Los Hijos del Pais v3: Two Hundred Years of Solitude, a Philippine TL

[Metempsychosis]

Florentino's Metamorphoses and Calag's Canciones de Ma-i are but two of the many great Filipino literary works of the late 19th to early 20th centuries, and the flowering of Filipino culture in this period goes far beyond literature. In addition to the literature and anthropological scholarship pioneered by the circles of Calag and Florentino, other groups explore the new methods of the sciences brought by scholars and ilustrados from Europe and experiment with the arts, tinkering with the old forms of poetry, prose, and drama, mixing the old lowland Christian traditions with the theories and practices of various other cultures. Florentino and Calag drew upon an increasingly rich literary and poetic tradition when writing their great works, a tradition encompassing such disparate works as the brutal realism and clarity of Atanasio Banaag (1830-1898) and his masterpiece Le Nueva Gehenna, the archaic and distant feel of the 'ancient Filipino' and 'Roman' sagas of Enrico Halili (1828-1871), the flowery but deep romanticism of Cayo de Bongabon (1831-1869) and his corridos of the King Arthur and Charlemagne sagas, and so many others.

In addition to the literature of the period, the arts flourished as well, whether visual or musical. Deeper contacts with the West and its Romanticism strengthens both the existing Western-descended tradition of Filipino music and the study of the music of the Muslims and the highlanders, and many musicians have traveled west to make their names in the concert halls, theaters, and salons of Europe, such as the mostly Catholic Tarlac-based Banda Rondalla de San Clemente, the mostly Evangelical Laguna-based Coro nang Mabuting Balita, the strong heldentenor Francisco Dumlao (1852-1929), the brilliant soprano sisters Emilia (1852-1901) and Victoria (1855-1933) Salang, the concert pianist Alejandro Domingo (1850-1923), the guitarist Arturo Catabay (1861-1929), and a number of musical families scattered across the rising cities and towns of the Philippines. The Ilocano composer Ladislao Agbuya (1851-1919) collaborated often with the dramatist Felipe Tiongson (1852-1931) to write a number of tragic operas, works such as the Roman tales Coriolano (1877), Anac ni Cincinnato (1879), Panata nang manga Horacio (1880), the Biblical Atalia (1878), Ang manga anac ni Eli (1881), Samson Nagtagumpay (1883), the Chinese Hongsian sa Hapei (1885) depicting the defeat of Lü Bu at Xiapi Castle, and the Arthurian Labanan sa Camlann (1887). These and many more immortalized the two and formed part of the core of the Philippine musical and literary canon. Along with this, the sacred composer Julian Santos (1841-1901) arranged the music for the Himno, the Philippine National Anthem whose lyrics were written by the great Balagtas himself in Spanish and Tagalog, but whose tune was adapted from the music of the Feast of La Naval de Manila.

As for the visual arts, painters as varied as the avant-garde Modernists Baltazar Tan (1835-1912) and Osias Chua (1861-1931), the fiercely Romantic Alfonso de Castro (1842-1927), and the Classical Nicanor Flores (1853-1933) paint in many styles, borrowing from such diverse sources as Chinese landscape painting, the art of Africa and the Pacific islanders, and Western realism, and sculptors in marble make their pilgrimage to the island of Romblon, where the marble is the finest in the Orient. Here, the wealthy commission great works of marble to showcase their wealth and power, and the art of classical Western sculpture finds itself rising once more.

This age of cultural richness bloomed in rich soil in many ways: with the increasing wealth of the islands and their diverse economy, the middle class looks for ways to show off their wealth in a way that is not so unseemly to the old money, yet still a good investment for the future. And so, patronage of the arts and sciences among high and even middle society flourishes, even as wealth disparity remains a problem and corruption slowly creeps in again after the Novales Reforms of the 1870s.

Tourism also becomes a force in the middle class as many young Filipinos of the upper and middle classes travel west to learn the newest and most advanced methods in medicine, technology, and the sciences, subsidized by the Novales government. Many also travel west simply to make the Grand Tour of Europe and pilgrimages to West Asia in the 1880s and 1890s, transformed as these regions are by the revolutions and the Popular Wars, the treaties and wars of the mid-19th century. The Indian states, the Japanese imperial republic, and the Taiping kingdom opened up to trade with the Philippines before this time, and with that came a number of scholars who wished to study Asia as a whole. After the Nusantaran Jihad, the number of scholars and other tourists only increased with the desire to understand the so-called 'souls of the nations of Asia', and according movements of Pan-Asianism and Pan-Austronesianism (or, as it would be called in later years, Muanism).

 

[Metempsychosis]

—¡ah! sufrir... trabajar... ¡es la voluntad de Dios! ¡Convenza usted á esos de que su asesinato es su salvacion, de que su trabajo es la prosperidad de su hogar! Sufrir... trabajar... ¿Qué Dios es ése?

—Un Dios justísimo, señor Simoun, contestó al sacerdote; un Dios que castiga nuestra falta de fé, nuestros vicios, el poco aprecio que hacemos de la dignidad, de las virtudes cívicas... Toleramos y nos hacemos cómplices del vicio, á veces lo aplaudimos, justo es, justísimo que suframos sus consecuencias y las sufran tambien nuestros hijos. Es el Dios de libertad, señor Simoun, que nos obliga á amarla haciendo que nos sea pesado el yugo; un Dios de misericordia, de equidad, que al par que nos castiga nos mejora, y solo concede el bienestar al que se lo ha merecido por sus esfuerzos: la escuela del sufrimiento templa, la arena del combate vigoriza las almas.

"Ah, to suffer, to work, is the will of God! Convince them that their murder is their salvation, that their work is the prosperity of the home! To suffer, to work! What God is that?”

“A very just God, Señor Simoun,” replied the priest. “A God who chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which we hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make ourselves its accomplices, at times we applaud it, and it is just, very just that we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer them. It is the God of liberty, Señor Simoun, who obliges us to love it, by making the yoke heavy for us—a God of mercy, of equity, who while He chastises us, betters us and only grants prosperity to him who has merited it through his efforts. The school of suffering tempers, the arena of combat strengthens the soul."

-Jose Rizal, El Filibusterismo, OTL

The world of the Ilustrado is one of paradox, large yet increasingly shrinking, caught between East and West, unable to stand aloof from either. His nation is in many ways the one bastion of Christendom in the Orient, standing astride the Western Pacific in strength and victory over its foes, yet they who ruled from Formosa to Bali seem confused about their own identity as a people, fractured in dialect yet deeply multilingual, neither truly Western nor Eastern, sons of both horizons.

