Malê Rising

[Julius Vogel]

Golly, Hawaii could be rather interesting. On one hand it is inevitable that the US as a whole will see Hawaii as within its sphere, but on the other hand, it took a long time and a lot of mucking about before it ended up as a de jure part of the US. All of the original developments will doubtlessly already have been derailed by the POD.

I guess it is quite possible that an ATL adventurer does his thing during the War (akin to Tahiti), one of the Blocs seizes the islands for strategic purposes or everyone puts it into the "too hard" basket for the post war settlement. In which case there is a chance that an independent state survives long enough to be treated with dignity.

 

[The Uchronian]

Golly, Hawaii could be rather interesting. On one hand it is inevitable that the US as a whole will see Hawaii as within its sphere, but on the other hand, it took a long time and a lot of mucking about before it ended up as a de jure part of the US. All of the original developments will doubtlessly already have been derailed by the POD.

I guess it is quite possible that an ATL adventurer does his thing during the War (akin to Tahiti), one of the Blocs seizes the islands for strategic purposes or everyone puts it into the "too hard" basket for the post war settlement. In which case there is a chance that an independent state survives long enough to be treated with dignity.

I'd like to see it end up as a U.S. state(or commonwealth, like Puerto Rico) eventually, and hopefully, with less maltreatment of the natives, too.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

The only problem I found in your numbers was Alsace-Lorraine (which was ~1.6-7 million) was not subtracted from the NDB figure, or added to the Metropolitan France figure, so you had their numbers reversed (Metropolitan France has slightly higher population then the NDB, 40 vs 38 million). But that doesn't really effect the general situation greatly.

Fair point - I should have added Alsace-Lorraine to the French side of the ledger.

Last comments for tonight, given that the French are besieging Koln, Belgian entry seems rather insignificant at this point. The Belgian railroad network would greatly improve French logistics, no doubt about it, but beyond that, there isn't any great flanking maneuver that can be attempted. I assume the French are either outside or have taken Aachen already. Belgian finances and industry would be a boon, however (in general though, I assume France's finances are in a far better state then they were OTL, given France didn't have to fork over capital equal to 22% of GDP to Prussia).

Belgium isn't actually in the war - it just agreed to let the French army pass through. The transit deal enabled the French to push through the NDB's lightly defended border with Belgium (the Germans reinforced it once they got word of the agreement, but didn't have time to build strong defenses) and get to the gates of the Ruhr, which they had been unable to reach during the initial attacks the year before. And the French did take Aachen during the offensive that brought them to the Düsseldorf Line and to Köln.

Was there any negotiations on the status of Rome and the Papal state attempted by Italy prior to the war/before they joined? It would seem to me that Italy could've had their cake and eaten it too, so to speak, by getting Rome as a bribe for neutrality, without having to go to war with the two large neighbors next door, when Italy is in no condition to fight an industrial war.

I assume that the sore point of Rome had tangled Italy into a somewhat stable alliance with North Germany and maybe Britain long before the war, so that their full commitment is, if not automatic, to be expected right from the start. Also, domestic situation in France, as Jonathan described it, does not seem very conducive to an agreement.

Falecius is correct - Leclair himself would have been happy enough to let the Italians take Rome, but the fragmented French political scene meant that he couldn't do so without alienating parties whose support he needed. Italy did try to make a deal with France at the beginning of the war, but the negotiations failed, and at that point, there wasn't any politically acceptable option other than taking Rome.

Italy is, of course, in over its head at this point - the third year is going to be a rough one, and some of the regionalist tendencies that Falecius has discussed may emerge. (Speaking of which, was there any significant separatist movement in Sardinia at this time, or did the Savoyards' Sardinian roots still command loyalty?)

Golly, Hawaii could be rather interesting. On one hand it is inevitable that the US as a whole will see Hawaii as within its sphere, but on the other hand, it took a long time and a lot of mucking about before it ended up as a de jure part of the US. All of the original developments will doubtlessly already have been derailed by the POD.

I guess it is quite possible that an ATL adventurer does his thing during the War (akin to Tahiti), one of the Blocs seizes the islands for strategic purposes or everyone puts it into the "too hard" basket for the post war settlement. In which case there is a chance that an independent state survives long enough to be treated with dignity.

I'd like to see it end up as a U.S. state(or commonwealth, like Puerto Rico) eventually, and hopefully, with less maltreatment of the natives, too.

The United States definitely has the inside track - the American missionary and commercial presence goes back well before the POD, and the Hawaiian government was pretty thoroughly co-opted by American interests by the late 19th century. The British and French did mess with Hawaii on occasion, but never with anything more than punitive raids, and I don't see that changing in TTL. If the United States does end up joining the war, I'd imagine that one of its demands would be a free hand in Hawaiian affairs.

There are a few wild-card possibilities, though. For instance, if the American settlers try to impose something similar to OTL's Bayonet Constitution, or to overthrow the monarchy outright, the king might appeal to Britain or France for help. If this happens during wartime, when the French just so happen to be looking for ports to use as commerce-raiding bases and the British want to deny France those ports, one or the other (or maybe one after the other) might take Hawaii under its wing. Alternatively, if the settlers succeed in overthrowing the monarchy but the United States remains isolationist, the islands might remain in republican limbo somewhat longer. I'd imagine the first alternative would be better for the Native Hawaiians than the second.

Anyway, a couple more things. First, I'll probably have the update done this weekend - I'm almost out of the deadline pileup, but not quite. Second, courtesy of Incognito in the post-1900 Zhirinovsky thread, I've learned that there were Muslim and Buddhist Cossacks! That led me to this book, which in addition to being a great source on contemporary Central Asia, had more detail on the Muslim Cossack hosts of the 19th century.

That raises some fascinating possibilities for what might happen later in the war. The Tsars were generally smart enough not to mess with the Cossacks, and they gave the Muslim Cossacks the same deal of privileges in exchange for military service that the other Cossacks got. On the other hand, who knows what an ultra-nationalist government which sees Muslims as the enemy might do - and who knows what ideas might have passed from the Kazakhs and Kazan Tatars to the Muslim Cossack soldiers, and from them to the rest of the army? They do say that a revolution is what happens when the army changes sides.

 

[othyrsyde]

Anyway, a couple more things. First, I'll probably have the update done this weekend - I'm almost out of the deadline pileup, but not quite. Second, courtesy of Incognito in the post-1900 Zhirinovsky thread, I've learned that there were Muslim and Buddhist Cossacks! That led me to this book, which in addition to being a great source on contemporary Central Asia, had more detail on the Muslim Cossack hosts of the 19th century.

That raises some fascinating possibilities for what might happen later in the war. The Tsars were generally smart enough not to mess with the Cossacks, and they gave the Muslim Cossacks the same deal of privileges in exchange for military service that the other Cossacks got. On the other hand, who knows what an ultra-nationalist government which sees Muslims as the enemy might do - and who knows what ideas might have passed from the Kazakhs and Kazan Tatars to the Muslim Cossack soldiers, and from them to the rest of the army? They do say that a revolution is what happens when the army changes sides.

Never knew of Muslim and Buddhist Cossacks. That's really cool, especially for my TL too. Thanks for bringing this up, even just for knowledge sake.

