United States of the Americas and Oceania
- Thread starter Eurofed
- Start date
Eurofed
Banned
Do you remind that the 1830-1848 revolutions are yet to hit Austria, ITTL it looks even more the decaying reactionary dinosaur than IOTL, Pan-German liberal nationalism is on the rise, Prussia is already commited to German unification, and Russians have no interest in saving Habsburg butt against the interests of its Prussian and Neapolitan buddies ?
The Joy of Federations is that Californians are not ruled from DC, they are ruled from Sacramento. As technology advances and as America takes its place on the world stage Centralization will increase, but I doubt the line of "too centralized" will be crossed. As you say, this America is too big and diverse for States Rights not to be very important as a matter of course.
Eurofed
Banned
Absolutely true. On the other hand, as this USA gradually expand to their proper "Oceanic" dimensions, the spectacle of the US political life spread across four continents would be absolutely fascinating. Think, a Presidential campaign in say 80-100 states (wild guess here, I've absolutely no idea so far how much the final count shall be) all across the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. I regret I have not the kind of writing skills to make inspirational fiction pieces about it. The globetrotting primaries, Quebec one day, Santiago the second, Sydney the third.
About centralization, I think that in the end, it shall be more about cultural homogeization driven by mass media, like globalization but with federal political unity already in. World government anti-nationalist nerdgasm.
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One reason for the stability of America, in my opinion, is that when things are crappy in New Jersey, we don't blame the bastards in DC, we blame the bastards in Trenton. So long as that sense of local responsibility for local successes and failures remains, it is very difficult for unrest to reach the kind of fever pitch needed for instability. I believe this is also the reason we haven't had a real civil war, as opposed to a succession crisis, in our 200+ years as a nation even though we are nearly as big as all of Europe.
Edit: As to Primaries, until TV and airplanes, I don't think any politician will be doing a campaign tour of this USA, it's too damn big.
Edit: As to Primaries, until TV and airplanes, I don't think any politician will be doing a campaign tour of this USA, it's too damn big.
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Something occurred to me, a problem with America eating so much of the British Empire. As America gains former British territories, it will become more Pro-British. With each piece of the Empire that America devours, the less inclined Britain is to let them get more, and the less inclined America is to take more by force.
If America takes British South America and then the Australasian territories, significant portions of America won't want to go to war with Britain for South Africa, and there is no way America is going to get all three chunks of the Empire at once.
Edit: I can see America finding some Casus Belli to chomp British South America pretty soon, and later one to take Australia once it has the Philippines, but I can't think of any for South Africa. Liberia is the only thing in the vicinity, and it's too far away.
If America takes British South America and then the Australasian territories, significant portions of America won't want to go to war with Britain for South Africa, and there is no way America is going to get all three chunks of the Empire at once.
Edit: I can see America finding some Casus Belli to chomp British South America pretty soon, and later one to take Australia once it has the Philippines, but I can't think of any for South Africa. Liberia is the only thing in the vicinity, and it's too far away.
Eurofed
Banned
Oh, absolutely, I was thinking of the 20th century. Anyway, the campaign tours only became necessary when the primary sustem became dominant, relatively late late into the 20th century.
Well, BSA and Australia could be chomped down in one bit, before this USA can tackle a general war with the British Empire it needs to deal with ; Mexican War, Civil War, and Reconstruction and recover from it, by then it shall be entrenched in the Pacific and gotten the Spanish colonies by means fair or foul, so taking Australia shall make sense. Who knows, theoretically the new British-American War and Spanish-American War could be compressed in one big WWI, Europe is getting polarized into a German-Russian camp and a British-French one. The "CPs" are the natural allies of the USA when they cast isolationism off. As for SA, we shall see, I'm kinda fuzzy about them myself right now.
Eurofed
Banned
1816-1835
After the fall of the Tory government after the defeat of Waterloo, a coalition government of reformist Tories and Whigs took over and established peace treaties with the United States, France, Russia, and Prussia. Britain was excluded from North America and the northern half of South America, and had to concede the supremacy of continental Europe. It kept global naval supremacy and a huge colonial empire in Asia, besides the vast newly-won colonies in southern South America, and its maintenance and expansion became the main concern of British ruling class. Due to the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars, by which Britain had toiled under a generation-long war to stop the rise to European hegemony of Revolutionary-Napoleonic France, only to see the alliance of Russia and Prussia (with their Naples ally) to rise successfully in its place. This made the British elites grow disillusioned about the traditional concept of the balance of powers in Europe, although the country made an effort to rebuild some balance to unchecked Russo-Prussian dominance by gradually creating an opposed coalition with France (shift from enmity to détente and later effective alliance occurred during the following decade) and regional powers like Spain, Denmark, and Sweden. Such an alliance was able to check Russian expansion in the Asian half of the Ottoman Empire for the time being.
