Hell, the notion of a massive rail system that is used mostly for freight would have not crossed my mind. When I think of trains, I think of passenger trains by deafult. (and I sort of knew that). Talk of cultural differences.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Hell, the notion of a massive rail system that is used mostly for freight would have not crossed my mind. When I think of trains, I think of passenger trains by deafult. (and I sort of knew that). Talk of cultural differences.
That is one of the things I find slightly odd about the European freight system, is your reliance on trucks as opposed to trains for overland transport, despite a rightly well-regarded passenger system. In 2010, for example, the entire European Union moved about as much freight (in terms of ton-kilometers) as Canada did in 2011, despite having rather more than ten times as many people and a comparable or larger developed land area (clearly most of the Canadian freight movements were in the south, not the north of the country!). This has particularly confused me because rail is a very energy-efficient method of transporting freight overland, so in light of general European interest in energy-efficiency and pollution, it would seem to be a natural area of investment.
You are right. It's odd, and while I am not very well informed, I would bet it is also fairly horribly inefficient in terms of energy and fuel.
I guess that part of it is about how the rail system was and is constructed. Part of it is probably cultural. People in Europe tend to live relatively more packed than in most of North America, and the need for efficient and constant inter-city public transportation is arguably deeper.
Trains are pretty good for that (relatively) on shorter average distances than you have in NA. I suppose this tends to skew the whole system into a focus on passengers, and since you can only have so many trains per time unit, passenger transport ends up to result more efficient.
Add that oil based fuel is considerably more expensive in most of Europe than in the US (I don't know about Canada) which makes travelling by train comparatively more convenient (although this is slowly changing as rail companies focus on long range passenger transportation at comparatively higher costs, with "screw the commuter" as the battle-cry).
Also, Europe is denser in transportation bottlenecks such as Alpine passes and the Channel and Sund crossings, where I suppose there is some reason to want to limit the number of individual cars.
Honestly, I think there should be a concerted EU policy to massively improve and encourage rail transportation, esp. local one, over trucks and cars, although I understand that European motor industry is in enough of a bad shape as is, which might prevent steps in this direction (workers in that sector are still quite a lot of voters after all). However, things are going (again) on the opposite direction: I just read today that the Italian government plans to further de-fund rail transportation (meaning a new hike in ticket prices for passangers and costs per ton for freight, I guess). Not surprising, but short-sighted.
However, this discussion probably belongs to Chat.
I've always been told it is due to the very different nature of how trains are used and need to be used in Europe. With such a massive demand for fast, efficient, public transportation uses, it is not possible to use those same tracks to the extent American ones are used for freight.
To give an example, a train from my aunt and uncle's home in rural Switzerland to Zurich went was about 30 minutes, meaning the train was going about as fast as the cars on the nearby roads. The train was large but almost entirely devoted to passengers and could fill up very quickly during certain times of day. It had to be fast and it had to have space for people to be comfortable to remain competitive.
In contrast, the freight train track next to my apartment here in Wisconsin has at least one train come through every day. That train is filled to the highest possible safe weight, travels at fastest 10-15 miles an hour and during most of the year is lucky if it breaks 5. The tracks are maintained just enough to avoid derailment or issues during the winter, but wear and tear on certain sections can slow the trains down quite a bit. To cross my small city's Main Street, a one lane each side road, requires between 10-20 minutes due to amount of cars attached to the train making the whole thing really damn long, really damn slow, and really damn heavy.
I have no idea if that's fully accurate, but that's always how I've heard it.
It is true that it is difficult to use the same network for passengers and freight, but it's not impossible, as the American system in the early 20th century shows (admittedly, standards were different then). European attention to maintenance and track quality would benefit freight trains as well, after all, and you could always build parallel or freight-only segments.
Wow. I had no idea the two systems requirements were so different. But I fail to see why freight trains have to be so slow.
Weight is hard on the tracks. Speed is hard on the tracks. Weight x speed = really, really hard. So if you don't want to spend a lot on maintaining the tracks, you can't go too fast (plus you probably haven't invested in the tracks enough to allow going fast without risking derailment or other problems).
Freight trains in my youth travelled at highway speeds - of course these were grain trains on the Canadian prairies.
Gotcha. So basically you can't move both a lot of passenger traffic and a lot of cargo on the same grid unless you spend a godawful amount of money in maintenance? Damn.
Well, I'm not sure it's a godawful amount; after all, you have to remember that the American rail network is privately owned, so there are all those factors. Certainly maintenance monies are going to be concentrated on main line routes, though, which due to their traffic volumes need higher speeds to allow sufficient throughput. Additionally, as Dathi notes, some types of cargo have to travel just as fast as people do, perishable things like livestock or orange juice (look up Tropicana's Juice Trains). But most cargoes are things like coal, steel, containerized goods, and the like, which are not particularly time-sensitive.
As Goblin says, I don't think it's impossible. The situation in the US is, of course, that most freight tracks are privately owned. It's a lot more cost-effective to send one or two trains with lots of attached cars(meaning lots of weight) and go slowly, both in terms of fuel used and in terms of the wear and tear on the tracks. There's also the weather and terrain to consider. Unlike in much of Europe, the railroads here go through large territories of almost completely open land where sending people out to clear and repair tracks takes more time and money. If they just send one train a day that's already going pretty slow for safety reasons, they can send more freight at once and pay less conductors, less track maintenance people, and less in fuel.
