Chapter 12
Of course, while we focused on America and Drakia things were going on around the world.
In the 1860s a civil war in China saw the rise of a religious sect called the “Tiandao” or “Way of Heaven”, an offshoot of the
Xiantindao religious movement that syncretized some elements of Christianity with its belief in a universal Dao that worshipped the unborn ancient mother goddess Wusheng Laomu. The Tiandao followers were ultimately victorious, overthrowing the Qing Dynasty in favor of a new “Tian” Dynasty whose rulers claimed merely to be the stewards of Wusheng Laomu, conveying her wishes via
automatic writing. The new dynasty was unapologetically Han-supremacist, discriminating against other ethnic groups in China- in particular the Mongols and the Manchu. Manchus saw their land and wealth seized and were forced to denigrate themselves through public humiliations. Russia- which had finished off the khanates of Central Asia- took advantage of the civil war to seize outlying parts of China, including Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Manchuria itself (the usual suspects) and install a puppet monarch in Korea.
Increasing Russian industrialization gave the empire the military capabilities to do this, but at a cost of growing social disruption as the Czars sought to acquire the power of a modern industrial economy without the accompanying modern socio-political change.
When it came to European imperialism, Russia and Britain were two of the only games in town. France successfully grabbed some islands in the Pacific and launched unsuccessful attempts at intervention within Indochina. Spain conquered Morocco and found itself tied down trying to deal with the restive and deeply unhappy African country. The Italians purchased Albania from the failing Ottomans. Germany ran Syria as a neo-crusader state- technically its own kingdom within the German Confederation it was ruled by a class of colonial nobility with a Christian-only military whose officers referred to themselves as knights.
Tiandao rebels during the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty.
Outside of Morocco Britain, Drakia, and various ephemeral British dominions were able to keep other parties out of Africa. But in Asia and the Pacific they were not just challenged by Russia, but by the United States.
America never went isolationist ITTL after all, and New York’s influence started colliding with London’s in the Asia-Pacific region as early as the 1840s when the two powers
clashed over Hawaii. A different American opened up Japan than Commodore Perry, and a different Shogun bowed to his demands, but otherwise the opening up of Japan ran similarly to OTL. Britain intervened in TTL’s version of the
Boshin War in favor of the Shogunate, prompting American intervention in favor of the Imperial Restorationists, leading the conflict to take on characteristics of a proxy war. The victory of the Emperor (someone who knows how Japanese imperial names work can help me come up with a name for him) saw Japan continue to modernize with help from an America that considered a strong ally in Asia to be useful against Britain. (OTL there was a wave of Americophilia in Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries- ITTL it will be even stronger and more pronounced.) An American adventurer
secured control over Sabah in Borneo, and the United States annexed Hawaii in the 1870s after a pro-British Hawaiian monarch tried to align his kingdom with the British Empire and an alliance of American planters overthrew him (for what it’s worth he’d aligned himself with Britain to prevent exactly such an American overthrow in the first place).
With Spain diplomatically isolated following its attempt to play both sides during the Last Crusade there was no one to protect it in 1884 when an incident on the Haiti-Santo Domingo border led to the Spanish-American War. Peace in 1886 saw Cuba and Santo Domingo added to the Union as states (Cuba woulda been IOTL if the South hadn’t nixed it for reasons of racism)- voluntarily on the part of Cuba, an insurgency would simmer in Santo Domingo for decades to come- the Philippines becoming an American Protectorate that ceded territory for American military bases, and Puerto Rico remaining Spanish. The Red government that had controlled Spain under different leaders since the Canadian was toppled, and an absolutist revolution ended with King Ferdinand IX realigning Spain with Britain (to the disapproval of the majority of Spaniards).
The American and Spanish fleets face off in the Caribbean.
But the point of this chapter was
not to spend all of our time focusing on America and Drakia.
Stuff happened in South America as well.
