I’ve alluded to a coming economic crash in the Late 1920s in several different posts, so how about I talk about it now? For the winners of the Second Global War, the postwar period was a time of jubilation (this was particularly true in the Commonwealth of America, which was least affected by the fighting). After a brief period of adjustment from war to peace, the economies in the victorious countries prospered, the spirits flew high and the period became known as a golden age. However, nothing lasts forever, and this update will go over the collapse of that golden era, and what it would lead to.
During the Late 1910s and most of the 1920s, the Stock Market saw an unprecedented explosion, as millions of ordinary citizens invested their money for the first time. However, with that growth in the value of stocks came a bubble, as many of said stocks were priced higher than they were actually worth. While some financial analysts had predicted a coming decline in the stock market starting around 1926, it wasn’t clear when or how it’d happen, nor was it of much concern to the shareholders who were getting rich. However, this would all come to a dramatic and sudden end in the Autumn of 1928…
On Wednesday, September 19th of 1928 (I looked up the calendar from 1928), Wall Street opened up to a massive drop in the prices of stocks. Panicked investors rapidly sold stocks in order to get as much of their money back as possible, only furthering the tanking of the market. News spread overseas, and the London and Berlin stock exchanges both plummeted the following morning. The stock market crash of Dark Wednesday would not cease after the final bell rang, as both Thursday the 20th and Friday the 21st would see massive declines in the market. With the bursting of the stock market bubble, the economy began to tank, with unemployment rising from 4% in August of 1928 to 12% by the end of the year, rising further to 20% by the end of 1929. While there had been financial panics in the past, this was far, far worse than anything that had been seen in a very long time.
Politically, the crisis caused great shifts within Commonwealth politics. The Liberal/Whig Party had prospered during the Golden Dozen, winning both the 1920 and 1925 Parliamentary elections over their historical rivals of the Conservative/Tory Party and the newer but rising Labour Party. The Liberals generally believed in letting the free market do its thing, and that was a generally successful economic policy during most of the decade, the public wanted the government to provide relief, which the Liberals were reluctant to pursue (out of the fact that it would cause large deficits). The Bank of the Commonwealth (the central bank that controlled the money supply, sort of like the Federal Reserve of OTL) was hesitant to print more money out of concerns over inflation, which inadvertently led to the country sinking further into economic turmoil.
The Labour Party had been founded around the turn of the century in order to represent the interests of working-class industrial laborers, and had won their first seats in Parliament in 1905. Over the following decades, they grew popular among the urban working class (particularly among Catholics and Jews), as well as among Black people both in urban and rural areas. By 1925, they had won around a fifth of the seats in parliament, but it was in the 1930 election that the party really took off. In that election, the Labour Party surged from just under 20% of the seats to just under 40% of the seats, becoming the largest party in Parliament (the governing Liberals took a huge hit, while the Conservatives lost a few seats here and there), as well as taking control of over a dozen provincial governments. New Scotland MP John McKay became the first Labour head of government (as well as the first Catholic head of government). Now that the Labour Party was the largest party in Parliament, they could get to work pursuing their economic goals. While not officially Socialist (although possessing a Socialist faction), the Labour Party was in favor of greater worker protections, a social safety net and government spending on public works projects to rebuild the economy. While they didn’t do anything too radical (some Labour MPs proposed nationalizing major industries, which even much of the party found to be a step too far), they did go and pursue a program of direct state investment into the economy in order to try and rebuild from the crisis (which peaked in 1931, right at the beginning of Labour’s five year term in office). Large sums of money were sunk into public works projects like roads, dams and railways, unemployment relief was provided to millions of unemployed workers and establishing programs like payments to the elderly. While recovery was slow, the Labour government was sufficiently popular to retain their status as the largest party in 1935, winning just under 40% of the seats in parliament. Similar governments were elected in other countries like Britain, Australia, Patagonia and the German States, while in other countries, their responses to the economic crisis were… a bit more interesting, but I’ll get to that in another update. For now, however, this has been an update on the state of the Commonwealth of America during TTL’s Great Depression. This is going to be my last update of 2020, so I wish you all a happy end to this miserable year. See you guys in 2021!
Hey guys, and welcome to the first update of 2021! I was originally gonna do an update on Russia, but A: I had no idea how to approach it, and B: I haven’t done an update on Africa in about a year, so I think it’s time to revisit The Land of the Blessed Rains.
