"The Battle of Dorking"

In otl did the absurd story, which required the whole Royal Navy to be otherwise engaged to allow a German conquest of Britain have an influence on Anglo German relationships.

Astonishingly it was published in the 1870s
 
I know nothing of this battle of Dorking. But if you talking about a battle of dorks, I am pretty sure you can find that on this site everyday jaja
 
Re: Battle of Dorking

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=battle+of+dorking+online+text&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Theres the google search results. I read the text circa 1984. This little bit of alarmist fiction was a part of of the British Army changes or reforms of the latter 19th Century. Actions that took the army from that which fought in the Crimea to that which fought in Egypt circa 1882 & beyond. This brief book uses a fictional invasion of England by a German army to show how a British army little changed from the Napoleonic era was unsuitable for modern warfare of the 1870s.
 
It didn't actively change anything on its own, invasion literature was already prominent. What makes the novel important is that it's the first to implicitly feature the Germans as the invader rather than the French or the Russians, though that's more reactive to events (Prussia/Germany had just crushed France with apparent ease) rather than actually causing them.
 
The Battle of Dorking? It's not bad but I always preferred Erskine Childers The Riddle of the Sands or P. G. Woodhouse The Swoop. ;)
 
It didn't actively change anything on its own, invasion literature was already prominent. What makes the novel important is that it's the first to implicitly feature the Germans as the invader rather than the French or the Russians, though that's more reactive to events (Prussia/Germany had just crushed France with apparent ease) rather than actually causing them.

Well keep in mind before 1871 there really wasn't a 'Germany' to be Britain's antagonist. Prussia was a regional power in Central and Eastern Europe but it was never a Great Power like the French or Austrians or Russians.
 
Ah, invasion literature. Proving that Marty Stues where people take one legions of Germans have a long and hallowed place in Anglo-American literature.
 
Ah, invasion literature. Proving that Marty Stues
The British lose the Battle of Dorking, to an extent that would make the most virulent Anglophobe drool:

How we lived through the degradation we daily and hourly underwent, I hardly even now understand. And what was there left to us to live for? Stripped of our colonies; Canada and the West Indies gone to America; Australia forced to separate; India lost for ever, after the English there had all been destroyed, vainly trying to hold the country when cut off from aid by their countrymen; Gibraltar and Malta ceded to the new naval Power; Ireland independent and in perpetual anarchy and revolution.

where people take one legions of Germans
The Battle of Dorking was not fought against either Prussia or Austria (see some discussion here). In fact, there are probably as many stories with Germany as an ally than as an opponent; see this and this, for instance. Old habits died hard: The New Battle of Dorking was written as late as 1910 but was against the French.

have a long and hallowed place in Anglo-American literature.
By no means limited to the English-speaking world. Examples abound: Plus d'Angleterre (1887), La Guerre Anglo-Franco-Russe (1900), Der Weltkrieg deutsche Traume (1904).

It didn't actively change anything on its own, invasion literature was already prominent.
I've not come across any pre-Dorking invasion literature, but I'd be interested to see what it's like. Could you recommend some?
 
Much invasion literature, like a ton of people's post-Sea Lion fantasia, has the ending where the English win through in the end - hard to make a popular novel otherwise.
 
Not necessarily, it's essentially a tract playing on people's paranoia, so it can have a 'this could happen here' sense of urgency and dread to it.
 
Much invasion literature, like a ton of people's post-Sea Lion fantasia, has the ending where the English win through in the end
Except the book that this thread is about, and of course invasion literature published in Germany or France (where the Germans or French tend to win). For instance, The Invasion of 1910 had a British victory in the original English edition and a German victory for the German translation. It seems strange that you're fixated on this being a particularly English phenomenon: it may be a mistaken impression resulting from the bulk of the accessible literature being in English. The fact is that audiences seem to have preferred a home victory regardless of the nationality of said audience.

How many times have you read a Trent war written by an American where the British come out on top?
 
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