From Manila and Cebu sail forth the dutiful sons of the nation, soldiers and sailors, merchants and scholars, men who seem mongrels of every other land with features blending European and Asian, and yet are of one people. And into the harbors and havens of the rising Filipino cities flow goods and men of every nation on Earth to trade and see the sights: from the Nusantaran lands and from India come forth learned religious scholars, and merchants with iron and spices, wheat and rice, cotton and tea, and myriad other goods and raw materials; refugee peasants and émigré gentry from China, men who flow into the land as the silver and porcelain they bring; from Japan, students to learn the ways of the West, and art and silken things; from Latin America come settlers as well, men across the sea who see the wealth of their cousins and want to carve out their fortunes in whatever capacity they can, and they bring chocolate and corn and roses; and from Europe and the West come adventurers and financiers looking to build their fortunes anew with the collapse of the old order at home, and with them machines of steam and steel and fire, with them untold luxuries and strange ideas. In the markets and factories and growing houses of the wealthy, all is prosperous and peaceful.

For all this, there is the feeling of displacement that cannot solely be blamed on advancing technology. Here in the new cities of the Philippines, one sees a new civilization, like Babylon in its power, like Carthage in its wealth, yet like Jerusalem in its faith and Rome of the Scipios in its patriotism, a seeming true center of the world and meeting between East and West, however much wealthier the high financial centers of Europe and America, yet one with many contradictions and paradoxes. It is an uncomfortable feeling for men and women who for centuries lived in peace at the edges of the world to now be at the center of things, for people who for so long knew themselves to be mongrels and knew their place as a people and a nation to now be exalted so highly. There is an unsettlement, like a constant Carnevale, the world all topsy-turvy as the old order falls to revolution elsewhere, and here which was the periphery is now, at least for a moment, the heart.

And thus, with the confusing of the old order, come various radical ideas, burning through the islands, lighting the fires of liberty, and justice, and a new order. Thus are born radical movements in the vein of those in the West, some nationalists with mad ideas to take all lands that belonged to an ancient Empire of Mu born from nightmares, some atheistic rationalists who see the iron chains of causality woven into the fabric of the world and proclaim the death of God, some acolytes of science who say that the world belongs to the strong and the ruthless. Thus are born the anarchists and socialists of various stripes, men and women who rally round the black flag to fight for a world of true justice and a land without lords or masters. Thus are born new movements of Christianity, Catholic and otherwise, some embracing the turnings of modernity and some despising it and fighting against the breaking of the world.

The Age of the Ilustrado is a blooming of Filipino liberty, a bright light of many colors in the darkness of barbarity, yet in the freedom of the free man is also the seed of his downfall, as the duties and rights laid out by men to preserve his own liberty turn sour in the mouths of the dispossessed and bitter to the tongues of the proud and greedy. As the years of the 19th century fade into the 20th, the First Philippine Republic is sorely tested by its own people.

 

[WeirdKo]

It would be nice to see the Philippines would host and showcase different cultural exchanges such as cultural festivals featuring both western and eastern cultures, etc. Especially since this recent thread, focuses more on the cultural side of the atl Philippines. Can't wait for something like this to happen knowing it could greatly affect the Philippine's way of life, especially in tourism , culture and image internationally

 

[Metempsychosis]

The fall of Washington in early 1853 to the armies of the Federal States of America and the signing of the Treaty of the Potomac that followed marked the end of an era for the various peoples of North America, and the culmination of a generation of escalating tensions between the semi-feudal agricultural South and the modernizing industrializing North which had started with the Nullification Crises of the 1830s. The seeming tyranny and terror unleashed by Andrew Jackson and his successors in a heavy-handed assertion of federal power over the states had provoked fear and fury from many Southerners, however deserved it might have seemed in hindsight, seeing the equally heavy-handed actions of the Carolinian governments to assert their rights against the federal government. As for the slaves and free blacks, they suffered as they ever did under the crossfire of white politics and the shadow of white supremacy.

Whatever the case, the especially devoted Southerners began plotting and preparing to secede, and claim their independence from the Union by force if necessary. As for the radical abolitionists and the blacks both slave and free, they made their own plans, and stoked the fires of resistance and escape. By William Henry Harrison's time as president, the tension on all sides was coming to a boiling point. He did what he could to strengthen the Union and the federal government, but this was difficult even in the days when the North and South could come to an accord, never mind in his own days, mired by bickering and calls of tyranny by the South which dominated legislative assemblies of the nation. Tensions over the insurgent Texas Republicans also brought things in Congress to a standstill as Southerners agitated to fight the Mexicans and annex the republic, and Harrison's presidency, though it avoided the poisoned chalice of that offer which faded over the decade, accomplished only little things for the Union and the North. Unable to establish stronger central institutions, Harrison watched helplessly as the nation moved towards the brink. When he left the presidential candidacy to a Whig successor in 1844, he echoed the words of Louis XV: "After me, the flood."

And the flood came with the 1848 election, a mad multi-way electoral campaign that breaks the nation in half with a Northerner elected as president. This caused a large portion of Congress to break away before the inauguration of the new president and convene in Montgomery, Alabama, declaring their secession from the Union, electing a leader, and forming the Federal States of America. This group included delegates from the Republic of Texas, which had, after a conflict prolonged into the beginning of the 1840s which saw a stalemate on the Nueces River, claimed its independence and was looking to join an English-speaking Union. And since the leading figures of said republic were slaveowners saved by Southern volunteers, they joined the FSA as one of the first states to ratify its constitution, beaten only by Alabama and the Carolinas.

The army of the United States, divided as its soldiery and officers were in loyalty between the various states and the Union itself, saw a number of mutinies which would begin the First Great American War, called the War of Southern Independence by the FSA, the First Secessionist Insurrection by the United States, and the Texas War by the Mexicans.

The first year of the war saw the South drive towards three things: to force the Union to surrender early by taking Washington, to secure its border with Mexico as far as possible, and to open diplomatic links with Europe, Britain and France most of all. In these goals, and with the armies it assembled from all the slave states that had ratified the Federal Constitution, it succeeded in two of the three: against Mexico it pulled off a victory at Corpus Christi, and with Europe its ambassadors were able to court the conservatives of Britain and France to recognize their independence. But against the loyalists of the Union, it failed, at least for the first year. It came close in a few battles, and in so doing secured Virginia for the Federal States, but not close enough yet to take Washington and force a negotiation.

