Napoleon's Victory [LONG]
- Thread starter Zach
- Start date
At that time the Greek population must have been 300000(1940) (if you don't have the progroms of 1870-1880-OTL- and the forceful Greek and Turkish population exchange).
Bulgarians are not Slavs by any definition they were CULTURALY absorbed by the dominant population of the aerea who were Slavs adopting Slav language.See the wars between Serbs and Bulgarians;they are not justified between brother nations....and please don't think we are splitting hairs,a random question among their respective populations would convince you.
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Dementor
Banned
According to the census carried out in Eastern Rumelia in 1884 the Greek population was about 50 thousand or about 5% of the total (the Bulgarians were about 680 thousand or 70%). It's extremely unlikely that it would have increased six times in less than sixty years, even without the population exchange between Bulgaria and Greece.
And what are these pogroms you are speaking of?
Slavs do not have a common culture or common genetics. They are a linguistic group. All Slavs have mixed with other peoples, but that doesn't mean that, for example, the Russians are Fins or the Czechs Germans. Also, the fact that the Bulgarians speak a Slavic language is strong evidence that they outnumbered the Bulgars, so even if Slavs were defined by genetics, the Bulgarians are mostly Slavic with some admixture, as all other Slavs.
In any case, the time when the Slavs and the Bulgars were distinct ethnic groups ended by the 9th century at the latest. There were certainly no non-Bulgarian Slavs in Bulgaria like you described in your post.
And the comment about "brother nations" is ridiculous. Countries usually fight wars with their closest neighbors and so fights between closely related peoples are extremely common in history; check out for example the history of Sweden and Denmark.
And what would the random question be? In both Bulgaria and Serbia there are people who think that the Bulgarians are Slavs and people who don't. The latter seem who disproportionately represented among nationalist types, but I don't really think they are a majority.
Exactly as yousaid "think" I have asked some of my professional contacts...they were from indifferent to very hostile.That means simply put that I cannot conduct a poll alone and get results...so I am also a little hasy about what the result would be or what were the results of Silvnitza etc.
A note:'exchange' of populations for Greeks,Armenians and other 'undesirables' took place before the sensus;It is also known that Greece conducted a mobilisation for that,but nothing happened after the intervention of the ambassadors of certain powers.I wonder why would Greece conduct a mobilisation if there wasn't a very serious reason?
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Dementor
Banned
Hostile to the idea that the Bulgarians are Slavs?
And what has the battle of Slivnitsa to do with this?
Thanks for answering my questions. I have another set if u don't mind:
- Before the POD, Spain and France did propose to divide Portugal into three states. Why two in this TL?
- Why didn't France threw more manpower when Spain's American colonies were fighting for ndependence?
- What about Irish independence? Does that happen in OTL?
- What happens to Ethiopia in this TL?
- What happens to Thailand in this TL?
- I really doubt that a Byzantine state is plausible. There aren't enough Christians and/or ethnic Greeks for this. Why can't the land simply go to Greece?
- Who is Arabia aligned to?
- What happens to Iran and Afghanistan in this TL?
- Will the Ottoman Empire soon fall?
- Why weren't the US able to gain Canada after the War of 1812?
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I'm interested in many of the same questions as RWG, but I have one more :
Should I use this TL as inspiration for a campaign/mod in IL-2 Sturmovik ?
The original idea is over here. I'd keep everyone up-to-date on the progress. It's been a long time since I last made stuff like that, but I think this TL wouldn't be too bad a setting.
Should I use this TL as inspiration for a campaign/mod in IL-2 Sturmovik ?
The original idea is over here. I'd keep everyone up-to-date on the progress. It's been a long time since I last made stuff like that, but I think this TL wouldn't be too bad a setting.
It took place exactly for the same reason Greece conducted mobilisation.
These acts don't take place without reason OK?
Dementor
Banned
Yes, both Greece and Serbia didn't want a bigger Bulgaria as it would (and did) interfere with their own ambitions. But I still don't see what this has to do with whether the Bulgarians are Slavs.
