Dunno about it, but if I was following AH back in 2012 or had seen it in the Cabal, I'd likely had pestered Jonathan a fair degree about his Greek parts.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
I just watched this video too and realized how much I have been missing by not reading this TL. I am also sad that there is not another video I can find to learn more about the plot. Does anyone know an easy way for me to get a summery of the TL besides going through each post on here?
Here is the link from alternatehistorywiki (some of the links doesn't work)
You also have the threadmarks here to use. Most of the posts were not threadmarked given that the new feature was not present back then.
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My apologies to everyone for taking so long to answer these comments - I was away for a while, things happened (mostly good things, but things), and catching up took longer than I anticipated.
It's hard to say, though. I don't think my fundamental values have changed, but the last few years have schooled me on how fragile seemingly-established political orders can be and how easy it is to strain social relationships during crises. A timeline written now would probably reflect that in some way - I don't think I let any of the sociopolitical developments in the Malêverse go unchallenged, but if I were writing from scratch, I'd might challenge it more strongly and include some incidents to show that even the most deeply entrenched reforms are never permanently beyond debate. I wouldn't make the story dystopian, and I'd still aim to explore the same themes and end it in roughly the same place, but it might get there through a more difficult and less certain path - looking back, I think I may have Mary Sued this universe a bit.
Stylistically, I'd probably want to focus more on storytelling, with more emphasis on vignettes and less on "history book" excerpts - the timeline as a whole might look more like the Great War and Indian War of Independence arcs or maybe like the 1955-70 slices of life, with more being shown and less being told. Those were always my favorite parts of the timeline to write, and in the past decade, I've both become more confident as a writer and more convinced that lived-in worlds are the best. I might include more of the in-universe literary excerpts too - those were lots of fun.
You're assuming that I'd have the audacity to start a project like this now.
It's hard to say, though. I don't think my fundamental values have changed, but the last few years have schooled me on how fragile seemingly-established political orders can be and how easy it is to strain social relationships during crises. A timeline written now would probably reflect that in some way - I don't think I let any of the sociopolitical developments in the Malêverse go unchallenged, but if I were writing from scratch, I'd might challenge it more strongly and include some incidents to show that even the most deeply entrenched reforms are never permanently beyond debate. I wouldn't make the story dystopian, and I'd still aim to explore the same themes and end it in roughly the same place, but it might get there through a more difficult and less certain path - looking back, I think I may have Mary Sued this universe a bit.
Stylistically, I'd probably want to focus more on storytelling, with more emphasis on vignettes and less on "history book" excerpts - the timeline as a whole might look more like the Great War and Indian War of Independence arcs or maybe like the 1955-70 slices of life, with more being shown and less being told. Those were always my favorite parts of the timeline to write, and in the past decade, I've both become more confident as a writer and more convinced that lived-in worlds are the best. I might include more of the in-universe literary excerpts too - those were lots of fun.
I wish you'd been there - it's always great when people more familiar with the relevant history and culture than I am can keep me honest.Dunno about it, but if I was following AH back in 2012 or had seen it in the Cabal, I'd likely had pestered Jonathan a fair degree about his Greek parts.
In addition to the wiki link that @Libertad mentioned, there's also a TV Tropes page with a capsule summary and some more detail (along with minor spoilers - be warned) in the trope listings. This timeline defies easy summarization, though - there are a lot of cascading effects from the original POD, and I ended up exploring many social and cultural ideas along the way. My best advice, if you're interested, would be to jump in and don't let it intimidate you; if there's anything specific you want to ask, don't hesitate to do so here or message me.
I'm certain that there is no cabal, that could address this.
Great answer, Jonathan.
If we've got you here answering questions: given that the past decade has seen a renewed and revitalised discussion about the memory of imperialism and colonialism in Western cultures, has that- in particular- had any effect on how you imagine the Malê Rising universe? Did, for example, 'Rhodes Must Fall' make you reconsider how you depicted surviving European colonies in Africa?
I hope that doesn't sound accusatory, it's 12:30 here and I'm too tired (and frankly, tipsy) to fine the question down.
If we've got you here answering questions: given that the past decade has seen a renewed and revitalised discussion about the memory of imperialism and colonialism in Western cultures, has that- in particular- had any effect on how you imagine the Malê Rising universe? Did, for example, 'Rhodes Must Fall' make you reconsider how you depicted surviving European colonies in Africa?
