Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Thanks for the maps, Walkerloop. In an earlier post, iddt3 raised the idea of an offensive up the Amur. If anyone tried to attack through the lower Amur, it would be very difficult. The riverbanks are either marshy or forested, making it hard to fight battles in. The river has many banks, sandbars, islands, and a very confusing, often splitting course. That would make it a nightmare for riverboat actions. A defending army could easily utilize the terrain along the Lower Amur to beat back attackers.
I wonder if all the geologists going to Kazembe have anything to do with a particularly explosive element. 
Kaiphranos
Donor
I wonder if all the geologists going to Kazembe have anything to do with a particularly explosive element.
Ooh, good catch...
Sulemain
Banned
I wonder if all the geologists going to Kazembe have anything to do with a particularly explosive element.
In my update about the Royal Navy, I wrote about British experiments in that area. I suspect that either Germany or Russia will get the bomb first ITTL.
Great updates btw. I wish I wrote as half as well as you do JE.
I wonder if all the geologists going to Kazembe have anything to do with a particularly explosive element.
There's quite a bit of that element right across the border in Katanga, so if they are working on it, they'll have a ready supply.
And yes, they are. Most of the need for geologists is because Kazembe is a mining country, but Germany, which still provides much of the funding for higher education there, is also working on nuclear fission as both an energy source and a potential weapon. Several other countries are doing the same thing, albeit at a peacetime level of commitment rather than Manhattan Project urgency - TTL might see nuclear reactors before it sees nuclear bombs.
Thanks to everyone who provided maps - they're very useful.
Hamadoun Coulibaly, Independent West Africa in the Era of Decolonization (Timbuktu: Sankore, 1978)
… In 1930, civil war in the Toucouleur Empire seemed only a matter of time. The urban industrialists, traders and professionals, who overwhelmingly subscribed to modernist Islam or even secularism, existed on sufferance, permitted to govern themselves in exchange for punishing taxes. And although the countryside owed its comfort to the towns’ largess, the marabouts preached darkly of the forbidden and degenerate urban ways, and argued that the cities’ very existence threatened the peasant-scholar commonwealth that existed outside. The two were on a collision course, and only a miracle could save the nation from a bloody reckoning. [1]
What happened instead may not have been a miracle, but many people took it as one all the same. In the generation since the Great War, Toucouleur businessmen had developed partnerships with their French counterparts, and had a part in much of the development work in French West Africa during this period. This was especially true in the Kingdom of the Arabs, where the Toucouleur Empire’s influence made its businessmen valuable intermediaries and cultural guides – and it was a French-Toucouleur company, the Société pétrolière du Sahara, that found oil at Hassi Messaoud in 1935.
Over the next five years, the Toucouleur would carve out a place in the Saharan oil industry, either as shareholders in the oil industry or, more commonly, providers of ancillary services. This brought in wealth such as the empire had never before experienced, and – at least temporarily – it calmed social dissension. The “modern quarters” of the city were able to pay their taxes without being pushed to the limit, and the revenue went to new religious schools and charities that kept the rural marabouts busy. For a few years, the marabouts’ new wealth shifted them toward other areas of empire-building – particularly the foundation of allied schools in the French African provinces and the Sahara – and away from their traditional adversaries in the cities. The promised civil war receded, and the empire’s impossible social order got a new lease on life.
But even during this era of relative good feeling, the next crisis was taking shape. Unprecedented wealth concentrated in the cities meant a large increase in rural migration, and by 1940, a near-majority of urban dwellers were recent arrivals from the countryside. They lived in dense neighborhoods, often under the informal rule of marabouts as newly-come as themselves, and shared workplaces and public squares with people they had been taught from birth were corrupt. With modernism no longer a distant bogeyman but a daily temptation, the marabouts’ preaching grew more urgent. At the same time, the people of the modern quarters feared being overwhelmed by the new arrivals, and resurrected their dream of a nationwide liberal constitution. Such disagreements in such close proximity could not but lead to conflict, and there were sporadic instances of violence on both sides.