You're claiming that Greeks, Armenians and other undesirables were removed from Eastern Rumelia before the census 1884? This is the first time I've heard of anything like that. Do you have a source for this?
As for why Greece mobilized, see above. And incidentally, how would Greece be able to prevent the unification of Eastern Rumelia with Bulgaria? Greece did not have a common border with either. In fact, I believe they wanted compensations from the Ottoman Empire, which was quite helpful for Bulgaria, as the Ottomans had to keep part of their forces on the Greek border.
I consider the information I have in hand rather inadequate at present to answer this last point;obviously Greece had no common border with Bulgaria,but they had a fleet and Bulgaria had none;I will have to visit Greece again especially Parliament and Benaki Libraries
for modern historical evidence,if they are fully available on such recent matters.
Like a phoeniz from the ashes, one of the greatest TL's on the site rises again! Love the trouble in the Confederacy (Union all the way!
) and can't wait to hear more about Austria, Japan, Ottomans, Velikoslavia...
) and can't wait to hear more about Austria, Japan, Ottomans, Velikoslavia...Don't have time yet to answer all the questions that have popped up but here is a brief update on France in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and its efforts to democratize a bit.
France
The middle of the twentieth century was a period of growth, stability and a bit of indulgence for the members of the victorious coalition coming out of the Second Great War. Young people across Europe, buoyed by the efforts of the previous two victorious generations, looked forward to a future without war and where education – not conscription – would meet their adolescence. Parents and grandparents would see their young ones not go to war but to university and then to professional careers in business, public service, the health care sector and many other areas that had been ignored by millions of young men and women in previous generations. Beyond the regions in Germany and Poland that had experienced the brunt of the fighting against Prussia, the nations of Western Europe were physically unscathed by war. Psychological wounds ran deep; the millions of young soldiers who fought across the world who would not return were a daily reminder of the terrors of war. The Allies commemorated their dead in an elaborate War Memorial built near the edge of the city. Completed in 1947, it towered more than 500 feet above the Paris skyline, a marble palace in the neo-classical style popular during the Peace Era.
The Emperor Napoleon III, who was 82 at the time, presided over the dedication ceremony where he gave a long speech exhorting the values of liberty, equality and brotherhood among nations. It would be his last public appearance and his health slowly deteriorated, diminished by more than three decades of firm rule, steady policy-making and leading a complex empire through a victorious war even as a septuagenarian. He passed away on April 14, 1948, at the age of 83. The fourth Napoleon had reigned for 37 years, the second longest of any of his predecessors (his grandfather Napoleon II reigned for 51 years). The French dynasty had long faced the issue of Napoleon IV’s successor. The Bonapartist tradition called for primogeniture and each succeeding emperor had a healthy and able son to which to pass the crown. Napoleon IV, however, only had one child, Princess Catherine, who was for many years his preferred heir. While the laws of succession and tradition held that the crown ought to pass to his youngest brother Ferdinand (who in 1948 was 77 and not in robust health) or perhaps one of his two nephews (both were named Napoleon, sons of his brothers Joseph and Charles), Napoleon IV had the law changed in 1940 to disregard gender in imperial succession. On this issue, France was hardly the most progressive country in the world. Empress Catherine I, elegant and appropriately regal at 50 years old, was crowned the first female ruler of the French Empire on August 30th, 1948. By virtue of her position, she became the most powerful woman on Earth and probably the most powerful person.
France’s “Age of Catherine” neatly coincided with the height of the Peace Era and a period of political liberalization, economic expansion and an enhanced quality of life. Since the reign of Napoleon I, France had largely spurned official politics and political parties were banned. The policies of the emperors and his ministers drove the discussion and the majority of the population succumbed to the largely enlightened and liberal authoritarians. The Bonapartes had placed great faith in the rule of law and the vast bureaucracy that regularly grew from the nineteenth century and into the mid-twentieth century. The highly centralized empire in the nineteenth century under Napoleons I and II slowly gave way to a more dispersed governmental mechanism under Napoleons III and IV. While Paris remained the center of the empire and its government, the twentieth century saw an increase in the legal power of the legislature. The old French Constitution of Year XII (passed in 1804) became increasingly outdated and amendments scattered throughout it confused even the most experienced bureaucrats. The French Parliament, with the consent and support of Napoleon III, ratified the Constitution of Year CXXVII/1919 (combining the revolutionary and standard calendars). The 1919 constitution, replacing its unusually stable predecessor, soon gave way to the more recent Constitution of Year CXLVI/1946, which, among other changes, allowed women to the French throne, direct elections of senators and ending the prohibition on political parties.
