Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Hnau
Banned
Great update, Jonathan. It seems to me that the Brussels Conference accomplished much less in this timeline than the OTL Berlin Conference. This leads me to believe that territorial boundaries in Africa will be decided much more by the Great War, with the victors asserting their claims over those that will lose. By the way, have you told us who will win the Great War yet?
As for Abacar I have no art skills but I imagine him thin, long face, grizzled with a goatee but I have no art skills whatsoever
I've always imagined him looking something like Adam Kok III, although he wouldn't, because his ancestry is Fulani rather than mixed Boer, Khoikhoi and Tswana.
The only firm things I've said about his appearance are that he's five and a half feet tall and heavily built, and that he was 55 years old at the beginning of the story.
Anyone care to try his hand? Don't make me ask for a TV Tropes page instead.
You're correct that the Great War will decide the medium-term destinies of several colonies as well as many of the remaining independent kingdoms.
I haven't said who'll win, and I'm not going to spoil the surprise now. What I have said is that there will be degrees of victory and loss: not everyone on the winning side will do equally well, and there may even be overlapping outcomes between countries that are nominally on the winning and losing sides. That, and some outcomes that initially seem like losses may turn out in the long term to be gains.
I absolutely loved "I see we're making progress already."
Great stuff, though for me it still feels like a very edited, white-washed transcript of what actually took place at the symposium. I guess I'm too much a cynic to accept something like this without frequent interruptions or someone pedantically belaboring some personal fixation.
Great stuff, though for me it still feels like a very edited, white-washed transcript of what actually took place at the symposium. I guess I'm too much a cynic to accept something like this without frequent interruptions or someone pedantically belaboring some personal fixation.
Bring the jubilee
London
June 1887
“Your lady mother couldn’t come?” John Alexander asked.
“She wanted to,” Usman answered. “But the jajis are hard work, and she’s seventy, and…”
He let the sentence trail off, tasting familiar pain; Mother Aisha’s declining health was nothing new, and she’d outlived two of his sister-mothers already. Her mind was still sharp, and she’d taken over the Nana Asma’u’s job with passion, but she rarely left her garden anymore, and a trip to England was well beyond her. And soon enough, more than that.
John’s seventy-two himself; no doubt he’ll understand.
It seemed he did. Without saying anything further, he ushered Usman and Adeseye into the apartment he’d rented to watch the parade. It was well-furnished and equipped with a large balcony; Usman briefly wondered whether John had paid more or less for its use today than its tenant paid in an ordinary year.
“I was hoping to see Sarah.”
“Sarah… oh, from Dorset. She’s in India still – a nurse on the Bombay famine commission, and still part of the All-India Reform Congress. She writes me letters sometimes on the condition of the Indians, and she’s turned into quite the suffragist.”
“I approve,” said Adeseye and Dione Alexander at once, and then dissolved into laughter. The two had taken an instant liking to one another, the sisterhood of formidable women.
Usman looked back at the source of the merriment. Both his wife and John’s were wearing sari-inspired dresses – the Empire was all the rage in this jubilee year – and the sight of Adeseye in one brought him forcefully back to his own years in India. For a moment, he was a twenty-one year old lieutenant again rather than a settled man of forty-five, and it was as if he’d been transported to another person’s body; India, and all that had happened since, had changed him more than he realized. Evidently it had changed Sarah too; it was hard to reconcile what he knew of her now, and what she’d done during the great famine, with the girl of thirty years past who’d been utterly uninterested in politics.
John led them onto the balcony, where Dione had set out tea and cakes. There would be others coming later, but no servants; this would be an intimate occasion, a “battlefield reception” as John called it, with the guests attending as family and friends rather than the political allies they also were.
"Your children are well?" he was saying.
"Yes, Paulo will be ready for Magdalen in a couple of years. He wants to read law, and join your African civil service for a while."
"They won't send him back to Ilorin, you know. He'll be posted to East Africa, or down to Zululand."
"He knows. He thinks it will be good seasoning." Usman remembered the advice John's father had once given him on just that subject, the day he'd bought him a cavalry commission; after a quarter-century's absence, Britain was a place for memories.
"Has it all planned out, does he? Not a bit like his grandfather."
"He's got a share of my father's blood, no mistake, but the mysticism passed him by; he has no more of that than I do. Ibrahim, on the other hand... his passion is God and all His creation. He can't decide whether to be a poet, an imam, a physicist or all three."
"He's thirteen," said John, amused. "He has time... did you say he writes poetry?"
"Love songs to God," said Usman. "Some of them aren't bad. But he'll grow some by the time you see him - he'll go to university too, but I'm not sure how we'll prevent him from trying to read everything."
