Look to the West Volume VII: The Eye Against the Prism
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Oh my god LTTW world is lucky that Wikipedia won't exist. Imagine the edit wars.
They have edit wars, they just call it "literally every facet of academia"
There wouldn't be one version of Wikipedia. Or, possibly, there would be multiple pages or multiple subsections for each interpretation of an event.
Contradictory versions of the same page in English, Irish English and Scottish English
The pages would also have censored segments based on your region.
The bit of the last update that says that people that don't have the means to listen to VoxHumana are violating the law made me curious. A foreshadowing of how crazy Societism is or just more Diversitarian propaganda?
I re-read most of the TL during the hiatus and way back when the Heritage Points of Controversy were first introduced, Thande described them (at least I think it was him) as "the things we would have wikipedia edit wars about". Just some food for thought, I guess.
Censored or "censored"? Just remember what the differences between the English and the Irish editions of books look like ITTL.
255
Thande
Donor
Part #255: Grooves and Moves
“Orpington One Two. Requesting shipment to White Gate. See Manifesto Hackney Islington One Two. Addendum. Orpington One Two assembling additional Group. Leadership, Barking Barking Six. Reports directly to Orpington One Two...Barking Barking Six Group will require additional Manifesto. Repeat, Manifesto Hackney Islington One Two...to be shipped to, Outer, Clerkenwell Abbey Mayfair Barking Southwark. Clerkenwell, Abbey, Mayfair. Location: Ealing Rainham Abbey Southwark Mayfair Vauxhall Southwark...Rainham Rainham. Repeating... ”
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From: Motext Pages EX124C-G [retrieved 22/11/19].
Remarks: These pages are listed under “SAAX History Revision: Syllabus B”. We speculate that SAAX stands for ‘Scholastic Achievement Award eXam’ or possibly ‘Scholastic Advanced Award eXam’ but this is presently unconfirmed. From context it would appear this is a (probably) optional and specialist level of study taken around age 19 or 20 by students in the Kingdom of England, likely as a precursor to university study, and follows on from the Higher exams.
Extraneous advertising has been left intact.
Remember—be careful of parroting ‘accepted truths’!
The skilful historian knows that there is not one ‘true’ historical narrative, merely the way in which each person perceives the events. That’s true even for those who lived through those events, never mind people looking back on records of times they don’t have personal experience of. It’s easy for us as all as naive kids to say ‘Yes, but what REALLY happened?’ Don’t fall into that trap! Not only does it smack of unsavoury beliefs, it’s also just silly. You know from your own personal life. If a troublemaker came into your classroom halfway through a lesson, made a rude sound at the teacher and then ran away—imagine asking your colleagues just what happened. Ask them about the troublemaker’s gender, hair colour, height, build. Whether they wore their school uniform according to standards or not. You’ll get as many answers as there are pupils in your class! This isn’t just because they weren’t paying attention. Alienists have studied problems like this, and found this inconsistency again and again, which has informed how lawyers approach witnesses in a court setting.
So we all see the world in our own way. What about history? When we write about history, we’re often not even trying to be as unbiased as we can, or to see the other person’s point of view. We’re trying to convince others that our view is the right one. We’ll never truly succeed, of course—if we did then that would miss the point—but we can find new insights into the narrative through our debate. Remember that. When you’re writing about history, you shouldn’t be trying to find the ‘right’ answer—because there isn’t one! (However, there are plenty of WRONG answers that are based on events all would agree did not happen, like saying that the German monarchy ended because the Bundeskaiser spontaneously combusted!) Your focus when writing should not be to find any particular answer, but to ADD something to the conversation about that topic.
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Let’s take an exam question like this one for instance:
Why were world powers so slow to see the threat of international Societism following the Pandoric Revolution?
(In real life the question might also hint to you how many sources or case studies you are expected to consider, depending on the mark balance devoted to it, but we’ll ignore that for now)
Now this is a very simple question on the face of it. You might think you’ve seen something similar at Higher level, or your parents might have done a similar question when they were your age, when the education system was less criterial. But don’t be fooled into seeing this as an open-and-shut case! There is an ‘obvious’ argument to base your answer on. If you formed that argument well and supported it adequately with examples, you might get a good Upper Mid Decile grade—but you’ll never reach the Top Deciles.[1] At SAAX level the examiners expect more of you than to do something predictable, even if you do it well!
Can you guess what the predictable argument we’re talking about is? If not, have a think about it before you scroll to the next page.
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Aydub, did you get it?
The predictable argument would be something like ‘The Nations did not see the threat of Societism coming, because in the years leading up to the Pandoric War and Revolution, the Societists were a minor presence and seemed far less dangerous than other revolutionary groups. Also it took the losses of the war for the Societists’ message to become appealing to a war-wary populace in different countries.’
As well as being a very old argument, this is actually easy to criticise in some ways. For example, it would imply that countries particularly damaged by the war would be more vulnerable to Societist insurgent activity. This was true in some parts of the world, but there were also countries where Societism rose to prominence despite those countries being neutral in the war. Spain is the obvious example here. In that case, we could write about how the shared Spanish language and heritage meant that events in South America would be particularly keenly observed there, as well as pointing to the domestic factors that would enable a crisis.
But as well as critiquing an old argument, we can also come up with new ones—or at least newer ones; it will be rare for you to truly find a viewpoint that hasn’t been considered before by more experienced historians, but you will be rewarded for trying!
Instead, for example, we could look at the period immediately AFTER the war rather than the one before it. After all, another way we could critique the old argument above would be to say that countries’ governments still underestimated the Societists even after the Revolution, and after the expulsion of French and IEF forces from South America. The ‘First Black Scare’ was so called precisely because it was usually citizens’ militias and small political groups warning of the consequences of the Societist victory and consolidation in the former UPSA. Not governments or established interests, who saw the Societists as harmlessly eccentric, particularly when trade was allowed to resume in a controlled fashion. It is no exaggeration to say that as late as 1910, the average aristocratic or bourgeois voter in European countries (and many even in the ENA) would have regarded the Combine as very much the lesser evil to govern the continent of South America. After all, if things had gone slightly differently, it might still be ruled by Monterroso’s Mentians, and that would be bad for trade!