If you're looking at it from that lens, then there is a lot of hassle involved with putting a heavy passenger system on the same tracks as a freight system. It's certainly doable, especially as technology advances, but currently given the lack of feasibility of widespread rail transport compared to cars in the US, it's one of those "could be done, not worth the effort" issues. I confess to not knowing why Europe has not tried to work on a different and more effective system, though.
Clearly if the tracks aren't totally saturated, carrying train cars pretty much continuously, then one could add cars carrying freight without impeding the passenger service--except of course that the total load hence maintenance needed would go up--maintenance means closing tracks for a time so that's a limiting factor too. When I visited Europe in the late 80s and 1990, I wasn't generally near the rail lines (being mostly in the Donnersberg-Kreis of Rheinland-Pfaltz, as far in the "boonies" as you can get in Germany, which is where the USAF liked to put its bases after all). So I can't testify but I suspect most lines are pretty far from being totally saturated, though some routes might be. (These would be the ones that would best justify putting in parallel lines though, if the right-of-way area can be acquired somehow).
Then the problem of putting American-style freight loads on European passenger lines would become the one of the huge disparity of speeds; the answer there is to limit the freight load of each car to the weight of a passenger car, which I guess would make for pretty puny loads in each compared to Western hemisphere practices, but this would allow the freight cars (on separate trains or attached to passenger ones) to move at the same speeds as the passenger cars. Instead of a single long train of very heavy cars passing slowly through the luckless towns that aren't in a position to make the crossings over bridges or in tunnels, we'd have a lot more freight cars (I don't know, five times as many? Ten? and certain very massive items Americans move on freight cars would be too heavy and forbidden I guess) on smaller trains that move quickly through the crossings but a lot more frequently. And of course if we double total tonnage, the wear caused by individual trains is the same but there are twice as many so the maintenance cost goes up. Surely though the savings realized by avoiding trucking on the roads (that surely costs some public maintenance costs as well, not to mention the bill for importing expensive fuel) can more than cover the higher maintenance, again until we reach saturation anyway.
So I always did assume Europe's freight moved mostly on rails, and the trucks there were a lower proportion of the ton-miles achieved than in the USA, and this conversation has amazed me.
As a general thing, I guess it belongs elsewhere--but clearly it has a bearing on Jonathan's timeline as it brings up issues for him to consider, not just in Europe but the whole world, vis a vis the balance of transport between roads and rails (and air, and shipping and canals).
The USA for instance--probably tended to abandon passenger rail as per OTL, what with North America being a major early oil exporter. ITTL "foreign" oil has had a tendency to be discovered earlier and sold to more customers than just Europe and the USA though; American fortunes would enjoy an early surge due to oil prices rising somewhat over OTL despite more sources being found earlier, then we'd approach domestic depletion sooner. We'd still have lots of purchasing power to buy on the global market, but is it possible that serious concerns about domestic depletion might coincide with environmental concerns sooner, and bring a political movement to check the decline of passenger rail and automotive sprawl that reverses the failing of passenger rail, keeping it a priority, and perhaps there is some kind of quasi-nationalization to create a unified, somewhat socialized network including local commuter rail and long-range passenger transport as well?
The former is probably a more rational priority than the latter; for really long distances in America, it makes sense to take an airplane instead; favoring rail is most significant in cutting down on urban area traffic congestion, pollution, and inefficient fuel consumption, particularly if urban centers can remain viable, with their local public transport systems cutting down on the desirability of having one's own car handy.
If a big part of the US rail network (and Canadian and Mexican, a major reason I've been saying "American" freely not necessarily meaning just the US) is bearing passenger trains, then they have to be kept clear of big heavy slow modern OTL American style freight trains. The same might not be true of the long haul lines that would see most of their passenger traffic lost to aircraft, but upon approaching urban hubs the monster American trains of OTL would have to break up or be shunted onto special heavy slow lines of their own; there might be more than enough alternate lines in US conurbations to allow two parallel systems to be sure.
Meanwhile in Europe where domestic oil supplies are scarce, perhaps the leading powers (France, Germany) have led the way in making their rail lines useful to both passenger and freight demands, the passenger needs setting most of the standards to be sure but freight evolving to accommodate them rather than being shunted onto highways. (Why this did not happen OTL remains mysterious to me, perhaps it was thanks to US influence in the post-WWII era?)
The issues remain pertinent also to other continents such as Africa and South America and of course Asia--everywhere really.
I never did follow through on thinking out a proper narrative of how airships might have evolved and perhaps remained relevant. I'd suggest though that for very large, heavy items such as I suggested Americans might allow on a freight flatcar but Europeans cannot afford to do so, not to mention even larger ones too big for anyone's rail lines, big airships can be competitive.
If there are any investors from the lamented CargoLifter venture of the 1990s-early 2000s around they'll probably want to come hit me now I guess--I know, I was heavily involved in an LTA liftserv around that time. Good thing for me I'm pseudonymous, eh?