Dione must have seen his pensiveness, because she changed the subject. “Were you at yesterday’s banquet?”
“Not me. The Ooni was invited, but he’s a king; prime ministers are rather less exalted.”
“You should have been,” said Adeseye. She’d wanted him to meet the Queen, along with the other African and Indian princes, but it was just as well he hadn’t; he would have been uncomfortable being treated as royalty, and it would have been bad politics at home. The Ooni had caused enough of a stir, with the religious strictures that banned him from eating in front of other people; it was a good thing someone had thought to remind the palace staff that his refusal to partake wasn’t a sign of disrespect.
And it wasn’t as if Usman’s arrival had gone unremarked. He’d been taken to meet Gladstone the other day – it was amazing the old man was still around, much less prime minister – and several naval officers and members of Parliament had received him privately. And when he’d been to see the Malê workers at the Chatham shipyards, they’d cheered him like a visiting prince: the Ooni might be their titular monarch, but they were much more citizens of Ilorin than of Oyo, and the Abacar family were the leaders they had chosen.
“A curious thing happened at Chatham,” he said, suddenly reminded. “The Prince of Wales was visiting the shipyards the same day I was, and one of the policemen swung his club at a worker who was standing too near. The Prince stopped him, and what was it he said – ‘because a man has a black face and a different religion from our own, there’s no reason why he should be treated as a brute.’” [1]
“I heard about that!” Dione cried. “The Queen too: she’s taken a servant from India and one from Calabar, and she won’t hear of anyone in her household treating them poorly.” [2]
“It’s a shame that they can only stop what they can see,” said John.
“Don’t underestimate that,” Usman answered. “What they see one day, everyone sees the next, when it’s reported in the papers. And it’s something for a stranger in this country to know that there’s someone who’ll stand up for him.” He remembered the workers’ housing in Chatham, which was no worse than what most of the British working class endured but would have caused a revolt in Ilorin; they needed someone to represent them. He made a mental note to dispatch a consul there, and to make sure the one in London visited regularly.
John’s attention was taken momentarily by the arrival of other guests, two officers he’d known in the Crimea and their wives. Usman exchanged greetings with each before leaving Seye to charm them, as she always did. Another Liberal MP arrived a few minutes later, one on the select committee for colonial affairs, and one with whom Usman had sometimes corresponded.
“This is my last term, I think,” John was saying to him. “I saw the reform bill through, and it’s time to go home.”
“We’ll need you for the Empire Office scheme too.” Usman had heard something about that; a single office to oversee relations with colonies, dominions and princely states alike
“That should be done in time, and if not, I trust you to finish it. And since we’ve got Abacar here today, you’ll surely want to ask his views.”
Any further discussion was cut off by the sound of shouting from below, and Usman looked down the road to see the Queen’s coach approaching. In a moment, all of them – members of Parliament, retired officers, Malê prime ministers and formidable ladies – were on their feet, cheering Queen Victoria’s passage.
Usman remembered India again, and the question he had asked himself so long ago in Udaipur: what would a nation be like that combined the best of all nations? Could the provinces of the British empire put aside their prejudices and be that for each other?
Maybe not yet. But we’re at peace with our neighbors now, and we’re part of something larger than all of us, and that’s a start. Another generation of peace, and we’ll see where we are then…
_______
[1] He said this in OTL, albeit about India.
[2] In OTL, she took on two Indian servants during the jubilee year, including the (in)famous Abdul Karim; she criticized other servants’ rejection of him as “race prejudice” and looked on him maternally. She showed unconventional racial views on other occasions as well, although this may have been more due to lively curiosity and fascination with her imperial subjects than any broad support of egalitarian policies.
London
June 1887
“Your lady mother couldn’t come?” John Alexander asked.
“She wanted to,” Usman answered. “But the jajis are hard work, and she’s seventy, and…”
He let the sentence trail off, tasting familiar pain; Mother Aisha’s declining health was nothing new, and she’d outlived two of his sister-mothers already. Her mind was still sharp, and she’d taken over the Nana Asma’u’s job with passion, but she rarely left her garden anymore, and a trip to England was well beyond her. And soon enough, more than that.
John’s seventy-two himself; no doubt he’ll understand.
It seemed he did. Without saying anything further, he ushered Usman and Adeseye into the apartment he’d rented to watch the parade. It was well-furnished and equipped with a large balcony; Usman briefly wondered whether John had paid more or less for its use today than its tenant paid in an ordinary year.
“I was hoping to see Sarah.”