I hope that doesn't sound accusatory, it's 12:30 here and I'm too tired (and frankly, tipsy) to fine the question down.
Wouldn't even matter if it did - I'm pretty hard to offend.
Anyway, "Rhodes Must Fall" happened while I was finishing the main timeline, and it wasn't really anything new. Decolonization of public space has been an issue for a long time - witness, for instance, renaming of cities (Leopoldville --> Kinshasa, Salisbury ---> Harare) and the periodic controversies over the Faidherbe statues in Senegal. I was very much aware of this when I was writing this story - I hope I wouldn't have to be told that colonialism is an exploitative practice that leaves trauma and controversies over memory in its wake.
Colonialism is also a continuum, and so are the responses to it. At one extreme are genocidal hellscapes like the Congo Free State; at the other end are places like Mayotte that saw enough in it for themselves to want to stay; and there's a lot of space in between. Of course, given the inherently exploitative nature of colonialism, the median is a lot closer to the Congo Free State than to Mayotte or Aruba, which is why nearly all colonies fought for independence - but if you talk to, say, many middle and upper-class Nigerians (to use the example I know best), there's a lot of nuance in how they view the colonial period.
ITTL, colonialism is still an inherently exploitative relationship, and most colonies still chose independence. OTOH, there were more constraints to the exploitation, both because Europe depleted its resources and manpower two decades earlier than OTL and because the colonized peoples were better able to resist and to force better treatment. So the median was a bit further toward the right of the curve, the colonized peoples were able to force more benefit for themselves out of the relationship, and there were more Mayottes and Arubas even though those were still not the norm. There were also more New Caledonias and Puerto Ricos - places like Gabon and Algeria that remained with the metropole but had many discontents - as well as the singular case of Portugal where the colonies basically took over. So I think the surviving European possessions in Africa ITTL, and the ways in which they negotiated their relationships with their respective metropoles, are part of the continuum, as are the very different, more Rhodes Must Fall-like ways that other post-colonial states ITTL chose to remember.
I'm definitely aware that this is the aspect of TTL that has come up for the most critical discussion - fairly so, I think - both while the timeline was in progress and now. I wouldn't say, though, that TTL represents an attempt to "improve" colonialism. The colonial relationship is still an exploitative one. To the extent that the exploitation was tempered, it wasn't because Europeans became more beneficient or altruistic, it was because they faced stronger constraints; to the extent colonialism ITTL evolved into more equal relationships in some places, that happened because the colonized peoples forced it to do so. Whether that's a satisfactory answer is in the eye of the beholder; I've certainly been wrong about other things.
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Just dropping in to mention that I've written a new Mutanda-verse story, And Where I Go In Dreams - if anyone's interested, I'd appreciate your thoughts before I edit and submit.
This article by Oludamini Ogunnaike about postcolonial education and attempts to diversify education and their failures may be of interest
Due to the relevancy of the map, here is a map of the Rubaiyat scenario mentioned as a Man in the High Castle Equivalent .
All credit to B_Munro for the 1900 base map
@Jonathan Edelstein I would need to edit out the numbers
All credit to B_Munro for the 1900 base map
@Jonathan Edelstein I would need to edit out the numbers
Attachments
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Thanks! Are there any critiques @Jonathan Edelstein
Also I have a few questions about the meta-TL if you don’t mind?
1. Is the *Ottoman governing ideology like that of the OTL wartime Committee of Union and Progress, with its attempts at borrowing the worst features of European and Japanese imperialism and secular Social Darwinism?
2. How do the Russians administer Western China and Yemen?
3. Are there nationalist secret societies in the colonies and other methods of resistance ?
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The map is great - give me a couple weeks and I'll come up with some suitably grim notes for it.
That plus the worst of Kemalism. The postwar Ottoman Empire in the meta-TL decided that its near-collapse both during the war and on past occasions resulted from losing control of its periphery, and that it had to make damn sure that never happened again. It has imposed totalitarian central control and is attempting to culturally Turkify all the minorities - banning minority languages (except Arabic, which it can't ban without banning Islam, but non-religious use is strongly discouraged), "encouraging" adoption of Turkish customs and dress, the whole nine. All this is enforced by periodic massacres of noncompliant minorities, up to and including genocide if the noncompliance is strategically threatening enough - I'm fairly sure, for instance, that the Armenians have suffered at least as much in the meta-TL as IOTL, and the Jews and Serbs probably have as well.
