Absolutely, Australia first beat England in 1882 in the first of the "ashes" competitions. I don't see anything changing the fundamentals behind that, though doubtless the Ashes themselves won't exist. With NZ and Fiji Australasia would be very potent.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
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Absolutely, Australia first beat England in 1882 in the first of the "ashes" competitions. I don't see anything changing the fundamentals behind that, though doubtless the Ashes themselves won't exist. With NZ and Fiji Australasia would be very potent.
Fair enough. Speaking of Fiji, is it too early for rugby sevens to catch on? I'm imagining the Fijians picking it up from Scottish plantation managers and then spreading it to the rest of Australasia. The Fijians love sevens in OTL; with them plugged into the world a bit more, I could see them picking it up earlier. The West Africans might also like it, or the more traditional version of rugby.
Well, that depends. I wouldn't say "not at all."
At some point in this timeline I developed the hope the British Empire holds together, acceptably well. Those hopes were long ago dashed, by prophecy we see unfolding here. I'm no fan of a racist, oppressive regime, but I thought the Empire might evolve into something truly multinational here. Sadly, the British reactionaries are having none of it.
Their loss. Once we accept that the British (or a tragically large number of them) cannot handle the idea of the torch being passed to a greater populace, one that makes the peoples of the British Isles just several of many in the Empire, but with cultural heritage strongly shaped by them--but not exclusively--then we look to what happens to the ordinary people of the colonies as the criterion of good or bad. And compared to OTL, both West (and southern!) Africa and India look to be taking off as independent peoples on a much sounder basis than OTL. In terms of development of democratic, economic and working multicultural institutions, they are on firmer and higher ground.
So unfortunately there are Troubles ahead. (And God knows what Ireland is in for too). But given the lack of British acceptance of Irish dignity OTL, I don't count the Troubles that island has gone through as too high a price for the Irish Republic that has eventually emerged, and OTL I accept that India had to become independent, and even the West African nations, despite some severe and continuing problems, had to free themselves of the British yoke. This is OTL. It's too bad the Empire couldn't hang together ITTL, but here they will, despite terrible times in the separation, be emerging on a better basis than OTL, and so the messes of Indian and African separation seem all the more justified here. I lay the blame for any upcoming horrors on British reaction, mostly, and have faith the new republics (or possibly emirates, in some West African cases) will be stronger and more stable and more humane than their OTL counterparts.
I read my E.B. White as a child and regret it can't all be one happy Commonwealth. But it's clear enough to me where the stumbling blocks are to that. I do think at the end of the day that the fragments of Empire can get along civilly with each other, better than OTL. In particular I hope India pulls loose of the Empire without fragmenting off pieces of Pakistan, due to a stronger bond between Muslim and Hindu independence fighters.
As for West Africa, I expect that a transAtlantic relationship to South Carolina and African America in general will synergistically strengthen both parties on both sides of the Atlantic, and provide alternatives for West Africans seeking their own path of modernization--and leverage for African Americans. On that basis Liberia will be a stronger nation too.
Also, while West Africa may be foretold to split off the Empire for sure, we don't know South Africa will go the same way. I can see the parties there perhaps hanging on to the Empire as framework and referee--it depends on how badly the upcoming decade of British reaction screws the pooch across the board. Maybe they can at least hang on to Cape Colony and the federation around it.
But anyway--India is worse off from a Raj Forever point of view, but relative to OTL, clearly better it seems to me.
I'm still sad the British blow the Empire, but on their head be it.
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Omar's story is looking hopeful to me. I suppose he won't be coming back for Marie-Claire, any more than Umar Abacar wound up marrying the English girl he knew. Marie-Claire will find her own life, the way the English girl wound up in India as a major mover and shaker. Maybe her life will be more obscure, but decent--and the better for crossing Omar's path.
So is France in general. With the Liguists losing the civil war, I don't suppose clerical reaction will vanish completely, but the Empire seems settled on a decently liberal-secularist axis, enough for the diverse range of views to co-oexist without killing each other. I doubt their Troubles are completely over, but the dice are loaded on the liberal side, I trust.
Long ago (well, once peace started breaking out) I wondered what would be the fate of the Spanish colonies. I think enough people associated with the Philippines have come forward so we can have a plausible working out of what happens there, but I think we are still in suspense about Cuba and Puerto Rico. I rather thought the Pope might muck things up there royally, but we've seen talk from Filipino fans of the timeline about how the Filipino Papal Legionists might be a monkey wrench for the Spanish regime there.
