I think that the death of Charles Brooke would lead to Sarawak getting Sabah for a simple reason; how the press would react to Charles's heir being "cheaten" out of these gains after his and his family's sacrifices and hardships for British Empire.
Of Rajahs and Hornbills: A timeline of Brooke Sarawak
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I think that the death of Charles Brooke would lead to Sarawak getting Sabah for a simple reason; how the press would react to Charles's heir being "cheaten" out of these gains after his and his family's sacrifices and hardships for British Empire.
Seems doable. They are small enough to not be seen as a threat and neither side is looking for more enemies.
The greater danger might be internal unrest if the war causes recession by disrupting trade. The sultan has ruffled many feathers, so hard times might see grumbling turn violent.
To anyone who's wondering, the latest mini-update is on the last page.
That’s an interesting angle. 19th-century British public opinion of Sarawak isn’t exactly what one would consider ‘accurate’ or even ‘wholesome’ IOTL or ITTL, if they’re even thinking of the kingdom at all. To the average Londoner or Liverpolitan, the sheer distance between them and Borneo – and to the Brookes – often blends all the pieces of info they’ve heard about Sarawak into an exotic, humid wildland where some equally wild adventurers carouse about with tribal headhunters underneath the rainforest canopies. The stories and penny dreadfuls from the British Isles and abroad regarding Borneo are more often remembered than Sarawak itself; the Sandokan novels are still penned ITTL, and there’s a fair number of people whom think of the tall tales as real insights into the kingdom and the Brookes.
Given the state’s direct role in the Great War, though, this can change rapidly. The news of Charles Brooke and his sons fighting against Italy in some tropical wonderland would find a good audience with the British public, especially as the winter sets in and the death tolls closer to home begin to mount past the point of comfortability. The fall of Italian Sandakan at the cost of both the White Rajah and his heir further adds a touch of Shakespearean tragedy to it all, which would compel public discourse to let the kingdom have all of Sabah as recompense. There might even be a few men or women whom will get interested in journeying there to see what the ‘Land of the Headhunters’ has to offer.
Now, the British government could still annex the former colony and make it their own regardless, but there’ll be far less acquiescence from the public or the press if they’re going through it ITTL.
Abu Bakar and his ministers are watching the regional and global battlefronts, but the Great War is going to be Johor’s greatest challenge yet, and one that they all may be underestimating. To a part, the palace does understand that the conflict could incite local passions amongst the Muslim Malays and Indians against other races and the European community (especially the French, Italians and Russians, whom are all kicked out of British Malaya and Singapore), which is why they are still neutral while neighbouring Aceh is fully involved. Not everyone is on board with this though, and there is a faction in the royal court - mostly fans of the Turks - that wants Johor to enter the war full-scale as an Ottoman ally.
As of 1906, the racial pot seems to have boiled over, but no one yet knows how bad it’ll be. More subtly, the unsafe shipping routes has also raised the price of imported goods. Abu Bakar and Jaafar are taking advantage of this to kick-start industrialization, but this also means that the average Johorean’s shopping expenses will also climb higher and higher. A rise in vegetable prices is one thing, but if the price of Javanese rice doubles, then Johor is in for a much bigger discontent than industrial growth.
I’m going to have this explained in time, and I haven’t fully set her backstory solid just yet. But in a nutshell, Lily Brooke had a rather colourful courtship period as a princess royal of Sarawak. Both IOTL and ITTL, daughters of the Brooke family (all of whom from side branches) are married with parental arrangement into families of the British upper middle class and/or the aristocracy, but Lily herself married the son of a London merchant family with business holdings across Malaya and Singapore. It wasn’t perfect, but the couple were happy until the husband died in a shipping accident approximately a year before the Great War began.
As a princess royal, Lily was welcomed back to Sarawak, but despite all the help that is offered to her, she’s still a single mother trying to raise two children at the end of the day.
