Draco would raid the treasure fleets on the way to Spain…
I think they would prefer the term ‘privateer’ (Audience chuckles) but yes.
That decline that you alluded to, that became clear in Mexico as well. The Criollos chafed under Peninsular domination. Artists and writers began to diverge from copying the Spanish narrative. In Puebla we developed our own ceramic tradition, maiolica ware, inspired by the Chinese porcelain that the Manila Galleons brought. Authors and artists embraced Our Lady as a symbol of Mexico in its own right, and in their historical treatments they honoured the Aztec emperors, not Cortés – ironically glowing portrayals often came from the same Criollo people who had been at the forefront of oppressing the Tortolians. But there was a certain common cause against the peninsulares.
Just as in other parts of the Spanish Novamund.
Sí…that complicates the tale. As you norteamericaños know, the eighteenth century was dominated by a series of wars fought by the European powers across the world.
The Wars of Supremacy.
As you call them, or some of you. The War of the Spanish Succession, or the First War of Supremacy, did not directly see fighting in Mexico – though there was some in and around what was New Granada – but the end result drastically changed things in Mexico and the other colonies.
Yes, the Hapsburg line failed in Spain and a French Bourbon was placed on the Spanish throne…for the first time, don’t confuse it with the time it happened in 1861![6] (A few chuckles from the audience but mostly just confused sounds) Philip V became King of Spain and, under French influence, began what are now called Enlightenment reforms.
With mixed results, I think it’s fair to say?
Yes…so-called rationalisations. The appointment of French-style Intendants to more effectively govern – and tax – the colonies, replacing the corrupt corregidores and weakening the central power of the viceroys and captains-general. The Viceroyalty of Peru was trying to rule practically all of South America from Lima, and you can imagine how effective that was with the technology of the day. New Granada was created as a separate viceroyalty in 1717 for better governance. There was even talk of doing the same for Platinea. If that had been done early enough…
Then the Meridian Revolution might have been avoided? Perhaps.[7]
I will get back to that…but the reforms were not popular with the Criollos, who found even their limited and informal influence further restricted as the Intendants were, again, all Peninsular appointees. The exception was in the military. The new Bourbon rulers feared encroachment from other empires – rightly so – and engaged in building forts and assembling militias. It was in these militias that Criollos could begin to build power – a dangerous combination.
Yes. When the military became important, as in the First Platinean War…
Or closer to home, in Jacinto Canek’s Maya revolt of 1761.[8] Governor Crespo, a Peninsular of course, tried a kind of early Kulturkrieg crackdown against the Maya in the aftermath of the revolt, but it was Criollo militias that had suppressed it.
But we’re probably getting ahead of ourselves again. First there was the Second War of Supremacy…
Or the War of the Asiento, as it is known in Mexico.
It’s also sometimes called the War of Jenkins’ Ear, or the Novamundine part of it was, at least. An English trader named William Jenkins had his ear cut off by a Spanish captain and it became a cause célébre. After the First War of Supremacy, England had secured the right to trade with South America…
That is one way to put it, carefully not mentioning the slaves. (Audience murmurs)
Well, quite…which had a huge impact on English history and ultimately our own, as the failure of the South Sea Company intended to capitalise on that phantom trade helped elevate a single minister, Robert Walpole, to power in London – the Prime Minister, ancestor of today’s Presidents both in England and here in the Empire. (More audience murmurs) The war was related to the struggle over the Danubian, no, I should say Austrian, throne in Europe…
Sí, for which reason it is also called the Italian War. (Confused reaction from audience) Because most of the European fighting was in Italy, you see.
Er…yes. Well, the Second War of Supremacy is well known here in the Empire. It was when the American identity as we know it first began to be forged. We all grew up hearing the heroic stories of Major Lawrence Washington, the half-brother of our first President.[9] (Sound of assent from audience) But most of the fighting was in the Caribbean, in New Granada again, or in Carolina against Spanish Florida.
Yes, it little touched Mexico, except indirectly. But it demonstrated the limitations of the reforms that the Bourbons had managed to pass. When Charles III became King in 1761, having experimented with such ideas in his former role as ruler of Naples, he accelerated the pace of reform.[10] The Jesuits were attacked as being incompatible with Enlightenment ideas – which alienated many Tortolians and others. There was an attempt to create a mercantilist trade preference system between Spain and the colonies through the Casa de la Contratación being moved to Cádiz. But by this point, the English were undermining that monopoly, and smuggling was rife.
And then came the First Platinean War.
We don’t need to go into the detail of that. You all know how Spain and Portugal clashed over the Guaraní Reductions and it ultimately escalated into a war in which England became involved.[11]
The Floridas were taken by the Empire at that point as well.[12]
Yes, but that is of little importance besides the failed English occupation of the Rio de la Plata, that is, of Platinea during the war. 1767. I believe the English had their commander shot out of embarrassment afterwards…
To encourage the others, I believe Voltaire put it.[13]
As I was saying. The English had been defeated by Platinean colonial militias commanded by Criollos, not the Peninsular nobles who ruled them. People began to wonder just why they were paying increasingly high taxes to the distant Bourbon government with its unpopular anti-clericalist ideas. It had demonstrated that it could not protect them, whereas their own people could.
But those factors weren’t as strong in Mexico or Guatemala, were they?
No – the fighting was too distant. There weren’t any major rebellions in Mexico to accompany the Great Andean Revolt of 1779 in all its forms – Tupac Amaru, Tomas Katari, the Comuneros in New Granada, and then finally the great Platinean Revolution in response to the betrayal of the Spanish government to their so-called French allies.[14]
And, of course, the Second Platinean War was a war in which American troops under General Washington fought for the freedom of the Meridians. A decision that, given what happened later with the UPSA, many had cause to regret.
Again, I do not need to discuss the rise of the UPSA…initially its government was the target of some admiration by liberals in Mexico, although the growth of Jansenism was viewed with more mixed reactions.
But, of course, there were soon reasons why Mexicans had need to rally against the Meridians.
Yes. Charles III died only three years after the end of the Second Platinean War saw the ruin of much of his imperial ambitions. Philip VI ruled until the Jacobin Wars, but then Spain was paralysed by a civil war just as the Jacobins invaded. The Infante Charles fled to Mexico in 1803 and established the Empire of New Spain – or of the Indies – on our soil, claiming to control all the remaining colonies in a new federal structure devised by the Duke of Aranda. The name Mexico finally appeared on official maps to match common usage. We were now a Kingdom under the new Empire, under the rule of King Antonio I.
But President-General Castelli had other ideas, didn’t he?[15]
Yes. The Meridians claimed they would ‘liberate’ us, and invaded us. The Third Platinean War, as you call it.
It wouldn’t be long before Castelli blundered into war with us, too – the First Cherry Massacre… (Audience murmurs) and set the UPSA down a course that ultimately led to destruction.
Which was just as well, as some of your Constitutionalist Party members were advocating invading and conquering Mexico as well, before the situation changed. (A more intense audience reaction)
Um…yes.
The war might be a victory eventually, with the Meridians losing Peru, but it came at a high price for Mexico. While those earlier wars might not have touched us directly, this time General Fernández marched on the City of Mexico itself, and the Nuevo Ejército under Infante Gabriel defeated him by trapping his army there and destroying the city with it.[16] A brutally effective strategy, which showed how little the Infantes cared for the people they claimed to have given a new settlement for with the Arandite constitution.
That had a profound, uh, long-term effect on Mexico, didn’t it?
Certainly. After the war, Charles IV imposed a new constitutional settlement.
The term ‘Cortes’ was tainted by association with the UPSA, but elected Congresos were put in place in three of the four new kingdoms, including Mexico...
Though with a very restricted franchise.
At least it included a voice for Criollos for the first time, and a handful of others.
A handful is right. Note how there was no central elected body, even for the wealthy; so long as policy was mainly decided by the Emperor, the voice of the people was conveniently excluded – just as Aranda had said, the people could not be trusted with power.[17]
Nonetheless, New Spain, including Mexico, had become something more than just a wealth generator – now Old Spain was not under the control of the same house, there was nowhere to export wealth to in the same way. It was becoming something new.
And as you said, there was a profound effect on Mexico. Carlos – I mean Charles – put the central capital of the Empire as a whole in Veracruz, and attempted to govern Mexico from Monterey in California, trying to develop a threshold mass of courtiers and aristocrats there that might boost colonisation of the region.
Which had become disputed with Spain and with the Empire.[18]
Yes. It did not work, of course. Some colonists did move there, but when gold was discovered in 1818, they were soon outpaced and drowned out by newcomers from all over the world. Especially the Russians and their allies, and you norteamericaños. [19] In 1821 they gave up and moved the capitals back. The City of Mexico was rebuilt, but people who had known it before the war say it had lost some of its unique identity, its perceptible ties back to Aztec days. For the next century, Mexico was a country searching for an identity. Were we merely an exilic form of Spain, a power base for Charles and his heirs waiting for the day when they could return? Were we the cultural successors of the old Tortolian empires, or the last remnant of true Roman Catholicism as the world seemed to go mad? All these identities became confused and melded together, especially when the King married María Jerónima Oca Moctezuma y Mendoza, the Condesa de Moctezuma de Tultengo.
A descendant of the last Aztec emperor, of course.
And one with a longer pedigree than many European houses, for what that’s worth. Charles maybe only paid lip service to embracing a Mexican identity, to make himself more popular with the people. But his son Ferdinand grew up truly believing it, and seeing the Nuevo Mundo as superior to the Old. You have a word for that, don’t you…
Named after him, yes. Ferdinandismo.
Which is redundant! If you’re going to use the Spanish suffix, it should be fernandismo…never mind. Things were not going well for the Empire. We lost the Philippines to the Portuguese and their Castilian puppet state in 1821. But then came the Popular Wars and the crisis in Brazil, a distraction for the Portuguese. The Meridians, old enemies, became allies of convenience. A Meridian fleet under false flag was sacrificed – paid for with the blood price of the Philippines, in time – and the long-hoped-for Reconquista took place. The puppet Felipista Castilians were overthrown and Spain was reclaimed for Carlos.[20]
As Herr Tollkühn so memorably captured in his poem.
Romantic claptrap...(Sharp audience reaction) I, uh, I suppose his intention was to portray drama rather than historical accuracy.
Quite. Charles died only seven years later and then Ferdinand VII, whom you mentioned, took over. How is he seen in Mexico today?
A complex figure. Mexico was always close to his heart, and there are many of us who still vicariously enjoy how he elevated us over Spain in terms of rhetoric. But there is still the basis of how that rhetoric was founded. Ferdinand dismissed the modern Spanish as the descendants of the fainthearts and cowards who had stayed at home, whereas the Spanish component of Mexico was descended from the brave and heroic conquistadores...as he saw it. For all that he praised Tortolian culture and used its art and values more extensively, he was still fundamentally a romantic about the conquest.
What, even with the Salamanca Riots in 1843?[22]
Just because the Spaniards believed Ferdinand regretted the conquest doesn’t mean that he did. And when he did turn to Tortolians and Criollos for support, he did it by creating new aristocrats and recognising older, informal concentrations of power with titles. It was still fundamentally a hierarchical system, in which the majority of the people were firmly at the bottom and excluded from any influence over the levers of power.
Uh...what about liberalisation?
The provincial Audiencias were made elected with a much broader franchise. But power was still really locked behind the more restricted Congresos and, ultimately, the untrammelled imperial prerogative. Still, the economy was booming and things were improving. But the Californias were also becoming overrun with immigrants. So was Tejas y Luisiana, which had already had a large number of French Canajuns there, but they had been joined by Irishmen after the potato famine of 1822. And the numbers increased after the upheavals of the Popular Wars in Europe.
And then came the Great American War?
As you call it – in Mexico it is La guerra de separación. Mexico, all of New Spain, had started to fall behind. It took until the turn of the 1840s for the government to decide to embrace steam power, with the Veracruz-City of Mexico railway opening in 1841 as our first.[23] The navy was also upgraded with steam, but we were in no position to compete with the armourclads being developed by the French and you norteamericaños. Bourbon rule might have seemed modernising in the eighteenth century, but now Mexico was hamstrung by rulers who had one foot in that last century. We were handicapped, always playing catch-up. If we had had republican rule from the start of the nineteenth century, things would have been different... (Audience murmurs)
Perhaps. But nonetheless, Spain itself would soon be lost to your Bourbon rulers, with the Pânico de ’46 and the Second Spanish Revolution.
Blake was a fool. Without his actions...
Again, perhaps. What of the Mexican soldiers who were sent to Spain to die in a futile attempt to hold on.
It is a difficult point. We want to celebrate their achievements but, as you say, it was futile. With the trouble in California that began shortly afterwards, we could never have spared the troops to take back Spain.
The trouble which also helped ignite the Great American War here. In the Concordat, of course, New Spain became allies with Louisiana, the UPSA – and Carolina. (Strong audience reaction)
Do you wish for me to apologise for aligning ourselves with slaveholders? What of you effectively aligning yourself with serf-making imperial Russians? (More loud audience reaction) We were merely trying to survive.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stir things up. Let’s move on. (Pause) After the war was over, California was lost to Ferdinand, along with Spain itself.
