What could be possible names of a German or Spanish version of the Commonwealth

So, if Germany or Spain had an organization similar to the British Commonwealth or the French La Francophonie, where former colonies are in association with each other, what would there name(s) be? As a bonus, what would the name be for an italian version?
 
Spain would be an obvious choice, but colonially Portugal and the Netherlands were bigger players than Germany, simply due to the fact, that by the time Germany became a unified state again, they were pretty late to arrive at the colonial table. The Dutch word for the British commonwealth is 'Gemenebest', but given our decolonization in Indonesia (a conflict, which also resulted in many associated with the Dutch moving or being forced to move to the Netherlands) and to a lesser degree Suriname, we don't have a proper Dutch equivalent for the Commonwealth.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
Would La Hispanidad work for a Spanish style commonwealth? It could be a layman's term, like the Commonwealth OTL.
 
Deutschtumsverband? In German, especially around the twentieth century, choice of words depends heavily on political orientation. You'd get a different name from, say, a surviving Kaiserreich than you would from a Republican successor state, and a different one from a government dominated by progressive forces than from one still controlled by old elites. So that question will matter from the start.
 
Deutschtumsverband? In German, especially around the twentieth century, choice of words depends heavily on political orientation. You'd get a different name from, say, a surviving Kaiserreich than you would from a Republican successor state, and a different one from a government dominated by progressive forces than from one still controlled by old elites. So that question will matter from the start.
Agreed.
Also, there´s always plenty of boring bureaucratically sounding options, like "Lomé-Vertragsunion".
 
Spain would be an obvious choice, but colonially Portugal and the Netherlands were bigger players than Germany, simply due to the fact, that by the time Germany became a unified state again, they were pretty late to arrive at the colonial table. The Dutch word for the British commonwealth is 'Gemenebest', but given our decolonization in Indonesia (a conflict, which also resulted in many associated with the Dutch moving or being forced to move to the Netherlands) and to a lesser degree Suriname, we don't have a proper Dutch equivalent for the Commonwealth.
IIRC there actually was a treaty-set up 'Gemenebest' with various Indonesian splinter group that the Indonesian Republic reneged on pretty quickly.

For other countries, maybe a Francophonie equivalent at best. Really depends on how messy the decolonisation is; that sets the tone for what binds the involved countries. Politics, language, miscellaneous culture, etc.
 
A Dutch Commonwealth would have been possible if the Dutch East Indies never fell to the Japanese. Best POD for this would have been a victory at the Battle of the Java Sea, perhaps if ABDA had better coordination that day between the naval forces of those four nations. Even better if you had an earlier POD where the Dutch flood the Holland Water Line in the Battle of the Netherlands and either sue for peace with Germany or somehow survive a year long siege concurrent to the fighting in the Indies.

Without the Japanese destroying the local colonial administration, it seems likely that Indonesia would receive independence by the 1950s, possibly with Queen Wilhelmina remaining head of state for at least a while in a way similar to the OTL British Empire.

Another possibility is an agreement being reached where Malaysia and Indonesia achieve independence together as unified state, such a power would become as strong as India eventually becomes in OTL.

South Africa is another candidate for joining this Union, in a way similar to how Canada is simultaneously members of the Commonwealth of Nations and Francophonie. If super Indonesia became a precedent in this world, the simultaneous membership in both the British and Dutch commonwealth might have actual teeth in real political terms instead of just being a nod to a shared language.

It would depend on how the Dutch approach a South Africa that was fast on the tract to going full apartheid in 1948. Perhaps joining the Gemenebest would push South Africa towards liberalisation, as the widespread anti-British sentiment could manifest itself as seeking closer ties to Europe instead of giving the middle finger to the rest of the world by becoming a Afrikaan nationalist pariah state. The strongest possible Gemenebest South Africa might be if some crisis over racial integration caused South Africa to be partitioned into three states. Cape Province gains independence from Pretoria, the other provinces of Natal, Transvaal and the Free State become one country, perhaps called the "Volkstaat" or something, and Southwest Africa gets independence as Nambia with black majority rule.

