Nobody Expects: The Spanish Revolution
- Thread starter Onerom
- Start date
Guys, I have ended my vacations and today I started med school again, so updates will become more spaced as I will have other things to focus. I'll keep answering questions that may arise and I'll try to make at least a biggish update (read: something above a wikibox) about every two weeks, but I can´t promise it.
Also, I think that with this I have covered in broad lines the important things of the Great War for the TL skeleton, and can shift the focus to other toppics; of course, there's much more lore already thought to it if you want, and I'll cover it (eventually), but I thought these the minimum necessary to understand the world.
And one last thing: despite the previous 'A Minute to Pray' being just a silly thing that crossed my mind and I thought interesting as a this world's blend-of-TL191-and-Kaiserreich analogue, in fact I have been (unwantedly and obsesively) expanding the concept mentally, and believe I can flesh it in the future and achieve a cool AH-inside-AH. So just that, if you liked it I can delve into the concept deeper (including both the TL of AMtP and its effects on the cultural world of NE); if not, let me know to exile these thoughts of my mind and focus on things that *actually happened* ITTL.
Also, I think that with this I have covered in broad lines the important things of the Great War for the TL skeleton, and can shift the focus to other toppics; of course, there's much more lore already thought to it if you want, and I'll cover it (eventually), but I thought these the minimum necessary to understand the world.
And one last thing: despite the previous 'A Minute to Pray' being just a silly thing that crossed my mind and I thought interesting as a this world's blend-of-TL191-and-Kaiserreich analogue, in fact I have been (unwantedly and obsesively) expanding the concept mentally, and believe I can flesh it in the future and achieve a cool AH-inside-AH. So just that, if you liked it I can delve into the concept deeper (including both the TL of AMtP and its effects on the cultural world of NE); if not, let me know to exile these thoughts of my mind and focus on things that *actually happened* ITTL.
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In Rhodesia (it dropped the "South" after Zambia renamed itself shortly after attaining self-rule), for Euro-Rhodesians life is quite good, the country is doing well economically, while for Afro-Rhodesians it is quite frankly like living in OTL 1950 US South: segregation, discrimination and poverty are rife within the community, and the areas designated as Native Land (basically like reservations for Africans) are mismanaged. Afrhodies officially have political rights, but are specifically less that the ones Eurhodies enjoy, and even those they have (like voting) are difficult to exercise due to Eurhodie discrimination. The administration of the state is mostly composed of Eurhodies, including police and military, and abuse of authority isn'tuncommon.
Orange Free State is officially an ethnic homeland for Afrikaners as per its constitution, Apartheid is official and so Africans are treated as foreigners and have literally no rights in their own land. Even European immigrants, while not openly discriminated against, are suspicious and the process for naturalization is lengthy and difficult, requiring learning Afrikaner and converting to one of the State-sanctioned Christian denominations. It is a parliamentary republic, but since the franchise is limited to citizens (that is, ethnic Afrikaners and those Europeans crazy enough to immigrate and endure the naturalization process, by definition active supporters of the OFS and its policies), it acts as a one-party state.
The South African Republic (Transvaal) was similar to OFS, but dropped it's façade of "democracy" and ended up becoming a dictatorship, with even Afrikaners opposed to the state policies persecuted and "reeducated". Here Apartheid is taken to it's extreme, with Black South Africans relocated to Bantustans and closely watched. They can only abandon them under official approval in order to work in state-sanctioned enterprises, cannot bring their families with them and are rutinely rotated. The State has a extensive vigilant network, basically controling nearly every citizen to detect the slightest sign of disloyalty the earliest possible, and non-citizens to avoid the risk of uprisings. South Afrikaners are heavily indoctrinated, and thanks to the state-owned mineral wealth of the Republic (leased to primarly British-owned companies at under-market prices) enjoy comfortable lives. Bantustaners, living in underdeveloped lands, are also controlled by the state surveillance and indoctrinated by coopted Blacks who in exchange live wealthy (compared to the average African's standards, not the Afrikaner's) lifes. Despite this borderland-nazi hostility, the Republic aknowledges within its ranks the necessity of the Black laborforce, so there aren't policies of extermination nor expulsion; however, due to fears of uprisings, the policy is to maintain the Black population static, with a fertility rate just below replacement of 2, through a combination of available contraception, abortion and sterilization, all of which are vetoed to Afrikaners under severe penalties.
Disclaimer: there are plenty of Afrikaners/Cape Dutch in the Cape and the rest of the UK and the world that oppose all this policies and are among the most vocal detractors of the OFS and the SAR. I don't harbour animosity towards Afrikaners nor any other group and this is a work of fiction
I feel sick writting this, I hope it's because they are good villains.
Sorry for the absence, I haven't been able to work in the TL for the past few days, so (to keep it alive) I have been tampering with Inkscape over a map I had already done trying to get it to look cooler. As you can see, I'm focused at the moment in the Great War, and I hope to be able to prepare a biggish update in the next week(s) centered around it.
To be honest, I don't really know much about Botswana except a vague notion of it being IOTL sucessful by African standards. A quick and shallow research seems to indicate that is the case, with relatively high growth standards and a strong economy centered on mining. So, ITTL, I plan it to be somewhat more sucessful, a British aligned republic with a democratic history tracing back to their very independence, a strong rule of law and human rights observance, which uses revenue afforded by its natural resources to fund a strong social state that provides welfare to its citizens, and that is able to better cope with the HIV epidemic of Africa.