We often encounter a picture of the period between 1900 and the early 1920s which was summed up by the American writer Jacob Linacre as the ‘Flippant Era’. Linacre took this name from the youth subculture of this period, seen to arise simultaneously in multiple countries, an example of one of the false cultural parallels which the Societists claimed. In America (and to a lesser extent England, Scotland and Ireland) they were called Flippants, while in Germany and Danubia they were called Schnodders, and in France Les Allegres.[2] Once again, many writers will argue this jaunty subculture came about as a backlash against the bloody losses and grave seriousness of the Pandoric War period, ignoring the fact that it arose in neutral France as well as in those countries which had taken losses. In France Les Allegres were often attacked in newspaper editorials as being a symptom of wider malaise, to be blamed on whatever political move or technological innovation those editors did not care for. Of course, many of those writers were of an age to have been involved in the equally raucous Sauvage subculture that had terrorised Paris a quarter-century before, but clearly they saw that as different!
The Flippants (in the all-encompassing sense) were a diverse crowd, no matter how they were stereotyped in the press. Perhaps they were in part a reaction to the dark period of the war, but they can also be explained in terms of being the first generation (in many countries) to grow up with certain old political battles being won and settled. Female Flippants were the first generation of girls to grow up expecting a right to vote roughly equal to that of men of a similar socioeconomic class, which applied regardless of whether the country in question had universal suffrage or not. There was also a sense that the old arguments of the Enlightenment and the Jacobin Wars had also faded into the past. European countries had settled into a ‘default’ expectation that Government would be broadly democratic (in the modern sense), a representational parliamentary constitutional monarchy (or perhaps an Adamantine republic) with stable law and order, the bourgeoisie generally in the driving seat, but with the proletariat treated fairly and the aristocracy retaining some background influence. Though it took unrest in postwar Germany and Danubia to tilt them in this direction, it seemed as though all the old battles were won. And the Flippants took this as an excuse to party!
There were other factors behind the Flippants’, well, flippancy. Don’t refer to Photel here, incidentally—it came about in this era, but its use for straightforward voice communication and broadcasting music, as opposed to simple Bicker signals that required constant resets, didn’t become common until the second decade of the twentieth century. This was, however, when practical ways of recording music first came about, the groovedisc and the groovetape (for more on these, check out the EPB’s ‘Inventions That Changed The World’ series!) Many Flippants had also been taught in school how to play musical instruments, which were becoming cheaper through process-line production. Informal bands could be formed at school or in pubs and bars after work, playing new innovative music styles different from the traditional folk and classical music of Europe. Unrest in different countries (see later) also led to musicians fleeing as refugees to different countries and bringing their different musical cultures with them. Maroon and Trance pioneers from the West Indies and Nouvelle-Orleans (such as Jojo Fontana) came to Europe, as did Turks and other Ottoman subjects who popularised the use of new drumming styles. New genres formed, such as Rattlebang in New York City, Funk in Dresden (named after the German word for Christian Ilsted’s Photel spark-gap, Funkenstrecke) and Sillon in Paris. The latter was named after the French word for ‘furrow’, used by the French to describe the grooves on groovetapes and discs.
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Besides being musical innovators, the Flippants also shocked their elders by critiquing social mores. Drug use (partly inspired by the Nouvelle-Orleanaise Trance music) and polygamy were frequent rumours about their wild dance parties. They were also notorious for their behaviour on celeripedes, now sometimes enhanced with small engines. Flippants who supposedly ran over old ladies or burned passers-by with their steam exhaust were dubbed ‘Scalders’ in the press. Those wealthier individuals who did the same in steam mobiles were described as Mobile-Scalders, and ‘scalds’ persists today in English as a worn-down term for dangerous drivers. Some Flippants were also radical in areas of art and poetry, though these were less mainstream within the movement (if one can call it that) than some depictions of the period suggest. It might be more accurate to say that the sort of iconoclastic movements in the arts which always stem from rebellious youth were given a bigger voice by the wider Flippant phenomenon.
Moral guardians in newspapers (and eventually on Photel) opined about the degradation of society’s values, even as they dismissively walked past the crippled Pandoric War veteran begging for coins outside their railway station. In reality, of course, the vast majority of young people in the 1900s and 1910s were no more wild or raucous than their parents’ generation had been; it’s just that they had more opportunities to have fun in novel and colourful ways. But there were individual cases of extreme behaviour, such as pseudo-Gnativist suicide cults, idolised musicians who were found to have sexually abused young girls, and gangs of nihilist indiscriminate murderers. The state of the news media in the 1900s and 1910s was such that these stories were endlessly circulated, amplified and exaggerated until Europe (and to a lesser extent America and China) had moral panics on their hands.
So did the Flippants just not care enough about serious matters, and Societism was allowed to grow and fester in the background? No! Again, this is a cliched view. Even if we stereotype the Flippants in this way, not everyone was a young person and not every young person was a Flippant! There had to have been other reasons why society seemed ignorant of Societist machinations behind the scenes!
To explain this, why not turn to that old aphorism—not being able to see the wood for the trees. Or you might think of the film adaptation of Constable Jacques from a few years ago, where a murderer with a specific target in mind hides his murder in a slew of apparently random killings to avoid being connected with that one crime. The Societists’ ability to mask their activities across the world in the Flippant Era were generally less deliberate, however. Most Societist agents were sufficiently fanatical ideologues that they would not deliberately stir up unrelated unrest even as a distraction, as they did genuinely believe that any division-inspired harm was a sin unless it explicitly served their ends. However, unfortunately, there was plenty of genuine low-level conflict going on without Zon1Urb1 adding any more to the mix. While many of these occurrences took place outside Europe, America and China (the regions usually identified with the Flippant-type subculture, sometimes including Russia as well) some did happen within their borders. This rather dents the popular picture of this time as being one of dull calm before the storm in those lands, and supposedly justifying the Flippants’ dismissive attitude towards matters of politics and war. Indeed, one could just as easily argue that the Flippants’ actions were motivated by escapism towards continuing bad news at home and abroad.
