Malê Rising

[eliphas8]

So what basically happens in this timeline? Something about West Africa?

Just read it. You'll thank us when you're done.

 

[Scientist Shan]

Bornu, which has been a battleground throughout the war and which has suffered casualties similar to Serbia in OTL.

How has Bornu had it so hard?

As I remember its only been invaded by the French from the north and is generally surrounded by British, German or Ottoman controlled territory.

Whereas IOTL Serbia was mostly surrounded by bigger enemies, was overrun after a year of hard fighting and then suffered from a typhus epidemic.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Japan would have to be very overstretched in China and Korea to not invade Vladivostok at this time and try to take some territory.

Where do the troops come from? Vladivostok is less defensible, less valuable, and less of a threat to the islands than is Korea. And in Korea they've long since been bleeding themselves white.

Also on the table is Mongolia and Tannu-Tuva. It is possible China could assert itself there in the chaos, reclaiming the old borders.

That's anachronistic. At this time both regions remain legally Chinese. The only question mark is the Russian squatters in Tannu Tuva, who aren't even a majority there yet. So there's actually nothing significant to take back except Russian Manchuria - the maritime provinces.

It is possible China could get carried away and try to grab those back, but it would be idiotic in the extreme. The Russians are the wartime allies that let them back into Korea. Stealing their Pacific ports would break China's one secure foreign alliance in the era of Western encroachment, less than two years after losing Taiwan to the Japanese. The Emperor can get Korea and an allied Russia, effectively guaranteeing external security and making revanchist policy toward the Japanese conceivable in the medium term, or he can trade Russian Manchuria for Japanese Taiwan and a pro-Russian Korea - literally surrounding the entirety of northern China with enemies and opening a mainland door for the Japanese to try again. Not to mention leaving China vulnerable to possible foreign encroachment to the south, with no allies to back it.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

So what basically happens in this timeline? Something about West Africa?

The POD was in Brazil, but the first and greatest changes, and the ideas that influenced later events, are African. Hnau explained it pretty well, and there's more on the wiki here.

It seems that there was an OTL flu epidemic in 1889-90 and in 1898-1900, starting in Russia. Some sort of flu epidemic, given the trench conditions and amount of people involved, seems likely.

Hmmm. It seems that several flu viruses cause recurrent pandemics. If H3N8 was in fact the culprit for both the 1889-90 and 1900 pandemics in OTL, then there might well be a postwar outbreak in TTL - that strain is endemic in horses and could cross over from infected cavalry horses and military draft horses to humans. Fortunately, an H3N8 pandemic probably wouldn't kill as many people as an H1N1 outbreak - "the Russian flu" will be remembered as one of the hardships of 1897-98, but it won't take three percent of humanity with it.

As an aside, good point about washing machines and contraceptives, although I think that in the first case, the potential benifits were very obvious even to most benighted capitalist patriarch, outweighting any "revolutionary" foreseeable consequence. And I've heard enough from my elders to appreciate that yes, those things were really felt as revolutionary.

Granted, but there's also a question of priorities - for instance, should the co-op get a new tractor this year, or use the old one for another year and buy a washing machine instead? If those decisions are consistently made in favor of technology that improves women's lives, it could impact demand as well as the way that manufacturers forecast demand - or, in a planned economy, the development priorities of the planners.

That would prove, erm, problematic for the anticipated Feminist blossoming post-war. STDs are hardly any friend of any kind of gender liberation.

It could cut both ways - it would inhibit the loosening of sexual mores, but it might also make male contraceptive use more widespread. Also, if the outbreak occurs at a time when there has already been some feminist progress - and remember that, given incubation time, it probably won't attain pandemic status until the 1910s - then the education/prevention campaigns might promote sexual hygiene in a way that emphasizes respect for the female partner.

With that said, though, feminist advances won't be across the board. The status of women will improve in many countries - quite markedly so in some - but remain static or even regress in others, as happened after both wars in OTL.

What's the relationship between the TTL Anastasia and the OTL Anastasia?

TTL Anastasia would be OTL Anastasia's aunt. She's a daughter of Alexander III's ATL-sibling.

How has Bornu had it so hard?

As I remember its only been invaded by the French from the north and is generally surrounded by British, German or Ottoman controlled territory.

Whereas IOTL Serbia was mostly surrounded by bigger enemies, was overrun after a year of hard fighting and then suffered from a typhus epidemic.

Bornu was a front-line state for almost three years. When Ottoman Libya fell, the French threw everything they had in North Africa at it, in the hope of breaking through and threatening the Malê successor states from the north. The idea was that if Sokoto and Adamawa came under attack, they would have to withdraw their troops from the Asante-Dahomey front, and the British West African possessions would become vulnerable to a pincer movement.

In the end, the French breakthrough didn't succeed, but the front moved back and forth through Bornu for much of the war. The capital came under siege three times. And for the first year or so, the British weren't able to commit many resources to help, which made Bornu a buffer in truth.

Bornu survived by mobilizing the entire country, which its state-Belloist ideology enabled it to do. The military casualties were very heavy, and the constant fighting also led to food shortages and epidemics. After the first year, when the British were able to provide meaningful help, things became easier, but there was still great hardship.

The next update, involving West Africa, will show the beginning of the reconstruction. Hungary after that, and then it's two more updates to the armistice.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Yes, that was my guess. What other Shevek is there, after all, except for his predecessor the hardware inventor?

Actually, when he and I first started interacting, I took it as a contraction of Bolshevik. How I ever could have come to that misconception I'll leave out!

Also, Germany will have all it wants out of Russia - once Finland, Poland and the Baltic states have become independent German clients, there's really no reason for Germany and Russia to fight. Not to mention that postwar Germany will be undergoing extensive social and economic changes and will be preoccupied with internal reforms, so it isn't going to be an immediate threat to Russia.