But I still think the basic concept is viable and that there's a fair chance that that is one niche the Great-War legacy early dirigibles which probably played a major unsung role ITTL between 1900 and 1920 might have moved into, setting an upper limit on the sort of cargo items one wants to move on rails or roads. The big infrastructural cost of a big airship is a suitable set of bases, with big enough hangars to hold the things--but a big enough airship, made with high enough technology, might only need one of those. (Building that is what took CL into bankruptcy OTL though).
Airplanes certainly can carry large cargoes as well, at a high cost per ton-mile--though with the development of high-efficiency turbofan engines I gather those costs have come down to close to those of fast surface transport like cars, if not down to railroad levels. I've seen designs for big flat-bed jets, like a typical jetliner with its middle fuselage squeezed flat like a tube of toothpaste; the payload would be loaded on (the Lockheed design I refer to had a split tail to accommodate that) and lashed down good and hard and the cargo would just be exposed to the slipstream and ambient pressures. It's not for delicate loads! Although a composite or fabric fairing would possibly be an option.
I guess such things might have to wait for really big and powerful engines, though I can imagine it being done with piston engines. The original "Guppy" to haul Saturn upper stages was a modified piston plane after all, though later versions use turboprops or even turbofan engines instead. Such planes, with or without enclosed cargo sections, would be viable for moving stuff that isn't too heavy but is too bulky to ship on rails or roads running through tunnels and over bridges.
An airship might allow direct delivery from factory to final point of use, though keeping station in shifting winds is enough of a problem that it is a challenge. That was part of what CargoLifter tried to promise and a feature that prompts suggestions of big airship cargo haulers perennially.
Then the problem of putting American-style freight loads on European passenger lines would become the one of the huge disparity of speeds; the answer there is to limit the freight load of each car to the weight of a passenger car, which I guess would make for pretty puny loads in each compared to Western hemisphere practices, but this would allow the freight cars (on separate trains or attached to passenger ones) to move at the same speeds as the passenger cars. Instead of a single long train of very heavy cars passing slowly through the luckless towns that aren't in a position to make the crossings over bridges or in tunnels, we'd have a lot more freight cars (I don't know, five times as many? Ten? and certain very massive items Americans move on freight cars would be too heavy and forbidden I guess) on smaller trains that move quickly through the crossings but a lot more frequently. And of course if we double total tonnage, the wear caused by individual trains is the same but there are twice as many so the maintenance cost goes up. Surely though the savings realized by avoiding trucking on the roads (that surely costs some public maintenance costs as well, not to mention the bill for importing expensive fuel) can more than cover the higher maintenance, again until we reach saturation anyway.
So I always did assume Europe's freight moved mostly on rails, and the trucks there were a lower proportion of the ton-miles achieved than in the USA, and this conversation has amazed me.
As a general thing, I guess it belongs elsewhere--but clearly it has a bearing on Jonathan's timeline as it brings up issues for him to consider, not just in Europe but the whole world, vis a vis the balance of transport between roads and rails (and air, and shipping and canals).
The USA for instance--probably tended to abandon passenger rail as per OTL, what with North America being a major early oil exporter. ITTL "foreign" oil has had a tendency to be discovered earlier and sold to more customers than just Europe and the USA though; American fortunes would enjoy an early surge due to oil prices rising somewhat over OTL despite more sources being found earlier, then we'd approach domestic depletion sooner. We'd still have lots of purchasing power to buy on the global market, but is it possible that serious concerns about domestic depletion might coincide with environmental concerns sooner, and bring a political movement to check the decline of passenger rail and automotive sprawl that reverses the failing of passenger rail, keeping it a priority, and perhaps there is some kind of quasi-nationalization to create a unified, somewhat socialized network including local commuter rail and long-range passenger transport as well?
The former is probably a more rational priority than the latter; for really long distances in America, it makes sense to take an airplane instead; favoring rail is most significant in cutting down on urban area traffic congestion, pollution, and inefficient fuel consumption, particularly if urban centers can remain viable, with their local public transport systems cutting down on the desirability of having one's own car handy.
If a big part of the US rail network (and Canadian and Mexican, a major reason I've been saying "American" freely not necessarily meaning just the US) is bearing passenger trains, then they have to be kept clear of big heavy slow modern OTL American style freight trains. The same might not be true of the long haul lines that would see most of their passenger traffic lost to aircraft, but upon approaching urban hubs the monster American trains of OTL would have to break up or be shunted onto special heavy slow lines of their own; there might be more than enough alternate lines in US conurbations to allow two parallel systems to be sure.
Meanwhile in Europe where domestic oil supplies are scarce, perhaps the leading powers (France, Germany) have led the way in making their rail lines useful to both passenger and freight demands, the passenger needs setting most of the standards to be sure but freight evolving to accommodate them rather than being shunted onto highways. (Why this did not happen OTL remains mysterious to me, perhaps it was thanks to US influence in the post-WWII era?)
The issues remain pertinent also to other continents such as Africa and South America and of course Asia--everywhere really.
I never did follow through on thinking out a proper narrative of how airships might have evolved and perhaps remained relevant. I'd suggest though that for very large, heavy items such as I suggested Americans might allow on a freight flatcar but Europeans cannot afford to do so, not to mention even larger ones too big for anyone's rail lines, big airships can be competitive.