Would there have been any Carribean Legionaires at all? My impression was, the prestige of the Catholic Church was even more fatally entangled in the abuses of the Spanish regime there than in the Philippines. But I don't really know. Were Cuban national liberationists also anticlerical across the board, or like the Filipinos was there some basis of islander Catholicism that protested Castilian rule but embraced the Faith?
And the whole Yankee issue is even more inseparable from the Caribbean islands than from the distant Philippines. If Cuba is being churned up in a nasty civil war, just across the water from the tip of Florida--just how do the Yanks stay out? Long ago I predicted ambivalence in the Carolinian African-American community--that there would be Republican Afro-Americans from Carolina and elsewhere who have been quite assimilated into general Yankee jingoism arguing that the USA should do right by the oppressed brown people of Cuba, versus the Tubmanites who are very skeptical of what a white-dominated America will actually do there. Is a third path, of supporting genuine local autonomy there, possible, and can the autonomists hope to navigate Scylla and Charbidis, between hungry Yankee imperialism that is not chastened by the terrible costs of the Great War and the Spanish status quo?
Or can the timeline's general meliorism allow for a wiser Spanish regime that can actually hold on to Cuba and PR by offering the people there a decent deal? I think there has been some hint of that in Jonathan's remarks. It might not be enough to hold the Philippines, but can the alt-Hearsts and Pulitizers be confounded by peace in the Caribbean, and the sheer distance of the Philippines?
The British, and BOGs in general, don't owe Spain any favors, and the French are not in much of a position to champion them, so it all comes down to, how liberal and capable is the alt-Spanish government, with the Pope joggling their elbows?
The Pope seems to be on mighty thin ice in Spain by now, with the liberal government. The question is, how thin is the ice that liberal government sits on?
I don't have the "hope;" a big backstop of my hopes is that there isn't going to be another Great War for sixty years at least, God willing never.
But I was just writing about the mess the USA might be in for. None of the great "opportunities" for the "American Century" have fallen into Yankee imperialist laps yet; no acquistion of Hawaii, Samoa, or possessions in the Caribbean. It's hard to see, whatever the outcome of things in the Philippines, how the Americans get involved so far overseas, with none of those other island possessions to bridge the gap.
So there will probably be one big disgruntled American imperialist faction. I can hope the Peace Party and Progressives and Populists hold them in check.
But given that we know the British are in for a bout of serious hubris, some ugliness might shape up in the Western Hemisphere; the Americans might throw down for a place in the sun in "our backyard" and have the peoples of the Caribbean and Central America choosing sides between us and a recently more race-hierarchic British Empire, the previous hegemons. This could react back on US domestic politics, in a way I'd fear is basically bad, as white supremacists might have major innings. Or vice versa--the USA might decisively turn its back on White Supremacy at last, but only in the cause of conquest at the expense of the Empire.
That looks like a formula for major global war to me and hence is presumably excluded--what isn't unfortunately excluded is a white-supremacist USA that loses to the devil the contested peoples know, even if they are getting more devilish.
So there's one theatre of possible brewing bad. The world is full of others. God knows what will become of China for instance, or how much pooch-screwing the British might be up for in Southeast Asia, or even in parts of Africa.
I'm a sentimental sap and I vote for global good feeling in the first half of the 20th century, with a USA disabused of dreams of empire and liking it.
But there are faultlines and flashpoints aplenty still left. All we know is, no big global wars until the later 1950s.
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I have to wonder--a canal of some sort connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific across Central America somewhere has got to be in the works. Who builds it, and where?
I'm sick of global goodfeeling- as wonderful and catholic and erudite as this masterpiece is, it has been, on the whole, too positive for my jade glasses. I need to see Shakespearean ambitions lead to failures worthy of a Greek tragedy- I need to see the dark side of the human condition, along with all the good and all the common touch that this TL has provided so deftly.
I hope Britain's global endeavors grandly implode in spite of those who seek to save it. If France can have Civil War between the government and Reaktion, than Britain can fail on a grand scale.
I hope Britain's global endeavors grandly implode in spite of those who seek to save it. If France can have Civil War between the government and Reaktion, than Britain can fail on a grand scale.
You know, the Whitening thing in Brazil was mentioned before, but actually I think it might well be a global trend in this timeline. It's still likely for Brazil, but in this timeline we also have the Cape Dutch coopting the mixed race peoples (pretty much all the Afrikaans speakers had a white ancestor somewhere) and the racial-mixing-Swedish-sect in East Africa. I could easily imagine that being one strand of progressive thought toward the problem of race at the opening of the century.