This timeline’s Africa is a bit different than our timeline’s Africa, as European colonization is largely limited to the coast. Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t European influence in the interior of the continent, as the Portuguese and Dutch-descended South Africans have conquered the entire southern 30% of the continent (aside from Natal, which is British), but other than that, the interior is still under direct Native African rule. However, any sort of outside influence is much more indirect than IOTL, as most European presence in the interior of the continent is from missionaries, merchants and explorers, rather than direct conquest. On the coast, Europeans expanded out from trading posts to establish control (whether direct or through protectorates) over most of the coast (rhyming intended) of Sub-Saharan Africa. Even further inland, many of the native African states took on a lot of European influence,with the Sahel becoming a battleground of European states gaining influence, Portugal and Prussia influencing the Congo and Ethiopia becoming more influenced by the French out of Djibouti. In North Africa, direct French control over Algiers (and Spanish control over The Rif) was reduced to just a few coastal cities after the Second Global War, but Cisalpina and Naples retained control over the coast of Libya, with Tripoli and Benghazi becoming quite Italianized, although the Italians remained a minority in the region. The many French settlers in Algeria either retreated to the French-controlled port cities, returned to France (the most common option) or moved to other French colonies like Terre-Bourbon. Speaking of the French, they expanded their base in Djibouti to include a bit more of Somaliland, building a second base at Berbera whilst turning the Somali states into protectorates. Otherwise, some of the main native African states were Egypt, Morocco, Sokoto, Ethiopia, Zanzibar and Merina. Austria-Bavaria acquired a slice of desert coast in Mauritania and Western Sahara, establishing their main base at Weißekappe, which while extremely dry had much more tolerable temperatures than other parts of the colony.
As mentioned earlier in this post, the influence of Europe on TTL’s Africa is much more subtle and indirect than on OTL’s Africa, which was almost entirely conquered by the European powers. Many of the native African states (particularly in the Sahel and in East Africa) looked to acquire new technology (particularly military tech like firearms) in order to secure power and expand their realms, seeking to trade with the Europeans who were based on the coast, who were hungry for Africa’s natural resources. As a result, the Sahel states like the Toucouleur, the aforementioned Sokoto, Ashanti (no, not that one), Kanem-Bornu and Futa Jallon expanded and conquered neighboring tribes. Much the same played out in the Congo and the Great Lakes, with Lunda, Luba and Buganda all growing due to the new technologies. On the east coast of the continent, the aforementioned Zanzibar Sultanate expanded out from the coast into the interior, with the aid of anti-malarial medicine. Ethiopia (with weapons acquired from the French) expanded south from their highland abode into the desert. Yeah, I know it’s a lot of space-filling imperialism here, but I’m an ignorant westerner who knows next to nothing about Africa beyond The Lion King, but I think there is one region that I know at least a little more about…
Yes, I’ve gone the entirety of this update with only a passing reference to South Africa, the one part of the continent that I have even the slightest bit of knowledge about (and not coincidentally the most westernized part of the continent). Having taken advantage of the chaos and warfare in the Highveld in the Early-Mid 19th Century, the South African Republic had expanded as far north as the Zambezi, with easily the largest population of Europeans on the continent. Probably the most powerful country in all of Africa, South Africa had a total population of nearly 10,000,000 by 1930, with a near even split between native Africans and the non-native White and Coloured populations. To put it mildly, the South African government’s policy towards the native African ethnic groups like the Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa and Pedi… wasn’t exactly friendly. Due to the superior military tactics and technology of the newcomers and due to longstanding hostilities between the different Black ethnicities, the native Africans were ultimately defeated by the Boers. The tribal chiefs and kings had no choice but to sign treaties that relegated them to be subjects of the South African Republic, took much of their nations’ land and reduced their people to second class citizens. When it came to the Coloureds, there was a large debate as to whether they should be put as a middle group between Blacks and Whites or to give them equal status in the hopes that they would be gradually assimilated into the general White population (this was especially prevalent in the Cape Province, which had the largest Coloured population).
(It’s very awkward for me to talk about this, because I am on a music site that is very left wing politically and thus I assume are not very keen on taking things like racial terminology in other countries in context, and I use the same username over there, so if you are from that site and find this post: spare my life, and I will grant you three wishes).
Either way, the continent of Africa was in a period of rapid change, and whether for the better or the worse, this is far from the last time I’ll be revisiting the Land of the Blessed Rains.
For the final post before my Part 100 Special, I’m going to return to East Asia. I’ve already talked about China (and to a lesser extent Japan), but I still have a lot more to go over in the Far East.
First, I’ll talk about the most modernized and powerful country in the Far East, Japan. Starting in the Mid 19th Century, Japan had gone through a massive shift from an isolationist, medieval-esque state to an industrialized and modern powerhouse of the Far East. Tokyo and Osaka had become some of the largest cities in the world, and Japan could now count itself as one of the world’s Great Powers. The Japanese Imperial Army was well-trained, disciplined and ferocious, and the Navy had grown to be the most powerful in the region, save possibly the British Imperial Pacific Fleet (I mean, being an island nation will do that to you). With Japan’s meteoric rise visible to the entire region, it wasn’t long before another country began to try to replicate its success…
Korea had been in a similar predicament to Japan. It was quite an isolationist country, keeping it’s distance from the outside world (with the exception of China, to whom it was a client state). Seeing the success of Japan (who was exerting ever more influence on Korea), the Joseon Dynasty began its own period of reforms, becoming the Korean Empire. Public schools were established, infrastructure was modernized and the military was revamped, among other things. While Japan had a bit of a head start on modernizing, Korea was following the same course, for better and worse.