Yes. Ferdinand continued to reign for around another fifteen years after the war, but his once-fiery spirit was broken by the defeats. That was the start of a long period of rudderless decline for New Spain. The four kingdoms were merely pawns in the great game of the Meridians and you norteamericaños.
They were subjected to pseudopuissant corporations. Both ours and theirs. Starting with the TFC and GFC before the war – American Fruit...
Yes. it is a pattern that repeats itself, of weakened and poorly-guided nations being exploited by their stronger neighbours. France went on to do it to Spain – so much for their revolution! Bengal later did it to Guntoor, Corea did it to southern Yapon...sometimes countries properly control their rapacious corporations within their own borders, but are quite happy to let them exploit others beyond those borders for their own gain. (Audience murmurs)
In the case of the Meridians, of course, they let those corporations grow too powerful – until they turned on them and became more important than their own elected government.
There was a certain dark satisfaction in that, but it did not make our lives any easier. Rather than being exploited by a distant Hapsburg government in Spain in the past, now we were being exploited by corporations based in Buenos Aires, as it was, or New York. But the mines were just as dangerous either way, the hacienda fruit plantations just as onerous, even if now we could buy shirts with slogans on them. (Audience murmurs)
But nonetheless, the Long Peace tends to be fondly remembered now? Certainly, a lot of Mexican period dramas are set then.
Again, romanticised...but as far as popular culture is concerned, yes. Traditionally, we called it the Era de Plata, the Silver Age.
Because of the Electrum Standard, as opposed to the Gold Standard which came later?
Partly – the Electrum Standard was certainly better for Mexico. But mostly because men said that our wealth, the silver we had mined for foreign masters for so long, was finally starting to trickle down to our own people. As I said, it’s romanticised. We still had foreign masters, though more in corporate boardrooms than in parliamentary palaces, here and in the UPSA. (Audience murmurs)
There was a growing middle class, though?
Sí... The Casta system was finally starting to break down. (Bitter tone) Bad for business. Most of the people never saw that wealth, but it’s true that a minority who formerly would have been excluded now had the ability to get rich. Cities grew larger as more and more moved from the countryside. Discrimination still continued against many of the more traditional Tortolian groups, however, especially the Maya. Fundamentally, we were not masters of our own land – nor was Emperor Charles or King Antonio. We were subject to pressure from outside.
Today some historians say that Charles tried to play the Empire and the UPSA off against one another, as the Californians did.
Ha! Revisionism. Our old kings could not play off a diamondball game. (A few surprised audience chuckles) No, Mexico – and Guatemala – ended up in both camps, exploited by both the Hermandad and the Philadelphia Bloc, out of pure indecision and paralysis.[24] Guatemala. Whereas Peru and New Granada – which had lost Venezuela – at least knew who their sole masters were. Here in 1882 the New Irish immigrants rebelled against the government—
That’s a slight exaggeration, I think...
But rather than deal with it ourselves, the Meridians forced us to create a new captaincy-general. Which eventually became your puppet state of Nueva Irlanda, torn from Mexico’s borders... (Audience reaction) Guatemala also tried to revolt in 1886, but the rebels couldn’t break out of their territory and spread their revolt before they were crushed, because the different Meridian companies had used different railway gauges. Like them, we were trapped.
Nonetheless, the increasing prosperity...
Where we could, we ate the scraps from the table. But when either the ENA or UPSA – or their corporations – took exception to something we did, we bowed like slaves. (Audience murmurs) Look at Lucio Reyes.
A brilliant inventor. I think every schoolchild still learns he developed the Artibol camera that brought asimcony to the masses.[25]
He is proof that Mexico was not some sleepy backwater by inherent racial character, as some unreformed Linnaeans have claimed over the years. A man of genius who changed the world. But could he do it at home? No, because Meridian companies would not permit him to build his own factory. They wanted to keep Mexico a pure producer or primary products, not an industrial rival. And they tried to bully his ideas out of him for their own profit.
Instead, he came here to the Empire, and founded his company in St Lewis. 1890, I believe.
Which was wonderful for North American industry. Not so much for Mexico’s.
But that situation came to an end with the Pandoric War in 1896.
In a sense. All that indecision came back to bite the younger Charles and Antonio III in the – I do not know the English word. When war broke out between North and South America, he did what he always did – agonise for months and miss opportunities, then finally make the wrong decision. He had always been closer to the Meridians, and joined them over your side. Even though the Meridians were now being run by Monterroso, a man who stood against the corporations and was no friend of Bourbon kings.
It does seem a rather foolish decision.
And so our soldiers were soon dying in trenches in Jamaica for someone else’s war. Closer to home, I suppose we should be fortunate that the fighting was not so bloody as it might have been.[26] The so-called Crowninshield spearhead was always a sideshow. Our soldiers were never too enthusiastic about fighting a war they had been bullied into – something which you in the ENA would discover in time. (Sharp audience reaction)
There was also the problem that your rulers didn’t trust your own military, as you alluded to.
No, that goes back to when Criollos had begun to concentrate their power there. They also claimed it was riddled by secret societies like the Freemasons, the Oddfellows, and even cults that idolised Tortolian beliefs.[27] There might even have been a few Societists, back when that was just another club for bourgeois hobbyists. (Audience murmurs)
But regardless, it meant that the troops were kept on a tight leash and never used effectively.
No. And your generals were wise enough to realise that that would change if you invaded full-force and threatened our homes and families. (More murmurs)
So instead we focused on dominating the Caribbean in the short term, then launched Operations Craveheart and Ottawa in August 1898.[28]
Sinking our ships and sending our sailors to the ocean floor...but it could have been worse. Your leaders had calculated that Carlos and Antonio, the cowards, would flee the country if they felt threatened, and the troops you landed cut us off from Guatemala. You were right. They fled right into your waiting embrace.[29]
I know that Mexicans today are...less than happy that the Empire then promptly returned them to their thrones.
Merely this time as norteamericaño...partners. Yes, it was a bitter pill to swallow. There were many admirers of the ENA in Mexican politics who were frustrated we had been held back. Even with the loss of Arizpe, they would have been happy to rebuild Mexico in the ENA’s image as a true ally, not merely a puppet under incapable, inbred kings who had long since lost their purpose for existence. (Sharp audience reaction)
But most of those liberal politicians whom you describe were also Adamantine Republicans. And that was a step too far for American public opinion at the time.
A pity. No, a tragedy I say. Your President Faulkner sometimes seemed to sympathise. Other times he merely wanted a pliable vassal. And he didn’t have a majority to come to a decision regardless.
Sadly not – a lot o the problems with Carolina stemmed from that as well. No-one could quite agree on what to do with it, and so the status quo continued and things decayed.
The same with Mexico. We just sat there and decayed, as Peru and New Granada were swallowed up by the Societists.[30] Too many mediaeval anachronisms continued. The Inquisition might have become the Internal Security Bureau, but a new name didn’t mean anything had changed.
There was a significant film industry established, wasn’t there?
Sí, but the ISB’s censorship meant that our studios were often making films that made money overseas but we were not allowed to view ourselves – or only in a heavily edited form. Given that the UPSA market was gone, in the era of soundless film, sometimes they did not even bother coming up with a Spanish version of the subtitles... (Audience reaction)
From a modern Diversitarian perspective, that is bitter indeed.
We were allowed to industrialise, but factories were run by norteamericaño corporations subject to controls in the ENA itself, just as French corporations did in Spain. Workers still lacked rights. Our internal markets had been cut off from South America, on which we had been dependent. We were overwhelmed with refugees from Societist rule, desperately seeking a Spanish-speaking nation in which to dwell. Within them, sadly, were cryptic reservists. Even if there had not been, people would still have been resentful towards them, and there was violence. Now a canal was being dug across Guatemala by the UNCC and the wishes of its people were ignored.[31] And then in 1917 the global economy collapsed.
Mexico suffered badly during the Panic of 1917, didn’t it?
It started in Guatemala, more or less. Our troops and yours were called in to put Felipe back on his throne after the banks failed.[32] Another wonderful waste of lives.
And it played into Societist hands, didn’t it?
Yes...with other rabble-rousing groups defeated, the Societists filled the gap. In the Black Twenties, as we were blasted by two major waves of the plague and the government seemed powerless to resist. Some desperate people did turn to the Societists. They little dreamed they were merely cards in Alfarus’ hand, to be dealt as distractions in the War of 1926.
Also true of the deluded here in the ENA, I must say. The reputation here was that the plague had entered in part because customs guards and quarantine enforcers in Mexico could be bribed.
Some men can be bribed everywhere. But in Mexico, your policies had ensured that the, how do you say, bribe-able were favoured for promotion. (Audience murmurs) You did not want men who could think for themselves. They might get ideas.
Well...of course, some Mexican soldiers were later deployed to Carolina when Imperial ones were withdrawn to fight Russia.
It was a wearying carousel. Our troops had sometimes been used by the Meridians to keep the peace, as they called it, in Carolina during the Silver Era. Now you were doing the same thing. I don’t think the Carolinians liked it. (Audience reaction)
What you said about fighting for your homeland is a truism, because I know the Mexican troops who fought in Guatemala in the War of 1926 – when the Societists invaded and Mexico looked threatened – fought a lot harder than those troops in Carolina.
They were effectively mercenaries being paid a pittance and surrounded by Linnaean lunatics who wanted to murder anyone who didn’t look exactly like themselves, what do you expect? (Mixed audience laughter and a few boos)
Hmm, well. We shouldn’t judge, not when they were facing the Scientific Weapon.
Sí, a terrible thing, and usually they lacked any protective gear, making them vulnerable even before the Alkahest was introduced.
Let us not dwell on it. What of the Electric Circus era?
Again, as you call it. Well, it was a mixed period for Mexicans. On the one hand, the economy was slowly improving again, and we were gaining access to more markets. On the other hand, the move to the Gold Standard in 1936 hurt our silver mining industry. It is a strange thing. They were always a terrible place to work, yet people were perversely proud of them, and the decline of that industry was a loss of pride.
There were other industries that sought to replace it, though, weren’t there?
Sí. In particular, oil. I know we are supposed to regret it today with climatic amelioration, but at the time, oil was the lifeblood of Mexico. I must admit that it helped that the Societists down in South America had experimented with an oil-based economic system and then turned on their experts when it collapsed; many of them became refugees and helped us set up our own drilling rigs and infrastructure. (Audience murmurs) It came at just the right time, as you norteamericaños started buying spirit-engine mobiles instead of steam. Your companies, like Studebaker and Trojan, began setting up factories south of the border to take advantage of cheaper labour. Unlike those who had come before, though, they began to treat workers more fairly and give them good, reliable jobs.
I know J. Clifford Dawes, the chairman of Trojan, was something of a philanthropist who said ‘Mexico is the future and it is our duty to—‘
Dawes was a good man for what he was. But it was much more that the mobile companies were dependent on the oil supply, and Mexico controlled the oil supply. In theory. In practice, your government exerted pressure on the oil companies, and ours, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. Emperor Charles died in 1932 and his son Ferdinand VIII was a sickly man who spent most of his time in a sanitorium in Puerto Rico.[33] Meanwhile, King Antonio passed away two years later and, after three Antonios in a row, we had the novelty of a Francis. But he was no more effective, spending all his time going hunting or shooting and letting the country be run by favourites, as though it were the Middle Ages. It had been over a hundred years since Charles IV had promised us an elected imperial Cortes, and it had never materialised. We had some ability to vote for Audiencias and for Mexico’s Congreso, but ultimate power still rested in the hands of the wastrel emperor.
People got angry, didn’t they?
We had been growing richer – well, some people had. In the First Interbellum, a generation of talented young people were able to go to universities here in the ENA. Especially, many went to the new University of New London in Cygnia. They were exposed to radical academics there who inspired them to return to Mexico and found new modern colleges, or modernise some of the existing universities. Then a second generation grew up in the 1930s and 40s taking on those ideas. They knew Mexico could be something greater, and they were unwilling to settle for the failures and misrule of the past.
I know that many of those people were encouraged to go to American universities by organisations in the Empire...
Some of them probably thought they were training up good loyal little colonial administrators who would identify more with the ENA than with Mexico. (Intake of breath from audience) But, for the most part, they remained patriots. Some also got involved with the – what do you call it? The upheaval here in the Empire in the early 1940s?
The Long Hot Summer. Yes, some Mexican students did join in the protests, didn’t they?
And when your reforms didn’t go as far as some of your own radicals wanted, some of them came back to Mexico with them. Of course, I have seen your history books claim they were the real catalyst for change in Mexico, those norteamericaños. Because we can’t do anything for ourselves.