This WWI was much more destructive than OTL's WWI, and with the destruction and death spread over a much larger area. India suffered far more war casualties compared to OTL, Africa was far more devastated by the war, South America had its own upheavals; the only continent to not be significantly touched by the war was North America (Australasia had its share of the war dead). There's been plenty of tragedy.
Well, I don't know myself, but I do happen to have electronic copies of about twenty books on the teaching method and/or it's history. If you're interested I could probably get a couple to you.
I actually have the scanned notebook of Maria Montessori herself, though heaven knows what I'll ever do with it.
Hnau
Banned
Agreed. Though it looks like it'll be turning into a better world, it has paid a price for progress.
Dragos Cel Mare
Banned
Again, agreed. And of course, there's the earlier spread of AIDS; that ought to be enough grimdarkness to satisfy people who are into that sort of stuff.
IIRC the Australian-England cricketing competitions started in the 1870s or 80s - well before federation and it seemed like both teams were competitive at the time. Hard to really say here, as sport of that era was so different from today.
With the earlier Great War and Fellowship of Comrades-in-Arms etc it might be that *British sports get spread about and popularised sooner amongst a wider range of people. I would suspect that having lots of young armed fit men in close proximity would require a lot of distracting sports to be put on by the high command or the local hosts.
With the earlier Great War and Fellowship of Comrades-in-Arms etc it might be that *British sports get spread about and popularised sooner amongst a wider range of people. I would suspect that having lots of young armed fit men in close proximity would require a lot of distracting sports to be put on by the high command or the local hosts.
Wow, thanks for all the comments! Fortunately I'm on a conference call this morning, so I have plenty of time to answer them.
True enough. But they're also going to reach a critical point in their demands for self-rule at a time when the British are less willing to accept facts than they were during the 1947-60 period in OTL. India, in particular, will reach that point when a reactionary government is in power in London, and will do so precisely because of that government's policies.
So India and the African colonies - not to mention Southeast Asia, which will have a greater measure of autonomy under British rule than it did in OTL under the French - will indeed be better set up to function as independent countries, but the struggles before they get there might in some cases be quite a bit worse. They'll be worth it... in the end.
There won't be a Pakistan or Bangladesh, but there might be a few holes in the map, for reasons that will become clear around 1915-20.
There are also the Coaster peoples knitting the West African ports together economically and to some extent culturally, who have managed to operate under the colonial empires' radar and/or make themselves useful enough to stay in business.
He won't marry her, especially since while she isn't quite old enough to be his mother, she's a good fifteen years his senior. She was a doctor at a field hospital where he spent some time after being wounded in action. Her relationship with him was a maternal and teaching one - she noticed he was interested in medicine, so when he got well enough to help, she put him to work. Eventually he got sent back to the front, but the idea of a career in medicine stayed in his mind.
Marie-Claire has returned to private practice at this point, and we may hear from her again. We will see Omar again, but as stated above, I won't say where.
I'm not sure what the situation was in OTL, but TTL is a different environment - the liberal Spanish government granted autonomy to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the 1870s, so there's less nationalist-establishment tension.
What happens in Puerto Rico and Cuba will depend in large part on what happens in Spain. If Spain continues on a moderate, liberal course, they may stay. But if it turns into something that the Cubans and Puerto Ricans don't want to be part of - whether because an ultra-right-wing government takes power, because a radical left-wing one does, or because the country descends to a state of low-grade civil war - then they'll reconsider, and at that point, the United States may or may not get involved.
And as you mention, nearly all the Spanish factions are on thin ice.
It will definitely be a strand - money whitens, and politics might also whiten if (as in the Afrikaners' case) the adoption of nonwhites is necessary to ensure a group's dominance or keep it relevant. I'm guessing there will be a fair amount of this in the Portuguese colonies, which are still under a ramshackle, early 19th-century type of administration.
Of course, there will be others who want no part of such thinking, either because they refuse to accept nonwhites at all or because they don't see "whitening" as necessary or desirable. Look for this as a conflict in southern Africa and, to a lesser extent, parts of east Africa.
For now, the veterans are tired of war and happy to be demobilized, and as long as the "partnership raj" looks like it might work, they'll give it a chance.
Once things go bad, though, the veterans will be a major force - and some of them will have less patience than others.
Hmmm, not sure. I assume something like it would exist, maybe with different rules - given the evidence of the Mesoamerican ball games, someone's bound to get the idea of throwing a ball through a hoop.
