Some vaguely Draka-related musings

Thande

Donor
I was thinking about the broad themes behind the concept of the Draka universe. OK it's silly and cartoonish so we tend sometimes to brush over them, but several people have tried to come up with more realistic versions (I believe that's basically how Decades of Darkness got started).

Firstly the idea that the Domination is a sort of "anti-America", with similar origins and comparable cultural influences (all the immigrants from all over + settling the natives' land and pushing them out) but which executes them in an inverted way. This is quite an interesting idea, but several people have said the problem is with Stirling trying to have an anti-America and a more-or-less "normal" America in the same TL. Again, Decades of Darkness explores only the "dark United States" part of this concept, unless you regard New England as a rump "good USA".

The idea I had around this was Latin America. After all, when you're talking about racism against black people...the Nazis ruled for barely more than a decade, the Afrikaners only institutionalised apartheid for less than a lifetime...but Spanish America was ruled by the limpieza system for centuries. So you could make an interesting Draka-type variation if you had all of Latin America staying together and keeping the limpieza system, eventually becoming a superpower. A way to do this might be to have a situation where Spain gets crushed in the 17th or early 18th century (by who, the Ottomans?) and its king and leadership flee to the colonies and rule in exile. This avoids the kind of revolutionary thought associated with the colonies' independence that in OTL led to the abolition of the ancien regime's hierarchy (as well as the fact that under limpieza the highest casta was people not only pure of blood but born in Spain, which became impossible after independence).

Secondly, the Domination is essentially "South Africa made more like the USA" - powerful, expansionistic, broader background of immigrants and more of them, etc. What if we invert this and have the USA more like South Africa?

By which I mean: at some point after lots of English and Scottish colonists are in North America, but before there are so many of them that foreign states ruling over them would be impossible - let's say about 1730 - Great Britain badly loses a major war and France is awarded all or most of Britain's North American colonies at the peace settlement. France takes over with lots of troops and enforces its policies as seen in Quebec and Louisiana - Catholic supremacy, high taxes and centralised rule - and a lot of the Anglo-Scots colonists decide that they can't live like that and go on a Boer-style trek into the American interior, fighting the natives on fairly close terms and establishing independent states deep in the Midwest.

Think any of those concepts have AH potential?
 
Secondly, the Domination is essentially "South Africa made more like the USA" - powerful, expansionistic, broader background of immigrants and more of them, etc. What if we invert this and have the USA more like South Africa?

By which I mean: at some point after lots of English and Scottish colonists are in North America, but before there are so many of them that foreign states ruling over them would be impossible - let's say about 1730 - Great Britain badly loses a major war and France is awarded all or most of Britain's North American colonies at the peace settlement. France takes over with lots of troops and enforces its policies as seen in Quebec and Louisiana - Catholic supremacy, high taxes and centralised rule - and a lot of the Anglo-Scots colonists decide that they can't live like that and go on a Boer-style trek into the American interior, fighting the natives on fairly close terms and establishing independent states deep in the Midwest.

Think any of those concepts have AH potential?

That sounds like an interesting timeline. But maybe a little earlier, in the war of Spanish secession with a successful invasion of Britain by France and the reestablishment of the Stuart monarchy.

But what would be interesting is the fighting between the native states and far flung British settlements. Oh that would be really cool but not entirely analgous with OTL Boer states. I'm pretty sure that these states with high birthrates and the relative technological inferiority of the Native Americans, can displace native populations entirely unlike the Boer states.
 
Ugh, I was in the Museum of the Americas a few weeks back and they had a gallery full of painting descriptions various castes in Latin America. How one gets a mulatto vs a metizo vs a coyote etc. Pretty disgusting stuff, given the context
 
This is very interesting and thoughtful, and there many different points of departure that could be fun, though not all necessarily going to the same place.

Just the idea in itself of a different outcome to the--oh, let's make it real good--War of Spanish Succession or Seven Years War (Pitt the Elder gets run over by a coach as a boy or something) leading to a transfer of the 13 colonies to France creates some awesome possibilities, including perhaps most subversively, a happier contemporary America. (In Manhattan we'd have a giant cathedral where Times Square is, Ez-e cheese would not exist, really the possibilities are endless!)