 

[Metempsychosis]

The next couple of years see the Union put up a stalwart defense against the Federation, even making advances in the West, where the Union Army is able to drive the Southerners back down the Mississippi in the Battle of Sainte Genevieve and the Battle of Charleston after an initial Federal advance into Missouri. This is a minor victory, however, and on the eastern front the Union is unable to make any significant headway against the Federals and their defensive lines. Indeed, the Federals advance further over the course of this period, and by the beginning of the 1850s, the situation in Washington becomes precarious enough for embattled and demoralized Congress to evacuate to the rear headquarters in New York and plan its eventual move to Shicagwa, Illinois.

Despite this feeling of a hopeless war, the Union and its generals fought on for a further three years, its numbers bolstered by militant abolitionists, free blacks, and escaped slaves. Speaking of the slaves, a mass movement starts moving behind the lines of the Federal States, led by the charismatic yet secretive preacher known only as Ephraim, and his brilliant subordinates named Joshua, Deborah, and Gideon: the Great Exodus rallies slaves in the tens of thousands from every state in the Federation in a mass escape to the west and south, through the chaotic frontier wilderness of Texas. As the movement gains momentum, Ephraim strengthens his core following in both number and discipline and courts through his lieutenants the liberals of the Mexican Republic, culminating in the Second Battle of Corpus Christi between the Federal States Army and an alliance between the Mexicans and the Ephraimite Covenant, which ends in an almost miraculous victory over the Federal States and the survival of the Ephraimites as a distinct movement. Most of said Ephraimites, saved by the liberal Mexicans, end up settling in California as free men and women with their aid, though a splinter group led by Gideon is inspired to break away and establish the more radical True Ephraimite Covenant (called the Gideonites by the other Ephraimites), moving to various locations in the West Indies and stirring up trouble for the Federals and their British allies.

All this, though a pain in the side for the Federal States in the decades to come, was nothing compared to the closeness of victory, and with the Fall of Washington in 1853, capturing the most stubborn Congressmen who remained in the city as well as the high command of the Army of the Potomac and the full enforcement of the blockade of New York by the Federal fleet, the United States was forced to surrender, and in the ruins of Washington the president came to terms with the Federal leadership, signing the Potomac Armistice. These negotiations were hard-fought, even with the Southern advantages, for the armies in the Western theater were still strong enough to fight and Mexico remained a thorn in the South's side. This armistice was also less advantageous to the South than the South would have liked, remaining restricted in the West to the borders of the Nueces River in the south. With all that, however, the feeling of the treaty being a stab in the back of the American people could not be shaken, and the government of the United States all but collapsed in the years that followed.

 

[Metempsychosis]

The First Great American War ended with the Union broken and its party system in shambles. Its Congress was a gutted mess of divided and squabbling delegates from a spectrum of parties, and its President, the fourth one-term president since Andrew Jackson's rule, tainted his Democratic Party with the overwhelming stench of failure. The institutions of the Union seemed to have failed, and thus the Party Systems of the United States first gave way to an American Interregnum, with a number of factions dividing the political landscape among themselves, ranging from radicals of all stripes (the viciously nationalist All-American Party, the proto-socialist American Labor Federation, the radical abolitionist Free Soil Party, and others) to broad and moderate coalitions such as the anti-British New Federalists pushing for centralization and a reform of the Constitution of the United States. The situation lasted for much of the remaining decade as the various political parties and groups of interest in the United States radically transformed their country in their pushing and pulling to create a new balance, causing no small amount of political violence. What came out of the anarchy of 1850s America was a far more Hamiltonian, almost unitary republic, one which somewhat reluctantly secured the rights of men of all races, finally coming out strictly against slavery. With much soul-searching and many amendments, the nation moved forward, slowly and painfully.

This America was also viciously united against the British Empire, pinning the failures of stopping secession squarely on the shoulders of Britain and the old order in Europe, the latter of which began to burn during the height of the Secessionist Insurrection. When the Mughal Restoration War burned across India in the early years of the 1860s, they supplied what they could to aid the emerging semi-republican assemblies of India, and more importantly they took advantage of the chaos to aid and formally ally with an incipient joint Métis-Quebecois rebellion against the British in North America, beginning the War of the North (1863-1865). This war was a tame affair compared to the bloody Secessionist Insurrection, but it was still a bloody revolution against British rule, and it was still modern warfare on display with all its horrors, especially in the more inhabited eastern parts of British North America. Its main consequence was the establishment of two new independent nations (the Republic of Quebec and the Métis Red River Republic) and the seizure of large tracts of the Northwestern Territories by the United States, restoring national pride and satiating the need for revenge against Britain, at least for the moment. Thus the whole of British North America was lost to the Americans, the Quebecois, and the Métis.

 

[frustrated progressive]

Just finished the TL, and I'm loving the new and dynamic Philippines you've crafted (with its cast of interesting leaders and cultural figures), and its impacts on the wider world.
A few random speculations:
Even with victory in the Social War and the start of integrating the Philippine's satellite states into the country proper, I wonder if certain areas are just too restive to be worth the effort of full union with the Philippines. Maybe even the Nationalists (if nothing else, to reduce future numbers of Muslims in the electorate) could, for some places embrace a new version of the Filipinosphere-but unlike the last one, based on modernized mini-states with "free governance" (likely republican although maybe with purely figurehead monarchs), full dependence on whatever Manila economic concerns will arise to exploit the products and labor of Nusantara in the Second Industrial Revolution, and uncontested military subordination?
Speaking of Nationalists and Liberals, maybe the latter embrace that foreshadowed "Pan-Austronesianism" as a way to move past religious divides and create a united state stretching from Luzon to Java (though maybe a "centralizing secular liberals vs. federalist/autonomist Catholic conservatives" is just too Latin American), whether that is based on religious toleration and amity between Christianity and Islam (at least a "modernized" variation that doesn't conflict with other liberal priorities) or Florentino-style laïcité.
With Catholicism still relevant and economic divides becoming more stark, maybe an ATL version of Rerum Novarum could inspire an uptick in left-tinged Catholic social thought, with the potential to cleave the Republic apart with a communal appeal that is both revolutionary in a way Nationalists won't like and anathema to the liberal legacy of the state's institutions?
What Chinese peoples make up the diaspora in the Philippines again? Perhaps were could see their communities, especially as they grow more prosperous and integrated with the Philippine's literary flowering, produce Romanized literature in their languages, and maybe even export them back to China, possibly with political results as part of concern about the post-Taiping chaos?
Could the Philippines be embraced as a (relatively culturally similar) model by Latin American reformers dealing with their own weak, corrupt, and fractious states, analogous to the influence Manila's example is beginning to have across Asia?
What's the Philippine diplomatic presence like? Does it participate fully in the European international system at this point, or do certain countries still not deign to host their ambassadors, etc?

