also in regards to Japanese Modernization, that will be detailed in the next chapter, because the main fighting will take place there as well.
The Revenge of the Crown : An Alternate 1812 and Beyond.
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
I was thinking more "This rabble will not have the honor of killing me," kind of deal. Or maybe Aerys the Mad getting his way.
But you stoke my interest in Jackson's fate ever more.
It will be intresting to see what role the Samurai will play in this war.
Hmm perhaps he could die painfully of an STD, or Gangrene. That seems about right bonus points if the cause is particularly embarrassing.
This is true and even if it were not there are very strong arguments for it in real-political terms. If successful it could pose a broader model to get quite a lot of Russia's minority regions jumping ship.
On the other hand such a policy might cause the Russians come down harder on said minorities.
If nothing else its less of an issue (because they opened early) than if they opened up as OTL. They're had a few years to pick things up and the military quantum leap that had happened just as Perry showed up OTL won't leave them in quite so much trouble.
As OTL trade with the Dutch will have let them keep rough pace with Europe (or at least China) until c.1800 when the IR takes off. Then being an isolationist back water they lost ground and got badly leapfrogged which led to a scramble to catch up and a century of mistakes on both sides.
Having opened up a little earlier in the industrial Revolution they won't have been in quite the same "basket case" position as OTL because the acceleration won't have pulled the world quite as far ahead by that point.
Still a scramble to catch up but with the US gone and the European powers distracted they'll have had time to start getting the house in order that they didn't OTL.
The ones really in trouble are the American's who have got themselves in quite the trap without industrial technology.
I mean those few years could make the difference of this war playing out like the opium wars vs the Russo Japanese war.
Chapter 46: Interim
Chapter 46: Interim
***
“The fighting in the Balkans and the Caucasian Mountains was on the frontiers of Russian logistics, and as such maintaining an army for the Russians in the Danubian principalities and the Caucasian mountains was a very hard task for the Russian Empire and its Imperial Army. However the situation was very different in the Baltic and Finland region. St. Petersburg, the capital of Imperial Russia stood on Ingrian shores, and the Baltic and Finland was connected directly to this region of the country. As such, the logistical support for the Imperial Russian Army was very high in this region. Finland could be reinforced by 100,000 troops at a minute’s notice from Ingria and Novgorod, as well as Pskov.
The Typical Swedish and Norwegian trooper during the Eastern War.
Throughout the winter, no fighting had taken place in earnest as both sides decided to take an unofficial break from the whirlwind fighting that had taken place in 1842, and decide their next steps of war in 1843. Britain and France hoped to divert Russian reinforcements from the Black Sea back to the north by having Sweden-Norway enter the war. Sweden-Norway and King Oscar I for their part were no fools. They knew that the Russian Army would be far stronger in their theatre of war rather than the Black Sea. As such they had taken precautions. The Swedish Army numbered some 40,000 well trained professionals and the Norwegian Army numbered some 25,000 well trained professionals as well, and in particular, the Norwegian Army was suited for amphibious warfare, whilst the Swedish Army was suited for direct confrontational warfare. Oscar I and the Swedish government intended to use this to their advantage.
The Swedish fleet had managed to link up with the Anglo-French navies at the ending months of 1842 before the Baltic Sea froze up, and the Swedish Navy had been unofficially aiding the French and British navies in navigating the ice free areas of the Baltic sea throughout the winter. The Swedes were waiting for the ice to break as attacking during the icy season could allow the Russians to simply march over the ice and capture Swedish cities, as they had done in the Finnish War of 1808 and 1809 which saw Sweden lose Finland to the Russian Empire.
By mid February, 1843, the ice was peeling away and the remaining ice was too unstable for any army to cross. As such, King Oscar I decided to honor his new alliance with London and Paris and called the Norwegian and Swedish parliament and asked them for their permission to declare war. The Swedish parliament was more willing to go to war, and immediately handed legislation to Oscar I, whilst the Norwegian parliament debated for a week before handing the appropriate legislation giving him permission to declare war on the Russian Empire. With legislation in place, on February 27, 1843, the Kingdom of Sweden-Norway declared war on the Russian Empire, citing its alliance with France and Britain.
The first action of the Swedes and Norwegians during the war actually happened one day before the declaration of war, which had been ordered to take the Russians by surprise. From Stockholm and Oregrund, as well as Forsmark, 10 Swedish warships, led by the Swedish flagship, HMS Gustav Adolf II managed to cross the Alands Sea, and appeared on the shores of Eckero, the western most side of the Aland Islands. The Swedish warships opened fire at the Russian naval defenses in the area and after eliminating them through a massive bombardment, the 5th Norwegian Marine Regiment, 8th Norwegian Marine Regiment, the 3rd Swedish Marine Regiment and the 1st Swedish Infantry Regiment, a total of 5,000 men landed at Eckero to conduct a ‘liberation’ of the islands. The Swedish population of the islands certainly did not like the Russian government and in many cases aided the landing enemy forces.
The Aland Islands.
By the end of March 10th, 1843, the islands had been cleared out of Russian presence in the islands, and the islands were fully occupied by the Norwegians and Swedish. At the Town’s Hall in the capital of Aland, Mariehamn, the legislative members of the Aland Islands declared their allegiance to the Swedish government once again after 36 years, and declared King Oscar I to be their sovereign, and not Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.
Whilst Sweden-Norway was successful in the Aland Islands, the Russians were more than welcoming for the Swedes to try an invasion of the rest of Finland. A small Swedish force of 3,000 probed the Swedo-Russian border at Tornio where they found a Russian contingent of 5000 troops and were defeated at the Battle of Tornio, forcing the Swedes to stay at their side of the border for the moment. Oscar I halted any invasion attempt before the army could be sufficiently mobilized and sufficiently prepared for a grueling long invasion of the Finnish coastlines.” Oscar I the Great of Sweden and Norway: Crimean War Edition, Kalmar Publishing, 2008
“The idea of the Ottomans sponsoring an independent Armenia was not a new idea, nor was it a novel idea. It had been floated around in the court of Constantinople too many times for it to have been a new idea. During the countless Ottoman-Persian Wars, the Ottomans had tried to create an Armenian state acting as their vassal state in the north, and in the wars that followed with Russia, the Ottomans had tried to appeal to the Armenian populace as well. As such the Ottoman government was fully aware of the case of an independent Armenia.
