How do the Ummatists view the guys in Aceh (I casually mentioned in one of my Shun China updates that a regime which "combines Purple Unitarianism (TTL's Fascism) with fanatical Islam" took power there)? Also, is Osmanoglu connected in any way to the (powerless) Ottoman government-in-exile?
The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline
- Thread starter Augenis
- Start date
I imagine that the Ummatists would have stern words for Aceh. First, Aceh is Unitarian-- that's enough to leave a bad taste in most Ummatists' mouths. Second, combining Unitarianism with sectarian/puritanical Islam doesn't make it any better, since the Ummatists disavow that kind of radicalism. The Ummatists are still divided on their attitudes to non-Muslims, but they generally agree that Muslims should treat each other with respect. Their pluralism's a bit weird; I like to think of it as, "I disapprove of how you pray, but I will defend to the death your right to pray it."
Selim Osmanoglu has no connection to the Ottoman government in exile. Instead of lugging around the dead weight of his family name, he's decided to make his own path in life.
So, Selim's okay if the Sultan of Egypt decides he'd like to become Kayser-i-Rum (read: proclaim a "restored" Ottoman Empire using the fact his dynasty is a cadet branch of the House of Osman)?
Selim wouldn't mind his relative in Egypt making claims to Ottoman authority-- although he'd very much prefer that such claims be backed up by (well-planned and likely-to-succeed) action against Unitarian Turkey. If an "opening" is found against the Turkish Unitarians, the despoilers of the Two Holy Cities and of Jerusalem... well, he'd leave Africa to his subordinates and run north to make sure that opening doesn't close. Even then, he'd probably leave the task of ruling a post-Unitarian Middle East to someone else. Selim's a soldier, he leaves the task of governing to old and venerable types like Faisal bin Hussein.
This timeline has a funny habit of using OTL figures' names and pictures in weird places so I figured I'd join in :^)
I wonder how Chinese Muslims (the Hui) are viewing this? Were there any prominent Hui who travelled to Cairo?
The pictures are understandable given that we can only get pictures from OTL and there are only so many of those to go around for a given context. The names? I’ve only seen that happen once (even then I’m not sure) with “Vladimir Ulyanov” as a 19th(?) century Volga Russian leader. Your updates are good, but I’m getting hung up on some details.
Panjang Umur Nusantara!
Panjang Umur Nusantara!: The rise of the Nusantaran Confederation
For centuries, the minor states of Nusantara (OOC: TTL’s term for Maritime Southeast Asia) have been squabbling with each other since the fall of the Majaphit Empire in the 16th century and so have become the pawns of their neighbors with Malaya falling under French control and the Moros becoming part of Nan Lusang. With the exception of Aceh and Borneo, the Nusantaran states were largely weak and defenseless but the rise of nationalist sentiments made many Nusantaran intellectuals feel that Nusantara would be stronger as a unified nation as opposed to squabling Kingdoms. Gradually, ideas of Nusantaran unity seeped into the popular consciousness of the people of Nusantara along with the aristocrats of Nusantara with movements calling for a united Nusantara which would be a strong force in the world arising. The Nusantaran “Persekutuan” (Federation) movement gained many adherents in the 1920s and 30s due to the rise of the Unified Indian State, with it’s radical state atheism and policies of uniformity and militarism, being percieved by many as a threat which should be confronted as a united front of the peoples of Nusantara. The Persekutuan movement was supported by the Empire of the Great Shun, the colossus of East Asia, as the Shun Dynasty sought new allies in East Asia as a counterweight to the Unified Indian State. Among the major proponents of “Persekutuan” among the Nusantaran elite was Sultan Kuwat of Banten. He envisioned a federation of Nusantaran states united in a federation. He was aided in this by Suhendra Budiaman, a nationalist intellectual who was head of the “Congress of United Nusantarans”, a nationalist movement dedicated to the creation of a united Nusantara.
Suhendra Budiaman, head of the Congress of United Nusantarans
In the aftermath of the French Flu, voices for federation among the states of Nusantara grew more vocal as many in the Nusantaran business class believed that a unified Nusantara would be able to recover faster than the collection of statelets which Nusantara had and many Nusantarans believed a Nusantaran Federation would be more able to stand up to the Unified Indian State than the collection of kingdoms which Nusantara was. In the 1930s, the “Congress of United Nusantarans" had become a mass movement calling for the unification of Nusantara, a movement few of Nusantara’s leaders would be able to ignore. With the exception of Aceh, where a Purple Unitarian regime had arisen after the September Coup, the leaders of the various kingdoms and statelets of Nusantara agreed in February 1938 to convene a convention on the unification of Nusantara into a “Nusantaran Confederation" pattered after the Italian Confederation and with the encouragement of Shun China.
The Convention was held in the city of Banten, the center of the Nusantaran Persekutuan movement, which pushed for the unity of the peoples of Nusantara under one banner and was marked by divisions between Javans, Sundans, Balinese, Sulawasians, Sumatrans, and Borneoans. The minor statelets of Java, (Southern) Sumatra, the Sunda Islands, and Sulawasi did not want Borneo to become more powerful while the Sultan of Borneo had the goal in having the Sultanate of Borneo be the dominant player of the proposed “Nusantaran Confederation”. Over the next year, the Convention ironed out the details of how the government of the Nusantaran Confederation was to be organized with the head of state of the Nusantaran Confederation being the “Kepala Negara” or “Head of State”, a title which would be elected by the “Council of Rulers” or “Dewan Penguasa” for life, which also served as a upper house for the Nusantaran Confederation with each of the rulers of the constituent states having one seat and one vote for the upper house. The Kepala Negara appointed a Chief Minister from the major party in the lower house, the “Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat”, which was elected by the people of the Confederation. Under the Banten Constitution, the government of the Nusantaran Confederation would be responsible for affairs which were considered to be of importance to the entire Nusantaran Confederation like foreign and defense policy while the local rulers retained control over local affairs. The Banten Constitution was formally approved on April 21, 1939 after 14 months of deliberation.