That's all for now, can't wait to see where this goes.

 

[Simeon]

I never got the impression that the Philippines ever wanted to politically integrate the newly-independent polities such as Taiwan into the country itself. More like, they seemed to be largely contented by a new diplomatic order that had Manila at the helm of the region. Even after assuming a dominating and senior role, neocolonial even, in the region, they largely have amicable relationships with its "brotherly" neighbours.

Say, the Philippines is "the shining hill" where the rest of South East Asia look up to culturally and politically (and go to work and trade with). Also, they're doing the heavy work of leveraging whatever they had against the European navies, especially before the fall of the Raj.

If ever that they wanted to be closer, it will be less like nation-states and more like an alternative to the Westphalian system centering around the whims of Manila and the pro-Philippine elite outside the metropole. I don't believe it will come around without an outside threat. Now that British Empire has all but broken down, it most likely will come from a terrible war within the region resulting to a German-style subjugation of one side into the other.

Also, I recommend you to reas Namayan's Empire of New Castille to see a dark mirror of this TL.

 

[frustrated progressive]

I never got the impression that the Philippines ever wanted to politically integrate the newly-independent polities such as Taiwan into the country itself. More like, they seemed to be largely contented by a new diplomatic order that had Manila at the helm of the region. Even after assuming a dominating and senior role, neocolonial even, in the region, they largely have amicable relationships with its "brotherly" neighbours.

Say, the Philippines is "the shining hill" where the rest of South East Asia look up to culturally and politically (and go to work and trade with). Also, they're doing the heavy work of leveraging whatever they had against the European navies, especially before the fall of the Raj.

If ever that they wanted to be closer, it will be less like nation-states and more like an alternative to the Westphalian system centering around the whims of Manila and the pro-Philippine elite outside the metropole. I don't believe it will come around without an outside threat. Now that British Empire has all but broken down, it most likely will come from a terrible war within the region resulting to a German-style subjugation of one side into the other.

Also, I recommend you to reas Namayan's Empire of New Castille to see a dark mirror of this TL.

I meant Indonesia, but otherwise great points!

 

[Metempsychosis]

Just finished the TL, and I'm loving the new and dynamic Philippines you've crafted (with its cast of interesting leaders and cultural figures), and its impacts on the wider world.
A few random speculations:
Even with victory in the Social War and the start of integrating the Philippine's satellite states into the country proper, I wonder if certain areas are just too restive to be worth the effort of full union with the Philippines. Maybe even the Nationalists (if nothing else, to reduce future numbers of Muslims in the electorate) could, for some places embrace a new version of the Filipinosphere-but unlike the last one, based on modernized mini-states with "free governance" (likely republican although maybe with purely figurehead monarchs), full dependence on whatever Manila economic concerns will arise to exploit the products and labor of Nusantara in the Second Industrial Revolution, and uncontested military subordination?
Speaking of Nationalists and Liberals, maybe the latter embrace that foreshadowed "Pan-Austronesianism" as a way to move past religious divides and create a united state stretching from Luzon to Java (though maybe a "centralizing secular liberals vs. federalist/autonomist Catholic conservatives" is just too Latin American), whether that is based on religious toleration and amity between Christianity and Islam (at least a "modernized" variation that doesn't conflict with other liberal priorities) or Florentino-style laïcité.
With Catholicism still relevant and economic divides becoming more stark, maybe an ATL version of Rerum Novarum could inspire an uptick in left-tinged Catholic social thought, with the potential to cleave the Republic apart with a communal appeal that is both revolutionary in a way Nationalists won't like and anathema to the liberal legacy of the state's institutions?
What Chinese peoples make up the diaspora in the Philippines again? Perhaps were could see their communities, especially as they grow more prosperous and integrated with the Philippine's literary flowering, produce Romanized literature in their languages, and maybe even export them back to China, possibly with political results as part of concern about the post-Taiping chaos?
Could the Philippines be embraced as a (relatively culturally similar) model by Latin American reformers dealing with their own weak, corrupt, and fractious states, analogous to the influence Manila's example is beginning to have across Asia?
What's the Philippine diplomatic presence like? Does it participate fully in the European international system at this point, or do certain countries still not deign to host their ambassadors, etc?

That's all for now, can't wait to see where this goes.

For the Social War and its aftermath, I may have to flesh it out a bit more. Well, we'll be returning to the Philippines eventually. Certainly, the Philippines continues to prosper more or less. Of course, the southern New Territories of the Philippines will be a bone of contention between many groups of interest.

For the Big Three parties and the various small parties, their dynamics will definitely change over the course of the next few decades, as they have over the last half-century. The Social War certainly has plaued its part in introducing its fair share of problems and solutions to the nation and its tensions, and the transformation of the Philippines into a modern nation is something to watch out for. We'll see how the Filipino Catholics both liberal and conservative react to Rome, and heck, how Rome reacts to them. And of course Islam has its part to play. As does Filipino nationalism.

For the Chinese, a large number of them are of the south, so I expect Hokkien and Cantonese to dominate the diaspora communities as they assimilate into speaking Spanish, Tagalog, and the other Austronesian languages of the Philippines, probably leaving a large stock of loanwords and grammar on both sides in the process. And for their contribution to the literature and culture of the period, I could place a spotlight on that. I've already snuck in more than a few Filipinized Chinese surnames into the list of prominent writers, as the Chinese diaspora makes its mark. And as for China, the Taiping are likely a mess, though they present a united front to the Western powers. It'll be interesting to explore the turnings of the Taiping Tianguo and its dealings with Qing Manchuria, Tibet, East Turkestan, and the Republic of Isla Hermosa.

And for Latin America, I definitely should shine a spotlight on them too. There should definitely be influence crossing the Pacific in both directions, and the mestizos and indios of Latin America would definitely see a model in the workings of the Philippine state. Still, the economics and criollo supremacy are obstacles to overcome, just as the Catholic supremacy which does remain extant even in the Philippines.

As for Europe, Britain recognizes the Philippines, and through an assiduous use of Insular Criollo and mestizo ambassadors, so does most of the West (Spain itself probably becomes a hermit kingdom under the Carlist Bourbons who succeed to the throne after Ferdinand VII's lynching), though the chaos of the second half of the 1800s makes the embassies of the former Spanish Empire a bit difficult to maintain, I would think.