Colombia (it was never officially named Gran Colombia in either OTL or TTL) fought a civil war won by the Liberals, La Plata fought its own civil war won by the Federalists. The Banda Oriental (Uruguay) province passed back and forth between La Plata and Brazil in a couple of wars but ended up staying with La Plata. When the liberal Emperor Pedro II (genetically the half-brother of
this guy) began passing democratic reforms and initiated the process to ban slavery in Brazil, rich landowners and elements within the Brazilian military came together in an attempt to overthrow the monarchy and replace it with a Republic. They successfully killed the emperor, but his son Pedro III vengefully crushed the revolt and followed it with a purge of suspected Republican sympathizers. This sparked an exodus of Brazilian aristocrats and conservatives (who ironically
weren’t monarchists), about 25,000 of whom settled in Drakia, where they joined the pre-existing Lusophone community.
Peru (which includes OTL Bolivia ITTL) had an interesting time of it, including a revolution in the 1840s by Native Quecha who proclaimed a restored Incan Empire, followed by a period of military rule, followed by an attempt create a republic along
utopian socialist lines. By the late 19th century however, the country had settled down under a fairly normal (by OTL standards) republican oligarchy.
La Plata began focusing heavily on the conquest and settlement of Patagonia, opening the land there to an eclectic variety of European immigrant groups, not unlike OTL Argentina. As America began to expand its influence over what remained of Latin America- acquiring Panama from Colombia after a war in 1886- the Platineans remained friendly with New York, regarding the United States as a fellow federal democracy.
A Platinean homestead in Patagonia.
But let’s talk about ideologies for a bit.
With an earlier, more extensive, and more intense industrial revolution the factors that drove the OTL rise of social reform and Socialism emerged in spades. The Red Movement split into a conservative wing affiliated with the Reds who had gained power back when the French Sister Republics were taken down, and a Christian Democratic wing called the Christian Populists. Radical forms of Socialism akin to OTL Communism emerged in the absence of substantive change, but unlike OTL there was another radical and ultimately revolutionary ideology that was born alongside it. That ideology was
Geoism- albeit rather more than just the simple economic school that you’ll find if you click on the link. Geoism doubled down on the connection between the common people and the land, on a romanticized image of “down to earth country folk”, and the truth that the value of land rises because of the efforts of the community, generating landowners more money without them providing any investment or contribution. It called for a tax on economic rent (google it) in lieu of other taxes that can depress economic activity or be passed on to consumers, and it wanted common ownership of natural resources by the people. Geoism demanded a form of basic universal income funded by the profits off of natural resources, and it wanted land reform, but it didn’t propose to abolish capitalism or- initially- to radically restructure society. Unlike Socialism it was pro-organized religion (within reason) and socially conservative in a number of ways. Peasants, farmers, the rural poor were attracted to Geoism in the face of a transforming global economy that was leaving them behind and edging them into a financially precarious existence. This meant that it struggled to gain adherents in urbanized countries like France and Britain where the Socialists had the support of factory workers, but in more rural countries like Russia- where it evolved from TTL’s version of the
Narodniks- Geoism could emerge as a real force. In the United States Geoism took the form of the Nationalist Party, a rural party of French-style positivism and Geoist economics (Christian Populists would eventually join the Nationalist coalition, giving it an urban wing) that called for state ownership of railroads, free coinage of silver, a single tax on economic rent, and an end to the crop lien system. The National Party rapidly became the primary opposition to the Whigs and remained moderate as it proved able to achieve some of its goals through legislation. In other countries though- such as Russia and Spain- Geoism was suppressed by governments that regarded it as dangerous, driving it underground where it festered and radicalized.