That’s a tad unfair. We have been in the same situation ourselves. When the Empire was first founded and self-rule was established, a lot of English Radicals came over here to get themselves elected to Parliament. They thought it was just a bully pulpit that they could pontificate about reform back in England from. They had a rude awakening when they found that we were actually people ourselves, who wanted politicians who would work for us.[34]
Yes. It is a shame that we go through the same things as nations, yet so often we repeat the same mistakes to others that we were subjected to ourselves. Just as we do as individuals.
Regardless. It was really the later 1940s and early 1950s that change came to Mexico, wasn’t it?
Yes. There were a number of prominent figures, but first among them is Héctor Luis Márquez Rojas. He began as a student radical who studied here at the Royal University of Chichago, and supported President Washborough’s reforms. He was also classmates with David Dawes, the son of Clifford Dawes, and established contacts with the Trojan company through their friendship.
I remember. Hector was a Trojan champion in the old Greek epics, wasn’t he? They used to do puns on that...
It was his enemies who mostly pointed that out, more radical trade unionists who claimed he was too close to the company. Still, through that relationship he worked to improve the lot of workers in Mexico after he returned home in 1945. He was elected to the local Audiencia in 1947, even though the ISB and the intendant tried to conspire against him.
He wasn’t the only one either, was he? There were a few of these radical students who were coming home and getting elected, all across Mexico.
Sí. Most of the factories were in the Vale, but José Salvador García Vega was in Veracruz, Diego Cuéllar Rivera was in Zacatecas...and María Isabel Williams Reyes, who had grown up here as Mary Elizabeth, the great-niece of Lucio...she set up a factory for her family company in Culiacán, but then became invested in the plight of the Mexican people.
It usually gets called the Reformista movement here.
A very generic name! Probably because you cannot pronounce renacimiento. (A few audience chuckles) But they were reformists, it’s true, not radicals or revolutionaries – no matter how much the ISB and the aristocracy paid your papers to claim they were. We were fortunate that your President Stuart told the King’s favourite, General Ortiz, where to go when he wanted an army of ENA protguns to run over striking workers with. (Shocked reaction from audience)
Er...yes. I think it’s fair to say that much of the American political establishment had grown dissatisfied with propping up the Mexican and Guatemalan monarchies. There were a lot of fears about continued Societist infiltration, and a sense that a strong bulwark was needed.
It wasn’t enough to have someone to tell what to do, you needed someone who might actually do it?
Er...well, that’s one way of putting it. (Hastily) I know Mexico’s cultural influence here also became stronger with the growth of groove-recording and then Photel broadcasts. Joaquín Flores...
I will say that it’s good that El Huracán – we mostly call him by his nickname – is getting more recognition here in the ENA since that biopic came out. He was really the founder of Murria music with his song “Las Nubes” in 1942, though obviously many others were also involved at the start. As you all know, Murria became influential worldwide. El Huracán was a scion of a longtime family of poor miners who had finally lost their jobs when his mine in Potosí closed, worked out and no longer profitable with the Gold Standard. So he turned to the guitar and put the pain and plight of his class into music.
There are claims that black Maroon music also influenced Murria – in particular, the refugees after the Societists took over Jamaica...
Just another attempt to take our cultural heritage away from us, to always attribute it to someone else. El Huracán certainly did not get credit from you for years. While he sang in Spanish south of the border, and his groovediscs were smashed by the ISB for supposedly ‘anti-government sentiments’, his ideas were stolen by those two Californians, Peter and Pilar Roldanov, and it was their unauthorised covers of his songs that were bought by your grandparents. (Mixed cheers and boos from audience)
Of course, they also released Californian trilingual versions, when that was less controversial, so a wider audience could understand. It did bring the troubles of the Mexican people to Anglophone ears.
I suppose so, even if I regret the way it did so. Nonetheless, you are right. That did have an effect when the Revolution broke out in 1957. The government had made themselves enemies of those who sang Murria, or our own versions of your zig-y-zag. They promoted classical music and anodyne tunes for workers labouring in factories; your term Facile Listening is actually a calque from Mexican Spanish.[35] Ironically, one of the productions that the King liked and the government promoted would be subject to more censorship now than then. The classical composer Carlos Araujo, son of a first-wave Meridian Refugiado had had fled to Mexico in 1902, collaborated with the organist Andonius Simonus,[36] who had fled from the Combine in 1941 to escape the Silent Revolution. (Audience murmurs) Their music was a combination of classical Spanish and its Mexican derivation, the more modernist and experimental music of the UPSA before the fall, and Alfaran-era ‘Human Music’ from the Combine. It is actually quite impressive, but ironically has become tainted in Mexico because of association with the old regime.
Er, interesting. But you were saying, about the Revolution?
Yes. When the government tried to suppress these things, they only made the Murria singers heroic rallying points for the people. Our athletes at the Global Games also were not always happy to parrot the King’s propaganda. After being raised up by the government, Alejandra Méndez, our first female laurel winner, then embarrassed them by publicly criticising their botched response to a storm that devastated her home town in Oaxaca. Mexico was a powder keg of discontent, and all it needed was a spark to light it.
And there were several sparks, weren’t there?
Sí. Of course, the biggest one was the Crash of 1955. Many people who had been dissatisfied with the status quo, but content to remain quiet so long as the economy was healthy and they had well-paying jobs, were now jolted into opposition.
As they were in many countries.
Indeed. In Mexico the problem was especially that oil demand began to fall, and cracks began to show in our fragile new economic settlement.
I’ve heard that people were also jealous of some of the new welfare systems and workers’ rights that President Washborough and his successors had brought in to the Empire.
Frankly, having what the ENA had fifty years before Washborough would have been an improvement. But now people like Rojas and Rivera had managed to get elected to the Mexican Congreso, despite attempts to rig the vote against them and by the ISB to have them arrested on trumped-up charges. They were beginning to table votes on bills to set up such systems, and to raise taxes on the wealthy, who had usually found ways to make themselves exempt. They criticised the extensive spending on, and by, the royal household, and the insider trading in the stock market. They also took issue with the level of influence that the norteamericaño government had, of course. (Audience murmurs)
Over here, we mostly remember the final spark as being the General Fernández incident.
It’s true that was important, but it wasn’t the only factor. Still...in July 1957, as the drums of war beat on, yes, the King came to show off the newest addition to the Armada of the Nuevo Ejército, the General Fernández.
Whose construction Rojas had been against. That’s what’s often brought up here, the idea he was soft on the Societist threat.
Pure propaganda! Rojas was no less concerned about the Societists than anyone else. No, it was because the Fernández project was ill-conceived from the start. A lineship, thirty years after the Black Twenties had shown that such vessels were obsolete! No Photrack set, outdated engines, construction contracts handed out to corrupt companies whose boards of directors were all cousins of government ministers...it was a cavalcade of failure that every child is now taught in school. Nothing more than an expensive symbol. And then, as she left Acapulco harbour, right in front of the King, one of the worst earthquakes in years struck.
I know some people were killed in the City of Mexico and, uh, in Chilpancingo.[37] But the bigger danger was the marémoto [tsunami].
That’s right. It was not large, as marémotos go, but it was sufficient to overturn and capsize some ships and boats in the region. But a crowd of people – and the news cameras – watched as fishing boats and freighters righted themselves, but the brand-new Fernández tipped on her side and sank. More than two hundred sailors died from a wave that should not have troubled her in rough seas. Her construction had been botched by all those corrupt contractors.
Technically that’s never been proved – surveys of the wreck have been inconclusive – but it’s certainly the most common theory. The people weren’t happy, were they?
No. And your government in Fredericksburg was going to have to decide what to do about it, as ours ineffectually cracked down, arrested men like Rojas, and only unleashed a revolutionary fury that would finally end Bourbon rule over Mexico...
*
(Dr Wostyn’s note)
Ugh, where’s that clip button again? I think I included more of this recording than I intended to. Well, never mind. Our next update will probably be somewhat longer, as we try to sum up the world situation before the Sunrise War. But you’ll hear more from the Captains when they return from Ne – ah, I’ll let them explain.
[1] See Part #266 in Volume VII (the Chappe-Cugnot Marque System, loosely analogous to Michelin stars in OTL).
[2] ‘As they have it in Mexico’ is shorthand for ‘in the Spanish-speaking world’ here, because Americans in particular often think of the two as being synonymous. This reflects the fact that, in the absence of the American Revolution (and with Diversitarianism promoting nationalist alternatives), Columbus is a diminished figure in the ENA. John Cabot is often treated as the discover of ‘(the parts that we think matter of) the Novamund’ in English-speaking countries.
[3] I.e. OTL Kansas.
[4] The speaker is being a bit anachronistic with his historiography here, perhaps to make things clearer to the audience.
[5] In OTL, the role of Jamestown and the ships Susan/Sarah Constant, Discovery and Godspeed in American history became de-emphasised in favour of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. This was part of a historiographic strategy following the American Civil War, wishing to give the USA more of a northern origin and not associate it with treacherous Virginia and the rest of the rebel South. This is despite the fact that the Mayflower did not sail until 1620, the site had already been explored and named New England by John Smith of Virginia four years before the Pilgrims arrived, and the first native to encounter the colony, an Abenaki chief named Samoset, greeted the settlers in English as he had learned it from English trappers and fishermen in what is now Maine. It is frankly risible that anyone ever tried to claim this, even symbolically, as some kind of ‘first contact’ or ‘founding moment’ of future American settlers! Another reason why the Pilgrims were over-emphasised in OTL is their experimentation with (a form of) democratic government, which the later USA preferred as a founding story over the more aristocratic (and slaveholding) Virginian settlers. In TTL, this factor does not apply; Virginia is certainly still regarded with some historical suspicion by northern Confederations for its neutrality in the Great American War, but Carolina has absorbed the ire of true treason. Jamestown is therefore secure in its historiographic place as the founding of English settlement in the New World (with caveats like its temporary abandonment and the earlier, failed Roanoke colony). The negative reactions from some parts of the audience are probably a reference to the stereotype that Virginians will not shut up about being the first colony, rather than critiquing the truth of that statement. Ironically, even Diversitarians in TTL would probably feel that claiming the Pilgrims as the ‘real’ founders would be a stretch too far for an alternative historical interpretation!
[6] See Part #195 in Volume IV.
[7] In OTL the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata was created in 1776, but this never happened in TTL (see Part #12 in Volume I).
[8] This also happened in OTL and went similarly.
[9] See #Part 4 (et al) in Volume I. Admiral Vernon’s campaign, and Lawrence Washington’s role in it, are much better remembered in TTL America than OTL, for a number of reasons. As the speaker says, it represents a moment of national birth for a distinct American identity (something which was noted in OTL – ‘Colonials’ became ‘Americans’), and in TTL it is easier to draw continuity to that without the dramatic break of the American Revolution. Secondly, Lawrence Washington was a key supporter of the exiled Prince Frederick, avoided his OTL early death and played an important role in Frederick’s return to England in the Second Glorious Revolution. Lawrence went on to command Anglo-American troops against the French in the Ohio Country in the Third War of Supremacy (part #8 in Volume I) but in the modern ENA is best remembered for the (exaggerated) stories of his exploits in the Cartagena campaigns under Vernon, as loosely adapted in plenty of sensationalist films and other media.
[10] This also happened in OTL.
[11] See Part #9 in Volume I.
[12] While it is technically correct to refer to ‘the Empire’ in this period as the entity had been legally created by Frederick some years earlier, the speaker commits a typical anachronism in implying any kind of central authority exerted by colonial Americans before 1788, rather than this being a combination of British and colonial American troops being directed primarily by London and secondarily by the Georgina colonial government.
[13] In OTL Voltaire said this about a similar incident with Admiral John Byng, who lost Minorca to the Spanish in the Seven Years’ War and was court-martialled and executed for cowardice. In TTL, on the other hand, Byng had a successful career, rallying to Frederick out of discretion after King William was shot on the deck of his own ship. The admiral who was blamed for the failure to hold Platinea in TTL was Marriott Arbuthnot, who in OTL is best known for his mixed record in the American Revolutionary War.
[14] See Part #12 in Volume I.
[15] See Parts #52 and #58 in Volume II.
[16] See Part #82 in Volume II.
[17] See Part #110 in Volume III.
[18] Again, at this point (though transitional) most contemporaries would say Californian claims were disputed with Britain, not the ENA.
[19] See Part #98 in Volume II.
[20] See Part #122 in Volume III.
[21] See Part #49 in Volume I, although this quotes from the part of the poetic cycle about the downfall and exile of the Carlistas rather than the restitution.
[22] See Parts #158 and #174 in Volume IV. Briefly, the University of Salamanca invited the Cherokee politician John Vann to speak and some professors, seeking to suck up to Ferdinand’s views, suggested the Spanish conquest of the Americas had been a tragedy. Some patriotic students took exception to this, starting riots which culminated in the death of Vann.
[23] See Part #160 in Volume IV.
[24] The Philadelphia Bloc of American-aligned nations was not established until 1910, but it is common for people to speak anachronistically as though it existed during the later stages of the Long Peace, as de facto there was a pre-existing understanding.