If there are any investors from the lamented CargoLifter venture of the 1990s-early 2000s around they'll probably want to come hit me now I guess--I know, I was heavily involved in an LTA liftserv around that time. Good thing for me I'm pseudonymous, eh?
But I still think the basic concept is viable and that there's a fair chance that that is one niche the Great-War legacy early dirigibles which probably played a major unsung role ITTL between 1900 and 1920 might have moved into, setting an upper limit on the sort of cargo items one wants to move on rails or roads. The big infrastructural cost of a big airship is a suitable set of bases, with big enough hangars to hold the things--but a big enough airship, made with high enough technology, might only need one of those. (Building that is what took CL into bankruptcy OTL though).
Airplanes certainly can carry large cargoes as well, at a high cost per ton-mile--though with the development of high-efficiency turbofan engines I gather those costs have come down to close to those of fast surface transport like cars, if not down to railroad levels. I've seen designs for big flat-bed jets, like a typical jetliner with its middle fuselage squeezed flat like a tube of toothpaste; the payload would be loaded on (the Lockheed design I refer to had a split tail to accommodate that) and lashed down good and hard and the cargo would just be exposed to the slipstream and ambient pressures. It's not for delicate loads! Although a composite or fabric fairing would possibly be an option.
I guess such things might have to wait for really big and powerful engines, though I can imagine it being done with piston engines. The original "Guppy" to haul Saturn upper stages was a modified piston plane after all, though later versions use turboprops or even turbofan engines instead. Such planes, with or without enclosed cargo sections, would be viable for moving stuff that isn't too heavy but is too bulky to ship on rails or roads running through tunnels and over bridges.
An airship might allow direct delivery from factory to final point of use, though keeping station in shifting winds is enough of a problem that it is a challenge. That was part of what CargoLifter tried to promise and a feature that prompts suggestions of big airship cargo haulers perennially.
As I've more or less exhausted my knowledge of trains in those two posts, let me get back to the TL.
I'm very interested in how the Portugal situation is shaping up. In particular, the way that they talk so openly of "Portuguese" applying not just to the Europeans but to "overseas" folks as well is a very strange thing at first, but the more I think about it the more I like it. ITTL, with nationalism being considered a sin, racial disparities undergoing constant assault from religious and secular authorities, and the political realities of the Africans more or less ruling massive powers, it's oddly refreshing to see this kind of situation. Nobody is completely dominant, no matter what they want, and everyone's being forced to compromise as a matter of necessity, which may very well save the overseas unity of the Portuguese former empire.
On a purely economic level, let me also say that the constant expansion of regions and cultural ties across borders, though something we've all discussed before, keeps bringing up a number of different ideas.
To go back to my constant obsession with American minorities, let me give a few thoughts/ideas:
Given the extreme economic power of Germany and the Zollervein ITTL and the much more slowly diminishing German cultural and linguistic influence in the Midwest, I'm wondering if Milwaukee and Chicago might not end up with agreements with the Zollervein. They wouldn't be full members, but something a step below the ports in Baltic Russia may be in the cards as things shape up, sort of a free-trade zone for the cities with the organization and making themselves "favored ports" or somesuch.
At the same time, the Great Lakes is likely going to be undergoing a lot of the internationalization between Canadian and US agencies seeking to protect environmental resources even sooner here. The more internationalized world does open up the possibility of invasive species much earlier and the traditional issues of stewardship of water resources will be coming up, except now you also will have the Ojibwe, Menominee, and other Natives who may end up with voices in the Great Lakes organization that forms. The reverse side of that is that the conflict over spear fishing may come to a head sooner between state-level conservation laws and tribal-level traditional laws, which would complicate the whole relationship a bit.
Regarding Italians in the Northeast, it's also occurred to me that, unlike OTL, the liberals and anti-traditionalists are not the ones being expelled from Italy, but rather the ones ruling it ITTL, so the Italians in New York and environs here will still be culturally similar but will quite possibly be more culturally and religiously conservative than OTL's migrants, which would leave its own mark on Northeastern society. TTL's Catholic Church, and if we're assuming they're the more poor, conservative Italians they will be some of its most fervent adherents, will be pushing hard for Italian anti-nativism in the Northeast, which will rub WASP Yankees very much the wrong way, even as other groups like the Christian Arabs, Jews, and countless others I can't really talk about much start to fill in. If there's any place that seems to fit the image Shevek had a long time ago about America being an "armed camp" between some Christian denominational/ethnic identities, I can't think of any better region than the northeast for that.
Both the West Coast and the South will be more focused on racial divides and issues, as will the Natives/Hispanics/Whites living in the Southwest, especially if eventually migration patterns match OTL where lots of people start moving south as air conditioning becomes viable.
I'm very interested in how the Portugal situation is shaping up. In particular, the way that they talk so openly of "Portuguese" applying not just to the Europeans but to "overseas" folks as well is a very strange thing at first, but the more I think about it the more I like it. ITTL, with nationalism being considered a sin, racial disparities undergoing constant assault from religious and secular authorities, and the political realities of the Africans more or less ruling massive powers, it's oddly refreshing to see this kind of situation. Nobody is completely dominant, no matter what they want, and everyone's being forced to compromise as a matter of necessity, which may very well save the overseas unity of the Portuguese former empire.