 

[Falecius]

IOTL, the part of Italy where something amounting to some level of political regionalism existed in this timeframe was Sicily, and even there it was pretty marginal in the 1890s.
I have no knowledge of any separatist movement of note in any part of Italy at this point.
This TL, however, can easily be different.
I already noted the likelihood of Venetian and Friulan regionalism, and a Sicilian separatism is quite probable too.
As for other regions, I don't know for sure, I can easily see a more marginal group of Genoan Republicans equivalent to theri Venetian counterparts, but probably less relevant. In Lombardy, Cattaneo's leftist federalism will probably have more impact, so that there could a healthy group of liberal Lombards calling for a less centralized state, though probably not outright separatists.
Tuscany and the nearby parts of the former Duchy of Modena (Lunigiana and Garfagnana) also had some degree of regional consciousness that did, IOTL, turn political in the 1850s-60s with some loyalty to the local dynasties. This disappeared rather quicky IOTL, but ITTL there might be factors conducive to a more resilient call to Tuscan and Lunigian identities: more strained Catholics, stronger social streak in the left, Italian capital not transferred to Florence, which will do nothing to endear the Tuscans.
Southern Italy as whole had an armed insurgency lasting into the early 1870s which was, first and foremost, anti-Piedmontese. Neapolitan nationalism played a part and there was a degree of loyalty to Catholicism and the Bourbons, but IOTL this was completely extinct in the political arena by the 1890s. I'd argue that the stronger leftist streak in the central government might prove mixed bag in tackling this issue. I expect less severe insurgency and less brutal repression, so that overall Neapolitan embryonic nationalism could be both more political and longer lasting.
Mind you, all the above is about fringe or minority groups, stronger than IOTL but still irrelevant in the political big picture so far.
They might prove important as war goes on though, esp. if the Italian state finds itself in dire straits and proves unable to fix pressing problems, which is a quite likely scenario.
Italy here is probably no pushover, but still in a very uncomfortable military situation to say the least.
Re: Sardinia. The House of Savoy commanded little true loyalty there and they not family ties of note in the island. The place was theirs because of diplomatic horsetrading not inheritance rights. It had been administered basically as a Piedmontese colony.
In the context of this TL, I expect some form of early awareness of Sardinian linguistic and historical uniqueness to arise and turn somewhat political, but I have no clue about the possible details.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Wrapping up the second year, part 1

Peter Moller, The Great War: The Second Year (New York: Academy, 1959)

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… In the war’s second year as in its first, the trenches of North Germany and the Balkans would see the bloodiest and fiercest fighting, as both alliances tried to break the trench-warfare stalemate. The Austro-Hungarians would provide the opening gambit: in the spring of 1894, they prepared a major offensive against the Ottoman lines on the Vardar, which they unleashed in June. The attack was initially successful: part of the Ottoman force had been drawn off by a diversionary Russian offensive in Bulgaria, and the Austrians punched through the line in three places and rolled up two weakened Ottoman divisions. Rather than consolidate their position on the far side of the Vardar, however, the Austrians advanced too quickly and became overextended. Resistance stiffened as the invading army pushed toward the Struma, and by that time, the Ottomans had realized that the Russian attack was a diversion; by late July, the advancing Austrians had been cut off and forced to surrender, and now it was Austria-Hungary that was hard put to hold the Vardar.

The North German Confederation, which was growing stronger as more troops arrived from the British Empire and as its war production ramped up, felt badly in need of an offensive to boost morale. In August, it decided to kick Austria while the latter was down, mounting an offensive across the Erzgebirge into Bohemia. This attack, too, was initially successful: after the North German and British forces dislodged the Austrians from their trenches, they retook all of Austrian-held Silesia and pushed to within fifty kilometers of Prague. The Sudeten Germans offered no meaningful resistance and were quick to accept North German rule, and the Czechs, who were suffering under martial law and inspired by Wilhelm II’s promise to create a Bohemian kingdom, also acquiesced or in some cases actually helped the invaders. The Austrian army scrambled to dig a new trench line north and west of Prague, and while the Anglo-German offensive had stalled by October, the fact that Austria-Hungary was now fighting a defensive war on its own soil sent many Vienna politicians into a panic.

But the North Germans had attacked before they were ready, and had pulled too many men from other fronts to support the drive on Bohemia. Both the French and Russians quickly found the weak points, and believed that the North Germans were close to collapse. It was this intelligence, combined with the promise of African colonies, that convinced the Belgian parliament to allow French transit, albeit not joining the war itself. By early September, both the French and Russian armies were on the march, and the North Germans were unable to reinforce the Belgian border fast enough to stop the French from pouring through.

Again, however, trench warfare would work its curse. The Germans were pushed back in West Prussia, but managed to blunt the Russian attack east of the Oder and resume the grinding war of attrition. The French attack, falling on an area unprepared for it, did better in its first stages, but the Germans delayed them long enough to construct a trench line running from Düsseldorf west to the Dutch border. The line was thinly held and vulnerable, but before the French could attack it, they had to eliminate the threat to their rear in Köln. The battle in that city would become the first example of modern urban warfare.

Up to the time of the French offensive, there had been little fighting in cities; generally, retreating armies would evacuate urban areas in order to establish strong trench defenses. The army in Köln evacuated the civilians but stayed in the city themselves, reasoning that as long as the French were occupied in taking the city, they would be unable to bring their full force to bear against the Düsseldorf line. This proved true in a way that neither army had bargained for. Unable to ignore such a sizable force in their rear, the French army attacked the city, and quickly became embroiled in brutal street fighting.

Rather than fight pitched battles, the Anglo-German forces in the city turned buildings into strongpoints held by companies or platoons, and fought the French forces in ambushes and raids. The French adopted similar tactics in the parts of the city that they controlled, turning captured factories or apartment houses into fortresses. The battle became a grueling positional fight in which each side tried to reduce and outflank the other’s strongpoints; in some cases, the city sewers themselves were used for flanking maneuvers, with firefights taking place underground in what became known as “the war of the rats.” Close-quarters fighting was common, and the intensity of the battle meant that casualty rates were even higher than in trench warfare.

In February 1895, after four months of battle, the French flag was finally raised over Köln. By that time, however, 150,000 Frenchmen and nearly 200,000 soldiers from the North German Confederation and the British empire had died – more, all told, than the prewar civilian population of the city - and the defenders had bought time for the Düsseldorf line to establish itself. The French army had reached the gates of the Ruhr, but not the Ruhr itself, and the North German industrial heartland remained out of enemy hands.

Events in the Caucasian front were little different. The Russians began the spring of 1894 with a renewed offensive, but attacks by partisans in the mountains made their advance a living hell, and their supply lines were growing longer and more vulnerable. To add to that, Armenia and Georgia – which, since 1878, had been independent kingdoms, albeit with the Tsar as king – were distinctly lukewarm about taking part in the war. Both kingdoms, particularly Georgia, had substantial Muslim populations and had trade and family connections to territories under Ottoman control. Although both countries looked on Russia as their traditional protector, they had little appetite for an offensive war; their armies were ineffective in the field, and a clandestine trade – with its attendant intelligence opportunities – continued between them and the Ottomans. The Russian attack on Shirvan and eastern Anatolia had become stalled in Caucasian politics, beside which Balkan politics were straightforward, and the second year of the war ended in much the same stalemate as the first.