Going further south, I’ll touch upon a region that I don’t think I’ve ever talked about: Southeast Asia. Now, unlike IOTL, mainland Southeast Asia (apart from a few port cities in Malaysia and the coast of Burma) remains uncolonized, but that doesn’t mean that European influence was nonexistent in this area. The European Powers (The Netherlands, France, Portugal, Prussia and especially Britain) were all interested in establishing ties with the Southeast Asian kingdoms of Siam, Cambodia and Dai Nam, including access to ports, allowing missionaries to proselytize and the drafting of trade deals (often times unfair trade deals in their favor, but trade deals nonetheless). Whether fair or not, mainland Southeast Asia became more influenced by the Great Powers of Europe (and also by the aforementioned rising power of Japan, which came to see itself as the new leader of the East). In the Malay Peninsula, the cities of Penang, Malacca and Singapore were under direct British rule, while the rest of the peninsula was divided between the British protectorate of Malaya and the southern portion of the aforementioned Siam.
In the island archipelago known as Indonesia or Nusantara, there was much more direct European rule. Starting out of their main base in Batavia, the Dutch had expanded their rule to cover most of the Indonesian archipelago, including the entirety of Java and Sulawesi, Sumatra apart from Aceh, the southern 2/3rds of Borneo (the northern third being under Bruneian control) and innumerable other smaller islands, plus the western half ofNew Guinea. Portugal controlled the islands of Flores and Timor, and the Prussians controlled the eastern half of New Guinea, although I’ve talked about that in a previous update. The Philippines were still a colony of the British, with Manila being home to one of the largest bases of the aforementioned British Imperial Pacific Fleet. Among the thousands of Pacific Islands, various European powers (plus Japan) were in a scramble to nab them up, with Britain, Prussia, France and Japan all acquiring little islands across the vast Pacific Ocean.
Across the European colonies in the Far East, nationalism and independence movements were on the rise. In the British Philippines, talks of becoming a dominion or even full independence were becoming more common, while in the Dutch East Indies, there was nationalism both for each island and for the idea of a united Indonesia. With high population growth and exhaustion from the Second Global War (at least for the British), it was going to get harder to keep large-scale colonies over time, so there was some discussion about decolonizing peacefully rather than being forcibly pushed out in the future, but it was rather minor for the time being in the home countries. Either way, this has been an update on East and Southeast Asia, and the final update before the milestone of Part 100, so I’ll see you then, so farewell for now and have a good day!
Alas, after nearly a quarter decade of brainstorming, writing and posting, we have finally arrived at Part 100 of this timeline! I started this timeline after I lost interest in my previous French Australia and French Canada timelines, and I was looking to start a new timeline. I wanted a point of divergence that would lead to a very different North America, and found the Anglo-French War of 1627-29, and more specifically the seizure of Quebec by privateer David Kirke to be a good launching point. By having the seizure take place a year earlier before the war in Europe ended (blatant handwaving, I know), the English (and Scottish) could acquire French Canada and Acadia in the peace deal. After that, France colonizes the Deep South (which remained uncolonized by the British until later on in the 18th Century), thus kicking off the timeline in full.
From it’s beginning in 1628, we’ve progressed over 300 years up to the 1930s. During this time, there have been major divergences between this timeline and our own. The American, French and Latin American revolutions never happen, leading to many more monarchies in the western world surviving. In contrast to the long post-Napoleonic peace in Europe of OTL during the 19th Century, the continent is rocked by a continent-wide war occuring from the Mid 1860s to the Early 1870s. With the weakening of Europe in the war and the absence of a certain hand-mutilating king going “hippity hoppitythe Congo is my property”, the Scramble For Africa is much more limited, largely concentrated in the southern third of the continent and along the coast. Asia is also less colonized, as mainland Southeast Asia is mostly independent. In China, the Ming Dynasty has risen from the grave, and Japan has gone from isolationism to great power within a lifefime. Australia is split between the British in NSW, Victoria, Southern Queensland and Tasmania, France in South Australia, The Netherlands in Western Australia and Portugal in Northern Queensland and the Northern Territory. Across the Tasman Sea, New Zealand is colonized by the Danish on the North Island and the Swedes on the South Island (EDIT: Retconned to be a Prussian colony). In the New World, The Commonwealth of America is the giant of North America. The former French colony of La Floride and the former Spanish colony of Mexico are both recently independent republics formed out of the chaos of the Second Global War (1911-1916), while Central America is largely under the new Guatemalan Republic and the Caribbean is a mix of European colonies and recently independent states. In South America, the main player is the behemoth that is the Empire of Brazil. The rest of the continent is made up of the Spanish dominions of New Granada, Peru and La Plata, the Dutch colony of Suriname and the British dominion of Patagonia. Back in Europe, the twin German states of Prussia and Austria-Bavaria dominate the continent after their victory in the Second Global War, while the losers lick their wounds and think of how to get back on top. Meanwhile, Russia has thrown off the czar and is now a radical-controlled Republic, although whether that is to last remains to be seen. All the while, Britannia continues to rule the waves, in no small part because their branch-off of the Commonwealth of America is now the hegemon of the Western Hemisphere.
