While Tsar Alexander III was left to pick up the pieces of his country, Japan and to a lesser extent China, were establishing themselves as dominant powers in Asia and the Sino-Japanese Alliance was made official in the Treaty of Kobe which entailed a lot mutual economic investment, military aid and common policies on certain fields although Japan’s policies dominated the alliance for now since Japan was the dominant partner. The Republican Chinese regime, in reality a pseudo-militaristic dictatorship that used revolutionary propaganda to appeal to the people, looked to the Japanese Empire as a role model and example of a successful Asian great power. Japan had a strong navy and army which had defeated a European power, a modern industrial economy and a modern, effective bureaucratic state apparatus. Japan was respected in the international community due to its westernization and modernization and China wanted to do that too and Japan could assist in that goal. Moreover, Japan and China shared the ideology of Asian nationalism and in the long term both Beijing and Tokyo wanted to remove European influence from the Asian continent and establish it as their sphere of influence and close its markets to everyone but themselves. Japan and their French allies started to invest in China. France was considered a colonial power too, but Britain still held the largest colonial empire in Asia and Japan’s and China’s efforts were therefore directed toward the British in the first place. With the suffocating and reactionary Imperial government gone in China, modernization could begin. One of the goals was to industrialize China through commerce and capitalism with state guidance. French and Japanese companies started to build roads, railroads telephone lines and telegraph lines which automatically led to much improved governance. Japanese and French entrepreneurs signed lucrative business contracts to develop China’s infrastructure and industrial base which was so far nonexistent. Japanese military experts were sent to train Chinese soldiers in modern tactics and teach them to work with new, European weapons such as France’s rapid fire 77 mm gun and new rifles and machine guns with 7.69x54 mm cartridges that had lethal effects. Coal mines and a steel industry were under development by 1920. China turned out to have the world’s largest supply of coal, but also supplies of iron ore, copper, tungsten and manganese and China started to build up a massive mining industry with steel industry and heavy industry being other important sectors.
With state devised Four Year Plans and foreign credit (mostly Japanese long term loans) the Chinese government guided what they considered the key sectors, cornerstones of a modern economy. Between 1908 and 1920 coal production tripled and steel production doubled. China started to export machinery, textiles and raw materials, replacing rice as its main export product. The Chinese government also abolished sinecures – functions which provided income for little work – and made education up to the age of fourteen compulsory. The education system itself was reformed to teach mathematics, physics, history, geography and spelling instead of Confucian teachings. Reading and writing used to be occupations that were considered noble, but now they were taught to all. The regime also adopted the metric system and in 1918 the State University of Beijing was founded, a large building that was clearly not in Chinese style, but in a solemn, imposing neoclassic style. China still had major problems such as a lot of underdevelopment in the countryside where the reforms caught on slower, but they were getting better. The rights of the old landed elites were largely abolished and the land redistributed and resistance against the reform was brutally stamped out. China would achieve Japan’s GDP by 1935 and exceeded it a year later due to the enormous investments in industrialization and rising heavy industrial, mining and steel industry sectors, but not in the least investment into a modern educational system. China remained inferior to great empires like Britain and France, but came up to Japan, Spain and Russia in terms of economic power. It was also at this time that the Sino-Japanese Alliance saw a clear division of tasks in the military field: Japan was to concentrate primarily on building a naval force while China would concern itself with developing a massive army from its manpower pool. They thereby complemented each other quite nicely and they also built up an integrated economic structure which gave Japan’s industry the resources it needed at a reduced price.
In Europe, quite the opposite was happening as an economic malaise had erupted post-war. Many European powers found it difficult to transition from a war economy back to a peacetime economy. Many soldiers were returning from the front to find their jobs taken and went into a mass of unemployed veterans who had nothing else to do but hang around. An economic slump followed in Europe which was compounded by ethnic strife in Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. A mild inflation hit Europe although nowhere near as high as the hyperinflation the Russians were experiencing, but it was enough to set off an economic depression which entailed quite some unemployment and led to resurfacing of old tensions. In the Ottoman Empire, Selim IV solved his ethnic problems by a decentralization as opposed to his father’s centralization policy. He gave his mostly Christian minorities equal rights to the Muslim majority of the empire . The many ethnic minorities received the right to teach in their own languages as long as they taught Turkish, the lingua franca of the empire, as well, administration in these regions became bilingual, the post of governor was opened up to non-Turks and a relatively large degree of autonomy was given to these governors even if Constantinople held the last word. Hungary, however, violently put down any Slovak or Romanian independence movements and maintained a relatively large army to do so. This period saw a reinvigoration of the Collectivist movement although fear of it due to its short-lived success in Russia also led to a rise in militant nationalist movements made up of veterans. Leftwing and rightwing violence was limited to the most politicized of the lower classes and assumed nothing nowhere near the scale of the upheaval the Russian Empire was undergoing. Western Europe’s social structure, political tradition and good response to the economic problems prevented worse from occurring as the message of Collectivism and militant nationalism seemed outdated, unnecessary. The regular police was therefore able to deal with any unrest caused by what they considered delinquents, small timers. Russia, at this time, was experiencing a severe economic crisis, much worse than the relatively mild one in Europe of which it would recover a few years later. Russia, however, had been ruined due to the civil war with a lot of infrastructure and industry destroyed and a lot of farmland left uncultivated due to the casualties of the war. Hyperinflation gripped Russia and Collectivist unrest remained after the end of the brief civil war and veteran militias rose against it, forming a smattering of rightwing splinter parties. In Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk and Kiev street battles between Red militias and veterans were daily occurrences and the bloodshed didn’t cease, it increased as the economic crisis deepened and Russian society became more polarized: rich versus poor, worker versus peasant, left versus right.