Nor was the temptation of wealth confined to the cities. The flow of tax revenue to the countryside meant that peasants and herders could afford short-wave radios, motor wagons, mechanized farm implements and all sorts of mail-order consumer goods. Although the marabouts inveighed against these things, they were not illegal, and increasingly, the simple herders of Umar Tall’s imagination were exposed to the cultures and ideas of foreign lands. The preachers called for imported goods to be banned, but for the first time, they found many of their own congregations arrayed against them…
… If oil wealth brought social change in the Toucouleur Empire, its effect on the Kingdom of the Arabs can only be described as a social revolution. The kingdom’s population in 1930 was less than 500,000, with most belonging to nomadic Berber and Tuareg tribes. There were few towns and no real cities, and few of the accoutrements of a modern state; there was not even a fixed capital, and the courts were as nomadic as the population. Borders also meant little in the desert, and many of the kingdom’s nominal citizens crossed freely into French Mauritania or the desert lands held by Bornu, and sought justice and guidance as freely from the Toucouleur emperor or the Bornu sultan as from their own king.
Modernity came to them suddenly and hard. The oil camps took only a few years, and in some cases even months, to grow into towns of thousands, and most of the people who settled in them were foreigners. Napoleon III had put the Kingdom of the Arabs off limits to French settlers, and its people had never experienced the kind of colonial presence that existed in the littoral, but now the country was full of outsiders whose languages were foreign and their ways strange. And their presence was, suddenly, vital to the nation’s wealth, so there was no choice but to accept and deal with them.
So much wealth distributed so few ways also changed the citizens themselves. Although most of the oil revenue found its way into the coffers of the foreign companies that drilled for it, the 25 percent royalty paid to the kingdom was still enough to give it the highest per capita income in the world. And surprisingly – at least to cynics – the royal court, which lived modestly and had stayed close to its nomadic roots, took only a moderate amount for itself. The rest was distributed as largesse to the citizens, which gained enormous prestige for the monarchy but also provided every desert tribesman with an income comparable to a bourgeois German.
By 1940 it was common to see nomadic clans following their herds in motor wagons, with tents in back that unfolded into luxurious pavilions and fine foods, clothing and consumer goods keeping company with them. Others left the desert entirely to settle in the growing towns. In both places, wealth brought many benefits – higher education, improved roads, access to filtered water – but it also brought anomie and a vulgar ethic of conspicuous consumption.
To the Toucouleur in the kingdom – whether oil workers, businessmen or marabouts – the effects of wealth began to seem like an exaggerated version of what was happening in their own country, and many of them saw it as a warning. The Toucouleur imamate had been anti-modern since Umar Tall’s era, but now a few preachers became anti-technological as well. It was one of the schools run by Toucouleur religious foundations – ironically, paid for by Saharan oil – that first began to condemn modern technology as inherently corrupt and conducive to sin, and to preach a Amish-style rejection of the technological lifestyle…
*******
Fabienne Callas, Africa and the Liberal Empire (Dakar: Nouvelle Presse Africaine, 1955)
… On the surface, the 1930s in French West Africa were quieter than the tumultuous 1920s. The accord of 1929, which had made French départements of all remaining colonies and conferred full citizenship on their people [2], was seen as a victory by most of the population, and they were at least willing to give it a chance. Even those opposed to annexation realized that the courts and the political process were now open to them, and that they could carry on their protest in less confrontational ways.
But there was still a deep sense of unease. The protest movements of the 1920s had awakened nationalist sentiment, and although these movements’ overriding goal was freedom, they were far from sure that they wanted to experience that freedom as “black Frenchmen.” Senegal, with its futurist cities and high-speed (for the time) trains, where public discourse was conducted in French and ouoçais slang was ubiquitous among the youth, where a tenth of the population was European and mixed marriages increasingly common, was an ever-present example, and for every Soudanais or Ivoirien who saw it as an ideal, another saw it as a warning.