[25] See Part #267 in Volume VII.
[26] See Part #237 in Volume VI.
[27] Freemasonry has played a much more minor role in the history of Mexico in TTL compared to OTL. In OTL, at one point in the nineteenth century most of Mexico’s political divisions were driven by whether a politician belonged to the York or Scottish Rite Freemason factions!
[28] See Part #241 in Volume VI.
[29] See Part #242 in Volume VI.
[30] In fact, Emperor Charles VI, Mexico’s King Antonio III and Guatemala’s King Felipe did try to appeal for help from Faulkner after Gabriel of Peru came to an arrangement with the Societists, but King Diego refused to cooperate with the Americans and fell alone. See Part #260 in Volume VII. However, this speaker is not exactly willing to give them a fair hearing.
[31] See Part #266 in Volume VII.
[32] See Part #270 in Volume VII.
[33] Puerto Rico remains part of Guatemala; it was not one of the Caribbean islands to be lost to the Societists after the War of 1926.
[34] Part #27 in Volume I.
[35] Similar to Muzak or elevator music in OTL.
[36] ‘Simonus’ is often found in Societist names as a false Novalatina translation of the surname Jimenéz or Ximenes. In fact both of them mean ‘son of Jimeno’ or archaically ‘son of Xemen’, a Basque name which only coincidentally resembles the Hebrew name ‘Simon’.
[37] In OTL the earthquake is estimated to have killed between 54 and 160 people.
“‘BEST MEXICAN FOOD IN TOWN’ – Alex Clarke, The New York Register
‘A SLICE OF AUTHENTIC MEXICAN CULTURE IN THE HEART OF THE CAPITAL’ – Melissa M’Lintock, F’burg Patriot
UNA MUESTRA DEL VIEJO VERACRUZ – A TASTE OF OLD VERACRUZ – Afonso Aleman, La Linterna de Expatriado (The Expatriate’s Lantern) - Translation Authorised 04/10/20 MyCult-X122E49P21
Voted Top Mexican Restaurant in Virginia by Motext Users!
Null CCS marques![1]
Embrace and defend our neighbours’ culture today and fill your belly with a warming flame this winter!
BURRITO GONG
Gooch Street
Hamilton Avenue
Henry Boulevard
And many more locations – see Motext page 64F-102!”
– Advertising billboard in tourist stand in Foxbury Street Bus Station, Fredericksburg, ENA.
Taken and transcribed by Sgt Dom Ellis, December 2020
*
(Dr Wostyn’s note)
I have – finally – been left to tackle the next section myself. I would enlighten you at the Institute to what my colleagues are up to, but I feel it should come les deux cu— I mean, the two captains themselves.
I will say on all our behalf that it is heartening to hear that a vaccine has now been developed for the coronavirus epidemic back home. Hearing about it here has been stressful and troubling, knowing there is nothing we can do to help our loved ones. Hopefully our interdimensional quarantine can end soon and we can return home. But, ah, not perhaps, hmm, too soon…
It will make more sense when you hear from the captains. For now, in this penultimate section on the so-called Electric Circus era, we visit a land whose history has been as sadly neglected in English-speaking circles in this timeline as in our own…
*
Extract from recorded lecture on “South of the Border” by Dx María Rosario Martínez and Alfred Foster , recorded October 27th, 2020—
…but that’s enough for introductions. We need to move on.
Sí, time is of the essence. The history of Mexico in the last century, all the tumultuous events we have seen, is integral to your own identity as imperiales, ah, that is, norteamericanos as you would have it. (Audience murmurs) Though we would argue that Mexico is also part of…
Yes, yes, we must move on, Doctrix. Archaeologically speaking, Mexico and Guatemala are sometimes described as Mesoamerica – Middle America. It was settled by Tortolian peoples for thousands of years before European contact—
Sí, and there is still disagreement over just how many thousands of years. But we know that our Tortolian ancestors began to domesticate corn – maize, that is – and, along with squash and beans, the ‘Three Sisters’, it was the primary staple of people’s diets.
But those weren’t the only foods. If you think you can live your life without ever eating another tomato – or another bar of chocolate… (Audience reaction) Only then can you join those persnickety food critics who still look down on Mexican food to this day.
Eso es cierto! Not that what you call ‘Mexican food’ up here is—
Ah, well, that’s a discussion for another day. Um, Tortolian peoples like the Maya , in southern Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, were also known for developing an advanced system of mathematics and a writing system. Remember that they were wholly isolated from the Old World. Until the Maya script was discovered and deciphered, some linguists and archaeologists had claimed that all writing systems in the world were derived from a common origin, probably Sumerican cuneiform. Yes, there were claims that even Chinese logograms were derived from cuneiform…the achievements of the Maya finally punctured that theory, and were another nail in the coffin of the Societist ‘Central Origin’ hypothesis.
Sí, and we are still trying to interpret Mayan astronomy to this day. The Maya did not have a single central ruling authority, and they were already in sharp decline even before the Spanish arrived – food shortages, plagues, the full reasons are not clear. This was in contrast to the Nahua people to the north, including the fertile lands of the Vale of Mexico. Best-known among these were the people who called themselves the Mexica, giving their name to my country, but who are known to history as the Aztecs. (Audience murmurs)
Yes, the Aztecs. Can any people be less uncontroversial to the historian? Well, perhaps the Vikings of Europe or the Dahomeans of Africa… Were the Aztecs truly like the image many of us have obtained from Califilms, of brutal tyrants sacrificing thousands in the names of crude pagan gods, of imperial oppressors who sought to dominate their neighbours? Or, conversely, were they a remarkable civilisation that built the mighty city of Tenochtitlán, astonishing to the conquistadores as outstripping anything they had seen in Europe, who organised a tax-funded state with a feudal sophisticated aristocracy worthy of that same continent?
Today, of course, we acknowledge that both can be true. The Aztecs were a terror to their neighbours, especially the Tlaxcallans. Cortés and his conquistadores benefited far more from internal division than any kind of technology gap. But that does not in any way justify – as some have tried to – the grotesque destruction of Mexica culture, an act worthy of the Sanchezistas—
Right, yes, well…as you were saying, about thirty years after Columbus discovered the Novamund (as they have it in Mexico), the first expeditions from the Spanish-ruled Caribbean arrived in Aztec Mexico.[2] The first two failed, but in 1519 Cortés arrived, founded the city of Veracruz, burned his ships so that his men had no escape route, and marched on Tenochtitlán. In a complicated series of events…
A tragic series of events.
That, too…as you said earlier, Cortés would have failed without the support of Tortolian allies, who saw him as the lesser of two evils to the Aztec.s In 1521 Tenochtitlán fell, a year after the death of Moctezuma II, the last real Aztec emperor.
Because Cortés had him murdered!
Not everyone agrees on that point… but it is true that the conquest of Tenochtitlán devastated the great city. One of Cortés’ soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, wrote in hindsight that he had thought the city was ‘the garden of the world’ on his earlier visit with Cortés, and now despaired that all the wonders he had witnessed were lost.
Lost it certainly was. The people were enslaved by the Spanish, and meted out to conquerors according to the encomienda system. That same system that had been used to parcel out land stolen from Jews and Muslims in the Reconquista of Spain itself, blindly transferred to another continent. Even the very name of the country was changed to Nueva España, New Spain, and Mendoza was appointed as its first viceroy.
Already there was criticism, however. Bartolomé de las Casas was appointed as the first Bishop of Chiapas, and lobbied the Cardinal-Regent back in Madrid to appoint him as Protector of the Indians – to use the term used at the time. Las Casas recorded the abuses of power meted out against the Tortolians in his book “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” in 1542. In 1550 he took part in the Valladolid Debate, the first recorded debate about the morals of European colonialism, and argued that Tortolians were free men who were no less human than the colonisers.
A good man, though his idea of remedying this was to import black slaves instead…
He went back on that position later in life when he saw what Portuguese slavery was like.
Regardless. Though his aid was valuable, he was one man. Many other Europeans, including scholars, considered Tortolians to be less than human. And it was that view that prevailed in the oppressive rule of the ensuing centuries.
Slavery of Tortolians formally ended with the so-called New Laws of 1542, in part due to Las Casas’ work. But it is true that a kind of serfdom endured nonetheless.
Sí. Even the best of the Spanish administrators were, at most, paternalistic and patronising. Many were far worse than that. Mendoza simply refused to fully implement the reform, whilst claiming he was still loyal to the Crown!
We must remember that the trip from Europe to the Novamund was weeks, if not more, at this point of history. Even supposedly absolute monarchs could only do so much to enforce their will. The law required the encomendado estates to be returned to the crown after two generations, but this was simply ignored by the colonists most of the time. Many times the powerful landowners rose up and slew bishops or governors who tried to enforce the rules. It’s that sheer ineffectiveness that always undermined Spanish attempts to rule the Novamund at arm’s length. The Council of the Indies was created in 1524 to enforce crown authority over New Spain. New state agencies were created. The Casa de contratación of 1504 regulated trade, and the consejo de hacienda of 1556 dealt with financial matters. The Audiencia, then meaning primarily a legal court, was exported early on, and so were the cabildos or town councils. Viceroyalties were created, as I mentioned, and under them, erratically, came captaincy-generals. But in practice, the average Tortolian peasant mostly witnessed authority in the form of the local corregidor, a tax collector and creator of public works whose power was often open to abuse, despite the efforts of the visitador inspectors on behalf of the crown. The nature of Spanish authority, imposed by the crown from the top down, was self-sabotaging. It couldn’t concede representation to the people, deliberately limited trade and economic development, and isolated power in a small number of royal appointees from Spain, seeing the colonies as merely a revenue stream. A revenue stream that would, ironically, cause more harm than good for the Spanish economy…
Regardless of the internal problems of Spain, it was the Tortolians who suffered, indeed often at the hands of the corregidores, all the more as the vast silver mines were opened. But the Mexican people today are not solely Tortolian, of course. The Spanish enforced their complex systems of Castas on us, as in other parts of the Spanish Empire. There was a complex hierarchy based on whether one’s blood was pure European, a mix of European and Tortolian – and what the ratio was – or, only occasionally in Mexico, black as well…
And in addition to that, political power rested only in the hands of those born in the Iberian Peninsula, the peninsulares. Second-generation colonists, criollos, were excluded from power even if they were of pure European descent.
How tragic for them. As you just said, so many of those people were the ones ignoring what limited orders the Spanish government did give to lift the boot from the neck of the Tortolian a little…
Ahem, yes. But we must move on. Separating the history of Mexico from that of Guatemala is tricky because the status of the different colonies changed over time. The Spanish also tried expanding to the north, quite early on, but not always very successfully. The Apache and Comanche peoples provided a barrier. The explorer Vázquez de Coronado ventured north in 1540 in an attempt to find some legendary seven wealthy cities, only to find a perfectly ordinary Tortolian village in what’s now Verdigris.[3] Around the same time, Hernando de Soto was probably the first European to cross the Mississippi, exploring much of what’s now Carolina, as well as parts of Old Virginia, Westernesse and more – though he died in the process. Spanish control did extend to the Floridas and the Hamiltons, but expeditions farther north started to run out of steam when it became clear there was no easy way across the continent to find that shortcut to Asia that Columbus had hoped for. The city of Monterey was founded, by some definitions, as early as 1584, but California remained largely out of central control for years for that reason. The Jesuit missions had practically free reign for a time, and it was more than a century before the last Tortolian peoples of the region were subdued.
Sí…serious colonisation of California only began in the eighteenth century, in response to Russian and American – or English, at the time – encroachment.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. The Viceroyalty of New Spain, as it then was, had the first university in the Novamund, back in 1551, long before Harvard or William and Mary, and the first printing press. The education system…
Was frequently denied to the Tortolians.
True, but some benefited from it. Mexico would not be where it is today without those early educational foundations. Having instructed the Tortolians in their Roman faith, the Spanish found them used it against them. In 1531, a Tortolian peasant named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin claimed he saw visions of the Virgin Mary in the form of the darker-skinned Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadeloupe. (Politely sceptical reaction from audience) Whether one believes the tale or not, an image of legitimacy for Mexico and its people in their own right, not merely as second-class Spaniards, had been created.
Our Lady would be a rallying cry for patriots in later years. For now, the people remained nothing more than dollar signs to Madrid.
It is true that primarily, the colony was merely treated as a source of wealth. Not only for its own sake, but as the nexus of the annual Manila Galleon trade.
Sí. From around 1565, the trade was firmly established, finally building that link to Asia that the accursed Columbus had wanted so much. Treasure fleets of galleons brought silver from the Tortolian-worked silver mines from Acapulco to Manila in the Philippine Islands – which were then a Spanish colony formally ruled from the City of Mexico – where they were traded to the Chinese in exchange for goods like spices and porcelain. These were then brought back to Acapulco – not for our benefit, of course, but tocross the isthmus to Veracruz and then be sent on to Spain.