The Tsar resolved that this would not be repeated yet a third time. In December 1894, he decreed that conscription would take place on an unprecedented scale, in order to raise an army larger than any before and overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers. Russia also put increasing pressure on the Persian court, which was divided between pro-Russian and pro-British factions, to join the war on Russia’s side and attack the Ottomans; it was hoped that the creation of an iron ring around the Ottoman Empire would also stiffen Georgian and Armenian spines. By the spring of 1895, it was clear that the conscription, at least, was going forward, but the repression required to enforce the draft was straining cohesion at home to the breaking point…

​

… As the war in Europe reverted to stalemate, the powers once again considered the best way to achieve a breakthrough. This was particularly acute on the FAR side, which saw the tide of battle turning against it in the colonial theaters and which knew that British and German industrial production would increasingly shift the balance of the war. The main dispute was between those who wanted to try one more attempt to overwhelm the North German Confederation, and those who preferred to turn their attention to the weaker Italian and Ottoman links and return to North Germany after its allies were defeated in detail…

… In Southeast Asia, the war was nearly over by the end of the second year. This had always been the most lopsided of the land conflicts, with the Indian army heavily outnumbering the French forces in Indochina and their Siamese allies, and France unable to send meaningful reinforcements in the teeth of the Royal Navy. The British advance was slowed because many Indian troops were needed elsewhere, but that only delayed the inevitable. By September 1894, all of Upper Burma and northern Siam had fallen, and the attackers had reached the borders of Indochina itself. At that point, the King of Siam decided to save his skin by joining the winning team; he withdrew his forces from the fight, opened the country to British transit, and invited British diplomats to Bangkok to discuss the terms of a subsidiary alliance.

That was the beginning of the end. By January 1895, the Anglo-Indian forces, including several regiments from Australia and New Zealand, had fought their way through Cambodia and entered Cochin China. In March, they besieged Saigon, and although the French garrison in the city continued to fight, it was clear that all that remained was mopping up.

In West Africa, as well, the tide was turning. The French had made good use of the discontent within the Asante and Fon kingdoms, but the loyalty of the Niger Valley states was never in doubt, and they were able to mobilize a larger and better-equipped force than the French could muster. France was also unsuccessful in prosecuting the siege of Sierra Leone, largely due to Liberia’s refusal to join that siege; without Liberian support, the French had little hope of interdicting the shipments that the Coaster peoples and the Gullah merchants of South Carolina moved through Monrovia to Freetown. By 1895, Sierra Leone had become a base behind French lines rather than a besieged bastion, and French forces had been pushed out of the Asante and Mossi kingdoms and into Côte d'Ivoire. This in turn freed up more British troops – including, famously, Usman Abacar’s irregulars – to oppose the French forces that had taken Libya and were fighting in northern Bornu.

The South American theater was progressing somewhat better for the French and their Brazilian allies, although even there, victory looked nowhere near as certain as it had the year before. The Brazilian riverine navy had firm control of the Amazon basin, but its relatively small vessels were unable to assault the heavily defended perimeter around Manaus. The progress of French and Brazilian land forces was also slowed by the alliance of desperation that the Grão-Pará government concluded with the quilombos and the Army of Angelim, promising to restore the republic’s original constitution and implement land reform in exchange for military aid. This alliance was concluded in the summer of 1894 after several months of negotiation, and from that point, any attempt to reinforce or supply the forces in the upper Amazon became a very chancy proposition. As well, the Grão-Pará government was able to neutralize Ecuador and Bolivia – albeit not Peru or Venezuela – with substantial territorial concessions.

Grão-Pará in 1895 was still in desperate straits, with the government’s effective control limited to a few large towns and rubber-producing regions, and the Franco-Brazilian army was planning a major new offensive as the spring began. But Argentina, to which Britain was seeking to entice into the war with increasingly lavish promises, was starting to notice how much of a quagmire the Amazon was becoming, and how many Brazilian troops had been drawn off to the war in the north…

​

… The one unalloyed bright spot for the FAR alliance was in fact an own goal on the British side: the assassination of the Sultan of Oman in December 1894. It is now generally believed that the murder was carried out by a younger son of the Sultan’s third wife, who was frustrated at being passed over for lucrative military commands and court posts, although many conspiracy theories circulated at the time. Regardless of why it was done, however, the result was civil war: in his later years, the Sultan had played his sons, nephews and cousins off against each other, leaving no clear successor and many potential claimants.

Britain, anxious to prevent the Omani empire from turning into a prolonged distraction, sought to quickly install one claimant on the throne. This effort, however, was stymied by events in Oman proper, where the Russian forces in Aden offered their backing to a younger prince. The candidate who the British forces in Zanzibar supported did not have the support of the Omani tribes, and any attempt to install him in Muscat without putting Britain at war with all the local clan chiefs would require months of diplomacy and bribery. The British thus threw their backing to the prince who already controlled Muscat – a move which improved their ability to stand off the Russian-backed claimant, but which their favored candidate in Zanzibar saw as a betrayal. That prince promptly broke off relations with the British and sought support from the Swahili feudalists along the coast, which resulted in all hell breaking loose as rival princes sought to consolidate their own backing and local rulers in the interior seized the chance to assert their independence.

Curiously, the Muslim Ethiopian princes of the northern marches, who had been among the Sultan’s more independent-minded vassals, remained loyal: if they rebelled, they might simply end up being reannexed by Ethiopia. The Yao, who guarded the southern frontier against Portugal, also stayed loyal. But this didn’t mean that these provinces were quiet: they both had their favored contenders for the throne, as did many of the other feudalists of the interior. Even Great Lakes kingdoms such as Ankole, with its religious ties to the Masai and the Carlsenist Swedish settlers, were courted by one or another contender.

The British, with the help of Tippu Tip’s royal Omani army, had advanced deep into the eastern Congo by this time. The crisis forced both forces to withdraw, lest they find themselves armies without a country. French forces, and allied African warlords, took advantage of the British disarray to retake much of the eastern Congo, and France also launched an offensive northward from Gabon and the French Congo into Kamerun and Ubangi-Shari. The small North German garrison in Bangui gave way before the French advance, but found support from an unexpected quarter: the exiled Buganda prince Kikulwe in N’Dele, who had broken off his alliance with France upon learning that his kingdom had been promised to Belgium…

… Yet another fateful event would take place in a part of Africa that was nominally outside the global conflict. In January 1895, Portugal, which had been unable to reduce the Mutapa kingdom, finally concluded a peace treaty with it: Mutapa would recognize the King of Portugal as nominal sovereign, allow Portugal to speak for it in world affairs and grant transit rights to Portuguese troops, but would otherwise retain complete freedom of action including the power to maintain relations with neighboring states. The politicians in Lisbon considered this peace a humiliation and blamed the British and North Germans for it; although the BOG alliance had never promised to help Portugal fight African rulers, many Portuguese felt that the grant of a free hand in establishing a corridor to Katanga was an empty pledge without such aid.

Worse was to come when, having settled matters in Mutapa, the Portuguese forces finally moved to attack the Yeke Kingdom itself. King Msiri of Yeke, knowing what was coming, had reached out to Dietmar Köhler, the warlord of South Kivu, for an alliance. By this time, Köhler was not even nominally loyal to the North German Confederation: he was, to all intents and purposes, the ruler of an independent empire who conducted foreign policy without regard to North German interests. The Portuguese, however – who were already angry at the North Germans – didn’t believe that. They simply saw a German governor helping a Katangan king resist their army, and German rifles being used to shoot their troops. They demanded that the German troops in Southwest Africa bring Köhler to heel at once, which was something the colonial garrison was in little position to do…

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Thomas Liddell, The Great War at Sea (London: Popular, 1987)

… The naval war was, from the beginning, a lopsided conflict. Britain had been supreme at sea for generations, and the North German Confederation and Ottoman Empire also had considerable fleets; in contrast, the France-Austria-Russia entente was an alliance of land powers. The Royal Navy alone was bigger than all the enemy navies put together.

What made it a fight was that the RN and its allies were spread thin, while the French and Russian fleets (the Austro-Hungarian navy was a cipher which saw action only in the Adriatic) were much less so. The British fleet had to simultaneously blockade the French and Russian ports, transport troops between far-flung colonial theaters, protect allied merchant shipping and defend the home coastline. The French and Russians, in contrast, lacked the strength to attempt a blockade of British or North German ports, and because their own harbors were blockaded, they had little merchant shipping to protect. They were thus able to concentrate on home defense and keeping a few critical sea lanes open.