As it concerns the colonial empire, besides the establishment of British South America, and the entrenchment of British control over India, the main development were the Anglo-Dutch colonial war over the control of Indonesia, an after-effect of former French occupation of Netherlands and commercial rivalry. The War ended with the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1825, which gave Britain control of Malacca, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, and Dutch possession in India. Minor clashes with Spanish colonists and Brazilians in BSA continued till the late 1820s, resulting in gradual affirmation of British control over the former Spanish Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, the Captaincy General of Chile and southern Brazil (in OTL terms, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paranà). As it concerns domestic matters, the coalition government was able to reduce popular discontent by re-establishing free trade of foodstuffs, reforming the Poor Laws, and repealing the limitations that wartime Tories government had imposed to right of assembly and association. The opposition of the unpopular Prince-Regent (after 1820 George IV) stalemated other very important reforms such as the Catholic emancipation and electoral reform, although popular pressure to have them passed mounted up. After the death of George IV, his popular and level-headed daughter Queen Charlotte, ascended to the throne, who was sympathetic to the Whigs and their reforms. Catholic emancipation and the electoral system reform were passed over the strong opposition of the Tories and the House of Lords, when new elections returned a strong Whig majority and the Queen threatened to “pack” the HoL with pro-reform Peers.
The convulsions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had eventually left France with a somewhat unexpected settlement when the victorious Russo-Prussians decided to keep the young son of Napoleon on the throne with a regency council dominated by Louis Philippe of Orleans. The allies reasoned out that neither the Bourbon (that had sided with Austria and Britain against them) nor Napoleon were satisfactory solutions and maybe a moderate liberal Bonapartist-Orleanist France could prove more stable and reliable. The assumption proved to be mostly correct in the following two decades. A liberal constitution (basically similar to the OTL 1830 one) was passed and the new regime got the strong support of the middle classes. Although the Legitimist nobles opposed it in the name of the Bourbon rights and ultra-reactionary Catholicism, such opposition never amounted to much. After the efforts of the Napoleonic Wars, the nation was exhausted and wished for repose and moderate without endless wars nor the reactionary excesses of the Bourbon. The regime aimed to provide it and economic stability. Although the 1816 peace had left France in a subordinate position to the victors, and lost it important territory (Alsace, Lorraine, Corsica, and all the post-1789 conquests), France was able to re-establish diplomatic equality with the other nations of Europe over the late 1810s and 1820s, and achieve an effective détente with Britain that turned hereditary enemies into tentative allies. The frustration of defeat was channeled into the effort to rebuild a colonial empire, with the conquest of Algeria, which begun in 1822 and was ongoing for the next two decades.
Spain had a rather more troublesome political course than its fellow powers. King Ferdinand VII had refused to honor the liberal Constitution of 1812 and restored the absolutist regime and the privileges of the nobility and the clergy. Malcontent brew in the army, where liberal feelings were strong. When the king made an army assemble to attempt the re-conquest of Mexico (the rest of continental Spanish American Empire had been lost to America and Britain with the Treaty of Ghent) in 1820, it rebelled and forced the king to reinstate the liberal constitution. A "Progresista" (liberal) government was appointed, though the king expressed his disaffection with the new administration and constitution. The Progresista government reorganized Spain into 52 provinces, and intended to reduce the regional autonomy that had been a previous hallmark of Spanish bureaucracy. The opposition of the affected regions - in particular, Aragon, Navarra, and Catalonia - shared in the king's antipathy for the liberal government. The anticlerical policies of the Progresista government, with the abolition of the Inquisition and the banishment of the Jesuits, led to friction with the Church, and the attempts to bring about industrialization, although beneficial to the nation, alienated old trade guilds. Royalist forces attempted an uprising and although it was beaten back in Madrid by constitutional forces, civil war erupted in several regions. Both sides appealed to the great powers of Europe, and although Britain, Russia, and Prussia declined to intervene, France decided to do so on the side of the liberals, hoping to reaffirm its influence in Spain. The French expeditionary corps succeeded in a few months where Napoleon had failed for years, crushing the reactionary royalists and reaffirming the rule of the liberals, which grow sympathetic to France. Ferdinand VII was forced to abdicate and the throne was given to his youngest brother Francisco de Paula, passing over his notoriously ultra-reactionary elder brother Carlos.
By the late 1820s and early 1830s, the political situation remained essentially quiet in most of Continental European powers, notably France, North German Union, Naples, and Russia. Although the absolutist aristocracy and the clergy mourned the old order, and the pangs of industrialization were to be felt with the discount of the lower classes in following decades, stability came from factors like the constitutional order, liberal reforms, efforts to promote economic growth by fostering land reform and industrialization, successes in foreign policy, ongoing national unification process in Germany and Italy, serf emancipation in Russia, and autonomy in Poland. All of these pleased the progressive sectors of the landed nobility and the army, and the wealthy middle classes, which formed the new ruling elite and the backbone of the moderate constitutional monarchies. The only real troublesome spot were the Balkans, where riots, uprisings, and massacres occurred repeatedly, fueled by national and religious antagonisms between the various nationalities, and to a more serious degree between Christians and Muslims. Eventually the Russian government decided to restore a semblance of peace by imposing religious uniformity, and Balkan Muslims were expelled (an example soon followed by Greece, Austria, and Naples). Most of them resettled in the Ottoman Empire, and some emigrated to British South America and Australia.