The 1930s thus brought resistance – largely passive and nonviolent, but resistance all the same – to the introduction of French state institutions. French-language schools were particularly distrusted, and so was the continued appointment of European officials: municipal governments were now elected, but department-level officials were appointed as they were in France, and civil servants from metropolitan France, Senegal and Algeria often had preference for these posts due to their seniority. The former colonial subjects were now eligible for civil service jobs and many were hired, but they necessarily started at junior levels; except for the minority who had held citizenship beforehand, they were not yet eligible for appointment as a chef de département or high-level judge. The colonies had been promised that they would be treated the same as any other French department, and they were, but integration into the French administrative system didn’t entirely dispel the feeling of being ruled from abroad.
Integration did, of course, work both ways. Civil servants from Guinea or French Sudan could now be posted to metropolitan France, and their representatives in the corps législatif - now swollen to more than 800 members – had a voice in French law and policy. Many welcomed their status as full citizens of France and shared masters of a larger house, and valued the economic benefits and broadened cultural horizons this brought them. But to many others, a share in ruling France was not worth the increasing acculturation of their own provinces, and democratic rights didn’t make up for the fact that many of their rulers were still foreign. In every election during the 1930s, nationalist or autonomist parties won between 30 and 50 percent of the seats from the pre-1929 colonies, and their deputies often used the floor of the assembly as a setting for political theater.
Curiously enough, they found allies in the metropolitan French right. By this time, several of the right-wing parties – the ideological heirs of the prewar “Trianon bloc” [3] – had become champions of regionalism, seeking to protect the more conservative and religious regional cultures against domination by the cities. These parties were quite willing to advocate the same rights of cultural preservation for Guineans or Algerians as they did for Bretons or Corsicans, and to argue that education in Bambara was as worthy of preservation as education in Occitan.
In a way, this was a sign of how integral Africans had become in France. Three generations after Abdoulaye Diouf won citizenship for Senegalese soldiers and their families, even many staunch conservatives now regarded West Africans as another regional French culture, and considered their nationalist movements no different from those in Brittany. But they were different: they were much more recent parts of the French oikumene, and independence was a recent memory rather than a distant one. The Africans considered independence an option in a way the Bretons did not, and events in the 1940s would give impetus to their desire…
*******
David Marsden, The Colonial Century: Britain's Strange Career in Africa (London: Macmillan, 1990)
… Depending on who one asks, it is either irony or poetic justice that the toughest obstacle to Wells’ dream of an “All-Dominion Empire” was the same region that had given birth to the idea of African self-rule within the British sphere. What no one will disagree with is that it was undeniably so. There were too many small states, and they were too diverse to push into federation as had been done in Malaya or the West Indies. Oyo and the Malê successor states were large and rich enough to be viable dominions, and dominions they became, but what could be done with the city-states of Borgu and Gobir, or the Nupe and Wukari polities?
Given time and patience, a viable solution might have been found. South Africa pointed the way: states with widely varying levels of democracy and sovereignty, and even different imperial patrons, could integrate one function at a time and eventually arrive at political union. But the Empire Office was unwilling to wait until 1960 or 1970 to form a Dominion of West Africa, and it was stubbornly unwilling to grant full self-government to the princely states or colonies as anything but dominions. The Lagos and Lower Niger colonies did improve their status, winning responsible government in 1932 and 1933 respectively, but they remained subject to a long list of reserve powers granted to their governors. And while the African Civil Service officers (most now African themselves) and their bosses in Whitehall were always willing to support economic development and internal modernization in the princely states, a revision to their treaty status, other than as part of a regional federation, was off the table.
Even this might have led where the Empire Office wanted it to go: for all that the regional states increasingly saw federalism as a British-sponsored imposition rather than the indigenous movement that it still was, both the economic and political benefits were undeniable. Federalist parties still won elections in the Malê dominions and the princely states that had them, and at the 1934 regional conference, several of the objections that had stalled federation in the 1920s were ironed out. The meeting did result in a customs union and an agreement on recognition of licenses and diplomas, which was how South Africa had started: the next conference, scheduled for 1939, might have led to more. But before then, bloody-mindedness among both British officials and African rulers would have its say.