On January 29, 1843, the Ottoman government declared the State of Erivan to be an independent state, and that the boundaries of the state would be that of the Erivan Oblast within the Russian Empire. Garabet Balyan, the Ottoman Armenian General who had captured Erivan the previous year was declared the first Ottoman Governor-General of Erivan whilst the population of Erivan elected one Akabe Arakelian to be their first Prime Minister. The new legislative assembly of Erivan declared Sultan Abdulmejid I of the Ottoman Empire to be the Grand Duke of Erivan, and the saint of the Erivan Coptic Church, pulling the two states into a personal union. Abdulmejid I formally accepted the offer in a public assembly in Burs on February 14.
flag of the Grand Duchy of Erivan
Basically a copy pasted flag of the Antiquity Armenian kingdom.
This declaration had profound affects throughout the rest of Europe. Within the Ottoman Empire itself, volunteer centers for the army in Anatolia were swamped by enthusiastic Armenian volunteers so much so that Minister For War For the Exalted Ottoman State, Mehmed Cebal Pasha, jokingly stated that ‘Our army is full of Armenians now. We need no one else’.
Within Russia itself, the declaration was met with aghast expressions. Whilst the majority of the Russian Armenian population was centered in and around the area of the Erivan Oblast, there were quite a few of Armenians, majority even, in some places like Karabakh within the Karabakh Oblast, and in the eastern Tifilis area. The Russians stamped down on the Armenians left in their territory by pushing forward the anti-Coptic Laws in early 1843 which discriminated the state against the Coptic Armenian population of the state, and basically surprised the identity of being Armenian within the empire. Many in the empire, at least the reformists, warned Tsar Nicholas I that doing such an act could embolden the Russian Armenians to move against the Russian state even further, however most of the state heartily agreed with Nicholas I’s new anti-Armenian drive as Armenian printing press’s were closed down and Coptic Church’s were converted into Orthodox cathedrals.
Jan Zygmunt Skrzynecki
The idea of an independent Armenia also reared its nationalistic head somewhere else as well. Namely, in the Polish territories of the Russian Empire. One Jan Zygmunt Skrzynecki, who had once commanded the Duchy of Warsaw’s forces within the Napoleonic Wars, asked why was Poland a part of Russia? It was supposed to be independent, after all. Even though formally on paper Poland’s autonomy remained, in reality the de-facto situation that existed within Poland was that the autonomy was meaningless, as it was a farce of epic proportions. Zygmunt knew that there were around 1000 Polish exiles within the Ottoman Empire fighting for the freedom of Poland by siding with the Ottomans. Zygmunt decided he would follow these 1000 exiles, and conferred his idea with other prominent Polish marshals and generals, namely Henryk Dembinski and Maciej Rybinski. Rybinski and Dembinski agreed with Zygmunt’s plan, and the three generals defected from Russian command and formed the Polish Legions, fighting for the Ottoman Empire, and around 6,000 Polish Legionnaires would escape from Russia and enter into service within the Ottoman Army, which formed the Ottoman Polish Legions to fight against the Russians. Famously Maciej Rybinski converted to islam after reaching the Ottoman empire, and entered service formally as an Ottoman general, when he was given the name Mehmed Rybinski Pasha.
Maciej Rybinski
All of these efforts were of course supported by London and Paris. Louis XIX of course knew that France had massive pro-Polish sympathies, as many within France hadn’t forgotten how the Poles had fought for the French Empire loyally, and within London itself, anti-Russian sentiment meant that they would support any and all anti-Russian separatism that existed within the boundaries of the Russian Empire.” The Armenians and Poles: A Forgotten Legacy of the East, Osprey Publishing 1998.
“Emperor Ninko of Japan hadn’t been enthusiastic to go to war in all honesty however, he was overruled by the very enthusiastic Japanese Imperial Diet, who were fed up with overt European, mostly Dutch, British and French influence in the Japanese State. The Shogun of the Empire, Tokugawa Ieyoshi, was certainly not pro-west and instead was a proponent of creating an all-Asian faction and alliance against European encroachment in the continent, favoring an alliance with the Tian Dynasty, the Himalayan Empire, and the powers of Siam, Dai Viet etc. It seems that Ieyoshi had forgotten that the Tian Dynasty was loosely allied with the French Kingdom, the Himalayan Empire was allied with the British, and that Siam and Dai Viet was a hot ground of influence between the competing French, British, Dutch and Danubian traders of the region.
Tokugawa Ieyoshi
Nonetheless, Ieyoshi, after having taken power in 1837 had led the Japanese Empire into a time of modernization. In 1838 he had promulgated the Tenpo Reforms, in concert with Emperor Ninko, which was aimed at converting the Japanese economy from a peasantry based economy to that of a banking and credit economy much like the rest of Europe. Using Dutch and Russian observers, the Japanese managed to convert their economy fully by 1841, with the Imperial Kyoto Bank, being created in 1840 as the central bank of the Japanese Empire. There was some idea among the western influenced sections of society for promulgating elections within the empire as well however Ieyoshi tramped down on this notion with the aid of the Daimyos and the Samurai, all of whom knew that elections would mean the end of their power and influence in the state.
Nonetheless, administratively, Ieyoshi and Ninko started to create a more western modeled system. The provinces of the Daimyos were made into full provinces, and a modern taxation system was also implemented, with a portion of the taxes going into the Daimyos, who became hereditary governors of the provinces, for a lack of a proper term. The Samurai formed the aegis of the new Japanese Armed Forces, and many Samurai entered service into the new and reformed Japanese Army which was formed in 1838. Economically, the Japanese were willing to conduct a full industrialization scheme, however they didn’t have the money to conduct a full industrialization scheme until much later, so for the moment, the Japanese government had pursued a home industrialization movement, creating a industrial movement from the grassroots level.