For nearly a century and a half the French Empire had functioned without existing political parties. The 1946 constitution, then, provided a significant shift in French political policies. To be sure, there had always been factions in the French Senate, Legislative Body and even in the various cabinets and courts over which the emperors had presided. But to be fully manifested in a traditional party was a novel idea to the French, unlike the United Kingdom and the American Republics. The fact that the first major party did not register until late in 1947 was evidence of French skepticism around the concepts of political parties. Loyal Bonapartists formed the Citizen and Emperor Movement (Mouvement citoyen et empeurer or MCEE). Because the party was unprecedented in the French Empire, Bonapartist leaders were unsure on what to do and named Napoleon IV as the party leader, despite the obvious parallels between them and the Zavtra Party of Russia in which the head of state (or de facto) is also the head of the party. After Napoleon IV’s death, the MCEE nominated a non-imperial family member as head. In 1948 the small equalitarian movement in France formed the Equality Party (Parti equalite) and a group of reform-oriented members of the legislature banded together to form the United Republic (Republique solidaire). Soon, local interest parties had formed, particularly on ethnic and linguistic lines, particularly those speaking German, Dutch, Italian, and Basque. The Citizens for a Free Italy (Citoyens pour une Italie libre), founded in 1952, were among the most vocal of the French Parliament and voters in Piedmont, Savoy and the French-held Papal regions regularly sent members of that party to Paris throughout the 1950s as an Italian unity movement took shape. Catherine, who held ultimate control despite the rapid openness of the French system, welcomed the new political parties. In the Parliament’s first session in 1948 in which a political party was present (although at the time it was only MCEE and a large number of “independent” legislators), the empress declared a “new era of debate and discussion, of law-making and best efforts, all for the sole effort for the welfare, safety and glory of the French Empire and all of its millions of diverse subjects.”
The “welfare, safety and glory” of the empire’s seventy million or so inhabitants in 1950 dramatically improved over the following decades because of a number of long-term projects that initiated during Napoleon IV and Catherine’s reign. After the Second Great War, the French monarchs spearheaded a massive infrastructure overhaul. In the interwar period, Napoleon III and his various ministers invested heavily in major highways but almost all of them crisscrossed from east to west, primarily from major cities like Paris to Germany. Most projects aimed to facilitate the French military on their movements east. There were few new roads and railroads aiming to connect cities within the empire. Many of those systems remained in the care of the local departments, which had irregular methods of upkeep and improvement. Beginning in 1945 to the middle of the 1950s, the French government vastly expanded and modernized the roads across the empire, connecting the distant German-speaking regions in the north, to the middle of France and into departments on the Italian peninsula. The highways were nicknamed “routes impératrices” after Catherine, although it was Napoleon IV who initiated the huge and expensive project. Similarly, the railroads modernized, often alongside or in between the new highways. French trains, at the forefront of engineering for decades, had become faster and more comfortable for land travel. Companies, with generous imperial aid, built more lines to facilitate more customers and more cargo and French-based trains flew across international borders, carrying goods and people.