So more cricket and rugby in central Europe, Africa and southeast Asia (I'd really like to get sevens going in Fiji and Australasia). How big was (association) football at this point? Might be interesting if some rugby variant became the leading world sport in its place.
As I've said before, part of this is my fault - I've told the story of the Great War mostly through narratives, and much of the worst of it has happened offstage. Now that we're about to revert to a mostly-academic format (albeit probably with more narrative interludes than before), the conflicts will be more front and center.
Those who like this timeline for its hopefulness will find much to like about the twentieth century; those who want to see more conflict will also find much to like. The Great War has overturned all the nineteenth-century verities just as our own First World War did, and while that opens the door to a better world, it also means many disputes over what happens next.
Right now, the following conflicts, at minimum, are brewing:
The first "academic" update on the postwar shakeout will hopefully be ready by the end of the week; if not, then sometime over the weekend.
True enough. But they're also going to reach a critical point in their demands for self-rule at a time when the British are less willing to accept facts than they were during the 1947-60 period in OTL. India, in particular, will reach that point when a reactionary government is in power in London, and will do so precisely because of that government's policies.
So India and the African colonies - not to mention Southeast Asia, which will have a greater measure of autonomy under British rule than it did in OTL under the French - will indeed be better set up to function as independent countries, but the struggles before they get there might in some cases be quite a bit worse. They'll be worth it... in the end.
There won't be a Pakistan or Bangladesh, but there might be a few holes in the map, for reasons that will become clear around 1915-20.
There are also the Coaster peoples knitting the West African ports together economically and to some extent culturally, who have managed to operate under the colonial empires' radar and/or make themselves useful enough to stay in business.
He won't marry her, especially since while she isn't quite old enough to be his mother, she's a good fifteen years his senior. She was a doctor at a field hospital where he spent some time after being wounded in action. Her relationship with him was a maternal and teaching one - she noticed he was interested in medicine, so when he got well enough to help, she put him to work. Eventually he got sent back to the front, but the idea of a career in medicine stayed in his mind.
Marie-Claire has returned to private practice at this point, and we may hear from her again. We will see Omar again, but as stated above, I won't say where.
I'm not sure what the situation was in OTL, but TTL is a different environment - the liberal Spanish government granted autonomy to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the 1870s, so there's less nationalist-establishment tension.
What happens in Puerto Rico and Cuba will depend in large part on what happens in Spain. If Spain continues on a moderate, liberal course, they may stay. But if it turns into something that the Cubans and Puerto Ricans don't want to be part of - whether because an ultra-right-wing government takes power, because a radical left-wing one does, or because the country descends to a state of low-grade civil war - then they'll reconsider, and at that point, the United States may or may not get involved.
And as you mention, nearly all the Spanish factions are on thin ice.
It will definitely be a strand - money whitens, and politics might also whiten if (as in the Afrikaners' case) the adoption of nonwhites is necessary to ensure a group's dominance or keep it relevant. I'm guessing there will be a fair amount of this in the Portuguese colonies, which are still under a ramshackle, early 19th-century type of administration.
Of course, there will be others who want no part of such thinking, either because they refuse to accept nonwhites at all or because they don't see "whitening" as necessary or desirable. Look for this as a conflict in southern Africa and, to a lesser extent, parts of east Africa.
For now, the veterans are tired of war and happy to be demobilized, and as long as the "partnership raj" looks like it might work, they'll give it a chance.
Once things go bad, though, the veterans will be a major force - and some of them will have less patience than others.
Hmmm, not sure. I assume something like it would exist, maybe with different rules - given the evidence of the Mesoamerican ball games, someone's bound to get the idea of throwing a ball through a hoop.
So more cricket and rugby in central Europe, Africa and southeast Asia (I'd really like to get sevens going in Fiji and Australasia). How big was (association) football at this point? Might be interesting if some rugby variant became the leading world sport in its place.
As I've said before, part of this is my fault - I've told the story of the Great War mostly through narratives, and much of the worst of it has happened offstage. Now that we're about to revert to a mostly-academic format (albeit probably with more narrative interludes than before), the conflicts will be more front and center.
Those who like this timeline for its hopefulness will find much to like about the twentieth century; those who want to see more conflict will also find much to like. The Great War has overturned all the nineteenth-century verities just as our own First World War did, and while that opens the door to a better world, it also means many disputes over what happens next.
Right now, the following conflicts, at minimum, are brewing:
- In the British Empire, the proponents of a federal arrangement against those who prefer Britain to be a master dominating its possessions, both of whom will be part of a larger dispute over social hierarchies. This will be a growing background issue during the 1900s and become very sharp in the 1910s.