The world in this timeline is familiar in some ways and yet quite different in others, and I look to provide more interesting content in the years to come (if I keep up this pace, I’m thinking this TL will reach the present sometime in 2022, after which I will start a Maps & Graphics series). It has been a thrill to write this over the past two and a half years, and I’m going to keep this world alive for at least the near future (assuming I don’t get the ban hammer by then). I’ll be putting up some maps within the next few days, and will start thinking of what to do for #101. Thanks to all of you for sticking around for 100 parts, and here’s to many more to come!
For the first update after Part 100, I’m going to look at the fate of the victorious countries from the Second Global War of 1911-16. While Russia had fallen into Civil War and France was barely hanging on, the victorious states were experiencing a post-victory high. Sure, many men had died and many more were injured or shell shocked, but there was a price to pay for victory (freedom does cost a buck o’ five, after all). In particular, I will be talking about the European victors of the war, namely The German States and Britain.
First, The German States of the North German Confederation (dominated by Prussia, which is what I’ve been calling it) and the Austro-Bavarian Union (or Austro-Bavaria) had established the new economic and defense union of Mitteleuropa (which would’ve been established if the Central Powers won World War 1 IOTL). This union, which I already talked about in Part 84, basically tied much of Central and Eastern Europe’s economy around that of the German States, as well as providing the Germans’ military protection against any French or (especially) Russian threats. The rich natural resources of Eastern Europe were now at Prussia and Austro-Bavaria’s disposal.Massive amounts of grain was shipped from Ukrainian fields to German cities, and coal from the Carpathians fueled industry. In return, German-produced goods would be sold to Eastern Europeans for reduced prices, so there were benefits for both parties here, although the lion’s share of the gains went to the Germans. While the new Eastern European partners (or more accurately subjects) weren’t thrilled with rule from Berlin and Salzburg (the capital of Austro-Bavaria, a compromise between Vienna and Munich), it was preferable to rule from Moscow, as at least they had their own governments (even if they were effectively puppets).
Now, to the other major victor of the war, Britain. Britain, being an island with the world’s top navy was mainly unscathed. However, they had lost around a million men fighting in the fields of the Rhineland and Northern France, and were generally exhausted by that. Meanwhile, nationalism in British India, which was already significant, began to surge in the period after the war, and debates over whether to peacefully depart from The Subcontinent became more frequent.
With that said, the most notable trend in post-SGW Britain was the shift in opinions towards the Germans. With France on its knees and Russia in chaos, the Germans had completely taken over Continental Europe. Thus, the British became increasingly concerned over the German hegemony over the mainland, with Anglo-German relations souring over the 1920s. If there’s one thing Britain doesn’t like, it’s one power dominating the continent, and thus, the unthinkable came…
A rapprochement with France.
France and Britain had been age-old rivals, fighting numerous wars over centuries. Frenchmen and Brits may as well have been natural enemies by this point (insert Groundskeeper Willie reference here), and it was going to take exceptional circumstances for the frogs and limeys to reconcile. Well, those exceptional circumstances may have come to fruition, just a decade and a half after the Brits waltzed into Paris, France and Britain were rapidly reconciling, as Britain too came to see the Germans as their main threat. The French and British negotiated a new pact of nonaggression, with the monarchs of each nation shaking hands and burying the metaphorical hatchet, thus putting a stop to the Anglo-French rivalry that had been a thing since the 14th Century at least. Heading into the Mid 20th Century, the geopolitics of Europe (and indeed the world at large) was rapidly shifting, and we’ll continue to cover this story in the future.
Part 102: Demographics and Migration in the Commonwealth of America
This update is going to be a bit of a special one, as I get to talk about a particular interest of mine: Demographics! More specifically, this is going to be about the various ethnic and cultural groups that formed the Commonwealth of America up to this point in the timeline, and where they ended up. I’ll also talked about some of the different cities and provinces in the country later on, but that’ll be after the settlement part. The East Coast of OTL’s U.S. from Virginia on north is much the same. New England is still settled by Calvinists, Pennsylvania by Quakers, Virginia by Cavaliers and Appalachia by the Scotch-Irish. However, further north is where things begin to change.
In New Scotland, it should be pretty obvious who settled there. Being a colony of Scotland before the Act of Union in 1707, New Scotland was overwhelmingly settled by Scots (shocking, I know). This gave the colony a very Scottish character, with the accent being noticeably more Gaelic than the rest of the country. Up in Laurentia, the colony was more of a mixed bag. Being quite cold, the colony basically took whoever was willing to come. As I mentioned way early on in Part 4 of this timeline (posted in September of 2018, man does time fly), Laurentia was settled by a mixture of different groups, from Englishmen to Scotch-Irish to Germans and even some Scandinavians.
