Kaiphranos
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Hmm, a Russo-Chinese War... could this be our opportunity for some armored train action in TTL? 
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Shoot, I go on a surprise vacation, and so much happens! I definitely occupied myself during the plane ride by starting through the forum pages from way back - I was already interested, but I must say that the background conversations and debates that accompanied your posts are even more fun than I thought! I had totally forgotten how the Napoleonic dynasty managed to hold onto power, and reading through it all made me really, really want to find a dibiterie while I was in Paris.
...I have contributed!!</squeaky voice>
Much jetlag right now, so that's as far as I've gotten (lol), but I'm quite stoked to get through the new pages!
...I have contributed!!</squeaky voice>
Much jetlag right now, so that's as far as I've gotten (lol), but I'm quite stoked to get through the new pages!
I doubt that any former colony will try to rejoin as a colony, although there are some that might seek integral union as Anjouan did, or more likely seek a close association while maintaining independence.
Cochin China is something of a unique case - after the Great War, tens of thousands of (mostly Catholic) Vietnamese people with French citizenship went to France or French-allied Brazil, so the Vietnamese diaspora is overwhelmingly French-influenced. Those who are coming home now that Cochin China has attained self-government are bringing French culture with them, and since they have a disproportionate share of capital, they'll be influential in Cochin-Chinese society. They might not seek political union with France but they'll favor close mercantile and cultural ties.
That could be a two-edged sword, though. Russian troops will start out a lot closer to the Chinese heartland than vice versa. China would have to advance a long way to threaten the Russian industrial plant, and even strategic bombing with 1940s aircraft might be a stretch, while the northern Chinese cities would be within range of Russian bombers at the beginning of the war. If China falls back, it would be doing so through more valuable territory than Russia, although as you say, if Russia loses Siberia it will be very hard if not impossible to regain a strategic advantage.
In many ways, it will be an even match - the more populous and rapidly industrializing rising power against the more developed and experienced but smaller one.
Very possibly. Thus far in TTL, there have been several attempts to develop blitzkrieg tactics, but the terrain and the attacking force's industrial plant were never ideal. Steppe warfare will be virtually ideal for a large-scale armor-driven assault. On the other hand, the prior, imperfect attempts at blitzkrieg have given the defending armies some idea of how to deal with it. The Russian observers in the Nile War might provide some very valuable knowledge, which would be an advantage to Russia at least at first.
Anyway, I won't say too much more now about how the war will be fought or how it will play out, given that it will be one of the defining events of the 1940s and will have a major effect on international politics and law, but I'll say that the parts Japan and Korea will play (if any) are still very much up in the air.
Hmm, a Russo-Chinese War... could this be our opportunity for some armored train action in TTL?
There was actually some of that in the Latin American theater of the Great War, and in the Indian war of independence, but it might happen on a larger scale in the vastness of Siberia.
Shoot, I go on a surprise vacation, and so much happens! I definitely occupied myself during the plane ride by starting through the forum pages from way back - I was already interested, but I must say that the background conversations and debates that accompanied your posts are even more fun than I thought! I had totally forgotten how the Napoleonic dynasty managed to hold onto power, and reading through it all made me really, really want to find a dibiterie while I was in Paris.
The conversations with an educated audience are a big part of the fun of writing these stories - I've learned a great deal about OTL from them, and not only in the field of history.
And if you're close to NYC, there are some good dibiteries on 116th Street, although I'd bet money that the best ones in Paris are better.
I can't but agree on your appreciation of Russian and Chinese industrial heartlands' vulnerability, but I have to point out that the war objective is Manchuria, not Siberia and even less industrial plants in European Russia. The further the Chinese could want to come would be close enough to the Transsiberian, to render it useless.
It could refer to USSR vs Third Reich. I agree it could be a double-edged parallel as the Red Army finally took Berlin, but contrary to Stalin who had rooted any opposition, Ma Qi has still, seemingly, to deal with opponents to his agrarian reform, and unless Ma Qi be willing to cause a famine like Mao did, the peasant class should remain very important to ensure recolts and thus remain an important source of opposition.
The way China went through Ma Qi's reforms makes me thinking that it is a giant with feet of clay. This economic expansion would be of no use if another civil war breaks out.
To me, it seems that Russia has the initial advantage; the wide open spaces will make a power with a more developed industrial base to produce aircraft and armour important. The other advantage that Russia has is that it isn't an implicit threat to all of its neighbours in the way China is. The result of a clearly victorious China will be a state with a clear claim to regional hegemony. Japan, Siam, Turkestan, even India and the European powers all will have an interest in making sure China doesn't get too big for its britches, or carving bits and pieces off. China might be able to get Turkestan on board through concessions, or at least take it out of contention through sponsoring revolts, but China is going to have to deal with keeping substantial numbers of troops back to defend their other borders at best, and a multi-front war at worst.
On the other hand, probably Germany wouldn't mind taking Russia down a peg or two.