The Japanese Army however was not ready for a full war with any European power in 1843. The most they had done for training was going off to Hokkaido and defeating the technologically backward Aino rebels in the area. The Samurai Legions as they were being called, were professional and dangerous if used properly, however they were still rife with clan and Daimyo loyalties instead of loyalty to the state, and the supply and creation of modern weapons was in very small amounts. The situation of the navy was even worse. Around 120 vessels of war existed in the Japanese Navy, however only 11 of these were capable of handling and fighting European vessels. The rest would be like sitting ducks for the Royal Navy and the French Navy. Marshal Kuroda Nagahiro, the Daimyo of Fukuoka, was given command of the 10,000 expeditionary army they were forming to invade Sakhalin. Nagahiro himself protested against the war, stating that there was not a chance in hell that they could take on the French and British on proper terms and come out victorious.
Kuroda Nagahiro in 1870
Nonetheless, he accepted command, and 3000 Japanese troops led by Nagahiro landed on the shores of French Sakhalin on February 18th, and started to fight it out with the French garrison present there.
The Japanese government also had another motive during the fighting. The Russo-Japanese Alliance was an alliance of convenience, and nothing more, however a clause in the treaty explicitly ended the free movement of Russians and Japanese in the island, and the Russo-Japanese Alliance Treaty had divided the island into half, with the northern half of the island being given to Russia, whilst the southern half of the island was given to the Japanese, as a part of their alliance and goodwill with one another.
On the other hand, both sides needed each other a lot. Japan needed Russia to be their gateway to the European world, and to export their science, technology and information back to Kyoto. On the other hand, Russia needed Japan to be a semi-powerful ally, enough to distract the western powers and its enemies so that their own holdings in the far east could be secured. As a result, the alliance became one of convenience. The two sides weren’t even communicating with each other when Nagahiro landed in Sakhalin, whilst a small Russian landing party of 100 men landed completely unaware in northern Sakhalin that their Japanese ally was doing the same in Southern Sakhalin.” The Russo-Japanese Alliance: The Rising Sun and the Bear. University of Kyoto, 1988.
“Around 5,000 men under Lieutenant Colonel David Price set off from British Borealia and decided to commit themselves towards an invasion of Russian Alaska on March 3rd, 1843 as the snow lessened enough for a military invasion to take place. The British had intelligence that the Russian garrison in Alaska was only 2000 strong, and centered around Novo-Archangelsk. This intelligence was wrong. The Russians had neglected Alaska for far too long, and the garrison on Novo-Archangelsk was truly only about 800 strong. However what made the Russians a canny opponent was the fact that the Russians had defensive entrenchments in and around the area, and more importantly, the British could not transport heavy guns and artillery through the snow, whilst the Russians had the heavy guns present in their forts to attack the enemy. The navies of both sides would be completely useless with one another as the frozen tracts of the area made the navies of the area unable to navigate the surrounding sea lanes. The Russian naval warships at port as well were partially frozen, however they at least could be used as artillery carriers against the invading British troops.
The british however also knew that they basically only had to capture Novo-Archangelsk, or in British terms, Sitka, and then the battle for Alaska would be over, as the Russians didn’t have a real presence else where in Alaska other than a few whaling outposts in the region for trade with the native population.
Novo Archangelsk in 1838
The 5,000 men marched up the British Colombian Coastline entering Russian territory wearing heavy clothing but taking less amount of ammunition to allow themselves to move quickly. On May, as the ice gave out completely, the troops arrived to Kuiu Island, which was an island away from the Sitka island, which harbored Novo-Archangelsk. The British troops now numbered only 3500, as around 500 had died from the cold and supply situation, whilst around 1000 were left behind in secure areas and depots as protection against native raids in the area.
The 3500 troops then began to construct boats in order to cross the sea towards Sitka island and with the aid of the British Pacific Fleet which steered north after the ice gave away, managed to commandeer around 20 ships and used the 20 ships to cross from Kuiu island onto Sitka.
The British landed in Baranof Lake, right at the mount of the pass between two major mountain ranges, with the pass moving towards Blue Lake, which overlooked Novo-Archangelsk on the other side of the island.
The British passed through the passes in the mountain following Baranof river, and eventually made their way to Blue Lake, arriving on May 27th on the area.
The Royal Navy appeared from British Borealia in order to aid the British forces, and around 6 warships of the British Pacific Squadron began to bombard the port of Novo-Archangelsk under the command of Captain Richard Price, who was the cousin of David Price. The bombardment distracted the Russians enough for David Price and his men to overcome the first entrenchments and enter the second line of Russian defense. A small landing party of 40 marines was arranged by Captain Richard Price as well, and the marines landed in Novo-Archangelsk harbor and destroyed the port facilities, and caused general havoc, diverting Russian attention even more. Finally after three days of bombardment, and after the British troops entered the citadel of the city after fierce hand to hand cold weather fighting, the Russian commander, Vladimir Agapov, the garrison commander, surrendered the town to the British forces.
Thus, the British conquest of Alaska had ended.” The British Conquest of Alaska, The Eastern War, 2018.
“Andrew Jackson within the United American Union was being caught up in what Jackson called the Spoils System. In politics, and government, a spoils system is a practices in which a political group after winning a victory, give governmental civil service jobs to its supporters, friends and relatives as reward for working towards the attained victory and as an incentive to keep working together – as opposed to a merit based system, where offices were awarded on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political affiliation.
The term was derived from the phase ‘to the victors go the spoils’ by New Jersey Filibuster and Senator, William L. Marcy, referring to Andrew Jackson’s victory in the aftermath of the Gaines Rebellion with the term spoils meaning goods or benefits taken from the loser in a competition, or victory. Similar spoils systems were and are common in other nations that were traditionally based on tribal organizations and other kinship groups and localism in general.
a canadian satire of Jackson's spoils system showing jackson riding a pig.