That covers the early, foundational migrations of the colonial era, but now it’s time to talk about what transpired after the independence of the Commonwealth in 1776 (blatant parallelism to OTL). In the century following independence, the five major regional groups of the U.S. (Chesapeake, Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic, New English, New Scottish and Laurentian expanded westward. The Chesapeake planter class was rather limited, only being able to expand to some areas along major rivers south of the Ohio before slavery’s death knell rang (this is also largely where TTL’s African-Americans were concentrated before the equivalent to the Great Migration happens). Appalachian settlers cut across the mountains into the land the slaveholders didn’t take, as well as much of the land along the Ohio and in the Lower Midwest (as well as into the land acquired from La Floride after the First Global War). Mid-Atlantic migrants went straight west into the fertile central part of the country. New Englanders settled in the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest. Laurentians and New Scotsmen settled in much the same regions as the New Englanders, with the three groups coalescing to form the basis for the culture of the Great Lakes region.
The Central part of the country (what we’d call the Midwest IOTL) was also heavily settled by German immigrants, many of whom came to farm the fertile fields of the region, while others settled in growing urban centers like Chicago, Millocky, Cleaveland, Losantiville and New Hanover. Some of the central provinces of the Commonwealth ended up with populations that were over 25% ethnically German, and the German language would maintain a large presence in said provinces for decades. Back out east, Irish immigration surged, as half a million Irishmen fleeing the famine ended up in the Commonwealth. The wave of Irish immigration wouldn’t stop there, as Ireland would be one of the largest suppliers of settlers to the Commonwealth for the remainder of the 19th Century. While the Irish settled pretty much everywhere in the Commonwealth, the largest number stayed in the East Coast cities in which they landed (in large part because they had no means of moving further inland), giving cities like Boston and Saint John a very Irish flavor.
Anyway, a bit more on the largest cities and stuff (which I already talked about a bit in Part 87). Obviously, the largest city was New York, as it is IOTL. The population in the greater New York area had recently crossed the 10 Million threshold, becoming possibly the first city in the world to reach that momentous milestone. However, I’ll dedicate a whole paragraph or two to the province of Laurentia.
To start, Mount Royal was the second largest metro area in the nation with nearly seven million people (I greatly overshot it when I said it had nearly 10 Million). Pretty much the entire Island of Mount Royal had filled up by this point (the island itself had a population of 4.5 Million, or over 23,000 people per square mile), so the city was rapidly spreading both across the Saint Lawrence onto Caroline Island (named for Charles I of England in the 1630s) and across the river, greatly growing the preexisting city of New Lambeth (named for Lambeth, one of the areas of South London that is immediately across the Thames from the center of the city).
Downstream in Kirkeston, the population had grown to 3.5 Million. A massive new bridge had been constructed across the river (think something as huge and iconic as the Golden Gate or Brooklyn bridges), allowing the city to spill over, greatly expanding the city of Southwark (once again named for an area in South London). Three Rivers had long surpassed the one million mark, while other cities were home to hundreds of thousands of residents, including Falton, Hull, Williamstown and Sherbrooke. With such a concentration of large cities in a relatively small area, the population density in the Saint Lawrence river valley and lowland Laurentia was now similar to that of Western Europe, and there was only so much room to expand, so Laurentians, along with other Easterners, began to pack up and move west…
The West Coast provinces of New Albion, Oregon and Columbia began to boom during the Early-Mid 20th Century. With cheap land, a mild, pleasant climate and abundant resources, the West Coast became a very appealing destination for Easterners. The San Francisco Bay Area became the largest urban area on the West Coast of North America, with the cities of San Francisco, Newhampton and Oakland swelling with emigres from out east. Other cities in New Albion like Tuleburg, Sacramento and Reading also saw their populations grow. Further north in Oregon and Columbia, the cities of Chiffing, Chimikitty, Oregon City, Vancouver, Port Gardner, Bellingham and New Westminster were also growing, also in large part because of migration from the East Coast. The same held true in the interior west, where cities like Spokane, Eagle Rock, Salt Lake and Blackrock were also attracting easterners (you can tell that I really like listing locations).
Broadly speaking, the Commonwealth of America was seeing both internal and external migration drastically reshaping much of the country during the Late 19th and Early 20th Century, which would go on to form the characteristics of each region of the country. Wherever the rest of the 20th Century takes the Commonwealth, I’ll be looking forward to writing about it. Take care folks, I’ll get those maps out in the near future, and have a great day!
With the victory of the Radical faction in the 1928 Russian elections, Russia was now in uncharted territory. While there’d been Radical rebellions that had taken over entire cities in other countries, Russia was the first country to come under the control of committed Radicals. Now that they had a democratically-elected mandate, the Radicals got to work.
While originally gaining popularity in Russia’s growing urban centers, they’d expanded their appeal out into the sticks by promising land reform. Land owned by the former nobility (which as a class had been formally disestablished upon the creation of the Republic) was to be seized and redistributed to landless peasants without any sort of compensation for the former owners, even ones who’d reconciled with the Republic. From 1929 to 1932, huge amounts of land was expropriated by the state and either redistributed into smallholdings or kept as public land. This move was a mixed blessing, as while thousands of peasant families across Russia got to acquire land for the first time, the massive disruptions in agricultural production that resulted caused food shortages across parts of the country, increasing the price of grain substantially in the Early 1930s.