France, as one of the five largest economies in the world, was at the vanguard of international economic cooperation. Although Russia remained a tightly controlled autarkic system with deep tariffs, France, the United Kingdom and its Dominions, the United States and China all traded heavily with each other and among the “second rate” economies such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Persia and Korea. The French economy since the official end of the Continental System in 1913 (a very different system than its 1807 progenitor) had been buoyed by international capital and investments. French transportation companies such as Claveau Automobiles and Compagnie Générale Transatlantique boomed in the postwar era as millions of the empire’s inhabitants moved to buy their own automobiles and travel the world by ship or through the air. Claveau was a major domestic automobile manufacturer in the 1930s through the 1960s but faced rivals in Populaire, Autobloc and Hergé. Of course, France continued to be a leader in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors, with a particular emphasis on its world-renowned culinary tradition.
Up until the late 1970s, France experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth. If one could measure its Gross Domestic Happiness, it would have undoubtedly been equal to or greater than the era after Napoleon I’s major victory over Great Britain and the almost full century of the First Pax Napoleonica. From 1942 to as late as 1982, France experienced the Third Pax Napoleonica. Members of those generations of tranquility, cooperation and openness remember fondly the maternal voice of Empress Catherine’s regular addresses on the state of the empire and her Christmas addresses. They remember a period of peace and plenty.
France
The middle of the twentieth century was a period of growth, stability and a bit of indulgence for the members of the victorious coalition coming out of the Second Great War. Young people across Europe, buoyed by the efforts of the previous two victorious generations, looked forward to a future without war and where education – not conscription – would meet their adolescence. Parents and grandparents would see their young ones not go to war but to university and then to professional careers in business, public service, the health care sector and many other areas that had been ignored by millions of young men and women in previous generations. Beyond the regions in Germany and Poland that had experienced the brunt of the fighting against Prussia, the nations of Western Europe were physically unscathed by war. Psychological wounds ran deep; the millions of young soldiers who fought across the world who would not return were a daily reminder of the terrors of war. The Allies commemorated their dead in an elaborate War Memorial built near the edge of the city. Completed in 1947, it towered more than 500 feet above the Paris skyline, a marble palace in the neo-classical style popular during the Peace Era.
The Emperor Napoleon III, who was 82 at the time, presided over the dedication ceremony where he gave a long speech exhorting the values of liberty, equality and brotherhood among nations. It would be his last public appearance and his health slowly deteriorated, diminished by more than three decades of firm rule, steady policy-making and leading a complex empire through a victorious war even as a septuagenarian. He passed away on April 14, 1948, at the age of 83. The fourth Napoleon had reigned for 37 years, the second longest of any of his predecessors (his grandfather Napoleon II reigned for 51 years). The French dynasty had long faced the issue of Napoleon IV’s successor. The Bonapartist tradition called for primogeniture and each succeeding emperor had a healthy and able son to which to pass the crown. Napoleon IV, however, only had one child, Princess Catherine, who was for many years his preferred heir. While the laws of succession and tradition held that the crown ought to pass to his youngest brother Ferdinand (who in 1948 was 77 and not in robust health) or perhaps one of his two nephews (both were named Napoleon, sons of his brothers Joseph and Charles), Napoleon IV had the law changed in 1940 to disregard gender in imperial succession. On this issue, France was hardly the most progressive country in the world. Empress Catherine I, elegant and appropriately regal at 50 years old, was crowned the first female ruler of the French Empire on August 30th, 1948. By virtue of her position, she became the most powerful woman on Earth and probably the most powerful person.
France’s “Age of Catherine” neatly coincided with the height of the Peace Era and a period of political liberalization, economic expansion and an enhanced quality of life. Since the reign of Napoleon I, France had largely spurned official politics and political parties were banned. The policies of the emperors and his ministers drove the discussion and the majority of the population succumbed to the largely enlightened and liberal authoritarians. The Bonapartes had placed great faith in the rule of law and the vast bureaucracy that regularly grew from the nineteenth century and into the mid-twentieth century. The highly centralized empire in the nineteenth century under Napoleons I and II slowly gave way to a more dispersed governmental mechanism under Napoleons III and IV. While Paris remained the center of the empire and its government, the twentieth century saw an increase in the legal power of the legislature. The old French Constitution of Year XII (passed in 1804) became increasingly outdated and amendments scattered throughout it confused even the most experienced bureaucrats. The French Parliament, with the consent and support of Napoleon III, ratified the Constitution of Year CXXVII/1919 (combining the revolutionary and standard calendars). The 1919 constitution, replacing its unusually stable predecessor, soon gave way to the more recent Constitution of Year CXLVI/1946, which, among other changes, allowed women to the French throne, direct elections of senators and ending the prohibition on political parties.