The problem is that the Russian region that borders China is not at all tank country. From Novokuznetsk to Khabarovsk, the region is covered by mountain ranges like the Altay, Sayan, and Stanovoy, that are mostly forested. Past Khabarovsk, the Amur valley is a large swamp, from Ussuriysk to Nikolayevsk-na-Amure. Beyond that swamp is the forested Sikhote-Alin Range. Past the initial border region, there are mountains all the way up to Anadyr east of the Lena, and west of the Lena there is a very large forest that phases into the swamp of the Ob basin. On the China side of the border, Manchuria and Inner/Southern Mongolia may be tank country, but Northern Mongolia is full of mountains. The Khingan Range separates Inner Mongolia and the North China Plain, creating chokepoints at Beijing and the Yellow River Valley. Also, the Manchus may not be too ready to take arms for China, considering how Ma replaced their comfy Manchu regime with a Uighur-Barbarian-Devil-Muslim-Heathen regime. Also, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Southern Siberia all have the weather of North Dakota.
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The East Indies are really interesting. Do you think that *Malaysia could join Nusantara? With its multi-tiered government structure, the monarchies could get complete autonomy while their citizens could benefit from closer ties with Batavia.
Given the cooperation over Sabah, is it also possible that some sort of East Indies Customs Union is created between *Malaysia, Nusantara, and the Philippine states?
Given the cooperation over Sabah, is it also possible that some sort of East Indies Customs Union is created between *Malaysia, Nusantara, and the Philippine states?
Problem is that (barring ATL butterflies) the Chinese and larger-than-OTL Indian minorities might abhor such a union as it might reduce their political, economic and social presence in the Dominion of Malaya. Even in OTL the combined Chinese-Hindu community formed over 40% of Malaya's populace when it declared independence, and they were not quiet about it.
Speaking of which, does Malaya have it's own home army? I remember there being a huge debate about it during Malaya's decolonization: the Malays wanted a permanent army with everyone participating while the Chinese wanted to be out of it.
Just a note, I noticed that someone has proposed an ISOT involving Malê Rising in the ASB section.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=318421
Essentially, it's considering what would happen if France, Austria-Hungary, and Russia from Malê's timeline on March 7, 1893 are transported to OTL. So far there isn't much discussion, but I think it's interesting to consider. Personally, I'd be interested in the reverse, with people from our world being sent into the Malê world. Even so, it would be cool to see where this idea could go.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=318421
Essentially, it's considering what would happen if France, Austria-Hungary, and Russia from Malê's timeline on March 7, 1893 are transported to OTL. So far there isn't much discussion, but I think it's interesting to consider. Personally, I'd be interested in the reverse, with people from our world being sent into the Malê world. Even so, it would be cool to see where this idea could go.
Journeys, 1940
Lagos:
The Lagos offices of Akhtar and Singh were in the new civic center, in one of the tall steel towers that seemed to be sprouting like weeds there. The company’s chief local agent, Tiberio Abacar, lived not far away in the Portuguese quarter, in an old colonial house that a succession of Afro-Brazilian families, both Aguda and Malê, had owned. From the roof of that house, he could see his office building and the Five Cowrie Creek beyond, and with the miracle of an electric fan behind him, it was also an excellent place to watch the Carnival wind its way through the streets.
“I’ve missed this,” said Funmilayo, holding a cup of sangria and looking down at the revelers decked in masks and feathers. “We had it in Ilorin every year when I was growing up, and your grandfather and I would march with the Abacarist party. The one in Paris isn’t the same.”
“This one’s more like the one in Rio,” Tiberio answered. “In Sokoto and Ilorin, it’s political, not religious. Here, it was the Agudas who were first, and they’re still mostly Catholic.”
“It’s political here too, though. Especially this year.”
“And if there were one in Ife?”
“I can’t imagine. With the Empire vote in two weeks, and with the ogboni and the egungun societies all taking sides, it would be more riot than festival. It’s bad enough there as things are.”
“Is that why you’re passing through here?” asked Carole, turning her attention momentarily from the younger of her two children. “Not that we aren’t always happy to see you…”
“I wouldn’t miss a vote like this one. Sokoto and Ilorin are lost causes after what happened in Yola, and I can’t say I blame them, but I hope I can convince Oyo to stay a dominion. We shouldn’t build walls between the Yoruba in Ife and the ones in Lagos…”
“Walls? Britain’s agreed a customs union with Ilorin and Sokoto even if they leave; wouldn’t they do the same for Oyo?”
“Not economic walls, Tiberio. Political walls. Cultural walls. I was on the British end of the talks with Ilorin, and I wouldn’t underestimate how much of a break leaving the empire would be. Would it really be better if students from Oyo who go to the Ibadan University, or Lagos industrialists who have plants in Ife, were foreigners?”
Not for the first time, Tiberio was reminded powerfully of how many worlds his aunt inhabited – a citizen of four countries and a member of three parliaments. It wasn’t always an easy thing for others to accept: it was the reason why, despite being one of the longer-serving members of the Corps législatif, she had never been even a junior minister or a party official, and it was why she would never be those things in the British House of Lords or the Oyo House of Cities either. But it was also the reason she had more clout than nearly anyone else who wasn’t a minister. If there were an issue that required back-channel diplomacy or close understanding of Britain and British Africa, she was the one who would be called on. He hoped that when she talked about how a breakup would look from the British side, the gathering of Oyo city-states would realize the same thing.
“… And,” she finished, “if we stay in, we’ll have something to say about what happens here.”
Tiberio nodded. The Crown Colony of Lagos had responsible government now, but the governor still had a veto and a list of reserve powers, and the colony was having the same debate over its future that the dominions to the north were having. Some of the marchers in the street below were sponsored by the British party or the independence party, and the Carnival songs they played often had pointed lyrics.