Nationalism got big as it did OTL, with people across the world identifying with their country and wanting to see it grow in power- or simply exist. The Polish nationalists sought independence from Prussia and Russia, the Finns from Sweden. German pan-nationalists successfully brought Hannover into the German Confederation after a British-allowed plebiscite that firmly reoriented Germany from the Russian bloc into the British one, and unsuccessfully agitated for unity in Bavaria, Austria, and the French Rhineland. Italian nationalists pulled off a coup in the
Republic of Ragusa with the help of Italian-speaking elites there and saw it annexed to the Italian Federation (to the annoyance of Ragusa’s Slavic majority). They also called for a similar annexation in actually Italian-majority Sardinia to no avail. Zionism emerged as a Jewish response to racial nationalism that refused to admit that Jews could ever be loyal citizens of their different home countries, and a version of the
Jewish Colonial Association settled Jewish agricultural colonies in parts of America, Argentina, and the Holy Land. The
Scandinavianists were far more successful than OTL, securing official support from the governments of Denmark and Sweden (each of which had ambitions to unify Scandinavia under itself). The
Schleswig War of 1880, in which Denmark and Sweden fought together against the German Confederation and won, with Danish and Swedish airships dropping white phosphorus bombs on Berlin, brought the countries closer together and ultimately a dynastic marriage between the House of Glucksburg and the House of Bernadotte led to the United Kingdoms of Scandinavia in 1888.
A Scandinavian airship during the firebombing of Berlin.
On a side note; those Danish airships that bombed Berlin were opposed by early heavier-than-air flying craft carrying light machine guns. These were not OTL airplanes though, invented in Austria in the 1870s they were
four-winged ornithopters (the forward wings were fixed, the aft wings flapped, it’s no less practical than a propeller design really). Initially known as “libellen” they were later dubbed “drachenflieger” after some cross contamination between English and German and pilots deciding “dragon flier” was more badass name than some kind of bug (this is my etymological hill and I will die on it). While their use in the Schleswig War and several other late 19th century conflicts demonstrated that drachenflieger were a cheaper but effective substitute for airships when it came to military reconnaissance, the total inability of German drachenflieger to notably damage let alone shot down a single one of the Scandinavian airships during the Schleswig War left most countries convinced that drachenflieger were not an effective weapon against airships. This opinion was reinforced when Russian experiments in the 1890s aimed at developing an
incendiary bullet capable of igniting the hydrogen gas in airships (instead of poking a small hole and passing right through like an ordinary round), concluded that the use of incendiary bullets against airships wasn’t practical either. The bullets failed to ignite in the absence of oxygen once they entered the airship’s hydrogen cells, and so Russia (and everyone else) reasoned that nothing short of a large artillery shell could effectively take down a modern military airship. Military aviation thus focused its attention on developing heavy anti-aircraft weapons to take down airships, ignoring drachenflielger which were good for reconnaissance and shooting down each other, but nothing else.
Someone is in for a rude awakening sooner or later.
The annoying thing is that they only ever built like two of these OTL, so there's only like two decent pictures of them.
Anyway, back to ideologies. American Fascism influenced some schools of thought abroad, but America’s unique situation meant that most countries had little use for a multiracial, monocultural society, and those who could have (like Drakia or the other minority-white British dominions) were fundamentally hostile towards it. Fascism did influence France towards greater acceptance of its Afro-Caribbean and Polynesian citizens though, and it played a role in Scandinavia’s project to create a pan-Scandinavian culture (while suppressing the cultures of the Sami, Finns, and Inuit). The ideology had more success in Latin American countries like Brazil, where the government promoted it as an alternative to the old race-based colonial ethnic divisions. It was the Japanese however who embraced Fascism whole-heartedly, de-emphasizing the importance of the
Yamato Race compared its national identity OTL, and incorporating the Ainu and the Ryukyuan peoples into Japanese society wholesale- provided they assimilated of course.
At the same time another ideology was spreading across the globe, sinking down roots and influencing almost every country that engaged with it.
A certificate issued by a Eugenicist in Drakia issued to young persons for the purpose of whatever passed for dating there.
Eugenics.