At this time the extreme rightwing nationalist movement in Russia was disunited because it was made up of hundreds of splinter parties with more or less similar ideological positions. St. Petersburg alone had seventy of such parties in late 1908 and early 1909. Political violence had gripped the newly democratic Russian Empire with its elections and subsequent campaigns that consisted of beating up opponents. The Duma, Russia’s parliament, was a chaotic mess because no stabile government coalition could be formed because there were at least three dozen parties in the Duma which prevented clear majorities. The coalitions that did form were highly unstable and fell apart due to squabbling. Russia’s peoples had demanded democracy, but Russia had totally no experience with it whatsoever after centuries of autocracy. Out of the ashes of the Russian Civil War rose one man whose goal was to restore Russia’s pride and power. His name was Boris Vladimirovich Antonov. His ideas were not unusual for the time and certainly not original: he combined Russian ultra nationalism with a broader Trans-Slavic nationalism, militarism, xenophobia, valuing of traditions, support for Russian Orthodox Christianity, superiority of the Slavic race and some popular ideas about eugenics. Anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim tinges were also part of his ideology and this was in line with widespread anti-Semitism in Russia as expressed in large pogroms. They were seen as non-Russian, as traitors and coincidently many Collectivist leaders had been of Jewish descent which was oil on the fire for the extreme right movement. Antonov founded the Russian Fatherland Party, at first seemingly an extreme rightwing splinter party like any other. He was an extremely gifted orator or demagogue if you will and propagated how Russia had to retake its position as protector of the Slavic peoples and unite them under the Tsar’s rule. His antics were directed against liberals, collectivist-democrats, Collectivists and Jews (mostly used as a synonym for Collectivist) who he blamed for Russia’s many problems. He united with a number of parties in St. Petersburg and started with small speeches for a few dozen people on town squares and streets, but his crowds grew to hundreds and even thousands as he managed to strike a chord. He also founded a militia of his own which would quickly become infamous for their political violence against any ideological opponent: they were known as the Blue Shirts for their dark blue uniforms. The RFP became (in)famous for its charismatic leader, but also its street battles and soon disgruntled elements from all over society found their way to Antonov. Membership numbers grew from seventy in the summer of 1909 to two thousand in 1910 and 60.000 by 1915, which made it a major contender in regional politics with most of St. Petersburg’s rightwing nationalist parties having merged with the RFP or having ended up marginalized. The city elites came to support it as a counterweight against the Collectivists since they were pro-preservation of traditional values (and therefore against women emancipation for example), preserving the power of the Church and old elites while also providing an alternative for Collectivism to the ordinary Russian with its hardcore xenophobic, anti-Semitic nationalism which provided solidarity and appealed to existing sentiments. The city government started to use the Blue Shirts as strike breakers against Collectivist organized strikes. For example, they broke up the 1917 railway workers strike effectively and swiftly. Their ideology became popular, partly thanks to Antonov who was seen as a messiah-like figure by many of his supporters who came to call him ‘Vozhd’ which means Leader.
By 1923, the RFP had 500.000 members and the Blue Shirt militia numbered 100.000 men. There was another upsurge in Red activity and the electoral way was going to slow for Antonov and so he decided to act. In October 1923 he marched on St. Petersburg, declared the government disbanded and announced his New Order. Propaganda exalted his struggle for Russian freedom and the ‘battle’ he had to fight to ‘liberate’ St. Petersburg and the Tsar from the Collectivists although the coup had been bloodless in reality and with cooperation from many of the elites and the army. He took power and set about to industrialize Russia forcefully by nationalizing key industries, outlawing strikes and trade unions (except for the RFP’s own trade union of course), and instituting long workdays and almost unattainably high quotas. A series of Plans, much like in China, guided a crash industrialization program which was pressed through regardless of the costs. Antonov radically reformed the military based on his own experiences as a sergeant, introducing promotion by merit instead of by seniority or birth, introducing trucks for transportation and modern armoured cars as breakthrough weapons and also modern planes to support the ground forces. He forcefully industrialized Russia often by use of forced labour for major construction projects and he was adored for it because he put Russia ‘back on track’. He would undo the shame of Orléans and unite the Slavic peoples under the rule of the Tsar and Russia. He proclaimed Russia a ‘Trans-Slavic Empire’.