Of the four West African territories that remained crown colonies, Lagos had the most economic and strategic importance, and it was a possession that London badly wanted to keep as part of the empire. But in the 1930s, it was also a textbook example of how not to run an aspiring colony. Just next door, the Lower Niger was a model of cooperative development: after the Women’s War [4] and the struggles of the 1920s, the Igbo took pride in the responsible government they had won, and the British governor – who, after 1936, was named Okonkwo and was British mainly because he sat in the House of Lords – respected it. But Lagos was run by an authoritarian whose sensibilities would have been better suited to the previous century, and he repeatedly clashed with the legislature and used his powers to override and even restrict the colony’s political and business institutions. One of the key supports of the British Empire in the Niger increasingly considered leaving, as many Christian Yoruba put aside their distrust of their Muslim neighbors to seek union with Oyo.
A still more toxic brew was concocted by the princely rulers who had spent the past generation standing against democracy’s tide and who now faced it in full flood. In the Asante kingdom, closest to the border, suppression and divide-and-conquer tactics could not last forever, and in 1934 Kumasi was swept by revolution. The king escaped only narrowly, going into exile in the United States, and was replaced by what might be called either an elective monarchy or a royal republic: the chief of state was elected for five years and was subject to strict constitutional limits, but he was called “Your Majesty,” sat on the royal stool and wore kingly regalia. [5]
The other princes responded by redoubling whatever they had been doing before. In places such as Gobir and Borgu, which had gone some way toward democratization, the rulers held conferences and assemblies to discuss advancing civil liberties. But those who had resisted, did so all the harder: they imposed more repressive measures and, wary of the rumors that the Asante rebels had received aid from the Mossi and neutral Indénié, ratcheted up censorship. As in Southeast Asia, London was far less willing to support such measures than it had been in the 1920s or before, but the residents and district officers on the spot – who were often in sympathy with the ruling class, if not actually drawn from it – were often a different story.
The climactic act of the drama would open, as it often did, in Adamawa. It was the most radical of the Malê successor states, with a left wing schooled by a century of labor battles, and also the most authoritarian: since the strikes of 1929 [6], the emir had governed under emergency regulations. The industrial cities’ tolerance for these measures, never high, became increasingly frayed in the 1930s, and despite widespread intimidation, the 1937 election brought in a majority of Abacarist, Labor Belloist and secular leftist parties. To say the emir and the parliament didn’t get along would be an understatement, and in 1939, matters came to a head.
It began with the Majlis calling in the prime minister for questioning and, when he refused to attend, voting to sack him – a power that, under the constitution, it didn’t have. The emir responded by dismissing the parliament, which refused to stand down and called for popular support. The streets of Yola, the capital, were soon full of protesters, and their demands escalated from responsible government to the end of the monarchy.
No one can be certain of how it might have ended had not the governor-general intervened. He declared that, with national politics at an impasse, he had authority to resolve the crisis, and ruled in favor of the emir as legitimate ruler. He confirmed the Majlis’ dismissal until new elections could be held, and – most critically of all – asked British and dominion troops in the region to restore order.
Order, such as it was, was restored soon enough in Yola, but events quickly cascaded across the region. It was bad enough when the colonial power intervened on the side of a repressive princely ruler, but to do so in a dominion represented a threat to the other regional states that had attained that status. That the emir was in fact acting within his constitutional authority, and that the Majlis had exceeded its, was forgotten; what mattered was the principles each stood for. The intervention was overwhelmingly unpopular across the region, and in one case fatally so: in Sokoto, where the emir had sent troops to support Adamawa’s ruler, massive protests forced him into exile, and the Third Sokoto Republic was declared from the throne room of the palace.
