The Great Divergence: A History of the World Since 1750

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Frederick: King, Elector and Emperor ii
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    • Rattigan

    Frederick’s long-awaited accession to the throne occasioned a shake-up in the alliances then prevailing in the House of Commons. Contrary to some of the more hysterical predictions from Whig propagandists of the 1740s, Frederick’s accession did not cause the wholesale replacement of the traditional Whig ruling party but it did mean that the pieces were thrown into the air and did not come down to land until some time later. By 1750 we can see the broad outlines of three general groupings. These help us conceptualise the political disagreements of the era but it should be noted that these groupings were protean and they by no means always acted in concert.

    The dominant groupings were the Patriots and the Court Whigs, the former of whom had been brought to power by Frederick’s accession. The most notable Patriots, of course, were Lord Carlisle, who became prime minister in 1743, as well as future prime ministers William Pitt and Lord Egmont, but the grouping included important figures such as George Grenville and George Lyttleton. Temperamentally, this grouping opposed government corruption and supported Frederick albeit with concerns about the potential for executive overreach. On questions of political economy, most supported a general belief in the improving nature of trade and finance, while on foreign policy a general antipathy towards large standing armies was contrasted with strong negative views towards other European powers, especially France and Spain, who threatened Britain’s American and West Indian colonies.

    The Court Whigs was the name given to those who still followed the Pelham brothers as the heirs to Walpole. They considered themselves to be the upholders of the principles that had governed Britain since 1714 until the Patriots had usurped them. Several of the Court Whigs, particularly the Pelhams, remained influential members of the government and used what control they had over patronage to ensure that their grouping was arguably the most orderly and functional of all the factions in Parliament at the time. Indeed, to a great extent the end of the Whig Oligarchy was the best thing that could have happened to Whiggism after the division and struggles of Walpole’s later premiership as it gave them, in the form of the Patriots, an opponent who was really competing with them for power. Generally the Court Whigs favoured religious toleration, protectionist trade and moderate economic reforms, while being uncomfortable both with political radicalism and excessive exercise of the royal prerogative.

    The final grouping has been called, at the time and since, the County Party but this does not really do justice to the nature of the beast. The only thing which all of these things had in common was that they were not in government and, in most cases, had no plausible avenue for entering it. On the one hand the Country Whigs, long reconciled for a variety of reasons to not entering government, saw themselves as upholding real Whig values which had not been corrupted by faction or government. Resolving to judge governments based on “measures, not men,” this diverse grouping lacked a real leader and occasionally ground themselves in a pro-government position and sometimes in opposition. What really unified them as a group was a stated commitment to Whig ideals and position outside government.

    The Country Whigs are occasionally placed alongside another opposition faction: the Tories. Almost driven out of business by the harsh proscription of the two Georges, as with the Court Whigs the accession of Frederick also breathed life into an organisation that had become almost totally moribund. Although he was careful not to bring too many famous Tories, notably Bolingbroke, into government in 1743, Frederick did bring in other notable Tories such as Lord Beaufort and Sir John Cotton. Overall, however, toryism remained an oppositional ideology, with Tories valuing their status as independent men, supporting English liberty, deference to the Crown and opposition to needless foreign entanglement.

    The final grouping, and the smallest, were known as the Radicals or Commonwealthmen. Usually elected from one of the populous urban constituencies, they strongly supported radical religious and political reform. They condemned corruption and lack of morality in British political life, theorising that only civic virtue could protect a country from despotism and ruin. On the other hand, this often led them to adopting the extreme xenophobic or anti-semitic views held by many of their constituencies.