With the Banten Constitution formally approved upon, the Banten Convention became the nucleus of the interim government of the Nusantaran Confederation, which was formally inagurated to much fanfare amongst the peoples of Nusantara on July 1, 1939. The first Kepala Negara of Nusantara was Sultan Kuwat of Banten, the main voice behind the Persekutuan movement, who was elected by the Dewan Pengusa the next day to the post. The Nusantaran Confederation almost immediately joined the East Asian Security Association as a full member on July 9 as well. One of the first acts of Sultan Kuwat as Kepala Negara was to name Suhendra Budiaman, his ally and the leader of the “Congress of United Nusantarans”, Chief Minister of the Nusantaran Confederation. Elections were scheduled to be held in early 1940 but Nusantara would have to fight for it’s unity soon and it’s struggle would solidify the new Nusantaran Confederation and strengthen the national identity of Nusantara.
For centuries, the minor states of Nusantara (OOC: TTL’s term for Maritime Southeast Asia) have been squabbling with each other since the fall of the Majaphit Empire in the 16th century and so have become the pawns of their neighbors with Malaya falling under French control and the Moros becoming part of Nan Lusang. With the exception of Aceh and Borneo, the Nusantaran states were largely weak and defenseless but the rise of nationalist sentiments made many Nusantaran intellectuals feel that Nusantara would be stronger as a unified nation as opposed to squabling Kingdoms. Gradually, ideas of Nusantaran unity seeped into the popular consciousness of the people of Nusantara along with the aristocrats of Nusantara with movements calling for a united Nusantara which would be a strong force in the world arising. The Nusantaran “Persekutuan” (Federation) movement gained many adherents in the 1920s and 30s due to the rise of the Unified Indian State, with it’s radical state atheism and policies of uniformity and militarism, being percieved by many as a threat which should be confronted as a united front of the peoples of Nusantara. The Persekutuan movement was supported by the Empire of the Great Shun, the colossus of East Asia, as the Shun Dynasty sought new allies in East Asia as a counterweight to the Unified Indian State. Among the major proponents of “Persekutuan” among the Nusantaran elite was Sultan Kuwat of Banten. He envisioned a federation of Nusantaran states united in a federation. He was aided in this by Suhendra Budiaman, a nationalist intellectual who was head of the “Congress of United Nusantarans”, a nationalist movement dedicated to the creation of a united Nusantara.
Suhendra Budiaman, head of the Congress of United Nusantarans
In the aftermath of the French Flu, voices for federation among the states of Nusantara grew more vocal as many in the Nusantaran business class believed that a unified Nusantara would be able to recover faster than the collection of statelets which Nusantara had and many Nusantarans believed a Nusantaran Federation would be more able to stand up to the Unified Indian State than the collection of kingdoms which Nusantara was. In the 1930s, the “Congress of United Nusantarans" had become a mass movement calling for the unification of Nusantara, a movement few of Nusantara’s leaders would be able to ignore. With the exception of Aceh, where a Purple Unitarian regime had arisen after the September Coup, the leaders of the various kingdoms and statelets of Nusantara agreed in February 1938 to convene a convention on the unification of Nusantara into a “Nusantaran Confederation" pattered after the Italian Confederation and with the encouragement of Shun China.
The Convention was held in the city of Banten, the center of the Nusantaran Persekutuan movement, which pushed for the unity of the peoples of Nusantara under one banner and was marked by divisions between Javans, Sundans, Balinese, Sulawasians, Sumatrans, and Borneoans. The minor statelets of Java, (Southern) Sumatra, the Sunda Islands, and Sulawasi did not want Borneo to become more powerful while the Sultan of Borneo had the goal in having the Sultanate of Borneo be the dominant player of the proposed “Nusantaran Confederation”. Over the next year, the Convention ironed out the details of how the government of the Nusantaran Confederation was to be organized with the head of state of the Nusantaran Confederation being the “Kepala Negara” or “Head of State”, a title which would be elected by the “Council of Rulers” or “Dewan Penguasa” for life, which also served as a upper house for the Nusantaran Confederation with each of the rulers of the constituent states having one seat and one vote for the upper house. The Kepala Negara appointed a Chief Minister from the major party in the lower house, the “Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat”, which was elected by the people of the Confederation. Under the Banten Constitution, the government of the Nusantaran Confederation would be responsible for affairs which were considered to be of importance to the entire Nusantaran Confederation like foreign and defense policy while the local rulers retained control over local affairs. The Banten Constitution was formally approved on April 21, 1939 after 14 months of deliberation.