I never got the impression that the Philippines ever wanted to politically integrate the newly-independent polities such as Taiwan into the country itself. More like, they seemed to be largely contented by a new diplomatic order that had Manila at the helm of the region. Even after assuming a dominating and senior role, neocolonial even, in the region, they largely have amicable relationships with its "brotherly" neighbours.

Say, the Philippines is "the shining hill" where the rest of South East Asia look up to culturally and politically (and go to work and trade with). Also, they're doing the heavy work of leveraging whatever they had against the European navies, especially before the fall of the Raj.

If ever that they wanted to be closer, it will be less like nation-states and more like an alternative to the Westphalian system centering around the whims of Manila and the pro-Philippine elite outside the metropole. I don't believe it will come around without an outside threat. Now that British Empire has all but broken down, it most likely will come from a terrible war within the region resulting to a German-style subjugation of one side into the other.

Also, I recommend you to reas Namayan's Empire of New Castille to see a dark mirror of this TL.

The Republic of Isla Hermosa, as Taiwan is known ITTL, was a joint project of the non-Russian West, though Philippine influence on the island was strongest, and only got stronger as the other powers lessened their commitment to deal with domestic issues. Still, beyond a cursory crash course in republicanism and a semi-assimilation of Filipino culture and ideas, the Hermosans remain overwhelmingly (Hokkien) Chinese. Of course there's also the aboriginal Taiwanese, whose languages and their study spark the whole Pan-Austronesian movement.

But anyway, ATL Taiwan is more of a side-project for the Republic. The real complicated stuff is down south, in the principalities and New Territories of OTL eastern Indonesia. The people there are a mix, more so than IOTL, thanks in large part to the Chinese diaspora and the Dutch Wars before it. A flood of native Filipino and Chinese settlers causes tension with the old Muslim polities of the region, and indeed with the existing Muslim populace, as I explained before. And of those settlers, many would come to prefer direct rule from Manila to the rule of Muslim sultans. Of course there's a lot of shuffling around and complications from the Social War's aftermath, a lot of policy changes and, among other things, demands for reserved seats for Muslims and non-Christian Chinese in the Assembly. It's definitely a mess that I might have understated before, but it's something I also want to flesh out.

As for how things will work out, let's see.

 

[Metempsychosis]

Mexico's history after claiming independence from Spain is a long and messy tale, a tale of shame and glory in equal measure, a tale that echoes time and again across the histories of the former Spanish empire. In a messy counterpoint to the Philippine Revolution's path forward, the squabbling and factionalized Mexican elite treacherously executed their Emperor, Agustin de Iturbide, the founder of the nation and the would-be Caesar whom they themselves had invited into office, and slowly and painfully they lurched towards a stabler system from the anarchy that followed, trying to find a path between the traditional ideals of the nation and the new path of republicanism and liberalism.

As the Philippines began its own revolution against the tyranny of Spain, Mexico in the wake of Iturbide's execution entered a period of conservative stratocracy, as the generals of the newly proclaimed and ostensibly centralizing First Republic of Mexico seized power as a junta, each of the generals not wanting any one of their number to seize power as Iturbide did. In doing so, they selected one among their number as president every few years, and ruled the nation under martial law. The stratocracy of the First Republic lasted from 1824, through the chaos of the 1840s, all the way to the Great American War in 1849, with the defeat of the Mexican army in the First Battle of Corpus Christi.

During much of this period, the increasingly bitter and desperate liberals bided their time, many among them fleeing north to the frontier territories of California and New Mexico, building alliances with the native peoples of the frontier and the government in Washington, waiting for a chance to strike against the central government, which they finally got during the advance of the Federal States into Texas. With a coalition of dissenters, disillusioned Mexican soldiers, the Ephraimite Covenant, and Native American peoples with Mexican territory, the Liberals of Mexico under Benito Juarez led the Revolution of 1850, overthrowing the stratocratic First Republic of the defeated Mexican army and forcing a program of secularization and anticlericalism on the Second Republic of Mexico, which was to be built upon a more federal constitution than the centralizing system that came before it. All of this would lead to problems further along the road, but for the moment the Liberals were in the ascendant and so built on what they could, reforming the economy to function better and reforming the army to function under civilian control. For their part in the overthrow of military tyranny, the Ephraimites under Joshua and Deborah were given extensive land grants in California, and the native peoples who fought on the side of the Second Republic (including but not limited to the Diné people and the Nʉmʉnʉʉ) were given autonomy.

 

[frustrated progressive]

Mexico's history after claiming independence from Spain is a long and messy tale, a tale of shame and glory in equal measure, a tale that echoes time and again across the histories of the former Spanish empire. In a messy counterpoint to the Philippine Revolution's path forward, the squabbling and factionalized Mexican elite treacherously executed their Emperor, Agustin de Iturbide, the founder of the nation and the would-be Caesar whom they themselves had invited into office, and slowly and painfully they lurched towards a stabler system from the anarchy that followed, trying to find a path between the traditional ideals of the nation and the new path of republicanism and liberalism.

As the Philippines began its own revolution against the tyranny of Spain, Mexico in the wake of Iturbide's execution entered a period of conservative stratocracy, as the generals of the newly proclaimed and ostensibly centralizing First Republic of Mexico seized power as a junta, each of the generals not wanting any one of their number to seize power as Iturbide did. In doing so, they selected one among their number as president every few years, and ruled the nation under martial law. The stratocracy of the First Republic lasted from 1824, through the chaos of the 1840s, all the way to the Great American War in 1849, with the defeat of the Mexican army in the First Battle of Corpus Christi.

During much of this period, the increasingly bitter and desperate liberals bided their time, many among them fleeing north to the frontier territories of California and New Mexico, building alliances with the native peoples of the frontier and the government in Washington, waiting for a chance to strike against the central government, which they finally got during the advance of the Federal States into Texas. With a coalition of dissenters, disillusioned Mexican soldiers, the Ephraimite Covenant, and Native American peoples with Mexican territory, the Liberals of Mexico under Benito Juarez led the Revolution of 1850, overthrowing the stratocratic First Republic of the defeated Mexican army and forcing a program of secularization and anticlericalism on the Second Republic of Mexico, which was to be built upon a more federal constitution than the centralizing system that came before it. All of this would lead to problems further along the road, but for the moment the Liberals were in the ascendant and so built on what they could, reforming the economy to function better and reforming the army to function under civilian control. For their part in the overthrow of military tyranny, the Ephraimites under Joshua and Deborah were given extensive land grants in California, and the native peoples who fought on the side of the Second Republic (including but not limited to the Diné people and the Nʉmʉnʉʉ) were given autonomy.