“We’d like to have Oyo on our side,” said Carole. “We’d like to stay in too – most of us would – but the governor’s making it impossible. One more push here and in the Lower Niger Colony is all we need, but I’m not sure we can do it on our own.”
“And you, Tiberio? Do you think we should stay?”
“The Chamber of Commerce does,” he temporized. “I’m not sure myself. If we could be a dominion the way Canada or Australasia is, maybe I could be sure, but sometimes the Empire Office looks at Africa, says ‘dominion’ and still means ‘colony.’ As long as things like Yola happen, I’ll have my doubts.”
He expected Funmi to reply – she was much more a skeptic of empires than her parents, but she’d inherited their preference for large federations and cultural mixing – but she nodded gravely instead and was silent. He could almost see her filing the information away for the next time someone in London or Paris asked her about the mood of Lagos’ business leaders.
“I told the Lords what I thought of Yola,” she said at last. “Both before and after. Have you shared your doubts with the chamber?”
“They’ve come up in discussion. I never wanted to be political, but…”
“…politics found you. Change comes to us all.” She realized she still had a glass of sangria in her hand and flourished it to emphasize the point: in her youth, she’d been strict about not drinking, but as she liked to say, her God had grown with her.
“But tell us about Paris,” Carole said – she always did know when a change of subject was necessary. “And the family. How are Noura and Madeleine, and your other children?”
Funmilayo lifted the cup again, and this time she drank from it. “I can tell you stories,” she said. “So many stories…”
Paris:
Every generation, it seemed, the nineteenth arrondissement changed. Ninety years ago, it had been full of Italians, Germans and Poles, licking their wounds after the ’48 revolutions and arguing passionately in the cafes. Sixty years ago, the quarante-huitards had been replaced by other immigrants lately come from Algeria and West Africa, and the arguments were held in mosques. Thirty years ago, the African working class had found homes elsewhere, and the nineteenth was the home of those who had become bourgeois and even wealthy; many tenements were replaced with fine town-homes and elegant apartments, and its parties and political deals were legendary.
Now, the haute sénégalais had also moved on, settled closer to the Seine in the districts where the rich Frenchmen lived. The nineteenth arrondissement was still African – that, at least, seemed like it would never change again – but those who lived there now were the painters, poets, and musicians, and three generations in France had made many of them as French as a Norman villager. The parties were still legendary, the arguments had returned, and so had the cafes.
Noura was no stranger to cafes or arguments, but she didn’t care for parties: she was as quiet and studious at thirty-eight as she had been at twelve, and her ideal social evening involved her husband, a couple of family friends and an outdoor table at a dibiterie. There were times, though, when parties couldn’t be avoided, especially where she was the guest of honor.
At least the gathering was at her favorite neighborhood restaurant rather than someplace fashionable and uncomfortable. The Dibiterie Souleymane had itself seen many of the neighborhood’s changes: it turned sixty this year, and although the old man was eight years dead, the place was still in the family. It was one of Souleymane’s grandchildren, in fact, who was at the head of the table, and he tapped it three times for silence.
“We’re here today to say farewell to Noura and Alassane, and to wish them well in their new employment at the University of Kazembe,” he said. “May their life of discovery continue in whatever new lands they discover…”
“I didn’t know there was a university in Kazembe,” said Noura’s neighbor Mariama amid the chorus of approval.
“For the past year. The technical colleges and the Higher School of the Humanities joined together. Madame Skłodowska’s chancellor.”
“It has a cultural mission, does it?” That was Oumou, a sculptor who claimed to find Noura’s mathematics endlessly inspiring. “Le Soir had some quotes from the king’s speech at its founding – ‘to catalog, preserve and protect what is African…’”
“With Skłodowska as chancellor? And with Chishimba heading the physics department? I don’t doubt it will be a fine school of African humanities, but that’s not what it’ll be famous for. There are Germans going to study there, and most of them aren’t going for the Lunda anthropology. And that wasn’t why they reached out to me either.”
“How did they find you?”
“Käthe Mutelo - she’s a nuclear physicist at Berlin Polytechnic [1] – was a student of Skłodowska’s, and she mentioned it to me at a conference last year. She must have mentioned me to someone else, too, because I got a letter two months later. Mamadou teaching geology made it even better. They like geologists down there.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“The Laumann company could tell you, no doubt.”
“So they’re offering you more than the Sorbonne?” asked Mariama.
“Less, actually. Prices are lower, so that will make up for some of the difference, but we still won’t live quite the way we do here.”
“Then why go?”
“Doesn’t everyone need a change of scene sometimes?”
“Yes, but…”
Noura began to speak, but Mamadou was already answering. “For ninety years, people have made things together in this place, and each one has taken what they’ve made into the world. It’s our turn, Noura and I. And… we both grew up French patriots, and we’ll always be, but Noura’s mother made sure we were African ones too…”
The South China Sea:
From where Madeleine stood on the deck of the Marie-Laure, she could see the lights of Saigon growing closer. She looked from them to the canvas in front of her, dipped her brush onto the palette and added a stroke, a bold pool of light to set off the buildings beyond the harbor.