The Baltics are going? Why? Historically they didn't even try until after the Soviets had literally given them away at Brest-Litovsk. Has the government been coming down so hard on them, too? I'd think even then that at most the upper and middle classes (read: Germans) would be a problem, and that only in the last few months of the war.

Given that the Prussians are still in Poland or on their own territory, the Baltic states are in some ways better linked to St. Petersburg than most of Russia. You'd think there'd still be a good opportunity to keep the Baltics in, perhaps after a token nod to autonomy. I'm having a lot of trouble picturing how you could separate more than Lithuania and Courland under the relatively benign circumstances of this timeline.

Absolutely - Japanese militarism has taken a hit due to the army's poor performance in Korea, and Japan's energies for the foreseeable future will be directed at expanding its economic and political influence in the Pacific. Japan will still have commercial interests in Korea, but it won't invade again anytime soon, and it won't challenge Russia's position on the mainland.

On the other hand, long-term conflict with China may still happen, if borderlands like Mongolia and eastern Siberia become more important to it than Formosa.

Hrm. Seems like a bit of a stretch. The government will want to follow its interests, within which an alliance with Russia and pulling Korea back into the fold are much more valuable than empty stretches of dry scrubland and taiga. What could shift that for them is public opinion - if the man on the street hates Russia, the government would make sure to follow suit (within the limits of its abilities). But mostly that would depend on the Russians. They'd really have to screw up. For internal reasons.... Hrm.

A big issue is the land shortage for Chinese peasants, and just as in OTL at about this time the government loosening of restrictions will see a lot of them moving into Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. Neither of those could cause much friction themselves. If the Qing try to push on into Outer Mongolia, though, aside from a lot of Han small farmers dying in the desert the Mongols would rebel, which might tempt Russia. But that's all that comes to mind. Eastern Siberia wouldn't have much appeal to the Chinese at their current strength, but if there was a 1917-1919 style collapse a few decades down the road.... Maybe.

Yeah, I thought of that myself. Both carlton_bach's and my militias, though, are riffs on OTL, and they're a natural thing for the Tsarist regime to rely on once it starts to lose the loyalty of mainstream society.

Indeed. Interesting.

I could quibble a bit with that. The Congo and Amazon basins are worse off, Argentina isn't faring well, and Jim Crow is less widespread but deeper where it exists. The world has undergone a bloodier and more widespread Great War than OTL, with close to twice the total number of casualties and with many areas that were peaceful in OTL being part of the fighting. In some places this has been devastating - Russia, but also the Great Lakes of Africa (which have been going through their own Mfecane for the past fifteen years), and Bornu, which has been a battleground throughout the war and which has suffered casualties similar to Serbia in OTL. There will also be future conflicts which set parts of the world back at least temporarily from OTL - I've hinted at a couple of such conflicts within the British Empire.

TTL also appears to be headed for a world with more monarchies, which was not what I intended when I started it, although that may or may not be dystopian depending on one's view of monarchy and on what kind of kingdoms there are.

But overall, you're right. I'm a meliorist at heart, and that probably comes through in my writing. Like the novel that Shevek23 took his username from, TTL is in some ways an ambiguous utopia - ambiguous because conflict continues and much injustice exists, but tending toward the utopian nonetheless. I don't think there's anything wrong with that - to my mind, semi-utopias aren't inherently less honest or less revealing of the human condition than semi-dystopias - but I'll certainly confess it.

But this isn't meliorism, is it? I mean, obviously it is a timeline about the world getting better, so in that sense, yes. But relatively speaking it, it's about the world getting better faster.

Which leads to a question which I will take up in time: is totalitarianism an inevitable outgrowth of industrial modernity? Does the reality of industrial warfare, in which the entire output of a nation must be committed, necessarily lead to ideologies that seek to militarize politics and turn the life of the nation into an analogue of total war? Such ideologies will exist in TTL; I don't think it would be plausible for nobody to get the totalitarian idea. But whether they take power will depend on the answer to that question, and it's one I'll be returning to as the twentieth century progresses.

Well I'd argue that totalitarianism isn't "special" per se, but just out toward the end of a sliding scale that nearly all modern states fall onto. If this timeline has done anything, it's weighted those scales to the good. As such it's very reasonable to suppose that the peculiar extremes of OTL may never occur. That said, given that we're even now barely a decade past the declaration of the War on Terror - I think the trend in general is unavoidable in most states.

Of course, lacking our frame of reference, this timeline's inhabitants are likely going to find a great deal to view as horrific or depressing in the early twentieth century. No matter how much we might be relieved to see them getting off lightly.

 

[Admiral Matt]

There may or may not be a super-bug like the Spanish Flu - there will certainly be opportunistic diseases spread by poor nutrition and conditions in the trenches, but a cytokine-storm virus crossing over at just the right time isn't a given. If someone here with greater medical knowledge can give me a better idea of the odds of various outcomes, I'd be grateful.

There could be something else, though. Think eastern Congo, widespread population movements, and war/refugee conditions that give rise to a demand for bushmeat, and remember that many of the soldiers fighting in that region are European, Indian or from other parts of Africa.

That would prove, erm, problematic for the anticipated Feminist blossoming post-war. STDs are hardly any friend of any kind of gender liberation.

Yeah, ouch, poop. That will be awful.

With the medical structures available, it could be decades before anyone even realizes that one virus is the problem, rather than a weird variety of diseases afflicting people with similar wasting illnesses. Treatment will be out of the question. Detection is a matter for their grandchildren, and without it the early practice of blood transfusions will crash for a generation or two.

Say fifty years of growing sexual conservatism, from here on? Good for the rubber industry, anyway!

