Part 57: The World Now Turns (...-1870)
A century has passed since the fanning of the winds of the Great German Revolution, and if the people of the time - Maximilian Schwarzburg, Martynas Pacas, Arthur Bachelot - were to see the world of 1870, they would find it completely unrecognizable. Steam power has now fully replaced wind and animals as the vehicle of the new age, and where once man would ride a horse, now he would board a train, where once he would take a sailship to cross a sea, now he would step into a steam vessel. The old artisan and agricultural society was gone, replaced by a modern industrial world, where one's standing and power is determined not by his birth, but by how many livres he has in his pocket. Long forgotten were the days of absolute monarchs and feudal divisions of land, and ideas which the people of the 19th century took for granted, like, say, the universal right to vote, would have been unthinkable only a few hundred years ago. The principles of divine right and absolute rule were being thrown out and replaced by suffrage, equality among citizens and constitutionalism, even in countries which were still trying to hold onto the ways of old, countries like Lithuania, Turkey, India and Spain. Even art was taking a sharp turn - no longer were painters and writers slaves to the whim of their patrons, more and more of them were trying to live completely from selling their works, dripping in poverty in the process, but pushing art and culture towards a revolution.
It was around this time that dark clouds began to look over the horizon. The Paris System, a replacement of the Amsterdam System, had been surprisingly effective, and the continent of Europe had not seen a full-scale war for a century - but that did not mean that enmities between European nations were forgotten. A new generation was born, one which forgot what war and suffering felt, and thus was itching to start the cycle all over again.
For fame and glory. For mud and crushed dreams.
In Asia, the ancient empires of India and China remained throughout the century. While the Mughal Empire entered an era of innovation and a rapid game of catch-up with the West, the Shun dynasty stagnated and failed to pick up on the zeitgeist of the time period. The Emperors would have much rather closed their country and did things their own way rather than sacrificed their pride to adopt the ideas of the Western devils. Of course, not everything can by blamed on China's arrogance - the fact that it was much, much farther away from Europe than India meant that contacts with the Westerners were scarce and far in between. Though, in this particular instance, the fact that the Shun emperors kicked the Dutch, the only major European power which bothered to reach them, from their ports did not help... While the Shun closed themselves, the Mughals began to interfere in their sphere of influence. They had already asserted their domination over the Indonesian islands and most of South-East Asia, protecting it from Western imperialism while at the same time turning many local states, like Burma into Mughal protectorates, and now the Indians began to encroach on Tibet, Ayutthaya and Vietnam, states firmly under the Chinese sphere. In the farthest east, Japan and Korea were also spared from Western conquest due to managing to adopt Western weapons and techniques, as well as a large degree of centralization which helped both states to start their own modernization programs, similar to India.
In Vespucia, meanwhile, the days of an empty unclaimed continent were over, as outside of the deepest reaches of the Amazon Rainforest and the cold and barren North Vespucian northwest, the entirety of the New World was now claimed and populated. In North Vespucia during this time, the VFS and New Sweden both expanded far to the west, Mejico was gnawing on the arid, mountainous lands to the southwest, colonizing them piece by piece, while New England, now under direct British administration, laid claims to the western coast. Deep in the continent, meanwhile, the Native Vespucian tribes of Pueblo and Shoshone were putting up a tough resistance against European and Nahua settlers, while at the same time adopting many of their technologies and social structures to reform their societies.
In the 1860s, economic development in Europe began to slow, even going into negative percentages in some countries, and this series of events marked the end of the Second Industrial Revolution. What happened to cause this weakness in the European Dream? Well, in many ways, the Paris System was at fault here. After the German Revolutionary Wars, France and Lithuania, the winners of the conflict, swore to prevent any more wars in the European continent - and since at the time they were the strongest countries in Europe, nobody tried to challenge them. But what happens when you combine lack of military conflict with rising living standards, improved medicine and quality of life that the Industrial Revolution brought? That's right - you see a massive population boom. The population of countries like France, Germania and Visegrad rose so quickly that their economic growth could no longer catch up, leading to mass poverty, starvation and unemployment, which brought upon economic weakness. In addition, Europe did not have many resources to begin with.
What Europe needed was to discharge it's surplus population - but where? In the 1860s, millions of Europeans emigrated to the New World, especially the VFS and New France, both strong and wealthy Vespucian nations, and while this alleviated the situation somewhat, it also resulted in a brain and workforce drain - many of the people who left were young, energetic and ambitious, many of them had degrees which were now applied not in their homelands, but in Vespucia. It was a one-way drain, too,,unlike, say, colonial migration.
Colonial migration, you say?..
But are there any places in the world which Europe could colonize and discharge it's population surplus in?
Hmmm.
Wait a minute, what is that vast untamed land to the south of the Mediterranean?
Map of the world in 1870
Lithuania was one of the few nations in Europe where overpopulation was not a problem. Sure, it went through a population boom like everyone else, but it had vast strategic depth and lots of untamed, barely inhabited territory in the south and east, which pretty much invited settlers from more populous territories in the nation's heartland to come in. However, Lithuania had many, many, many other problems to deal with, already detailed many times before. It's population was less educated, it was a despotic absolute monarchy, it lagged behind in industrialization, it was extremely multicultural with tensions between the three main nations rising every day. It's not that the monarchy was unaware of these headaches - oh yes, they were - but for decades, nobody could agree on how they were meant to be solved.
In 1865, a new Emperor ascended to the throne after his father's timely death -
Žygimantas III, grandson of Jonas II, the first Emperor after the Restoration. Merely 29 years old at the time of his coronation, Žygimantas III was surprisingly sharp for his age - he understood that the current system of government of Lithuania is unsustainable, even if most of his court didn't agree with him on that. He sympathized with the Federalist movement, popular in Lithuania and Ruthenia, and while the idea of giving up his absolute power in favor of a parliament did not sting him the right way, he was nevertheless interested in the possibility of granting wide autonomy to both Ruthenians and Russians to stabilize the nation's situation, at least for the time being. In a surprising and controversial rule, he dismissed most of his advisors and instead called for an "Assembly of the Nobility" ("Bajorų asamblėja") to negotiate the content of what he perceived as the most important document in the history of the nation - the
Constitution of the Federal Empire of Lithuanians and Slavs.
Five years of negotiations took place, marked by harsh conflicts between the protectionist and the republican parts of the nobility, while the lower classes protested that they do not have a say, however, after all this time debating, it appeared as if an agreement was finally reached. Lithuania would become a semi-constitutional monarchy, with a parliament composed of aristocrats and a few token capitalists elected from each of the three consistent viceroyalties, but the Emperor would nevertheless have the final say on all laws, hold a right to dissolve the parliament at will, appoint a Prime Minister of his own liking and keep reserve emergency powers. Not very democratic at all, but it was a big step forward for a nation that had never tasted democracy. When the final bits of the planned constitution were tinkered out, Žygimantas III was not present - he was in Nizhny Novgorod, where his father constructed a royal resort, with a hunting lodge, swimming pools and the like. Why was he there? Well, two weeks earlier, he had finally married, with the bride being a Swedish princess, and thus wanted some rest and free time with his wife. Of course, as soon as news of the Constitution being finished and ready to sign arrived, he ordered the servants to prepare a chariot and head back to Vilnius.
To Vilnius through Russia.
A nation which is famous for it's deep hatred against anything Lithuanian. Even if the Mutual Understanding weakened that hatred, it was still there.
A nation with many radicals, anarchists and extreme nationalists.
And the Emperor and his consort made the choice to not bring their guards with them - after all, why should some soldiers be around them, young, romantic newlyweds?
And then...
And then...