She stepped back and looked at the canvas critically. It wasn’t good enough to show – none of her paintings were. She was a photographer, not a painter. But painting was a way to train the eye, and she liked the way that the nighttime skyline was developing. It might be good enough to hang up at home, once she and Noureddine found a place to stay.
“Very nice,” said a familiar voice, and she turned to see that her husband had come on deck. He stopped a pace or two behind her and gave the painting a closer look. He was a painter, and he’d taught her in the early years of their liaison, before they were married. He let that bias him only slightly in matters of artistic technique, but it seemed this time he approved.
“We’ll put it near a window,” he said. “But you should finish it soon. We’ll be in port in two hours.”
“My bags are already packed,” she answered, inclining her head at where they stood. She wasn’t bringing much more to Saigon than she’d brought to Dakar when they’d left Paris – keepsakes and personal things, a few changes of clothes, some jewelry and not much more. When they found a place, they’d furnish it here.
“I see.” There was the slightest hint of surprise in his voice, as if up to now he hadn’t seen how little she’d taken. “You wanted to leave Dakar behind that badly?”
“It wasn’t that, it was…” She trailed off, seeing Noureddine’s smile. He hadn’t meant what he’d just said, and he knew how she really felt – he knew, because he felt the same.
The truth was she was homesick already. She would miss photographing Dakar. That was a city that grew almost day to day, and its changes told a million stories – the old markets, the spreading resorts of the Senegalese Riviera, the N’Diaye Building which would rise forty stories graceful as a minaret, all the places, but even more, the people who built them.
Saigon, she’d heard, was more traditional, and the countryside beyond it more so yet. But it was changing too. France and Britain had washed over it in their turns, and now France was making itself felt again, but for the first time in eighty years, it was also free to be Vietnamese – and to decide what that meant.
“I want to be there when it happens,” she murmured.
“And be part of it happening?”
“Yes, that.” Madeleine wasn’t the only passenger on the Marie-Laure who had African or European as well as Vietnamese blood; some, in fact, were all three. The Vietnamese had gone out into the world, and this was one of the things they were bringing back: women like Madeleine who had African mothers, or men like Noureddine whose grandfather had served as a tirailleur in Saigon and come home with a Vietnamese wife.
She remembered a Belloist teacher her mother had known, in Paris when she was a child, and remembered one of the lessons he’d preached: a community is something that makes itself. Something had driven her here; maybe it was that.
“Maybe,” she said, “it will be home.”
Zanzibar:
“You really don’t have to come with me, Sabine,” said Mélisande.
“We’ve had this argument already. I’m coming, Mother. You aren’t going out there alone.”
Mélisande looked at Sabine’s face carefully and nodded, more thoroughly subdued by her daughter than she had ever been by kings or soldiers. “Let’s go to the house, then. There are a few last things I need.”
She looked around for the last time at the low brick building where she was, and through the window at the streets outside. This neighborhood had been a slum once, an unlicensed district on the edge of the city where people new-come from the interior had built huts and shelters. It was still poor, and life was still a struggle, but the people had made this health cooperative, and they had the clean water they’d fought for. More than that: it was a place, now, that people called home.
Abuya was at one side of the room with her medical class; she’d learned from Mélisande, and now she was the teacher. Good. Where the doctors don’t come, make everyone a doctor; if there are no police, let everyone enforce the law.
She couldn’t help feeling that she was abandoning them. But one thing she’d taken far too long to learn, in the days when she was a prophet, was that eventually you had to leave. Was it abandonment for a parent to let a grown child go into the world? The people here could take care of themselves and the others who would come, and could fight if the state tried to crush them again; for Mélisande to stay would only make them think of her as a leader or, worse, a ruler. There should be none of those but God, and certainly not me.
She caught herself and saw that Sabine was ready, and they walked out to the street. It was a long way to the Stone Town house that hadn’t really been a home since Paulo died, and it would be a longer way from there to what had lately been the northern provinces.
They’d only left the empire a few months ago, and already there was fighting: warlords looking for thrones to claim, new-made kingdoms squabbling over borders, peoples contending for living space or food or water. Those caught between them would need medicine, and they would also need arms and strength to resist warlords and armies – medicine could do only so much good in a sick place.
Maybe all of them together would heal it. There was only one way to know.
_______
[1] And someone with whom we’ve made brief acquaintance.
Lagos:
The Lagos offices of Akhtar and Singh were in the new civic center, in one of the tall steel towers that seemed to be sprouting like weeds there. The company’s chief local agent, Tiberio Abacar, lived not far away in the Portuguese quarter, in an old colonial house that a succession of Afro-Brazilian families, both Aguda and Malê, had owned. From the roof of that house, he could see his office building and the Five Cowrie Creek beyond, and with the miracle of an electric fan behind him, it was also an excellent place to watch the Carnival wind its way through the streets.
“I’ve missed this,” said Funmilayo, holding a cup of sangria and looking down at the revelers decked in masks and feathers. “We had it in Ilorin every year when I was growing up, and your grandfather and I would march with the Abacarist party. The one in Paris isn’t the same.”
“This one’s more like the one in Rio,” Tiberio answered. “In Sokoto and Ilorin, it’s political, not religious. Here, it was the Agudas who were first, and they’re still mostly Catholic.”
“It’s political here too, though. Especially this year.”
“And if there were one in Ife?”