 

[Scientist Shan]

TTL Anastasia would be OTL Anastasia's aunt. She's a daughter of Alexander III's ATL-sibling.



Bornu was a front-line state for almost three years. When Ottoman Libya fell, the French threw everything they had in North Africa at it, in the hope of breaking through and threatening the Malê successor states from the north. The idea was that if Sokoto and Adamawa came under attack, they would have to withdraw their troops from the Asante-Dahomey front, and the British West African possessions would become vulnerable to a pincer movement.

In the end, the French breakthrough didn't succeed, but the front moved back and forth through Bornu for much of the war. The capital came under siege three times. And for the first year or so, the British weren't able to commit many resources to help, which made Bornu a buffer in truth.

Bornu survived by mobilizing the entire country, which its state-Belloist ideology enabled it to do. The military casualties were very heavy, and the constant fighting also led to food shortages and epidemics. After the first year, when the British were able to provide meaningful help, things became easier, but there was still great hardship.

Thanks.

That's what I guess about Anastasia.

Regarding Bornu its a bit difficult to visualise it. Wikipeida says it contained land which is now part of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

Could you let us have an approximate equivalent size and population in comparison to the British 'Nigeria' states.

In fact approximate population numbers for all the places would be great

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

The Baltics are going? Why? Historically they didn't even try until after the Soviets had literally given them away at Brest-Litovsk. Has the government been coming down so hard on them, too? I'd think even then that at most the upper and middle classes (read: Germans) would be a problem, and that only in the last few months of the war.

Given that the Prussians are still in Poland or on their own territory, the Baltic states are in some ways better linked to St. Petersburg than most of Russia. You'd think there'd still be a good opportunity to keep the Baltics in, perhaps after a token nod to autonomy. I'm having a lot of trouble picturing how you could separate more than Lithuania and Courland under the relatively benign circumstances of this timeline.

Hmmm. I'd assumed that North Germany would try to detach them because of the German upper class and also to create a buffer between Germany and Russia, but you are of course correct. So maybe Russia will keep them as autonomous provinces with a few concessions to German influence (maybe they would be members of the Zollverein, or Germany would have some extraterritorial rights) and they will be another data point for the change to post-Westphalianism.

BTW, what do you think would be the most realistic eastern border for postwar Poland - something like the Curzon line?

Hrm. Seems like a bit of a stretch. The government will want to follow its interests, within which an alliance with Russia and pulling Korea back into the fold are much more valuable than empty stretches of dry scrubland and taiga.

The Chinese will also be preoccupied with internal reforms for a couple of decades after the war - as we've discussed, the emperor will use the political capital gained from the victory in Korea to push through something like the Hundred Days' Reform. Not to mention that the peasant self-defense organizations in the areas that had been occupied by Japan or under warlord rule will have to be assimilated somehow - the Big Sword Society has done a lot of do-it-yourself land reform in those regions.

So, yeah, unless the Russians screw things up big time, relations with China will probably stay fairly cordial.

Well I'd argue that totalitarianism isn't "special" per se, but just out toward the end of a sliding scale that nearly all modern states fall onto. If this timeline has done anything, it's weighted those scales to the good. As such it's very reasonable to suppose that the peculiar extremes of OTL may never occur. That said, given that we're even now barely a decade past the declaration of the War on Terror - I think the trend in general is unavoidable in most states.

I'd tend to agree with you (and Hnau and Falecius) on this. I think it's inevitable that totalitarian ideologies would develop in a modern industrial world - someone will get the idea of translating total war to the political realm. There might even be a few new twists on the totalitarian idea in TTL given the greater spread of modernity - there could be some kind of totalitarianism with an Islamic or Indian flavor. Democracy is still a relatively new thing at this time, and it will be severely tested by economic and political factors just as it was in OTL. But at the same time, there are more non-totalitarian options to choose from, and the prevalence of "popular front" revolutions means a lower chance of going to extremes. TTL will probably see a Mussolini or two (on the left as well as the right) but maybe not a Hitler or Stalin.

Yeah, ouch, poop. That will be awful.

With the medical structures available, it could be decades before anyone even realizes that one virus is the problem, rather than a weird variety of diseases afflicting people with similar wasting illnesses. Treatment will be out of the question. Detection is a matter for their grandchildren, and without it the early practice of blood transfusions will crash for a generation or two.

Say fifty years of growing sexual conservatism, from here on? Good for the rubber industry, anyway!

I hadn't even thought of the effect on blood transfusions. That could have a major impact, although at this point the science of blood typing was primitive anyway.

What I'm tentatively figuring is that the crossover will occur in the 1880s, when one of the bushmeat hunters who supplies the Great Lakes armies cuts himself while butchering an infected animal. He then spreads the virus to various prostitutes of his acquaintance, who then infect their other customers, who carry the disease into the mining towns and logging camps. No one notices at that point - the opportunistic infections are seemingly unconnected, and most victims die of other causes before the virus-related complications can kill them. But then, in 1893-97, the armies tramp through the Congo, and many soldiers pick up the virus from camp followers.

Given incubation time, it will be 1900-05 before cases start appearing in Europe, India and Zanzibar, and it will take longer before anyone connects them. But sooner or later, someone will notice that soldiers who've been in the Congo (and people who've had sexual relations with them since their return) are getting sick at a higher rate than the rest of the population, and they'll probably figure out that the infection is transmitted sexually. Maybe 1910 before the syndrome is classified.

Beyond that - well, they might guess that a virus is responsible, because viruses were theorized as early as the 1890s, but they won't have a prayer of getting a handle on it. Education and prevention would be all they could do, which would mean sexual conservatism on the one hand but more acceptance of condom use on the other, and possibly also a greater recognition of the necessity of sexual education. On the darker side, governments in the 1910s might be more willing to quarantine HIV patients than governments in the 1980s, especially since not all cases are transmitted sexually and it may take a while to determine that an exchange of body fluids is required.