Let’s look at some of these areas of unrest which meant the Societists’ machinations often blended into the whole mess. Some were explicitly driven by the aftermath of the Pandoric War and, for example, public anger at being on the losing side, or not sharing in the winnings. Others were driven by other events that were not necessarily a direct consequence of the war, some of which would have occurred anyway.
The Irish Question. Following the Third Glorious Revolution in Great Britain (later England and Scotland) the Kingdom of Ireland was forced to choose whether to continue to acknowledge Emperor George IV (and his son Augustus) in Fredericksburg or the upstart Frederick III in London. The Lord Deputy, James Wesley, 2nd Duke of Dublin, and Prime Minister Finucane persisted with a policy that was described by opposition MP Martin Healy as ‘active dithering’. England and Scotland were the more geographically proximate threat and were backed by France, but America was the bigger threat in the long term if betrayed. The French were also keen on the idea of America not keeping a foothold in European affairs through Ireland. It was likely only because the Emperor and King kept on relatively good terms that the crisis did not come to a head. Eventually (1918) the Irish Question was resolved by the Treaty of Wexford, which saw both Augustus and Frederick abandon their claims to the throne of Ireland. Instead it was occupied by the Duke of Dublin, elevated to King James III. Ireland was politically bound into a mutually near-contradictory web of treaties that tied it both to England-Scotland and America in diplomatic, military and economic terms. By this point, any French hope for gaining advantage had largely been quashed by the decline of the Marseilles Protocol’s reputation following the defeat of the IEF. Between 1900 and 1918 (and for some time afterwards) political gangs and militia were active in Irish politics, ostensibly fighting as loyalists to Augustus or Frederick (or even for a United Society of Equals-inspired radical Protestant republic). In practice, many of them were simply criminals using politics as a shield, and would persist long after their alleged political cause had become obsolete.
The Trebizond Backstab Legend. The Ottoman Empire had entered the war on the Northern Powers’ side in return for the return of Servia by the Danubians. Abdullah Seyyid Pasha had seen this as the culmination of the rebirth of Ottoman power began by Abdul Hadi Pasha’s Devrim period. However, the Turks had gambled wrongly and had ultimately been defeated by Russia. The defeat was not total, and paradoxically this may have hurt the Ottoman state’s stability. As far as the average Ottoman subject was concerned, the war had been presented as going well, right up to the point where they were told that the Sultan was handing Varna and Trebizond over to the Tsar. This naturally led to anger, backlash, rioting, and accusations of a backstabbing conspiracy organised by whichever group the speaker didn’t like. Armenian and Bulgarian Christians were often targeted in particular, being blamed for supposed treachery in helping the Russians in those conquered areas. Notably the Ordusu (Ottoman Army) deliberately isolated occupied Servia to prevent those riots from spilling over and creating more lurid headlines in European papers that might encourage foreign intervention. Sultan Mehmed VIII responded to the unrest in typical Ottoman fashion, by having Abdullah Seyyid Pasha executed and appointing someone from outside Abdullah Seyyid’s inner circle as Grand Vizier in his place. This met with mixed results for a number of reasons. Abdullah Seyyid Pasha had been popular with the Empire’s Arabs for being one of their number who had risen to such an exalted position, and Mehmed VIII throwing him to the dogs started a new and different period of unrest among the Arab populace, fanned by the Persians. Mehmed VIII’s choice of replacement, Fadil Karim Pasha, was also controversial. He had served ably as Governor of the Vilayet of Suakin, the key fortified Red Sea port from which the Ottomans suspiciously watched Russian Erythrea. He had fought hard before being forced to eventually surrender the port to the Russians due to broken supply lines, and was still regarded as a hero. However, he was Sennari-born and had ambitions to repair the Ottomans’ honour by pursuing a new period of expansion into the interior of Africa, including the annexation of his homeland and Darfur. This would not perhaps lead to the sort of consequences that Mehmed VIII might have imagined.
The Red Sash Brigades. The defeat of the Empire of Siam to Feng China resulted in the loss of Tonkin and parts of Vientiane and Luang Prabang, which were annexed as the province of Jiaozhi. This was taken as a sign of weakness by restless minorities within the Empire, including the Burmese of Pegu, the southern Muslims and the Cambodians (while the Annamese and Cochinchinese mostly remained loyal out of fear of the Chinese troops on their borders). However, because Siam exited the war almost two years before its end, Sanphet XII and his Front Palace had some time of stability on their borders in order to crush these rebels. More of a serious problem were the Red Sash Brigades. These were groups of angry young men (mostly), comprised of a core of veterans of the war who felt they had been badly treated and betrayed by decadent and vapid aristocrats at home. They largely remained loyal to Sanphet himself, but phrased their revolt as being against his ‘evil advisors’. Their titular red sashes were meant to imply bloodied bandages, showing they had bled for their country, whereas their targets had not. They are also noted for mocking those aristocrats by portraying them as white elephants, an expensive luxury that served no practical use and which Siam could not afford. The Red Sash Brigades defy easy classification, with the class warfare (and veiled contempt for traditional religion) of radical Mentians coupled to royalism and the militaristic worship of strength. Some have even considered them, imperfectly, as an Ayutthai manifestation of the Jacobin tendency, given their racial supremacism and hostility to the minorities within Siam. Sanphet’s solution was similar to that of the Ottomans’, but somewhat more successful in the short term at least. Firstly, he passed dramatic but temporary super taxes on the wealthy playboys of Ayutthaya to assuage the public’s grievances. Then, as time had passed and the military had stabilised, he sent the worst aristocratic offenders—along with the Red Sash veterans—to expand Siam’s power in the wake of the war’s end and the collapse of the Hermandad. The Siamese worked indiscriminately with Meridian loyalists, Societist revolutionaries and Mataramese or Sulu avengers alike to carve up the corpse of the Batavian Republic. They also signed a treat with the Philippine Republic, now lacking its Meridian protector, which saw the Philippines become a junior ally and partner to Siam. This was a particular diplomatic master stroke which did a lot to repair Siam’s reputation and alarm the Chinese. Of course, now the Societists had been given the opportunity to get a foothold in the Nusantara, but surely nothing could come of that?