    As stated, these descriptions are necessarily vague, but we can draw up the following tabulation of MPs elected in the 1743 election:

    Patriots - 223
    Court Whigs - 206
    Country Whigs - 72
    Tories - 49
    Radicals - 8

    The Court Whigs and the Patriots were in government together for almost all of Frederick’s reign and some, not least opposition satirists, noted that there was little to mark a division between the two of them. On the other hand, if there is anything that political history has taught us, it is that seemingly-superficial differences do matter. Frederick continued to use Leicester House as his main residence in London and the Patriots made sure that their meetings were held either there or at Cobham’s residence, Stowe House. The Court Whigs, meanwhile, took to congregating at Newcastle House, the residence of the Pelhams in London, and the Tories at Bolingbroke House in Surrey. The Radicals and the Commonwealthmen lacked such a base but, by charting the three great houses out on a map of London, we can begin to see the origins of the famous points of the political compass: the North, the South, the West and the East.

    – from ‘Frederick: King, Elector and Emperor’ (2012)
     
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    • Rattigan

    Analytical Engine said:
    Is there still a Seven Years' War-equivalent ITTL?

    Also, yay for more Habsburg Empire!
    Click to expand...
    Yes, there will be a Seven Years War equivalent. As before, I plan on taking a slow and steady divergence from OTL. So the 7YW might look pretty similar and there will also by a Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars-equivalent but by then the context, combatants etc will be very different...

    If you like Habsburgs, you're going to love this TL
     
    Charles Bourbon goes to the New World
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    • Rattigan

    The need for far-reaching reform of Spain’s overseas holdings had been a preoccupation of all of the Bourbon Spanish monarchs and, indeed, had been obvious to many before the extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs. As we have seen, of principal concern to Luis, Fernando and the two Felipes had been increasing colonial production of primary export products, in particular the valuable silver and gold mining trades. This was combined with mercantilist restrictions on secondary and tertiary industry, designed to reduce competition with Iberian Spanish products.

    The preceding chapters have shown that the results of these reforms were mixed. Production, particularly in the export-oriented mining and ranching sectors, did increase but with a number of ancillary costs, not least of which was the frustration of the creole elites at the reductions in their power. In addition was the enormous increase in the cost of defending the vast Atlantic and Pacific coastline from those who sought to circumvent these export restrictions. The Spanish fleet of the 18th century lacked the ability to combat the Royal Navy and was also unable to end the enormous smuggling market that grew up along its coasts. Recurrent Andean revolts from the 1740s further raised the spectre of popular revolution, a terrifying prospect both for the peninsulares and the creoles.

    During his time as King of Naples and Sicily, Carlos had been a committed centraliser and regalist, an approach that many expected him to take to his new kingdoms. In 1760, he dispatched Bernardo Tanucci, a reliable servant of his in Naples, José de Gálvez, and the Count of Aranda as the Inspectors General of the Indies, on the pretext of studying the causes of the Andean Uprisings of the previous decades but in fact to provide a comprehensive review of Spanish American society and politics. Arriving in Havana in May of that year, the trio spent nine months travelling around South and Central America collecting information on the societies they found, including their religious, political and economic character.

    Aranda.jpegSonora.jpegTanucci.jpeg
    The Inspectors General of the Indies: (l-to-r) Aranda, de Galvez and Tanucci would revolutionise Spanish colonial government

    After they returned to Spain in February 1761, they submitted their report on the Andean Uprisings in 1762. By that stage, however, they were already working on a separate report, which appeared in 1763. On the first page of the jointly-authored report, Tanucci, Gálvez and Aranda stated that: “While the present state of things persists, Your Majesty’s subjects in the Indies have no security for person or property - no stimulus to industry.” This and the overweening influence of the Church were subjects to which the trio would return to repeatedly throughout their report.

    The most famous aspect of their report, and the one which caused the most comment in Madrid and America, was their far-reached proposals to re-organise the administrative structures of Spanish America. New Captaincy Generals would be created in Venezuela and New Extremadura, centred on their capitals Caracas and Moneterrey, respectively. North of New Extremadura, fresh military Commandancies were to be set up in Texas, New Mexico and the Californias. The Captaincy Generals were designed to encourage settlement and trade in both those areas, which were perceived to have been left underdeveloped in comparison to other regions of New Granada and New Spain. The Commandancies, however, were designated specifically as military formations, designed primarily to form a buffer between the French, the British and the Comanches in North America. Civilians did migrate there, but in smaller numbers and were expected to be subject to military discipline.