I haven't decided yet whether to canonize the early HIV crossover. In OTL, it seems to have happened during the early 20th century - but the prevailing theories are that the crossover was aided by social conditions, and many of those conditions (or other equivalent ones) will be present at an earlier time in TTL. I'd say that an HIV outbreak under these conditions is not only possible but probable - semi-utopian this timeline may be, but the earlier integration of Africa into the modern political and economic world will have consequences. Environmental as well as medical, but that won't be a major factor until later.

Regarding Bornu its a bit difficult to visualise it. Wikipeida says it contained land which is now part of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

Could you let us have an approximate equivalent size and population in comparison to the British 'Nigeria' states.

In fact approximate population numbers for all the places would be great

There's a prewar map of Africa showing the extent of Bornu (in sky-blue, with allies/vassals in a lighter shade). Keep in mind that much of the Bornu empire is relatively flat and open savanna or desert, meaning that the front is very mobile.

Population estimates are hard, because there are no reliable census figures for these areas in the 19th century. Also, TTL populations will be different because of the earlier end to the slave trade, changing fortunes of war, and the beginnings of industrialization and modern agricultural methods.

I often use this site for historical population statistics, but its reliability varies and many of the 19th-century numbers are estimates. If we go by that, then the combined population of Niger and Chad in the 1890s was about two million. Bornu's area of influence includes pretty much the entire land area of Chad and most of Niger, as well as marginal bits of northern Nigeria and Cameroon. Let's say, given the changed conditions of TTL, that in 1893 there were two million people in Bornu proper and another million or so in the vassal states. In 1897, the population is half a million lower.

For Nigeria, the population site gives an estimate of 15,589,000 in 1900, which seems a little high. Statistics for administrative divisions only go back to the 1930s. So figure in TTL, maybe 17 million people in the area that would make up Nigeria in OTL, about seven million of whom are in the Malê successor states, another two or three million in Oyo, and the remainder in the Lagos and Lower Niger colonies and the minor princely states. There would also be another two or three million people in the colonies and princely states further west, in what would be Ghana, Benin and Togo in OTL.

For French West Africa, say seven million in total (a million and a half of whom are Senegalese), and for the independent entities, say a million in the Mossi kingdom and 1.5 million in the Toucouleur empire. Liberia is under a million, but census numbers are recklessly inaccurate - say 600,000 or 700,000. If anyone has better numbers, I'd be happy to hear them.

 

[Faeelin]

Would anyone even realize that people are dying from the same disease? "Hm, a lot of prostitutes are getting TB. Hohum."

 

[Falecius]

Would anyone even realize that people are dying from the same disease? "Hm, a lot of prostitutes are getting TB. Hohum."

It will take some time before someone starts noticing, I guess.
It's not as apparent as, say, syphilis.

 

[Jord839]

Well, had to take a couple months off for various things but I finally found the free time to catch up. Looks like I came in just at the right time, too.

Without going too much into it, on further reflection, the retcon of the Ticino Incident was something more realistic and more in line with what I first imagined. So Switzerland became a BOG-favoring neutral, and could conceivably benefit from French/Austrian territory, but I have a hard time seeing that the way the war has ended and with Swiss internal problems having been emphasized by issues with the ultramontanes. Looks like very little is going to change there.

ITTL, the war's ended more or less by consent of the FAR's, and at least France and Austria are not going to be open to too much of their homelands being carved up like turkeys for political points. France's only likely mainland cession would be a negotiation on the status of A-L which could go any number of ways(stay in France as is, independent buffer state, division, etc.) and the acknowledgement of German Unification of some form(though it might go to bat for the continued place of the Grand Duke of Baden and King of Wurttemburg within Germany or a specific political development there). The main areas it'll be suffering in is the colonies, specifically I'd guess in Africa which should bring the focus back to the Male successor states nicely. West Africa, especially Senegal, is not going anywhere but Sahelian territories are more iffy and could be given to puppet kingdoms or other powers. It could also lose many of its territories in the Pacific since it already has very tenuous connection to those territories and the BOG's have had a long time to set-up occupation governments in those areas which may or may not involve locals.* France can come out fairly well if it plays its cards right, but there's also potential to lose out.

Austria's going to be a mess though. There's a lot of internal tensions between the various nations within the Empire, lots of starvation and unrest among troops and rural areas, and probably a not-insignificant anger at former allies like the Serbs who suddenly decided to switch sides. On the other hand, they and France are still in a relatively decent position for terms, so I could see the Empire enduring in the short term and the long term being dependant on how they react politically to the challenges facing them. Shevek's Catholic Nationalism idea from way back could come into focus, possibly with the Alt-Christian Democracy elements you've mentioned mixed in to distance themselves from totalitarian rule, for example. It doesn't have much in the way of colonies though, and the Ottomans seem more concerned with gains from Russia than AH in the last few updates, though some territory might change hands. If I had to guess, I'd say AH is going to be seen as one of the death knells of the Westphalian system, though, either as a cautionary tale along the lines of OTL Yugoslavia or by going the TTL Ottoman route in at least part of the Empire.