Modern Eugenics- in the Separate-verse as in OTL- arose in part from a growing awareness of genetics, evolutionary theory, and the nature of artificial selection. Eugenicists argued that through selective breeding of human beings it was possible to reduce or eliminate the prevalence of inherited genetic diseases, low intelligence, criminal behavior, immoral behavior (including dishonesty, selfishness, and cruelty), mental illness, and a great many things, many of which were not actually controlled by genetics. They wanted to breed out these things partly by encouraging “superior” persons to have more children, but also partly by preventing “inferior” persons from reproducing through a variety of methods, some more unethical than others. Eugenics was popular because it reinforced existing social and economic hierarchies- it argued that elites were privileged thanks to superior genetics and that the disadvantaged were disadvantaged due to their inferior biology. It did not directly attack individuals such as Evan Pharrish who received their disabilities later in life through circumstances outside of their control, but by arguing that a person born blind or unable to walk “could only ever be a burden on society” the ideology implied a corollary that people who received disabilities later in life became burdens. Eugenics also fathered a subsidiary ideology- Scientific Racism. After all, if superior genetics explained why some people ended up in the ruling class and others in the masses, then surely superior genetics explained why certain races ended up ruling over other races? Eugenics offered a “rational” and “scientific” justification for the rule of white Europeans over black Africans and “yellow” Asians, suggesting that non-whites could
never become the equals of whites, no matter what religion they espoused or what culture they practiced. Their inferiority, it argued, was a biological issue outside of any one individual’s control. In such it was directly opposed to TTL’s Fascism.
Discussion of Eugenic principles began in the 1870s, implementation of its policies first began twenty years later. An earlier start made sure that the movement was more global and longer-lasting than it was in OTL.
A pro-Eugenics display in America.
Eugenics had a fair bit of popularity among the upper and middle classes in Europe and the Americas for whom it reassured their superiority. Eugenic programs in those places offered compensation for “inferior” individuals who voluntarily subjected themselves to sterilization, and even forcibly sterilized inferior persons who were imprisoned for crimes or hospitalized for mental illnesses. Occasionally euthanasia of inferiors occurred via lethal neglect on the part of doctors and hospitals. But that was extreme- to give credit where credit was due there were relatively harmless and even occasionally positive Eugenic programs in many places. They played a role in opening up greater access to contraceptives, sexual education, and abortion for women that those in power deemed inferior while denying such access to women in the middle and upper classes. The identification- earlier than OTL- that drinking alcohol while pregnant led to a
variety of disorders spurred some quite reasonable public health projects to discourage drinking, smoking, and sex while pregnant in order to reduce the rate of children born disabled. In parts of Europe this was paired with efforts to improve pre- and post-natal nutrition for the same reason. After the French Eugenicist Auguste Charbonnier came up with the pseudo-scientific theory that physical fitness allowed individuals to improve the genes they passed on to their children, it sparked a global craze for fitness and calisthenics. But this was Eugenics as it presented itself in places where it faced staunch opposition from Fascists and Liberals and religious Christians (including the Papacy which condemned forced sterilization and euthanasia categorically), forcing it to moderate.
This was not the case in Drakia and the White minority-ruled dominions of India and the East Indies.
For White colonial minorities Eugenics was incredibly attractive. It legitimized their rule and offered a scientific excuse for the exclusion of Natives from government and their exploitation at the hands of their rulers. Drakia in particular
loved Eugenics, and under the government of Premier Benedict Westermann in 1889 began to adopt Eugenic policies that would reach their maturity in the first decade of the 20th century. Like many they misunderstood the rules of evolution, forgetting that it was the
adaptable that it favored, choosing instead to believe that evolution preferred the strong. And who was stronger than Drakia? Drakia with its unending wars of conquest against the Natives to keep it sharp, wars in which the weak lost and the strong conquered. Drakia with her people drawn from the nobility and aristocracy- and therefore the most genetically, physically, and morally superior stock- of Britain and France, and by extension of Rome and Greece. The Firstborn Dominion glorified ancient Sparta, and of course the Spartans had performed a form of Eugenics themselves. To be sure superiority was a matter of degrees, there were relatively superior Natives who could become Honorary Whites, but they would never be able to achieve equality with true Drakian stock.
An anti-miscegenation Eugenics display in Capetown.
Most of what Eugenics accomplished in other countries it achieved in Drakia- in particular the craze for physical fitness which built on pre-existing Drakian trends- and then it kept going, and going, getting progressively worse and worse into the early years of the 20th century.