    The other major change was in the River Plate. The new Viceroyalty of the River Plate was to be created, taking advantage of the confirmation of Spanish control of the region granted by the end of the Six Years War. Previously, the mining trade from Potosi had been routed through the Pacific port of Lima, which added weeks or months onto the transport of commodities to and from Europe and left the region around Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Asuncion both undeveloped and hives of smuggling and contraband. In theory, by bringing these ports under legitimate jurisdiction, the smuggling trade would be crushed and trade would be improved.

    In addition to these administrative reforms, the report suggested wide ranging economic changes. A commerce council would be set up in each of the Viceroyalties and Captaincy Generals, which would be empowered to negotiate internal trade and would (in theory) have some influence on imperial-level trade, which would continue to be decided by Madrid.

    Elsewhere, the trio veered out of their jurisdiction, suggesting widespread domestic reform in Europe. These included proposals to re-grant a degree of local autonomy to Navarre and Aragon as Captaincy Generals and to integrate Naples and Sicily into the Spanish Empire more thoroughly as their own Viceroyalties. These proved too explosive in Madrid (never mind that the ability of Madrid to practically or legally incorporate Naples and Sicily was in doubt) and were quickly shelved. Those suggestions, however, would see their time come a few decades hence.

    But the American proposals found their audience and would see their introduction over the course of the 1760s. The new administrative divisions of the River Plate and New Extremadura were established in 1766, followed by Venezuela in 1767 and Chile in 1769. Cuba was separated from New Spain in 1764 and raised to the status of Viceroyalty, while the Captaincy Generalships of Guatemala, Yucatan and Santo Domingo were put on a more formal basis.

    Each new Captain General or Viceroy was appointed directly by the King in Madrid and was responsible solely to him. Under the Captain General or Viceroy was a Real Audiencia, bodies which were elected by a highly restricted franchise that effectively left them under the control of local creoles. The Real Audiencia were empowered to perform an advisory function over local government. The third major body would be the Commerce Council, made up of 17 members, eight appointed by the Real Audiencia and nine appointed by the Captain General or Viceroy.

    In the decade of 1768–1778, the commerce between Spain and Spanish America increased by nearly 700%, helped by these reforms which managed to be both liberalising and centralising at the same time.

    – from ‘The Eighteenth Century Revolution in Spain and America’ (1958)
     
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    • KingSweden24

    This is right around the right POD to actually make Spain run the Americas intelligently so I’ll be intrigued to see where that goes…
     
    Miguel Demiurgos

    Miguel Demiurgos

    What I want is that the Spaniards do not end up so screwed up, perhaps a Spanish Louisiana or that they stay with Naples and Sicily.
    The latter would be interesting especially when the era of nationalism begins, perhaps the Papal States will survive as a kind of buffer state between a unified Italian north and a Spanish south.
     
    The Empire of the Longhouse i
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    • Rattigan

    But while Louis may have been able to look at his vast maps of North America from the comfort of Versailles, few European officials, be they in Quebec or Boston, could be in any doubt about who controlled much of the middle ground between the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean. So, as tensions between London and Paris once again found a reason to rise, one of the most important questions in European diplomacy was “Which way would the Iroquois jump on this occasion?”

    As we have seen, the informal trifecta of Skenandoa, Sayenqueraghta and Tanacharison had enforced a generally pro-British stance from the clans and villages in the Hudson Valley and up to the Appalachians west and north of New York and the Chesapeake. However, this did not mean that the Confederacy itself was now anti-French. One of the advantages of the Iroquois mode of government in this period is that it allowed individual bands the flexibility to negotiate with the white traders in accordance with local needs. As seen in previous chapters, this policy of effective neutrality had allowed the Iroquois to extend their hunting grounds across the Great Lakes region.