Such a course was not to be the lot of Austria. The venerable Habsburg state had been teetering on the brink of a fall since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The defeat and the territorial losses had weakened the empire strategically and economically and destroyed the prestige of the monarchy. Although the Habsburg monarchy had attempted to affirm its position by enforcing a centralized absolutist bureaucratic system over the nationalities of the state, opposition had been brewing up: liberals wanted a constitution and reforms, German and Italian nationalists wished take part into the ongoing unifications of Germany and Italy , other nationalities such as Hungarians and Slavs wished to affirm their autonomy, too. The difficulties of the Habsburg state were only compounded by the troublesome annexation of restive Bosnians and Serbs. Loss of valuable lands, Bohemia-Moravia, Lombardo-Veneto and Galicia, and growth of the Prussian and Neapolitan control over Germany and Italy, seriously weakened the economy of the Habsburg state. The old empire was a powder-keg, and the spark was provided by an apparently minor clash in Vienna between rowdy members of a student union and the police in 1830. It quickly grew up into a riot, then an uprising, which spread throughout the land of the empire. King Francis I reluctantly appointed new, nominally liberal, ministers. New freedoms (including freedom of the press and freedom of association) were introduced, and elections for constituent assemblies were called. Social and political conflict as well as confessional hostility momentarily subsided. Mass political organizations and public participation in government became widespread.
However, liberal ministers were unable to establish central authority. German liberal-nationalists claimed for Austria to join the German unification movement (although different factions advocated contrasting solutions, either to join the NGU, to set up a union of South German states, or to create a wholly different unitary German state), a new Hungarian government in Budapest announced its intentions to break away from centralized Habsburg state and create a personal union with Francis as king, Croats and Serbs were clamoring for autonomy, too. The victory of the party of movement was looked at as an opportunity for lower classes to renew old conflicts with greater anger and energy. Several tax boycotts and attempted murders of tax collectors occurred in Vienna. Additionally, the constituent assemblies were charged with the impossible task of managing both the needs of the people of the state and determining what that state physically is at the same time. In Hungary, a new national cabinet took power under Lajos Kossuth, and the Diet (parliament) approved a sweeping reform package that changed almost every aspect of Hungary's economic, social, and political life, giving the Magyar nobility and lower gentry in the parliament control over its own military, its budget, and foreign policy. It essentially created an autonomous national kingdom of Hungary with the Habsburg King of Austria as its king. They also demanded that the Hungarian government receive and expend all taxes raised in Hungary and have authority over Hungarian regiments in the Habsburg army. Further, the new laws ended the special status of Transylvania and Croatia-Slavonia. One of the first tasks of the Diet was abolishing serfdom, which they did rather quickly. The Hungarian government set limits on the political activity of both the Croatian and Romanian national movements. Slavs and Romanians had their own desires for self-rule and saw no benefit in replacing one central government for another. Armed clashes between the Hungarians and the Croats, Romanians, Serbs, along one border and Slovaks on the other ensued.
Conservative local government of Croatia-Slavonia, which supported centralist Habsburg authority, severed relations with the new Hungarian government and devoted itself to the imperial cause. Soon contrasts between Croatian and Hungarian authorities escalated to military action. The King took opportunity from the war to attempt a royalist coup in Vienna, but it failed, radicals took control of the city and King Francis and the court were forced to flee Vienna. Civil war swept the Habsburg lands, pitting absolutist Habsburg conservatives and their centralist Croat supporters against Austrian liberal-nationalists and the Hungarian constitutional monarchist government, and the latter against their own restive Slav and Romanian subject nationalities.
The neighboring great powers, faced with the chaos on their borders, decided to intervene to “restore order”, claiming the precedent of the French intervention in Spain. Although Russia, NGU, and Naples were no friends of the Habsburg, and hoped to exploit the situation to their advantage, they were not willing to let the Habsburg lands dissolve into a chaos of endless bickering nationalities or worse have the radicals get the upper hand and create Jacobin republics, and thus spread the unrest to their own lands. A coordinated intervention by NGU, Russian, and Neapolitan troops imposed the authority of the powers over the war-torn empire in a few months, and representatives from moderates among the various factions were summoned to Vienna to negotiate with the three powers. The second Treaty of Vienna in early 1831 partitioned the former Empire. German Austria and Slovenia were set up as the Kingdom of Austria, with Franz Joseph of Habsburg as King, which joined the North German Union. Naples annexed Trent, Kustenland, and Dalmatia. Hungary became an independent Kingdom with Slovakia and Transylvania and a federal union with Croatia-Slavonia, with Maximilian of Habsburg as King. Bosnia and Serbia became a kingdom in real union with Hungary.
The breakdown of the Habsburg empire and the entry of Austria in the NGU greatly increased nationalist enthusiasm and popular pressure for German unity in the remaining south German states, and soon its governments acknowledged the inevitable. After negotiating some minor constitutional revisions, in late 1831 Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg joined the NGU, which was renamed Germany, and the title of Emperor was bestowed on the president of the Union and King of Prussia. A lavish ceremony crowned Frederick William III of Prussia Emperor of Germany in the Cathedral of Aachen.