Although that said the idea of an English-speaking Protestant interior hostile to a cosmopolitan French/English coast Thande mentions has its own interesting possibilities. I can see something developing in the Great Lakes region and running to the Appalachians quite easily.
 
Oh my, the the Empire of the West Indies is going bad places...

Very interesting concept Thande, but you cannot cover its real use up with a side concept about "Boers" in America (also intruiging, however). ;)
 

Thande

Donor
Oh my, the the Empire of the West Indies is going bad places...

Very interesting concept Thande, but you cannot cover its real use up with a side concept about "Boers" in America (also intruiging, however). ;)

Stop conspiracising, this had nothing to do with LTTW.
 
Stop conspiracising, this had nothing to do with LTTW.

Oh suuuure. ;)

Anyway, as I said, this is an intruiging topic. I agree that parts of Latin America *could* be turned into a Draka-esque state, but I disagree that blacks would be the only victims of such a system. Natives, mestizos, and maybe even non-Hispanic whites could also find themselves at teh bottom rung of the ladder.
 

Thande

Donor
Anyway, as I said, this is an intruiging topic. I agree that parts of Latin America *could* be turned into a Draka-esque state, but I disagree that blacks would be the only victims of such a system. Natives, mestizos, and maybe even non-Hispanic whites could also find themselves at teh bottom rung of the ladder.

Oh, absolutely; I didn't say it was a perfect analogy. (Though arguably black Africans in the Draka scenario are more analogous to natives in Latin America anyway).
 

Glen

Moderator
I was thinking about the broad themes behind the concept of the Draka universe. OK it's silly and cartoonish so we tend sometimes to brush over them, but several people have tried to come up with more realistic versions (I believe that's basically how Decades of Darkness got started).

Firstly the idea that the Domination is a sort of "anti-America", with similar origins and comparable cultural influences (all the immigrants from all over + settling the natives' land and pushing them out) but which executes them in an inverted way. This is quite an interesting idea, but several people have said the problem is with Stirling trying to have an anti-America and a more-or-less "normal" America in the same TL. Again, Decades of Darkness explores only the "dark United States" part of this concept, unless you regard New England as a rump "good USA".

The idea I had around this was Latin America. After all, when you're talking about racism against black people...the Nazis ruled for barely more than a decade, the Afrikaners only institutionalised apartheid for less than a lifetime...but Spanish America was ruled by the limpieza system for centuries. So you could make an interesting Draka-type variation if you had all of Latin America staying together and keeping the limpieza system, eventually becoming a superpower. A way to do this might be to have a situation where Spain gets crushed in the 17th or early 18th century (by who, the Ottomans?) and its king and leadership flee to the colonies and rule in exile. This avoids the kind of revolutionary thought associated with the colonies' independence that in OTL led to the abolition of the ancien regime's hierarchy (as well as the fact that under limpieza the highest casta was people not only pure of blood but born in Spain, which became impossible after independence).

Secondly, the Domination is essentially "South Africa made more like the USA" - powerful, expansionistic, broader background of immigrants and more of them, etc. What if we invert this and have the USA more like South Africa?

By which I mean: at some point after lots of English and Scottish colonists are in North America, but before there are so many of them that foreign states ruling over them would be impossible - let's say about 1730 - Great Britain badly loses a major war and France is awarded all or most of Britain's North American colonies at the peace settlement. France takes over with lots of troops and enforces its policies as seen in Quebec and Louisiana - Catholic supremacy, high taxes and centralised rule - and a lot of the Anglo-Scots colonists decide that they can't live like that and go on a Boer-style trek into the American interior, fighting the natives on fairly close terms and establishing independent states deep in the Midwest.

Think any of those concepts have AH potential?

It has possibilities. I like the concept of making an "American South Africa" with the American colonists standing in for the Boers, the Native Americans for Native Africans, and the French for the English.

Your South American 'Draka' isn't as parallel in many ways, certainly not as envisioned. Importing the Spanish Monarchy and maintaining the limpieza system are just making a mega-feudalistic and racist society (and they still have interbreeding, thus why they have all those castes, plus they are still all part of the Catholic Church). Furthermore, there is no great push to domination in this story thus far. The Draka mythos is fed not just on subjugation but on conquest.