That’s an interesting angle. 19th-century British public opinion of Sarawak isn’t exactly what one would consider ‘accurate’ or even ‘wholesome’ IOTL or ITTL, if they’re even thinking of the kingdom at all. To the average Londoner or Liverpolitan, the sheer distance between them and Borneo – and to the Brookes – often blends all the pieces of info they’ve heard about Sarawak into an exotic, humid wildland where some equally wild adventurers carouse about with tribal headhunters underneath the rainforest canopies. The stories and penny dreadfuls from the British Isles and abroad regarding Borneo are more often remembered than Sarawak itself; the Sandokan novels are still penned ITTL, and there’s a fair number of people whom think of the tall tales as real insights into the kingdom and the Brookes.
Given the state’s direct role in the Great War, though, this can change rapidly. The news of Charles Brooke and his sons fighting against Italy in some tropical wonderland would find a good audience with the British public, especially as the winter sets in and the death tolls closer to home begin to mount past the point of comfortability. The fall of Italian Sandakan at the cost of both the White Rajah and his heir further adds a touch of Shakespearean tragedy to it all, which would compel public discourse to let the kingdom have all of Sabah as recompense. There might even be a few men or women whom will get interested in journeying there to see what the ‘Land of the Headhunters’ has to offer.
Now, the British government could still annex the former colony and make it their own regardless, but there’ll be far less acquiescence from the public or the press if they’re going through it ITTL.
Abu Bakar and his ministers are watching the regional and global battlefronts, but the Great War is going to be Johor’s greatest challenge yet, and one that they all may be underestimating. To a part, the palace does understand that the conflict could incite local passions amongst the Muslim Malays and Indians against other races and the European community (especially the French, Italians and Russians, whom are all kicked out of British Malaya and Singapore), which is why they are still neutral while neighbouring Aceh is fully involved. Not everyone is on board with this though, and there is a faction in the royal court - mostly fans of the Turks - that wants Johor to enter the war full-scale as an Ottoman ally.
As of 1906, the racial pot seems to have boiled over, but no one yet knows how bad it’ll be. More subtly, the unsafe shipping routes has also raised the price of imported goods. Abu Bakar and Jaafar are taking advantage of this to kick-start industrialization, but this also means that the average Johorean’s shopping expenses will also climb higher and higher. A rise in vegetable prices is one thing, but if the price of Javanese rice doubles, then Johor is in for a much bigger discontent than industrial growth.
I’m going to have this explained in time, and I haven’t fully set her backstory solid just yet. But in a nutshell, Lily Brooke had a rather colourful courtship period as a princess royal of Sarawak. Both IOTL and ITTL, daughters of the Brooke family (all of whom from side branches) are married with parental arrangement into families of the British upper middle class and/or the aristocracy, but Lily herself married the son of a London merchant family with business holdings across Malaya and Singapore. It wasn’t perfect, but the couple were happy until the husband died in a shipping accident approximately a year before the Great War began.
As a princess royal, Lily was welcomed back to Sarawak, but despite all the help that is offered to her, she’s still a single mother trying to raise two children at the end of the day.
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Sarawak observes Salic Law by necessity due to heavily patriarchal society in South East Asia. The only matriarchal society is Minangkabaus, to the extend Negri Sembilan, even then it only covers nuclear family.
And in some cases, a Minang family that embraces Islamic orthodoxy can abrogate the Adat Perpatih and bequeath their inheritance to the sons instead of daughters.
In many ways, Lily Brooke’s marriage and even existence is an uncharted territory for the White Rajahs. IOTL, Charles Brooke and Ranee Margaret had only sons, making the issue of marrying off a daughter a non-existent one. The most they ever thought of advantageous marriages was through their sons’ arrangement parties and their personal choices, which partially set the stage for Sarawak’s malaise in the mid-20th century.