The revolution in the Habsburg lands quickly sparked imitation in the Italian minor states, where dissatisfaction with the reactionary rule of its kings and of the Popes was as deeply felt. Liberal-national revolutions exploded in Etruria, Sicily, the Papal States, and Sardinia-Corsica. Revolutionary constituent assemblies petitioned for union with Naples. Neapolitan armies took control of Etruria, the Papal states, and, eluding the surveillance of the British fleet, landed in Sicily and Sardinia-Corsica. Naples annexed the other Italian states, and changed its name to Kingdom of Italy in 1831. Joachim Murat had accomplished his long-felt dream of being the leader of an united Italy, and staged his own coronation as King of Italy in Rome.
Although the unification of Italy had been accomplished with little bloodshed, trouble soon occurred with the Pope, which refused to acknowledge it and to renounce his rights over the former Papal states, refusing the Italian government’s offers of compromise from Murat and the Italian government, who intended to allow the Pope to keep the Leonine City as a small remnant Papal State. The Pope fled to Spain, appealing to aid from the powers and Catholic opinion to restore his rights. His appeals to the powers essentially fell on deaf ears, as the governments of France, Germany, Britain, and Russia were allies of Italy, non-Catholic, and/or liberal, thus ill-disposed to disrupt the peace of Europe to prop up the theocratic claims of the Pope. The Pope’s presence in the Iberian peninsula however sparked a new row of civil wars.
Reactionary sections of Spanish society were inspired by his inflammatory condemnations of liberalism to rally around the elder brother of king, Don Carlos, who was supported by absolutists, reactionary clergy, and those provinces (Basque countries, Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia) which stood for their traditional autonomies and privileges against the modern liberal state. The Carlist uprising occurred in 1833 and swept northern and eastern provinces of Spain. A very similar civil war erupted in Portugal over a succession crisis with opposite pretenders being backed by liberals and reactionaries. Although the great powers of Europe avoided large-scale intervention, they all supported the Iberian liberals, and volunteer expeditionary corps from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy fought on their side, while a trickle of absolutist and reactionary Catholic volunteers from various European countries fought for the Carlists and Miguelists (from the name of the absolutist Portuguese pretendent, Dom Miguel). The war raged till 1835 in Portugal and till 1838 in Spain, the superior resources of the liberals being balanced up to a point by the fanatical determination of the Catholic absolutists. The liberals were eventually victorious in both countries and seized the opportunity to confiscate the extensive properties of the clergy. The Pope and his court were captured and put under virtual house arrest in the Isle of Formentera. Various European governments (such as France, Germany, and Italy) passed laws to confiscate the property of Catholic clergy, supervise its activities and forbid its involvement in policy, abolish religious orders, institute free and later mandatory lay education in public schools, and make marriage a civil ceremony.
The unification of Germany sparked another drama to its northern borders, about the fate of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. The question, wrapped in a web of complex constitutional and dynastic issues, boiled down to whether ethnically German Holstein-Lauenburg and mixed German-Danish Schleswig, ruled by the King of Denmark, should be integrated in the unitary Danish state or become a part of the federal German Empire. Holstein was a part of the old German Confederation, Schleswig was not, but their ancient constitution claimed that both duchies ought to be “indissoluble”. Tensions in the duchies, between Danish attempts to change the constitution of the duchies to integrate them with Denmark, and German pressures for their integration in the German Empire, built up during 1832 and in 1833 exploded in open conflict between Germany and Denmark. Norway-Sweden sent an expeditionary corps to support Denmark (an action that was to strengthen the future long-term fortunes of the Scandinavist unification movement decisively). Russia and Italy supported their ally Germany, while Britain and France supported Demark. Russia massed troops to the border of Sweden, and Britain sent its fleet in the Danish Straits. However all powers were still wary of a general conflict, and German army won several victories in few months, seizing control of the Jutland peninsula. The Danish were forced to negotiate and in the third treaty of Vienna (1834) they ceded the three duchies to Germany. Over Danish and British insistence a provision was added for a plebiscite in Northern Schleswig. Such a plebiscite, held in 1835, returned Northern Schleswig to Denmark.
Riots also occurred within Burgundy, where its ethnically mixed French-German population was divided about the options of union with Germany, union with France, or continued independence, and in the southern, French-speaking and Catholic, provinces of the United Kingdom of Netherlands, which ill-tolerated Dutch dominance. Those riots were however quashed (in the Southern Netherlands owning to the decisive action of Crown Prince Frederick, who represented the monarchy in Brussels), and the status quo enforced for the moment, even if both issues were to resurface later.
After the fall of the Tory government after the defeat of Waterloo, a coalition government of reformist Tories and Whigs took over and established peace treaties with the United States, France, Russia, and Prussia. Britain was excluded from North America and the northern half of South America, and had to concede the supremacy of continental Europe. It kept global naval supremacy and a huge colonial empire in Asia, besides the vast newly-won colonies in southern South America, and its maintenance and expansion became the main concern of British ruling class. Due to the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars, by which Britain had toiled under a generation-long war to stop the rise to European hegemony of Revolutionary-Napoleonic France, only to see the alliance of Russia and Prussia (with their Naples ally) to rise successfully in its place. This made the British elites grow disillusioned about the traditional concept of the balance of powers in Europe, although the country made an effort to rebuild some balance to unchecked Russo-Prussian dominance by gradually creating an opposed coalition with France (shift from enmity to détente and later effective alliance occurred during the following decade) and regional powers like Spain, Denmark, and Sweden. Such an alliance was able to check Russian expansion in the Asian half of the Ottoman Empire for the time being.