“I can’t imagine. With the Empire vote in two weeks, and with the ogboni and the egungun societies all taking sides, it would be more riot than festival. It’s bad enough there as things are.”
“Is that why you’re passing through here?” asked Carole, turning her attention momentarily from the younger of her two children. “Not that we aren’t always happy to see you…”
“I wouldn’t miss a vote like this one. Sokoto and Ilorin are lost causes after what happened in Yola, and I can’t say I blame them, but I hope I can convince Oyo to stay a dominion. We shouldn’t build walls between the Yoruba in Ife and the ones in Lagos…”
“Walls? Britain’s agreed a customs union with Ilorin and Sokoto even if they leave; wouldn’t they do the same for Oyo?”
“Not economic walls, Tiberio. Political walls. Cultural walls. I was on the British end of the talks with Ilorin, and I wouldn’t underestimate how much of a break leaving the empire would be. Would it really be better if students from Oyo who go to the Ibadan University, or Lagos industrialists who have plants in Ife, were foreigners?”
Not for the first time, Tiberio was reminded powerfully of how many worlds his aunt inhabited – a citizen of four countries and a member of three parliaments. It wasn’t always an easy thing for others to accept: it was the reason why, despite being one of the longer-serving members of the Corps législatif, she had never been even a junior minister or a party official, and it was why she would never be those things in the British House of Lords or the Oyo House of Cities either. But it was also the reason she had more clout than nearly anyone else who wasn’t a minister. If there were an issue that required back-channel diplomacy or close understanding of Britain and British Africa, she was the one who would be called on. He hoped that when she talked about how a breakup would look from the British side, the gathering of Oyo city-states would realize the same thing.
“… And,” she finished, “if we stay in, we’ll have something to say about what happens here.”
Tiberio nodded. The Crown Colony of Lagos had responsible government now, but the governor still had a veto and a list of reserve powers, and the colony was having the same debate over its future that the dominions to the north were having. Some of the marchers in the street below were sponsored by the British party or the independence party, and the Carnival songs they played often had pointed lyrics.
“We’d like to have Oyo on our side,” said Carole. “We’d like to stay in too – most of us would – but the governor’s making it impossible. One more push here and in the Lower Niger Colony is all we need, but I’m not sure we can do it on our own.”
“And you, Tiberio? Do you think we should stay?”
“The Chamber of Commerce does,” he temporized. “I’m not sure myself. If we could be a dominion the way Canada or Australasia is, maybe I could be sure, but sometimes the Empire Office looks at Africa, says ‘dominion’ and still means ‘colony.’ As long as things like Yola happen, I’ll have my doubts.”
He expected Funmi to reply – she was much more a skeptic of empires than her parents, but she’d inherited their preference for large federations and cultural mixing – but she nodded gravely instead and was silent. He could almost see her filing the information away for the next time someone in London or Paris asked her about the mood of Lagos’ business leaders.
“I told the Lords what I thought of Yola,” she said at last. “Both before and after. Have you shared your doubts with the chamber?”
“They’ve come up in discussion. I never wanted to be political, but…”
“…politics found you. Change comes to us all.” She realized she still had a glass of sangria in her hand and flourished it to emphasize the point: in her youth, she’d been strict about not drinking, but as she liked to say, her God had grown with her.
“But tell us about Paris,” Carole said – she always did know when a change of subject was necessary. “And the family. How are Noura and Madeleine, and your other children?”
Funmilayo lifted the cup again, and this time she drank from it. “I can tell you stories,” she said. “So many stories…”
*******
Paris:
Every generation, it seemed, the nineteenth arrondissement changed. Ninety years ago, it had been full of Italians, Germans and Poles, licking their wounds after the ’48 revolutions and arguing passionately in the cafes. Sixty years ago, the quarante-huitards had been replaced by other immigrants lately come from Algeria and West Africa, and the arguments were held in mosques. Thirty years ago, the African working class had found homes elsewhere, and the nineteenth was the home of those who had become bourgeois and even wealthy; many tenements were replaced with fine town-homes and elegant apartments, and its parties and political deals were legendary.
Now, the haute sénégalais had also moved on, settled closer to the Seine in the districts where the rich Frenchmen lived. The nineteenth arrondissement was still African – that, at least, seemed like it would never change again – but those who lived there now were the painters, poets, and musicians, and three generations in France had made many of them as French as a Norman villager. The parties were still legendary, the arguments had returned, and so had the cafes.
Noura was no stranger to cafes or arguments, but she didn’t care for parties: she was as quiet and studious at thirty-eight as she had been at twelve, and her ideal social evening involved her husband, a couple of family friends and an outdoor table at a dibiterie. There were times, though, when parties couldn’t be avoided, especially where she was the guest of honor.
At least the gathering was at her favorite neighborhood restaurant rather than someplace fashionable and uncomfortable. The Dibiterie Souleymane had itself seen many of the neighborhood’s changes: it turned sixty this year, and although the old man was eight years dead, the place was still in the family. It was one of Souleymane’s grandchildren, in fact, who was at the head of the table, and he tapped it three times for silence.
“We’re here today to say farewell to Noura and Alassane, and to wish them well in their new employment at the University of Kazembe,” he said. “May their life of discovery continue in whatever new lands they discover…”
“I didn’t know there was a university in Kazembe,” said Noura’s neighbor Mariama amid the chorus of approval.