Western China is an extension of Russian Central Asia - it has been made into integral provinces of the Russian Empire which that empire is aggressively Russifying and Christianizing. The semi-tolerance of Buddhism that the Russian Empire practiced IOTL isn't really a thing in the meta-TL.
Yemen, Eritrea and Somalia (Ethiopia has managed to stay more of a client state) are garrisoned with cantonists - soldiers primarily from minority groups who are drafted at age 12, sent to military school, and serve as soldiers from 18 to 38. This practice was abolished in the 1850s IOTL but continues in the meta-TL. After being released from service, the cantonists are required to stay as settlers, with the quid pro quo being that they are eligible for administrative offices and that their children will be considered full Russians. These, along with the naval stations, form the backbone of Russian control, ruling over the disenfranchised Yemeni, Eritrean and Somali populations, although their control over the inland nomads has never been complete.
Absolutely, and some of them have managed to survive where the terrain is difficult and isolated enough - in the mountains, deep in the jungle, in deserts and swamps. The empires don't have the technology or the resources to root them out completely. But their existence is always precarious and becoming more so.
Also:
Thanks!
1) this reminds me of the Societist Eternal state which adopted Societist cultural genocide in the areas of Turkey and the Balkans it controls
4) Are there internal systemic failure modes for the empires? Ephraim Ben Raphael’s Separated at Birth, a reconstruction of the Draka series, has the Drakia and their allies “win” for 14 months before a Russo-Drakian war and a general slave/princely state revolt occur
Obviously there is also general nuclear war.
5) Do populous colonies like India or Japanese China or even British America still use native bureaucrats or any kind of intermediate layer?
Thanks!
1) this reminds me of the Societist Eternal state which adopted Societist cultural genocide in the areas of Turkey and the Balkans it controls
4) Are there internal systemic failure modes for the empires? Ephraim Ben Raphael’s Separated at Birth, a reconstruction of the Draka series, has the Drakia and their allies “win” for 14 months before a Russo-Drakian war and a general slave/princely state revolt occur
Obviously there is also general nuclear war.
5) Do populous colonies like India or Japanese China or even British America still use native bureaucrats or any kind of intermediate layer?
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I'm way behind on LTTW - I need to catch up sometime soon.
Britain, class; France, class; Germany, class and religion (there was an attempt at Kulturkampf 2.0; it did not go well); Russia, class and logistics; Ottoman, logistics and Islam (comes back to the "can't ban Arabic" thing, plus there are limits to how much a Caliphate can repress the mosques); Japan, logistics and particularly energy.
Also finance, for all six - imperialism costs a crap ton of money. The Germans and Ottomans probably have the fewest financial stresses (Germany has the easiest logistical issues and and a network of relatively prosperous client states; the Ottomans have that sweet, sweet oil), and Russia has the most. And several of them - Russia, Japan, Germany and the Ottomans, but also France vis-a-vis Algeria - have core or near-core territories that are as restive as the colonies.
They have to, because the metropolitan populations aren't big enough to run the empire on their own. Chinese and Korean people can join the Japanese bureaucracy by taking a Japanese name, becoming more Japanese than the Emperor, and passing a civil service exam that is basically the keju system adjusted to measure cultural assimilation. For Indians, it's basically like the late 19th-century Raj IOTL, with a very, very strong glass ceiling. The British dominions get somewhat more respect, but not that much more; they have roughly as much self-government as they did in the 18th century and are much more closely policed.
BTW, in case anyone is wondering why the last few posts are so dystopian, we aren't talking about the main Malê Rising timeline, we're talking about the Rubaiyat of Shahrzad Esfahani, an in-universe dystopian alternate history novel that, as @Beatriz has said, bears a passing resemblance in topic and theme to The Man in the High Castle. (And while I've got your attention, there's a new story-focused work in progress of mine here, which involves Ottoman Palestine.)
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This is so great. I’m on page 46 right now,so no spoilers please^^.
I learned al lot about African politicians at the time
I learned al lot about African politicians at the time