Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Do they still keep the royal family?
I mean, France continually loses theirs, so does Austria-Hungary. Be some strange coincidence if even like OTL they somehow still retain their Royal Family....
Has *any* TL with a post-1815 POD on this site, ever, removed the Danish (or Swedish for that matter) monarchy?
A real shortage of Scandinavian (or Japanese or Arabian) republics
The Japanese and Scandinavian monarchies seem to be well respected on this site...
Untouchable, tbh.
The closest I can remember (and even that fails the post-1815 test) was one of the map games in Shared Worlds where Denmark became a republic following the breakdown of a unified (if Swedish-dominated) Scandinavian empire that chose the wrong side in *WW1. Other than that..yeah, I got nothing.
Its common for Scandinavia to "reunify" into a larger Kalmar Union...
France goes Bonapartist then gets defeated again and turns into a Republic.
Germany and Russia seem to go monarchical again at times.
Has Great Britain ever turned into a republic?
Like, EVER?
Indiana Beach Crow
Monthly Donor
Queue up the saddest war ever in 1991 when Norway is accusing Denmark of illegally slant-drilling, and the United States has to go protect a major oil producer.
Keep? Sure, in 2024 Denmark is a monarchy.
Is said monarch a male-line descendant of Christian X? Cant guarantee that.
A POD where 1832 goes sideways in the UK could produce that, I think.
I did a Republican England in Napoleon’s World way back when
This would be objectively hilarious, haha.
Though can you even slant-drill with ocean platforms?
There actually is a rather detailed TL ongoing showing the UK turning into a republic, though it took quite a while to get there:
The Popular Will: Reformism, Radicalism, Republicanism & Unionism in Britain 1815-1960
Lockdown has provided me with an attempt to delve deep into the array of Republican, Radical and Reformist Politics in the United Kingdom between the Napoleonic Wars and the passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832, consequently, I've launched a major rewrite of my previous timeline, From The...
www.alternatehistory.com
So in theory, Denmark will be quite a bit wealthier ITTL.
You've mentioned in the past that Sweden-Norway lasts way longer, possibly to present, but suffers from Dutch Disease/the Resource Curse. So Sweden-Norway still has lots of oil in its territorial waters, just not as much, and Denmark has the biggest and/or most productive oil field? So does Denmark also fall afoul of the curse? Is your earlier assertion that Scandinavia becomes a conservative semi-backwater still true for both nations? Or does that happen to Sweden-Norway while Denmark drifts closer to what Norway is like OTL?
You've mentioned in the past that Sweden-Norway lasts way longer, possibly to present, but suffers from Dutch Disease/the Resource Curse. So Sweden-Norway still has lots of oil in its territorial waters, just not as much, and Denmark has the biggest and/or most productive oil field? So does Denmark also fall afoul of the curse? Is your earlier assertion that Scandinavia becomes a conservative semi-backwater still true for both nations? Or does that happen to Sweden-Norway while Denmark drifts closer to what Norway is like OTL?
Still need to read that
I’d say about even; Denmark has all that sweet sweet oil but lacks today’s vibrant and innovative knowledge economy (where OTL they are in fourth behind Germany, Sweden, and Finland in the EU - suffice to say TTL’s continental European knowledge economy will not have 3/4 in it!).
If you look at a map of the North Sea fields you can see this cluster running from Ekofisk to Valhall and Hod that would fit in Denmark’s sea boundaries had they not moved their border southwards diagonally to benefit “the poor sister.” But that cluster of oil/gas fields east of Shetland would still definitely be Norway’s.
Denmark would probably be just about as Dutch diseased as the OTL Dutch, I’d say. Maybe the phenomenon is even called Danish Disease! So it wouldn’t be Venezuela or anything but it’d definitely not be OTL Norway with its wealth fund and Equinor (what really helped Norway there was its experience developing hydropower in the 1920s-1950s, the real first economic bonanza for the country)
TTL's European knowledge economy ranking will go Azerbajan, Georgia, Armenia and Bosnia.
The Northern Citadel: Manchuria 1912-1957
"...nonetheless caught all observers by surprise, and it was only those on the ground who realized how serious the situation had been; the American governor of Chusan, for instance, cabled Philadelphia of a "feud between generals in the Qing Manchuria," not elaborating further, whereas the report of British envoy to Mukden Sir Alan Freelander described, "A most serious crisis, quite possibly bearing the impetus of the Tsar, where now an hourglass has been turned in Manchuria with the sand running out on the continued rule of General Duan Qirui and his immediate allies."