“For the past year. The technical colleges and the Higher School of the Humanities joined together. Madame Skłodowska’s chancellor.”
“It has a cultural mission, does it?” That was Oumou, a sculptor who claimed to find Noura’s mathematics endlessly inspiring. “Le Soir had some quotes from the king’s speech at its founding – ‘to catalog, preserve and protect what is African…’”
“With Skłodowska as chancellor? And with Chishimba heading the physics department? I don’t doubt it will be a fine school of African humanities, but that’s not what it’ll be famous for. There are Germans going to study there, and most of them aren’t going for the Lunda anthropology. And that wasn’t why they reached out to me either.”
“How did they find you?”
“Käthe Mutelo - she’s a nuclear physicist at Berlin Polytechnic [1] – was a student of Skłodowska’s, and she mentioned it to me at a conference last year. She must have mentioned me to someone else, too, because I got a letter two months later. Mamadou teaching geology made it even better. They like geologists down there.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“The Laumann company could tell you, no doubt.”
“So they’re offering you more than the Sorbonne?” asked Mariama.
“Less, actually. Prices are lower, so that will make up for some of the difference, but we still won’t live quite the way we do here.”
“Then why go?”
“Doesn’t everyone need a change of scene sometimes?”
“Yes, but…”
Noura began to speak, but Mamadou was already answering. “For ninety years, people have made things together in this place, and each one has taken what they’ve made into the world. It’s our turn, Noura and I. And… we both grew up French patriots, and we’ll always be, but Noura’s mother made sure we were African ones too…”
*******
The South China Sea:
From where Madeleine stood on the deck of the Marie-Laure, she could see the lights of Saigon growing closer. She looked from them to the canvas in front of her, dipped her brush onto the palette and added a stroke, a bold pool of light to set off the buildings beyond the harbor.
She stepped back and looked at the canvas critically. It wasn’t good enough to show – none of her paintings were. She was a photographer, not a painter. But painting was a way to train the eye, and she liked the way that the nighttime skyline was developing. It might be good enough to hang up at home, once she and Noureddine found a place to stay.
“Very nice,” said a familiar voice, and she turned to see that her husband had come on deck. He stopped a pace or two behind her and gave the painting a closer look. He was a painter, and he’d taught her in the early years of their liaison, before they were married. He let that bias him only slightly in matters of artistic technique, but it seemed this time he approved.
“We’ll put it near a window,” he said. “But you should finish it soon. We’ll be in port in two hours.”
“My bags are already packed,” she answered, inclining her head at where they stood. She wasn’t bringing much more to Saigon than she’d brought to Dakar when they’d left Paris – keepsakes and personal things, a few changes of clothes, some jewelry and not much more. When they found a place, they’d furnish it here.
“I see.” There was the slightest hint of surprise in his voice, as if up to now he hadn’t seen how little she’d taken. “You wanted to leave Dakar behind that badly?”
“It wasn’t that, it was…” She trailed off, seeing Noureddine’s smile. He hadn’t meant what he’d just said, and he knew how she really felt – he knew, because he felt the same.
The truth was she was homesick already. She would miss photographing Dakar. That was a city that grew almost day to day, and its changes told a million stories – the old markets, the spreading resorts of the Senegalese Riviera, the N’Diaye Building which would rise forty stories graceful as a minaret, all the places, but even more, the people who built them.
Saigon, she’d heard, was more traditional, and the countryside beyond it more so yet. But it was changing too. France and Britain had washed over it in their turns, and now France was making itself felt again, but for the first time in eighty years, it was also free to be Vietnamese – and to decide what that meant.
“I want to be there when it happens,” she murmured.
“And be part of it happening?”
“Yes, that.” Madeleine wasn’t the only passenger on the Marie-Laure who had African or European as well as Vietnamese blood; some, in fact, were all three. The Vietnamese had gone out into the world, and this was one of the things they were bringing back: women like Madeleine who had African mothers, or men like Noureddine whose grandfather had served as a tirailleur in Saigon and come home with a Vietnamese wife.
She remembered a Belloist teacher her mother had known, in Paris when she was a child, and remembered one of the lessons he’d preached: a community is something that makes itself. Something had driven her here; maybe it was that.
“Maybe,” she said, “it will be home.”
*******
Zanzibar:
“You really don’t have to come with me, Sabine,” said Mélisande.
“We’ve had this argument already. I’m coming, Mother. You aren’t going out there alone.”
Mélisande looked at Sabine’s face carefully and nodded, more thoroughly subdued by her daughter than she had ever been by kings or soldiers. “Let’s go to the house, then. There are a few last things I need.”
She looked around for the last time at the low brick building where she was, and through the window at the streets outside. This neighborhood had been a slum once, an unlicensed district on the edge of the city where people new-come from the interior had built huts and shelters. It was still poor, and life was still a struggle, but the people had made this health cooperative, and they had the clean water they’d fought for. More than that: it was a place, now, that people called home.
Abuya was at one side of the room with her medical class; she’d learned from Mélisande, and now she was the teacher. Good. Where the doctors don’t come, make everyone a doctor; if there are no police, let everyone enforce the law.