When it comes to the other economic policies of the Radicals, one of the main priorities was to rapidly industrialize the country. Russia, despite its massive manpower, had struggled mightily during the Second Global War against the much more industrialized Germans, and the new leadership sought to rectify that. While not full-on Commies like IOTL (although there was a small faction of utopians who held views similar to Communism), it would be fair to consider the Radicals in Russia Socialists of some sort, so the Radicals nationalized many major industries and launched new state-run enterprises to tap into Russia’s natural resources. As with the land redistribution, the results were quite mixed. On the one hand, Russian industrialization went into high gear, and new jobs were created left and right for the growing urban populations. On the other hand, many of the state-owned industries were quite inefficient and nepotistic, giving management positions to ideological cronies with no experience instead of to those who were skilled with running industries but may have held different viewpoints. The Radical government also built public housing on the outskirts of growing cities, which provided thousands with new homes (albeit cheap and shoddily constructed ones, but homes nonetheless).
When it came to the Radicals’ foreign policy, they were less focused on outward expansion than they were on defending what they had and on contacting and influencing similar movements abroad. For example, the Russian government made contact with Indian nationalists, who viewed Russia’s overthrow of their own oppressive, distant monarchy as inspiration to their own struggle against the Britishers (to use the proper Indian phrase). Meanwhile, they began to rebuild Russia’s military, growing and modernizing the Army of The Republic into a fighting force that could combat the Germans in the west and Japanese in the east.
However, their social and cultural policy was definitely the most… contentious. Needless to say, the Radicals weren’t exactly friendly towards former Czarists, banning any Czarist political parties and forbidding any praising of the former monarchy from being spoken in public. While most of Russia’s top nobility (including the Czar and his family) had fled after the fall of the monarchy (mainly to either other Orthodox countries or Russian allies from the Second Global War), there was a second wave of Russian emigration during the period of Radical rule. The unfriendliness of the Radicals towards the Nobility also carried over into a disdain for the Russian Orthodox Church, which they viewed as an institution inhibiting progress in the country. The religious views of the Radical higher-ups varied from Deist on one end to zealous Atheists on the other, and most weren’t big fans of the church. While the church was removed from its status as the state religion upon the declaration of the Republic, the Radicals wanted to basically remove religion from the public sphere (not just Christianity, but other religions like Islam and Buddhism, which made the Radicals unpopular with minorities like the Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens and Kalmyks). Religious schools were shut down, preachers of all faiths that were critical of the regime were at the very least censored (if not imprisoned) and the church was put on a tight leash as to what if could say and do. This alienated many peasants and rural folk who, while not necessarily fans of the pre-war Church, were usually quite religious and voted for the Radicals for economic reasons, not for the entirety of Russian society to be remade from the top down. Needless to say, when the 1932 elections came around, it was a complete toss-up as to who would win, and Russia’s future hung in the balance, and as for who will come out on top, well, that is yet to be seen...
I know I just did an update on The Commonwealth, but I decided on a whim to do one more, this time on the sparsely populated northern part of the country. While there may not have been much here but bears, moose and trees, I still find it quite an interesting region to talk about, as well as a perfect opportunity to add to my ever-growing list of locations. I think it’s time to start the update for real now, so I’m just gonna get right into it, starting out east and heading west.
At the very eastern edge of the great north was Northern Laurentia and the Northeastern Territory. Laurentia only stretched as far north as the Atlantic-Hudson Bay continental divide and the 52nd Parallel (with the exception of a small coast on the Hudson Bay), but pretty much everything north of the Laurentian Mountains and the Saguenay River (with the towns of Shecootimee and Tadosack along its shores) was incredibly sparsely populated. The North Shore of the Gulf Of St. Lawrence was home to some small fishing and forestry-based towns like Manicoogan, Seven Isles and Mickan along it’s shores, but was otherwise very sparse. In the vast forests and hills of Northern Laurentia were places like the resort town of Trembling Mountain and the mining towns of Gold Valley and Copper Lake. The Northeastern Territory, a vast expanse of Taiga, Tundra and innumerable lakes, lies north of the Laurentian frontier and was mainly inhabited by native tribes and a few brave prospectors and settlers. The coast was home to scattered, mainly Inuit villages, and the only major town was the territorial capital of Goose Bay, and even that only had a few thousand residents.
Further west into Gitchigami (OTL Northern Ontario), the two largest cities in the province were the capital of Bawitigong and Gaminstigwea, but there were other cities and towns in the province as well. The city of Portage was built at an important stop on the fur trade route, and retained that role when a northern railroad was built. The Canadian Shield is rich in mineral resources, and the cities of Sudbury and Mattagami grew up around mineral deposits. Finally, the old trading post of Moose Factory grew into a small, isolated port town on the Hudson Bay.