If anyone was more taken aback by the popular reaction than the princely rulers, it was London, which had lately paid less attention to the Niger Valley than it ought. To its credit, Whitehall attempted to make amends: it belatedly recognized that it would have to treat its African dominions the same way it did Canada or Australasia, and invited representatives of the princely states and colonies to a round table at which a guaranteed timetable for dominion status would be set. And some of the domains were still willing to participate: in early March 1940, Oyo narrowly voted to stay in the empire, and a pro-imperial party won the Lagos general election later that year after a more conciliatory governor had been appointed.
But Ilorin and Sokoto were lost causes. They waited only for guarantees that the customs union treaty would be respected, and once those were in hand, voted overwhelmingly to declare full independence and withdraw recognition from the British monarchy. On April 6, 1940, a hundred years to the day after Paulo Abacar the Elder defeated the Sultan’s troops at Birnin Kebbi, the British flags in Ilorin and Sokoto were lowered for the last time…
_______
[1] See post 4263.
[2] See post 4263.
[3] See post 885.
[4] See posts 3872 and 3893.
[5] Like Samoa in OTL, only more so.
[6] See post 4416.
And that finishes the 1930s, and with it the first hundred years of Malê Rising. This was the second potential endpoint for the timeline: as Usman’s death represented a lifetime since the beginning of the story, 1940 – and the rebirth of the Sokoto Republic – represents a century.
I won’t finish here, of course - there’s still the independence era to chart out, and the consolidation of a new international system. On the other hand, I would like to finish this year. And as I’ve mentioned, the modern world order will be largely in place by 1970: that won’t be the end of history or conflict, and new political, religious and artistic movements will continue to arise, but what happens after will be less revolutionary than before.
What I propose to do, then, is to write full narrative cycles for 1940-55 and 1955-70, followed by either a full 1970-2000 cycle or abbreviated cycles for 1970-85 and 1985-2000. At the rate of two months per cycle, which is what it’s worked out to lately, that will take me to the end of the year. After that, I’ll finish with a narrative post, or a series of them, showing the world in 2015.
I’m leaving on vacation tomorrow afternoon, and will be in Austral(as)ia until July 11, so I don’t expect to do a great deal of posting, but there will be some. At the very least, I have a 24-hour flight ahead of me with nothing better to do, so maybe I can put a couple of the 1940-55 updates in the bank. I’m also planning what I hope will be a nice surprise in collaboration with Kaiphranos; I’ll write the first installment of that on the plane as well, and you’ll find out what it is on June 29 when the Map of the Month contest is announced.
I’d wish everyone another fine century, but there isn’t that much time left: here’s to the next 75 years, then, and I hope you’ll all be with me for them.
I won’t finish here, of course - there’s still the independence era to chart out, and the consolidation of a new international system. On the other hand, I would like to finish this year. And as I’ve mentioned, the modern world order will be largely in place by 1970: that won’t be the end of history or conflict, and new political, religious and artistic movements will continue to arise, but what happens after will be less revolutionary than before.
What I propose to do, then, is to write full narrative cycles for 1940-55 and 1955-70, followed by either a full 1970-2000 cycle or abbreviated cycles for 1970-85 and 1985-2000. At the rate of two months per cycle, which is what it’s worked out to lately, that will take me to the end of the year. After that, I’ll finish with a narrative post, or a series of them, showing the world in 2015.
I’m leaving on vacation tomorrow afternoon, and will be in Austral(as)ia until July 11, so I don’t expect to do a great deal of posting, but there will be some. At the very least, I have a 24-hour flight ahead of me with nothing better to do, so maybe I can put a couple of the 1940-55 updates in the bank. I’m also planning what I hope will be a nice surprise in collaboration with Kaiphranos; I’ll write the first installment of that on the plane as well, and you’ll find out what it is on June 29 when the Map of the Month contest is announced.
I’d wish everyone another fine century, but there isn’t that much time left: here’s to the next 75 years, then, and I hope you’ll all be with me for them.