As it concerns the colonial empire, besides the establishment of British South America, and the entrenchment of British control over India, the main development were the Anglo-Dutch colonial war over the control of Indonesia, an after-effect of former French occupation of Netherlands and commercial rivalry. The War ended with the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1825, which gave Britain control of Malacca, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, and Dutch possession in India. Minor clashes with Spanish colonists and Brazilians in BSA continued till the late 1820s, resulting in gradual affirmation of British control over the former Spanish Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, the Captaincy General of Chile and southern Brazil (in OTL terms, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paranà). As it concerns domestic matters, the coalition government was able to reduce popular discontent by re-establishing free trade of foodstuffs, reforming the Poor Laws, and repealing the limitations that wartime Tories government had imposed to right of assembly and association. The opposition of the unpopular Prince-Regent (after 1820 George IV) stalemated other very important reforms such as the Catholic emancipation and electoral reform, although popular pressure to have them passed mounted up. After the death of George IV, his popular and level-headed daughter Queen Charlotte, ascended to the throne, who was sympathetic to the Whigs and their reforms. Catholic emancipation and the electoral system reform were passed over the strong opposition of the Tories and the House of Lords, when new elections returned a strong Whig majority and the Queen threatened to “pack” the HoL with pro-reform Peers.
The convulsions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had eventually left France with a somewhat unexpected settlement when the victorious Russo-Prussians decided to keep the young son of Napoleon on the throne with a regency council dominated by Louis Philippe of Orleans. The allies reasoned out that neither the Bourbon (that had sided with Austria and Britain against them) nor Napoleon were satisfactory solutions and maybe a moderate liberal Bonapartist-Orleanist France could prove more stable and reliable. The assumption proved to be mostly correct in the following two decades. A liberal constitution (basically similar to the OTL 1830 one) was passed and the new regime got the strong support of the middle classes. Although the Legitimist nobles opposed it in the name of the Bourbon rights and ultra-reactionary Catholicism, such opposition never amounted to much. After the efforts of the Napoleonic Wars, the nation was exhausted and wished for repose and moderate without endless wars nor the reactionary excesses of the Bourbon. The regime aimed to provide it and economic stability. Although the 1816 peace had left France in a subordinate position to the victors, and lost it important territory (Alsace, Lorraine, Corsica, and all the post-1789 conquests), France was able to re-establish diplomatic equality with the other nations of Europe over the late 1810s and 1820s, and achieve an effective détente with Britain that turned hereditary enemies into tentative allies. The frustration of defeat was channeled into the effort to rebuild a colonial empire, with the conquest of Algeria, which begun in 1822 and was ongoing for the next two decades.
Spain had a rather more troublesome political course than its fellow powers. King Ferdinand VII had refused to honor the liberal Constitution of 1812 and restored the absolutist regime and the privileges of the nobility and the clergy. Malcontent brew in the army, where liberal feelings were strong. When the king made an army assemble to attempt the re-conquest of Mexico (the rest of continental Spanish American Empire had been lost to America and Britain with the Treaty of Ghent) in 1820, it rebelled and forced the king to reinstate the liberal constitution. A "Progresista" (liberal) government was appointed, though the king expressed his disaffection with the new administration and constitution. The Progresista government reorganized Spain into 52 provinces, and intended to reduce the regional autonomy that had been a previous hallmark of Spanish bureaucracy. The opposition of the affected regions - in particular, Aragon, Navarra, and Catalonia - shared in the king's antipathy for the liberal government. The anticlerical policies of the Progresista government, with the abolition of the Inquisition and the banishment of the Jesuits, led to friction with the Church, and the attempts to bring about industrialization, although beneficial to the nation, alienated old trade guilds. Royalist forces attempted an uprising and although it was beaten back in Madrid by constitutional forces, civil war erupted in several regions. Both sides appealed to the great powers of Europe, and although Britain, Russia, and Prussia declined to intervene, France decided to do so on the side of the liberals, hoping to reaffirm its influence in Spain. The French expeditionary corps succeeded in a few months where Napoleon had failed for years, crushing the reactionary royalists and reaffirming the rule of the liberals, which grow sympathetic to France. Ferdinand VII was forced to abdicate and the throne was given to his youngest brother Francisco de Paula, passing over his notoriously ultra-reactionary elder brother Carlos.
By the late 1820s and early 1830s, the political situation remained essentially quiet in most of Continental European powers, notably France, North German Union, Naples, and Russia. Although the absolutist aristocracy and the clergy mourned the old order, and the pangs of industrialization were to be felt with the discount of the lower classes in following decades, stability came from factors like the constitutional order, liberal reforms, efforts to promote economic growth by fostering land reform and industrialization, successes in foreign policy, ongoing national unification process in Germany and Italy, serf emancipation in Russia, and autonomy in Poland. All of these pleased the progressive sectors of the landed nobility and the army, and the wealthy middle classes, which formed the new ruling elite and the backbone of the moderate constitutional monarchies. The only real troublesome spot were the Balkans, where riots, uprisings, and massacres occurred repeatedly, fueled by national and religious antagonisms between the various nationalities, and to a more serious degree between Christians and Muslims. Eventually the Russian government decided to restore a semblance of peace by imposing religious uniformity, and Balkan Muslims were expelled (an example soon followed by Greece, Austria, and Naples). Most of them resettled in the Ottoman Empire, and some emigrated to British South America and Australia.