On a purely economic level, let me also say that the constant expansion of regions and cultural ties across borders, though something we've all discussed before, keeps bringing up a number of different ideas.
To go back to my constant obsession with American minorities, let me give a few thoughts/ideas:
Given the extreme economic power of Germany and the Zollervein ITTL and the much more slowly diminishing German cultural and linguistic influence in the Midwest, I'm wondering if Milwaukee and Chicago might not end up with agreements with the Zollervein. They wouldn't be full members, but something a step below the ports in Baltic Russia may be in the cards as things shape up, sort of a free-trade zone for the cities with the organization and making themselves "favored ports" or somesuch.
At the same time, the Great Lakes is likely going to be undergoing a lot of the internationalization between Canadian and US agencies seeking to protect environmental resources even sooner here. The more internationalized world does open up the possibility of invasive species much earlier and the traditional issues of stewardship of water resources will be coming up, except now you also will have the Ojibwe, Menominee, and other Natives who may end up with voices in the Great Lakes organization that forms. The reverse side of that is that the conflict over spear fishing may come to a head sooner between state-level conservation laws and tribal-level traditional laws, which would complicate the whole relationship a bit.
Regarding Italians in the Northeast, it's also occurred to me that, unlike OTL, the liberals and anti-traditionalists are not the ones being expelled from Italy, but rather the ones ruling it ITTL, so the Italians in New York and environs here will still be culturally similar but will quite possibly be more culturally and religiously conservative than OTL's migrants, which would leave its own mark on Northeastern society. TTL's Catholic Church, and if we're assuming they're the more poor, conservative Italians they will be some of its most fervent adherents, will be pushing hard for Italian anti-nativism in the Northeast, which will rub WASP Yankees very much the wrong way, even as other groups like the Christian Arabs, Jews, and countless others I can't really talk about much start to fill in. If there's any place that seems to fit the image Shevek had a long time ago about America being an "armed camp" between some Christian denominational/ethnic identities, I can't think of any better region than the northeast for that.
Both the West Coast and the South will be more focused on racial divides and issues, as will the Natives/Hispanics/Whites living in the Southwest, especially if eventually migration patterns match OTL where lots of people start moving south as air conditioning becomes viable.
Lake Tana, October 1964
There had been many people on the mainland docks: Ethiopian monks and others who were Russian or Greek; villagers returning from the market; merchants loading their wares into the boats they would steer from island to island. But on this boat there were only women. There was no law or doctrine saying it should be so, but for a decade now, by unspoken agreement, no man debarked at the island where the boat was going.
It lay ahead now: a low-lying islet amid deep blue waters, with rocky promontories rising from the forest. It was too small for anyone to have built a monastery or a village; for most of the lake’s storied history, no one had lived there. Daraartu, her gaze fixed beyond the boat’s prow, could see that there wasn’t even a port; she and the other passengers would have to wade the last few meters to the shore.
She said nothing to the other women, nor they to her. Those with children murmured to them, but otherwise, there was no sound but the motor; most people who came here had business they didn’t wish to share.
The engine puttered to a stop, and the boatwoman brought the vessel to a halt with a pole. Two other women, one with the look of the Kush nations and the other Greek, waded out to take the cloth and books and sacks of grain that lay in the prow. The passengers, Daraartu with them, swung over the side and set foot in the waters, gathering their skirts for the passage to the rocky beach.
Others had come now to help unload the supplies, and a few more waited on the shore. All at once, Daraartu studied them closely. Most of them were old, as she had expected; few of the young were attracted to a contemplative life. They were from all of Ethiopia’s nations: Amhara, Oromo, Tigrinya, Yemeni, Nilotic, Russian. They dressed simply, but not in habits as nuns might, and not all in one color, and some wore patterns. They were those who had come to stay: some for a week or a month, some for years. Some would never leave.
The passengers on the boat would not stay beyond the day, and the women on shore greeted them as visitors. One, an ancient Amhara with a bronze latticework cross on a filigree necklace, led them silently up a path, which wound through forest to a wooden cabin built in the Russian style and a field that had been cleared around it. And in the clearing, preparing the garden for winter crops, she was standing.
She’s so small, was Daraartu’s first thought. The white-haired woman in a plain gray dress had become gaunt with age; it seemed that a strong wind would send her tumbling like the leaves. Surely this wasn’t the woman who had shared the throne of Solomon for so many years, and who had loaded antiaircraft guns calmly when bombs were exploding all around. But when she spoke, there was no doubt of who she had been, and who she still was.
She welcomed her visitors, as the women on shore had done, and sat on a chair just beyond the garden’s edge. Daraartu’s fellow passengers formed a line and, one by one, told her why they had come. Some wanted only a blessing: for a forthcoming marriage, for a newborn child, for a job or a business venture. Others sought prayers for family members who were sick or in danger. Most, though, had come for advice: in domestic matters, in affairs of the heart, in navigating the treacherous web of relationships that was family and clan and business. The line moved slowly, because Anastasia would send no one away until she was finished, but it moved, and Daraartu finally looked into her eyes.