Jackson’s Spoils System also directly affected the Barnburner and Hunkers Factions within the political system of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Barnburners and Hunkers were the name of two opposing factions of the New Jersey and Pennsylvania independent senators and congressmen. The main issue diving the two factions was that of slavery and the question of favoring the current dictatorial government or not, with the barnburners being the anti-slavery, and anti-governmental faction. While this division occurred within the context of Pennsylvanian and New Jersey politics, it reflected the national divisions in the American Union in the years preceding the First American People’s Movement.
The Barnburners were the radical anti-governmental and anti-slavery faction. The term barnburner was applied and derived from the idea that someone who would burn down his entire barn to get rid of a rat infestation, instead of applying rat traps. In this case it applied to men who were thought to be willing to destroy all governmental corporations, in order to root out their abuses.
The Barnburners opposed expanding the public debt, and were opposed to the power of the large state established corporations. They also stood up for proper state local control without interfering with the federal government. Prominent American politicians such as attorney general Silas Wright Junior and financial theoretician John Adams Dix etc were members of the Barnburners.
The hunkers on the other hand were the pro-governmental faction. They opposed the barnburners, favored state banks, internal improvements, and creating a compromise between the agrarian economics and industrial economics of the country.
This issue became a burning one because of the fact that whilst Andrew Jackson was dictatorial, he hadn’t taken away power from the local councils of the government, and retained the local council system, and maintained its semi-democracy within the country, making it the only real democratic system left in the country. The Barnburners would eventually apply for aid from the Democratic Union of American Youths or the DUAY, and came into contact with Robert E. Lee and his group of political dissenters. The Barnburners and the DAUY held several meetings in 1841 and 42, wherein the two sides decided to ally with one another. This alliance with define the coming 1st American People’s Movement.” Origins of the American Peoples Movements. University of Richmond, 1993.
“Lincoln’s first session in the colonial legislature of Lower Canada took place and ran from 1834 till 1835. In preparation for the session, Lincoln borrowed some 100 pounds from one of his richer friends in the area, and spent around 25 pounds to buy his first suit of classical formal clothes. As the second youngest legislator in Colonial Canada, and one of the thirty six first time attendees, he was willing to make a good first impression. Lincoln was primarily an observer, however many of his friends, colleagues and acquaintances soon recognized Lincoln’s oratory skills and with his newfound ease in bilingualism between English and Quebecois French, and asked him to draft bills for them becoming an intermediary of sorts.
When Lincoln announced his re-election bid in 1836, he addressed the controversial hot topic about suffrage within the colonial election schemes. Many in the opposing Hunter Party wished to expand suffrage to all white males within the party. The Hunter Party simply wished to gain the votes of the incoming Irish immigrant population and the Bonapartist immigrants who had fled to Quebec after Louis XIX started to crack down on them in metropolitan France. Lincoln supported the traditional Patriot position of expanding voting suffrage to naturalized immigrants with property ownership.
Lincoln was re-elected in 1836 and as the top vote getter in the Montreal delegations, surprising many of the Quebecois nationalists who found an Anglo now winning most of the votes in one of Quebec’s most prestigious cities. Lincoln continued to support for more economic reforms within the Colony of Lower Canada, and persuaded the legislature to perhaps look into an inquiry to aid the American refugees coming from America. This is of course attributed to the fact that Lincoln himself was an American immigrant, and Lincoln wished and hoped that other American immigrants would get a proper living in British North America.
In 1839, the Colony of Lower Canada and Upper Canada both signed into action, the American Refugee and Immigration Act that would create refugee hotels and areas for the American immigrants and refugees to become naturalized into, slowly integrating within the Canadian lifestyle and system. Lincoln for his status as a former American and an American immigrant was deemed to be the best man to handle the Lower Canadian Refugee Committee formed after this act. Lincoln took up this position in 1839 and became the Director of the Lower Canadian Refugee Committee and mostly oversaw the naturalization of the francophone American refugees into Lower Canada.
Meanwhile however, Lincoln’s infamous luck came into play n 1840 when he continued his job as both colonial MP and director. One of the new chief immigrants from America was former President Nathan Sanford and his family. Sanford was only willing to take refugee status as he was still very much an American man and American patriot, even old as he was however he filed for Lower Canadian citizenship for his children and grandchildren. Sanford’s name was of course well known in the political apparatus of the Canadian colonies. Lincoln met with the now old and wizened Sanford face to face, and with his oratory skills managed to impress the old president of the United States. It was during this meeting that Lincoln met with his future wife, Charlotte Sanford. Lincoln would soon court her and marry her in late 1841.
Charlotte Lincoln nee Sanford.
Lincoln becoming director and his well-managed management of the immigration and refugee crisis made him well known at least within the political bodies of the colonies, and when a small financial panic erupted in British North America in 1840, he stood alone as some of the few calm MPs during the panic. He proposed that the colony buy public lands at a discount from the central government in London, and then sell them to new settlers at a profit. Next he proposed a graduated land tax that would have shared the tax burden instead of heaping them on peasants and farmers. His ideas were adopted alongside a slew of other economic reforms called the Reformes d’Amelioration or Betterment Reforms in Lower Canada. His proposed reforms worked perfectly as intended, making his policies and political stances all the more popular.
When war between Russia broke out in 1842, suspicion grew among the Canadian born Canadians about the American immigrants, and how they were disloyal against the British crown and the mother country. Lincoln disabused this notion, and became one of the proponents of sending 5,000 specialized engineers to fight against the Russians in aid of the British. Whilst this plan didn’t go through, his willingness to stand with Britain was noted.” Lincoln: A Biography of Canada’s Father. Ottawa Publications, 1987.
***
***
“The fighting in the Balkans and the Caucasian Mountains was on the frontiers of Russian logistics, and as such maintaining an army for the Russians in the Danubian principalities and the Caucasian mountains was a very hard task for the Russian Empire and its Imperial Army. However the situation was very different in the Baltic and Finland region. St. Petersburg, the capital of Imperial Russia stood on Ingrian shores, and the Baltic and Finland was connected directly to this region of the country. As such, the logistical support for the Imperial Russian Army was very high in this region. Finland could be reinforced by 100,000 troops at a minute’s notice from Ingria and Novgorod, as well as Pskov.