This sounds really promising, but I honestly doubt Juarez's chances of ordaining this as a sustainable longterm settlement-incorporating "uncivilized" Indians who regularly raided Mexican lands and a black Protestant sect as constituent parts of the Mexican union is bound to alarm conservatives and Catholics, even if they are in temporary eclipse.
Maybe he can increase his prestige/the power of the government with economic growth caused by European investment (perhaps diverting from America as it fractures), which also would have the nice side effect of further breaking the rural estate economy that allowed conservative Catholic landowners to monopolize politics? With anyone else I'd attribute that to authorial fiat but we are talking about Benito Juarez, he would be far-sighted enough to pull that deliberately. Still, he'd have to juggle the Europeans pretty adeptly to avoid the typical Latin American extractive debt trap, or a Porfiriate-style spoils system favoring a few firms and their slush at the expense of longterm prospects.
Alternatively...maybe he can win a war? The South gets cocky and tries to grab more Texas before being beaten back?
Just some thoughts.

 

[Metempsychosis]

This sounds really promising, but I honestly doubt Juarez's chances of ordaining this as a sustainable longterm settlement-incorporating "uncivilized" Indians who regularly raided Mexican lands and a black Protestant sect as constituent parts of the Mexican union is bound to alarm conservatives and Catholics, even if they are in temporary eclipse.
Maybe he can increase his prestige/the power of the government with economic growth caused by European investment (perhaps diverting from America as it fractures), which also would have the nice side effect of further breaking the rural estate economy that allowed conservative Catholic landowners to monopolize politics? With anyone else I'd attribute that to authorial fiat but we are talking about Benito Juarez, he would be far-sighted enough to pull that deliberately. Still, he'd have to juggle the Europeans pretty adeptly to avoid the typical Latin American extractive debt trap, or a Porfiriate-style spoils system favoring a few firms and their slush at the expense of longterm prospects.
Alternatively...maybe he can win a war? The South gets cocky and tries to grab more Texas before being beaten back?
Just some thoughts.

Thanks for the feedback! Certainly there's going to be resentment and tension on the part of the defeated conservatives which will need to be addressed eventually, and the anticlericalism will be a point of contention. The dissolution implemented by Juarez's "heathen horde of bandits, barbarians, and renegade slaves out to destroy Mexican civilization" will likely be a fiercely fought battle and a trauma for the conservative psyche. And Europe, well, let's see how Europe interacts with Mexico in the years to follow.

 

[frustrated progressive]

Thanks for the feedback! Certainly there's going to be resentment and tension on the part of the defeated conservatives which will need to be addressed eventually, and the anticlericalism will be a point of contention. The dissolution implemented by Juarez's "heathen horde of bandits, barbarians, and renegade slaves out to destroy Mexican civilization" will likely be a fiercely fought battle and a trauma for the conservative psyche. And Europe, well, let's see how Europe interacts with Mexico in the years to follow.

No, thank you for such a great and well-rounded TL.
That all makes sense, eagerly awaiting the next roll of the dice.

 

[Metempsychosis]

The Mexican stratocracy crossed swords with many groups with varying levels of success, from American freebooters on the Yucatan to renegade natives in the south, some of whom had formed the United States of Central America in the aftermath of Iturbide's execution and proclamation of a conservative and Spanish supremacist republic. Despite this, the army established under the First Republic was plagued by factionalism, corruption on the part of the council of generals who dominated the politics of the First Republic, and desertions by soldiers disillusioned by the central government for various reasons, between its heavy-handed brutality and its treatment of non-Criollos. Still, the army stood unreformed as the Liberals fled north to establish their own rag-tag army against the central government.

The Federal States and its Western Campaign thus began with a devastating victory at Corpus Christi, which the Federal States used to promote itself to Europe, followed by advances into Coahuila and Tamaulipas, defeating the conservative armies of the Republic assembled against them, all but dissolving the First Republic. Yet the armies led by General Joseph E. Johnston did not fully defeat the Republic nor march into Mexico City, for in the northwest rose the Liberal armies led by Benito Juarez, who had assembled the Northern Coalition from varied sources, between his core of liberal dissidents, runaway slaves of the Ephraimite Covenant, various tribes of the north, and those disillusioned by the Stratocracy. This three-way war between the liberals, conservative remnants, and the Federal States lasted for some time as the conservative remnants were crushed by the Federal army, who were in turn forced to withdraw by a major liberal victory at the Second Battle of Corpus Christi. His victory secure, Juarez marches on Mexico City and overthrows the remnants of the First Republic's junta, forming by several decrees and the signing of a new constitution the Second Republic of Mexico.

He was not finished, however, as the Union was pushed to surrender in 1853, and Mexico was left to face the Federal States almost alone. Thankfully, however, Mexico's fleet had been able to keep the Federal States at bay, and the European Revolutions were in full swing, with the regime in France swinging in favor of the Mexicans. By 1854, the Federal States was exhausted by war, falling from the high from their victory over the Union, and the European powers forced through the Treaty of Havana, enforcing a compromise between the Second Republic of Mexico and the Federal States of America. Texas was confirmed as a state of the Federal States, but its border was clearly delineated at the Nueces River.

With this came a time of peace under the rule of the radical reformist who was now president of the Republic, a man who seemed to have as much a talent for peace as for war.

After a time of decrees and reforms pushed through by the armed forces of the Northern Coalition turned increasingly disciplined military, Juarez began his regime in a fashion similar to Andres Novales, who had gained some fame in Latin America for his own abdication of power as Jose de San Martin had, dividing up military and administrative roles and giving up control of the military to the newly formed civilian government, now full of Liberals after purging the conservatives and essentially seizing much of their land to be redistributed to small farmers. Unlike Novales, however, Juarez was a partisan, and he would continue his political career as a bastion of the revolution, pushing reforms in a civilian position rather than the military one he had held as a leader of the Coalition.

The largest of the new regime's tasks was enforcing the reforms he had initiated. This was not an easy task, nor an immediate one, and it caused much grief in the following years and decades of the Second Republic, with some raising the banners of Cristo Rey after the death of Juarez. Still, it is telling that the Cristeros did not emerge until after the death of the wily Jaguar of Oaxaca, and the rule of Juarez and the radical Liberals of the early Second Republic, however much a trauma to the conservatives of Mexico, would forever change the trajectory of the nation.