In British, France and parts of America there was involuntary sterilization of convicted criminals and the severely mentally ill. Drakia imposed forced sterilization on members of the general population it identified as having inferior genetics- persons classed as “feeble minded”, persons with alcoholism or addiction, persons with diabetes, persons with epilepsy, persons who were physically deformed, persons who were blind, persons who were deaf, persons who suffered from Huntington’s Disease, persons who expressed “anti-social behavior” (which included prostitution, criminal activity, homosexuality, and anti-government activity). Euthanasia targeted “burdens on society” who not only had inferior genetics but were disabled such that they “were not worthy of life” (i.e. could not perform labor). Persons thus categorized included persons with severe intellectual disabilities, persons with Down Syndrome when accompanied by blindness or deafness, persons with microcephaly, persons with hydrocephaly, persons born with deformation of the limbs, head, or spinal column, persons born deaf and blind, and persons with moderate to severe Cerebral Palsy. Such Drakian Eugenic programs were aimed far more heavily at Bondsmen and Nationals than Citizens, and considerably more at Honorary Whites than Whites. Though defended as being for the good of Africans and the only way that the African race could be truly improved and civilized, in practice it was a means of population reduction and social control- if you wanted inferior genetics in yourself or your family to be overlooked then you were obedient and you made yourself useful to your rulers.
The application of the Eugenic policies was far from universal. Despite heavy investment into roads, railroads (including the Cape to Cairo connection), telegraph and telephone lines, and general infrastructure there were still swathes of territory where Drakian control was weak and government policy could be exercised only intermittently. Within the nominally autonomous Drakian Princely States Eugenics were moderately applied, if at all.
From a French Eugenics "medical" text for identifying superior and inferior genetics on the basis of a person's appearance.
Inferiorities tended to be overlooked among White Citizens if they weren’t visible- alcoholism and male homosexuality for instance- as Drakia wanted such people reproducing to keep its numbers up. When it came to “anti-social behavior” among otherwise genetically superior Citizens, they were often left unsterilized regardless- particularly if they were women. The Dragon’s Nest Project was initially conceived of as a way for unmarried pregnant women with superior genetics to give birth out of wedlock discretely and safely in out of the way places, after which their children could be adopted out to suitable Citizen families. It expanded however to incorporate general adoption programming- finding desirable orphans in Europe or America and rehoming them in Drakia- and “treatment” for women who displayed anti-social behavior. For the most part this meant Drakian women from three different sources- women who had engaged in sedition or anti-government behavior, women who had engaged in prostitution, and women who were homosexual. The so-called treatment involved hypnosis, drugs, physical exercise, psychological abuse of various forms, and was not considered successful until the woman in question had been married to a husband and given birth to a child. The women who passed through the program were then released into their husband’s custody- usually a lower ranking soldier who had finished his service in the Drakian Army- and were to be sent back if their previous behavior re-emerged.
Of course, these programs were impossible to keep secret. And it’s worth noting that the worst of it was never submitted to the parliament in London for approval- as Drakia was legally required to do. The Premier simply secured the approval of key members of the Drakian Parliament and then acted in violation of British law.
Woman undergoing "treatment" for "anti-social behavior" at a Dragon's Nest facility.
The mass forced sterilization was public from the start and strongly criticized even in Britain, where attitudes had been liberalizing steadily towards the mistreatment of colonial Natives- let alone Whites. But that was really just a more extreme version of what was happening already in many parts of Europe, and Drakia could get away with it. Not for much longer- not with criticism mounting of the Bonded labor system, Drakian Eugenics, and the Firstborn Dominion’s general cruelty towards the Native Africans. But it wasn’t until word broke of the Euthanasia program, until the testimony of Audrey Ratcliff before the British Parliament, until
Black Lamb’s Blood entered publication in Scandinavia… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Give it a few years.
And a world war.
Separate-verse in 1900. I know the different British dominions are a little hard to tell apart- particularly Nigeria and Drakia- but don't worry. It won't take long.