The Typical Swedish and Norwegian trooper during the Eastern War.
Throughout the winter, no fighting had taken place in earnest as both sides decided to take an unofficial break from the whirlwind fighting that had taken place in 1842, and decide their next steps of war in 1843. Britain and France hoped to divert Russian reinforcements from the Black Sea back to the north by having Sweden-Norway enter the war. Sweden-Norway and King Oscar I for their part were no fools. They knew that the Russian Army would be far stronger in their theatre of war rather than the Black Sea. As such they had taken precautions. The Swedish Army numbered some 40,000 well trained professionals and the Norwegian Army numbered some 25,000 well trained professionals as well, and in particular, the Norwegian Army was suited for amphibious warfare, whilst the Swedish Army was suited for direct confrontational warfare. Oscar I and the Swedish government intended to use this to their advantage.
The Swedish fleet had managed to link up with the Anglo-French navies at the ending months of 1842 before the Baltic Sea froze up, and the Swedish Navy had been unofficially aiding the French and British navies in navigating the ice free areas of the Baltic sea throughout the winter. The Swedes were waiting for the ice to break as attacking during the icy season could allow the Russians to simply march over the ice and capture Swedish cities, as they had done in the Finnish War of 1808 and 1809 which saw Sweden lose Finland to the Russian Empire.
By mid February, 1843, the ice was peeling away and the remaining ice was too unstable for any army to cross. As such, King Oscar I decided to honor his new alliance with London and Paris and called the Norwegian and Swedish parliament and asked them for their permission to declare war. The Swedish parliament was more willing to go to war, and immediately handed legislation to Oscar I, whilst the Norwegian parliament debated for a week before handing the appropriate legislation giving him permission to declare war on the Russian Empire. With legislation in place, on February 27, 1843, the Kingdom of Sweden-Norway declared war on the Russian Empire, citing its alliance with France and Britain.
The first action of the Swedes and Norwegians during the war actually happened one day before the declaration of war, which had been ordered to take the Russians by surprise. From Stockholm and Oregrund, as well as Forsmark, 10 Swedish warships, led by the Swedish flagship, HMS Gustav Adolf II managed to cross the Alands Sea, and appeared on the shores of Eckero, the western most side of the Aland Islands. The Swedish warships opened fire at the Russian naval defenses in the area and after eliminating them through a massive bombardment, the 5th Norwegian Marine Regiment, 8th Norwegian Marine Regiment, the 3rd Swedish Marine Regiment and the 1st Swedish Infantry Regiment, a total of 5,000 men landed at Eckero to conduct a ‘liberation’ of the islands. The Swedish population of the islands certainly did not like the Russian government and in many cases aided the landing enemy forces.
The Aland Islands.
By the end of March 10th, 1843, the islands had been cleared out of Russian presence in the islands, and the islands were fully occupied by the Norwegians and Swedish. At the Town’s Hall in the capital of Aland, Mariehamn, the legislative members of the Aland Islands declared their allegiance to the Swedish government once again after 36 years, and declared King Oscar I to be their sovereign, and not Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.
Whilst Sweden-Norway was successful in the Aland Islands, the Russians were more than welcoming for the Swedes to try an invasion of the rest of Finland. A small Swedish force of 3,000 probed the Swedo-Russian border at Tornio where they found a Russian contingent of 5000 troops and were defeated at the Battle of Tornio, forcing the Swedes to stay at their side of the border for the moment. Oscar I halted any invasion attempt before the army could be sufficiently mobilized and sufficiently prepared for a grueling long invasion of the Finnish coastlines.” Oscar I the Great of Sweden and Norway: Crimean War Edition, Kalmar Publishing, 2008
“The idea of the Ottomans sponsoring an independent Armenia was not a new idea, nor was it a novel idea. It had been floated around in the court of Constantinople too many times for it to have been a new idea. During the countless Ottoman-Persian Wars, the Ottomans had tried to create an Armenian state acting as their vassal state in the north, and in the wars that followed with Russia, the Ottomans had tried to appeal to the Armenian populace as well. As such the Ottoman government was fully aware of the case of an independent Armenia.
On January 29, 1843, the Ottoman government declared the State of Erivan to be an independent state, and that the boundaries of the state would be that of the Erivan Oblast within the Russian Empire. Garabet Balyan, the Ottoman Armenian General who had captured Erivan the previous year was declared the first Ottoman Governor-General of Erivan whilst the population of Erivan elected one Akabe Arakelian to be their first Prime Minister. The new legislative assembly of Erivan declared Sultan Abdulmejid I of the Ottoman Empire to be the Grand Duke of Erivan, and the saint of the Erivan Coptic Church, pulling the two states into a personal union. Abdulmejid I formally accepted the offer in a public assembly in Burs on February 14.
flag of the Grand Duchy of Erivan
Basically a copy pasted flag of the Antiquity Armenian kingdom.
This declaration had profound affects throughout the rest of Europe. Within the Ottoman Empire itself, volunteer centers for the army in Anatolia were swamped by enthusiastic Armenian volunteers so much so that Minister For War For the Exalted Ottoman State, Mehmed Cebal Pasha, jokingly stated that ‘Our army is full of Armenians now. We need no one else’.
Within Russia itself, the declaration was met with aghast expressions. Whilst the majority of the Russian Armenian population was centered in and around the area of the Erivan Oblast, there were quite a few of Armenians, majority even, in some places like Karabakh within the Karabakh Oblast, and in the eastern Tifilis area. The Russians stamped down on the Armenians left in their territory by pushing forward the anti-Coptic Laws in early 1843 which discriminated the state against the Coptic Armenian population of the state, and basically surprised the identity of being Armenian within the empire. Many in the empire, at least the reformists, warned Tsar Nicholas I that doing such an act could embolden the Russian Armenians to move against the Russian state even further, however most of the state heartily agreed with Nicholas I’s new anti-Armenian drive as Armenian printing press’s were closed down and Coptic Church’s were converted into Orthodox cathedrals.