The strategy of France, and to a lesser extent Russia, was threefold: to localize strength, to keep the Royal Navy occupied, and oppose quantity with quality. The French military planners designated certain critical routes for protection – to Algeria, Dakar, Rio, Belém and Valparaiso – and instituted a program of heavily escorted convoys, with much greater strength than the RN was likely to have in any one place. These would leave at unpredictable intervals from various ports, with enough force to achieve temporary local superiority and push through the blockade, and would generally return to a different port than the one they had left. Russia had less room to use this tactic – it was bottled up in the Black Sea by the Ottoman fleet, and in the Baltic by the RN and the North German Bundische Marine – but its Pacific fleet concentrated its strength along the routes to Valparaiso and San Francisco.

This was, of course, nowhere near a foolproof strategy, because if the RN responded by concentrating its own forces, it would be able to overwhelm even the strongest French or Russian escort. To stave off this possibility, France turned to aggressive commerce raiding. The French raider squadrons would consist of small groups of fast cutters or corvettes which would move between colonial ports and islands with carte blanche to attack enemy merchant shipping. Their effectiveness was limited – the raiders were stronger than armed merchantmen, but not strong enough to take on an RN escort in force – but their speed, and the fact that they might pop up anywhere, meant that the RN had to protect every merchant ship that sailed from an allied port.

France also experimented with weaponry and shipbuilding innovations, which were part of its overall technical research program. By mid-1894, many French cutters had been refitted with improved engines which enabled them to outrun the RN, enabling them to keep steady communications open with Algiers and act as reconnaissance screens around the merchant-escort fleets. 1894 also saw the introduction of self-propelled torpedoes which, while expensive and not very accurate, could be used without closing to point-blank range.

Possibly the most significant improvement, however, was in communications, with the first use of ship-to-ship radio. Experimental wireless telegraphy was already in use before the war, and in late 1893, the French technical teams developed a system that could receive broadcast signals at distances of up to 40 kilometers. These were installed on the merchant-escort fleets beginning in February 1894, and played a critical part in defeating the first British attempt to close the French sea lanes.

The Royal Navy had made a number of abortive attacks on the French coastline during the first year of the war, but had to back off in the face of overwhelming shore batteries. In May 1894, however, they received reliable intelligence that a French merchant fleet had sailed from Brest for Rio with a heavy naval escort, and the Mediterranean and Sierra Leone squadrons were both in position to intercept it as it passed the Moroccan coast. The plan was for the two British task groups to close on the French from opposite sides and envelop them. In the event, however, French reconnaissance cutters spotted both groups and warned the main escort fleet in time for that fleet to turn and defeat the Mediterranean task force in detail. The Sierra Leone squadron, too weak to envelop the French force in its own, veered off and returned to port.

The battle came as a very unpleasant surprise to the RN command, which had a deep-rooted sense of its own superiority. The British fleet was still stronger by far than its enemies, but it now realized it would need considerably greater concentrations of strength – more than it could easily muster in one location – in order to shut down French shipping. It responded by instituting its own crash program to match the French fleet’s improved communications and propulsion. In addition, the Pacific and Indian Ocean islands – which had, up to then, been backwaters – became a focus of the RN’s attention as Britain attempted to root out the French commerce raiders and deny them the islands from which they were based. It was hoped that if the raider squadrons were destroyed, the RN would be able to reduce its escorts of allied merchant ships and bring overwhelming force to bear against the French shipping routes.

The campaign against the French (and, in a few cases, Russian) raiders would involve a considerable naval commitment, including, for the first time, shipbuilding and the development of a blue-water navy in India. But such a strategy could not be accomplished by the navy alone; land forces would also be necessary to seize the islands and prevent French ships from using their harbors. The British manpower shortage meant that this was far easier said than done. An expeditionary force from Australia had taken New Caledonia in the early stages of the war, but by mid-1894, most of the Australian and New Zealander troops were fighting in Europe or Southeast Asia. Britain was thus forced to resort to adventurers such as Indian warlord Nazir Ali Hydari, who conquered the Society Islands in September 1894, or to arming local rulers such as the King of Tonga and Malietoa Laupepa of Samoa. France likewise competed for the allegiance of the Pacific chieftains, which, during the third year of the war, would result in both sides becoming embroiled in Hawaiian politics…

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Miriam Calderon, Machines of War (Salonika: Sepharad, 1971)

​

… Many more spectacular technologies would emerge from the Great War, including the primitive aircraft that flew for the first time during its final year, but none would become as iconic as the humble motor wagon. Along with trench warfare, poison gas and machine guns, the image that comes to mind most often when the Great War is mentioned today is the convoy of motor wagons rumbling down a German road or crossing the African savanna.

Like other wartime innovations, the motor wagons’ roots go back well before the war. The internal combustion engine was already well known, and primitive self-propelled vehicles had existed since the early 1880s. The engines available at the start of the war, however, were neither reliable enough nor powerful enough to carry large loads of supplies or troops.

Nearly all the major powers sought to improve that situation, and in early 1894, France was the first to develop a militarily useful vehicle. The Niasse motor wagon, named after the young Senegalese lieutenant who perfected its propulsion system, had a two-cylinder, 15-horsepower engine that could carry up to a two-tonne payload with greater speed and endurance than a team of draft horses. The French army, which had been frustrated by the retreating North Germans’ destruction of their railroads, immediately commissioned a fleet of motor wagons to use as an alternative logistics system.

The early Niasse wagons were temperamental, and it was said that each required a crew of twelve: one to drive, one to load and ten to push when it became bogged down in mud. But they were versatile and easy to build – indeed, many of the French army’s early vehicles consisted of Niasse engines and drive trains installed on requisitioned farm wagons – and by the end of the year, thousands of them were in service. The British and German armies had begun building their own improved motor wagons by that time, with the other, less industrialized, powers doing so on a much smaller scale.

As was only natural, the powers also sought to develop motor wagons for combat use. Niasse proposed that wagons be armored and used to move troops through battle zones; however, his initial design proved impractical because the weight of the armor would render the wagon effectively immobile. A true armored personnel carrier would require a considerably more powerful engine, and by early 1895, both the French and German technical corps were hard at work creating one.

Mounting machine guns on the wagons proved more practical, but mobile gun platforms were of little use in trench warfare: the vehicles could neither enter nor cross trenches, and were vulnerable to both artillery and small-arms fire. At first, armed motor wagons were used mostly to deter raids against convoys. They would come into their own in two places: Köln and Bornu.

The French were the first to deploy motor wagons during the grueling street fighting in Köln, using them as reaction vehicles to clear ambushes and spearhead attacks on enemy barricades. Often, makeshift sheet-metal armor would be installed around the cab and engine housing; in street warfare, where high speed was not necessary, such light armor did not render the wagons impractical. By the end of the battle, the North German and British forces were using motor wagons in similar ways, in some cases resulting in running skirmishes between wagons on the streets of the city. Their effectiveness is often questioned, but many of the vehicles became mascots for their units, and their place in urban warfare was firmly established.

Wagons came to Africa by a more roundabout route. As automotive development took on a greater role in the war, some of the Ilorin factories which manufactured precision naval parts were included in the British engine production programs. By early 1895, Ilorin had become a significant automotive building center, constructing engines with the new Daimler four-cylinder, 40-horsepower design. Most of these were slated for the European front, but others were used locally to move troops and supplies from the Sokoto and Adamawa railheads to the Bornu front. Along the way, the drivers realized that the Sahel during the dry season was much better motor-wagon country than Europe, and that mobile gun platforms might be more useful on the savanna than in the North German trenches…

 

[Neoteros]

Along the way, the drivers realized that the Sahel during the dry season was much better motor-wagon country than Europe, and that mobile gun platforms might be more useful on the savanna than in the North German trenches…

I can't help but picture tens of charging European and African soldiers being mercilessly slaughtered by a line of car-mounted machine guns... the battle for Köln seems equally brutal, though.