“Sarah… oh, from Dorset. She’s in India still – a nurse on the Bombay famine commission, and still part of the All-India Reform Congress. She writes me letters sometimes on the condition of the Indians, and she’s turned into quite the suffragist.”
“I approve,” said Adeseye and Dione Alexander at once, and then dissolved into laughter. The two had taken an instant liking to one another, the sisterhood of formidable women.
Usman looked back at the source of the merriment. Both his wife and John’s were wearing sari-inspired dresses – the Empire was all the rage in this jubilee year – and the sight of Adeseye in one brought him forcefully back to his own years in India. For a moment, he was a twenty-one year old lieutenant again rather than a settled man of forty-five, and it was as if he’d been transported to another person’s body; India, and all that had happened since, had changed him more than he realized. Evidently it had changed Sarah too; it was hard to reconcile what he knew of her now, and what she’d done during the great famine, with the girl of thirty years past who’d been utterly uninterested in politics.
John led them onto the balcony, where Dione had set out tea and cakes. There would be others coming later, but no servants; this would be an intimate occasion, a “battlefield reception” as John called it, with the guests attending as family and friends rather than the political allies they also were.
"Your children are well?" he was saying.
"Yes, Paulo will be ready for Magdalen in a couple of years. He wants to read law, and join your African civil service for a while."
"They won't send him back to Ilorin, you know. He'll be posted to East Africa, or down to Zululand."
"He knows. He thinks it will be good seasoning." Usman remembered the advice John's father had once given him on just that subject, the day he'd bought him a cavalry commission; after a quarter-century's absence, Britain was a place for memories.
"Has it all planned out, does he? Not a bit like his grandfather."
"He's got a share of my father's blood, no mistake, but the mysticism passed him by; he has no more of that than I do. Ibrahim, on the other hand... his passion is God and all His creation. He can't decide whether to be a poet, an imam, a physicist or all three."
"He's thirteen," said John, amused. "He has time... did you say he writes poetry?"
"Love songs to God," said Usman. "Some of them aren't bad. But he'll grow some by the time you see him - he'll go to university too, but I'm not sure how we'll prevent him from trying to read everything."
Dione must have seen his pensiveness, because she changed the subject. “Were you at yesterday’s banquet?”
“Not me. The Ooni was invited, but he’s a king; prime ministers are rather less exalted.”
“You should have been,” said Adeseye. She’d wanted him to meet the Queen, along with the other African and Indian princes, but it was just as well he hadn’t; he would have been uncomfortable being treated as royalty, and it would have been bad politics at home. The Ooni had caused enough of a stir, with the religious strictures that banned him from eating in front of other people; it was a good thing someone had thought to remind the palace staff that his refusal to partake wasn’t a sign of disrespect.
And it wasn’t as if Usman’s arrival had gone unremarked. He’d been taken to meet Gladstone the other day – it was amazing the old man was still around, much less prime minister – and several naval officers and members of Parliament had received him privately. And when he’d been to see the Malê workers at the Chatham shipyards, they’d cheered him like a visiting prince: the Ooni might be their titular monarch, but they were much more citizens of Ilorin than of Oyo, and the Abacar family were the leaders they had chosen.
“A curious thing happened at Chatham,” he said, suddenly reminded. “The Prince of Wales was visiting the shipyards the same day I was, and one of the policemen swung his club at a worker who was standing too near. The Prince stopped him, and what was it he said – ‘because a man has a black face and a different religion from our own, there’s no reason why he should be treated as a brute.’” [1]
“I heard about that!” Dione cried. “The Queen too: she’s taken a servant from India and one from Calabar, and she won’t hear of anyone in her household treating them poorly.” [2]
“It’s a shame that they can only stop what they can see,” said John.
“Don’t underestimate that,” Usman answered. “What they see one day, everyone sees the next, when it’s reported in the papers. And it’s something for a stranger in this country to know that there’s someone who’ll stand up for him.” He remembered the workers’ housing in Chatham, which was no worse than what most of the British working class endured but would have caused a revolt in Ilorin; they needed someone to represent them. He made a mental note to dispatch a consul there, and to make sure the one in London visited regularly.
John’s attention was taken momentarily by the arrival of other guests, two officers he’d known in the Crimea and their wives. Usman exchanged greetings with each before leaving Seye to charm them, as she always did. Another Liberal MP arrived a few minutes later, one on the select committee for colonial affairs, and one with whom Usman had sometimes corresponded.
“This is my last term, I think,” John was saying to him. “I saw the reform bill through, and it’s time to go home.”