She couldn’t help feeling that she was abandoning them. But one thing she’d taken far too long to learn, in the days when she was a prophet, was that eventually you had to leave. Was it abandonment for a parent to let a grown child go into the world? The people here could take care of themselves and the others who would come, and could fight if the state tried to crush them again; for Mélisande to stay would only make them think of her as a leader or, worse, a ruler. There should be none of those but God, and certainly not me.
She caught herself and saw that Sabine was ready, and they walked out to the street. It was a long way to the Stone Town house that hadn’t really been a home since Paulo died, and it would be a longer way from there to what had lately been the northern provinces.
They’d only left the empire a few months ago, and already there was fighting: warlords looking for thrones to claim, new-made kingdoms squabbling over borders, peoples contending for living space or food or water. Those caught between them would need medicine, and they would also need arms and strength to resist warlords and armies – medicine could do only so much good in a sick place.
Maybe all of them together would heal it. There was only one way to know.
_______
[1] And someone with whom we’ve made brief acquaintance.
Excellent update. It is great to see the Abacars spreading out. I think it is appropriate that these events are taking place at this TL 100 year mark. It really shows just how much of an impact Paolo the Elder had even indirectly in changing the world so dramatically.
I agree with Funmilayo on the secession votes. The best thing for the region in TTL is for a Nigerian Federation to be created, either as a dominion or, more likely as an independent nation. I feel like there will be a lot problems further down the line if part of the region is independent but others are still British.
BTW how is decolonization progressing in the rest of Africa, are any of the German, Portuguese, or French colonies starting to demand independence yet?
Also, I noticed you said that Noura was going to be teaching at the University of Kazembe, what is she going to teach?
Finally, since part of this update occurs in Lagos OTL's largest African city, I am wondering what Africa's largest cities are in TTL. Since large parts of Africa are more developed then they were in OTL, I'm sure some, such as Zanzibar and Ilorin are likely far more important then they were in OTL.
I agree with Funmilayo on the secession votes. The best thing for the region in TTL is for a Nigerian Federation to be created, either as a dominion or, more likely as an independent nation. I feel like there will be a lot problems further down the line if part of the region is independent but others are still British.
BTW how is decolonization progressing in the rest of Africa, are any of the German, Portuguese, or French colonies starting to demand independence yet?
Also, I noticed you said that Noura was going to be teaching at the University of Kazembe, what is she going to teach?
Finally, since part of this update occurs in Lagos OTL's largest African city, I am wondering what Africa's largest cities are in TTL. Since large parts of Africa are more developed then they were in OTL, I'm sure some, such as Zanzibar and Ilorin are likely far more important then they were in OTL.
I've been thinking of a gate between OTL northen Nigeria and the same region TTL. Principally, because I want to see Boko Haram's pointly little heads explode, metaphorically and literally.
Another amazing narrative update, Jonathan. I'm enthralled at how much the Abacars had grown and how the world has changed around them, never mind all those names we knew from your earlier updates!
I'm enthralled at how much the Abacars had grown and how the world has changed around them, never mind all those names we knew from your earlier updates!Thanks to everyone who posted thoughts about the Russia-China conflict - I'll take everything on board but will hold my counsel for now. Can anyone point me to a good physical map of the border regions?
I agree with sketchdoodle about the likely opposition to a Malaya-DEI union, not to mention that the British and Dutch would have to work out major security issues. A customs union involving Malaya, the DEI, Aceh, the Philippine states and the independent Bornean states might be very doable, though, and that could end up leading to cooperation in other areas. Eventually they might back into some kind of confederation as South Africa did, or else they might not.
The Malay army... hmmm. Maybe the member states could each contribute a contingent, leaving decisions on recruitment and conscription to each ruler and state parliament.
What counts as "France" in this scenario? Either way, Willy the Second will go nuts when he realizes he's suddenly lost Alsace-Lorraine.
South Carolina circa 1890-1930 would also work pretty well in the head-exploding department. Pitchfork Ben (or better yet, Coley Blease), meet Miss Harriet.
Thanks! The world is changing and the family with it, and as the founding recedes into the past and the fourth generation comes into its own, many of them are branching out from politics. You'll notice, BTW, that there's one place where none of the scenes happened; Paulo the Younger believed that country needed a break from his family, and after the Muhammadu period, the electorate agrees. They'll return to its affairs eventually, but not now.
There's precedent in South Africa for unions that include both independent states and British possessions, but there's also precedent there for such unions being a mess. That's one of the factors that has been holding up federalism in the Niger Valley, and it's likely to continue that way for the time being.
The next update (which will be the last of the 1930s) will discuss the situation in British and French West Africa, and the next cycle will kick off the independence era in the other colonial empires.
I've mentioned in passing that she's a mathematician, although the reference was an easy one to miss.
Dakar and Libreville in French West Africa; Lagos, Ilorin, Sokoto and Calabar in the Niger; Gondar, Asmara and New Moscow (Massawa) in Ethiopia; Zanzibar in East Africa; Kampala in the Great Lakes (it's the only city of any size in that region); Luanda and Lourenço Marques (Maputo) in Portuguese Africa; Ndola in Kazembe; Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg in South Africa. Many of these cities have grown enormously between the Great War and 1940; Ilorin is the largest with a population over a million, but several others are close behind.