 

[Mirza Khan]

Just a question, but what part of Brazil are the BOGs going to be able to offer Argentina, anyway? Argentina's two most natural paths for expansion are Paraguay and Uruguay-heck if the Argentines take Rio Grande do Sul (the part of Brazil within easiest reach of them), they're going to surround Uruguay on two sides.

 

[imperialaquila]

I might be misremembering, but didn't a large chunk of southern Brazil become independent? Piritini or something like that? I think remember a discussion about Italian influence on it. If that's accurate, how are the Argentines planning on invading Brazil? I could see them using the distraction of the war to try to get concessions from Paraguay or Uruguay, but I doubt a full-scale intervention would be likely.

Very nice overview. It seems like the BOGs have the upper hand, with the war overseas going well and North Germany continuing to hold out. The Russians are looking dangerously close to their breaking point, and once they fall the FARs are basically screwed.

 

[eliphas8]

Just a question, but what part of Brazil are the BOGs going to be able to offer Argentina, anyway? Argentina's two most natural paths for expansion are Paraguay and Uruguay-heck if the Argentines take Rio Grande do Sul (the part of Brazil within easiest reach of them), they're going to surround Uruguay on two sides.

This may contribute as to why they don't join in.

 

[Shevek23]

I might be misremembering, but didn't a large chunk of southern Brazil become independent? ...

The whole South American situation is a thick fog to me; I'd have to go back over a bunch of old posts and then study the 1894 map carefully to hope to sort out who is on what side, and why.

Very nice overview. It seems like the BOGs have the upper hand, with the war overseas going well and North Germany continuing to hold out. The Russians are looking dangerously close to their breaking point, and once they fall the FARs are basically screwed.

I dunno; the British Empire itself seems safe enough, and France has totally lost Indochina, but East Africa and the Omani Sultanate are a big mess. Nothing shocked me so much in the latest update as the mention of pro-Russian/Ethiopian Omani factions!

As for the war in Europe--I like how the Ottomans are hanging on, but North Germany has me really worried; they look just as close to collapse, if not closer, than the Russians do at the moment. They've lost territory and the most bitter, concentrated battles of the war are happening on their soil; it just never occurred to me, when we were foreshadowing this war many months ago, that they could be this badly off. It makes me wonder what would happen if North Germany were to collapse or surrender at this point.

A lot would depend on the details; it's conceivable that the war would just end in a negotiated peace. But on what terms? Would North Germany get its territory back but have to acknowledge French hegemony in southern Germany--and how would the southern Germans, particularly the up-in-arms Bavarians, react to that? How much of an occupational quagmire would Bavaria in particular remain? Would the FARs be in a position to retain their gains, such as Russo-Ethiopian Yemen? Or even to demand back territory they lost fair and square, like Cochin China? Meanwhile Africa is in flux and South America is not yet settled either. I don't see the British agreeing to terms that cost them anything they've gained by blood, nor deny them taking back control where they could expect to do so eventually, as in the whole Omani mess.

So, Germany might just collapse, turn on the King of Prussia and dethrone him, and go neutral, leaving the British, Italians and Ottomans to go on twisting while the French consolidate their control of the west of Europe and the Russians to consolidate hegemony of the eastern Baltic, and both turn their main attentions south--France against Italy, Russians against the Sultanate. Note how I'm leaving Austria as an also-ran-- a very fortunate one in this case, with a shot at the dynasty actually surviving, but not capable of accomplishing much at this point.

I'm pretty sure this won't happen, only because Jonathan has told us the war drags on for some more years. It just might do that with the North Germans knocked out, but he's also indicated the Hapsburgs are probably going down, which they wouldn't do unless North Germany keeps fighting.

So I guess there's no need to go there, Wilhelm won't get deposed and North Germany--what is left of it! will keep soldiering on. I'm less confident than I was some months ago that it will rev up a mighty powerhouse of industrial warfare that will break the combined might of Russia, France and the bit Austria can contribute, because they've lost a whole lot of men and will lose more; there might not be enough people to both man the front and also the factory benches, even if they start hiring women at the latter. Which if NG does come out of this with some industrial growth, they'll pretty much have to have done by the way!

I think we are already at the turning point, and (only because we know NG does not collapse, not because it doesn't look awfully dire for them right now!) North Germany has been invaded as deeply as it ever will be, and will start pushing the invaders out, and hang on to gains made in Bohemia. For some time the situation will look more fluid than it actually is, and then France and Russia will be facing the fact that they are fighting a long defeat. But stretch it out they will, out of sheer pride and stubbornness. Very gradually the British will be able to bring concentrated strikes to bear in South America and Africa, eventually do something about Yemen which currently threatens their shipping lanes to and from India. And in that phase it will be Russia's turn (and Austria's) to go on deathwatch, a death we have no clear foreshadowing, in Russia's case anyway, of whether it will be much exaggerated or not. The Romanov dynasty could collapse, or pull through, we don't know. We've got more reason to think that the Hapsburg's days are numbered--according to foreshadowing.

Actually given the situation on the ground as it appears right now, the Hapsburg domains don't look all that unstable, whereas indeed Russia does seem to have the seeds of destruction sprouting all over.

 

[imperialaquila]

Assuming nothing has changed in South America since B_Munro's 1880 map, both Entre Rios and Piratini are independent. I'd imagine Argentina would be looking to take advantage of Brazil's distraction to either conquer or get concessions from the small republics between them and Brazil. Since they don't really stand to gain anything from declaring war on Brazil directly, and can gain much from staying neutral and bullying their neighbors, they'll probably go for the latter.

I don't think that a North German collapse and an Austro-Hungarian collapse are mutually exclusive. The Austrians could very well try to occupy large parts of North Germany, and become even more horribly overextended than they already are.

 

[Falecius]

I gather from here that French possessions like Réunion or the Comoros have been disposed of too?
Next year, East Africa is going to be a significant front, Congo is even worse of a mess than it used to be, and the Portuguese are clearly unhappy.
This is bad news for he BOGs. Thing have become better for their side, but in Europe they're still quite in dire straits. New African fronts are not quite welcome. What's Transvaal's stance in all this?
By the way, I expect the fine difference between "Belgium granting transit rights" and "Belgium declaring war" will get lost in traslation in London and Berlin, won't it?

 

[Hnau]

I love these yearly overviews! The depiction of motor wagons in the sahara, in street battles, and elsewhere was cool. Just a note, I don't think there is much chance that the Great War will improve chances for Polish independence. If Russia collapses, then it could be that Germany will push in and establish dominance. If Germany collapses, its Russia that will push in and make Poland their puppet state. Poland's creation in OTL was only possible with the collapse of both empires.

With so much more pressure on Germany, could revolutionary elements be empowered sooner than in OTL?

Will there be any analogue of Lenin's "sealed train" episode? Could a country send a revolutionary ideologue to another in order to try and knock them out of the war?

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

I can't help but picture tens of charging European and African soldiers being mercilessly slaughtered by a line of car-mounted machine guns... the battle for Köln seems equally brutal, though.

The trucks aren't invulnerable. They're still pretty slow at this stage, one artillery shell will take one out, and they can be flanked or attacked from the rear just like a stationary gun position can. But yes, a line of them going into battle against conventional infantry and cavalry would be pretty nasty, especially since someone will find a partial solution to both of the above problems.