Jan Zygmunt Skrzynecki
The idea of an independent Armenia also reared its nationalistic head somewhere else as well. Namely, in the Polish territories of the Russian Empire. One Jan Zygmunt Skrzynecki, who had once commanded the Duchy of Warsaw’s forces within the Napoleonic Wars, asked why was Poland a part of Russia? It was supposed to be independent, after all. Even though formally on paper Poland’s autonomy remained, in reality the de-facto situation that existed within Poland was that the autonomy was meaningless, as it was a farce of epic proportions. Zygmunt knew that there were around 1000 Polish exiles within the Ottoman Empire fighting for the freedom of Poland by siding with the Ottomans. Zygmunt decided he would follow these 1000 exiles, and conferred his idea with other prominent Polish marshals and generals, namely Henryk Dembinski and Maciej Rybinski. Rybinski and Dembinski agreed with Zygmunt’s plan, and the three generals defected from Russian command and formed the Polish Legions, fighting for the Ottoman Empire, and around 6,000 Polish Legionnaires would escape from Russia and enter into service within the Ottoman Army, which formed the Ottoman Polish Legions to fight against the Russians. Famously Maciej Rybinski converted to islam after reaching the Ottoman empire, and entered service formally as an Ottoman general, when he was given the name Mehmed Rybinski Pasha.
Maciej Rybinski
All of these efforts were of course supported by London and Paris. Louis XIX of course knew that France had massive pro-Polish sympathies, as many within France hadn’t forgotten how the Poles had fought for the French Empire loyally, and within London itself, anti-Russian sentiment meant that they would support any and all anti-Russian separatism that existed within the boundaries of the Russian Empire.” The Armenians and Poles: A Forgotten Legacy of the East, Osprey Publishing 1998.
“Emperor Ninko of Japan hadn’t been enthusiastic to go to war in all honesty however, he was overruled by the very enthusiastic Japanese Imperial Diet, who were fed up with overt European, mostly Dutch, British and French influence in the Japanese State. The Shogun of the Empire, Tokugawa Ieyoshi, was certainly not pro-west and instead was a proponent of creating an all-Asian faction and alliance against European encroachment in the continent, favoring an alliance with the Tian Dynasty, the Himalayan Empire, and the powers of Siam, Dai Viet etc. It seems that Ieyoshi had forgotten that the Tian Dynasty was loosely allied with the French Kingdom, the Himalayan Empire was allied with the British, and that Siam and Dai Viet was a hot ground of influence between the competing French, British, Dutch and Danubian traders of the region.
Tokugawa Ieyoshi
Nonetheless, Ieyoshi, after having taken power in 1837 had led the Japanese Empire into a time of modernization. In 1838 he had promulgated the Tenpo Reforms, in concert with Emperor Ninko, which was aimed at converting the Japanese economy from a peasantry based economy to that of a banking and credit economy much like the rest of Europe. Using Dutch and Russian observers, the Japanese managed to convert their economy fully by 1841, with the Imperial Kyoto Bank, being created in 1840 as the central bank of the Japanese Empire. There was some idea among the western influenced sections of society for promulgating elections within the empire as well however Ieyoshi tramped down on this notion with the aid of the Daimyos and the Samurai, all of whom knew that elections would mean the end of their power and influence in the state.
Nonetheless, administratively, Ieyoshi and Ninko started to create a more western modeled system. The provinces of the Daimyos were made into full provinces, and a modern taxation system was also implemented, with a portion of the taxes going into the Daimyos, who became hereditary governors of the provinces, for a lack of a proper term. The Samurai formed the aegis of the new Japanese Armed Forces, and many Samurai entered service into the new and reformed Japanese Army which was formed in 1838. Economically, the Japanese were willing to conduct a full industrialization scheme, however they didn’t have the money to conduct a full industrialization scheme until much later, so for the moment, the Japanese government had pursued a home industrialization movement, creating a industrial movement from the grassroots level.
The Japanese Army however was not ready for a full war with any European power in 1843. The most they had done for training was going off to Hokkaido and defeating the technologically backward Aino rebels in the area. The Samurai Legions as they were being called, were professional and dangerous if used properly, however they were still rife with clan and Daimyo loyalties instead of loyalty to the state, and the supply and creation of modern weapons was in very small amounts. The situation of the navy was even worse. Around 120 vessels of war existed in the Japanese Navy, however only 11 of these were capable of handling and fighting European vessels. The rest would be like sitting ducks for the Royal Navy and the French Navy. Marshal Kuroda Nagahiro, the Daimyo of Fukuoka, was given command of the 10,000 expeditionary army they were forming to invade Sakhalin. Nagahiro himself protested against the war, stating that there was not a chance in hell that they could take on the French and British on proper terms and come out victorious.
Kuroda Nagahiro in 1870
Nonetheless, he accepted command, and 3000 Japanese troops led by Nagahiro landed on the shores of French Sakhalin on February 18th, and started to fight it out with the French garrison present there.
The Japanese government also had another motive during the fighting. The Russo-Japanese Alliance was an alliance of convenience, and nothing more, however a clause in the treaty explicitly ended the free movement of Russians and Japanese in the island, and the Russo-Japanese Alliance Treaty had divided the island into half, with the northern half of the island being given to Russia, whilst the southern half of the island was given to the Japanese, as a part of their alliance and goodwill with one another.
On the other hand, both sides needed each other a lot. Japan needed Russia to be their gateway to the European world, and to export their science, technology and information back to Kyoto. On the other hand, Russia needed Japan to be a semi-powerful ally, enough to distract the western powers and its enemies so that their own holdings in the far east could be secured. As a result, the alliance became one of convenience. The two sides weren’t even communicating with each other when Nagahiro landed in Sakhalin, whilst a small Russian landing party of 100 men landed completely unaware in northern Sakhalin that their Japanese ally was doing the same in Southern Sakhalin.” The Russo-Japanese Alliance: The Rising Sun and the Bear. University of Kyoto, 1988.