Glad to see the Toucouleur dodged a bullet on the looming civil war and that the way France's African territories will gain independence is through cooperation with the metropolitan Right (ironic that the parties that would have supported colonizing them a century earlier now want to give them independence). It is sad but unsurprising how much of a mess British West Africa is. I am curious though if the instabilities in Sokoto, Adamawa, and Asante will convince the other Nigerian princely states to reform or cause them to crack down even hard on dissent and move closer to London. I am afraid that events in the Niger Valley might get a lot worse.
Sulemain
Banned
Interesting mix of ways of dealing with decolonisation. The French going with a mixture of federation and decolonisation, and the British with dominions and with decolonisation. I suspect Senegal and Algeria will remain Federated with France. And, as always, the quality of your writing continues to amaze .
.Interesting mix of ways of dealing with decolonisation. The French going with a mixture of federation and decolonisation, and the British with dominions and with decolonisation. I suspect Senegal and Algeria will remain Federated with France. And, as always, the quality of your writing continues to amaze
Well, at this point, Senegal is probably as French as Marseille.
Great update.
Nice to start off my morning with a good read. And it's also nice to see decolonization come about, even though it obviously isn't going to be all cake and ice cream. We've already seen this with Zanzibar. Still, the way you handled the process of colonization - showing the tragedies and triumphs, while capturing the humanity of both sides (and the lack of it too) - that seeing you depict Africans regaining their sovereignty will certainly be done just as well. And this would have been an excellent point to end on, but I would like to see how this TL's contemporary years compare to our own, so you have my support for future updates.
Have a great vacation too!
Have a great vacation too!
Sigh, it looks like some people can't do anything right - and all those horrid republicans messing things up with their horrid republics p). Still, one can only hope the West African (con)federation-ish-thingy will come to pass sooner or later, probably South Africa style.
Also, we will need a new map of Africa (and the World) to clarify all this, and to celebrate the first century of Male Rising.
Pooling of sovereignty FTW!!!
- and all those horrid republicans messing things up with their horrid republics p). Still, one can only hope the West African (con)federation-ish-thingy will come to pass sooner or later, probably South Africa style.Also, we will need a new map of Africa (and the World) to clarify all this, and to celebrate the first century of Male Rising.
Pooling of sovereignty FTW!!!
Those Toucouleur anti-tech preachers would have a hard time coming for them; with the oil boom going on, it won't be long before even the barest of modern tech would come knocking at their door. I guess they could just pack up and move deeper into the Sahara, but I think their stance on modern tech would ironically lead to more outsiders - Muslim or otherwise - becoming more interested in them, and who knows what might happen once that comes to pass.
Once again, you never fail to impress us with your updates.
Once again, you never fail to impress us with your updates.
I'm not sure if there's a TVA-type entity as such, but there's been huge emphasis on rural development - it's a main Farmer-Labor platform, so F-L administrations have poured billions into rural infrastructure.
Thanks!
The Toucouleur have avoided civil conflict for now - whether they can continue to do so after 1940 is very much up in the air. On the other hand, civil conflict doesn't necessarily mean civil war.
Parts of the French right are, and will become, anti-imperialist at a truly ironic level, both those that favor regionalism and those who favor a "little France" without so many Africans in the legislature. Of course, there are also others who say "how dare those savages reject French civilization," just as there are some on the left who say "who are those backward people who reject the Rights of Man" and others who believe those rights include self-determination. The politics of decolonization will be complicated, but in TTL, what isn't?
The thing about West Africa is that it's an older and more culturally diverse region than southern Africa. Not that there isn't plenty of diversity in the south, but all the cultures other than Khoisan or Batwa/Baka/etc. are Bantu, so there are many common threads. There are some threads between the West African peoples, but not as many, which means that there are more obstacles to a regional federation.
At any rate, some of British West Africa is a mess, while other parts such as Oyo, Ilorin, the Igbo country and increasingly Sokoto are fine. And as mentioned, the princes are approaching the crisis in a variety of ways, with some advancing democratization and others cracking down. The shakeout won't be universally bad - in fact, in some places it will be pretty cooperative - but it will take a while.