    This, however, presented its own problem. Although not the only people to have had military success against the Iroquois, the Sioux were the most prominent and soon found themselves at the centre of French policy in the West. In the late 1740s, the pays d’en haut had been in a state of unrest, seemingly irrevocably sliding into the arms of the British. The French trader and de facto chief of French operations west of Lake Michigan, Joseph Marin, was highly sympathetic towards the Sioux and concluded a number of treaties of friendship with them. Peace with the Sioux allowed the French to focus resources against the British in the Ohio Valley. But it also firmly drove the Iroquois into the British camp.

    When the French began constructing forts in the Ohio Valley, a band of Iroquois under Chief Theyanoguin petitioned Sir William Johnson, now the governor of New York, to come to their aid. Johnson responded by raising a regiment of militia and sending it west to warn the French to vacate the Ohio Valley. Not wanting to be left out of the action, Acting Governor of Virginia Robert Dinwiddie ordered a regiment of Virginia militia to be raised under Lieutenant Colonel George Washington for a similar task, setting the stage for a conflict which would spiral into the globe-spanning First World War in 1754.

    – from ‘The Empire of the Longhouse’ (1987)
     
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    • The First World War (1754-1760)
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    • Rattigan

    The First World War (1754-1760) was a global conflict fought between Great Britain and France and their respective alliance systems. It involved the majority of the world’s great powers forming two main military blocs: the Covenant, which consisted of Great Britain, Austria, Portugal, the East India Company, the Iroquois Confederacy and the Carnatic Sultanate; and the Compact, consisting of France, Spain, Prussia, Russia, the Mughal Empire and the Wabanaki Confederacy. Numerous smaller states, kingdoms and confederacies in Europe, America and Asia also took part.

    The war arose out of long-standing imperial rivalries across three continents. Britain and her allies were pitted against the French and Spanish Empires and their allies due to commercial rivalries in the Caribbean and the uncertainty regarding the boundaries of the hunting grounds of various American confederacies. In Europe, the war broke out over territorial disputes between Prussia, which sought greater influence in the German states, and Austria, who sought to consolidate its power against France. Meanwhile, in India there was a long running conflict between the French and British East India Companies for influence on the subcontinent. The established Mughal Empire allied with the French while the rising Carnatic Sultanate supported the British in Bengal.

    Overall, the two alliance systems proved relatively well-matched. In America, the Royal Navy demonstrated its superiority at sea, capturing the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Guadeloupe. But France and her allies proved superior on land, repelling a 1759 invasion of Quebec and retaining control of the Ohio Country and the St Lawrence River. The European theatre also saw the combatants evenly matched, with Prussia once again failing to conquer Silesia or dislodge Austria as the political heart of Germany. A Jacobite uprising in 1758 was defeated by British victory at the Battle of the Solent. It was in India that there were substantial changes of territory, with decisive Anglo-Carnatic victories at Plassey and Wandiwash expelling the French and the Mughals from the Bay of Bengal.

    A series of treaties were signed in 1760 which ended the conflict. The Treaty of Hanover restored relations between the European combatants on the basis of the status quo ante bellum, the Treaty of Quebec attempted to define the boundaries of the Wabanaki and Iroquois lands, and the Treaty of Allahabad formalised the paramountcy of the British East India Company and the Carnatic over eastern India.

    – from ‘Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers’, 12th edition, English translation (1970-1985)
     
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    • Frederick: King, Elector and Emperor iii
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    • Rattigan

    The balance sheet of the First World War was complicated, featuring great success in India but notable failures in North America and personal humiliation in Europe. Frederick’s ambivalence about his European holdings had given way to an intense concern. The humiliation of his capture at the Battle of Klosterzeven and subsequent ransoming back in 1757 had tweaked the martial side of his nature. That his brother, Cumberland, was praised for his handling of the North American theatre had done little to salve this issue.

    The natural person to take the blame for the failures in the First World War was Pitt. It was Pitt who had proposed overwhelming force in North America to dislodge France. It was Pitt who had failed to provide the naval support Frederick required in Brunswick. It was Pitt who had secured the premiership following Carlisle’s death in 1758 on the back of a series of masterful speeches in the Commons, promising imminent military success with a strategic focus on defeating France and Spain in America and India while using Austria to hold down Prussia and France in Europe. Having made his promises, Frederick resolved publicly that Pitt would now be judged on their failures.