Corporate Loyalties. The Royal Africa Company and its vassals had been mostly unmoved by the war, aside from the loss of trade and a minor Meridian-engineered revolt against the System in the Nupe lands which was rapidly crushed.[3] However, the RAC then faced a similar decision to Ireland over which Hanoverian monarch to owe allegiance to. It was clear that retaining access to the American markets would be more important for the RAC’s future, but there were more British (Anglo-Scottish) members of the Board of Directors than Americans and there was a feeling of loyalty towards the popular Frederick from his time as Regent. Paralysis ruled for some time in which the American government would probably have intervened, had it been led by someone other than the isolationist Faulkner. However, the Board eventually took inspiration from its counterpart in Bengal. With English, Scottish and American directors alike a minority in post-Privatisation Bengal, the native Bengali directors at this point took the opportunity to vote to dissolve formal ties with the Hanoverian monarchy. Both the Confederation of Bengal and the former RAC (now ‘the Directorate of Guinea’) pursued treaties with America and England that gave them favoured nation status and would allow those nations to continue to station troops and fleets at their ports (more relevant to America). However, as far as ‘colours on the map’ were concerned, this dealt with a large portion of the old Anglo-American empire. Arguably this had been foreshadowed by the fate of ‘Senhor Oliveira’s Company’ in India, which was officially renamed the Concan Confederacy in 1911 and fell largely under the rule of native Maratha princes and wealthy business magnates of both European and Indian descent.[4] However, France retained military power there. Movements also began towards a unified, native-led authority in the International Guntoor Zone (later the Guntoor Authority after two fo those words gained negative connotations).
Other Troubles in Africa. Really this takes in a whole host of somewhat unrelated disputes. The Cape Republic had suffered relatively minor losses to Anglo-American Natali and later Belgian forces during the war, but with the collapse of the Hermandad, multiple governments vied for control. One of these managed to seize control of Kaapstad and called in the French at the height of the Marseilles Protocol’s reputation. A complex, many-faceted insurgency dragged on, with Natali and Belgian interference, Matetwa adventurers, internal native rebels and Societist activists all drawn into the mix. Notably Natal was the only colony that explicitly declared for Frederick, in part due to its local governors rejecting Bengal’s proclamation of separation from the Crown. Natal would become England’s only overseas colony for some time to come. Meanwhile, an attempt to preserve the old Braganza dynasty in Angola following the fall of Portuguese-Brazil was scuppered when João VII scorned it for exile in France. This, together with many other factors, led to the Societists getting their first serious foothold in Africa here in 1905. The neighbouring Kongo Empire reasserted its independence from European or Novamundine patrons at this time, but would soon find itself in the Societist firing line.
The Prague Potato Riots. Actually only one of a significant number of food shortage-driven riots and other symptoms of unrest in the winter of 1904, where crops failed more due to a series of blizzards than record cold temperatures (as is often erroneously stated). The Prague riots are better known because they forced King John II of Czechosilesia (Ivan or Jonas Romanov, younger brother of the Grand Duke of Lithuania) to flee to Vilnius to escape. This illustrated the fragility of the nascent Czechosilesian state and foreshadowed trouble for the future. The fact that Czechs and Germans had joined together in the protests, despite the Russians’ attempts to play them off against one another, was also latched on to by Vienna School Societist thinkers in Danubia at the time.
The Cotton Question and the New Spanish Ulcer Probably the best-known of these insurgencies other than the Iberian Crisis. America was politically deadlocked over exactly what to do with the conquered Kingdom of Carolina, which had long ago been one of the five founding Confederations of the Empire. Arguments also persisted over what to do with the conquered parts of pre-war New Spain (Mexico and Guatemala) and the West Indies. While some decisions were reached, such as the independence of Nueva Irlanda (New Ireland) and the annexation of Nouvelle-Orleans and North Arizpe, a lasting settlement in Carolina, Guatemala and Mexico persisted through times of domestic political crisis as well. Meanwhile, local Kleinkriegers (guerrilleros in Spanish), angry that the fading Empire had swapped a Meridian domination for an American one, launched attacks on American occupation troops and corporate interests attempting to take advantage of these new captive markets. This is probably the area in which the best argument can be made that Societists may have aided movements which were not formally aligned with their interests, not least because there was a great deal of overlap in all the rebel groups in the Hispanophone world at this time. The same was true of Spain, which brings us to the Iberian Crisis...
[1] If we are interpreting this correctly, the Top Deciles would equate to a mark range of 70-100% and Upper Mid Decile would be 60-70%.
[2] There should be a grave accent, Les Allègres, but the English Motext system can’t handle special characters like that.
[3] ‘The System’ describes the arrangement by which the British/RAC, Freedonians and Fulani agreed to mutual spheres of influence and trade agreements, which had effectively left much of the Nupe lands under Fulani domination.
[4] Concan is a historical 18th century European term for the coastline of the area in question, its origins obscure.
“Orpington One Two. Requesting shipment to White Gate. See Manifesto Hackney Islington One Two. Addendum. Orpington One Two assembling additional Group. Leadership, Barking Barking Six. Reports directly to Orpington One Two...Barking Barking Six Group will require additional Manifesto. Repeat, Manifesto Hackney Islington One Two...to be shipped to, Outer, Clerkenwell Abbey Mayfair Barking Southwark. Clerkenwell, Abbey, Mayfair. Location: Ealing Rainham Abbey Southwark Mayfair Vauxhall Southwark...Rainham Rainham. Repeating... ”
–part of a transmission to or from the English Security Directorate base at Snowdrop House, Croydon, intercepted and decrypted by Thande Institute personnel
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From: Motext Pages EX124C-G [retrieved 22/11/19].
Remarks: These pages are listed under “SAAX History Revision: Syllabus B”. We speculate that SAAX stands for ‘Scholastic Achievement Award eXam’ or possibly ‘Scholastic Advanced Award eXam’ but this is presently unconfirmed. From context it would appear this is a (probably) optional and specialist level of study taken around age 19 or 20 by students in the Kingdom of England, likely as a precursor to university study, and follows on from the Higher exams.