Such a course was not to be the lot of Austria. The venerable Habsburg state had been teetering on the brink of a fall since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The defeat and the territorial losses had weakened the empire strategically and economically and destroyed the prestige of the monarchy. Although the Habsburg monarchy had attempted to affirm its position by enforcing a centralized absolutist bureaucratic system over the nationalities of the state, opposition had been brewing up: liberals wanted a constitution and reforms, German and Italian nationalists wished take part into the ongoing unifications of Germany and Italy , other nationalities such as Hungarians and Slavs wished to affirm their autonomy, too. The difficulties of the Habsburg state were only compounded by the troublesome annexation of restive Bosnians and Serbs. Loss of valuable lands, Bohemia-Moravia, Lombardo-Veneto and Galicia, and growth of the Prussian and Neapolitan control over Germany and Italy, seriously weakened the economy of the Habsburg state. The old empire was a powder-keg, and the spark was provided by an apparently minor clash in Vienna between rowdy members of a student union and the police in 1830. It quickly grew up into a riot, then an uprising, which spread throughout the land of the empire. King Francis I reluctantly appointed new, nominally liberal, ministers. New freedoms (including freedom of the press and freedom of association) were introduced, and elections for constituent assemblies were called. Social and political conflict as well as confessional hostility momentarily subsided. Mass political organizations and public participation in government became widespread.
However, liberal ministers were unable to establish central authority. German liberal-nationalists claimed for Austria to join the German unification movement (although different factions advocated contrasting solutions, either to join the NGU, to set up a union of South German states, or to create a wholly different unitary German state), a new Hungarian government in Budapest announced its intentions to break away from centralized Habsburg state and create a personal union with Francis as king, Croats and Serbs were clamoring for autonomy, too. The victory of the party of movement was looked at as an opportunity for lower classes to renew old conflicts with greater anger and energy. Several tax boycotts and attempted murders of tax collectors occurred in Vienna. Additionally, the constituent assemblies were charged with the impossible task of managing both the needs of the people of the state and determining what that state physically is at the same time. In Hungary, a new national cabinet took power under Lajos Kossuth, and the Diet (parliament) approved a sweeping reform package that changed almost every aspect of Hungary's economic, social, and political life, giving the Magyar nobility and lower gentry in the parliament control over its own military, its budget, and foreign policy. It essentially created an autonomous national kingdom of Hungary with the Habsburg King of Austria as its king. They also demanded that the Hungarian government receive and expend all taxes raised in Hungary and have authority over Hungarian regiments in the Habsburg army. Further, the new laws ended the special status of Transylvania and Croatia-Slavonia. One of the first tasks of the Diet was abolishing serfdom, which they did rather quickly. The Hungarian government set limits on the political activity of both the Croatian and Romanian national movements. Slavs and Romanians had their own desires for self-rule and saw no benefit in replacing one central government for another. Armed clashes between the Hungarians and the Croats, Romanians, Serbs, along one border and Slovaks on the other ensued.
Conservative local government of Croatia-Slavonia, which supported centralist Habsburg authority, severed relations with the new Hungarian government and devoted itself to the imperial cause. Soon contrasts between Croatian and Hungarian authorities escalated to military action. The King took opportunity from the war to attempt a royalist coup in Vienna, but it failed, radicals took control of the city and King Francis and the court were forced to flee Vienna. Civil war swept the Habsburg lands, pitting absolutist Habsburg conservatives and their centralist Croat supporters against Austrian liberal-nationalists and the Hungarian constitutional monarchist government, and the latter against their own restive Slav and Romanian subject nationalities.
The neighboring great powers, faced with the chaos on their borders, decided to intervene to “restore order”, claiming the precedent of the French intervention in Spain. Although Russia, NGU, and Naples were no friends of the Habsburg, and hoped to exploit the situation to their advantage, they were not willing to let the Habsburg lands dissolve into a chaos of endless bickering nationalities or worse have the radicals get the upper hand and create Jacobin republics, and thus spread the unrest to their own lands. A coordinated intervention by NGU, Russian, and Neapolitan troops imposed the authority of the powers over the war-torn empire in a few months, and representatives from moderates among the various factions were summoned to Vienna to negotiate with the three powers. The second Treaty of Vienna in early 1831 partitioned the former Empire. German Austria and Slovenia were set up as the Kingdom of Austria, with Franz Joseph of Habsburg as King, which joined the North German Union. Naples annexed Trent, Kustenland, and Dalmatia. Hungary became an independent Kingdom with Slovakia and Transylvania and a federal union with Croatia-Slavonia, with Maximilian of Habsburg as King. Bosnia and Serbia became a kingdom in real union with Hungary.