It was an early moment in capital ecumenism [globalisation], with silver Mexican dollars even forming the basis of Chinese currency for a while. It was also a move which led to the sharing of cultures and the development of hybrid ones, a gain for the world’s diversity…
At the cost of the lives of the Tortolian miners and the Filipino esclavos – indentured slaves, effectively – who were brought to Mexico.
Yes, sadly that was one way Spaniards and Criollos in New Spain got around the ‘New Laws’ about slavery. Well, the Spanish Empire reached its zenith under the man after whom the Philippine Islands were named, King Philip II, who reigned from 1556 to 1598. You may remember him from your schooldays as the one who tried to invade England in 1588 with the Spanish Armada. I always remember the mnem onic rhyme we were taught for exams – ‘the Spanish Armada’s special date is fifteen hundred and eighty-eight’. Bit strange really, I mean surely you could misremember any event to fit that rhyme…
Ahem. No matter how much of the map the Spanish managed to colour in, things went from bad to worse for the Tortolian people of Mexico, labouring in the fields – the Bajio became the colony’s breadbasket – and in the mines. By 1650, their numbers had been reduced to one-twelfth of what they had been before Cortés. (Shocked reaction from audience)
That’s an extreme estimate – nobody really knows – but it’s certainly true the demographic collapse was catastrophic. Though things were certainly rough for the Tortolians, they at least benefited from one factor not present to the Tahuantinsuya people of Peru. (A rather solemn pause) Both Peru and Mexico were major silver-producing regions, but by the 1670s Mexico’s production was outstripping Peru’s. Furthermore, Mexico’s mines were located far from population centres, which favoured wage labour over forced labour. This led to a more equitable distribution of wealth…
It certainly did not seem that way to the people at the time.
No, I am talking relatively here. The Spanish crown reserved its right to take twenty percent – the Royal Fifth – of silver mined in the colonies and maintained an isolationist, protectionist trade model. More than half the Spanish Empire’s taxes came from Mexico, brought across the Atlantic in the treasure fleets.
Something that would be increasingly targeted by others, especially the English.
Yes. As I said, the Spanish Empire peaked under Philip II and then declined throughout the seventeenth century. Spain lost half of Belgium to the Protestant Dutch revolt, led Mediterranean Roman states to victory over the Ottomans at Lepanto but failed to capitalise on it, failed to conquer England, and lost control of Portugal, which Philip had secured in a personal union. France, under the leadership of Richelieu and Mazarin, became increasingly prominent at the expense of Spain – quite deliberately. And, of course, both England and France began to settle North America, along with other nations like the Belgians, Scandinavians and Scots.[4] Jamestown was founded in 1607 (Cheers and a few boos from the audience) and from that seed, this Empire would grow. Spanish rule in this half of the Novamund would no longer go unchallenged.[5]
And English pirates like El Draco would raid the treasure fleets on the way to Spain…
I think they would prefer the term ‘privateer’ (Audience chuckles) but yes.
That decline that you alluded to, that became clear in Mexico as well. The Criollos chafed under Peninsular domination. Artists and writers began to diverge from copying the Spanish narrative. In Puebla we developed our own ceramic tradition, maiolica ware, inspired by the Chinese porcelain that the Manila Galleons brought. Authors and artists embraced Our Lady as a symbol of Mexico in its own right, and in their historical treatments they honoured the Aztec emperors, not Cortés – ironically glowing portrayals often came from the same Criollo people who had been at the forefront of oppressing the Tortolians. But there was a certain common cause against the peninsulares.
Just as in other parts of the Spanish Novamund.
Sí…that complicates the tale. As you norteamericaños know, the eighteenth century was dominated by a series of wars fought by the European powers across the world.
The Wars of Supremacy.
As you call them, or some of you. The War of the Spanish Succession, or the First War of Supremacy, did not directly see fighting in Mexico – though there was some in and around what was New Granada – but the end result drastically changed things in Mexico and the other colonies.
Yes, the Hapsburg line failed in Spain and a French Bourbon was placed on the Spanish throne…for the first time, don’t confuse it with the time it happened in 1861![6] (A few chuckles from the audience but mostly just confused sounds) Philip V became King of Spain and, under French influence, began what are now called Enlightenment reforms.
With mixed results, I think it’s fair to say?
Yes…so-called rationalisations. The appointment of French-style Intendants to more effectively govern – and tax – the colonies, replacing the corrupt corregidores and weakening the central power of the viceroys and captains-general. The Viceroyalty of Peru was trying to rule practically all of South America from Lima, and you can imagine how effective that was with the technology of the day. New Granada was created as a separate viceroyalty in 1717 for better governance. There was even talk of doing the same for Platinea. If that had been done early enough…
Then the Meridian Revolution might have been avoided? Perhaps.[7]
I will get back to that…but the reforms were not popular with the Criollos, who found even their limited and informal influence further restricted as the Intendants were, again, all Peninsular appointees. The exception was in the military. The new Bourbon rulers feared encroachment from other empires – rightly so – and engaged in building forts and assembling militias. It was in these militias that Criollos could begin to build power – a dangerous combination.
Yes. When the military became important, as in the First Platinean War…
Or closer to home, in Jacinto Canek’s Maya revolt of 1761.[8] Governor Crespo, a Peninsular of course, tried a kind of early Kulturkrieg crackdown against the Maya in the aftermath of the revolt, but it was Criollo militias that had suppressed it.
But we’re probably getting ahead of ourselves again. First there was the Second War of Supremacy…
Or the War of the Asiento, as it is known in Mexico.
It’s also sometimes called the War of Jenkins’ Ear, or the Novamundine part of it was, at least. An English trader named William Jenkins had his ear cut off by a Spanish captain and it became a cause célébre. After the First War of Supremacy, England had secured the right to trade with South America…
That is one way to put it, carefully not mentioning the slaves. (Audience murmurs)
Well, quite…which had a huge impact on English history and ultimately our own, as the failure of the South Sea Company intended to capitalise on that phantom trade helped elevate a single minister, Robert Walpole, to power in London – the Prime Minister, ancestor of today’s Presidents both in England and here in the Empire. (More audience murmurs) The war was related to the struggle over the Danubian, no, I should say Austrian, throne in Europe…
Sí, for which reason it is also called the Italian War. (Confused reaction from audience) Because most of the European fighting was in Italy, you see.
Er…yes. Well, the Second War of Supremacy is well known here in the Empire. It was when the American identity as we know it first began to be forged. We all grew up hearing the heroic stories of Major Lawrence Washington, the half-brother of our first President.[9] (Sound of assent from audience) But most of the fighting was in the Caribbean, in New Granada again, or in Carolina against Spanish Florida.
Yes, it little touched Mexico, except indirectly. But it demonstrated the limitations of the reforms that the Bourbons had managed to pass. When Charles III became King in 1761, having experimented with such ideas in his former role as ruler of Naples, he accelerated the pace of reform.[10] The Jesuits were attacked as being incompatible with Enlightenment ideas – which alienated many Tortolians and others. There was an attempt to create a mercantilist trade preference system between Spain and the colonies through the Casa de la Contratación being moved to Cádiz. But by this point, the English were undermining that monopoly, and smuggling was rife.
And then came the First Platinean War.
We don’t need to go into the detail of that. You all know how Spain and Portugal clashed over the Guaraní Reductions and it ultimately escalated into a war in which England became involved.[11]
The Floridas were taken by the Empire at that point as well.[12]
Yes, but that is of little importance besides the failed English occupation of the Rio de la Plata, that is, of Platinea during the war. 1767. I believe the English had their commander shot out of embarrassment afterwards…
To encourage the others, I believe Voltaire put it.[13]
As I was saying. The English had been defeated by Platinean colonial militias commanded by Criollos, not the Peninsular nobles who ruled them. People began to wonder just why they were paying increasingly high taxes to the distant Bourbon government with its unpopular anti-clericalist ideas. It had demonstrated that it could not protect them, whereas their own people could.
But those factors weren’t as strong in Mexico or Guatemala, were they?
No – the fighting was too distant. There weren’t any major rebellions in Mexico to accompany the Great Andean Revolt of 1779 in all its forms – Tupac Amaru, Tomas Katari, the Comuneros in New Granada, and then finally the great Platinean Revolution in response to the betrayal of the Spanish government to their so-called French allies.[14]
And, of course, the Second Platinean War was a war in which American troops under General Washington fought for the freedom of the Meridians. A decision that, given what happened later with the UPSA, many had cause to regret.
Again, I do not need to discuss the rise of the UPSA…initially its government was the target of some admiration by liberals in Mexico, although the growth of Jansenism was viewed with more mixed reactions.
But, of course, there were soon reasons why Mexicans had need to rally against the Meridians.
Yes. Charles III died only three years after the end of the Second Platinean War saw the ruin of much of his imperial ambitions. Philip VI ruled until the Jacobin Wars, but then Spain was paralysed by a civil war just as the Jacobins invaded. The Infante Charles fled to Mexico in 1803 and established the Empire of New Spain – or of the Indies – on our soil, claiming to control all the remaining colonies in a new federal structure devised by the Duke of Aranda. The name Mexico finally appeared on official maps to match common usage. We were now a Kingdom under the new Empire, under the rule of King Antonio I.
But President-General Castelli had other ideas, didn’t he?[15]
Yes. The Meridians claimed they would ‘liberate’ us, and invaded us. The Third Platinean War, as you call it.
It wouldn’t be long before Castelli blundered into war with us, too – the First Cherry Massacre… (Audience murmurs) and set the UPSA down a course that ultimately led to destruction.
Which was just as well, as some of your Constitutionalist Party members were advocating invading and conquering Mexico as well, before the situation changed. (A more intense audience reaction)
Um…yes.
The war might be a victory eventually, with the Meridians losing Peru, but it came at a high price for Mexico. While those earlier wars might not have touched us directly, this time General Fernández marched on the City of Mexico itself, and the Nuevo Ejército under Infante Gabriel defeated him by trapping his army there and destroying the city with it.[16] A brutally effective strategy, which showed how little the Infantes cared for the people they claimed to have given a new settlement for with the Arandite constitution.
That had a profound, uh, long-term effect on Mexico, didn’t it?
Certainly. After the war, Charles IV imposed a new constitutional settlement.
The term ‘Cortes’ was tainted by association with the UPSA, but elected Congresos were put in place in three of the four new kingdoms, including Mexico...
Though with a very restricted franchise.
At least it included a voice for Criollos for the first time, and a handful of others.
A handful is right. Note how there was no central elected body, even for the wealthy; so long as policy was mainly decided by the Emperor, the voice of the people was conveniently excluded – just as Aranda had said, the people could not be trusted with power.[17]
Nonetheless, New Spain, including Mexico, had become something more than just a wealth generator – now Old Spain was not under the control of the same house, there was nowhere to export wealth to in the same way. It was becoming something new.
And as you said, there was a profound effect on Mexico. Carlos – I mean Charles – put the central capital of the Empire as a whole in Veracruz, and attempted to govern Mexico from Monterey in California, trying to develop a threshold mass of courtiers and aristocrats there that might boost colonisation of the region.
Which had become disputed with Spain and with the Empire.[18]
Yes. It did not work, of course. Some colonists did move there, but when gold was discovered in 1818, they were soon outpaced and drowned out by newcomers from all over the world. Especially the Russians and their allies, and you norteamericaños. [19] In 1821 they gave up and moved the capitals back. The City of Mexico was rebuilt, but people who had known it before the war say it had lost some of its unique identity, its perceptible ties back to Aztec days. For the next century, Mexico was a country searching for an identity. Were we merely an exilic form of Spain, a power base for Charles and his heirs waiting for the day when they could return? Were we the cultural successors of the old Tortolian empires, or the last remnant of true Roman Catholicism as the world seemed to go mad? All these identities became confused and melded together, especially when the King married María Jerónima Oca Moctezuma y Mendoza, the Condesa de Moctezuma de Tultengo.
A descendant of the last Aztec emperor, of course.
And one with a longer pedigree than many European houses, for what that’s worth. Charles maybe only paid lip service to embracing a Mexican identity, to make himself more popular with the people. But his son Ferdinand grew up truly believing it, and seeing the Nuevo Mundo as superior to the Old. You have a word for that, don’t you…
Named after him, yes. Ferdinandismo.
Which is redundant! If you’re going to use the Spanish suffix, it should be fernandismo…never mind. Things were not going well for the Empire. We lost the Philippines to the Portuguese and their Castilian puppet state in 1821. But then came the Popular Wars and the crisis in Brazil, a distraction for the Portuguese. The Meridians, old enemies, became allies of convenience. A Meridian fleet under false flag was sacrificed – paid for with the blood price of the Philippines, in time – and the long-hoped-for Reconquista took place. The puppet Felipista Castilians were overthrown and Spain was reclaimed for Carlos.[20]
As Herr Tollkühn so memorably captured in his poem.
Romantic claptrap...(Sharp audience reaction) I, uh, I suppose his intention was to portray drama rather than historical accuracy.
Quite. Charles died only seven years later and then Ferdinand VII, whom you mentioned, took over. How is he seen in Mexico today?