Extraneous advertising has been left intact.
Remember—be careful of parroting ‘accepted truths’!
The skilful historian knows that there is not one ‘true’ historical narrative, merely the way in which each person perceives the events. That’s true even for those who lived through those events, never mind people looking back on records of times they don’t have personal experience of. It’s easy for us as all as naive kids to say ‘Yes, but what REALLY happened?’ Don’t fall into that trap! Not only does it smack of unsavoury beliefs, it’s also just silly. You know from your own personal life. If a troublemaker came into your classroom halfway through a lesson, made a rude sound at the teacher and then ran away—imagine asking your colleagues just what happened. Ask them about the troublemaker’s gender, hair colour, height, build. Whether they wore their school uniform according to standards or not. You’ll get as many answers as there are pupils in your class! This isn’t just because they weren’t paying attention. Alienists have studied problems like this, and found this inconsistency again and again, which has informed how lawyers approach witnesses in a court setting.
So we all see the world in our own way. What about history? When we write about history, we’re often not even trying to be as unbiased as we can, or to see the other person’s point of view. We’re trying to convince others that our view is the right one. We’ll never truly succeed, of course—if we did then that would miss the point—but we can find new insights into the narrative through our debate. Remember that. When you’re writing about history, you shouldn’t be trying to find the ‘right’ answer—because there isn’t one! (However, there are plenty of WRONG answers that are based on events all would agree did not happen, like saying that the German monarchy ended because the Bundeskaiser spontaneously combusted!) Your focus when writing should not be to find any particular answer, but to ADD something to the conversation about that topic.
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Let’s take an exam question like this one for instance:
Why were world powers so slow to see the threat of international Societism following the Pandoric Revolution?
(In real life the question might also hint to you how many sources or case studies you are expected to consider, depending on the mark balance devoted to it, but we’ll ignore that for now)
Now this is a very simple question on the face of it. You might think you’ve seen something similar at Higher level, or your parents might have done a similar question when they were your age, when the education system was less criterial. But don’t be fooled into seeing this as an open-and-shut case! There is an ‘obvious’ argument to base your answer on. If you formed that argument well and supported it adequately with examples, you might get a good Upper Mid Decile grade—but you’ll never reach the Top Deciles.[1] At SAAX level the examiners expect more of you than to do something predictable, even if you do it well!
Can you guess what the predictable argument we’re talking about is? If not, have a think about it before you scroll to the next page.
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Aydub, did you get it?
The predictable argument would be something like ‘The Nations did not see the threat of Societism coming, because in the years leading up to the Pandoric War and Revolution, the Societists were a minor presence and seemed far less dangerous than other revolutionary groups. Also it took the losses of the war for the Societists’ message to become appealing to a war-wary populace in different countries.’
As well as being a very old argument, this is actually easy to criticise in some ways. For example, it would imply that countries particularly damaged by the war would be more vulnerable to Societist insurgent activity. This was true in some parts of the world, but there were also countries where Societism rose to prominence despite those countries being neutral in the war. Spain is the obvious example here. In that case, we could write about how the shared Spanish language and heritage meant that events in South America would be particularly keenly observed there, as well as pointing to the domestic factors that would enable a crisis.
But as well as critiquing an old argument, we can also come up with new ones—or at least newer ones; it will be rare for you to truly find a viewpoint that hasn’t been considered before by more experienced historians, but you will be rewarded for trying!
Instead, for example, we could look at the period immediately AFTER the war rather than the one before it. After all, another way we could critique the old argument above would be to say that countries’ governments still underestimated the Societists even after the Revolution, and after the expulsion of French and IEF forces from South America. The ‘First Black Scare’ was so called precisely because it was usually citizens’ militias and small political groups warning of the consequences of the Societist victory and consolidation in the former UPSA. Not governments or established interests, who saw the Societists as harmlessly eccentric, particularly when trade was allowed to resume in a controlled fashion. It is no exaggeration to say that as late as 1910, the average aristocratic or bourgeois voter in European countries (and many even in the ENA) would have regarded the Combine as very much the lesser evil to govern the continent of South America. After all, if things had gone slightly differently, it might still be ruled by Monterroso’s Mentians, and that would be bad for trade!
We often encounter a picture of the period between 1900 and the early 1920s which was summed up by the American writer Jacob Linacre as the ‘Flippant Era’. Linacre took this name from the youth subculture of this period, seen to arise simultaneously in multiple countries, an example of one of the false cultural parallels which the Societists claimed. In America (and to a lesser extent England, Scotland and Ireland) they were called Flippants, while in Germany and Danubia they were called Schnodders, and in France Les Allegres.[2] Once again, many writers will argue this jaunty subculture came about as a backlash against the bloody losses and grave seriousness of the Pandoric War period, ignoring the fact that it arose in neutral France as well as in those countries which had taken losses. In France Les Allegres were often attacked in newspaper editorials as being a symptom of wider malaise, to be blamed on whatever political move or technological innovation those editors did not care for. Of course, many of those writers were of an age to have been involved in the equally raucous Sauvage subculture that had terrorised Paris a quarter-century before, but clearly they saw that as different!
The Flippants (in the all-encompassing sense) were a diverse crowd, no matter how they were stereotyped in the press. Perhaps they were in part a reaction to the dark period of the war, but they can also be explained in terms of being the first generation (in many countries) to grow up with certain old political battles being won and settled. Female Flippants were the first generation of girls to grow up expecting a right to vote roughly equal to that of men of a similar socioeconomic class, which applied regardless of whether the country in question had universal suffrage or not. There was also a sense that the old arguments of the Enlightenment and the Jacobin Wars had also faded into the past. European countries had settled into a ‘default’ expectation that Government would be broadly democratic (in the modern sense), a representational parliamentary constitutional monarchy (or perhaps an Adamantine republic) with stable law and order, the bourgeoisie generally in the driving seat, but with the proletariat treated fairly and the aristocracy retaining some background influence. Though it took unrest in postwar Germany and Danubia to tilt them in this direction, it seemed as though all the old battles were won. And the Flippants took this as an excuse to party!