With the Banten Constitution formally approved upon, the Banten Convention became the nucleus of the interim government of the Nusantaran Confederation, which was formally inagurated to much fanfare amongst the peoples of Nusantara on July 1, 1939. The first Kepala Negara of Nusantara was Sultan Kuwat of Banten, the main voice behind the Persekutuan movement, who was elected by the Dewan Pengusa the next day to the post. The Nusantaran Confederation almost immediately joined the East Asian Security Association as a full member on July 9 as well. One of the first acts of Sultan Kuwat as Kepala Negara was to name Suhendra Budiaman, his ally and the leader of the “Congress of United Nusantarans”, Chief Minister of the Nusantaran Confederation. Elections were scheduled to be held in early 1940 but Nusantara would have to fight for it’s unity soon and it’s struggle would solidify the new Nusantaran Confederation and strengthen the national identity of Nusantara.
Western Africa 1936-1939
Western Africa (1939)
Britannian West Africa
Inner Zone: New Kent
The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace. A monument to Puritan pride, it was the largest cathedral in all of Africa at the time of its construction.
The Colony of New Kent, with capital at Henriston [2], was the epicenter of Britannian power in the Sudan. This zone of least autonomy, in which the absolutism of London echoed most profoundly, was the primary destination for European migrants to Africa— and there were many, drawn by promises of land and gold. Henriston, in many ways, was intended from the start to be an ideal Puritan society, a “city upon a hill” that could be a model even for European cities, especially unruly cities like Birmingham. Africans had a part to play in all this.
Though servitude was sanctioned (“It’s just the natural order of things”) Britannia never permitted chattel slavery. Earthly shackles were just as bad as spiritual shackles, and seeking to place either upon a subject of the King made one an enemy of the King and of God. The Africans native to the territory of New Kent, usually people of Akan extraction, were allowed to stay and keep their property of the most part. Missionaries were urged to preach to the Akan. Converted Akan were urged to move to Henriston. Most interestingly, the English and the Akan were allowed to become friends, to marry, to have children. The monarchy grew to believe that a mestizo population, of the type that existed in Spanish Vespucia, was not such a bad thing. Did not the ability of Puritan Catholicism to transcend boundaries of race demonstrate the strength and vigor of the Faith? And, if it could bring two races together into one, was it not even more suited to unite the whole world in due time?
Middle Zone: The Princely States
In 1860, things had never looked better for the Kingdom of Dahomey. After freeing itself from Oyo domination earlier in the century, the kingdom launched several aggressive wars against the Yoruba, hastening Benin’s eventual conquest of Oyo. Though the abolition of the European slave trade hurt the states’ finances, a successful transition to selling agricultural products like palm oil pulled the kingdom out of economic free-fall. Through the middle of the 1800s, Dahomey grew wealthy from the sale of palm oil, pigs, livestock, maize, beans, cassava, and groundnuts.
Then the hammer of Britannian anger came crashing down.
The stated reason for Britannian intervention was that Dahomey had, despite appearances, continued to supplement its income through slave-trading. “We will not suffer the existence of this kingdom of lies on the doorstep of Henriston,” the Britannian Viceroy reportedly quipped when asked why Dahomey had been conquered. After capturing Abomey, the Britannians placed the child prince of Dahomey on the throne, and assigned the boy an English tutor.
By 1890, the prince— by now known as James I, first Christian King of Dahomey— announced that his Kingdom’s period of repentance for the perfidious lies of the old pagan king had ended. Personally visiting London aboard a ship of the Imperial Navy, James I met his Britannian counterpart. As a result of their deliberations, Dahomey became the first Princely State.
The Africa Company’s office in Henriston defined the Princely States as “those realms which, having converted over 40 of every 100 men among them to the True Faith, have become worthy of Britannia’s friendship and beneficence.” “Beneficence” meant privileged access to Britannian markets for traders, rights of migration for (converted) commoners, and unconditional protection without extortion fees or tribute payments.
The Asante Empire watched the situation in Dahomey with alarm. The same could thing happen here, the Asantehene wondered, as his eyes flicked nervously to his Golden Stool. The Golden Stool was more than just the ancient symbol of Asante rulership, bestowed by the divine— it was the soul of the Asante nation itself. Reasoning that the Britannians were ferocious savages who would easily and gladly melt the Stool down if they ever won against Asante, the monarch decided that conflict with Britannia would be too costly to win and too disastrous to lose. With this in mind, he made a difficult decision. Converting to Christianity, Asantehene Henry I set about remaking the Empire with the help of Britannian missionaries invited to his court at Kumasi. The Golden Stool became a Christian relic, supposedly containing metal from the nails that pierced Christ. A rebellion of traditionalist nobility and commoners was put down with Britannian auxiliaries. Destroying his own people affected Henry I greatly, and probably contributed to his early death in 1910. Nevertheless, when he died, Asante had become a Princely State and the Golden Stool— the soul of Asante— was safe from harm. In the next few decades, Asante Puritanism became a strange beast. Combining traditional Akan beliefs with the Puritanism doled out in newly-established seminaries, radical preachers like Kwame Johnson began to insist that the Asante, not the English, were God’s favored nation. England had been founded by some bastard named William, a foreigner from a country that the English tried but ultimately failed to hold on to. Only the Asante had been presented with such visible proofs of God’s favor as a stool descending from the sky, and interminable victory in war since the time of Osei Tutu. Kwame Johnson stood out for his particular willingness to extend this line of thought to its natural conclusion— if the Asante could guide the world to a true understanding of God, then the Britannian interlopers needed to be pushed out of the way sooner or later.
Kwame Johnson, radical preacher who helped define Asante Puritanism.
The Mande and Senufo peoples, to the west of Asante, grew interested in the idea of Princely States in the 1910s. On the eve of the War of the Danube, Henriston’s authorities considered the establishment of a Duchy of Kong— a Catholic successor to the Kong Empire that had ruled over the Mande and Senufo prior to its destruction by West African jihadists.