This time, with Charles and his chosen heir gone, and with his younger unmarried brother now on the throne, Lily’s son Walter is now the presumptive heir to Sarawak by virtue of lineage. As such, there is pressure for Rajah Clayton and Lily Brooke to marry (or re-marry) to continue having more heirs and ensure a stable succession. Given the family’s greater fame in Britain, Europe, and America ITTL, and with the Great War embellishing their credentials, there’ll be no shortage of men and women – sane or otherwise – wanting to snag a chance at being a consort.
But with that, there’s also the very open danger of whatever suitor they court having the power to influence Sarawakian governance. Margaret’s support of local hut schools is a positive example of a spouse exerting power, but this can also be turned around. The Astana court and Ranee Margaret will likely vet every candidate to see if they are a good match, or a threat.
Lastly, from what we’ve seen, Lily isn’t the sort of woman who will simply accept whatever offers are at hand. Given her character, position, and possible role as future Queen-Mother, a suitor for Lily Brooke must be:
- From a good, upstanding family.
- Proficient in English and Malay.
- Free from political, commercial, or familial baggage and/or conflicts of interest. At least overtly.
- Able to commute between their home nation and Sarawak.
- Not interfere with the policies of Sarawak. At least overtly.
- Be alright with exploring and hiking through Sarawak’s jungles and mountains (Ranee Margaret slept in forts and forest cabins IOTL).
- Be alright with participating in local rituals, including eating strange foods.
As you can see, the middle and last clauses are going to halt many a wannabe Rajah or Ranee consort.
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Well, it depends on what you consider to be a "proper" consort. By this point, both British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies have established substantial communities of Europeans and Eurasians whom know the local cultures well, or at least enough to satisfy most of the Astana's consort criteria. Go bit further afield and there's the communities of Australia and British India to pick at, which would at least be a familiar ground to the Brooke dynasty; James Brooke was born and raised in today's Varanasi, both IOTL and ITTL.
However, this doesn't mean that there won't be some far-out proposals by some ludicrous European or American suitor, royal or otherwise. Charles Vyner Brooke received fan-mail from American girls IOTL even after marriage, so the Astana could receive a mountain of postcards and letters from men and women wanting to become "Consort of Sarawak".
And it seems I have left this place dormant for the month, so let me say as recompense for being inactive that the next update shall be in January, and may you all have a Happy New Year!
About Strange States(, Weird Wars) and Bizarre Borders :
The first post about it seems to be from a book, but the later ones seem to be from a blog. Which one is it?
The first post about it seems to be from a book, but the later ones seem to be from a blog. Which one is it?
July-December 1905: Southeast Asia in the Great War (Part 1)
Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders, (weirdworld.postr.com, 2014)
For a while, the brutal slugfest between Sarawak and Italian Borneo transfixed Southeast Asia. Then, everyone realized that Great War belligerency isn’t simply confined to Borneo.
Well, almost everyone. Talk to an Acehnese of Sarawak’s attack on Brunei, and they’ll quickly reply that their navy was the first to engage in the War by combating the nearby Russians. Since the mid-1890’s, the Sultanate of Aceh and the Russian naval station of Phuket warily eyed each other across the Malacca Strait, with the Russians distrusting their Sumatran neighbour for being buddy-buddy with the Ottomans. Conversely, Russophobia and Ottomanophilia was the main reason why many Acehnese viewed the Russians as mud (more on that later) with the whole Russo-Turkish War of ’77 colouring Acehnese optics.
So when the world collapsed into conflict that July, it seemed natural for them to fire shell-shot on Russian-flagged boats passing through their waters.
What Aceh didn’t expect was the response. The Russian retaliation quickly saw the cruiser Zhemchug swiftly attacking the port town of Meulaboh, which had ballooned into a coal hub for the sultanate’s west coast and thus protected by Ottoman gunboats. But due to misplaced orders and the novelty of such an attack, the resulting bombardment pretty much devolved into a battle that saw Meulaboh’s docks in flames and two of the Porte’s ships damaged, at the cost of the Zhemchug bearing heavy damage of its own.