There is one, although it's tempered by the fact that the Yoruba in Oyo are mostly Muslim while those in the Lagos Colony are mostly Christian. (The two princely states that are north of the Lagos border but didn't join Oyo have a Christian ruling class and a Muslim-majority population - they're the Lower Niger's answer to Hyderabad or Bhopal). There are many on both sides who want union, but differences in outlook and disagreements over how the union would work are slowing things down.
I agree with sketchdoodle about the likely opposition to a Malaya-DEI union, not to mention that the British and Dutch would have to work out major security issues. A customs union involving Malaya, the DEI, Aceh, the Philippine states and the independent Bornean states might be very doable, though, and that could end up leading to cooperation in other areas. Eventually they might back into some kind of confederation as South Africa did, or else they might not.
The Malay army... hmmm. Maybe the member states could each contribute a contingent, leaving decisions on recruitment and conscription to each ruler and state parliament.
What counts as "France" in this scenario? Either way, Willy the Second will go nuts when he realizes he's suddenly lost Alsace-Lorraine.
South Carolina circa 1890-1930 would also work pretty well in the head-exploding department. Pitchfork Ben (or better yet, Coley Blease), meet Miss Harriet.
Another amazing narrative update, Jonathan.
Thanks! The world is changing and the family with it, and as the founding recedes into the past and the fourth generation comes into its own, many of them are branching out from politics. You'll notice, BTW, that there's one place where none of the scenes happened; Paulo the Younger believed that country needed a break from his family, and after the Muhammadu period, the electorate agrees. They'll return to its affairs eventually, but not now.
There's precedent in South Africa for unions that include both independent states and British possessions, but there's also precedent there for such unions being a mess. That's one of the factors that has been holding up federalism in the Niger Valley, and it's likely to continue that way for the time being.
The next update (which will be the last of the 1930s) will discuss the situation in British and French West Africa, and the next cycle will kick off the independence era in the other colonial empires.
I've mentioned in passing that she's a mathematician, although the reference was an easy one to miss.
Dakar and Libreville in French West Africa; Lagos, Ilorin, Sokoto and Calabar in the Niger; Gondar, Asmara and New Moscow (Massawa) in Ethiopia; Zanzibar in East Africa; Kampala in the Great Lakes (it's the only city of any size in that region); Luanda and Lourenço Marques (Maputo) in Portuguese Africa; Ndola in Kazembe; Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg in South Africa. Many of these cities have grown enormously between the Great War and 1940; Ilorin is the largest with a population over a million, but several others are close behind.
There is one, although it's tempered by the fact that the Yoruba in Oyo are mostly Muslim while those in the Lagos Colony are mostly Christian. (The two princely states that are north of the Lagos border but didn't join Oyo have a Christian ruling class and a Muslim-majority population - they're the Lower Niger's answer to Hyderabad or Bhopal). There are many on both sides who want union, but differences in outlook and disagreements over how the union would work are slowing things down.
iddt3
Donor
I think Japanese decision makers have to realize that a hard nationalist revanche China winning decisively is very very much not in their interests. Whatever short term gratitude and land it might generate, Taiwan is the next logical target. Assuming that any regime that wins Manchuria stays in power (which I think is likely) Next time there a bump in the road domestically it's going to be very tempting for the Chinese to go after the next logical target. Add to that, without Russian influence, China would be by far the largest power in the area, and Japan's strategic situation starts looking increasingly bad in that case.
I think the ideal situation for Japan is accommodation with Russia, ideally a formal alliance plus trade links. Any other solution leaves them vulnerable to Chinese domination in the long term.
Agreed. They might also be able to gain concession in Korea and Manchuria from the Russians, who will need all the help they can get to beat China. Japan may not be aggressively expanding its formal empire, but it will definitely be looking to expand its economic influence. Japan, as an importer of raw materials and exporter of finished goods, will probably be looking hungrily at Manchuria's coal and iron (and maybe oil, if it's been discovered already), as well as Manchurian, Russian and Korean markets for its products. Depending on how damaged Russia and China are by the war, Japan could bring Korea and Manchuria further into its sphere of influence with trade and military support than it ever did with conquest...
So a brief google perusal led me to this, but I don't know how helpful that really is...
Anyway, hopefully someone more well-versed in TTL/OTL Korean history can expand on the political goals of the principal actors - but it seems like, to me, the industrialists and bureaucrats modernizing Korea would have the same goals as their counterparts at the time in Adamawa, or even Toucouleur: to get the benefits of a modern economy without giving the masses too many ideas.
OTL South Korea has always struck me as one of the most centralized nations on the planet, and without a Cold War partition to distract the nationalists, I can imagine a modernizing Korea's army champing at the bit to make the same mistakes that TTL Japan's army did - and a government channeling aforementioned nationalism to distract their citizens from making political demands. Not that either party would see it exactly that way, of course.
Oh, and as long as the 19th century famines still occurred in Korea, I imagine there will still be a large Korean minority on the other side of the Tumen (Wikipedia says that OTL Koreans were up to 60% of the trans-Tumen populace as late as 1950). Perhaps Russia could offer Korea some kind of economic rights in the region, or perhaps some kind of political patronage, as compensation for military support?
And there is this map of the Russian Empire in 1912, encompassing North China, Manchuria and Korea, found on wikipedia; it's very detailed and gives a very good sight of the ground, although there is to battle with cyrillic alphabet: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Russian_Empire_Map.jpg .