There were other factors behind the Flippants’, well, flippancy. Don’t refer to Photel here, incidentally—it came about in this era, but its use for straightforward voice communication and broadcasting music, as opposed to simple Bicker signals that required constant resets, didn’t become common until the second decade of the twentieth century. This was, however, when practical ways of recording music first came about, the groovedisc and the groovetape (for more on these, check out the EPB’s ‘Inventions That Changed The World’ series!) Many Flippants had also been taught in school how to play musical instruments, which were becoming cheaper through process-line production. Informal bands could be formed at school or in pubs and bars after work, playing new innovative music styles different from the traditional folk and classical music of Europe. Unrest in different countries (see later) also led to musicians fleeing as refugees to different countries and bringing their different musical cultures with them. Maroon and Trance pioneers from the West Indies and Nouvelle-Orleans (such as Jojo Fontana) came to Europe, as did Turks and other Ottoman subjects who popularised the use of new drumming styles. New genres formed, such as Rattlebang in New York City, Funk in Dresden (named after the German word for Christian Ilsted’s Photel spark-gap, Funkenstrecke) and Sillon in Paris. The latter was named after the French word for ‘furrow’, used by the French to describe the grooves on groovetapes and discs.
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Besides being musical innovators, the Flippants also shocked their elders by critiquing social mores. Drug use (partly inspired by the Nouvelle-Orleanaise Trance music) and polygamy were frequent rumours about their wild dance parties. They were also notorious for their behaviour on celeripedes, now sometimes enhanced with small engines. Flippants who supposedly ran over old ladies or burned passers-by with their steam exhaust were dubbed ‘Scalders’ in the press. Those wealthier individuals who did the same in steam mobiles were described as Mobile-Scalders, and ‘scalds’ persists today in English as a worn-down term for dangerous drivers. Some Flippants were also radical in areas of art and poetry, though these were less mainstream within the movement (if one can call it that) than some depictions of the period suggest. It might be more accurate to say that the sort of iconoclastic movements in the arts which always stem from rebellious youth were given a bigger voice by the wider Flippant phenomenon.
Moral guardians in newspapers (and eventually on Photel) opined about the degradation of society’s values, even as they dismissively walked past the crippled Pandoric War veteran begging for coins outside their railway station. In reality, of course, the vast majority of young people in the 1900s and 1910s were no more wild or raucous than their parents’ generation had been; it’s just that they had more opportunities to have fun in novel and colourful ways. But there were individual cases of extreme behaviour, such as pseudo-Gnativist suicide cults, idolised musicians who were found to have sexually abused young girls, and gangs of nihilist indiscriminate murderers. The state of the news media in the 1900s and 1910s was such that these stories were endlessly circulated, amplified and exaggerated until Europe (and to a lesser extent America and China) had moral panics on their hands.
So did the Flippants just not care enough about serious matters, and Societism was allowed to grow and fester in the background? No! Again, this is a cliched view. Even if we stereotype the Flippants in this way, not everyone was a young person and not every young person was a Flippant! There had to have been other reasons why society seemed ignorant of Societist machinations behind the scenes!
To explain this, why not turn to that old aphorism—not being able to see the wood for the trees. Or you might think of the film adaptation of Constable Jacques from a few years ago, where a murderer with a specific target in mind hides his murder in a slew of apparently random killings to avoid being connected with that one crime. The Societists’ ability to mask their activities across the world in the Flippant Era were generally less deliberate, however. Most Societist agents were sufficiently fanatical ideologues that they would not deliberately stir up unrelated unrest even as a distraction, as they did genuinely believe that any division-inspired harm was a sin unless it explicitly served their ends. However, unfortunately, there was plenty of genuine low-level conflict going on without Zon1Urb1 adding any more to the mix. While many of these occurrences took place outside Europe, America and China (the regions usually identified with the Flippant-type subculture, sometimes including Russia as well) some did happen within their borders. This rather dents the popular picture of this time as being one of dull calm before the storm in those lands, and supposedly justifying the Flippants’ dismissive attitude towards matters of politics and war. Indeed, one could just as easily argue that the Flippants’ actions were motivated by escapism towards continuing bad news at home and abroad.
Let’s look at some of these areas of unrest which meant the Societists’ machinations often blended into the whole mess. Some were explicitly driven by the aftermath of the Pandoric War and, for example, public anger at being on the losing side, or not sharing in the winnings. Others were driven by other events that were not necessarily a direct consequence of the war, some of which would have occurred anyway.
The Irish Question. Following the Third Glorious Revolution in Great Britain (later England and Scotland) the Kingdom of Ireland was forced to choose whether to continue to acknowledge Emperor George IV (and his son Augustus) in Fredericksburg or the upstart Frederick III in London. The Lord Deputy, James Wesley, 2nd Duke of Dublin, and Prime Minister Finucane persisted with a policy that was described by opposition MP Martin Healy as ‘active dithering’. England and Scotland were the more geographically proximate threat and were backed by France, but America was the bigger threat in the long term if betrayed. The French were also keen on the idea of America not keeping a foothold in European affairs through Ireland. It was likely only because the Emperor and King kept on relatively good terms that the crisis did not come to a head. Eventually (1918) the Irish Question was resolved by the Treaty of Wexford, which saw both Augustus and Frederick abandon their claims to the throne of Ireland. Instead it was occupied by the Duke of Dublin, elevated to King James III. Ireland was politically bound into a mutually near-contradictory web of treaties that tied it both to England-Scotland and America in diplomatic, military and economic terms. By this point, any French hope for gaining advantage had largely been quashed by the decline of the Marseilles Protocol’s reputation following the defeat of the IEF. Between 1900 and 1918 (and for some time afterwards) political gangs and militia were active in Irish politics, ostensibly fighting as loyalists to Augustus or Frederick (or even for a United Society of Equals-inspired radical Protestant republic). In practice, many of them were simply criminals using politics as a shield, and would persist long after their alleged political cause had become obsolete.