America, in the meantime, was busy digesting its gains by flooding them with American settlers. Gold had been discovered in California and northern Mexico was being flooded too because it had silver deposits. America was growing into a superpower in its own right with a high population, lots of natural resources and an enormous industrial base and the US were also separated from both Europe and Asia by thousands of miles of ocean. The US had seen military success which had confirmed America’s ascension to great power status and had silenced the isolationists. America started a massive naval construction program to build battleships and the new battlecruisers to defend its long coasts although it also was seen as a threat by the European powers and Japan. The best example of American industrial might, however, are the two transoceanic canals built in Nicaragua and Panama. Both were massive undertakings for the US, but it did give them control over a major trade route, made it easier to transfer naval assets to the Pacific and was good for US prestige. The Nicaragua Canal was built by dredging the San Juan and San Juan del Norte rivers and building a short canal across the Rivas Isthmus to connect them. The Panama Canal was not at sea level since that would have been more difficult. A dam created an artificial lake and digging started from both sides to connect with the lake which made for much less digging time. Locks were the means of entrance for this canal.
France, Spain and Britain started their own naval construction programs as an extension of their prestige and national pride although it also cost a lot of money. Japan started to build a bigger navy too with cheap Chinese-bought steel. In 1928 Ottoman geologists discovered oil in the Trucial States and the oil revenue which would become enormous would fund an Ottoman fleet construction program and thus the Ottoman Empire joined the naval race too. The only notable absent power was Russia since Antonov decided to focus on the army and air force primarily with the navy being considered only necessary for coastal defence duties and close-to-shore operations. The Russian army saw a remarkable development due to Russia’s forced industrialization since many new modern industrial complexes had arisen to produce armoured cars, modern artillery and aircraft such as bombers, fighters and the first ground attack planes. The Russian army grew to 500 divisions with modern equipment, a high level of mechanization, good training and discipline with a good, new infrastructure to go with it. Despite increasing European militarization and the rise of China and Japan, however, the US had managed to establish itself as a great power and the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere with Brazil as a junior partner and the British a good ally, an alliance and partnership which became solid over the years since it was mutually beneficial.
By the mid 1930s, the world was once again ready for war. Russia was actively preparing for war and had already renewed its alliance with Britain. The Brazilians still had scores to settle with Spain and China and Japan were looking forward to expand their spheres of influence in Asia at the expense of both Russia, but also Great Britain. Napoleon IV was still alive at this point and had not reneged on his goal of keeping Europe armed at an equal level with Russia and Britain and his rearmament, fleet building programs and modernizations of the armed forces had pulled the economy out of the malaise. Western Europe’s culture had been thoroughly affected by the war since a gloomy attitude had taken root which was to be seen in many dark and post-apocalyptic movies and art. By the end of the 20s the era of gloom and doom in Western European culture was finally turning back to the frivolity of the 1890s as the new post-war generation had achieved adulthood. This was taking place under rulers like Emperor Napoleon IV of the French, King William V of the United Kingdom, Tsar Alexander III of Russia and Ferdinand IX of Spain who would see all they knew and held for granted end in the most enormous war the world had ever seen. Russia had considered none of the territorial losses stipulated in the Treaty of Orléans valid or just. They demanded the return of West Prussia and the liberation of the Slavic peoples who Antonov claimed were being horribly oppressed and he used ‘photographic evidence’ falsified by his own ministry of propaganda to prove it and sweep up a patriotic fervour. Russia reached a war fever due to the ultranationalist propaganda against the Turks and Poles who were seen as holding territory that rightfully belonged to Mother Russia. Russia ignited a territorial crisis when they demanded the return of the Caucasus states, which were Ottoman puppets, as well as West Prussia which had been awarded to them rightfully in the Treaty of Tilsit which France had already violated by unifying the German states which disregarded the interests of the Tsar’s German relatives. France under Napoleon IV followed a hard line stance against the Russians and the Hungarians who had chosen to become Russian allies rather than become part of the Continental Alliance. Before Napoleon IV could do anything rash he passed away of a heart attack at the age of 75 as a celebrated leader and he would miss the onset of the war. What he had done was change the succession laws and the result was that France got its first female monarch: the now forty year old but still youthful and beautiful Empress Hélène I who was a vigorous fighter as much as her father and she couldn’t care less about court protocols about these kind of things and studied a great deal about modern warfare by herself by reading books of prominent military theoreticians. Empress Hélène continued her father’s course and called Antonov a buffoon for thinking he could intimidate the French Empire and mobilized the army in response to Russia doing the same. She would see herself forced to lead a country through a war and with all the prejudices against women that still existed she would find it hard to do so with an exclusively male military hierarchy and an aristocratic and bourgeois elite which was also led by men. Antonov, by now, considered Russia ready to fight another war and so he took the final step and declared war. Britain, the US, Brazil and Hungary all believed they stood to gain from fighting the Continental Alliance again and so declared war on the flimsy excuse of supporting their Russian ally. The Continental Alliance’s Chinese and Japanese associates then declared war on what was known as the Seventh Coalition, yet another challenge for France to overcome and its greatest so far. The War of the Seventh Coalition had begun.