Remember too that part of the allure and repulsion of the Draka is the twisting of the American Ethos of the rugged individual and the land of opportunity. Draka are all that, but in service to the darker urges of human nature, rather than the higher ideals (which at least America traditionally has claimed).

Now then, having said all that, the limpieza system has some promise as a beginning for a Latin American Draka. But I think you still need revolution in Latin America! But prior to that, set up some sort of nascent Drakaesque society in Southern South America that is even more extreme than the rest. Let them expand on the slave system and become expansionist, picking off the other independent nations. Have them apply such rigid tests of purity to their new populations that only the palest of European immigrants and the top creoles of the new lands can even be considered for Citizenship (and eventually not even them with the passing of centuries). Then maybe we've got the start of something Drakaesque....
 
It has possibilities. I like the concept of making an "American South Africa" with the American colonists standing in for the Boers, the Native Americans for Native Africans, and the French for the English.

Your South American 'Draka' isn't as parallel in many ways, certainly not as envisioned. Importing the Spanish Monarchy and maintaining the limpieza system are just making a mega-feudalistic and racist society (and they still have interbreeding, thus why they have all those castes, plus they are still all part of the Catholic Church). Furthermore, there is no great push to domination in this story thus far. The Draka mythos is fed not just on subjugation but on conquest.

Remember too that part of the allure and repulsion of the Draka is the twisting of the American Ethos of the rugged individual and the land of opportunity. Draka are all that, but in service to the darker urges of human nature, rather than the higher ideals (which at least America traditionally has claimed).

Now then, having said all that, the limpieza system has some promise as a beginning for a Latin American Draka. But I think you still need revolution in Latin America! But prior to that, set up some sort of nascent Drakaesque society in Southern South America that is even more extreme than the rest. Let them expand on the slave system and become expansionist, picking off the other independent nations. Have them apply such rigid tests of purity to their new populations that only the palest of European immigrants and the top creoles of the new lands can even be considered for Citizenship (and eventually not even them with the passing of centuries). Then maybe we've got the start of something Drakaesque....

I agree with all that except for the Southern South America bit. I don't know if you knew this, but the Southern Cone is fairly uniform in race in regards to skin color (they all call themselves Latino)!
 

Glen

Moderator
I agree with all that except for the Southern South America bit. I don't know if you knew this, but the Southern Cone is fairly uniform in race in regards to skin color (they all call themselves Latino)!

Actually did. I was thinking that ITTL maybe they import more labor, and/or start moving North and pick it up through conquest.

Alternatively, we could start further north to begin with....
 
I agree with all that except for the Southern South America bit. I don't know if you knew this, but the Southern Cone is fairly uniform in race in regards to skin color (they all call themselves Latino)!

Uruguay a bit less so - according to my world almanac, Uruguay is about 12% black or Mestizo. (OTOH, my almanac says Chile is 95% "white and white Amerindian". What the heck is a white Amerindian?)

How about evil uber-Brazil for a racist dystopia? My impression was that back in the colonial days, they had an even more elaborate set of racial classifications than the Mexicans.

Not sure about a united Spanish Americas holding together through the 19th century, when with rails, telegraphs and steamships you might make a start at real unification - the communications problems between a capital in Mexico city, and, say, Lima would be pretty terrible. And anything any distance from the coasts, oy vey. Even today, IIRC, there's no good road through southern (eastern?) Panama to link the northern and southern continents.

Hmm - the US versus Evil Mega-Mexico, [1] in a battle for control of the Lousiana territories? Probably could get a good novel or two out of that, although one suspects Hispanics might find the portrayal of an evil racist Mexico a wee bit offensive.

[1] Alaska to Colombia

Bruce
 
I would wonder how the USA would develop with a major European style power right in its own backyard? Would the Monroe doctrine still be implemented? and if so would the US use it as an excuse to launch military adventurism against said Drakaesque power? Also as I recall south and central America was plagued by civil strife and rebelliousness long before such sentiment became prevalent in Africa, so would that cause the growth of such an empire to be stunted?
 