    On 29 July 1760, Pitt faced and lost a vote of no confidence, despite a speech that Horace Walpole described as one of his best. He resigned the following day, becoming the second Prime Minister to do so after Robert Walpole and establishing a lasting precedent. In his stead, Frederick turned to his friend Francis Dashwood to become First Lord of the Treasury. Although Dashwood’s political experience was skimpy, and there were persistent rumours at the time and since that he was functionally innumerate, he was a reliable favourite of Frederick’s and was well-liked by the Patriots and the Court Whigs alike, meaning that Pitt could be dispensed with while ensuring the minimum of cabinet changes otherwise.

    Frederick and Newcaslte took responsibility for the negotiations in Brunswick, staying at the Herrenhausen Palace and entertaining the French Foreign Minister, the Duc de Choiseul. Negotiations were initially testy due to Louis’ inclusion, in a fit of pique, of Frederick’s vanquisher at Klosterzeven, La Fayette, as part of the French negotiating team. Frederick flounced out of the negotiations, before allowing himself to be coaxed back in by Newcastle. He claimed to Prince Ferdinand, in a letter dated 7 October 1760, that this had been a deliberate strategy, although readers must be invited to draw their own conclusions on that topic.

    Nevertheless, the discreet discussions which took place at Herrenhausen seem to have had an effect and allowed Newcastle and Choiseul to agree on a number of general points which formed the basis for the peace. Key to this was Newcastle’s insight, stated in a letter to Devonshire, that the British negotiating position in 1760 was not as poor as many had thought at the beginning of the year. True, Brunswick had been lost and both Wolfe’s and Washington’s American expeditions had ended in failure. But, on the other hand, the French East India Company had effectively been expelled from the Bay of Bengal and the valuable plantation islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, as well as the port of Havana, had been captured.

    Frederick pressed for as favourable a treaty as possible in Europe and was willing to make concessions in North America to do so. He agreed to the return of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Havana, and generous borders in the Ohio Country and St Lawrence Valley, in return for a status quo ante bellum for Brunswick and Britain’s ally Austria in Europe. Although Frederick’s papers reveal that he flirted with the idea, Newcastle ultimately prevailed upon him to reject French demands for the return of Acadia. In fact, although Newcastle and Frederick were not known for their sympathies towards American interests, the negotiations which eventually bore fruit in the form of the Treaty of Quebec proved relatively beneficial for British and Iroquois interests there. The declaration that the Ohio Country were now Wabanaki hunting grounds was always going to have little effect on the ground for the Iroquois but the confirmation that the trans-Appalachian region west of New York and Pennsylvania was theirs has since been cited by nationalist historians as a beginning of incipient Iroquois nationhood.

    These relatively generous terms were based on Newcastle’s careful balancing of Britain’s continental and trading interests, as well as Frederick’s personal concerns. By securing the Austrian and Hanoverian positions in Europe, as well as continued Iroquois security in the trans-Appalachian region, Newcastle had managed to salvage an even peace out of an inconclusive conflict. It also kept alive the lucrative British trading alliances in the Mediterranean, Baltic and Atlantic. Choiseul and Louis XV declared themselves satisfied with the results but others in Versailles proved more long-sighted, with Jacques Turgot ruefully declaring that “The English had lost a war but bought a peace.”

    – from ‘Frederick: King, Elector and Emperor’ (2012)
     
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    • The First World War in the Indian Subcontinent
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    • Rattigan

    Mughal decline had been palpable for some time but, from the French point of view, they remained the most reliable allies on the Indian subcontinent. Indeed, their defeats at the hands of the Marathas, the Durranis and the Afsharids may well have heightened their attractiveness by making them genuinely dependent on French aid. From his office in Pondicherry, Comte de Lally understood that this approach created manifest problems, not least of which was that it was going to have to be French money which carried the burden of the Compact war effort in the subcontinent and that it risked pushing the Marathas and the Durranis into the arms of the British East India Company. But, as he noted in a letter to Louis XV, “the prospect of delivering such a glittering jewel into the hands of Your Majesty is heightened, for our allies here will be servile to our interests and our industries.”