“We’ll need you for the Empire Office scheme too.” Usman had heard something about that; a single office to oversee relations with colonies, dominions and princely states alike
“That should be done in time, and if not, I trust you to finish it. And since we’ve got Abacar here today, you’ll surely want to ask his views.”
Any further discussion was cut off by the sound of shouting from below, and Usman looked down the road to see the Queen’s coach approaching. In a moment, all of them – members of Parliament, retired officers, Malê prime ministers and formidable ladies – were on their feet, cheering Queen Victoria’s passage.
Usman remembered India again, and the question he had asked himself so long ago in Udaipur: what would a nation be like that combined the best of all nations? Could the provinces of the British empire put aside their prejudices and be that for each other?
Maybe not yet. But we’re at peace with our neighbors now, and we’re part of something larger than all of us, and that’s a start. Another generation of peace, and we’ll see where we are then…
[1] He said this in OTL, albeit about India.
[2] In OTL, she took on two Indian servants during the jubilee year, including the (in)famous Abdul Karim; she criticized other servants’ rejection of him as “race prejudice” and looked on him maternally. She showed unconventional racial views on other occasions as well, although this may have been more due to lively curiosity and fascination with her imperial subjects than any broad support of egalitarian policies.
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A lost opportunity....
Perhaps not a better one, but surely a lost one. Hrm.
That last read as almost wistful to me. Well done.
Perhaps not a better one, but surely a lost one. Hrm.
That last read as almost wistful to me. Well done.
That's more or less what I had in mind.
This was from Usman's POV, and there are three things to remember about him: his upbringing has made him pro-British to the point where he considers himself British as well as African; he is an imperialist, in the sense of favoring large federations where cultures and peoples can mix; and although his democratic ethos and working-class politics are real, he can never quite eliminate the elite viewpoint from his opinions and desires.
His ideal would be an empire that evolves into a Commonwealth federation. It isn't going to happen, both because of the social changes that will follow the Great War and because most people even in TTL aren't as cross-cultural as he is: there will be too many British officials who view the colonies as inherently subordinate, and while many Africans and Indians will develop (and have developed) an affection for British culture, most won't want to be British. And as Ganesha suggests, Usman is responsible for a nation now, and what his people want will take precedence over what he wants.
Usman will die with many of his dreams unrealized, but he may start to make some of them come true in a different way.
The world looks different to a prime minister and war-leader than to a student or young officer. When Usman was young, he was dreaming only for himself; now, he's been tempered by experience and responsibility. The Great War will be another formative experience - people can still have those even in their fifties - and Usman's career after that may take him in hitherto-unseen directions.
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While I like the idea of imperial federation the more I think about it, the more I read, the more unlikely it seems, even if everyone is on side.
What government, whether it be local, province, state, or Westminster actually has the will or capability to commit to a long term project with people who are far away and don't vote or pay taxes?
The EU's structure makes a lot more sense now. It seems that the only way a large supra national governance project can work is technocratic
Oh, I don't know. To my mind it ends up being about the level of economic connection, or the potential for the same. Imperial Fedration would then be extremely challenging, but mostly just due to its dispersed nature.
And I couldn't get it out of my head reading this that it was just moments before the bombing of Parliament in Fight and Be Right.
Abacar turning at the sound of a distant thunder.... soldier's reflexes tensing....
Abacar turning at the sound of a distant thunder.... soldier's reflexes tensing....
Oh sure, it is far more complicated than my response suggests. Probably worthy of a discussion by itself, outside of this thread.
I've been reading a bit of Canadian history of late, in advance of a holiday there and the process of federation there (like in Australia) was remarkably drawn out and fraught, taking decades to organise and develop any sort of national consensus (see Annexationism etc).
If it was so fraught in that situation, how on earth would it work across the Empire as a whole, given that the national polities would still be largely working around local issues, not imperial?
I'd argue that the two issues are related. Economic integration depends in part on the existence of a legal and political infrastructure that facilitates the integration, and once the integration occurs, it will give rise to demand for joint institutions. Eventually, the citizens of the federation will vote and pay taxes to some sort of governing body at the imperial level.
And that, of course, is the problem. This is still the nineteenth century, and neither the British elite nor the British public is ready to give up part of Britain's sovereignty to an imperial parliament (or even a technocratic judicial/administrative body) in which the colonies and dominions are represented. TTL's racial attitudes are incrementally more enlightened than OTL, and Europeans are willing to accept gradations among African peoples and to give state-level African societies a degree of respect comparable to South Asians, but few of them are ready to see past the background noise of racism and treat Africans or Asians as fully equal to whites. John Alexander's views are in the minority among his countrymen; views like those of Queen Victoria or the future Edward VII are more common, but their rejection of overt racism is by no means an acceptance of racial equality. While certain leaders in Britain, and in the dominions and colonies, will propose various forms of imperial federation, none will get very far off the ground.