The Trebizond Backstab Legend. The Ottoman Empire had entered the war on the Northern Powers’ side in return for the return of Servia by the Danubians. Abdullah Seyyid Pasha had seen this as the culmination of the rebirth of Ottoman power began by Abdul Hadi Pasha’s Devrim period. However, the Turks had gambled wrongly and had ultimately been defeated by Russia. The defeat was not total, and paradoxically this may have hurt the Ottoman state’s stability. As far as the average Ottoman subject was concerned, the war had been presented as going well, right up to the point where they were told that the Sultan was handing Varna and Trebizond over to the Tsar. This naturally led to anger, backlash, rioting, and accusations of a backstabbing conspiracy organised by whichever group the speaker didn’t like. Armenian and Bulgarian Christians were often targeted in particular, being blamed for supposed treachery in helping the Russians in those conquered areas. Notably the Ordusu (Ottoman Army) deliberately isolated occupied Servia to prevent those riots from spilling over and creating more lurid headlines in European papers that might encourage foreign intervention. Sultan Mehmed VIII responded to the unrest in typical Ottoman fashion, by having Abdullah Seyyid Pasha executed and appointing someone from outside Abdullah Seyyid’s inner circle as Grand Vizier in his place. This met with mixed results for a number of reasons. Abdullah Seyyid Pasha had been popular with the Empire’s Arabs for being one of their number who had risen to such an exalted position, and Mehmed VIII throwing him to the dogs started a new and different period of unrest among the Arab populace, fanned by the Persians. Mehmed VIII’s choice of replacement, Fadil Karim Pasha, was also controversial. He had served ably as Governor of the Vilayet of Suakin, the key fortified Red Sea port from which the Ottomans suspiciously watched Russian Erythrea. He had fought hard before being forced to eventually surrender the port to the Russians due to broken supply lines, and was still regarded as a hero. However, he was Sennari-born and had ambitions to repair the Ottomans’ honour by pursuing a new period of expansion into the interior of Africa, including the annexation of his homeland and Darfur. This would not perhaps lead to the sort of consequences that Mehmed VIII might have imagined.
The Red Sash Brigades. The defeat of the Empire of Siam to Feng China resulted in the loss of Tonkin and parts of Vientiane and Luang Prabang, which were annexed as the province of Jiaozhi. This was taken as a sign of weakness by restless minorities within the Empire, including the Burmese of Pegu, the southern Muslims and the Cambodians (while the Annamese and Cochinchinese mostly remained loyal out of fear of the Chinese troops on their borders). However, because Siam exited the war almost two years before its end, Sanphet XII and his Front Palace had some time of stability on their borders in order to crush these rebels. More of a serious problem were the Red Sash Brigades. These were groups of angry young men (mostly), comprised of a core of veterans of the war who felt they had been badly treated and betrayed by decadent and vapid aristocrats at home. They largely remained loyal to Sanphet himself, but phrased their revolt as being against his ‘evil advisors’. Their titular red sashes were meant to imply bloodied bandages, showing they had bled for their country, whereas their targets had not. They are also noted for mocking those aristocrats by portraying them as white elephants, an expensive luxury that served no practical use and which Siam could not afford. The Red Sash Brigades defy easy classification, with the class warfare (and veiled contempt for traditional religion) of radical Mentians coupled to royalism and the militaristic worship of strength. Some have even considered them, imperfectly, as an Ayutthai manifestation of the Jacobin tendency, given their racial supremacism and hostility to the minorities within Siam. Sanphet’s solution was similar to that of the Ottomans’, but somewhat more successful in the short term at least. Firstly, he passed dramatic but temporary super taxes on the wealthy playboys of Ayutthaya to assuage the public’s grievances. Then, as time had passed and the military had stabilised, he sent the worst aristocratic offenders—along with the Red Sash veterans—to expand Siam’s power in the wake of the war’s end and the collapse of the Hermandad. The Siamese worked indiscriminately with Meridian loyalists, Societist revolutionaries and Mataramese or Sulu avengers alike to carve up the corpse of the Batavian Republic. They also signed a treat with the Philippine Republic, now lacking its Meridian protector, which saw the Philippines become a junior ally and partner to Siam. This was a particular diplomatic master stroke which did a lot to repair Siam’s reputation and alarm the Chinese. Of course, now the Societists had been given the opportunity to get a foothold in the Nusantara, but surely nothing could come of that?
Corporate Loyalties. The Royal Africa Company and its vassals had been mostly unmoved by the war, aside from the loss of trade and a minor Meridian-engineered revolt against the System in the Nupe lands which was rapidly crushed.[3] However, the RAC then faced a similar decision to Ireland over which Hanoverian monarch to owe allegiance to. It was clear that retaining access to the American markets would be more important for the RAC’s future, but there were more British (Anglo-Scottish) members of the Board of Directors than Americans and there was a feeling of loyalty towards the popular Frederick from his time as Regent. Paralysis ruled for some time in which the American government would probably have intervened, had it been led by someone other than the isolationist Faulkner. However, the Board eventually took inspiration from its counterpart in Bengal. With English, Scottish and American directors alike a minority in post-Privatisation Bengal, the native Bengali directors at this point took the opportunity to vote to dissolve formal ties with the Hanoverian monarchy. Both the Confederation of Bengal and the former RAC (now ‘the Directorate of Guinea’) pursued treaties with America and England that gave them favoured nation status and would allow those nations to continue to station troops and fleets at their ports (more relevant to America). However, as far as ‘colours on the map’ were concerned, this dealt with a large portion of the old Anglo-American empire. Arguably this had been foreshadowed by the fate of ‘Senhor Oliveira’s Company’ in India, which was officially renamed the Concan Confederacy in 1911 and fell largely under the rule of native Maratha princes and wealthy business magnates of both European and Indian descent.[4] However, France retained military power there. Movements also began towards a unified, native-led authority in the International Guntoor Zone (later the Guntoor Authority after two fo those words gained negative connotations).