The breakdown of the Habsburg empire and the entry of Austria in the NGU greatly increased nationalist enthusiasm and popular pressure for German unity in the remaining south German states, and soon its governments acknowledged the inevitable. After negotiating some minor constitutional revisions, in late 1831 Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg joined the NGU, which was renamed Germany, and the title of Emperor was bestowed on the president of the Union and King of Prussia. A lavish ceremony crowned Frederick William III of Prussia Emperor of Germany in the Cathedral of Aachen.
The revolution in the Habsburg lands quickly sparked imitation in the Italian minor states, where dissatisfaction with the reactionary rule of its kings and of the Popes was as deeply felt. Liberal-national revolutions exploded in Etruria, Sicily, the Papal States, and Sardinia-Corsica. Revolutionary constituent assemblies petitioned for union with Naples. Neapolitan armies took control of Etruria, the Papal states, and, eluding the surveillance of the British fleet, landed in Sicily and Sardinia-Corsica. Naples annexed the other Italian states, and changed its name to Kingdom of Italy in 1831. Joachim Murat had accomplished his long-felt dream of being the leader of an united Italy, and staged his own coronation as King of Italy in Rome.
Although the unification of Italy had been accomplished with little bloodshed, trouble soon occurred with the Pope, which refused to acknowledge it and to renounce his rights over the former Papal states, refusing the Italian government’s offers of compromise from Murat and the Italian government, who intended to allow the Pope to keep the Leonine City as a small remnant Papal State. The Pope fled to Spain, appealing to aid from the powers and Catholic opinion to restore his rights. His appeals to the powers essentially fell on deaf ears, as the governments of France, Germany, Britain, and Russia were allies of Italy, non-Catholic, and/or liberal, thus ill-disposed to disrupt the peace of Europe to prop up the theocratic claims of the Pope. The Pope’s presence in the Iberian peninsula however sparked a new row of civil wars.
Reactionary sections of Spanish society were inspired by his inflammatory condemnations of liberalism to rally around the elder brother of king, Don Carlos, who was supported by absolutists, reactionary clergy, and those provinces (Basque countries, Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia) which stood for their traditional autonomies and privileges against the modern liberal state. The Carlist uprising occurred in 1833 and swept northern and eastern provinces of Spain. A very similar civil war erupted in Portugal over a succession crisis with opposite pretenders being backed by liberals and reactionaries. Although the great powers of Europe avoided large-scale intervention, they all supported the Iberian liberals, and volunteer expeditionary corps from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy fought on their side, while a trickle of absolutist and reactionary Catholic volunteers from various European countries fought for the Carlists and Miguelists (from the name of the absolutist Portuguese pretendent, Dom Miguel). The war raged till 1835 in Portugal and till 1838 in Spain, the superior resources of the liberals being balanced up to a point by the fanatical determination of the Catholic absolutists. The liberals were eventually victorious in both countries and seized the opportunity to confiscate the extensive properties of the clergy. The Pope and his court were captured and put under virtual house arrest in the Isle of Formentera. Various European governments (such as France, Germany, and Italy) passed laws to confiscate the property of Catholic clergy, supervise its activities and forbid its involvement in policy, abolish religious orders, institute free and later mandatory lay education in public schools, and make marriage a civil ceremony.
The unification of Germany sparked another drama to its northern borders, about the fate of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. The question, wrapped in a web of complex constitutional and dynastic issues, boiled down to whether ethnically German Holstein-Lauenburg and mixed German-Danish Schleswig, ruled by the King of Denmark, should be integrated in the unitary Danish state or become a part of the federal German Empire. Holstein was a part of the old German Confederation, Schleswig was not, but their ancient constitution claimed that both duchies ought to be “indissoluble”. Tensions in the duchies, between Danish attempts to change the constitution of the duchies to integrate them with Denmark, and German pressures for their integration in the German Empire, built up during 1832 and in 1833 exploded in open conflict between Germany and Denmark. Norway-Sweden sent an expeditionary corps to support Denmark (an action that was to strengthen the future long-term fortunes of the Scandinavist unification movement decisively). Russia and Italy supported their ally Germany, while Britain and France supported Demark. Russia massed troops to the border of Sweden, and Britain sent its fleet in the Danish Straits. However all powers were still wary of a general conflict, and German army won several victories in few months, seizing control of the Jutland peninsula. The Danish were forced to negotiate and in the third treaty of Vienna (1834) they ceded the three duchies to Germany. Over Danish and British insistence a provision was added for a plebiscite in Northern Schleswig. Such a plebiscite, held in 1835, returned Northern Schleswig to Denmark.
Riots also occurred within Burgundy, where its ethnically mixed French-German population was divided about the options of union with Germany, union with France, or continued independence, and in the southern, French-speaking and Catholic, provinces of the United Kingdom of Netherlands, which ill-tolerated Dutch dominance. Those riots were however quashed (in the Southern Netherlands owning to the decisive action of Crown Prince Frederick, who represented the monarchy in Brussels), and the status quo enforced for the moment, even if both issues were to resurface later.