Just a question, but what part of Brazil are the BOGs going to be able to offer Argentina, anyway? Argentina's two most natural paths for expansion are Paraguay and Uruguay-heck if the Argentines take Rio Grande do Sul (the part of Brazil within easiest reach of them), they're going to surround Uruguay on two sides.

I might be misremembering, but didn't a large chunk of southern Brazil become independent? Piritini or something like that? I think remember a discussion about Italian influence on it. If that's accurate, how are the Argentines planning on invading Brazil? I could see them using the distraction of the war to try to get concessions from Paraguay or Uruguay, but I doubt a full-scale intervention would be likely.

This may contribute as to why they don't join in.

Assuming nothing has changed in South America since B_Munro's 1880 map, both Entre Rios and Piratini are independent. I'd imagine Argentina would be looking to take advantage of Brazil's distraction to either conquer or get concessions from the small republics between them and Brazil. Since they don't really stand to gain anything from declaring war on Brazil directly, and can gain much from staying neutral and bullying their neighbors, they'll probably go for the latter.

Territorial gains aren't really on the cards for Argentina, except in Patagonia where British aid might help them conquer the French-backed Mapuche. The Republic of Piratini - the OTL states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul - is indeed independent, so the nearest Brazilian territory that Argentina could seize would be a long way off and difficult to rule.

What Argentina would want out of a war is regional hegemony. Right now, all the small republics can play the Argentines and Brazilians off against each other, especially since at least two of them (Paraguay and Piratini) are minor powers in their own right. If Brazil is defeated - and, in the best case, broken up into several states of more manageable size - then Argentina would have no rival, and the small states on its border would have to knuckle under. Remember, also, that this is an Argentina in which Rosas stayed in power longer and which took more time than OTL to coalesce into a state, so it has a national inferiority complex to work off.

With that said, its participation in the war is far from certain, for the reasons all of you have mentioned - it will be hard to sell the public on a costly war with no prospect of territorial gains. Right now, Britain is offering big financial subsidies and trade concessions, and is also trying to organize Argentina and the smaller republics into a regional alliance by offering Brazilian territory to the latter. The small states aren't yet biting - they realize what an Argentine victory would mean - and whether the subsidies will be enough without them remains to be seen. If it gets to the point where it looks like Brazil will go down regardless, then the decision may become easier, but things haven't reached that point, so there are leaders pulling both ways.

Very nice overview. It seems like the BOGs have the upper hand, with the war overseas going well and North Germany continuing to hold out.

As for the war in Europe--I like how the Ottomans are hanging on, but North Germany has me really worried; they look just as close to collapse, if not closer, than the Russians do at the moment.

This is bad news for he BOGs. Thing have become better for their side, but in Europe they're still quite in dire straits. New African fronts are not quite welcome.

Cool, if the situation is still this murky, I must be doing something right. Things will be in the balance in at least some theaters, including the European ones, for at least another year - I won't say at this point whether Shevek23 is right or not, but neither side has heard its last bad news.

I dunno; the British Empire itself seems safe enough, and France has totally lost Indochina, but East Africa and the Omani Sultanate are a big mess. Nothing shocked me so much in the latest update as the mention of pro-Russian/Ethiopian Omani factions!

It's fairly natural for there to be pro-Russian factions in Oman proper - the Russians are in control of Aden and all of Yemen, and they have an interest in installing a friendly ruler in Muscat, so they'd be obvious partners for a prince who doesn't have hope of British backing. The French too - the officers and governors in the Congo are entertaining Omani princes now, and there are lots of princes to go around.

Ethiopia isn't meddling, at least not yet - the ones who are meddling are Muslim Ethiopian princes who seceded from the Ethiopian Empire a generation ago and became Omani vassals. They don't want to cancel their Omani vassalage, because then Ethiopia would grab them, but they're powerful enough lords to demand a say in who the next Sultan is.

Expect this mess to take a year to shake out.

So I guess there's no need to go there, Wilhelm won't get deposed and North Germany--what is left of it! will keep soldiering on. I'm less confident than I was some months ago that it will rev up a mighty powerhouse of industrial warfare that will break the combined might of Russia, France and the bit Austria can contribute, because they've lost a whole lot of men and will lose more; there might not be enough people to both man the front and also the factory benches, even if they start hiring women at the latter. Which if NG does come out of this with some industrial growth, they'll pretty much have to have done by the way!

They're definitely hiring women by now, and the refugees from the French-occupied territories have helped to swell the industrial work force. The Ruhr is intact - if France had got there during 1894, North Germany would have lost the war, but it didn't quite - and while the industrial bases in Saxony and Silesia are damaged, some of that capacity still exists. Right now, the building in the Ruhr and elsewhere hasn't yet made up all the lost capacity in Silesia and Saxony, but considerably more of it is devoted to military production than was the case before the war.

One place that has been industrializing rapidly, BTW, is northern France, where the prewar capacity has been increased in order to meet the military need for guns, trucks and ships.

I gather from here that French possessions like Réunion or the Comoros have been disposed of too?

Next year, East Africa is going to be a significant front, Congo is even worse of a mess than it used to be, and the Portuguese are clearly unhappy... What's Transvaal's stance in all this?

By the way, I expect the fine difference between "Belgium granting transit rights" and "Belgium declaring war" will get lost in traslation in London and Berlin, won't it?

Réunion and the Comoros were left alone during the early stages of the war, because they were out of the way and the British didn't have the available land forces to take them, but they're now targets in the war against the commerce raiders. Unfortunately, the troops slated to attack these targets were Omani, so the situation there may remain fluid for a while longer.

Transvaal is maintaining a state of armed neutrality - it hasn't joined the BOG alliance like the Orange Free State has, but it also recognizes that Britain has a lot more force in the region than it does. If there's a rupture between Portugal and the BOGs (ironically, over a Katangan kingdom that was a Portuguese ally until a couple of years ago), then Transvaal might consider joining the Portuguese side if it looks like they can win.

And yes, the British and North German politicians aren't in the mood for nuance right now, so they won't draw distinctions between transit rights and outright belligerence. If the French ever have to retreat through Belgium, the BOGs won't hesitate to attack any Belgians who get in the way.

Just a note, I don't think there is much chance that the Great War will improve chances for Polish independence. If Russia collapses, then it could be that Germany will push in and establish dominance. If Germany collapses, its Russia that will push in and make Poland their puppet state. Poland's creation in OTL was only possible with the collapse of both empires.

With so much more pressure on Germany, could revolutionary elements be empowered sooner than in OTL?

Will there be any analogue of Lenin's "sealed train" episode? Could a country send a revolutionary ideologue to another in order to try and knock them out of the war?

Poland would seem destined to be German-dominated in the event of a BOG victory, but there's dominance and dominance. It might become an autonomous client state - one with at least as much self-rule as Congress Poland, with someone from a cadet branch of the Hohenzollerns as king - rather than a province of Germany. It would be easier for Germany to control a network of small client kingdoms and duchies rather than restive provinces filled with non-German voters, and Britain will also be pushing for such an outcome because it doesn't want any German state to get too big.

A FAR victory, of course, would leave Poland as a Russian province, unless the victory is preceded by a Russian collapse as in OTL (and given TTL's alliances, it would be hard to imagine how the FARs could still win if Russia collapses).

As for revolutionary groups, sealed trains and other forms of incitement: just you wait.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Wrapping up the second year, part 2 (of 3)

​

Ahmadu Odubogun, Faith and Ferment: The Sahel and Sudan in the Nineteenth Century (Ibadan Univ. Press 2005)

… The Fourth Labor Shura, meeting in Zaria in August 1894, faced the challenges of wartime industrialization. For the first time since the beginning of the Abacarist labor movement, wages weren’t the problem: with so many men in the army, even unskilled workers were in demand, and any man – or woman – out of uniform could get a well-paying job. The problem now was credit. The Malê successor states were awash in capital, but while factories owned by industrial barons or corporations could get it, those owned by workers’ cooperatives mostly couldn’t. The cooperatives of Zaria had been decimated by hard times, and now it looked like prosperity might do in those that remained.