“Around 5,000 men under Lieutenant Colonel David Price set off from British Borealia and decided to commit themselves towards an invasion of Russian Alaska on March 3rd, 1843 as the snow lessened enough for a military invasion to take place. The British had intelligence that the Russian garrison in Alaska was only 2000 strong, and centered around Novo-Archangelsk. This intelligence was wrong. The Russians had neglected Alaska for far too long, and the garrison on Novo-Archangelsk was truly only about 800 strong. However what made the Russians a canny opponent was the fact that the Russians had defensive entrenchments in and around the area, and more importantly, the British could not transport heavy guns and artillery through the snow, whilst the Russians had the heavy guns present in their forts to attack the enemy. The navies of both sides would be completely useless with one another as the frozen tracts of the area made the navies of the area unable to navigate the surrounding sea lanes. The Russian naval warships at port as well were partially frozen, however they at least could be used as artillery carriers against the invading British troops.
The british however also knew that they basically only had to capture Novo-Archangelsk, or in British terms, Sitka, and then the battle for Alaska would be over, as the Russians didn’t have a real presence else where in Alaska other than a few whaling outposts in the region for trade with the native population.
Novo Archangelsk in 1838
The 5,000 men marched up the British Colombian Coastline entering Russian territory wearing heavy clothing but taking less amount of ammunition to allow themselves to move quickly. On May, as the ice gave out completely, the troops arrived to Kuiu Island, which was an island away from the Sitka island, which harbored Novo-Archangelsk. The British troops now numbered only 3500, as around 500 had died from the cold and supply situation, whilst around 1000 were left behind in secure areas and depots as protection against native raids in the area.
The 3500 troops then began to construct boats in order to cross the sea towards Sitka island and with the aid of the British Pacific Fleet which steered north after the ice gave away, managed to commandeer around 20 ships and used the 20 ships to cross from Kuiu island onto Sitka.
The British landed in Baranof Lake, right at the mount of the pass between two major mountain ranges, with the pass moving towards Blue Lake, which overlooked Novo-Archangelsk on the other side of the island.
The British passed through the passes in the mountain following Baranof river, and eventually made their way to Blue Lake, arriving on May 27th on the area.
The Royal Navy appeared from British Borealia in order to aid the British forces, and around 6 warships of the British Pacific Squadron began to bombard the port of Novo-Archangelsk under the command of Captain Richard Price, who was the cousin of David Price. The bombardment distracted the Russians enough for David Price and his men to overcome the first entrenchments and enter the second line of Russian defense. A small landing party of 40 marines was arranged by Captain Richard Price as well, and the marines landed in Novo-Archangelsk harbor and destroyed the port facilities, and caused general havoc, diverting Russian attention even more. Finally after three days of bombardment, and after the British troops entered the citadel of the city after fierce hand to hand cold weather fighting, the Russian commander, Vladimir Agapov, the garrison commander, surrendered the town to the British forces.
Thus, the British conquest of Alaska had ended.” The British Conquest of Alaska, The Eastern War, 2018.
“Andrew Jackson within the United American Union was being caught up in what Jackson called the Spoils System. In politics, and government, a spoils system is a practices in which a political group after winning a victory, give governmental civil service jobs to its supporters, friends and relatives as reward for working towards the attained victory and as an incentive to keep working together – as opposed to a merit based system, where offices were awarded on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political affiliation.
The term was derived from the phase ‘to the victors go the spoils’ by New Jersey Filibuster and Senator, William L. Marcy, referring to Andrew Jackson’s victory in the aftermath of the Gaines Rebellion with the term spoils meaning goods or benefits taken from the loser in a competition, or victory. Similar spoils systems were and are common in other nations that were traditionally based on tribal organizations and other kinship groups and localism in general.
a canadian satire of Jackson's spoils system showing jackson riding a pig.
Jackson’s Spoils System also directly affected the Barnburner and Hunkers Factions within the political system of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Barnburners and Hunkers were the name of two opposing factions of the New Jersey and Pennsylvania independent senators and congressmen. The main issue diving the two factions was that of slavery and the question of favoring the current dictatorial government or not, with the barnburners being the anti-slavery, and anti-governmental faction. While this division occurred within the context of Pennsylvanian and New Jersey politics, it reflected the national divisions in the American Union in the years preceding the First American People’s Movement.
The Barnburners were the radical anti-governmental and anti-slavery faction. The term barnburner was applied and derived from the idea that someone who would burn down his entire barn to get rid of a rat infestation, instead of applying rat traps. In this case it applied to men who were thought to be willing to destroy all governmental corporations, in order to root out their abuses.
The Barnburners opposed expanding the public debt, and were opposed to the power of the large state established corporations. They also stood up for proper state local control without interfering with the federal government. Prominent American politicians such as attorney general Silas Wright Junior and financial theoretician John Adams Dix etc were members of the Barnburners.
The hunkers on the other hand were the pro-governmental faction. They opposed the barnburners, favored state banks, internal improvements, and creating a compromise between the agrarian economics and industrial economics of the country.
This issue became a burning one because of the fact that whilst Andrew Jackson was dictatorial, he hadn’t taken away power from the local councils of the government, and retained the local council system, and maintained its semi-democracy within the country, making it the only real democratic system left in the country. The Barnburners would eventually apply for aid from the Democratic Union of American Youths or the DUAY, and came into contact with Robert E. Lee and his group of political dissenters. The Barnburners and the DAUY held several meetings in 1841 and 42, wherein the two sides decided to ally with one another. This alliance with define the coming 1st American People’s Movement.” Origins of the American Peoples Movements. University of Richmond, 1993.
“Lincoln’s first session in the colonial legislature of Lower Canada took place and ran from 1834 till 1835. In preparation for the session, Lincoln borrowed some 100 pounds from one of his richer friends in the area, and spent around 25 pounds to buy his first suit of classical formal clothes. As the second youngest legislator in Colonial Canada, and one of the thirty six first time attendees, he was willing to make a good first impression. Lincoln was primarily an observer, however many of his friends, colleagues and acquaintances soon recognized Lincoln’s oratory skills and with his newfound ease in bilingualism between English and Quebecois French, and asked him to draft bills for them becoming an intermediary of sorts.