A complex figure. Mexico was always close to his heart, and there are many of us who still vicariously enjoy how he elevated us over Spain in terms of rhetoric. But there is still the basis of how that rhetoric was founded. Ferdinand dismissed the modern Spanish as the descendants of the fainthearts and cowards who had stayed at home, whereas the Spanish component of Mexico was descended from the brave and heroic conquistadores...as he saw it. For all that he praised Tortolian culture and used its art and values more extensively, he was still fundamentally a romantic about the conquest.
What, even with the Salamanca Riots in 1843?[22]
Just because the Spaniards believed Ferdinand regretted the conquest doesn’t mean that he did. And when he did turn to Tortolians and Criollos for support, he did it by creating new aristocrats and recognising older, informal concentrations of power with titles. It was still fundamentally a hierarchical system, in which the majority of the people were firmly at the bottom and excluded from any influence over the levers of power.
Uh...what about liberalisation?
The provincial Audiencias were made elected with a much broader franchise. But power was still really locked behind the more restricted Congresos and, ultimately, the untrammelled imperial prerogative. Still, the economy was booming and things were improving. But the Californias were also becoming overrun with immigrants. So was Tejas y Luisiana, which had already had a large number of French Canajuns there, but they had been joined by Irishmen after the potato famine of 1822. And the numbers increased after the upheavals of the Popular Wars in Europe.
And then came the Great American War?
As you call it – in Mexico it is La guerra de separación. Mexico, all of New Spain, had started to fall behind. It took until the turn of the 1840s for the government to decide to embrace steam power, with the Veracruz-City of Mexico railway opening in 1841 as our first.[23] The navy was also upgraded with steam, but we were in no position to compete with the armourclads being developed by the French and you norteamericaños. Bourbon rule might have seemed modernising in the eighteenth century, but now Mexico was hamstrung by rulers who had one foot in that last century. We were handicapped, always playing catch-up. If we had had republican rule from the start of the nineteenth century, things would have been different... (Audience murmurs)
Perhaps. But nonetheless, Spain itself would soon be lost to your Bourbon rulers, with the Pânico de ’46 and the Second Spanish Revolution.
Blake was a fool. Without his actions...
Again, perhaps. What of the Mexican soldiers who were sent to Spain to die in a futile attempt to hold on.
It is a difficult point. We want to celebrate their achievements but, as you say, it was futile. With the trouble in California that began shortly afterwards, we could never have spared the troops to take back Spain.
The trouble which also helped ignite the Great American War here. In the Concordat, of course, New Spain became allies with Louisiana, the UPSA – and Carolina. (Strong audience reaction)
Do you wish for me to apologise for aligning ourselves with slaveholders? What of you effectively aligning yourself with serf-making imperial Russians? (More loud audience reaction) We were merely trying to survive.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stir things up. Let’s move on. (Pause) After the war was over, California was lost to Ferdinand, along with Spain itself.
Yes. Ferdinand continued to reign for around another fifteen years after the war, but his once-fiery spirit was broken by the defeats. That was the start of a long period of rudderless decline for New Spain. The four kingdoms were merely pawns in the great game of the Meridians and you norteamericaños.
They were subjected to pseudopuissant corporations. Both ours and theirs. Starting with the TFC and GFC before the war – American Fruit...
Yes. it is a pattern that repeats itself, of weakened and poorly-guided nations being exploited by their stronger neighbours. France went on to do it to Spain – so much for their revolution! Bengal later did it to Guntoor, Corea did it to southern Yapon...sometimes countries properly control their rapacious corporations within their own borders, but are quite happy to let them exploit others beyond those borders for their own gain. (Audience murmurs)
In the case of the Meridians, of course, they let those corporations grow too powerful – until they turned on them and became more important than their own elected government.
There was a certain dark satisfaction in that, but it did not make our lives any easier. Rather than being exploited by a distant Hapsburg government in Spain in the past, now we were being exploited by corporations based in Buenos Aires, as it was, or New York. But the mines were just as dangerous either way, the hacienda fruit plantations just as onerous, even if now we could buy shirts with slogans on them. (Audience murmurs)
But nonetheless, the Long Peace tends to be fondly remembered now? Certainly, a lot of Mexican period dramas are set then.
Again, romanticised...but as far as popular culture is concerned, yes. Traditionally, we called it the Era de Plata, the Silver Age.
Because of the Electrum Standard, as opposed to the Gold Standard which came later?
Partly – the Electrum Standard was certainly better for Mexico. But mostly because men said that our wealth, the silver we had mined for foreign masters for so long, was finally starting to trickle down to our own people. As I said, it’s romanticised. We still had foreign masters, though more in corporate boardrooms than in parliamentary palaces, here and in the UPSA. (Audience murmurs)
There was a growing middle class, though?
Sí... The Casta system was finally starting to break down. (Bitter tone) Bad for business. Most of the people never saw that wealth, but it’s true that a minority who formerly would have been excluded now had the ability to get rich. Cities grew larger as more and more moved from the countryside. Discrimination still continued against many of the more traditional Tortolian groups, however, especially the Maya. Fundamentally, we were not masters of our own land – nor was Emperor Charles or King Antonio. We were subject to pressure from outside.
Today some historians say that Charles tried to play the Empire and the UPSA off against one another, as the Californians did.
Ha! Revisionism. Our old kings could not play off a diamondball game. (A few surprised audience chuckles) No, Mexico – and Guatemala – ended up in both camps, exploited by both the Hermandad and the Philadelphia Bloc, out of pure indecision and paralysis.[24] Guatemala. Whereas Peru and New Granada – which had lost Venezuela – at least knew who their sole masters were. Here in 1882 the New Irish immigrants rebelled against the government—
That’s a slight exaggeration, I think...
But rather than deal with it ourselves, the Meridians forced us to create a new captaincy-general. Which eventually became your puppet state of Nueva Irlanda, torn from Mexico’s borders... (Audience reaction) Guatemala also tried to revolt in 1886, but the rebels couldn’t break out of their territory and spread their revolt before they were crushed, because the different Meridian companies had used different railway gauges. Like them, we were trapped.
Nonetheless, the increasing prosperity...
Where we could, we ate the scraps from the table. But when either the ENA or UPSA – or their corporations – took exception to something we did, we bowed like slaves. (Audience murmurs) Look at Lucio Reyes.
A brilliant inventor. I think every schoolchild still learns he developed the Artibol camera that brought asimcony to the masses.[25]
He is proof that Mexico was not some sleepy backwater by inherent racial character, as some unreformed Linnaeans have claimed over the years. A man of genius who changed the world. But could he do it at home? No, because Meridian companies would not permit him to build his own factory. They wanted to keep Mexico a pure producer or primary products, not an industrial rival. And they tried to bully his ideas out of him for their own profit.
Instead, he came here to the Empire, and founded his company in St Lewis. 1890, I believe.
Which was wonderful for North American industry. Not so much for Mexico’s.
But that situation came to an end with the Pandoric War in 1896.
In a sense. All that indecision came back to bite the younger Charles and Antonio III in the – I do not know the English word. When war broke out between North and South America, he did what he always did – agonise for months and miss opportunities, then finally make the wrong decision. He had always been closer to the Meridians, and joined them over your side. Even though the Meridians were now being run by Monterroso, a man who stood against the corporations and was no friend of Bourbon kings.
It does seem a rather foolish decision.
And so our soldiers were soon dying in trenches in Jamaica for someone else’s war. Closer to home, I suppose we should be fortunate that the fighting was not so bloody as it might have been.[26] The so-called Crowninshield spearhead was always a sideshow. Our soldiers were never too enthusiastic about fighting a war they had been bullied into – something which you in the ENA would discover in time. (Sharp audience reaction)
There was also the problem that your rulers didn’t trust your own military, as you alluded to.
No, that goes back to when Criollos had begun to concentrate their power there. They also claimed it was riddled by secret societies like the Freemasons, the Oddfellows, and even cults that idolised Tortolian beliefs.[27] There might even have been a few Societists, back when that was just another club for bourgeois hobbyists. (Audience murmurs)
But regardless, it meant that the troops were kept on a tight leash and never used effectively.
No. And your generals were wise enough to realise that that would change if you invaded full-force and threatened our homes and families. (More murmurs)
So instead we focused on dominating the Caribbean in the short term, then launched Operations Craveheart and Ottawa in August 1898.[28]
Sinking our ships and sending our sailors to the ocean floor...but it could have been worse. Your leaders had calculated that Carlos and Antonio, the cowards, would flee the country if they felt threatened, and the troops you landed cut us off from Guatemala. You were right. They fled right into your waiting embrace.[29]
I know that Mexicans today are...less than happy that the Empire then promptly returned them to their thrones.
Merely this time as norteamericaño...partners. Yes, it was a bitter pill to swallow. There were many admirers of the ENA in Mexican politics who were frustrated we had been held back. Even with the loss of Arizpe, they would have been happy to rebuild Mexico in the ENA’s image as a true ally, not merely a puppet under incapable, inbred kings who had long since lost their purpose for existence. (Sharp audience reaction)
But most of those liberal politicians whom you describe were also Adamantine Republicans. And that was a step too far for American public opinion at the time.
A pity. No, a tragedy I say. Your President Faulkner sometimes seemed to sympathise. Other times he merely wanted a pliable vassal. And he didn’t have a majority to come to a decision regardless.
Sadly not – a lot o the problems with Carolina stemmed from that as well. No-one could quite agree on what to do with it, and so the status quo continued and things decayed.
The same with Mexico. We just sat there and decayed, as Peru and New Granada were swallowed up by the Societists.[30] Too many mediaeval anachronisms continued. The Inquisition might have become the Internal Security Bureau, but a new name didn’t mean anything had changed.
There was a significant film industry established, wasn’t there?
Sí, but the ISB’s censorship meant that our studios were often making films that made money overseas but we were not allowed to view ourselves – or only in a heavily edited form. Given that the UPSA market was gone, in the era of soundless film, sometimes they did not even bother coming up with a Spanish version of the subtitles... (Audience reaction)
From a modern Diversitarian perspective, that is bitter indeed.
We were allowed to industrialise, but factories were run by norteamericaño corporations subject to controls in the ENA itself, just as French corporations did in Spain. Workers still lacked rights. Our internal markets had been cut off from South America, on which we had been dependent. We were overwhelmed with refugees from Societist rule, desperately seeking a Spanish-speaking nation in which to dwell. Within them, sadly, were cryptic reservists. Even if there had not been, people would still have been resentful towards them, and there was violence. Now a canal was being dug across Guatemala by the UNCC and the wishes of its people were ignored.[31] And then in 1917 the global economy collapsed.
Mexico suffered badly during the Panic of 1917, didn’t it?
It started in Guatemala, more or less. Our troops and yours were called in to put Felipe back on his throne after the banks failed.[32] Another wonderful waste of lives.
And it played into Societist hands, didn’t it?
Yes...with other rabble-rousing groups defeated, the Societists filled the gap. In the Black Twenties, as we were blasted by two major waves of the plague and the government seemed powerless to resist. Some desperate people did turn to the Societists. They little dreamed they were merely cards in Alfarus’ hand, to be dealt as distractions in the War of 1926.
Also true of the deluded here in the ENA, I must say. The reputation here was that the plague had entered in part because customs guards and quarantine enforcers in Mexico could be bribed.
Some men can be bribed everywhere. But in Mexico, your policies had ensured that the, how do you say, bribe-able were favoured for promotion. (Audience murmurs) You did not want men who could think for themselves. They might get ideas.
Well...of course, some Mexican soldiers were later deployed to Carolina when Imperial ones were withdrawn to fight Russia.
It was a wearying carousel. Our troops had sometimes been used by the Meridians to keep the peace, as they called it, in Carolina during the Silver Era. Now you were doing the same thing. I don’t think the Carolinians liked it. (Audience reaction)
What you said about fighting for your homeland is a truism, because I know the Mexican troops who fought in Guatemala in the War of 1926 – when the Societists invaded and Mexico looked threatened – fought a lot harder than those troops in Carolina.
They were effectively mercenaries being paid a pittance and surrounded by Linnaean lunatics who wanted to murder anyone who didn’t look exactly like themselves, what do you expect? (Mixed audience laughter and a few boos)
Hmm, well. We shouldn’t judge, not when they were facing the Scientific Weapon.
Sí, a terrible thing, and usually they lacked any protective gear, making them vulnerable even before the Alkahest was introduced.
Let us not dwell on it. What of the Electric Circus era?
Again, as you call it. Well, it was a mixed period for Mexicans. On the one hand, the economy was slowly improving again, and we were gaining access to more markets. On the other hand, the move to the Gold Standard in 1936 hurt our silver mining industry. It is a strange thing. They were always a terrible place to work, yet people were perversely proud of them, and the decline of that industry was a loss of pride.
There were other industries that sought to replace it, though, weren’t there?