How do I greet her? she wondered. As an empress? As a nun? But she isn’t one, for all her devotion…
“I greet you, Mother,” she said. She waited to be chastised for her presumption, but Anastasia merely smiled, and invited her to say more.
“I am Duraartu from Oromia. My people were serfs before they were freed, and they are a commune now.” Anastasia nodded; she has surely seen such things before. No doubt she had the same image in her mind as Daraartu had now: land and equipment held in common as the narodniks did, round cement houses and gardens that were used for subsistence, fields of coffee and khat and vegetables for the market, the great hall where people learned and prayed together in the Belloist fashion.
“This year,” Duraartu continued, “my age-grade proposed me for the university.” That was the part of the commune that was straight from the Oromo gadaa tradition: there were age-grades for women now as well as men, and the eight-to-sixteens and the 16-to-24s lived together and ruled themselves.
“You don’t want to go?”
“Of course I want to go.” The image in Duraartu’s mind was no longer her commune but the city of Gondar as she had seen it on the way to this island, with its two million people, its jacaranda-lined boulevards, its factories and sprawling working-class neighborhoods, its theaters and public forums where all the nations gathered. “But I also want to marry. Tolessa… he may not wait for me, if I go away.”
“Ah,” Anastasia said. “My father disapproved of my marriage, you know.” Duraartu had heard this was so, but she couldn’t believe it: how could any father oppose his daughter’s marriage to a royal prince? “But we should speak of this later, when the other visitors are gone and we have more time. Stay for supper, and we will talk after.”
Duraartu stepped out of the line, not sure what she should do in the hours before supper was served. One of the women who waited by the garden wall solved that problem for her by showing her a bowl of water, a sack of teff and a pinch of yeast. “You will make dough for the bread to be baked tonight.”
That, Duraartu understood. It was the same in her commune: visitors who stayed for a meal shared in the village’s labor. Making bread was something she had done many times before, and she lost herself in it as the last of the boat’s passengers finished their business and the sun began to settle in the west.
At length the meal was prepared, and the women who stayed after the boat’s departure gathered around a table in the cabin. Anastasia sat at its head and prayed; after a moment, Duraartu realized that the prayer was silent, so that each person at the table could say the blessing that came most naturally to them. There was a Belloist prayer she knew, giving thanks to the God that made food and affirming the community that produced it, and she murmured it in a voice that no one else could hear.
Afterward, the conversation was the same as any dinner table, making allowances for the contemplative life that prevailed here. Some of the women had read an essay of Tolstoy’s that afternoon, and they discussed its prescriptions for the ideal community; others spoke of God and the virtues he demanded, or simply of supplies that were short and repairs that needed to be made. Duraartu listened, waiting for the time when she could speak again of what had brought her here.
And the dishes were finally cleared, and Anastasia motioned to her before anyone could draft her to clean. “May I take your arm?” she said, and did so before Duraartu could answer; together, they found a path that led up from the cabin and toward the island’s highest point.
“Do you have a convent here?” Duraartu asked.
“It is a place of contemplation,” Anastasia said. “But we have no priests, and no one to regulate our prayers.”
“No priests? Aren’t you Christian?”
“I am. But this is a Muslim country too, so there is no need of priests to stand between us and God.”
Duraartu wondered what religion the older woman had found. Her people were Muslim but had learned much from the Christian narodniks; was it possible to go the other way, and follow a Muslim version of Christianity? But they had reached the summit, and both of them looked toward the distant lights of the mainland.
“Will you tell me to follow my heart, as you did?” Duraartu asked.
“If it were that simple, I might. But where does your heart lead? To the university, or to Tolessa?”
“To both.”
“You see then? If you follow, you will have to go two ways. You know there is your duty to yourself, and your duty to your family and village – and there is a third duty as well, to your nation. You must think of what you have to offer it, and what it demands of you… and it may make its demands when you never look for them. When I came here, you know, I planned to live alone.”
Duraartu considered that for a moment: devotion interrupted by those who came for counsel and blessing, but fulfilled by the same token. “Duty to my family, duty to the nation,” she said. “So I should go to the university?”
“You can go there and marry,” Anastasia said. “I did. If your duty leads two ways, then you must choose – but if you can reconcile them, you may never need to.”
“Tolessa can’t go with me. The qondaala council didn’t choose him.”
“There are other reasons a person might go to the city. An apprenticeship, for instance.”
“Yes,” Duraartu said. “Maybe that.” People from the village did go for apprenticeships sometimes; mechanics for the farm equipment were needed, as were plumbers and electricians. There was a shortage of the last among the older generation; maybe Tolessa could be sent to learn that craft. “He would still have to be chosen, though.”
“Are you persuasive?”
Duraartu didn’t think of herself as such, but she was reluctant to admit as much in this place. “I can be. Sometimes.”
“I know you can. It took courage to come here, and with the same courage, you can speak in your council. And if that isn’t enough, maybe a recommendation from me will help.” She looked out at the lights on the far shore. “They do still know my name in that world.”
“You would do that?”
“To bring a promising girl to the university? To make sure that it doesn’t cost her a family? Of course.” The light was too dim for Duraartu to look into Anastasia’s eyes, but she was suddenly sure that the other woman’s concerns were very practical. She had come for advice for her soul, but the thought was somehow reassuring.