Out of this dilemma came the African Labor Bank. The bank, based in Ilorin and chartered in October under that country’s law, was owned collectively by the trade unions in Ilorin, Sokoto and Adamawa, and financed by a fixed contribution from each union – which, in practical terms, meant that it was capitalized by a one-time tax on union members. It would grant loans to factory cooperatives that wished to expand or modernize, offer credit to unions who wanted to buy out their owners, and in appropriate cases, lend money to individual workers.

The Labor Bank represented a triumph of the Labor Belloist model of union organization. The Sahelian unions had always had communalist features: they had originated as religious brotherhoods, and social welfare was part of what they did from the beginning. But the Fourth Labor Shura made communalist ideology explicit: unions were not merely advocates for labor rights but organs of the community of labor, and self-governing, collectively-owned businesses were recognized as the ideal economic unit. The bank’s charter was full of Belloist language: the trustees were directed to use its funds in service of the religious obligation of labor solidarity, and a board of three qadis was created to advise the trustees on ethical issues and veto any loan that they felt was morally wrong.

Labor Belloism, of course, had Abacarist roots, and Abacarist values, including participatory democracy, were also present in the bank’s founding documents. The unions would each have an equal vote in electing the bank trustees rather than having votes that were weighted according to their capital contributions, and the trustees would be ultimately responsible to the Labor Shura, which would now meet annually rather than every decade. This also made the bank more politically palatable to the Sokoto and Adamawa unions, which were poorer than those from Ilorin and had feared that their richer brothers might monopolize control of the pooled capital.

The African Labor Bank would in time expand beyond the Malê states, as the coal miners’ unions in Igbo country and the emerging labor brotherhoods of the Toucouleur joined in. But even before that, this example of cooperation across borders would feed the nascent Niger Valley federalist movement. The idea of a Niger federation was first conceived by Usman Abacar during his service as a commander of irregulars behind French lines; after seeing how the Toucouleur and the Mossi, and even his Malê, had become chess pieces in the battle between empires, he felt that such a union would give Africans a stronger voice in imperial affairs and enable them to set the terms of modernization. He also argued, in a January 1895 pamphlet, that the federation – which he called “Nigeria,” after Arthur John Evans’ hypothetical prehistoric African culture [1] – would enrich its member nations culturally and would ensure prosperity by expanding domestic markets.

The majority were skeptical of the idea: there were barriers of language, culture and in some cases religion, and the Niger states were hesitant to give up their historic identities. Also problematic was the fact that some of the proposed members were part of the British Empire and others were not, although there was partial precedent in southern Africa for sharing of functions across imperial borders. [2] But the Abacarist Labor Party, founded in Sokoto in 1895, would have a federalist platform, as would other parties founded during succeeding decades. The idea also found traction among industrialists and merchants in the Toucouleur Empire, whose economy had become increasingly oriented toward the Malê states since Usman had opened its markets, although it was vehemently opposed by the ruler and the religious elite. And there was also surprising support for the notion among the Mossi, who, though wary of joining a Muslim-dominated federation, had more than enough of being the battlefield on which empires fought…

… Elsewhere in the Sahel, the N’Dele kingdom’s volte-face brought it into alliance with some strange bedfellows. The Catholic King Kikulwe, betrayed by his erstwhile French allies, had now made common cause with the Protestant North Germans, which also meant he was on the same side as Bornu and its vassal kingdom of Ouaddai. The historic relationship between Ouaddai and N’Dele was a fraught one: the rulers of Ouaddai had once controlled the area, and in the not-very-distant past, slavers from that region had taken a heavy toll of N’Dele’s population. Bornu had since crushed the slavers, but their memory was still fresh, and Kikulwe’s subjects mistrusted the intentions of their northern neighbor.

The king hit on the same solution that Bornu had: to offset a threatening neighbor by an alliance with a more distant, but larger, patron. He in fact found two such patrons: North Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Kikulwe’s ambassador arrived at the Porte in March 1895, and the Catholic king of a mostly-animist country would acquire one Protestant and one Muslim protector…

*******​

Mohan Singh, The Empire at War (London: Standard, 1928)

​

… The negotiations between the All-India Reform Congress and the Government of India began to bear fruit in 1894, with the tabling of what would later become known as the “Formative Acts.” The first of these, the Licensing (Racial Classifications) Act 1894, was deceptively simple: “There shall be no distinction drawn between Indian and European in licensing or eligibility for any trade, business or profession.” On its face, this did nothing more than formalize the arrangement that the Raj and Congress had already concluded, under which Indians received unlimited access to industrial licenses in exchange for investment in war production. But in fact, as Romesh Chunder Dutt presciently realized, the law was far more sweeping: by prohibiting the exclusion of Indians from any business, it outlawed imperial monopolies, including the hated Salt Act.

The end of the salt monopoly – and of the tax that it made possible – were seen as a great victory for the Congress, and had almost immediate effects on the Indian economy and public health. Far less welcome was the graduated income tax that replaced it, which fell most heavily on the Indian elites who dominated the Congress leadership. Most of them, including Dutt, saw the income tax as a necessary price of reform, and the Muslims within the Congress viewed it in Belloist terms as part of the communal obligation of the rich. But the acceptance in many cases was grudging, and there were some who saw it as an act of revenge by Britain against the Indian upper middle class, arguing that what the British had given with the licensing reform, they were now finding ways to take back.

And if the aftermath of the Licensing Act was controversial, the Government of India Act 1895 was far more so. The bill initially submitted to Parliament in November 1894 was a compromise between the Congress, which wanted full self-rule within the empire, and the more conservative administrators of the Raj, but in light of the realities of war and the empire’s increasing reliance on Indian troops, it favored the former. The proposal called for the establishment of provincial councils, four-fifths of which would be elected. The appointed governors would retain control over defense, policing and the judiciary, and finance would be a shared responsibility with the governor proposing a budget which the council could reject but not amend. Everything else would be under the control of provincial cabinets responsible to the councils. And for the first time, some members of the Imperial Legislative Council itself would be elected, with that body expanding in size and authority.

To say the least, however, the bill’s passage through Parliament was not smooth. It encountered instant opposition from British commercial interests, whose position had already been shaken by the Licensing Acts, and also from influential members of the Cranbrook Government and both major parties. By the time the act was voted out of the Commons, it was considerably watered down, and it seemed likely to fail in the Lords altogether. Only through the intervention of the Imperial War Cabinet, which was keenly aware of how vital India was to the war effort, was a compromise brokered.

The final version of the Act, which was signed into law in March 1895, was a blow to Indian aspirations. Forty percent of the provincial councils’ members rather than twenty would be nominated; the councils would have power to discuss but not reject the budget; and while the councils could question and dismiss provincial ministers, the power to name them rested exclusively with the governor. Suffrage would be property-qualified rather than universal, with the qualification set high enough that less than ten percent of Indians would have the vote. And while the Imperial Legislative Council would still be expanded, and half of its members would be required to be Indian, none of them would be elected.

The same fate befell the third of the Formative Acts, the Bill of Rights (India) Act 1895. As initially envisioned, it would have given Indians civil rights equivalent to those enjoyed by Englishmen, including complete freedom of assembly and the press. As enacted, however, it was only an incremental expansion of freedom: press controls were relaxed, sedition laws were narrowed and Indians were given wider latitude to challenge administrative decisions in court, but the government retained the power to ban newspapers and political associations and, in some cases, to make summary arrests.