To what extent Cao Kun had recruited to his cause of overthrowing Duan's cabinet the Russians, the Hongxian Emperor, and Wu Peifu's clique is highly debatable. Wu and Cao were, after all, considered allies in the poisonous and murderous court politics of 1910s Mukden, where by early 1918 the wave of targeted killings of minor bureaucrats and officials to send messages to their patrons in Cabinet had once again reached endemic levels not seen since Duan's convalescence, and the Russians were widely thought to prefer Wu to Duan as it was, and that the long-term plan from St. Petersburg was to have Xu Shuzheng and Wang Yitang assassinated as soon as Duan stepped down or died so that Wu could cleanly step into power. As for the Emperor, it was known that strains had risen between the "prisoner of the palace" and his Prime Minister, in part due to the Palace's lack of confidence in the sustainability of Duan's health, and in part because Duan regarded the Emperor as an easily-flattered simpleton who knew enough to be dangerous.
Nonetheless, the April 18 Incident - as the attempted putsch in Mukden came to be known - failed largely because the "Cao Kun Coup" did not build sufficient support with Manchuria's three power centers independent of Duan, and was thus terribly outmatched. Cao planned to launch his attack by mobilizing forces under his command southeast of Mukden and attacking the city directly in the early morning and seizing its northern railroad station connecting it to Harbin; thereafter, presumably, he assumed that Wu would agree to his proposal to immediately depose Duan and send him into exile in Korea, thereafter killing Xu and Wang and allowing a new troika of Cao, Wu and Zhang Jingyao to form a new cabinet as appointed by the Emperor and blessed with the acquiescence of the Harbin Office. Cao was convinced, incorrectly, that there existed a deep well of antipathy towards Duan in the military ranks in Mukden and that his putsch would be quick, relatively bloodless, and finally end the scattered internecine killings.
None of those things occurred. Wu ignored three telephone calls from the southern barracks in the early hours of April 18 by "oversleeping," [1] suggesting that he may have been aware of what Cao was planning and decided to simply not lift a finger in either direction, thus dooming the other general without deliberately betraying him. The protege of the "Jade Marshal," Sun Chuanfang, mobilized his own troops and surrounded Mukden Palace, claiming that there was a threat against the Emperor and that he was defending the Imperial Family from harm. As this was going on, Duan was roused and immediately had his own loyalist troops mobilized to defend the train station, a battle which he supervised personally against the advice of Xu.
The April 18 Incident was thus a massive debacle for Cao, who upon seeing his men dispersed and realizing that neither Wu nor the Russian Army was coming to his aid - Russian troops in Manchuria, who generally did not enter Mukden's city limits as a courtesy to Duan, were not even placed on alert by the Harbin Office - that the game was up. One of the great heroes of the defense and evacuation of Peking had turned traitor, driven by his own ambitions and those of junior officers who had been excluded by the Wu and Xu cliques from high office; Cao fled south to the Great Wall, where he was apprehended by Republican border patrolmen and secretly returned to Mukden, where he was shot alongside his fellow conspirators and buried in a mass unmarked grave ten kilometers east of the city.
The "hourglass" missive to London was apropos, however. Duan had been directly challenged in a way that courtiers like Wu and Xu would never have dared, and while an immediate external threat to his control was gone, the near-miss nonetheless did much to challenge his authority. Duan already seemed tired and like he could not control the authoritarian regime he had constructed out of the Manchurian military on behalf of the Emperor; to quietly reward Wu, he relieved Wang Yitang of the Finance Ministry he had held for four years and installed Sun, thus empowering Wu enormously at the expense of Xu, who had always been his most loyal fellow traveler and who spent the months after April 18 purging the civil service of any suspected allies of Cao. In that appointment, Duan signed the death warrant of his Premiership and in many ways Xu's literal death warrant.
The April 18 Incident also persuaded a great many Manchurian junior officers that a putsch to remove the "old guard" was not only possible, but perhaps had a high chance of success with better planning and preparation, and that the system of cliques and factional murders was one that would eventually plunge Mukden into chaos and invite a Republican invasion. Crucially, the fiasco also suggested as much to the Harbin Office, which lost an enormous amount of confidence in the Duan-Xu diarchy but also wanted a backup option to Wu Peifu, should they need one.
And as luck would have it, amongst the Manchurian officers attached to Harbin proper, they had just such a name - Chang Tso-lin..." [2]
- The Northern Citadel: Manchuria 1912-1957
[1] That feeling when there's a coup going on and you "oversleep"
[2] This is going to be a very important name by the mid-1920s or thereabouts
To what extent Cao Kun had recruited to his cause of overthrowing Duan's cabinet the Russians, the Hongxian Emperor, and Wu Peifu's clique is highly debatable. Wu and Cao were, after all, considered allies in the poisonous and murderous court politics of 1910s Mukden, where by early 1918 the wave of targeted killings of minor bureaucrats and officials to send messages to their patrons in Cabinet had once again reached endemic levels not seen since Duan's convalescence, and the Russians were widely thought to prefer Wu to Duan as it was, and that the long-term plan from St. Petersburg was to have Xu Shuzheng and Wang Yitang assassinated as soon as Duan stepped down or died so that Wu could cleanly step into power. As for the Emperor, it was known that strains had risen between the "prisoner of the palace" and his Prime Minister, in part due to the Palace's lack of confidence in the sustainability of Duan's health, and in part because Duan regarded the Emperor as an easily-flattered simpleton who knew enough to be dangerous.