In fact, the cruiser barely managed to limp away before being eventually captured by the Royal Indian Navy. The British, Ottoman, and Acehnese fleets all tried to follow up on the attack, yet the following naval battles of Kutaraja, Lhokseumawe, and Langkawi showed that conquering ‘Fortress Phuket’ was going to be an uphill endeavour.
And given that Aceh was a regional expert in guerrilla warfare, it wasn’t long till the royal court proposed sending armed guerrillas to break the island from within.
The idea was… odd. There was a cartoon I saw somewhere on the Web showing puffed-up bureaucrats in British Penang and Singapore giving each other side-eyes at the whole proposal. But the Ottoman captains at Kutaraja were receptive, and so were a number Acehnese youngsters who have heard stories of their mothers and fathers fighting the Dutch and wanted to repeat that. And so, under the cover of dusk in mid-July, the first guerrilla forces were silently transported to Russian Phuket aboard commandeered fishing vessels. [1]
To be honest, I’m actually impressed at how the men managed to weave through the patrol boats and haul mobile artillery into the central mountains. As they expected, the Russian sailors were no forest fighters, and a fair number of them succumbed to disease whilst climbing the Kathu hills before they could even engage the Acehnese (almost all the good medicine went to the gunships, incredibly). Still, it took a while before they were whittled down – Ottoman-bought mobile artillery was a tad shoddy when compared to Russian firepower – and it took a few more naval battles before the admirals at Phuket town felt the pressure. But by early August, the island was surrounded and the Acehnese were on the march.
Now, the fall of Phuket town on August 11th has been gabbed about by a lot of folks, so I won’t nauseate you readers by repeating them here. What I will say is that a few captains and admirals actually managed to escape the siege and hightailed north into the Siamese mainland, where they quickly journeyed to Bangkok to seek the protection of King Chulalongkorn.
I wonder what his Royal Majesty’s face was like when hearing the news and seeing the group of Russian-speaking men huddled before the royal palace…
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Nengka-Ampdau Vagi, Commerce and Conflict; the Great War at Papua, (Westerlands, 1999)
…The politicians at Melbourne anticipated a short campaign when they sent 7 battleships and 5,000 men to conquer Italian Papua. They did not expect half the fleet to be sunk by the Regia Marina at the battle of Sorong in early August.
For over 2 decades, the northwest portion of the island has long been an open sore to Queensland, whom shared its fear of foreign invasion with the rest of Australia upon the commonwealth’s birth. While the idea is now viewed as an overblown prediction today, it was treated so seriously then that the government literally jumped to its feet when Great Britain declared war on the Kingdom of Italy. For a new dominion with geo-territorial jitters, it was the perfect justification to wipe off the biggest thorn on their side.
What they failed to recognize was that Italian Papua was the exact opposite of Italian Sabah. Perhaps alone amongst the island’s colonies, the administration of Cavour actively sought to build bridges between themselves, the settlers, and the indigenous tribes. Many people, even today, have forgotten how the failure of the Marquis De Rays’s colony of New France was only a step from complete collapse due to the struggling Venetian settlers exchanging labour for food with the local natives. [2] Because of this, both the colonists and the local government realized that antagonizing ably-suited locals was not in their best interest.
And as a result, the highland Manikom and Hatam tribes were guaranteed lands, resources, and a place at the governing table so long as they accepted foreign rule. The arrangement was not without obstacles – not everyone accepted the idea of sharing land, religion was a perennial issue, and the legal battles between the subgroups and settlers were judicially legendary – but a peaceful-ish Papua was firmly established by 1905, with inter-group commerce becoming an effective glue to bind all the affected stakeholders, which also had the welcome side-effects of spreading missionary Catholicism and improving colonial expenses…
…When the Great War knocked on Papua, it was met with initial shock, followed by fierce resistance. Despite their issues, the settlers and natives have tolerated each other as neighbours and viewed Australian aggression as a threat to hard-earned peace. Highland towns began preparing separate militias while the Regia Marina fortified Emmanuel Bay into an impenetrable fortress. Across the coastal waters of the Bird’s Head Peninsula, groups of swift destroyers lie in wait to ambush the arriving enemies. When the first squadron of the Australian Federated Naval Forces [3] –made up of ships amalgamated together from all the Australian territories – attempted a takeover of the coaling station of Sorong, they were unprepared for the surprise attack.