Going into the Prairies, settlements were stretching further north than they were out east. The province of Winnipeg went as far north as the Saskwaton River, while the provinces of Saskwaton and Athabasca went as far north as the Unjegah River and 60th Parallel north, further north than Oslo or Stockholm. In Winnipeg, the capital and largest city in the province was also named Winnipeg, while some other cities and towns included Grand Forks, Queensfort and Pascoya. In Saskwaton and Athabasca, the Prairie went further north than it did elsewhere, and the transitional Aspen Parkland was especially suited to farming. Because of the cold climate, settlers from Scandinavia and to some extent Eastern Europe were recruited to settle in the region, giving the high plains a quite significant Nordic and Slavic influence on the region. Apart from the provincial capitals of Saskwaton and Edmonton, some towns in Saskwaton and Athabasca were Catepwas, Battleford, Wascana, Swift Current, Redcliff, Bowville and Elkford. Oil was discovered in Athabasca, leading to a surge of settlers coming out to strike it rich and forming the basis of the province’s economy (in addition to farming and eventually tourism), whereas Saskwaton remained primarily agricultural and pastoral.
Across the Rockies, we get to the province of Columbia. While most of the population in Columbia ended up residing in the area around the Salish Sea, there were also many towns scattered around the forested and mountainous interior of the province. The main city of inland Columbia was Kamloops, but there were other cities and towns like Fort George, St. James, Clearwater and Penticton. The northern border of Columbia was expanded a bit further north during the 1930s, forming a new northern tripoint between Columbia, Athabasca and the Northern Territories. Hey, speaking of that…
We finally now get to the Northern Territories, the furthest north and most inhospitable portion of the Commonwealth. If the Northeastern Territory was remote and desolate, the Northern Territories took that and put it on a much larger scale. As with the Northeastern Territory, the Northern Territories were mainly populated by the various Native tribes and populations of the region, including the Inuit along the frozen shores of the Arctic. Other than that, Anglo-American settlement in the region was mainly limited to small outposts. For example, the former Hudson’s Bay Company trading post of York Factory had grown into a small port town on the shores of the Hudson Bay (much like the aforementioned Moose Factory). While technically at the very northern edge of Athabasca, the town of Fort Vermilion (also a former fur trading post) served as a gateway to the far north, as did the town of Fort St. John, whose area had some of the only arable land in the Northern Territories.
The part of the Northern Territories that was becoming the most important, however, was the western part. Much of this area had been part of the Russian colony of Alyeska, which gave the area a preexisting base to work from. In addition, Gold rushes in the region like at Hammerstone and at Nome drew tens of thousands of prospectors to the region, and while most of them went home after the gold dried up, some of them stuck around permanently. Seeing this rush of people into the area, construction of a railway connecting the area to the rest of the Commonwealth soon began. While a short railway was built from the port town of Shakagey into the interior, the railway from the aforementioned Fort George was the one that most travelers took to Alaska. Winding its way across over a thousand miles of endless taiga and mountains, the Alaska Railway connected the mainland Commonwealth to Alaska all the way to the Kenai Peninsula. Alaska had grown so much that there were even proposals to admit it as the newest province of the Commonwealth, but that’ll have to wait for the time being. I’m kind of surprised that I found so much material from some frozen tundra and forests, but that’s just how it turned out, and I’ve got to post the update already, so farewell for now, I’ll see you next time!
It’s been a year and a half since I did a full update on the Indian Subcontinent, so how about I do that? As I said in the first update on India from way back when, India is a big region that can’t be boiled down to a single update, but that’s just what I’m gonna do.
Going from North to South, we’ve first got to talk about the British Raj. Covering the entirety of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the British Raj occupied the old heart of Indian Civilization, and on it’s own would be one of the most populated countries in the world. The original main base of the Raj was in Calcutta, but it was eventually moved to Delhi to be more centralized in the country. Britain ruled much of its territory indirectly through Princely States, run by Maharajas who would pledge fealty to London but otherwise ran themselves. Britain also gained control of the coast of Burma, including the important coastal city of Rangoon. The rest of Burma was made into a British protectorate, joining the protectorats of Nepal and Bhutan. I’ll get back to British India to talk about some of the developments that have emerged there, but I’ve got to move on for now.
Going south across the Mahanadi River, we’ve got French India. France had gained control first over the Coromandel Coast, and then further extended their influence to cover the Deccan Plateau. In addition, France had acquired the Malabar Coast from Portugal after the First Global War, with the exception of the Goa area. Apart from the main French base of Madras, the French also had important secondary bases at Pondichéry, Yanaon and Mahé. Direct French rule was largely concentrated on the coasts, while the interior was mainly run by the French equivalent to Britain’s princely states.
Aside from the juggernauts of Britain and France, there were three more minor European colonial powers in India, those being Portugal, The Netherlands and Denmark. Aside from the aforementioned Goa, Portugal controlled the Kathiawar Peninsula from their main base of Diu. The Netherlands still controlled the island of Ceylon, although it was secondary to the main Dutch colony of the East Indies. Finally, Denmark still had their small territory around Trankebar and in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This is repeating a lot of stuff from the old update on India, but it’s been so long that I think it’s worth a reminder.