Outer Zone: The Halfway Domains
At the dawn of the 1800s, a teacher of Islamic law named Usman dan Fodio complained about conditions in the kingdoms of the Hausa, a people of the Northern Sudan. Eventually, he decided to fix them himself by gathering an army of his people, the Fulani, and inspiring them to a grand struggle— a jihad. His army swept across the lands of the Hausa, uniting all of their warring kingdoms into a single state. He turned his army’s camp at Sokoto into a proper city, and was declared the Caliph of his new domain. In time, the success of the Sokoto Caliphate inspired two more great Fulani jihads. The preacher Seku Amadu led a revolution against Segu, the empire of the Bambara, and became the founder of the Massina Empire. Massina would, in turn, be conquered in the 1860s by Umar Tall, founder of the Toucouleur Empire.
By the 1900s, it was clear that the two great Fulani states of the Sudan had seen better days. The Toucouleur Empire was a legal fiction— since the Great European War, it had been divided into western and eastern zones of influence controlled by the French and the Britannians, respectively. This division mirrored the division within the erstwhile Empire itself— the western portion, which encompassed the traditional Toucouleur homeland at Futa Toro, was functionally independent from the “official” rulers in the east who ruled the Bambara-populated territories of Segu and Massina. The Sokoto Caliphate’s political authority was diminished as it lost control over its constituent emirates, but the real blow to it and the eastern Toucouleur was spiritual. In 1877, Britannia sacked Sokoto’s southernmost city of Ilorin as a show of force, destroying over half the city and looting it thoroughly. They then promised to return and destroy another city unless the Caliph of Sokoto signed a "treaty of friendship". After the eastern Toucouleur signed a similar treaty in the 1920s, they and Sokoto became the two most prominent “Halfway Domains.”
The Africa Company’s office in Henriston defined the Halfway Domains as “those realms which, having not yet beheld the Light of our Lord, must be met with mercy and brought civilly, as adopted brothers, into the embrace of the Faith.” In other words, these states were allowed to exist on the sole condition that they convert to Christianity eventually and refrain from non-brotherly aggression against each other. To ensure that conversion happened, the governments of Halfway Domains would allow Britannian missionaries to enter, and bestow extraterritorial privileges to them. A Britannian criminal on Halfway Domain soil would be carted back to Henriston to be tried before a jury of fellow Britannians. Britannian merchants would also be allowed to enter freely, and would be entitled to protection from the rulers of the Halfway domains. With this arrangement, Britannia retained the capability to project power and subjugate the natives but still had the option to sit back, exact tribute, spy on the native populace and government, and steadily build up a loyal phalanx of the King’s own Christians in the darkest of the world's continents. Since Britannia was itself quite poor and agrarian, such features of the Halfway Domain system were not just benefits but necessary prerequisites for fast, easy, and profitable colonization. The Halfway Domain system, built on the early establishment of African fear of an exaggerated image of Britannian ferocity, gradually expanded to cover all the non-Christian states of the Northern Sudan.
The establishment of a third Fulani state, the Adamawa Emirate, was a bit of an accident. The groundwork for the state was laid by Modibo Adama, who conquered the land and governed it on behalf of his Caliph, Usman dan Fodio. Though it was originally governed as a part of the greater Fulani realm, its Emirs steadily grew autonomous. The Britannians, however, made Adamawa sovereign— upon arriving in the Emir’s court at Yola, they assumed that they were meeting a sovereign chief of the Africans and asked him to sign a “treaty of friendship” as if he were one. The Emir of Adamawa signed the treaty and, in return for numerous concessions, could expect Britannian protection from any future Sokoto army looking to reclaim their lost lands. Adamawa was, like a prisoner in his cell, absolutely secure from its fellow inmates.
The Fulani did not bear the Britannian yoke alone— two successor states of the old Hausa kingdoms (which the Fulani had swept aside in the jihads of the early 1800s) survived the arrival of the Britannians. The Abuja Emirate, centered on the city of the same name, was a continuation of the old Emirate of Zazzau. Zaria, the capital of Zazzau, had become a southern outpost of Sokoto in 1808— but its rulers fled southward, founded Abuja as a Hausa refuge in the late 1820s, and continued to claim the increasingly hollow title of Sarkin Zazzau (king/chief of Zazzau) well into the 20th century. Meanwhile, the Brotherly Emirates of Gobir and Katsina eked out a precarious existence in the far north of Britannian Sudan. The Hausa kingdom of Gobir and its last sarki, Yunfa, had once been Usman dan Fodio’s patrons— but upon realizing dan Fodio’s ambitions of jihad, they became his bitterest rivals. The Fulani seized Gobir and Katsina in 1808, killing Yunfa in the process. The Hausa loyalists, however, simply trekked northward, escaping the then-new Sokoto Caliphate’s reach. The Katsinawa founded the new settlement of Maradi, and then, putting aside their former differences with Gobir, helped the Gobirawa found a new capital-in-exile at Tibiri 5 kilometers away. Both of the new exile states derived their sustenance from the Gulbin Maradi (Maradi River) which supported a population of Hausa settlers that steadily grew after the 1830s. By the time the Britannians arrived, the area around the two cities had become a majority-Hausa zone of mixed ancestry. The two emirs at Tibiri and Maradi recognized this state of affairs, and signed the Britannian treaty to become a single, jointly-ruled Halfway Domain.