When Lincoln announced his re-election bid in 1836, he addressed the controversial hot topic about suffrage within the colonial election schemes. Many in the opposing Hunter Party wished to expand suffrage to all white males within the party. The Hunter Party simply wished to gain the votes of the incoming Irish immigrant population and the Bonapartist immigrants who had fled to Quebec after Louis XIX started to crack down on them in metropolitan France. Lincoln supported the traditional Patriot position of expanding voting suffrage to naturalized immigrants with property ownership.
Lincoln was re-elected in 1836 and as the top vote getter in the Montreal delegations, surprising many of the Quebecois nationalists who found an Anglo now winning most of the votes in one of Quebec’s most prestigious cities. Lincoln continued to support for more economic reforms within the Colony of Lower Canada, and persuaded the legislature to perhaps look into an inquiry to aid the American refugees coming from America. This is of course attributed to the fact that Lincoln himself was an American immigrant, and Lincoln wished and hoped that other American immigrants would get a proper living in British North America.
In 1839, the Colony of Lower Canada and Upper Canada both signed into action, the American Refugee and Immigration Act that would create refugee hotels and areas for the American immigrants and refugees to become naturalized into, slowly integrating within the Canadian lifestyle and system. Lincoln for his status as a former American and an American immigrant was deemed to be the best man to handle the Lower Canadian Refugee Committee formed after this act. Lincoln took up this position in 1839 and became the Director of the Lower Canadian Refugee Committee and mostly oversaw the naturalization of the francophone American refugees into Lower Canada.
Meanwhile however, Lincoln’s infamous luck came into play n 1840 when he continued his job as both colonial MP and director. One of the new chief immigrants from America was former President Nathan Sanford and his family. Sanford was only willing to take refugee status as he was still very much an American man and American patriot, even old as he was however he filed for Lower Canadian citizenship for his children and grandchildren. Sanford’s name was of course well known in the political apparatus of the Canadian colonies. Lincoln met with the now old and wizened Sanford face to face, and with his oratory skills managed to impress the old president of the United States. It was during this meeting that Lincoln met with his future wife, Charlotte Sanford. Lincoln would soon court her and marry her in late 1841.
Charlotte Lincoln nee Sanford.
Lincoln becoming director and his well-managed management of the immigration and refugee crisis made him well known at least within the political bodies of the colonies, and when a small financial panic erupted in British North America in 1840, he stood alone as some of the few calm MPs during the panic. He proposed that the colony buy public lands at a discount from the central government in London, and then sell them to new settlers at a profit. Next he proposed a graduated land tax that would have shared the tax burden instead of heaping them on peasants and farmers. His ideas were adopted alongside a slew of other economic reforms called the Reformes d’Amelioration or Betterment Reforms in Lower Canada. His proposed reforms worked perfectly as intended, making his policies and political stances all the more popular.
When war between Russia broke out in 1842, suspicion grew among the Canadian born Canadians about the American immigrants, and how they were disloyal against the British crown and the mother country. Lincoln disabused this notion, and became one of the proponents of sending 5,000 specialized engineers to fight against the Russians in aid of the British. Whilst this plan didn’t go through, his willingness to stand with Britain was noted.” Lincoln: A Biography of Canada’s Father. Ottawa Publications, 1987.
***
Interesting, although basing the Japanese military on the Samurai is asking for trouble. They were the world's greatest warriors... once but now they haven't fought a war, or at least a real knockdown drag out war in well over two centuries. The result is marred in tradition and hidebound thinking and training for duels and display rather than realistic combat.
What happened OTL (and how Nobunaga and his successors won in the first place) was to expand out of a small military caste and bring in new thinking from outside the traditional warriors. Also OTL most of the major power's were busy in the two or more decades after Japan was forced open and that gave time to clean house and catch up.
Moving now is asking for the Opium wars and a humiliation on the level of OTL China.
This here line seems very interesting. Honest Abe still making history as a Canadian.
It's about time modern ideologies start popping up it would be boring just to see rebranded communism has a major ideology here so let me suggest some things.
I think Benthamiteism would make for a great ideology here. It was very liberal and it flexible so we would see a lot of different strains popup
I think Benthamiteism would make for a great ideology here. It was very liberal and it flexible so we would see a lot of different strains popup
A Guide, Resource, and Repository of Could-have-been Ideologies for your Alternate History
IMO, that is the great folly of the transhumanists and, more broadly, of techno-utopians throughout history. They understood correctly that old ways of life would be rendered obsolete by new technology, but they never put much thought into what kinds of societies those systems would actually...
www.alternatehistory.com
They still have a powerful martial tradition, and are very professional troops, however........again clan and daimyo loyalties prevent cohesion......
Indeed
Interesting analogy
whilst that thread goes into several obscure ideologies, that existed otl, i intend to create my own new ideologies ittl here in this timeline. You will be seeing completely new ideologies ittl. For example, Neo-Loyalism is one that is present in the ittl USA as a ittl new political ideology.
Russia and Japan are going to lose, they're both unable to take on the entire Western world at this point, definitely far to early for Japan to even attempt it. Russia will probably lose Poland and Armenia, and those nations being independent will cause problems for Austria, Prussia and the Ottomans. Poland for Austria and Prussia, both have land that was formally Polish and nationalism is on the rise right now. Same problem with an independent Armenia for the Ottomans, even if they have good relations with the armenians in their territory.
Not sure what Japan will lose, maybe Okinawa to the British as a treaty port, that's about all I can think of, they don't really have anything of worth to nick so conquering them would be rather pointless.
Not sure what Japan will lose, maybe Okinawa to the British as a treaty port, that's about all I can think of, they don't really have anything of worth to nick so conquering them would be rather pointless.
polish independence is going to be very very hard without boots on the ground, which means prussian or danubian intervenetion in the war on side of the ottomans, unlikely
okinawa is the capital of ryuku, which is independent as of right. a port city would likely go towards the other cities like nagasaki etc.