Russia will probably lose a lot in the West to independent client kingdoms(at least Finland and Poland, the Baltics are more contentious) and at least some of Great Turkestan but it's also no longer ruled by the Tsar so there's going to be a balancing act between rewarding BOG allies and not angering this new government to the point where there's another decade-or-so truce before a major war again. It's also become really clear what you meant about Russia winning on points in Asia. Korea and China are both Russian allies against the Japanese expansion, and the narboniki movement seems to be ripe for influencing the Donghak and other peasant movements in those countries. The Russians might not have considered it the front that matters before, but it could be one of the last bits of international influence they're able to hold onto and one the revolutionary government might be willing to fight for. Orthodox-Chedonist Korea and bigger Orthodox minorities in northern rural China maybe? That also sets up problems with Japan at the peace conference and a difficult tight-rope for the BOGs Eritrea's going to Ethiopia as a full-fledged vassal, though Anastiasia is being given two titles meaning Queen of Ethiopia/Kush/Nubia so the Romanovs are not going to be without influence in the future there apparently, even if only through marriage alliance.

Brazil's kind of up in the air. I could see them actually coming out with some border readjustments in their favor in Grao Para considering we know that they've made some advances, but overall their ambitions in the North are going to be thwarted and Grao Para's going to be busy with internal change.

As for the Pope? I have no idea. He can't be restored to rule over Rome, but unless the BOG's want a running sore for the long foreseeable future, they'd be very smart to set up a Vatican City-esque arrangement if at all possible which France might actually be amenable to based on their frustration with the Pope and their previous attempted negotiations at the start of the war. Italy would be the main issue there, and the Papal Legion's reputation as a loose cannon has not won too many friends, so who knows.

Has Oman acknowledged Tippu Tip as Sultan then, or is Britain setting up a separate sultanate there and formalizing the Zanzibari-Omani split? I'm also wondering if Usman and Melisande will come up with something to bring Rwanda or other Great Lakes kingdoms into the fold. Rwanda might be doable but the others are up in the air.

God help whoever's in the Congo trying to forcibly recreate the old order, trying to set up a new one, or by pure bad luck stuck living there and caught in the middle.

Overall, I'd guess the main territory losses are going to be in the colonies, mostly in northern Africa and the Pacific. That's going to drive home just how pointless and stupid the war was to many Europeans, and also set up future conflicts within the colonies and imperial spheres.

*As we know that SE Asia became relatively more French vis-a-vis the slightly more British Africa, how well has TTL France managed to integrate themselves there? Are there relatively more Catholics there or other local allies as a result of the more broad French identity that are more amenable to continued French rule for the time being or would the BOGs have had enough time and local support to force larger independent states through at the peace conference in the theater the really dominated?

EDIT: Forgot about the main BOGs. Britain seems like the big winner but we know Britain's going to have some reactionary backlash in the future, which will likely hurt them in Ireland and India, but that should really only be in the beginning stages at this point. Britain stands to gain colonies in the Pacific and Africa. Eventually they're going to run head-first into decolonization movements and associated problems and that will likely break the Empire as it currently is. Germany's downright exhausted and has a demographic disaster on its hands, but has achieved its main goal of national liberation and outside of issues with Austrian Germans and keeping the Russian west from being a threat, are pretty satisfied. All-in-all, the Ottomans are actually coming out of this the best. They might have to give up Crimea and concede autonomy for certain tribes, but got puppet Great Turkestan, preserved an independent Georgia, an enlarged sorta-vassal in Bornu, and further possible gains in North Africa.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Would anyone even realize that people are dying from the same disease? "Hm, a lot of prostitutes are getting TB. Hohum."

It will take some time before someone starts noticing, I guess. It's not as apparent as, say, syphilis.

Soldiers will be getting TB too, and some of them will be officers. Even if no one in Europe or India cares about Congolese prostitutes and mercenaries, people will care when captains and majors from good families start turning up sick. That's probably when the connection to the Congo will be found.

But yes, it will definitely take some time - 1910 or even 1915, and by that time, the virus will have spread well beyond the initial group of returning soldiers.

 

[Scientist Shan]

Independent Ukraine?

Any chance of an independent Ukraine?

Germany might fancy it for economic exploitation reasons.
Poland might want a buffer state between it and Russia.
Ditto the Ottomans, especially if they want the Crimea back.

Would the Ukrainians be interested in this Tolstoyan agrarian christian-socialism?

 

[Falecius]

Any chance of an independent Ukraine?

Germany might fancy it for economic exploitation reasons.
Poland might want a buffer state between it and Russia.
Ditto the Ottomans, especially if they want the Crimea back.

Would the Ukrainians be interested in this Tolstoyan agrarian christian-socialism?

Very unlikely.
No boots on the ground so far. The new Russian government is probably fairly reassuring to many Ukrainians.
Crimea might go many ways, though, and it will be a probable other case where Westphalia goes down. The Ottomans are likely to insisting on some form of restoration of the Khanate, and Tolstoj could be amenable to that, maybe as some sort of condominium. A totally independent Khanate has been proven not viable, so they could try a way to conciliate Russian and Ottoman influence there somehow.
The rest of Ukraine is pretty firmly in Russian control by now. The most they could likely expect is octroyed autonomy.
Austrian Eastern Galicia, on the other hand, might be a very different story.

 

[eliphas8]

You know I just realized we've never gotten an Austrian update (besides Andras and his adventures). What's been going on, I mean the warmest have been effecting them pretty seriously.

 

[Hnau]

I'm having a lot of trouble picturing how you could separate more than Lithuania and Courland under the relatively benign circumstances of this timeline.

Benign? It seems like Jonathan established it is anything but. It seems to me that Russia has suffered worse circumstances than OTL, at least by this point (four years into the war).

Where do the troops come from? Vladivostok is less defensible, less valuable, and less of a threat to the islands than is Korea. And in Korea they've long since been bleeding themselves white.

They could loot the city for supplies, if there are any. I was guessing that by taking Vladivostok they might improve conditions in Korea somewhat. I mean, if the Tsar is abdicating, who would be in Vladivostok to defend it? It's the same logic that got the Japanese to invade the East Indies in order to get fuel for the Chinese front, if only on a much smaller scale. But, I don't know that Vladivostok would have anything especially valuable, so you could be right that it would be stupid to attack.