The last and largest of the Halfway Domains was the Bornu Empire. Suffering aggression from west, east, and center, this beleaguered state barely survived the 1800s. A violent dynastic transition in the early 1800s unseated the ancient Sayfawa dynasty, replacing them with the family of Muhammad al-Kanemi, a Muslim scholar interested in religious and political reform. The Kanemi dynasty, however, proved more than capable of venality, and signed up as a Halfway Domain more to stave off conquest by the more vigorous Wadai Empire to their east than any other factor.
***
The Gidan Rumfa, gate to the palace of the Emir of Kano.
The only thing the people of Bilad as-Sudan have in common, Selim decided, was their color.
In the four months he’d spent in the land, almost every notion of Africa that he’d developed in his sheltered years in Kostantiniyye had shattered. He’d learned so much, he felt that his head would burst. Though his Arabic proved sufficient to communicate with the men of letters— the modibo, the Sudanese called them— Selim was also trying, with some success to pick up Hausa. Only by communicating with the common man could the cause be furthered. Only speaking to the Sudanese in his own tongue could convince him to recognize the errors of sectarian chauvinism, which still held sway in these parts.
Sipping from a canteen of the ginger drink the locals were so fond of, Selim hastened his pace through the streets of Kano. What a city! The Berbers of the desert came in and left like sands in the wind, keeping alive the same trade routes their ancestors trod into the dirt centuries ago. Men traveled to and from all directions, in fact— and those who stayed in the city day after day were no less remarkable. Selim has heard stories of the jihad that once tore through this city, of the supposedly misguided Hausa farmers and town-dwellers set straight by the noble herdsmen of the Fula. And yet, looking around, who would tell the difference between one and the other? Subject and ruler had intermarried, blended, adopted each other’s culture until the lines between them disappeared. They were as one under the beneficence of their Caliph in Sokoto. There was unity in this land, to be sure. But it was, all the same, a rich mosaic of overlapping traditions and sources of authority.
Setting up a government in Tripolitania was difficult, but only with a state may we direct our own course through this violent world. Perhaps this land, this vast belt of hidden civilization, can be united in revolt. But what force could govern its people after that?
Selim found his way to the caravanserai, a room of which had been sub-let to him. He found his desk and papers. There was much that the Muslims of the world needed to know about the Sudan, and much that the Sudan needed to know about the world.
[1] From the Arabic Bilad as-Sudan, meaning “Land of the Blacks.”
[2] In OTL, this would be the Gold Coast Colony. Henriston (a corruption of “Henry’s Town”, named for the great line of Plantagenet Henries who conquered France. The cult of France-conquering kings is strong in Britannia) is at the site of OTL Accra.
Spanish Argelia
The flag of Argelia, the newest constituent nation of the Federal Republic. In another world, this flag was the Spanish merchant flag until 1927.
The Federal Republic of Spaniards, Basques, and Catalans faced a slight problem, and that problem’s name was Argelia.
The revolution that overthrew the old military government of Spain was met with hope and joy in Madrid, Barcelona, and Seville, but reactions were more tepid in Argel [1] and Orán. The Muslim population of the colony did not expect to be enfranchised or integrated to any significant degree. Surprisingly, they were both right and wrong.
After a series of contentious debates, the Cortes Federal, the representative body of Spain, issued the Basic Law of Argelia in 1925. In the spirit of Federalism, the Law proclaimed that Argelia was a constituent nation of Spain in the same manner as the Basque Country or Catalonia, and would have some of the trappings of local democracy and participation on the federal level— but only some. Spanish society still had room for Protectionism, and nowhere was this Protectionism more apparent then during the Argelian Question. Inspired by the Charter of Dakar which the French had issued four years earlier, the Basic Law proclaimed that Argelia would also have a limited electorate— but membership in this electorate would require attending government-run schools for the entirety of one’s primary and secondary education, completing of at least two years of higher education, and working for up to three years of productive employment in a Spanish firm or nonprofit. The aim was ostensibly to ensure that the best of the Argelians could get a chance to prove themselves, and guide their brothers toward full political development. However, the Basic Law also had a cultural element. Its goal was assimilation— the transformation of the Argelians into a people that might pray in mosques once in a while, but that in all other important respects would think and act like Europeans.
The cultural transformation of Argelia was not exclusively top-down. Some of it was more horizontal in nature.
In 1910, the population of the Spanish Caribbean stood at 4.5 million. That’s a lot of people to fit on some tiny islands, and overpopulation made itself felt even in Cuba, the largest of the Antilles. Among the Afro-Caribbean population, especially the educated portions, a sudden urge to move manifested. The latent racism of Caribbean society made the past unsavory, and population pressure made a future in the New World seem untenable. The “Returno al África” movement was a noticeable force by the late 1920s, and Afro-Caribbean writers like Luis Torres wrote extensively about the need of Africans to pull themselves away from the closed door to opportunity in the New World.
“Why do you bang your fists against a closed door?” Luis Torres wrote in a letter to a friend seeking to buy land for a farm near Havana. “You will walk away with bloody hands and a hungry stomach.”
Migration to Spanish Central Africa, while possible, was not as common as migration to Argelia, which stood out among the Spanish possessions in Africa for its economic and political opportunities. In Argelia, an African might be able to vote and run for office if he worked hard enough. Migrants boarded boats in Santo Domingo and San Juan, ready to leave centuries of disappointment behind. Santeria, Roman Catholicism, and everything in between made its way to the fertile plains of the Mitidja and the tall buildings of Argel el Blanco, pearl of the western Maghreb.