To be honest, I don't really know much about Botswana except a vague notion of it being IOTL sucessful by African standards. A quick and shallow research seems to indicate that is the case, with relatively high growth standards and a strong economy centered on mining. So, ITTL, I plan it to be somewhat more sucessful, a British aligned republic with a democratic history tracing back to their very independence, a strong rule of law and human rights observance, which uses revenue afforded by its natural resources to fund a strong social state that provides welfare to its citizens, and that is able to better cope with the HIV epidemic of Africa.
Yes, the Empire survived (well, it can be argued that the Empire of Austria and the Habsburg as Emperors have survived until the current time) although not the Ausgleich, the Great War put much strain on the Empire (and other neutral nations not directly involved in the War) to the structure to continue the same. I'll get to it (some day, I hope), and to the Austrian crisis of 1948 that lead to the current frontiers in most of Southeastern Europe.
And now, to continue with the Great War thematic, I have tried something that, while not giving you information about actual events ITL, I think can give some hints of the mindset of people ITL, and it's a bit of pop-cultural history.
Fan-made map of 1942 Europe as of the beginning of 'A Minute to Pray'.
I'm glad you like it, another person already comented about it, which is a pity because as you can infer from this wikiboxes it didn't last long and never really covered all the lands it claimed. The Empire of the Americas and the Indies (Imperio de las Américas y las Indias) was the far-fetched attempt of Ferdinand of Bourbon to reimpose the Spanish Empire, just from Mexico City instead of Madrid. It didn't succeed, and as you can see after his death his successors relinquished their claim to non-Novohispanic lands and intitled themselves "Emperors of Mexico", Emperadores de México (or Empresses, Emperatrices, as it seems...)
I'm ashamed to admit that it was unitended, an interference from my native language: I'm used to writting centuries with Roman numerals, and in the previous updates I took care to follow Wikipedia structure using Arabics, but this time It seems I have forgotten. However, to avoid having to change it, we can assume that ITL the article would be written mainly by Spanish-speaking Texans, who would consider the Roman numerals the norm, so it's their fault and not mine
The "liders" idem, when the words sound the same in English and Spanish I sometimes write the Spanish form unwillingly and it doesn't seem wrong when I read to check. Again, in an exercise of immersion we can consider that the Texan equivalent to the Founding Fathers are called Líderes de la Patria, and the world is used in English with the Spanish ortography to talk about Latin American non-authoritarian leaders in analogy to OTL Caudillos and Libertadores.
A change it is intended and that reflects the influence (or lack thereof) of Spanish in English ITTL is the use of "petty warfare" instead of "guerrilla", as the Peninsular War was fundamentally different . I hadn't thought much about it before, but it feels right that with more successful Spanish American countries ITTL, the status of Spanish is more akin to OTL French, regarded as a more prestigious language and less a working class language in the United States (which has a significantly lower Spanish American population owing to less push factors and a bigger European immigrational stream).
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Thanks!
They are descendants of Ferdinand I, just not by the line of Charlotte I but by her sister, Christina I and his husband Prince Anthony of Orleans, Duke of Veracruz and youngest son of King Louis Philippe of France. Charlotte was ousted from the throne in 1852 in a pronunciamiento (typical Hispanic-flavored coup) due to discontent from the Civil War, the Mexican-American War and corruption. However, the revolutionaries fell to infighting among themselves, and centralist and moderate republicans ended reconciling with monarchicals in 1854 and offered Christina the crown in 1854. Her reign would last less than a decade due to her premature death at childbirth, and her son Ferdinand would inherit the throne but during his reign the Mexican Monarchy would be definitely abolished in a new revolution. The Royal Family fled to the Caribbean territories which stayed loyal and continued to reign from Habana.
In NE, segregationism and racism are unfortunately much more acceptable to the general Western public due to the absence of both the horrors of Nazism to look to what they lead to and the Soviet Union as an international sponsor of equality among all peoples, so it's not that strange. Think about it as many Westerners being as the pre-Civil Rights average American from the South.
The Dutch Republic is the result of the instability that the Netherlands suffered in the 60s, due to the mishandling of the Indonesian Independence War that eventually led to a military coup d'etat.
No, not a civil war, and I don't really know if it is more sinister. The State of Congo, unlike OTL, wasn't awarded to any country during the Scramble for Africa, but instead it was turned to a free area internationally administered by the Great Powers of the time (UK, France, North German Confederation, Italy, US, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Portugal despite being of secondary importance) so as to ensure the free access of bussiness from any of them. The problem, no one of them wanted to invest much in the administration for it to benefit their rivals, so the State suffered from chronical underfunding and slowly turned into an anarchocapitalist's wet dream: hardly any law and fewer enforced but for private property (if your country was willing to support you). So, as of 2019, so to speak there's not really a State of Congo but a patchwork of tribal self-organized lands, private city-states, areas under company rule, petty warlords, even fanatic strongholds... It's a mess.
Yep, they borrow heavily but are not just identical copies, they are unitary republics for example so no electoral college.
Yes, in NE that kind of organization is precisely know as a French-styled republic (republique à la française), because it's the most prominent country that uses the system and while it wasn't the first (Swtizerland?), most of those who adopted it borrowed it from France.
Then I'll work on it, it has its origins in the Argentinian Civil War and I wanted to dive into it. Stay tuned.
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