Nonetheless, the April 18 Incident - as the attempted putsch in Mukden came to be known - failed largely because the "Cao Kun Coup" did not build sufficient support with Manchuria's three power centers independent of Duan, and was thus terribly outmatched. Cao planned to launch his attack by mobilizing forces under his command southeast of Mukden and attacking the city directly in the early morning and seizing its northern railroad station connecting it to Harbin; thereafter, presumably, he assumed that Wu would agree to his proposal to immediately depose Duan and send him into exile in Korea, thereafter killing Xu and Wang and allowing a new troika of Cao, Wu and Zhang Jingyao to form a new cabinet as appointed by the Emperor and blessed with the acquiescence of the Harbin Office. Cao was convinced, incorrectly, that there existed a deep well of antipathy towards Duan in the military ranks in Mukden and that his putsch would be quick, relatively bloodless, and finally end the scattered internecine killings.
None of those things occurred. Wu ignored three telephone calls from the southern barracks in the early hours of April 18 by "oversleeping," [1] suggesting that he may have been aware of what Cao was planning and decided to simply not lift a finger in either direction, thus dooming the other general without deliberately betraying him. The protege of the "Jade Marshal," Sun Chuanfang, mobilized his own troops and surrounded Mukden Palace, claiming that there was a threat against the Emperor and that he was defending the Imperial Family from harm. As this was going on, Duan was roused and immediately had his own loyalist troops mobilized to defend the train station, a battle which he supervised personally against the advice of Xu.
The April 18 Incident was thus a massive debacle for Cao, who upon seeing his men dispersed and realizing that neither Wu nor the Russian Army was coming to his aid - Russian troops in Manchuria, who generally did not enter Mukden's city limits as a courtesy to Duan, were not even placed on alert by the Harbin Office - that the game was up. One of the great heroes of the defense and evacuation of Peking had turned traitor, driven by his own ambitions and those of junior officers who had been excluded by the Wu and Xu cliques from high office; Cao fled south to the Great Wall, where he was apprehended by Republican border patrolmen and secretly returned to Mukden, where he was shot alongside his fellow conspirators and buried in a mass unmarked grave ten kilometers east of the city.
The "hourglass" missive to London was apropos, however. Duan had been directly challenged in a way that courtiers like Wu and Xu would never have dared, and while an immediate external threat to his control was gone, the near-miss nonetheless did much to challenge his authority. Duan already seemed tired and like he could not control the authoritarian regime he had constructed out of the Manchurian military on behalf of the Emperor; to quietly reward Wu, he relieved Wang Yitang of the Finance Ministry he had held for four years and installed Sun, thus empowering Wu enormously at the expense of Xu, who had always been his most loyal fellow traveler and who spent the months after April 18 purging the civil service of any suspected allies of Cao. In that appointment, Duan signed the death warrant of his Premiership and in many ways Xu's literal death warrant.
The April 18 Incident also persuaded a great many Manchurian junior officers that a putsch to remove the "old guard" was not only possible, but perhaps had a high chance of success with better planning and preparation, and that the system of cliques and factional murders was one that would eventually plunge Mukden into chaos and invite a Republican invasion. Crucially, the fiasco also suggested as much to the Harbin Office, which lost an enormous amount of confidence in the Duan-Xu diarchy but also wanted a backup option to Wu Peifu, should they need one.
And as luck would have it, amongst the Manchurian officers attached to Harbin proper, they had just such a name - Chang Tso-lin..." [2]
- The Northern Citadel: Manchuria 1912-1957
[1] That feeling when there's a coup going on and you "oversleep"
[2] This is going to be a very important name by the mid-1920s or thereabouts
A Russian-backed Zhang Zuolin is certainly an interesting prospect.
And Judging from the book title, the Fengtian will last much longer this time. OTL it was Zhang’s assassination by Japan that trigger his son to surrender to KMT, here the condition didn’t exist, Japan had it gazed southward and will be quite busy Post CEW. And Russia is much more involved in Asian affairs and more than happy to pop up puppet regime in Manchuria, I assumed something happened in 1950s in Russia, maybe a revolution topple the Romanov like OTL Iran, that lead to supplies dried up and Manchuria’s re-absorption in republican China.
Indeed. Not much else you can expect with this gang of degenerates, after all.
Sons, plural, in this case, with some of Chang Hsueh-liang's younger brothers getting in on the gambit over time, too.
A criminally under-used character in alt-hists, imo. With his pragmatism and skills he'd be a huge, huge boon for Russia's position in Manchuria long term.
That's an interesting thought process, certainly!