“Let’s go back to the house,” Anastasia said. “It’s past time to sleep. You can return on the boat tomorrow, with a letter from me. And when it comes time to use what you learn, remember who is depending on you.”
There had been many people on the mainland docks: Ethiopian monks and others who were Russian or Greek; villagers returning from the market; merchants loading their wares into the boats they would steer from island to island. But on this boat there were only women. There was no law or doctrine saying it should be so, but for a decade now, by unspoken agreement, no man debarked at the island where the boat was going.
It lay ahead now: a low-lying islet amid deep blue waters, with rocky promontories rising from the forest. It was too small for anyone to have built a monastery or a village; for most of the lake’s storied history, no one had lived there. Daraartu, her gaze fixed beyond the boat’s prow, could see that there wasn’t even a port; she and the other passengers would have to wade the last few meters to the shore.
She said nothing to the other women, nor they to her. Those with children murmured to them, but otherwise, there was no sound but the motor; most people who came here had business they didn’t wish to share.
The engine puttered to a stop, and the boatwoman brought the vessel to a halt with a pole. Two other women, one with the look of the Kush nations and the other Greek, waded out to take the cloth and books and sacks of grain that lay in the prow. The passengers, Daraartu with them, swung over the side and set foot in the waters, gathering their skirts for the passage to the rocky beach.
Others had come now to help unload the supplies, and a few more waited on the shore. All at once, Daraartu studied them closely. Most of them were old, as she had expected; few of the young were attracted to a contemplative life. They were from all of Ethiopia’s nations: Amhara, Oromo, Tigrinya, Yemeni, Nilotic, Russian. They dressed simply, but not in habits as nuns might, and not all in one color, and some wore patterns. They were those who had come to stay: some for a week or a month, some for years. Some would never leave.
The passengers on the boat would not stay beyond the day, and the women on shore greeted them as visitors. One, an ancient Amhara with a bronze latticework cross on a filigree necklace, led them silently up a path, which wound through forest to a wooden cabin built in the Russian style and a field that had been cleared around it. And in the clearing, preparing the garden for winter crops, she was standing.
She’s so small, was Daraartu’s first thought. The white-haired woman in a plain gray dress had become gaunt with age; it seemed that a strong wind would send her tumbling like the leaves. Surely this wasn’t the woman who had shared the throne of Solomon for so many years, and who had loaded antiaircraft guns calmly when bombs were exploding all around. But when she spoke, there was no doubt of who she had been, and who she still was.
She welcomed her visitors, as the women on shore had done, and sat on a chair just beyond the garden’s edge. Daraartu’s fellow passengers formed a line and, one by one, told her why they had come. Some wanted only a blessing: for a forthcoming marriage, for a newborn child, for a job or a business venture. Others sought prayers for family members who were sick or in danger. Most, though, had come for advice: in domestic matters, in affairs of the heart, in navigating the treacherous web of relationships that was family and clan and business. The line moved slowly, because Anastasia would send no one away until she was finished, but it moved, and Daraartu finally looked into her eyes.
How do I greet her? she wondered. As an empress? As a nun? But she isn’t one, for all her devotion…
“I greet you, Mother,” she said. She waited to be chastised for her presumption, but Anastasia merely smiled, and invited her to say more.
“I am Duraartu from Oromia. My people were serfs before they were freed, and they are a commune now.” Anastasia nodded; she has surely seen such things before. No doubt she had the same image in her mind as Daraartu had now: land and equipment held in common as the narodniks did, round cement houses and gardens that were used for subsistence, fields of coffee and khat and vegetables for the market, the great hall where people learned and prayed together in the Belloist fashion.
“This year,” Duraartu continued, “my age-grade proposed me for the university.” That was the part of the commune that was straight from the Oromo gadaa tradition: there were age-grades for women now as well as men, and the eight-to-sixteens and the 16-to-24s lived together and ruled themselves.
“You don’t want to go?”
“Of course I want to go.” The image in Duraartu’s mind was no longer her commune but the city of Gondar as she had seen it on the way to this island, with its two million people, its jacaranda-lined boulevards, its factories and sprawling working-class neighborhoods, its theaters and public forums where all the nations gathered. “But I also want to marry. Tolessa… he may not wait for me, if I go away.”
“Ah,” Anastasia said. “My father disapproved of my marriage, you know.” Duraartu had heard this was so, but she couldn’t believe it: how could any father oppose his daughter’s marriage to a royal prince? “But we should speak of this later, when the other visitors are gone and we have more time. Stay for supper, and we will talk after.”
Duraartu stepped out of the line, not sure what she should do in the hours before supper was served. One of the women who waited by the garden wall solved that problem for her by showing her a bowl of water, a sack of teff and a pinch of yeast. “You will make dough for the bread to be baked tonight.”
That, Duraartu understood. It was the same in her commune: visitors who stayed for a meal shared in the village’s labor. Making bread was something she had done many times before, and she lost herself in it as the last of the boat’s passengers finished their business and the sun began to settle in the west.
At length the meal was prepared, and the women who stayed after the boat’s departure gathered around a table in the cabin. Anastasia sat at its head and prayed; after a moment, Duraartu realized that the prayer was silent, so that each person at the table could say the blessing that came most naturally to them. There was a Belloist prayer she knew, giving thanks to the God that made food and affirming the community that produced it, and she murmured it in a voice that no one else could hear.