The idea will become more thinkable on the European end by 1925 or so, but by then, other events will have interfered. There may be other arrangements between Britain and its former colonies, but an imperial parliament won't be one of them.
Not gonna happen, but unfortunately, Abacar and his sons will have many opportunities to test their soldiers' reflexes in the years to come.
That reminds me, though, that I haven't read Fight and Be Right. If it's anywhere near as good as The Bloody Man, I need to do so forthwith.
Yeah, pretty much. As a wise man recently put it, this scene shows "not a better [opportunity], but a lost one." The Great War will soon happen, and while some of the social changes it triggers might make ideas like an imperial federation more thinkable, it will also give rise to other changes that will make such things impractical. Such multiethnic empires as survive into the mid-twentieth century will fall along different models.
If there is such a thing as allohistory in this timeline -- and I think there will be, given that it's only human to wonder "what if," and the major philosophical currents of the late 20th-early 21st centuries will be non-deterministic -- the Great War will be a major source of speculation.
Sure it is. Like everything by Ed, it's top quality writing and AH.
Ayup. You've made that pretty clear from the get-go. Yet you're so clearly touching on the roots of the issue with this timeline, and now doing it within the period where people began to really consider the idea.... It's probably inevitable (if not deliberate) that we'd be tempted.
Very different, very good, and (minus the first 30 or 40 years of Malê Rising) precisely overlapping this TL.
Considering it would've existed over 2,000* years by the time of the PoD, I think we can safely say it would.
*The earliest known recording of alternate history is from the 4th Century BCE.
As will many people in TTL! Given the different patterns of colonial rule, and the notional (albeit often breached) justification of it as a junior partnership, the federalist idea is almost bound to crop up, and both Europeans and Africans will suggest various forms of it. They'll fail, but that will hardly be the end of the story: the law of conservation of ideas will apply, with their concepts and proposals having relevance to other twentieth-century political debates.
And there are other areas in which developments in Africa may have an impact:
Letter to the Times from Mrs. Nancy Pankhurst, Chair, Women's Franchise League [1], 11 July 1887:
Sir:
Mr. Harding has expressed the opinion that women lack the fortitude and acuity to take part in affairs of state. I was recently a guest at a reception attended by several eminent persons from the nation of Ilorin in Western Africa, lately added to Her Majesty's dominions, and the information they imparted may interest him.
Ilorin, which is a republic after the American fashion, has never excluded women from voting [2], trusting that those who do not regard themselves as qualified will refrain from doing so. Few women vote in their elections, but the privilege is theirs should they choose, and all agree that they do so as wisely as their husbands and sons.
More than that, though, women have served in the cabinet of Ilorin since the foundation of the republic, and in its predecessor republic of Sokoto before that. The Nana Asma'u, founder of their renowned corps of teachers, served more than forty years as minister for education, being continued in the post regardless of which party held power, and her position is now held by one Aisha Abacar, widow of the nation's founder. It is to the credit of these women that the greater part of the Malê nation can now read and write, which is doubtless an achievement that even Mr. Harding can comprehend.
My learned interlocutor is no doubt aware that women of property have held the municipal franchise in this country for almost two decades, and have held the offices of borough councillor and poor law guardian [3], the latter of which it is my honour to occupy. That does not seem to have swayed his opinion. He may wish to consider the achievements of Ilorin's women at a higher level, and ask himself whether we ought to let a bunch of Africans outdo us.
Nancy Pankhurst (Mrs.)
Manchester
_______
[1] Miss Emmeline Goulden was born after the POD, but Richard Pankhurst wasn't, and given his strong support of woman suffrage, it makes sense that his wife in TTL would also be a suffragist.
[2] This was mentioned in post 100. The franchise in Sokoto, and subsequently in Ilorin, was like many medieval-through-18th-century householder franchises in Europe and North America: there was nothing explicitly allowing women to vote, but also nothing limiting the franchise to men. Ilorin's electoral system after the fall of the First Sokoto Republic was a householder franchise with a low property qualification, and when Usman Abacar took away the householder and property requirements, he didn't add a gender limitation. Due to tradition, and due to the fact that voting is still public at this point in the timeline, most women don't exercise their franchise, but some, especially educated urban women or widows with property, do stand on their rights.
[3] As in OTL, British women who were ratepayers became eligible to vote for and hold municipal office in the late 1860s.
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