By which I mean: at some point after lots of English and Scottish colonists are in North America, but before there are so many of them that foreign states ruling over them would be impossible - let's say about 1730 - Great Britain badly loses a major war and France is awarded all or most of Britain's North American colonies at the peace settlement. France takes over with lots of troops and enforces its policies as seen in Quebec and Louisiana - Catholic supremacy, high taxes and centralised rule - and a lot of the Anglo-Scots colonists decide that they can't live like that and go on a Boer-style trek into the American interior, fighting the natives on fairly close terms and establishing independent states deep in the Midwest.

I know that y'all aren't the biggest fans of the 163x universe, but if I remember right (I haven't read more than the first three books, and that was a few years ago), Charles I signs Englands' New World possessions over to France for some compensation, which could theoretically set up something similar.

Though I doubt that'd happen in that story line. And plus that's an ASB initial point.

Although that would be interesting an interesting scenario (the one you posited Thande), but beyond the initial similarities, wouldn't the different locales greatly affect what would come later? There is no Mississippi River in South Africa, after all, so the resulting conflicts and expansion/contraction of these American Exiles would be rather different from the Boer Wars, but perhaps with some similarities still.
 
This does sound interesting.

Has anyone read the novel "Aztec Blood"? It's about the colonial period in Mexico and it describes how horrifically cruel and racist everyone was back then.

Hmm...someone start writing their own version of "Marching Through Georgia" where an American spy tries to infiltrate such a mileu.

Perhaps TTL's WWII will have a north American phase where the descendants of the exiled Americans push through the Appalachians to liberate their Anglo brothers from the French despotism while the Hispano-Draka conquer Brazil and impose a Warsaw Pact-style alliance on the rest of South America.

The two powers then have a Cold War in their own hemisphere. France, shorn of its European empire by the "US" and perhaps humbled in Europe by Germany or a resurgent Britain could then get all radical and Communist (?).

Does anybody want to write this one? My Afrikaner TL and a short story I wrote that's set in it (along with two other unfinished short stories and possibly some novels later) emerged from the "Cold War Against the Apartheid Juggernaut," so some enterprising would-be writer could take this idea and have some fun with it.
 
In defense of Spain, the "Limpieza" was something done in mainland Spain to ferret out "secret" jews and muslims; a simple demographical comparison between modern native populations in south america and those in the US clearly shows who was the "worst" colonizer, and I always get rather offenced when everyone says otherwise. Nahuatl (aztec) and Quechua (inca) are still the second language in mexico and Peru, after all.

Now, on the other hand, we cannot say thna Spain is just a victim of maligning. "Limpieza" was almost certainly the first time in history where _race_, as oppose to culture of religion, was a deciding factor. The excuse was secret jews, but after a couple generations post (forced) conversion any marranos would not even know how to be a jew, secret or otherwise. The existence of semitic ancestors was enough for an inquisitorial investigation, and several "jewish" phisical characteristics were considered an insult: There is a famous poem by Quevedo, insulting his archenemy Gongora big nose, a "sign" os jewish ancestry an so impure blood. (Góngora and Quevedo hated each other and apparently spent theis spare time publishing sonets insulting their opponet art, appearance, style and personal habits. Since they are two of the greatest spanish poets, theirs is possibly the only collecion of insults an dirty limericks taught in high school in the world).
It's notdifficult to imagine how a more succesful Empire, with a Spai than is not obsesses with central Europe, could deepen his religouis racism to more classical racism -specially if we add the trauma of losing the homeland.
An interesting twist could be if marranos, wich, even if secret jews, are still european and white, take an high place in the caste system over natives and blacks...
 
Weren't there racial hierarchies in the Spanish colonies, with Spanish-born whites on top, native-born whites below that, and all the way down?

The whole Jew/Moor thing might not have applied, but there was still a lot of racism IIRC.

And it's true the Native Americans got genocided (albeit in a slow-moving unplanned fashion)--however, there were a lot fewer of them, 10 million north of Mexico.

There were simply too many Indians and too few Spaniards to pull off a full-blown ethnic cleansing, at least on the mainland.

(In the Caribbean, that got done--they ran out of Indian slaves and had to import blacks)
 
Weren't there racial hierarchies in the Spanish colonies, with Spanish-born whites on top, native-born whites below that, and all the way down?