That's anachronistic. At this time both regions remain legally Chinese. The only question mark is the Russian squatters in Tannu Tuva, who aren't even a majority there yet. So there's actually nothing significant to take back except Russian Manchuria - the maritime provinces.

I stand corrected.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Well, had to take a couple months off for various things but I finally found the free time to catch up. Looks like I came in just at the right time, too.

Great to have you back!

So Switzerland became a BOG-favoring neutral, and could conceivably benefit from French/Austrian territory, but I have a hard time seeing that the way the war has ended and with Swiss internal problems having been emphasized by issues with the ultramontanes.

I doubt the Swiss want more territory. In OTL, Vorarlberg voted overwhelmingly to join Switzerland in 1919, but the Swiss declined because they didn't want to upset their demographic and religious balance. The same factors would exist in TTL, and as you say, they'd be even more acute because of the internal conflict between the ultramontanes and the Catholic liberals.

France's only likely mainland cession would be a negotiation on the status of A-L which could go any number of ways

The Alsace-Lorraine issue will, believe it or not, be resolved in a way that everyone can live with, although currently it's one of the reasons why the war is still in progress.

The main areas it'll be suffering in is the colonies, specifically I'd guess in Africa

They might actually lose more in southeast Asia, where the BOG victory was overwhelming and they have no bargaining power. The wild card is Cochin-China, where many Vietnamese have French citizenship under the Latin right, and which may become a princely state under British domination but with considerable French influence. Annam, Tonkin and Cambodia are gone with the wind.

The three absolutely non-negotiable items for France are Senegal, Gabon and the Algerian littoral. Everything else will be on the table. They won't lose all of it, though - in West Africa, they may actually get back much of what the British have occupied. The next update will give some of the reason why.

Austria's going to be a mess though. There's a lot of internal tensions between the various nations within the Empire, lots of starvation and unrest among troops and rural areas, and probably a not-insignificant anger at former allies like the Serbs who suddenly decided to switch sides. On the other hand, they and France are still in a relatively decent position for terms, so I could see the Empire enduring in the short term and the long term being dependant on how they react politically to the challenges facing them.

Austria's predicament is that, unlike the other FARs, it is now facing an existential struggle. Nobody's talking about conquering France or Russia, but Wilhelm wants Austria as part of his empire. Franz Joseph may be willing to give up almost anything to keep Austria independent, or alternatively, he may just continue the fight until the war-weary Germans offer honorable terms. Austria, devastated as it is, may end up as the last FAR to quit the war.

In terms of the empire, Bohemia and Galicia are already gone, and it won't be practical to keep Eastern Galicia without contiguity. They'll lose Trentino too, although maybe not South Tyrol. The Slovenes and Dalmatians might be persuaded to stay, but they're spooked by the possibility that Austria might decide to join Germany one day and take them along. Maybe Franz Joseph can work out a deal in which he becomes King of Carniola and Dalmatia, but both are fully independent kingdoms with their own foreign policy. Or maybe he'll decide that he's already had too much of that with Hungary, and just let them go. Nothing's etched in stone yet - I have tentative plans, but they may change.

Shevek's Catholic Nationalism idea from way back could come into focus, possibly with the Alt-Christian Democracy elements you've mentioned mixed in to distance themselves from totalitarian rule, for example.

That could happen, especially if Austria keeps at least some of its minorities.

the Ottomans seem more concerned with gains from Russia than AH in the last few updates, though some territory might change hands.

The last thing the Ottomans want is more restive minorities. They want to make gains in Muslim, and particularly Turkic, regions; they'll leave A-H alone.

It's also become really clear what you meant about Russia winning on points in Asia. Korea and China are both Russian allies against the Japanese expansion, and the narboniki movement seems to be ripe for influencing the Donghak and other peasant movements in those countries. The Russians might not have considered it the front that matters before, but it could be one of the last bits of international influence they're able to hold onto and one the revolutionary government might be willing to fight for. Orthodox-Chedonist Korea and bigger Orthodox minorities in northern rural China maybe?

Daztur and I have discussed exactly those things. TTL's Cheondoism will have a distinctly Orthodox flavor (I've mentioned already that the Korean peasant army carries icons) and there will also be a large straight-up Orthodox population.

And Russia won't have to fight to keep the Korean alliance - Korea is practically begging it to stay.

Eritrea's going to Ethiopia as a full-fledged vassal, though Anastiasia is being given two titles meaning Queen of Ethiopia/Kush/Nubia so the Romanovs are not going to be without influence in the future there apparently, even if only through marriage alliance.

Well, we don't know which team Anastasia will be playing for by that time. The autobiography suggests that, when she finds out what her father did during the war, it will be a very unpleasant revelation.

Brazil's kind of up in the air. I could see them actually coming out with some border readjustments in their favor in Grao Para considering we know that they've made some advances, but overall their ambitions in the North are going to be thwarted and Grao Para's going to be busy with internal change.

Brazil won't lose out - you'll find out how. It will be another post-Westphalian data point.

As for the Pope? I have no idea. He can't be restored to rule over Rome, but unless the BOG's want a running sore for the long foreseeable future, they'd be very smart to set up a Vatican City-esque arrangement if at all possible which France might actually be amenable to based on their frustration with the Pope and their previous attempted negotiations at the start of the war. Italy would be the main issue there, and the Papal Legion's reputation as a loose cannon has not won too many friends, so who knows.