For nearly a century and a half the French Empire had functioned without existing political parties. The 1946 constitution, then, provided a significant shift in French political policies. To be sure, there had always been factions in the French Senate, Legislative Body and even in the various cabinets and courts over which the emperors had presided. But to be fully manifested in a traditional party was a novel idea to the French, unlike the United Kingdom and the American Republics. The fact that the first major party did not register until late in 1947 was evidence of French skepticism around the concepts of political parties. Loyal Bonapartists formed the Citizen and Emperor Movement (Mouvement citoyen et empeurer or MCEE). Because the party was unprecedented in the French Empire, Bonapartist leaders were unsure on what to do and named Napoleon IV as the party leader, despite the obvious parallels between them and the Zavtra Party of Russia in which the head of state (or de facto) is also the head of the party. After Napoleon IV’s death, the MCEE nominated a non-imperial family member as head. In 1948 the small equalitarian movement in France formed the Equality Party (Parti equalite) and a group of reform-oriented members of the legislature banded together to form the United Republic (Republique solidaire). Soon, local interest parties had formed, particularly on ethnic and linguistic lines, particularly those speaking German, Dutch, Italian, and Basque. The Citizens for a Free Italy (Citoyens pour une Italie libre), founded in 1952, were among the most vocal of the French Parliament and voters in Piedmont, Savoy and the French-held Papal regions regularly sent members of that party to Paris throughout the 1950s as an Italian unity movement took shape. Catherine, who held ultimate control despite the rapid openness of the French system, welcomed the new political parties. In the Parliament’s first session in 1948 in which a political party was present (although at the time it was only MCEE and a large number of “independent” legislators), the empress declared a “new era of debate and discussion, of law-making and best efforts, all for the sole effort for the welfare, safety and glory of the French Empire and all of its millions of diverse subjects.”
The “welfare, safety and glory” of the empire’s seventy million or so inhabitants in 1950 dramatically improved over the following decades because of a number of long-term projects that initiated during Napoleon IV and Catherine’s reign. After the Second Great War, the French monarchs spearheaded a massive infrastructure overhaul. In the interwar period, Napoleon III and his various ministers invested heavily in major highways but almost all of them crisscrossed from east to west, primarily from major cities like Paris to Germany. Most projects aimed to facilitate the French military on their movements east. There were few new roads and railroads aiming to connect cities within the empire. Many of those systems remained in the care of the local departments, which had irregular methods of upkeep and improvement. Beginning in 1945 to the middle of the 1950s, the French government vastly expanded and modernized the roads across the empire, connecting the distant German-speaking regions in the north, to the middle of France and into departments on the Italian peninsula. The highways were nicknamed “routes impératrices” after Catherine, although it was Napoleon IV who initiated the huge and expensive project. Similarly, the railroads modernized, often alongside or in between the new highways. French trains, at the forefront of engineering for decades, had become faster and more comfortable for land travel. Companies, with generous imperial aid, built more lines to facilitate more customers and more cargo and French-based trains flew across international borders, carrying goods and people.
France, as one of the five largest economies in the world, was at the vanguard of international economic cooperation. Although Russia remained a tightly controlled autarkic system with deep tariffs, France, the United Kingdom and its Dominions, the United States and China all traded heavily with each other and among the “second rate” economies such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Persia and Korea. The French economy since the official end of the Continental System in 1913 (a very different system than its 1807 progenitor) had been buoyed by international capital and investments. French transportation companies such as Claveau Automobiles and Compagnie Générale Transatlantique boomed in the postwar era as millions of the empire’s inhabitants moved to buy their own automobiles and travel the world by ship or through the air. Claveau was a major domestic automobile manufacturer in the 1930s through the 1960s but faced rivals in Populaire, Autobloc and Hergé. Of course, France continued to be a leader in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors, with a particular emphasis on its world-renowned culinary tradition.