The disastrous battle significantly altered how both sides saw each other. Although victorious, the high casualties on the Italian side convinced them of the impracticality of an offensive campaign; Cavour would fight on the defensive. For Australia, the sudden defeat soared the government’s invasion paranoia to new heights and saw a flood of men to local recruitment centres. Italian Papua was no longer seen as a belligerent colony. It was now an existential threat, to be completely eliminated.
But with the South China, Pacific, and Indian Ocean fronts to simultaneously deal with, the federation’s short-term goals were a tad unsystematic. A naval reorganization of the ADNF was swiftly undertaken and the shipyards of Cockatoo Island were swamped with a flood of new orders, yet there was no hiding the fact that Australia’s fleet of 14 gunships, including torpedo screws and submarines, was crippled by the Sorong debacle and by split commitments. When the second Papuan expedition left Australian waters in late August, it was a subdued and guarded one, with fewer high-gun battleships than what the admirals wanted. [4]
And so began the slow-burning, sluggish, and cautious Papuan naval campaign. The precarious makeup of the advancing fleet meant that open engagement was to be avoided when preferable. Instead of the sweeping campaign of the South China Sea, the Australians had to flush out any Italian ambush in a piecemeal manner. It wouldn’t be till mid-October that the Indian and Singaporean naval commands considered the Sarawak-South China Sea offensive a sure success and steam to Melbourne’s aid, with only the island group of Misool being the only Italian territory the ADNF managed to occupy.
The combined Royal Navy fleets did gave the Australians the firepower they needed, though, and the months of October and November saw naval forces taking the entire Raja Ampat archipelago, though not without a few biting defeats to the Regia Marina. By December 1, Sorong fell, and only the stronghold of Emmanuel Bay resisted the advance.
But unknown to the British and Australians, the administration of Cavour did not intend to go the way of Sandakan. The last several months saw the colonial government moving itself to the highland settler town of Nuovo Umbria, with engineers planting explosives onto the road and mountain railway connecting the coast to the Anggi lakes. The Australians and their British superiors may crack Emmanuel Bay, and they may even seize the coastal capital, but they will not obtain the surrender they so crave…
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Ulani Keopraseuth, The Years of Foreign Lead: Indochina (Anh Duc; 2018)
…By all accounts, the fall of French Cochinchina was dramatic, yet short. Comprising of the Mekong river delta and its environs, the colony was an important economic and political centre for the colonial French, granting them command of the great watercourse and the kingdoms surrounding her waters. As such, a valiant effort was made by the French and Italian navies to protect the river mouth and defend Saigon. But despite all efforts, no one expected the inmates of the city’s central prison to riot on the very day the British attacked. The Maison Centrale de Saigon was notoriously known by locals as an unsanitary hellpit [5], and the prison breakout of September 11th 1905 split the city’s defences at the worst possible time.
With battalions from British India pouring in and angry prisoners overpowering their incarcerators and escaping into the city centre to cause havoc, the local tirailleurs and Troupes de Marine found themselves fighting a war on two fronts. Unsurprising then that the city fell to the British by nightfall.
Cambodia was even more of a surprising affair. The protectorate, along with cobbled-together Laos, was among the more neglected/underdeveloped of the Indochina bloc and was completely unprepared for a regional tussle. Despite a valiant effort by the French and royal forces, Phnom Penh was seized later that month not by the British, but by a local mob whom kicked out the French Resident-General and sent the Cambodian puppet-king Sisowath fleeing to Siam, allowing his anti-French brother Yukanthor to take control of the streets.