 

[Metempsychosis]

We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people, perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it, for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants, because, as the laws are more inflexible, every one should submit to their beneficent austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice justice is to practice liberty. - Simon Bolivar

South of the turmoil of the Mexican Republic and Central America, strongmen and patriots also emerged to build nations and names for themselves. After the Battle of Ayacucho and Bolivar's immediate withdrawal north to stabilize and secure his Republic of Gran Colombia, and the Argentine army's withdrawal south as Rosas geared up to establish a semblance of order in the anarchy of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, the republics haphazardly established by Bolivar in Peru consolidate into a Peru-Bolivian Federation, which would stand ultimately as a rival to Bolivar's own state. It was a chaotic time, a time of warlords and heroes fighting for different causes, many opposing one another in their visions for a new order. It was an age of the highest ideals of freedom and brotherhood burning in the hearts of men, an age of the lowest and bloodiest intrigues and betrayals.

Wars were waged by and against the Peruvian Federation from both north and south, but the union endured, and Bolivia retook its old name of Upper Peru after war with Gran Colombia, a war which kept Peru and Colombia from dissolving. As for Argentina, the chaos left in the wake of independence led to Juan Manuel de Rosas seizing control over a conservative Federalist state and leading it through a number of chaotic wars against indigenous peoples, its neighbors, and the West. And finally, in the north and after southern betrayals, Simon Bolivar quashed the disputes and dissent from the federalists and separatists, building a liberal but strongly centralizing regime in Caracas against those who would tear apart the nation, refusing to die until he had preserved at least one of his achievements, crushing all who stood in his way and finding those who would carry on his dream. Thus, by his death in 1834, Gran Colombia stood firm, or at least firm enough to weather the storms that would inevitably come.

And they did come, and the years would see insurrections and conspiracies all across the continent, even in the rising and prospering Empire of Brazil, with its liberal monarch Pedro I de Braganza fighting to maintain his new throne and establishing control over the Portuguese colonial empire. Though most were uncovered and crushed, these conspiracies against the various states of South America continued to rise up and return time and again. Pedro himself had more than his fair share of traitors and detractors to deal with, and his rule, though long, was never easy.

Still, as the years passed, the empire and republics settled down, and by the beginning of the 1850s Spanish South America had been divided between several powers: in the north stood the Republic of Colombia, a relatively stable but strongly centralized liberal republic, rival to the newborn Federal States of America, and heir to Bolivar's ambitions of unity amongst the Latin Americans; in the south, the Federation of Argentina was ruled by the dictator Rosas with an iron fist to stand against the numerous threats against Argentine unity, within and without, and the Oriental Republic of the Uruguay stood as a liberal bastion between Argentina to its south and the Brazilian Empire to its north; and in the center, the Republic of Chile, the Republic of Paraguay, and the Peruvian Federation consolidate their lands, the former two under conservative caudillos and the latter under a liberal regime. Of course, all these nations were still plagued with corruption, factionalism, and a tendency towards both insurgencies and strongmen, but the bloody turmoil of the early years gave way to a web of diplomatic intrigue and rivalry that would ensnare the powers of the West, extending even unto the north, with the secession of the Federal States and its own plots to extend slavery into the Caribbean.

 

[Metempsychosis]

The Great Secession of 1853 was a bloody disaster for the United States, reduced in size by half and forced to deal with the shame of losing its agricultural heartland to slavers. Stabbed in the back by the political establishment, betrayed by the old Union and its institutions, the people abandoned the old parties in droves, establishing radical political movements or leaving politics completely to search for the 'true soul of America' in the arts and sciences, all to make sense of this great shame.

Many blamed the state itself, seeing its seemingly overweening tyranny and calling the American experiment a failure. A few led movements to dissolve the United States itself, calling for more secessions from it and even leading revolts against the supposedly weakened Union over the course of the remaining years of the 1850s. These little rebellions, called as a whole Men of the Rope, failed and only served to strengthen the legitimacy of the centralizing nationalism of the Neo-Federalist order.

Many more blamed the compromises made to the Southerners on the 'peculiar institution' over the years, compromises conceding the rightful power of the federal government to the supposed "states' rights", states that only plotted to undermine the Union. These formed the core of the Neo-Federalists, the men who restored the strength and order of the republic in the wake of the Treasonous Armistice and led it into the future, building up the Union's wealth and power once more.

Still others had an ax to grind against certain sectors of society for whatever reason. Some blamed foreigners of all sorts, especially the treachery of Perfidious Albion and its puppet monarchs, and these craved for revenge against Old Europe for 'bringing the old sins of treason and kinslaying upon the sacred ground of our Promised Land', in the words of the radical nationalist preacher and politician Boaz Johnson, one of the leaders of the All-American Party. Some blamed slavery as an institution, seeing its pernicious influence on the republic and its ideals, and vowed to destroy it wherever it stood. Of these men and women, some founded the abolitionist and anti-Southern secret society known as the Brotherhood of Freedom, whose conspiracies and operations against the Southern Order of the Golden Circle and its filibusters would extend across the Caribbean and become the stuff of legend, others extended their hatred of slavery to all sorts of injustices with a few becoming socialists and helping to establish the American Labor Federation and its political wing, the Labor Party of America, and still others stood moderate on the issue, forming the Free Soil Party to end slavery in the Union proper once and for all but going no further.

All this political instability in the years and decades following the Great Treason led the Union dangerously close to the strongman politics of the rest of the New World, what with the erosion of the old institutions, but it developed new ones in the interregnum and regained its legitimacy with the War of the North against the unraveling British empire. By the 1870s, the United States stood restored in the eyes of the now mostly republican West and as strong as it was before the First Great American War, though the scars and damage left by Southern treason continued to fester and manifest in unhealthy ways. It still held a deep distrust against the Federal States, one that would bleed into its few future dealings with that newborn nation and any of its policies.

 

[Simeon]

So, TL-191 with Great Patriotic War characteristics?

 

[Metempsychosis]

American culture before and during the Great American War was a strange beast, for it was the story of a nation trying to find its own voice apart from the tongues of Old Europe but failing to remain united. It was the tale of conflicting ideals and nations struggling in the womb of revolution and the American experiment. In the air of liberty and enlightenment and the republic reborn, many rose to take on the challenge of creating a system and nation that would stand and birth a new tradition altogether different from the nations before it, built not upon the whims of kings but upon high ideals, like freedom and justice, self-reliance and brotherhood. And these men, the founders and first republicans of America, were not altogether failures, despite the essential death of the one nation they built and in whose name they served, for in its stead were born two nations, two heirs whose traditions would carry on their legacy in increasingly different directions as the chaos of the War and its aftermath receded into bitter memory.