- The Ottoman Empire will have several fault lines: proponents of real democracy against those who favor the quasi-democratic status quo; centralists against autonomists; peripheral nationalisms (especially Arab nationalism) against supporters of a unified Ottoman identity. These are already starting, and all of them have religious overtones.
- China: reactionaries against reformers against radical peasants and regional separatists. Islamic reformism will play a (limited) part, so some of this will happen onstage.
- Messy borders in eastern Europe: this will be one of the regions that becomes a laboratory for post-Westphalianism, and the process by which that happens won't be pretty. It already isn't pretty in what's left of Hungary, and these conflicts will continue intermittently well into the century.
- Catholic reaction versus Catholic liberalism versus laicism - a big deal in Italy, Spain, France and Belgium (where the ultramontanes and the military are currently in power), and possibly Austria and elsewhere. Maybe Brazil eventually, and even the Philippines.
- Decolonization in Africa, which will involve both the independence struggles and internal conflicts (including Oman/Zanzibar, where much of the interior is a "colony" of the coast). This will start to heat up in the 1910s and continue until after independence in the 1940s-50s, and will be peaceful in some places but less so in others. Likewise for the Dutch East Indies, where things will get intermittently violent.
The first "academic" update on the postwar shakeout will hopefully be ready by the end of the week; if not, then sometime over the weekend.
I love the idea of Germany becoming a cricketing nation, if only to mirror that bit in Fatherland where cricket is specifically mentioned as the only sport Germany doesn't dominate in Europe (because they don't play it).
Association football had a significant head-start over other codes at this point IOTL; the English Football Association, and the attendant League and Cup competitions, were already well established, and leagues were beginning to be established abroad. Of course, a lot of that will have been disrupted by the war, but it's likely association rules will have been spread in the same way as cricket and rugby during the war. I don't quite have the time to write a full analysis now, but I think that if the rules of soccer are the same as OTL then it has too many advantages to be easily substituted as the world's number one sport.
One thought about rugby, though - TTL's Great War comes at about the time of OTL's split between the Union and League codes. Since you've mentioned the development of rugby sevens, it would be really interesting to see how the schism between the full codes would be affected/butterflied as well.
(Apologies, rambling off on a minor point. Hopefully you'll be able to glean something of value from it...)
It won't be the same kind of Arab nationalism that existed in OTL. But even in the 1830s, there were outbreaks of Arab grievance against arbitrary Ottoman rule. The Ottoman quasi-democracy of TTL will ameliorate those grievances somewhat, but not entirely: the Arab parts of the empire are run by corrupt landlords and headmen, and the government's industrialization and economic development programs have mostly been directed to northwest Anatolia. Many Arabs feel that they are being left behind and that, unlike the Balkan Christians, they have no outside power to speak for them.
The "Arab nationalism" that exists at this point is more a movement for more democracy and for local priorities to be taken into account than a one for outright independence, but it will still be a major challenge to the status quo, especially when combined with the challenges taking place in other parts of the empire.
If cricket follows the British troops, then not only Germany but Italy, Bohemia, Poland and parts of the Ottoman Empire will be cricketing nations. Better watch those Bosnians - they'll hit you for six every time.
Italy, a cricketing nation? Football will always be the most popular sport here - after all, it was introduced by the British and expatriate Italians in the last decades of OTL's XIX century, and it probably has already been introduced this way in ATL, too - but I can see cricket becoming as popular in ATL Italy as rugby, basketball or volleyball are in OTL Italy, if not even more. (I'm not sure if basketball and volleyball exist in ATL) It'd be ASB to have cricket become popular in Italy in most timelines, but you made it plausible.
I always loved the idea of the Olympics and it's good to see they are back in this TL. Regarding sports butterflies it would be fun to have a stronger Australian rules football spreading in Australasia, otherwise I think the rules for Rugby would be subtly different from ours if there is no split (however there were problems between rich club in southern England and poor ones in the north that would need to be addressed). I wonder what will be the situation in France because football codes would be seen as English but on the other hand, it may be too integrated to be rejected.
I was reading about the life of one of my preferred poet : Arthur Rimbaud, if he had been a bit more successful in his adventures, he could have had a role in the great war. There is also Appolinaire who could write some poems about the war.
I am happy to see this TL continue so thank you.
I was reading about the life of one of my preferred poet : Arthur Rimbaud, if he had been a bit more successful in his adventures, he could have had a role in the great war. There is also Appolinaire who could write some poems about the war.
I am happy to see this TL continue so thank you.