Sceptical of western colonialism, Yukanthor nonetheless knew that he was militarily disadvantaged and quickly parlayed peace. He would accept British protection and allow foreign forces to travel through to Laos, but Cambodia would remain internally sovereign and reassert control over its own finances and armed forces. It was an uncomfortable bargain, but it would nip a potential antagonist for the short-term, and thus, the British agreed. Another piece of Indochina settled and scored.
It would be the last easy victory for the advancing British.
Prince Yukanthor of Cambodia (left) and Emperor Thành Thái of Annam (right).
In Annam, the Great War landed the imperial Nguyen family into abject turmoil. Being a French protectorate, many royal members were pressured by their colonial superiors to publicly oppose the British, though a fair number supported the invasion in private as a pretext for reclaiming their old powers and independence. Chief among these was the reigning emperor Thành Thái himself, who, despite his eccentric behaviour, was able to spirit himself out of the capital in secret to lead a peasant uprising. The astonished French quickly enthroned his nephew Khải Định to present a unified face, yet this failed to suppress the bushfire revolts that swept across Annam, swelled on by reports of the royal escape and the fall of neighbouring Cambodia and Cochinchina.
With the protectorate so divided, it was a surprise then that the French navy and the Regia Marina managed to hold their ground for a while. Being on the defensive, the combined naval fleet was able to utilize their Jeune Ecole strategy to hold back the British tide, allowing colonial tirailleur regiments to hold defensive positions on all major ports and roads. The amphibious landing at Da Nang and the capture of Huế were bitter struggles that sat saw hundreds and then thousands dead on both sides, but the worst news came on December 11th when the eccentric emperor Thành Thái rejected British peace overtures and sent out a proclamation from his mountainous base, proclaiming how every Annamese should fight for the total and complete independence of their homeland.
In a similar vein, Tonkin exploded to chaos as her fellow neighbours collapsed. Military revolts and local uprisings paralysed French forces in the countryside while the long-running Yên Thế insurrection caught a second wind, with new flocks of volunteers swelling the resistance group and its capacity for guerrilla warfare. The final collapse of the Franco-Italian navy near Hạ Long Bay on November 24th and the subsequent surrender of Hanoi saw little change, as many rebel groups sought to oppose their new occupiers till the very end. Intriguingly, Hanoi was also the scene of the famous Cường Để assembly of intellectuals whom chaotically left the city just before it fell. Headed by titular Nguyen prince Cường Để, the delegation of educated Annamese and Tonkinese men headed for China and Japan where they hoped to continue the fight for independence abroad…
But the biggest, most unexpected surprise of all was Laos. Cobbled together from three separate kingdoms and containing over 140 ethnic groups, the colonial territory was truly the most backward of all French Indochina, underdeveloped on a scale that made Cambodia’s Phnom Penh looked like Paris. The seizure of the royal capital of Luang Prabang was relatively bloodless; the pro-French king Sisavang Vong was deposed so easily that one British sergeant noted how, “…it was if he cared little for the royal stool in the first place.” A week later, the besieged French administrative center of Vientiane similarly fell with a whimper.
But the swift disposition belied an undercurrent of unease. For the past decade, the mountainous regions of the Mekong were awash with millenarian movements, with prophets and holy men espousing how a new enlightened age will sweep over the world while sweeping away the sinful. [6] Moreover, the regional French presence saw many socio-economic developments that affronted both the peasantry and petty aristocracy such as the abolishment of slavery, the introduction of the head tax, and corvée labor. Finally, the Hmong, Lu, and other hill peoples of the north saw the foreign changes and conflagration of war as a sign that their time had finally arrived. As innovative and fierce as the headhunters of Sundaland, they thought a new homeland for themselves could be finally within reach, altogether striking a new chapter in Laotian history:
The War of the Insane.