    The war proved a disaster for the Mughals in every respect possible. Mughal participation in the war began with a joint attack on Calcutta in 1755, which was repelled. Mughal armies successfully defended their territory when the East India Company counterattacked into Bengal in 1756-57 and achieved initial victories against British-Carnatic forces in campaigns in the Carnatic coast. But a Maratha invasion in 1757 turned the tide against the Mughals for the final time. Seeing the position on the ground, de Lally abandoned the Mughals and formed what he called an alliance with the Marathas in 1757. Delhi was ransacked later that year by a Maratha army and, with that, Mughal power was decisively broken. Defeated on every front, Emperor Alamgir II died in Maratha captivity on 3 July 1760, at which point the throne passed to his son Alam II, who ‘ruled’ under the control of the Maratha general Raghunath Rao from the reasonably comfortable captivity of the Red Fort.

    main-qimg-9f46cf14df267c2304caf818984f83cc-lq.jpeg

    The Fall of Delhi, 1757

    However, what the French regarded as an alliance with the Marathas was, from the Maratha point of view, merely a truce and Maratha generals refused all French requests for aid in Bengal and the Carnatic. A French attempt to capture Madras was repelled and a combined Anglo-Carnatic force decisively routed the French army at Wandiwash in 1760, largely expelling France from the south of the subcontinent.

    The partition of the Mughal Empire was negotiated at the Hanover peace conference before being signed as the Treaty of Allahabad in 1761. Although notionally agreed between the European powers and presented to the Indian kingdoms as a fait accompli, in practice it followed the facts on the ground and did not seek to force the Marathas or Carnatic into any territorial adjustments they had already made. Bengal, Bihar and Orissa were annexed to the supposedly independent Bengal Sultanate. The Sultan, the grandson of the last independent Bengali Nawab Alivardi Khan, ruled under close British supervision under the anglicised name of Sir Roger Dowler. His political powers mimicked that of Emperor Alam and would prove just as unhappy and short-lived in their exercise. The former Mughal territories on the Carnatic Coast were annexed by the Nizam of Hyderabad, with the resulting much-expanded Carnatic Sultanate emerging as the preeminent British ally in the region. The French were expelled from all their trading posts in the subcontinent.

    Sir_Roger_Dowler.jpeg

    Sir Roger Dowler, Sultan of 'independent' Bengal

    Balajirao Bhat, the Peshwa of the Maratha Confederacy, was initially relaxed about the continuation of the Mughal line. Alam remained in the Red Fort and initially caused little problem, allowing the Marathas to superimpose their governing traditions on the oligarchic, confederal structures that had initially served the Mughals so well. However, that did not take long to change. In 1765, a loose conspiracy of Persian-speaking Muslim clerks was ‘uncovered’ by Raghunath Rao, which had allegedly planned to spring Alam from his captivity and begin a campaign to recover his Empire with French help. The scheme was, at best, fanciful and, more probably, an outright fabrication but it proved sufficient for Raghunath’s purposes. On 3 March, Alam was arrested and summarily executed, bringing down the curtain on an empire nearly two and a half centuries old.

    – from ‘Privileging Commerce: The Compagnie des Indes and the politics of trade in Enlightenment India.’ (2016)
     
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    • KingSweden24

    Interesting. I can’t claim to know enough about Indian history to fully understand the implications of all this but I’ll be curious to see how this much less singular India evolved
     

    Lord Duncan

    So basically the British have a much stronger position in India, albeit directly. The end of the Mughal dynasty will probably mean no threat to future British Sovereignty In the subcontinent (The emperor was for many even in 1857 the only legitimate 'Sovereign of India '). Do I see a balkanized India in future?
     
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