The property-qualified franchise did not terribly upset many of the Indian elites. In fact, it may have helped reduce intercommunal tensions: the Muslims’ greater wealth, and the multi-member electoral districts which Dutt had proposed, guaranteed that Muslims would be elected in proportion to their share of the population rather than being submerged among Hindu voters. But the rest of the Acts were profoundly disappointing. A majority of the Congress decided to welcome them as a good first step and continue to cooperate with the war effort while fighting for more, but others saw the Acts’ dilution as a sign that the British government would never concede any real self-rule, and began to question whether the Congress’ program was truly effective…

… The other item of unfinished Indian business was the relationship between the Congress, the Raj and the princely states. A few rulers, such as the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharajahs of Baroda and Travancore, had started to democratize before the war, either out of progressive sensibilities or yielding to public pressure. But many others – especially the smaller ones in the agencies – had gone in the opposite direction with the full support of British authorities, and the Gwalior massacre was still fresh in mind at the beginning of the war. [3]

In its concordat with the Congress, the Raj agreed to drop its active opposition to democratization in the princely states, but it showed no desire to promote democracy there or to intervene on the Congress’ behalf in its disputes with the maharajahs. And the princely rulers, for their part, had little taste for even the half-hearted reforms that were taking place in the provinces under direct rule. It was hardly surprising, then, that many Congress chapters in the princely states became radicalized, and that calls for rebellion became increasingly open. It was in the smaller princely states, rather than the Raj proper, that revolutionary agitation would fall on the most fertile ground…

​

… In Ireland, the broad acceptance that characterized the early days of the war was giving way to resentment. The Irish nationalists saw the British government lavishing gifts on the Malê, granting concessions to India and offering the dominions a voice in imperial affairs, but denying any of that to them. Many of them wondered, both in the Dublin newspapers and on the floor of Parliament, why their sacrifices were any less worthy of reward than those of the Africans or Indians.

Lord Cranbrook was not unsympathetic, and while he remained resolutely opposed to Irish nationalism, he proposed to “kill Home Rule with kindness.” He tabled a bill expanding the pool of money that Irish peasants could borrow to buy out their landlords, and in some cases, subjecting land to compulsory sale. Soldiers’ land purchases would be subsidized and existing debts forgiven for army service. He also offered repeal of the Coercion Acts and a statutory bill of rights.

Unfortunately, the Cranbrook proposal suffered the fate of many compromises: not enough for the Irish nationalists, and too much for his own party. The Prime Minister was quickly faced with rebellion among the Tory backbenchers and even within the government. He designated his Irish reforms as a confidence motion, but soon realized that he didn’t have the votes even so, and that the Irish Freedom Party wasn’t going to bail him out. He was forced to withdraw the motion in an embarrassing defeat for his government, and although he was able to pass parts of the plan (including a partial repeal of the Coercion Acts and an increase in loan funding) as separate bills, the failure did nothing to improve Irish morale…

… For many people in the dominions, the Great War represented their coming of age: the time when the mother country called for their help rather than the reverse, and the point where they were invited to help steer the affairs of the empire as a whole. But it was also a time of growing pains, and not only because of the toll the war took on their soldiers.

In January 1895, the Canadian parliament debated a law that would institute conscription for the first time in the nation’s history. The commanders of the Canadian forces had called for it in order to reinforce regiments depleted by trench warfare, and it had broad patriotic support in the English-speaking provinces. Among French-Canadians, however, conscription was much less popular. Few of them had any desire to fight for the British Empire, especially when the enemy was a country that they still regarded as their motherland, and those who had already served in the army remembered their unequal treatment at the hands of English-speaking officers. The major French-Canadian newspapers editorialized against conscription, and the Québécois legislative assembly passed a non-binding resolution condemning it; when it passed anyway, riots erupted throughout Québec and among French-Canadian communities in the major cities.

It took several days to restore order, and by that time, the government had realized that it would have to occupy Québec in order to enforce conscription there. That was an alternative nobody wanted; on the other hand, the government also didn’t want to be seen as giving special privileges to the French-Canadians. After further deliberation and negotiation with Québécois leaders, the government expanded the exemptions to military service, agreed to turn a pragmatic blind eye to discreet draft resistance and allowed French-Canadians to serve in their own regiments. Civil peace was restored, but the compromise meant that many fewer troops were raised than the generals wanted, and the issue would have to be revisited the following year.

In the Australian colonies and New Zealand, the worry was less about internal cohesion than about their place within the empire: in particular, their place as compared to India. The Government of India Act, incremental as it was, raised the possibility that India might one day become a dominion, and if so, it would be a richer and more populous one than any of the Australasian colonies. The growing Indian presence among the imperial officer corps, and Nazir Ali Hydari’s seizure of Tahiti, were seen in Sydney and Wellington as signs that India was flexing its muscles, and that it might take Australia’s place as the main British cadet in the region.

The Australians and New Zealanders had already grown closer together during the war through cooperation in military recruitment and war production, and the threat of India gave impetus to the calls for unity. Together, the Australasian colonies would be a regional military and economic power of some import, and would have a head start in securing their place on the Pacific rim. In March 1895, the colonies’ respective prime ministers agreed in principle to form a federation that included Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, together with any territories they might gain as a result of the war. There would be much argument over details before the final deal was done, but the seeds of union had been sown…

_______


[1] See post 1023.

[2] See post 1206.

[3] See post 1310.

 

[Falecius]

Well, it seems that the British are behaving quite like dicks to both the Indians and the Irish. I doubt it will end well.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Well, it seems that the British are behaving quite like dicks to both the Indians and the Irish. I doubt it will end well.

Given that eg Churchill was still thinking along those lines 60 years later, iotl, its a little amazing theyre moving that far forward ittl. Yes, necessity is the mother of invention, and the whole colonial scene is slightly, but visibly, less paternalistic, i think the compromise reached is realistic. Yes, parliament could have been a touch more generous, but thereare political constraints in Britain, too.

As for being 'dicks', isnt that, in some ways, the whole root of imperialism?

 

[Falecius]

As for being 'dicks', isnt that, in some ways, the whole root of imperialism?

Well, of course.

However, I mean that Indian manpower is more or less what allows the BOGs a fighting chance to begin with. Without India, they're pretty fucked.
I obviously don't expect India to be recognized as an equal partner in short order, but my point was that they are being dicks in a rather stupid way. Which, of course, does not mean it isn't realistic.

 

[Badshah]

Well, of course.

However, I mean that Indian manpower is more or less what allows the BOGs a fighting chance to begin with. Without India, they're pretty fucked.
I obviously don't expect India to be recognized as an equal partner in short order, but my point was that they are being dicks in a rather stupid way. Which, of course, does not mean it isn't realistic.

I think that further concessions to India pretty much have to happen. We're looking at a situation where India pretty much has Britain by the balls in terms of manpower, and I doubt people will be so eager to flock to fight, once the stories come in from the front. Despite war censorship, code will no doubt be used, and people will know about the seemingly hopeless situation.

As Jonathan's posted, the Congress elites won't necessarily be mad that only the rich can vote; after all that guarantees their own power. But I think Congress knows that India's contribution here is much larger than expected, and having that card to play on the British will be a very powerful issue to contend with in the future.

One question... actually two. Has Gandhi been butterflied, or could we possibly see him as part of a Medical Corps in either in Africa or Europe?

And is the Cape in South Africa becoming more opposed to the idea of union with the rest of the South African colonies based on their adoption of the Cape Qualified Franchise? Having this franchise actually become more popular throughout the region would be a boon to human rights, methinks.