Up until the late 1970s, France experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth. If one could measure its Gross Domestic Happiness, it would have undoubtedly been equal to or greater than the era after Napoleon I’s major victory over Great Britain and the almost full century of the First Pax Napoleonica. From 1942 to as late as 1982, France experienced the Third Pax Napoleonica. Members of those generations of tranquility, cooperation and openness remember fondly the maternal voice of Empress Catherine’s regular addresses on the state of the empire and her Christmas addresses. They remember a period of peace and plenty.
Good Update. Just a few things on your Political Parties and the translations of their names in French:
On Political grounds, I imagine that this party, as a loyal Bonapartist party, will hold the Majority for quite some time. It will probably lose ground to other parties in the following years, but it will probably remain one of the two major parties at least if not the strongest one.
Though I have a question on that party... The French Empire is technically a Monarchy but the name of that party suggetis it is Republican: does it advocates the abolition of the Monarchy? How strong it is? I imagine it's as much popular as the Republican Party in OTL Modern-day United Kingdom, and thus very small.
I think it would be best to translate the name of that Party into "Mouvement des Citoyens et de l'Empereur" or "Mouvement des Citoyens de l'Empereur" because the current names seems a bit off to me, a native French speaker. Also, I think the abreviation should only be MCE not MCEE.Zach said:
On Political grounds, I imagine that this party, as a loyal Bonapartist party, will hold the Majority for quite some time. It will probably lose ground to other parties in the following years, but it will probably remain one of the two major parties at least if not the strongest one.
Equalite is a word that doesn't exist in French. A better translation would be "Parti Egalitaire" or "Parti de l'Egalité".Zach said:
The litteral translation of United Republic should be "République Unie", but I think you can keep "République Solidaire" as it is a much better name. And the English translation isn't that far off.Zach said:
Though I have a question on that party... The French Empire is technically a Monarchy but the name of that party suggetis it is Republican: does it advocates the abolition of the Monarchy? How strong it is? I imagine it's as much popular as the Republican Party in OTL Modern-day United Kingdom, and thus very small.
I've just read this timeline, and although very good and impressive, I must say that some parts were rather odd.
For example, it was said that an analoguous to the revolutions of 1848 didn't happen, because the French hegemony provided more stability. But the situation was pretty much the same, with many nationalities being blocked or suppressed by France instead as opposed to the powers of the Congrss of Vienna.
As a matter of fact, I can see the equivalent of 1848 being a more generalized conflict with perhaps more chances of success. This because of a general perception that the French Empire has betrayed the principles of the revolution by forcefully keeping the italian penninsula and the states east of the rhine divided. I'd expect such Status Quo to be ultimately unsustainable, and France would have to make concessions.
Another thing, Prussia survived for far too long while being politically isolated, and with a French-backed Poland having historical claims to most of it's territory.
In general terms, very little seems to have happened in the 19th Century ITTL.
But it's a very enjoyable timeline anyway.
For example, it was said that an analoguous to the revolutions of 1848 didn't happen, because the French hegemony provided more stability. But the situation was pretty much the same, with many nationalities being blocked or suppressed by France instead as opposed to the powers of the Congrss of Vienna.
As a matter of fact, I can see the equivalent of 1848 being a more generalized conflict with perhaps more chances of success. This because of a general perception that the French Empire has betrayed the principles of the revolution by forcefully keeping the italian penninsula and the states east of the rhine divided. I'd expect such Status Quo to be ultimately unsustainable, and France would have to make concessions.
Another thing, Prussia survived for far too long while being politically isolated, and with a French-backed Poland having historical claims to most of it's territory.
In general terms, very little seems to have happened in the 19th Century ITTL.
But it's a very enjoyable timeline anyway.
He's mentioned the possibility of doing a Redux, mostly in response to his far from realistic American history. I think an 1848 revolution based in Central Europe would be really interesting.