The whole Jew/Moor thing might not have applied, but there was still a lot of racism IIRC.

Still not a rigid racism. Indian nobles intermarried with Spanish nobles and/or received new titles and privileges, and became part of the criollo class with the same rights as full whites. Mestizo nobles would be allways more powerful than white plebeians, because they were nobles.

There were simply too many Indians and too few Spaniards to pull off a full-blown ethnic cleansing, at least on the mainland.
And too few reasons to do it, if any. While colonization patterns changed over time and over place, it's generally agreed that English colonization was more about families moving to an area (so the locals have to go out), while Spanish colonization was more about single men looking for riches (i.e., the locals remain, as long as they serve me, and as there aren't many women from home here why not marry one of these). Result: Higher mixing in Spanish colonies.

(In the Caribbean, that got done--they ran out of Indian slaves and had to import blacks)
For reasons different to outright extermination or "racism". The more isolate a population is, the more vulnerable it is to foreign diseases. If Eurasian diseases were able to kill more than 80% of continental indians, imagine what they did to insular indians, which were even less exposed to foreign vermins and with an even lower genetic diversty. Still, DNA testings have shown that modern inhabitants of the greater antilles can have up to 30% of native genes, which means that the breeding of the survivors with other ethnic groups had no small role in the current extinction of their ethnic groups.

The truth is that in the 16th-17th centuries there wasn't a true equivalent of the racism of the 19th and 20th centuries. "Racism" in the Spanish Americas was quite absurd when looked from the modern pespective, and never had a common pattern. There were regions were blacks received better treatment than indians, and there were regions where the exact opposite happened. And then there was the whole can of different kinds of mestizos. While there might be someone with enough spare time to count and clasify all them, there was never an actual gradation based on racial characteristics that translated into social hierarchies like those that existed in colonial Africa later. This heavy intermixing is the main stone in the development of any drakaesque society in Iberoamerica and the reason why 20th cent racial theories and social darwinism never caught on in the Americas outside of countries where a single ethnic group was clearly mayoritary.

So going back to the "Limpieza", you just have to read about it to realize it doesn't really have to do with race, but with religious intolerance (I refuse to consider Jews as a race, by te way, they are a religious and cultural group) and even social divisions not related to race. There was a lot of moaning about people with Jewish and Muslim ancestors but for example there was never any backlash against the "morenos" of Huelva (descendants of 15th cent Guinean slaves not exposed to islam) or the Japón family of Seville, who descended from Japanese traders. Both of these groups have melted into the mainstream population and nowadays it's hard to find any of them with clear racial features revealing their origin. That doesnt mean their ancestors were genocided.

In fact many of the denounces about semitic ancestors were a last card used by lower cases to hit the nobles, otherwise unbeatable. The Inquisition generally though that peasants were "old Christians" while it always had a close watch on lesser nobles and bourgeoises. Why? Because many lesser nobles intermarried into rich Jewish or former Jewish families during the 15th century. Lesser nobles were seen as parasitic, often refusing to do physical work as that didn't fit into their "nature", and were though to receive many undeserved privileges. So when a young hidalgo, often "recommended" by an uncle or a cousin in a higher sphere, aspired to take the seal of a bishop or an important charge in a city council, and a plebeian aspired the same position, the plebian often denounced that he had heard that his hidalgo had had a Jewish great-grandmother and the whole shame that a potential investigation over him could cause to his reputation, even if all of it was bollocks, was enough to make many nobles step down and refuse the charge that otherwise would go to them.

Rakhasa, if Quevedo insulted Gongora implying that he was a Jew it didn't have anyhing to do with race. Remember that Gongora became a priest at the end of his life. To call him a Jew was the biggest insult ever, because descendants of Jews were assumed to be prone to sin. Remember again that for the Catholics of the time, any non-Catholic was a worshipper of the Devil, and after many generations of ancestors "doing that", something "should have remain" there. And what's worse for a priest than to call him a "natural born sinner"?
 
At what point could the French demand Britain's North American Empire and get it, with the Colonial population being large enough to that many flee into the hinterlands and establish a "Boer" state but not so large the French cannot conquer it?
 
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