The Plaza Republicana, in central Argel. Here, the increasingly numerous residents of the city bumped into each other on their way to work or stopped for a chat. Spanish, or some form of it, was the lingua franca here.
Nothing was simply black and white in Argelia. Spaniards, Berbers, Arabs, and Afro-Caribbeans struggled with and against each other, creating a society of almost unbelievable diversity and adversity. The repercussions of all this demographic tomfoolery would soon be felt in Spain itself.
[1] OTL: Algiers.
The Unclaimed Interior, Part I: The Sahara
The Europeans never penetrated very far into the African interior. Part of the reason was disease, a problem for which a cure— quinine— had only been invented at the turn of the 20th century. Part of the reason was the inhospitable climates. Part of the reason was simple inertia, or genuine ignorance of the economic opportunities that might lie deeper in the African continent. Whatever the case, two vast zones of land, centered around the Sahara and Kalahari, were completely unclaimed by any European power as late as 1939. In both zones, old ways of life retained their roots even as they morphed into something new.
A panoramic view of the Old City of Ghadames.
The oases were God’s gift to the Sahara. Oases, and the settlements that sprung up between them, made trans-Saharan trade possible. One trade route extended south from eastern Tripolitania to the oasis of Kufra, before proceeding onward to Abeche and then to Lake Chad. Another extended north from Kano in the north of the Sudan, to Agadez, to Tamanrasset, and then to Ghadames, just south of Tripoli.
The Kufra-Lake Chad route would become famous as “Selim’s Road”, the path that brought the young revolutionary to the great proving ground of the Sudan. The Ghadames-Kano route, meanwhile, was always famous. This was the Berber route. Though there were never more than a hundred Ghadamsi merchants in any given city, their keen knowledge of economic situations in the Mediterranean coast and the African interior let them serve as organizers and financial backers of trade. Tamanrasset was the center of the Kel Ahaggar Tuareg confederation. These men of the Ahaggar mountains recognized the prosperity trade could bring, and generally allowed men of wealth to proceed unmolested to Agadez, the home city of the Air Tuaregs. At every major step and plenty of minor ones, the Imazigh and their brethren dominated.
Through this trade, which proceeded apace through the 20th century with increasing amounts of trinkets made in faraway places like Budapest and Krakow and brought to the merchants in Ghadames, the Sahara kept tabs on the world beyond. In the 1930s, strange travelers with fire in their eyes came from places like Persia and Egypt, calling upon the Berbers and Tuaregs to join them. And, surprisingly, some did.
The ancient tribal confederations of the desert had not yet seen any compelling reasons to build centralized governments. But who knew what the future had in store?
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This post's gotten long, so I'll save Portuguese Morocco and French West Africa for another day-- the day when I finally get around to drawing up a picture of the Congo and Southern Africa.
Love how you seemed to understand my idea of Puritan Britannia in Africa, made my day if I'm honest! 
Love how you seemed to understand my idea of Puritan Britannia in Africa, made my day if I'm honest!
Thanks! I was wondering how to portray Britannia without falling back too heavily on "racist theocratic empire" tropes, and your Birmingham chapter helped me realize that Britannia could simply be race-blind. If religion is really the cornerstone of Britannian society, I figure a Puritan Akan who pledges his allegiance to the King would be more welcome than a Reformist Frenchman.
I would imagine that almost anything would be more welcome to the Brits than a Reformist Frenchman.
Portuguese Maroccos
Portuguese Maroccos (1939)
The Kingdom of Portugal was, in many ways, the least likely of the Western European states to survive the 20th century intact. Unlike France, Italy, and Spain, Portugal was not a democracy and had no built-in mechanisms for venting social tensions, dealing with dissent constructively, and staving off radicalism. Unlike Britannia, Portugal was not hermetically sealed against the guile of the outside world’s dangerous ideas. And so the Kingdom trundled on, an absolute monarchy absolutely unsuited for the task of dealing with the radicalism that, ever so slowly, built up at home and in the colonies.
***
The death knell of Morocco as an independent state sounded in 1648, when the majority of the country became an Ottoman puppet under a friendly line of Moroccan dynasts and the northern half of Morocco’s Atlantic coast was conquered by the Portuguese. After the native Moroccan dynasty died off, the Ottomans installed the Ramazanli family, with origins in Southern Anatolia. This ended up being the Ottoman’s last act of significance in Morocco— over the course of the 1700s, the Ottomans grew weaker. The European powers, incensed at the pirates from the “Barbary States”, retaliated by attacking the North African coast. Portugal, with the sanction of Europe, conquered the remainder of Morocco’s coastline. The shrunken Ramazanli kingdom shrunk into the interior of the country, steadily losing control of its peripheries. Locals seeking to submit matters to judgement were more likely to seek out the Portuguese authorities than the decaying bureaucracy of the “native” dynasty. When the last Ramazanli monarch of Morocco died in 1881, no one bothered to nominate a replacement. The office of “monarch” hadn’t commanded anyone’s respect since 1648 anyways. The Portuguese turned their de facto mastery of Morocco into de jure authority, moving the Office of the Viceroy inland to Marraquexe [1].