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Eurofed
Banned
Whew, that was a lot to write but now TTL's equivalent of the 1830-1848 revolutions are essentially done. Europe has taken a semi-stable settlement for now, although Belgium and Burgundy remain potential trouble spots, as do the Balkans and the Middle East. I think that our good resident map-maker for Europe can proceed to update his fine period-looking map of Europe to 1835 with all the new borders (from now on, I think that it is unnecessary and distracting to show the internal borders of the states that make up the German Empire, since it is a unitary federal state). I'm only as yet uncertain about when and how the 1830 revolutions would affect the consitutional settlement of Switzerland. On one hand, TTL reactionary Catholics are even more radicalized than OTL, on the other they are very much the underdog throughout Europe, as all major powers have a liberal and/or non-Catholic leadership, so any Sunderbund would be crushed. Yet, Switzerland could easily take a different course, with influence from earlier German and Italian unifications affecting it when it's still a loose confederation. For now, let's butterfly the issue under the rug.
The rise of Jacksonian democracy in the USA, and then the Mexican-American War, or perhaps the deeds of Mehmet Ali, remain to be covered in the next updates. I provide an updated world map. The American and European borders ought to be accurate, as I do not foresee any significant border change in the Americas up to 1835.
The rise of Jacksonian democracy in the USA, and then the Mexican-American War, or perhaps the deeds of Mehmet Ali, remain to be covered in the next updates. I provide an updated world map. The American and European borders ought to be accurate, as I do not foresee any significant border change in the Americas up to 1835.
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Eurofed
Banned
Sorry about the slip of the hand. Yes, it was indeed meant as British South America, I've edited the mistake and on second thoughts, I also added "Australia".
Well, I put "1816" because the first part of the update gave coverage to Britain, France, and Spain, whose domestic situation since the (second) Congress of Vienna had not got any so far. You may think last update as comprising two parts: France, Britain, and Spain, 1816-1835. Habsburg Empire, Germany, Italy 1827-1835 (since they had gotten coverage about the previous period in past updates). Sorry if it got confusing.
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Eurofed
Banned
Helios-Ra, the map is a beauty, but giving the Ottomans territory back in the Balkans in 1835 makes NO sense for this TTL. Please check post #13. The Ottoman Empire in the Balkans has been totally dismantled after the Russian conquest of Moldavia-Wallachia, Greece, and Bulgaria, which severed any Ottoman strategic connection with the Balkans, and caused Ottoman control of the Western Balkans to collapse. The Russians annexed what they wanted, and the rest they partitioned with their client Greece, their ally Naples (Italy since 1831) and Austria.
I quote the relevant bit from post #13 "Eventually the Treaty of Constantinople in 1819 saves the Anatolian-Middle Eastern cores of the Ottoman Empire, although its possessions in Europe are summarily abolished. Russia annexes Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria (note: including Macedonia), Greece is restored as an independent client kingdom of Russia, Naples annexes Albania and Montenegro, Austria gets Bosnia and Serbia. Constantinople and the Straits are established as a free territory ruled by the powers (Britain, France, Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Naples), under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan. The merchant and war ships of every power are guaranteed free passage through the Straits in peacetime and wartime".
I praise your dedication and contributions to the TL, but I have serious doubts that your research would have so much relevance as to invalidate the explicit description of TTL territorial changes that I have given (I try to make them as much reasonably explicit and detailed as I can). Could you please explain what did you mean ?
By the way, minor quibble, sorry if I was misleading, when I said we might erase the borders of internal states to the German Empire, I was meaning Alex Richards's "period" European map, not yours, since in 1827 he had kept the color distinction between Prussia and the other states in the NGU. I think that for yours it makes better sense to keep the same standard for all states and keep the grid of the OTL-like provinces for all of them.
I quote the relevant bit from post #13 "Eventually the Treaty of Constantinople in 1819 saves the Anatolian-Middle Eastern cores of the Ottoman Empire, although its possessions in Europe are summarily abolished. Russia annexes Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria (note: including Macedonia), Greece is restored as an independent client kingdom of Russia, Naples annexes Albania and Montenegro, Austria gets Bosnia and Serbia. Constantinople and the Straits are established as a free territory ruled by the powers (Britain, France, Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Naples), under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan. The merchant and war ships of every power are guaranteed free passage through the Straits in peacetime and wartime".
I praise your dedication and contributions to the TL, but I have serious doubts that your research would have so much relevance as to invalidate the explicit description of TTL territorial changes that I have given (I try to make them as much reasonably explicit and detailed as I can). Could you please explain what did you mean ?
By the way, minor quibble, sorry if I was misleading, when I said we might erase the borders of internal states to the German Empire, I was meaning Alex Richards's "period" European map, not yours, since in 1827 he had kept the color distinction between Prussia and the other states in the NGU. I think that for yours it makes better sense to keep the same standard for all states and keep the grid of the OTL-like provinces for all of them.
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Haha. Yeah, the entire issue with giving the Ottomans parts of the balkans is that I forgot about that post entirely.
I'll fix it (including getting colors accurate by the UCS)...and try and make the map so I don't have to shrink it every time, which makes it look disjointed.
I'll fix it (including getting colors accurate by the UCS)...and try and make the map so I don't have to shrink it every time, which makes it look disjointed.
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