Other Troubles in Africa. Really this takes in a whole host of somewhat unrelated disputes. The Cape Republic had suffered relatively minor losses to Anglo-American Natali and later Belgian forces during the war, but with the collapse of the Hermandad, multiple governments vied for control. One of these managed to seize control of Kaapstad and called in the French at the height of the Marseilles Protocol’s reputation. A complex, many-faceted insurgency dragged on, with Natali and Belgian interference, Matetwa adventurers, internal native rebels and Societist activists all drawn into the mix. Notably Natal was the only colony that explicitly declared for Frederick, in part due to its local governors rejecting Bengal’s proclamation of separation from the Crown. Natal would become England’s only overseas colony for some time to come. Meanwhile, an attempt to preserve the old Braganza dynasty in Angola following the fall of Portuguese-Brazil was scuppered when João VII scorned it for exile in France. This, together with many other factors, led to the Societists getting their first serious foothold in Africa here in 1905. The neighbouring Kongo Empire reasserted its independence from European or Novamundine patrons at this time, but would soon find itself in the Societist firing line.
The Prague Potato Riots. Actually only one of a significant number of food shortage-driven riots and other symptoms of unrest in the winter of 1904, where crops failed more due to a series of blizzards than record cold temperatures (as is often erroneously stated). The Prague riots are better known because they forced King John II of Czechosilesia (Ivan or Jonas Romanov, younger brother of the Grand Duke of Lithuania) to flee to Vilnius to escape. This illustrated the fragility of the nascent Czechosilesian state and foreshadowed trouble for the future. The fact that Czechs and Germans had joined together in the protests, despite the Russians’ attempts to play them off against one another, was also latched on to by Vienna School Societist thinkers in Danubia at the time.
The Cotton Question and the New Spanish Ulcer Probably the best-known of these insurgencies other than the Iberian Crisis. America was politically deadlocked over exactly what to do with the conquered Kingdom of Carolina, which had long ago been one of the five founding Confederations of the Empire. Arguments also persisted over what to do with the conquered parts of pre-war New Spain (Mexico and Guatemala) and the West Indies. While some decisions were reached, such as the independence of Nueva Irlanda (New Ireland) and the annexation of Nouvelle-Orleans and North Arizpe, a lasting settlement in Carolina, Guatemala and Mexico persisted through times of domestic political crisis as well. Meanwhile, local Kleinkriegers (guerrilleros in Spanish), angry that the fading Empire had swapped a Meridian domination for an American one, launched attacks on American occupation troops and corporate interests attempting to take advantage of these new captive markets. This is probably the area in which the best argument can be made that Societists may have aided movements which were not formally aligned with their interests, not least because there was a great deal of overlap in all the rebel groups in the Hispanophone world at this time. The same was true of Spain, which brings us to the Iberian Crisis...
[1] If we are interpreting this correctly, the Top Deciles would equate to a mark range of 70-100% and Upper Mid Decile would be 60-70%.
[2] There should be a grave accent, Les Allègres, but the English Motext system can’t handle special characters like that.
[3] ‘The System’ describes the arrangement by which the British/RAC, Freedonians and Fulani agreed to mutual spheres of influence and trade agreements, which had effectively left much of the Nupe lands under Fulani domination.
[4] Concan is a historical 18th century European term for the coastline of the area in question, its origins obscure.
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Thande
Donor
As requested by commenters above, I have started using threadmarks from here on out (apologies I forgot to do so from the beginning!)
Note retcon: the Chinese annexation of northern Vietnam is now called Jiaozhi (because I was unaware of that historic name at the time I wrote the earlier chapter).
Note retcon: the Chinese annexation of northern Vietnam is now called Jiaozhi (because I was unaware of that historic name at the time I wrote the earlier chapter).
Thande
Donor
Just a small response to this (thanks to you and others to pointing out we should cover Antarctica at some point). I just thought it was useful to point out I think you've misinterpreted the meaning of the footnotes in question:
(extracted from the map in question)
The strikethroughs on the letters and the footnote 'DELETED' doesn't mean the footnotes have been deleted - it means the countries have been.
Still interesting that advanced steam steam engines are the still the main form of transportation on land. How long until gasoline takes off?
Not quite. The coastline of Maharashtra and the like being called “Konkan” predates the arrival of the Europeans, and of course the language of Goa, Konkani, predates the 18th century though whether it’s a separate language or a dialect of Marathi has been disputed for a long time.
Wait... was that a Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town reference?
I'm just imagining the number of history textbooks students would be expected to read through ITTL. All of whom have different, contradictory interpretations, but all of them considered "correct" in their own way. It's more like philosophy than a science. At least, they teach people not to take things at face value and to think for yourself. Doesn't stop it from being really strange to someone from OTL, though.
Are there two different competing cassette formats used here? Cold (format) wars?
Lots of...unpleasantness occurring across the world.
Also, footnote [4] seems to be missing.
Does that mean they have to wear silver pyjamas and strange grey plastic helmets?
I'm just imagining the number of history textbooks students would be expected to read through ITTL. All of whom have different, contradictory interpretations, but all of them considered "correct" in their own way. It's more like philosophy than a science. At least, they teach people not to take things at face value and to think for yourself. Doesn't stop it from being really strange to someone from OTL, though.
Are there two different competing cassette formats used here? Cold (format) wars?
Lots of...unpleasantness occurring across the world.
Also, footnote [4] seems to be missing.
Does that mean they have to wear silver pyjamas and strange grey plastic helmets?
I love how the school troublemaker analogy used to provide Diversitarian propaganda can also be used to refute it--after all, if there's a single troublemaker who was objectively wearing one type of uniform, that means that whoever can recall it accurately is the only correct one.
Iberian crisis eh? Looks like the dream of a vanished Pyrenees by French monarchs has gotten significantly less likely. Great update as always Thande, and I wonder if these youth in revolt take inspiration from their immediate fore-bearers. IIRC, the now Lady Grey was written as having scandalized some of her elders with her conduct as a young girl courting the future Lord Grey.
Since they are not directly mentioned here, what's up with Freedonia? Also gained its independence?
I got kinda confused here. Multiple governments of what? The Cape Republic or the Belgian Cape Colony? If it's the Cape Republic, is it during the war or after the war?