Sí. In particular, oil. I know we are supposed to regret it today with climatic amelioration, but at the time, oil was the lifeblood of Mexico. I must admit that it helped that the Societists down in South America had experimented with an oil-based economic system and then turned on their experts when it collapsed; many of them became refugees and helped us set up our own drilling rigs and infrastructure. (Audience murmurs) It came at just the right time, as you norteamericaños started buying spirit-engine mobiles instead of steam. Your companies, like Studebaker and Trojan, began setting up factories south of the border to take advantage of cheaper labour. Unlike those who had come before, though, they began to treat workers more fairly and give them good, reliable jobs.
I know J. Clifford Dawes, the chairman of Trojan, was something of a philanthropist who said ‘Mexico is the future and it is our duty to—‘
Dawes was a good man for what he was. But it was much more that the mobile companies were dependent on the oil supply, and Mexico controlled the oil supply. In theory. In practice, your government exerted pressure on the oil companies, and ours, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. Emperor Charles died in 1932 and his son Ferdinand VIII was a sickly man who spent most of his time in a sanitorium in Puerto Rico.[33] Meanwhile, King Antonio passed away two years later and, after three Antonios in a row, we had the novelty of a Francis. But he was no more effective, spending all his time going hunting or shooting and letting the country be run by favourites, as though it were the Middle Ages. It had been over a hundred years since Charles IV had promised us an elected imperial Cortes, and it had never materialised. We had some ability to vote for Audiencias and for Mexico’s Congreso, but ultimate power still rested in the hands of the wastrel emperor.
People got angry, didn’t they?
We had been growing richer – well, some people had. In the First Interbellum, a generation of talented young people were able to go to universities here in the ENA. Especially, many went to the new University of New London in Cygnia. They were exposed to radical academics there who inspired them to return to Mexico and found new modern colleges, or modernise some of the existing universities. Then a second generation grew up in the 1930s and 40s taking on those ideas. They knew Mexico could be something greater, and they were unwilling to settle for the failures and misrule of the past.
I know that many of those people were encouraged to go to American universities by organisations in the Empire...
Some of them probably thought they were training up good loyal little colonial administrators who would identify more with the ENA than with Mexico. (Intake of breath from audience) But, for the most part, they remained patriots. Some also got involved with the – what do you call it? The upheaval here in the Empire in the early 1940s?
The Long Hot Summer. Yes, some Mexican students did join in the protests, didn’t they?
And when your reforms didn’t go as far as some of your own radicals wanted, some of them came back to Mexico with them. Of course, I have seen your history books claim they were the real catalyst for change in Mexico, those norteamericaños. Because we can’t do anything for ourselves.
That’s a tad unfair. We have been in the same situation ourselves. When the Empire was first founded and self-rule was established, a lot of English Radicals came over here to get themselves elected to Parliament. They thought it was just a bully pulpit that they could pontificate about reform back in England from. They had a rude awakening when they found that we were actually people ourselves, who wanted politicians who would work for us.[34]
Yes. It is a shame that we go through the same things as nations, yet so often we repeat the same mistakes to others that we were subjected to ourselves. Just as we do as individuals.
Regardless. It was really the later 1940s and early 1950s that change came to Mexico, wasn’t it?
Yes. There were a number of prominent figures, but first among them is Héctor Luis Márquez Rojas. He began as a student radical who studied here at the Royal University of Chichago, and supported President Washborough’s reforms. He was also classmates with David Dawes, the son of Clifford Dawes, and established contacts with the Trojan company through their friendship.
I remember. Hector was a Trojan champion in the old Greek epics, wasn’t he? They used to do puns on that...
It was his enemies who mostly pointed that out, more radical trade unionists who claimed he was too close to the company. Still, through that relationship he worked to improve the lot of workers in Mexico after he returned home in 1945. He was elected to the local Audiencia in 1947, even though the ISB and the intendant tried to conspire against him.
He wasn’t the only one either, was he? There were a few of these radical students who were coming home and getting elected, all across Mexico.
Sí. Most of the factories were in the Vale, but José Salvador García Vega was in Veracruz, Diego Cuéllar Rivera was in Zacatecas...and María Isabel Williams Reyes, who had grown up here as Mary Elizabeth, the great-niece of Lucio...she set up a factory for her family company in Culiacán, but then became invested in the plight of the Mexican people.
It usually gets called the Reformista movement here.
A very generic name! Probably because you cannot pronounce renacimiento. (A few audience chuckles) But they were reformists, it’s true, not radicals or revolutionaries – no matter how much the ISB and the aristocracy paid your papers to claim they were. We were fortunate that your President Stuart told the King’s favourite, General Ortiz, where to go when he wanted an army of ENA protguns to run over striking workers with. (Shocked reaction from audience)
Er...yes. I think it’s fair to say that much of the American political establishment had grown dissatisfied with propping up the Mexican and Guatemalan monarchies. There were a lot of fears about continued Societist infiltration, and a sense that a strong bulwark was needed.
It wasn’t enough to have someone to tell what to do, you needed someone who might actually do it?
Er...well, that’s one way of putting it. (Hastily) I know Mexico’s cultural influence here also became stronger with the growth of groove-recording and then Photel broadcasts. Joaquín Flores...
I will say that it’s good that El Huracán – we mostly call him by his nickname – is getting more recognition here in the ENA since that biopic came out. He was really the founder of Murria music with his song “Las Nubes” in 1942, though obviously many others were also involved at the start. As you all know, Murria became influential worldwide. El Huracán was a scion of a longtime family of poor miners who had finally lost their jobs when his mine in Potosí closed, worked out and no longer profitable with the Gold Standard. So he turned to the guitar and put the pain and plight of his class into music.
There are claims that black Maroon music also influenced Murria – in particular, the refugees after the Societists took over Jamaica...
Just another attempt to take our cultural heritage away from us, to always attribute it to someone else. El Huracán certainly did not get credit from you for years. While he sang in Spanish south of the border, and his groovediscs were smashed by the ISB for supposedly ‘anti-government sentiments’, his ideas were stolen by those two Californians, Peter and Pilar Roldanov, and it was their unauthorised covers of his songs that were bought by your grandparents. (Mixed cheers and boos from audience)
Of course, they also released Californian trilingual versions, when that was less controversial, so a wider audience could understand. It did bring the troubles of the Mexican people to Anglophone ears.
I suppose so, even if I regret the way it did so. Nonetheless, you are right. That did have an effect when the Revolution broke out in 1957. The government had made themselves enemies of those who sang Murria, or our own versions of your zig-y-zag. They promoted classical music and anodyne tunes for workers labouring in factories; your term Facile Listening is actually a calque from Mexican Spanish.[35] Ironically, one of the productions that the King liked and the government promoted would be subject to more censorship now than then. The classical composer Carlos Araujo, son of a first-wave Meridian Refugiado had had fled to Mexico in 1902, collaborated with the organist Andonius Simonus,[36] who had fled from the Combine in 1941 to escape the Silent Revolution. (Audience murmurs) Their music was a combination of classical Spanish and its Mexican derivation, the more modernist and experimental music of the UPSA before the fall, and Alfaran-era ‘Human Music’ from the Combine. It is actually quite impressive, but ironically has become tainted in Mexico because of association with the old regime.
Er, interesting. But you were saying, about the Revolution?
Yes. When the government tried to suppress these things, they only made the Murria singers heroic rallying points for the people. Our athletes at the Global Games also were not always happy to parrot the King’s propaganda. After being raised up by the government, Alejandra Méndez, our first female laurel winner, then embarrassed them by publicly criticising their botched response to a storm that devastated her home town in Oaxaca. Mexico was a powder keg of discontent, and all it needed was a spark to light it.
And there were several sparks, weren’t there?
Sí. Of course, the biggest one was the Crash of 1955. Many people who had been dissatisfied with the status quo, but content to remain quiet so long as the economy was healthy and they had well-paying jobs, were now jolted into opposition.
As they were in many countries.
Indeed. In Mexico the problem was especially that oil demand began to fall, and cracks began to show in our fragile new economic settlement.
I’ve heard that people were also jealous of some of the new welfare systems and workers’ rights that President Washborough and his successors had brought in to the Empire.
Frankly, having what the ENA had fifty years before Washborough would have been an improvement. But now people like Rojas and Rivera had managed to get elected to the Mexican Congreso, despite attempts to rig the vote against them and by the ISB to have them arrested on trumped-up charges. They were beginning to table votes on bills to set up such systems, and to raise taxes on the wealthy, who had usually found ways to make themselves exempt. They criticised the extensive spending on, and by, the royal household, and the insider trading in the stock market. They also took issue with the level of influence that the norteamericaño government had, of course. (Audience murmurs)
Over here, we mostly remember the final spark as being the General Fernández incident.
It’s true that was important, but it wasn’t the only factor. Still...in July 1957, as the drums of war beat on, yes, the King came to show off the newest addition to the Armada of the Nuevo Ejército, the General Fernández.
Whose construction Rojas had been against. That’s what’s often brought up here, the idea he was soft on the Societist threat.
Pure propaganda! Rojas was no less concerned about the Societists than anyone else. No, it was because the Fernández project was ill-conceived from the start. A lineship, thirty years after the Black Twenties had shown that such vessels were obsolete! No Photrack set, outdated engines, construction contracts handed out to corrupt companies whose boards of directors were all cousins of government ministers...it was a cavalcade of failure that every child is now taught in school. Nothing more than an expensive symbol. And then, as she left Acapulco harbour, right in front of the King, one of the worst earthquakes in years struck.
I know some people were killed in the City of Mexico and, uh, in Chilpancingo.[37] But the bigger danger was the marémoto [tsunami].
That’s right. It was not large, as marémotos go, but it was sufficient to overturn and capsize some ships and boats in the region. But a crowd of people – and the news cameras – watched as fishing boats and freighters righted themselves, but the brand-new Fernández tipped on her side and sank. More than two hundred sailors died from a wave that should not have troubled her in rough seas. Her construction had been botched by all those corrupt contractors.
Technically that’s never been proved – surveys of the wreck have been inconclusive – but it’s certainly the most common theory. The people weren’t happy, were they?
No. And your government in Fredericksburg was going to have to decide what to do about it, as ours ineffectually cracked down, arrested men like Rojas, and only unleashed a revolutionary fury that would finally end Bourbon rule over Mexico...
*
(Dr Wostyn’s note)
Ugh, where’s that clip button again? I think I included more of this recording than I intended to. Well, never mind. Our next update will probably be somewhat longer, as we try to sum up the world situation before the Sunrise War. But you’ll hear more from the Captains when they return from Ne – ah, I’ll let them explain.
[1] See Part #266 in Volume VII (the Chappe-Cugnot Marque System, loosely analogous to Michelin stars in OTL).
[2] ‘As they have it in Mexico’ is shorthand for ‘in the Spanish-speaking world’ here, because Americans in particular often think of the two as being synonymous. This reflects the fact that, in the absence of the American Revolution (and with Diversitarianism promoting nationalist alternatives), Columbus is a diminished figure in the ENA. John Cabot is often treated as the discover of ‘(the parts that we think matter of) the Novamund’ in English-speaking countries.
[3] I.e. OTL Kansas.
[4] The speaker is being a bit anachronistic with his historiography here, perhaps to make things clearer to the audience.
[5] In OTL, the role of Jamestown and the ships Susan/Sarah Constant, Discovery and Godspeed in American history became de-emphasised in favour of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. This was part of a historiographic strategy following the American Civil War, wishing to give the USA more of a northern origin and not associate it with treacherous Virginia and the rest of the rebel South. This is despite the fact that the Mayflower did not sail until 1620, the site had already been explored and named New England by John Smith of Virginia four years before the Pilgrims arrived, and the first native to encounter the colony, an Abenaki chief named Samoset, greeted the settlers in English as he had learned it from English trappers and fishermen in what is now Maine. It is frankly risible that anyone ever tried to claim this, even symbolically, as some kind of ‘first contact’ or ‘founding moment’ of future American settlers! Another reason why the Pilgrims were over-emphasised in OTL is their experimentation with (a form of) democratic government, which the later USA preferred as a founding story over the more aristocratic (and slaveholding) Virginian settlers. In TTL, this factor does not apply; Virginia is certainly still regarded with some historical suspicion by northern Confederations for its neutrality in the Great American War, but Carolina has absorbed the ire of true treason. Jamestown is therefore secure in its historiographic place as the founding of English settlement in the New World (with caveats like its temporary abandonment and the earlier, failed Roanoke colony). The negative reactions from some parts of the audience are probably a reference to the stereotype that Virginians will not shut up about being the first colony, rather than critiquing the truth of that statement. Ironically, even Diversitarians in TTL would probably feel that claiming the Pilgrims as the ‘real’ founders would be a stretch too far for an alternative historical interpretation!
[6] See Part #195 in Volume IV.
[7] In OTL the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata was created in 1776, but this never happened in TTL (see Part #12 in Volume I).
[8] This also happened in OTL and went similarly.