And so, the divergence between the two nations becomes clearer and clearer in the style and content of their literatures as the decades pass. In the South, there is a certain celebratory mood in the writings of Deep Southern whites, a feeling of having won a second War of Independence, and this feeling turns into a sense of manifest destiny as its leaders attempt to establish economic dominance over their region, forming economic ties with Europe in a careful balancing act between the steeply declining but still powerful British and the emerging new order in the rest of Europe, aiding the Cuban Revolution of 1861 which would add more territory to the fledgling republic, fighting the Mexico of Benito Juarez, and sending unofficial filibusters to the unstable region between Mexico and Colombia to strengthen its position in the region. With all this going on alongside the burning of the old order of Europe accompanied by an exodus of noble émigrés fleeing to the New World, as well as the raging economic debates in the halls of Montgomery and Richmond, the Southerners and their arts (especially in the great ports of the Deep South) gain a certain cosmopolitan tinge from its immigrant artists and a strange social Darwinist optimism from its new scholars which burns in sharp contrast to the treatment of their slaves.

Speaking of which, the blacks of the South continue to languish in their shackles and suffer what they must. In the aftermath of the Great Exodus, the aristocrats of the South fear the loss of even more of their property, and so spend the first years of their new-found independence cracking down on slave escapes, creating laws to restrict their movements. Still, among the free blacks and runaway slaves not part of the Great Exodus, men and women who fled north instead of west to escape the living hell of the Federal States, some gave voice to the plight of their race, beaten as it was into the ground and forced at best into parroting the 'civilized' opinions of their masters, who as the years and fear of outright mass slave revolt passed loosened the shackles, if only to keep the image of a civilized society. And so one sees the proliferation of ambiguities within and between the various communities of blacks in postbellum America. The little interaction between these communities becomes a tenuous bridge of threads between the widening chasm between south and north.

And so we arrive at the North and its arts, which undergo a radical transformation just as the politics of the era do. Turning inward to build a new economy but tying its star to the new order emerging in Europe and India, the United States stands, but is haunted by its own demons, which emerge in literature no less than politics. A recurring theme in the arts of this period is one of innocence lost, of waking from the grand dream of Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism, often tied to the haunted imagery of the ruins of Washington left abandoned for the interim capital in New York and the new one in Shicagwa. The Gothic imagery of the abandoned city reaches its height in the Potomac Lamentations, an anonymous poem echoing the Book of Lamentations in its desolation. The Great Treason (as the war is called in the north) is portrayed time and again in the light of an almost primal sin, the sin of betrayal and turning brother against brother. The literature of New England and the Midwest in this period range from contemplation of America's hubris as a nation and dark Gothic tales to bitter tirades against Old Europe and hopeful songs of freedom. Among the former, the fierce agnostics Augustine Bierce (1830-1915) [1] and Eli Clemens (1832-1912), known by his pen name Mark Twain [2], characterize the new and more cynical spirit of the period. After fighting in the war on the side of the Union, the two separately became journalists and made names for themselves in their travelogues and satires, making social commentaries on the bloody mess of Europe's Popular Wars and the labyrinthine intrigues of Latin America, mirroring the madness of foreign lands onto their own supposedly civilized societies. In those days, the two were called "Godless Amos and Hosea the Clown", referring to the prophets of Judah and Israel as they used their humor and satire to critique the twin nations of north and south in their respective follies. Eventually, the two also diverged, with Bierce turning to speculative fiction and romance, creating in the bleak, absurd, and naturalistic cosmic horror of his Saya's Song (1892) perhaps one of the greatest love stories of the 19th century, though the dark story of his protagonist's descent into madness was subject to heavy backlash in his time. In the meanwhile, Clemens wrote more grounded novels, tales of boyhood before the war and having to grow up in its insanity, tales which would resonate with America as a whole. The two writers would have no shortage of literary heirs.

[1] ATL brother of Ambrose Bierce
[2] ATL brother of OTL Mark Twain

 

[Metempsychosis]

In the wake of the Treaty of Manila, the Indian armies had expelled the EIC and British governors, and they had restored the Mughal dynasty to a place of honor above the supreme junta of former sepoy captains turned insurgent generals, yet now the victorious generals would need to win the peace, and the land was a chaotic and somewhat incoherent mess ruled by a loose coalition of imperial court, stratocratic junta, princely courts, republican assemblies, and the Sikhs, all of whom have their own agenda. Even in theory, the various pillars of this newborn Indian federation stand in conflict against one another or apart from one another, and even with the rise of high ideals within the revolution, the 1860s and 1870s see much upheaval, an age of chaos as patriots and tyrants emerge across the land, to unite Bharat Mata or sunder her in their desire for power. It is an age of poets and artists trying to create a new world in ink and with pens no less than the soldiers and conquerors of the age in blood and with swords. It is a time of statesmen and patriots struggling to establish in the land of Mother India a single front against the Firangi and all others who would try to violate her again, and a time of princes and courtiers, all scheming towards supremacy over the realm.

The proclamations of the various Sabhas during the early 1860s played a large part in the rebellion and had become a legal foundation of the Revolution, but as the land began to settle after the great upheaval, the Sabhas became an inconvenience to some of the more authoritarian leaders in the junta that controlled the imperial court. There was a struggle within the junta between the more aristocratic-inclined generals who wanted to rule as regents for the Mughal princes (the Delhi faction) and those who were more partial to the rising movement towards republicanism (the Lakhnau faction), and it did not help sectarian tensions that more of the former were Muslims and more of the latter were Hindus though there were plenty of both in either faction. For that matter, the heart of the directly-ruled Mughal realm was home to another dispute between the Hindustani and Bengali Sabhas, each of whom ran things differently from the other and both claimed certain territories and rights under their jurisdiction. The Hindustani Sabha was the larger and closer to the imperial court, but the Bengali was the first to declare for independence and economically the stronger, holding the prosperous port city of Calcutta and its surrounding plantations. It was a bitter rivalry, more bitter than any other inter-Sabha rivalry, that would continue for years to come and characterize the dynamics of post-revolutionary India in the north.

With all these developments going on in the east, the Sikhs, ruling an expanded and efficient realm, turn their eyes both inward, towards economic development and domestic policies (which included the building up of industry and infrastructure under the auspices of Filipino and French contractors), and outward, to the west against the Afghans and Balochis and to the north against the Turkic khagans and Tibetan lamas. The Young Lion Nau Nihal continues to rule through this period of upheaval and carefully watches the situation in the east, intervening where he can to keep his eastern flank secure and his allies there strong.