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Notes:
1. See post #1219.
2. See post #723.
3. The TTL name for the Commonwealth Naval Forces, the precursor to today’s Royal Australian Navy.
4. I based this from an OTL naval list of Australia from around the same year. For such a large dominion with invasion paranoia, Australia did not have much of a proper navy during her early years, especially in the very early 1900’s. What battleships and gunboats that made up the combined navy were taken from the individual colonies/territories, leading to a somewhat lopsided naval force in terms of reach and firepower. TTL Australia has tried to obtain more ships due to her Papuan paranoia, but it was still outclassed by the TL’s Regia Marina when the war broke.
5. From OTL accounts, Saigon’s central jail had prison riots occurring throughout the early 20th century, with the larger ones taking place in 1905 and 1914. Given the deplorable conditions within there (overcrowding and sanitation) and the excessive justice meted to inmates, it was easy to see why.
6. This was based in OTL. The region of eastern Thailand, Laos, and northern Cambodia were awash with syncretic millennialism in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s that mutated into sporadic revolts and insurrections, such as the Holy Man’s Rebellion.
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Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
I'm sure that this will be a brief and civilized conflict, with full obedience to the traditional rules of war from all sides.
EDIT: Holy bleep, I just looked it up and the War of the Insane is a real thing.
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This seems promising.
Mind you, I am not a little concerned with what is being promised....
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It seems this TL is preped to feature more independed southeast asian monarchies, barring whatever may come out of Laos. Can't say I'm not excited. I love reading about how countries interact with each other. Im kinda hoping that if we do see independent Kingdoms post-war that Thailand and Sarawak will see each other allies seeing as they didnt mind giving gifts to each other OTL, if that is indeed the direction you want to go with of course.
The author (which I hope could be introduced in-story later on) is very versatile in writing both in print and online. Also, this author has a brainfart in what goes where.
There will be a peace treaty in a week and everyone will be dancing together for the next fifty years! It'll be swell!
With so many ethnic groups, boiled-over neighbors, and an upswing in religious fervor wafting across the land, there's no question that Laos will be affected in some form or another. About half a year ago, I was pretty surprised to learn of such a thing as the War of the Insane until Rare Earth made a video about it. While some of the war's causes are no longer present or have a reduced impact ITTL - the French boot only lasted about a decade, for one - the basic tensions between the hill peoples and the settled Lao are still present. The Great War will also add new pressures on the protectorate; the rebel groups from Annam and Tonkin will seeing the high mountains as a very good place to hide, and the Hmong won't be exactly happy at being dragged into any sort of forced fighting or labor. Add to this the local knowledge of building modern weaponry directly from the forest (Sarawak's Dayaks would be so proud) and you've got a powder keg on your hands. Only this time, it'll blow up on the British.
The jury is still out on whether these monarchies could last, though. But with that said, the history of Southeast Asian kingdoms and empires is a fascinating rabbit hole that should be explored and given a place on alternate timelines. Cambodia and Annam are some of the more neglected kingdoms in colonial history, but even they are influenced in part by both the politics inside them and the world around them, and that should be acknowledged.
As for relationships between states, I admit I have been a bit neglectful on that front.
Sarawak and Siam are perhaps two states that are both similar in some respects, what with their desire for not being subsumed into a colonial world and possessing monarchs and their control of the armed/naval forces. Both states have sent gifts and pleasantries over the late 19th century, but differing commitments and points of interests ITTL have left their diplomatic relationships a tad distant from each other. As for whether this will change... there is still a Great War to muddle through first.How are Italian and French Africa doing?
Also, the French Caribbean?
And New Caledonia and French Polynesia?
Also, the French Caribbean?
And New Caledonia and French Polynesia?
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Is it supposed to be a pun that the Italian settlers in Papua are in Ar Fak?
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