Over hundreds of years of foreign rule, the Marroquinos had grown to know European society more intimately than any other Muslim people. Moroccan businesses exported iron and textiles to Lisbon and beyond. Though Lisbon made efforts to prevent foreign shipping in the 1700s, they had relented by 1844. Moroccan Jews found European brethren who were willing to do business, making contacts as far away as Vienna and Buda. A middle class of businessmen, small-time financiers and manufacturers formed, building up its prosperity despite skewed competition with Portuguese settlers, and they sent their kids abroad to learn the ways of modernity and, someday, return to contribute to the family business. Not always to Lisbon, of course— only people who could afford no better sent their kids to Lisbon. Most Moroccan students aimed to join the hordes of foreign students in French and Italian universities.
Some, though, made the long voyage to Vilnius instead.
Abdelcarim Alxarif. His facility with the Lithuanian language, notable even among other Vilnius alumni, earned him the nickname of al-Litwani (“The Lithuanian”) when he came home.
Abdelcarim Alxarif’s father was the manager of an imports store in Fez owned by a certain Yaakov Abergel, who had sent his own son to Vilnius. Lithuania’s historically large Jewish population made Vilnius a relatively tolerant city, and thus more likely to be a first-choice destination for Moroccan Jewish students. The University of Vilnius was a fine educational institution whose brochure bragged (with plenty of justification) about educating “Emperors, many advisors, magnates and nobles, poets and artists, inventors and scientists, philosophers and businessmen.” The elder Alxarif complained to his boss during downtime about his son’s lack of drive, and Abergel replied that if young Abdelcarim had no particular ambition, he might as well go to Lithuania, where Abergel’s son had many friends and contacts. The elder Alxarif worried about the timing— the year was 1920, and the wreckage of the Great European War still had to be cleaned up— but Abergel reassured him that Lithuania, now governed by a republic, was unlikely to collapse into civil war just yet.
In hindsight, the timing really was inauspicious. Abdelcarim Alxarif arrived at the University of Vilnius just in time to encounter Revivalism.
Augustinas Stankevicius had once been a Republican, but five years of war made him into an up-and-coming tyrant who founded the Revival Front in 1918. That transformation played out in miniature in the little Republican clubs of the University, who looked upon the rickety government that timidly ruled the ruins of the Empire and wondered what they’d found so attractive about Republicanism in the first place. Alxarif, who’d had trouble finding friends in childhood, found a home in the Lithuanian Historical Research Society, a campus club that, in a matter of years, become a feeder organization for the Green Berets (the youth paramilitary of the Revivalists). Here, something clicked for the young Moroccan.
Lithuania is a country with a great and glorious past that has been wronged in recent times, he thought. Couldn’t Morocco say the same? Was Morocco not the inheritor of its own great and glorious past, in which the Almoravids and Almohads and Saadis loomed larger than life? 600 years ago, Moroccans had been the masters of Portugal, not the other way around! The Revivalists’ lust for empire started to make sense to Alxarif— clearly, both Lithuania and Morocco deserved strong, independent governments that could reverse recent wrongs and settle old scores. The Revivalists’ disdain for the old House of Gediminas also made sense to Alxarif— the old Emperor’s incompetence in war had destroyed the prestige of the monarchy in this land, just as the Ramazanli family had done in Alxarif’s own. Alxarif wasn’t quite ready to give up on his studies yet— he came to learn about business management, and did so. But, increasingly often, he became the type of student that the interwar Lithuanian press liked to call a “weekend warrior.” From Monday to Friday, he kept his nose clean and studied hard. On Saturday, he donned a green beret and headed off with his friends to fight for Stankevicius’s vision of Lithuania.
In 1926, the Unitarian Liudas Vasaris was overthrown by a military coup— and elements of paramilitaries like the Revivalist Green Berets had been among them, seizing Sengupta stations and telephone lines. Alxarif was among them, and received a “Badge of 1926” for his troubles. He did not, however, stay in Lithuania long enough to watch Stankevicius become the Vadas in 1930— he finished his studies and left for Morocco in 1927. Moving to Bou Craa, a phosphate-mining boomtown in the Portuguese-ruled Southern Territories [2], Alxarif entered the phosphate business by buying a stake in a mine with a small loan from his father. He knew from chemistry and agronomy classes in Vilnius that phosphate fertilizers held much promise for raising the world’s agricultural potential.
Alxarif’s father died in 1929, and with the inheritance Alxarif acquired a controlling stake in his Bou Craa mine, upgrading it with new technology from France and Spain. Hiring a manager to handle day-to-day operations meant that Alxarif could travel back to his hometown of Fez, where he began to talk about what he’d learned in Lithuania. The quiet parties at Alxarif’s sumptuous residence, originally hosted to bring together Vilnius alumni, were soon opened up to anyone who proved receptive to the strange ideas about politics that such parties inevitably centered around. Here, Alxarif was reminded he wasn’t alone. He’d met more than a few Moroccans among the Green Berets, and many Moroccans who’d never even heard of Lithuania turned out to possess similar ideas. One regular attendee was Simão Abergel, the son of Yaakov Abergel who’d paved the way for Alxarif to go to Vilnius. He reminded the others about the services that Jews had rendered to the historical empires of the Lithuanians and Moroccans, and resolutely believed that Jews still had a role to play in Morocco’s future. Another was Camal Chahine, who, despite being quite young, had developed a deep understanding of Moroccan history from his apprenticeship at an antiques store. He had first been drawn to Alxarif in the same way many of the local twenty-year-olds were— by admiration. Alxarif was a bit of a celebrity— the worldly young man who’d traveled so far, come back, and achieved such commercial success before his 30th birthday!— but Chahine’s steadfast willingness to guard Alxarif’s subversive ideas from the eyes of the Portuguese authorities let him move permanently into Alxarif’s circle.