They didn't start with those approaches - France figured it would make all the colonies into integral provinces, and Britain figured it would make all of them into dominions, and everyone would live happily ever after. It hasn't quite worked out that way, which is why they've shifted to a mixed approach. The other colonial powers will end up the same way, with much of it playing out over the 1940-55 cycle although some straggler colonies will remain into the 1960s.
Senegal, almost certainly. Algeria's a bit more complicated - there's still political conflict between the colons and the Arabs, and there's a lot of history to work through.
Well, at this point, Senegal is probably as French as Marseille.
Which could be another way of saying that Marseille is no more French than Dakar, although that wouldn't be fair - 35 percent of Marseille's population is ethnically French at this point, another 25 percent are from other parts of Europe and even the non-Europeans are assimilating.
Senegal might best be compared to Corsica or Brittany at this point - some of its ways are odd by metropolitan standards and the people in the countryside speak another language, but it's part of France and (mostly) happy to be. By this time, most Frenchmen would give you a strange look if you told them that Senegal wasn't French.
Decolonization is well and truly under way at this point - the Filipino, Rif and (especially) Indian revolutions taught the same lessons to the colonial powers that WW2 taught in OTL. They know they can't hold on to empires indefinitely against the will of the people they rule. Of course, that doesn't mean they're choosing to grant independence right away - most of them want to see if they can keep their empires with the colonized peoples' will. In some cases they may even succeed, but by 1960 or so, the great majority of Africa and Asia will be independent.
Sigh, it looks like some people can't do anything right
Also, we will need a new map of Africa (and the World) to clarify all this, and to celebrate the first century of Male Rising.
Well, republics are what happens when monarchs... act like monarchs.
The beginnings of a South Africa-style federation are already there in the Niger Valley, with the customs union and reciprocity agreements. It will take patience and luck to get the rest of the way, but it's certainly possible.
And 1940 might not be a good point for a new map, because there will be many changes during the independence era - 1955, or maybe 1960, could be a better point to catch up.
I imagine they won't have any harder of a time than the Amish do, surrounded as they are by all the temptations of modern America. In other words, only a small hard core will follow the anti-technology preachers all the way, although others might adopt part of their teachings. Attrition rates are likely to be high as well. On the other hand, the Sahara is a big place and it's very sparsely settled, so as you say, there might be places for them to go.
And yes, they'll eventually attract spiritual seekers and, worse yet, tourists. You can run but you can't hide.
iddt3
Donor
Jonathan, you've written probably the most beautiful timeline on this board and I'll be sorry to see it go. I hate to ask for more, but I remember that, at one point a few years ago, someone asked about a truly equal federation of England and India. I believe at the time you responded that by the time of Male Rising it was too late for truly equitable imperial federations of that kind. Do you have any interest in writing a timeline where it isn't? If not, what, if anything, are you thinking of doing next?
Anyway, thanks once again for the amazing writing, you've changed my perspective on large areas of history, brought to my attention events I wasn't aware, and generally provided an enlightening experience. Whatever you write after this, I'll eagerly await.
The problem with an imperial federation is that, given the population difference between India on the one hand and Britain and the dominions on the other, any truly equal arrangement would result in the empire becoming the Indian Empire. It's one thing for Britain to let India rule itself or treat it as a nation among nations, but another thing entirely for the British political class to give up control of imperial matters to Delhi.
I wouldn't say that an imperial federation is impossible, but for it to work, Britain would have to be confident that it could remain the center of gravity. For instance, a world in which India was administered as several medium-size colonies rather than one huge one, and where the various colonies and princely states don't see eye to eye, might be one where Britain could remain confident that no single one of them will usurp its place at the center. But I'm not sure how to accomplish that with a POD any time in the nineteenth century.
Anyway, after I finish this, I plan to finish Lo, the Nobles Lament and Stories from a Divided Haiti, and possibly add something to Ten Quintillion AD. And if I come up with any other ideas that I find worthy of a long-term commitment, you'll find out right here.
Thanks for reading and commenting, and please continue.