Afterward, the conversation was the same as any dinner table, making allowances for the contemplative life that prevailed here. Some of the women had read an essay of Tolstoy’s that afternoon, and they discussed its prescriptions for the ideal community; others spoke of God and the virtues he demanded, or simply of supplies that were short and repairs that needed to be made. Duraartu listened, waiting for the time when she could speak again of what had brought her here.
And the dishes were finally cleared, and Anastasia motioned to her before anyone could draft her to clean. “May I take your arm?” she said, and did so before Duraartu could answer; together, they found a path that led up from the cabin and toward the island’s highest point.
“Do you have a convent here?” Duraartu asked.
“It is a place of contemplation,” Anastasia said. “But we have no priests, and no one to regulate our prayers.”
“No priests? Aren’t you Christian?”
“I am. But this is a Muslim country too, so there is no need of priests to stand between us and God.”
Duraartu wondered what religion the older woman had found. Her people were Muslim but had learned much from the Christian narodniks; was it possible to go the other way, and follow a Muslim version of Christianity? But they had reached the summit, and both of them looked toward the distant lights of the mainland.
“Will you tell me to follow my heart, as you did?” Duraartu asked.
“If it were that simple, I might. But where does your heart lead? To the university, or to Tolessa?”
“To both.”
“You see then? If you follow, you will have to go two ways. You know there is your duty to yourself, and your duty to your family and village – and there is a third duty as well, to your nation. You must think of what you have to offer it, and what it demands of you… and it may make its demands when you never look for them. When I came here, you know, I planned to live alone.”
Duraartu considered that for a moment: devotion interrupted by those who came for counsel and blessing, but fulfilled by the same token. “Duty to my family, duty to the nation,” she said. “So I should go to the university?”
“You can go there and marry,” Anastasia said. “I did. If your duty leads two ways, then you must choose – but if you can reconcile them, you may never need to.”
“Tolessa can’t go with me. The qondaala council didn’t choose him.”
“There are other reasons a person might go to the city. An apprenticeship, for instance.”
“Yes,” Duraartu said. “Maybe that.” People from the village did go for apprenticeships sometimes; mechanics for the farm equipment were needed, as were plumbers and electricians. There was a shortage of the last among the older generation; maybe Tolessa could be sent to learn that craft. “He would still have to be chosen, though.”
“Are you persuasive?”
Duraartu didn’t think of herself as such, but she was reluctant to admit as much in this place. “I can be. Sometimes.”
“I know you can. It took courage to come here, and with the same courage, you can speak in your council. And if that isn’t enough, maybe a recommendation from me will help.” She looked out at the lights on the far shore. “They do still know my name in that world.”
“You would do that?”
“To bring a promising girl to the university? To make sure that it doesn’t cost her a family? Of course.” The light was too dim for Duraartu to look into Anastasia’s eyes, but she was suddenly sure that the other woman’s concerns were very practical. She had come for advice for her soul, but the thought was somehow reassuring.
“Let’s go back to the house,” Anastasia said. “It’s past time to sleep. You can return on the boat tomorrow, with a letter from me. And when it comes time to use what you learn, remember who is depending on you.”
J.E., I can honestly say, without a doubt, that I've been liking your most recent material, and liking it a lot. I loved what you did with the Obamas, btw.
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From the tone of that narrative, I guess this will be the last we hear of the great Nigist of Ethiopia. Man, what a life she had.
Also, call me crazy, but I can easily see her attaining the status of... say... Queen Victoria or Elizabeth I as one of those monarchs who defined the period in which they ruled and lived in. Like, she's the one that comes up first in people's minds around the world whenever someone talks about 'Africa' and 'Empress' together.
Also, call me crazy, but I can easily see her attaining the status of... say... Queen Victoria or Elizabeth I as one of those monarchs who defined the period in which they ruled and lived in. Like, she's the one that comes up first in people's minds around the world whenever someone talks about 'Africa' and 'Empress' together.
I think that an important factor is the relative reluctance of individual states to cooperate in what they see as a critical national matter and invest the EU with the competence on the topic.
At present, of course, it is a non-starter. Just think how Britain would feel about it (it's not just euroskepicism either: a EU-controlled system would probably focus on the geo-economical core, roughly from Paris to Berlin). Of course, the more the Union is involved, the more scale economies you get, so in general it is probably beneficial in the long-term.
For example, there's discussion about a very controversial (and apparently very costly) transalpine high speed freight line. It's not the sort of proposal that makes you trust the higher-ups.
Actually, that makes sense, from what I've seen of the amount of freight that travels by truck through Switzerland. In fact, transalpine freight was one of the major things I had in mind that would benefit from improved rail infrastructure.
@Shevek: While I bring up the extra wear and tear on rails caused by high-speed high-weight trains, there is another factor in American trains tending to go slow, which is the fact that they use diesel engines to provide power. Europe, however, has a high degree of electrification, which means that for a given weight you can build a much more powerful locomotive (electric motors have a high power-to-weight ratio, and an electric locomotive does not, of course, have to carry its power supply along with it), meaning that you can go faster.