One option would be for him to stay in Spain, at least for the time being. It might be dangerous for him to return to the Vatican even if the Italian government is willing to make a deal - there are many Italians who have scores to settle. This may be an issue that gets deferred, especially if Italy is still dealing with Papal Legion remnants in Venetia.

Has Oman acknowledged Tippu Tip as Sultan then, or is Britain setting up a separate sultanate there and formalizing the Zanzibari-Omani split? I'm also wondering if Usman and Melisande will come up with something to bring Rwanda or other Great Lakes kingdoms into the fold. Rwanda might be doable but the others are up in the air.

The Omanis have accepted Tippu Tip for the time being, mainly because they're afraid to cross him. It may not stick over the long term, though.

The peasant-herder-religious republics which have emerged in the eastern Congo basin may be more likely than the Great Lakes states to join Tippu Tip's alliance, if he can credibly protect them from being reabsorbed into International Congo. As you said, the Congo's going to be a mess, and anyone who can stay out of it will move heaven and earth to do so.

All-in-all, the Ottomans are actually coming out of this the best. They might have to give up Crimea and concede autonomy for certain tribes, but got puppet Great Turkestan, preserved an independent Georgia, an enlarged sorta-vassal in Bornu, and further possible gains in North Africa.

They've actually managed to make Armenia their client as well, because the Tsar thoroughly alienated it during the war, and they and the British have installed a friendly government in Persia. They'll have to share Turkestan, though - they'll have a lot of influence there, but so will Russia and Britain, and the Turkestanis themselves have a strong independent streak.

Any chance of an independent Ukraine?

Germany might fancy it for economic exploitation reasons.
Poland might want a buffer state between it and Russia.
Ditto the Ottomans, especially if they want the Crimea back.

Would the Ukrainians be interested in this Tolstoyan agrarian christian-socialism?

Very unlikely.
No boots on the ground so far. The new Russian government is probably fairly reassuring to many Ukrainians.

Falecius is right - the North Germans are concentrated in Poland and East Prussia and are too exhausted to want to fight their way into Ukraine. Tolstoy's state will be largely decentralized, so the Ukrainians will be willing to give him a chance.

Crimea might go many ways, though, and it will be a probable other case where Westphalia goes down. The Ottomans are likely to insisting on some form of restoration of the Khanate, and Tolstoj could be amenable to that, maybe as some sort of condominium. A totally independent Khanate has been proven not viable, so they could try a way to conciliate Russian and Ottoman influence there somehow.

EDIT: There are many Crimean refugees in the Ottoman Empire right now, and they have supplied several regiments to the Ottoman army. They'd consider it an absolute betrayal if the empire abandoned them at the peace table, and they'd have popular opinion on their side. So Midhat Pasha will have to get them something.

On the other hand, as you say, an independent khanate has been proven impossible to defend, and any Crimean entity will have to depend on Russian acquiescence. Tolstoy will be amenable to making a deal - possibly an autonomous province under joint Ottoman-Russian sovereignty, or a self-governing Russian province with concessions to Ottoman influence.

Austrian Eastern Galicia, on the other hand, might be a very different story.

Yeah, what would happen to Eastern Galicia? Austria can't really keep it, joining it to Poland would be a bad idea, and it's probably too small to be viable as a state - would it become a German client duchy, or even join Russia?

You know I just realized we've never gotten an Austrian update (besides Andras and his adventures). What's been going on, I mean the warmest have been effecting them pretty seriously.

That's my fault actually - my knowledge of Austria during this period is rather sketchy, and I haven't felt competent to do an Austrian POV (other than the soldier mentioned in this update). Austria has been profoundly affected by the war and deserves a closer look; I'll probably include something in either the Hungarian update (the one after next) or two updates after that.

They could loot the city for supplies, if there are any. I was guessing that by taking Vladivostok they might improve conditions in Korea somewhat. I mean, if the Tsar is abdicating, who would be in Vladivostok to defend it?

They did attack Vladivostok earlier in the war, and were repelled. And while the Tsar may have abdicated, the shore batteries and the eastern Siberian army are still there. We can't rule anything out, but I doubt there's a prize in Vladivostok that's worth the risk.

 

[Scientist Shan]

The Alsace-Lorraine issue will, believe it or not, be resolved in a way that everyone can live with, although currently it's one of the reasons why the war is still in progress.

I look forward to that.

The three absolutely non-negotiable items for France are Senegal, Gabon and the Algerian littoral. Everything else will be on the table. They won't lose all of it, though - in West Africa, they may actually get back much of what the British have occupied. The next update will give some of the reason why.

That's how I figure it as well.

But I can see Bornu wanting control/dominance/influence in the 'Kingdom of the Arabs' and Britain wanting a link between Sierra Leone and the 'Nigeria' block.

Would Britain be willing to give Gambia to France in return for concessions elsewhere? With it being surrounded by Senegal its more trouble than its worth.

And has anything happened in Madagascar during the war? Its strategic position suggests that France would want to keep control there.

 

[galileo-034]

On West Africa, we already know that Mali remain French as an earlier litterary post (which includes the biography of a Malian woman author) mentions the independence of Department of French Mali if I remember correctly.

France's only likely mainland cession would be a negotiation on the status of A-L which could go any number of ways

The Alsace-Lorraine issue will, believe it or not, be resolved in a way that everyone can live with, although currently it's one of the reasons why the war is still in progress.

As for Alsace-Moselle, there is no question about whether it is to join Germany. ITTL, the some German nationalists who triggered the war of 1870 were surely more of marginals than an organization representative of Alsace intent, more like the independentists of today Savoy.

IOTL, Bismarck had been opposed to take Alsace to the French, fearing that it might trigger some irredentist scheme and another war, what happened; the annexation was more because of the King who wanted a buffer area against any further French invasion as he wrote it to the exiled Empress Eugénie. After the Great War, Empress Eugénie gave this famous letter to Clémenceau and this letter was instrumental in convincing the allies of France of accepting French claim as the German claim was not truly motivated by will of the Alsatians to become Germans.