Camal Chahine. He became a protege of sorts for Alxarif.
By 1931, the members of this group had stopped referring to the meetings at Alxarif’s house as “parties.” Though they acknowledged the obvious differences between their difficult political position and the privileges the Lithuanian Revivalists had enjoyed on their easy slide to power (and other differences besides) the group declared the establishment of the Moroccan Nahda Party [3], and almost as an afterthought, handed Alxarif the title of Ra’is [4] at their second meeting. No one thought much of it at the time, preferring instead to think about how the new Nahdatist movement might transition from being a bunch of unemployed layabouts huddling in a successful businessman’s house to becoming an organization capable of defeating Portugal and creating a new Moroccan Empire. The answer, unexpectedly, ended up being Alxarif’s bread and butter.
By 1932, Lithuania’s Amelioration Campaign had begun in force. The Vadas’s government sought to improve the land of Lithuania at all costs, sacrificing untold miles of swamps and marshes to create new farmland. In an innocuous looking letter to the Vadas, Alxarif discussed his phosphate business and asked for a face-to-face meeting with the Vadas or one of his ministers, so that the details of exporting phosphate fertilizer to Lithuania could be ironed out. With the letter came a package containing an old green beret and a 1926 service badge. Vilnius understood the symbolism, and could guess as to what topics Alxarif might bring up at this “face-to-face meeting.”
***
Lumps of phosphate dirt are liberated from the sands of Bou Craa. They are not processed into fertilizer on site— instead, they are ground into sand and packaged up in hardy bags. These bags are stacked onto the beds of trucks that take them to the port of Bojador, where they are loaded onto ships from Karaliaucius and Riga after the official payment has been made. Unknown to the Portuguese authorities, the unofficial payment, packed in wooden crates, arrives in Dakhla some days later. My soldiers find the crates, and open them to reveal munitions. Second-rate material, the refuse of the Lithuanian army, but it will do. My soldiers may yet derive some value from it.
Abdelcarim Alxarif opened the door of his office in Bou Craa. For seven years he’d kept this operation going. The hardest step had been talking to the tribal leaders of the Beni Hassan Arabs who inhabited the Southern Territories. They didn’t have much attachment to the idea of any nation, much less a Moroccan one, but they understood what Alxarif, in his Northern dialect, had to say about prosperity. They understood that the Portuguese had denied them prosperity by barring them from the coasts so that Portuguese fishermen could profit in peace. Alxarif convinced them that they could have the last laugh. Out here in the desert, Portugal’s control was weak and spotty. Out here, the Hassaniya tribes could become an army that could take back the coasts and more. They would only have to accept Alxarif’s money, guns, and instructions.
It really was a cycle. A select group of recruits, trained in the desert warfare of the Beni Hassan and the urban tactics of the Green Berets, would head north into the towns of Portuguese Morocco. There, they would recruit thugs, ideologues, and everything in between, convincing them to come south, train, and head back north to recruit again. Some recruits from the North didn’t even have to be met personally first. As the Unitarians and Republicans— folks who’d decided to study in France and Italy— realized how hollow their ideologies were, they’d hear of Alxarif’s efforts by word of mouth and underground publications. They’d pay a visit to certain buildings of their respective cities, with the full knowledge that those buildings housed local chapters of Morocco’s first modern political party. With luck, that party would be the only party Morocco’s people would require for the remainder of the century.
In the great desert, in nomadic Hassaniya settlements that the Portuguese didn’t bother to pin down, an army was growing. Young men and even women grew lean from work and training, then filled their stomachs with the meat of camels and goats. Purchased Lithuanian and stolen Portuguese guns were firmly clasped in increasingly adept Moroccan hands, and those hands were controlled by minds lit aflame with thoughts of reviving their nation.
Alxarif’s guide, an old Haratin, waited outside the office [5]. Master and servant departed Bou Craa together.
The flag of the Moroccan Nahda Party was suggested by Camal Chahine. It’s literally just the old flag of the Almohads.
[1] Marrakesh. Portuguese romanization is in vogue in Morocco— just remember that X and CH both stand in for the English “sh” and you’ll be fine.
[2] The Southern Territories are the light-green colored areas of loose Portuguese control. They’re roughly coterminous with OTL northern Mauritania and Western Sahara.
[3] In Arabic, “nahda” means “awakening” or, more poetically, “renaissance.”
[4] It basically translates to “chief” or “captain.”
[5] It just wouldn’t be Mauritania without slavery, would it? Yes, one of the concessions Alxarif made in exchange for Beni Hassan support is allowing the pre-colonial social order to persist. If Alxarif ever achieves the Revivalist Moroccan Empire of his dreams, building a state that would at the very least encompass all the Portuguese territory in Northwest Africa, he’ll turn a blind eye to the plight of the Haratin, a caste of Arabized black Africans who the Beni Hassan hold as chattel, as long as the Beni Hassan consent to be ruled by him. TTL, the Portuguese have outlawed slavery in Morocco proper but are powerless/unwilling to do the same in the Southern Territories, where colonial control exists more on paper than practice. Once that colonial control is thrown off completely, though… mining phosphates, iron, and other products for the Lithuanian market is an expensive process. Surely slave labor would expedite it?
Unitarian Japan is the Best Japan! Glory to the Supreme Ruler Nagai Takashi, who's descent from the Emperors of the Southern Court makes him deserving of leading the Japanese people to a new age of Unitarianism! (Everyone who dares point out this is utter nonsense is clearly a Chinese agent and will be dealt with)
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