[9] See #Part 4 (et al) in Volume I. Admiral Vernon’s campaign, and Lawrence Washington’s role in it, are much better remembered in TTL America than OTL, for a number of reasons. As the speaker says, it represents a moment of national birth for a distinct American identity (something which was noted in OTL – ‘Colonials’ became ‘Americans’), and in TTL it is easier to draw continuity to that without the dramatic break of the American Revolution. Secondly, Lawrence Washington was a key supporter of the exiled Prince Frederick, avoided his OTL early death and played an important role in Frederick’s return to England in the Second Glorious Revolution. Lawrence went on to command Anglo-American troops against the French in the Ohio Country in the Third War of Supremacy (part #8 in Volume I) but in the modern ENA is best remembered for the (exaggerated) stories of his exploits in the Cartagena campaigns under Vernon, as loosely adapted in plenty of sensationalist films and other media.
[10] This also happened in OTL.
[11] See Part #9 in Volume I.
[12] While it is technically correct to refer to ‘the Empire’ in this period as the entity had been legally created by Frederick some years earlier, the speaker commits a typical anachronism in implying any kind of central authority exerted by colonial Americans before 1788, rather than this being a combination of British and colonial American troops being directed primarily by London and secondarily by the Georgina colonial government.
[13] In OTL Voltaire said this about a similar incident with Admiral John Byng, who lost Minorca to the Spanish in the Seven Years’ War and was court-martialled and executed for cowardice. In TTL, on the other hand, Byng had a successful career, rallying to Frederick out of discretion after King William was shot on the deck of his own ship. The admiral who was blamed for the failure to hold Platinea in TTL was Marriott Arbuthnot, who in OTL is best known for his mixed record in the American Revolutionary War.
[14] See Part #12 in Volume I.
[15] See Parts #52 and #58 in Volume II.
[16] See Part #82 in Volume II.
[17] See Part #110 in Volume III.
[18] Again, at this point (though transitional) most contemporaries would say Californian claims were disputed with Britain, not the ENA.
[19] See Part #98 in Volume II.
[20] See Part #122 in Volume III.
[21] See Part #49 in Volume I, although this quotes from the part of the poetic cycle about the downfall and exile of the Carlistas rather than the restitution.
[22] See Parts #158 and #174 in Volume IV. Briefly, the University of Salamanca invited the Cherokee politician John Vann to speak and some professors, seeking to suck up to Ferdinand’s views, suggested the Spanish conquest of the Americas had been a tragedy. Some patriotic students took exception to this, starting riots which culminated in the death of Vann.
[23] See Part #160 in Volume IV.
[24] The Philadelphia Bloc of American-aligned nations was not established until 1910, but it is common for people to speak anachronistically as though it existed during the later stages of the Long Peace, as de facto there was a pre-existing understanding.
[25] See Part #267 in Volume VII.
[26] See Part #237 in Volume VI.
[27] Freemasonry has played a much more minor role in the history of Mexico in TTL compared to OTL. In OTL, at one point in the nineteenth century most of Mexico’s political divisions were driven by whether a politician belonged to the York or Scottish Rite Freemason factions!
[28] See Part #241 in Volume VI.
[29] See Part #242 in Volume VI.
[30] In fact, Emperor Charles VI, Mexico’s King Antonio III and Guatemala’s King Felipe did try to appeal for help from Faulkner after Gabriel of Peru came to an arrangement with the Societists, but King Diego refused to cooperate with the Americans and fell alone. See Part #260 in Volume VII. However, this speaker is not exactly willing to give them a fair hearing.
[31] See Part #266 in Volume VII.
[32] See Part #270 in Volume VII.
[33] Puerto Rico remains part of Guatemala; it was not one of the Caribbean islands to be lost to the Societists after the War of 1926.
[34] Part #27 in Volume I.
[35] Similar to Muzak or elevator music in OTL.
[36] ‘Simonus’ is often found in Societist names as a false Novalatina translation of the surname Jimenéz or Ximenes. In fact both of them mean ‘son of Jimeno’ or archaically ‘son of Xemen’, a Basque name which only coincidentally resembles the Hebrew name ‘Simon’.
[37] In OTL the earthquake is estimated to have killed between 54 and 160 people.
Thande
Donor
Every time I give one of these warnings I seem to pull it off anyway, only a little late this time. Thank you to the person who suggested Mexico as a topic, that got me thinking and it was a suitable topic for the penultimate update to Volume IX, though it ended up being longer than intended.
The final part may well end up being split over two actual updates as there's a lot to cover - watch this space.
Mexico having a post-Sunrise War republican revolution is unexpected but i wonder what other countries (besides Germany) have the right social conditions and geographic position rel. to societism for that. Italy seems to be a monarchist restoration like OTL Spain. Ethiopia coulf have a republican revolution
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Very good update.
Nice to see Mexico and to see radicalism that isn't of a Societist sort!
Nice to see Mexico and to see radicalism that isn't of a Societist sort!
I don't know if Thande has enough time to read this before the thread dies, but I wanted to at least try.
What are the aesthetics of the Combine? What does life inside the Combine look like? More accurately, what does the Combine want the outside world to think life inside the Combine looks like? I initially imagined the Combine looking like a scene taken from a mid-20th century dystopian novel al la Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World. Everyone wears uniform jumpsuits, lives in cramp Soviet-style block apartments, under constant surveillance, etc. Basically I imagined life under the Combine like this. Of course, with everyone describing the Combine as "OTL 1950s America on steroids" I started imagining the Combine as a utilitarian Levittown with most people living in small housing units similar to prefab houses built after World War II, although I don't know how accurate the elements I previous described are accurate given the totalitarian nature of the Combine.
I want to know how close these images of OTL Buenos Aires are to what life inside the Combine might have looked like
Scene of a rally being held in a major city in the core territories.
Interior of an administrative building.
Public housing in the Combine.
I keep reading "Combine" like the Combine from Half-Life 2 lol.
What are the aesthetics of the Combine? What does life inside the Combine look like? More accurately, what does the Combine want the outside world to think life inside the Combine looks like? I initially imagined the Combine looking like a scene taken from a mid-20th century dystopian novel al la Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World. Everyone wears uniform jumpsuits, lives in cramp Soviet-style block apartments, under constant surveillance, etc. Basically I imagined life under the Combine like this. Of course, with everyone describing the Combine as "OTL 1950s America on steroids" I started imagining the Combine as a utilitarian Levittown with most people living in small housing units similar to prefab houses built after World War II, although I don't know how accurate the elements I previous described are accurate given the totalitarian nature of the Combine.
I want to know how close these images of OTL Buenos Aires are to what life inside the Combine might have looked like
Scene of a rally being held in a major city in the core territories.
Interior of an administrative building.
Public housing in the Combine.
I keep reading "Combine" like the Combine from Half-Life 2 lol.
Thanks for this primer. While it does help making it easier to understand the Combine, I still have some questions about the government. So the Kapud is the head of state and the Zonal Rejes are provincial governors that are regularly rotated to prevent nationalist sentiment, okay good got that. What I have trouble understanding is the Kapud's relationship with the Celatores. What I am getting from this is that the Kapud is the head of an assembly of Celatores and they collective vote on high-level policies of the Combine,at least in theory. Feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.
In theory, the Kapud and the Celatores have no role in the government. It's just that, once there was a hierarchical organization of Celatores, there wasn't anyone else with the strength to tell the Kapud leading them what to do, and he kept dictatorial power for the rest of his life.
The Kapud is the head of the Celatores and nominally under the Zonal Rejes, who theoretically act as a collective head of state
Pacifism and racial equity, plus how they're educated (in the Combine) and the fact that it has that revolutionary edge (everywhere else).
Also, the Guntoor Crisis becoming the Combine’s Vietnam or Soviet-Afghanistan as backing proxy societist forces against an array of Diversitarian factions (Panchali Hindutvadis, Bisnagan Haidabaradi Neo-Monarchists etc.) only for the whole thing to fail and Citizen Zuzandus to return humiliated after their victory in Yapon would be deeply ironic
Thande
Donor
Thanks for those ideas. I don't really picture the setting visually until I need to for a prose segment, so really 'it depends'. Your ideas about housing (the Casa de Omnes Clases) looks about right, although later on the Combine will also tend to embrace more high-rise housing in cities.I don't know if Thande has enough time to read this before the thread dies, but I wanted to at least try.
What are the aesthetics of the Combine? What does life inside the Combine look like? More accurately, what does the Combine want the outside world to think life inside the Combine looks like? I initially imagined the Combine looking like a scene taken from a mid-20th century dystopian novel al la Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World. Everyone wears uniform jumpsuits, lives in cramp Soviet-style block apartments, under constant surveillance, etc. Basically I imagined life under the Combine like this. Of course, with everyone describing the Combine as "OTL 1950s America on steroids" I started imagining the Combine as a utilitarian Levittown with most people living in small housing units similar to prefab houses built after World War II, although I don't know how accurate the elements I previous described are accurate given the totalitarian nature of the Combine.
I want to know how close these images of OTL Buenos Aires are to what life inside the Combine might have looked like
Scene of a rally being held in a major city in the core territories.
Interior of an administrative building.
Public housing in the Combine.
I keep reading "Combine" like the Combine from Half-Life 2 lol.
Thanks for this primer. While it does help making it easier to understand the Combine, I still have some questions about the government. So the Kapud is the head of state and the Zonal Rejes are provincial governors that are regularly rotated to prevent nationalist sentiment, okay good got that. What I have trouble understanding is the Kapud's relationship with the Celatores. What I am getting from this is that the Kapud is the head of an assembly of Celatores and they collective vote on high-level policies of the Combine,at least in theory. Feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.
The 1950s America comparison is interesting, it's not one I would have made but there are some parallels (i.e. a relatively high standard of living - especially when many older people can remember things being worse - means people are somewhat willing to accept lack of freedoms in return; cultural isolationism helps support a message that this is the greatest place on earth; people generally not that aware of how embroiled in war the state is overseas). There are also a lot of differences or conversely Soviet parallels, like the Combine's economic autarky (udarkismo) somewhat insulating it from the Panic of 1917 in the same way the USSR was from the Great Depression (and this being held up as proof of the superiority of their system).
Major cities like Zon1Urb1 would be about a middle ground from the kind of glitzy neon shown in your first image of Buenos Aires and the dull bleakness we associate with Communism. Typically government buildings would stand out as homogenous whereas there would be more variation in private businesses (which do still exist under Societism, they're just regulated and can be taken over on a whim). While I tend to reflexively picture Societist government architecture as brutalist because of the Soviet comparison, really one would more expect them to embrace some kind of imagined Human Architecture based on taking alleged common elements from ancient civilisations across the world. In practice, there will be a bias towards classical Greco-Roman (like the OTL example you show) but also Babylonian. I envisage something like Saddam Hussein's neo-Babylonian ziggurat government buildings with more of a monotone (Renaissance reimagining of) Greco-Roman trappings.
Clothing is a difficult one because I think them going for the 1984 everyone in a jumpsuit style is anachronistic - at least at first. Probably in the Alfaran era everyone dresses according to 1890s western reform ideas of 'rational dress' (which would themselves be different in TTL) free from identifying marks and styles, with accusations of the latter being used as one of the trumped-up excuses for disappearing anyone the state takes a dislike to. Inevitably this supposed Human Clothing would be biased towards what was already the norm in the UPSA before the Revolution. I imagine the Silent Revolution might head more in the direction of the 'something new' space age/jumpsuit aesthetic, but probably different again in TTL. I don't know enough about the subject of fashion history to guess the specifics, but others are welcome to weigh in.
Constitutionally speaking, as said above the Kapud barely exists on paper as an office, but in reality is the man in charge due to leading the Celatores - who are constitutionally treated purely as some kind of local police force, when in reality they are a vast and powerful military (as well as a police force). The Zonal Rejes are the ones supposed to be in charge, but in practice always came a distant second to the Kapud under Alfarus. Under Alfaran Dual Thought, children were explicitly taught in school both how the Combine should be and how it actually was, with the implication that the latter was a temporary emergency measure until the world was united. After the Silent Revolution, the revolutionaries attempted to abandon this and square the circle by embracing how the Combine 'should' be, but this inevitably failed because it was impossible to dislodge the Celatores, only appease them. The Rejes supposedly have more power under the post-Silent Revolution regime, but this is inconsistently true, with - ironically - lots of regional variation.
The inspiration for this, incidentally, was how the Soviet Constitution of 1936 never even mentioned the office held by Stalin at the time, General Secretary of the CPSU, going into great detail about how the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and free elections and so on, none of which had anything to do with how the country was actually run. The Alfaran-era Combine similarly has an unspoken actual power structure that exists alongside its fictitious on-paper setup.
So I'm guessing Russia is actually knocked out in the Sunrise War within two years due to being hit by China, the Eternal State, rebels, and western Europe simultaneously.
From there it's the Societists making gains on the Nation's. I am interested in how revanchist the Americans are towards the Combine.
From there it's the Societists making gains on the Nation's. I am interested in how revanchist the Americans are towards the Combine.