Eventually, the way that the issue will be solved as JE wrote it makes me thinking on some referendum which would result in the region voting to remain French.

Anyway, the French could be willing to give up many things, colonies, unification of Germany, basically all that led France to war, but any piece of national territory, it would never be accepted. But if I was a British diplomat, I would justly use this very fact to get everything I want in other regions of the world.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Hmmm. I'd assumed that North Germany would try to detach them because of the German upper class and also to create a buffer between Germany and Russia, but you are of course correct. So maybe Russia will keep them as autonomous provinces with a few concessions to German influence (maybe they would be members of the Zollverein, or Germany would have some extraterritorial rights) and they will be another data point for the change to post-Westphalianism.

Could be. I'd expect it to be less intensive though. Without boots on the ground, the compromise will be made at the peace table, by which time the peak of centripetal forces will have subsided in Russia. Given the mood of the moment is something along the lines of "Germany is where the Germans are," I'd expect such a compromise to entail the Hanseatic Ports rather than the provinces themselves. Defining anything special about the Baltic Provinces is against German interests, remember. It means Baltic nationalism, which actually means a decline in the role of ethnic Germans (and Scandinavians) living there.

BTW, what do you think would be the most realistic eastern border for postwar Poland - something like the Curzon line?

Given a Russia with neither Brest-Litovsk nor a full Civil War, yeah, probably. The Poles wouldn't have a power vacuum to move into, and Curzon was near the ethnic frontier. I do think Poland has a real chance at Eastern Galicia, though, if Austria does lose its grip as seems likely. Russia could handle it, but given its internal issues I'd bet on the Poles.

I hadn't even thought of the effect on blood transfusions. That could have a major impact, although at this point the science of blood typing was primitive anyway.

What I'm tentatively figuring is that the crossover will occur in the 1880s, when one of the bushmeat hunters who supplies the Great Lakes armies cuts himself while butchering an infected animal. He then spreads the virus to various prostitutes of his acquaintance, who then infect their other customers, who carry the disease into the mining towns and logging camps. No one notices at that point - the opportunistic infections are seemingly unconnected, and most victims die of other causes before the virus-related complications can kill them. But then, in 1893-97, the armies tramp through the Congo, and many soldiers pick up the virus from camp followers.

Given incubation time, it will be 1900-05 before cases start appearing in Europe, India and Zanzibar, and it will take longer before anyone connects them. But sooner or later, someone will notice that soldiers who've been in the Congo (and people who've had sexual relations with them since their return) are getting sick at a higher rate than the rest of the population, and they'll probably figure out that the infection is transmitted sexually. Maybe 1910 before the syndrome is classified.

Beyond that - well, they might guess that a virus is responsible, because viruses were theorized as early as the 1890s, but they won't have a prayer of getting a handle on it. Education and prevention would be all they could do, which would mean sexual conservatism on the one hand but more acceptance of condom use on the other, and possibly also a greater recognition of the necessity of sexual education. On the darker side, governments in the 1910s might be more willing to quarantine HIV patients than governments in the 1980s, especially since not all cases are transmitted sexually and it may take a while to determine that an exchange of body fluids is required.

I haven't decided yet whether to canonize the early HIV crossover. In OTL, it seems to have happened during the early 20th century - but the prevailing theories are that the crossover was aided by social conditions, and many of those conditions (or other equivalent ones) will be present at an earlier time in TTL. I'd say that an HIV outbreak under these conditions is not only possible but probable - semi-utopian this timeline may be, but the earlier integration of Africa into the modern political and economic world will have consequences. Environmental as well as medical, but that won't be a major factor until later.

That seems very probable. The scientific comprehension might be a little fast given what they could handle at the time, but yeah - basically solid.

There's a prewar map of Africa showing the extent of Bornu (in sky-blue, with allies/vassals in a lighter shade). Keep in mind that much of the Bornu empire is relatively flat and open savanna or desert, meaning that the front is very mobile.

Population estimates are hard, because there are no reliable census figures for these areas in the 19th century. Also, TTL populations will be different because of the earlier end to the slave trade, changing fortunes of war, and the beginnings of industrialization and modern agricultural methods.

I often use this site for historical population statistics, but its reliability varies and many of the 19th-century numbers are estimates. If we go by that, then the combined population of Niger and Chad in the 1890s was about two million. Bornu's area of influence includes pretty much the entire land area of Chad and most of Niger, as well as marginal bits of northern Nigeria and Cameroon. Let's say, given the changed conditions of TTL, that in 1893 there were two million people in Bornu proper and another million or so in the vassal states. In 1897, the population is half a million lower.

For Nigeria, the population site gives an estimate of 15,589,000 in 1900, which seems a little high. Statistics for administrative divisions only go back to the 1930s. So figure in TTL, maybe 17 million people in the area that would make up Nigeria in OTL, about seven million of whom are in the Malê successor states, another two or three million in Oyo, and the remainder in the Lagos and Lower Niger colonies and the minor princely states. There would also be another two or three million people in the colonies and princely states further west, in what would be Ghana, Benin and Togo in OTL.

For French West Africa, say seven million in total (a million and a half of whom are Senegalese), and for the independent entities, say a million in the Mossi kingdom and 1.5 million in the Toucouleur empire. Liberia is under a million, but census numbers are recklessly inaccurate - say 600,000 or 700,000. If anyone has better numbers, I'd be happy to hear them.

Very interesting. Amazing, in a way, that we came this far before discussing it. I suppose it's a matter of the widening lens we had as we passed through the 1880s.