Cape Province ironically enough has the highest population of Afrikaan speakers, of all races, compared to the former Boer republics.

4532990_orig.jpg


This is because the Voortrekers weren't interested in assimilating the native population as much as they wanted to lord over them, compared to Cape Province that until around Cecil Rhodes's time had a well established tradition of racial equality in politics. Perhaps there would be a revival of this way of thinking in and independent, pro-European Cape Province, and the widespread prevalence of a Dutch dialect in Cape Province amongst all races, not just the Boer ruling class, would make such ties to the Netherlands more viable.

A Xhosa nation state is fourth possible state to come out of the partition, being allowed to leave by Cape Town. Additionally the Tswana areas in the North accede to Botswana.

What ever happens, it seems unlikely that South Africa or a rump state thereof would want to become subjects of the Dutch Queen after kicking out Lilibet, but it might happen.

At this point if the Netherlands has Indonesia and South Africa in it's Gemenebest it might butterfly into Suriname becoming like French Guiana is today, an integral part of the Netherlands and more prosperous than OTL.

So that's basically the largest possible Dutch Commonwealth. Unless you wanted to go really crazy and add Ceylon. Ceylon had a population of "Burgher" people descendant from Dutch Colonizers from the 1600s on. In 1946, they represented 0.62% of the population. Not much at all, but it was higher in the cities and these people had more influence than their numbers suggest. If Ceylon had some nasty political crisis in around the 50s between the Tamils and the Sinhalese, the Burghers and the Dutch language might end up playing into whatever power sharing scheme ends up getting worked out. Dutch might end up becoming the lingua franca in Ceylon for no other reason than it doesn't favour either side. Picking Dutch over say English would be more likely if the Netherlands retained ties to Indonesia and remained a power in that area of the world.

So, a map of Greater Netherlands, including annexed Flanders, would look like this:

AMPJ3RN.png
 
A Dutch Commonwealth would have been possible if the Dutch East Indies never fell to the Japanese. Best POD for this would have been a victory at the Battle of the Java Sea, perhaps if ABDA had better coordination that day between the naval forces of those four nations. Even better if you had an earlier POD where the Dutch flood the Holland Water Line in the Battle of the Netherlands and either sue for peace with Germany or somehow survive a year long siege concurrent to the fighting in the Indies.

Hold on, is Dutch even a particularly strong thing in Indonesia? I mean, my own country never really spoke Spanish, and it doesn't feel like the south was any different. The only reason we even speak English here in substantial numbers is America and its robust education system.
 
Hold on, is Dutch even a particularly strong thing in Indonesia? I mean, my own country never really spoke Spanish, and it doesn't feel like the south was any different. The only reason we even speak English here in substantial numbers is America and its robust education system.

Nope. The Dutch language was used only used by the elite in Colonial Indonesia. But India and Pakistan don't speak very much English either, but they're still members of the British Commonwealth. For what little that is actually worth.
 
Nope. The Dutch language was used only used by the elite in Colonial Indonesia. But India and Pakistan don't speak very much English either, but they're still members of the British Commonwealth. For what little that is actually worth.

Wut? English is way more prevalent (even outside the elite, as a creolized lingua franca) in the Subcontinent than Dutch ever was in Indonesia.
 
Wut? English is way more prevalent (even outside the elite, as a creoli.zed lingua franca) in the Subcontinent than Dutch ever was in Indonesia.
Not by very much. At the time of independence, English was spoken by 2% of Indians while Dutch was spoken by 1.5% of Indonesians.
From what I've read, the reason why Dutch wasn't accepted as a post-colonial lingua franca while English was in India was that, as mentioned by rfmcdonald, a local version of Malay already had that function, and unlike the situation in India that semi-local language wasn't problematic to some of the new ruling elite like Hindi was. Could be wrong, though.

That lack of a need for a lingua franca and the Dutch never really having much of a language policy (not like the Portuguese, anyway) made Dutch very 'unsuccesful' as a colonial language, only really spreading to Suriname and South Africa sort-of. It's barely a thing in the Caribbean Netherlands to this day.
 
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