Now for what has changed since the last update. In the 80 years that have passed since the first update on India, there have been two massive global wars, both of which saw extensive fighting in India. Millions of Indians on both sides had fought and died in the two wars, and were becoming increasingly restless and angry. While there’d been pro-independence sentiment for the entire history of the British and French Indian colonies, the Second Global War was the big spark for Indian nationalism and independence movements. Both Britain and France had promised increased autonomy after the war, but that’s just it, increased autonomy, not full independence. While both London and Paris knew that they couldn’t hold onto their Indian colonies indefinitely (India was just getting too populous and restless), they were gonna ride until they can’t no more. The British Raj started hosting general elections, but that’s it, it was still the British Raj, not a native Indian regime. Indian Nationalists in the Raj got in contact with the Russian Republicans, who pledged their support for Indian independence, and they decided to form the National Union of Hindustan, which advocated for a fully independent, united and republican Northern India. Russian Republicans also came in contact with South Indian nationalists, who wanted independence from the French. With that said, the nationalists movements did have internal divisions, such as between Hindus and Muslims and how to govern an area that was so large and diverse. In addition, groups like Christians and those of mixed European/Indian heritage were concerned that they would be punished for having ties with the Europeans, which added another complication to the matter. Either way, once those elections in the British Raj rolled around, the NUH won a strong majority of the seats, sending a message to the Britishers that the sun was, at one point or another, going to set on the British Empire, at least in India. Whatever happens in India over the coming years and decades is certain to be interesting, and I’ll be there to cover it, but for now, I’ve got to say goodbye.
For this update, I’ll be looking south of the 37th to the newly independent Mexico. I did do a Mexican update with Part 88, but that was rather small, and this will hopefully be more extensive than that one.
After having been a Spanish colony for four centuries, Mexico became independent in the aftermath of the Second Global War, in which the Commonwealth of America forced the Spanish out of North America. Upon independence, Mexico was made into a republic, as the Commonwealth did not want the Bourbons to return to North America. Geographically, Mexico stretched from the upper Rio Grande/Bravo valley at over 38 degrees north down to Punta Cometa in Oaxaca, a distance of over 1,500 miles north to south. The country was also incredibly varied in terms of climate and terrain, including everything from desert to jungle to mountains and forests. Along with the diverse geography, the country was far from homogeneous demographically. Once a center of Amerindian civilization with a population of around 20 million (larger than any country in Europe at the time), the native population of Mexico was devastated by the introduction of Old World diseases, particularly smallpox, and plummeted to just a fraction of what it’d been before the Spanish conquest. However, it remained large enough for the Indigenous component of the population in Central and Southern Mexico to remain very large, whether full native or of mixed heritage (Mestizo). Further north, however, the native population was far smaller, and thus was largely replaced by settlers, who were a mixture of Spaniards, other Catholic Europeans (most of whom were Italians) and migrants from further south (who were mainly Mestizo). As a result, the northern half of the country ended up much more European than the more Indigenous south. The immigration to the north would continue after independence, growing both major cities like Monterrey and San Diego and more modestly sized ones like Corpus Christi, San Marcos, El Paso, Las Cruces, Santa Fe, Pitic, Ensenada and Salinas.
The large regional and demographic differences led to Mexico adopting a federal system of government, with each of the different Provinces/Regions having a degree of local government while still being subordinate to the government in Mexico City.
Now, that’s a lot of stuff I’ve talked about before, but I feel the need to go into detail about some things I haven’t talked about. More specifically, I’m gonna talk a bit about Mexico’s economic situation and development. Ok, got it, let’s a go!
After the Spanish conquest, the economy of Mexico (or New Spain) came under the control of a small Spanish elite, with large Haciendas controlling much of Mexico’s agricultural sector and the vast silver and mercury mines being heavily regulated by the crown back in Madrid. Meanwhile, the Mexican political system was run entirely from Madrid, with the Mexicans having little to no autonomy or self governance for most of the colony’s history. While reforms were made in the 19th Century (giving the Criollos equal status to Peninsulares, for example), the Spanish colonies in the 19th Century were on a much tighter leash than, say, the Commonwealth. After the Second Global War and the brief Commonwealth occupation, Mexico had achieved independence as a unified country for the first time in its history. Now, this did come with a bit of a caveat, as the newly independent Mexico (as with the other newly independent North American countries) was in many ways an Anglo-American client state. This was both a boon and a detriment to the new country. On the one hand, American investments flooded into Mexico, building new infrastructure, boosting trade ties and making Mexico very attractive to wealthy Americans seeking to travel abroad. On the other hand, this meant that much of Mexico’s economy fell under the control of American businesses, stifling local industries and leading to a lot of resentment, as if independence didn’t mean anything and it was just a shift in who they were subject to. The first party to rule the newly independent Mexico, the Liga Nacional (National League), was by and large buddy/buddy with the Commonwealth, and the new populist, not exactly pro-Gringo Unión del Pueblo (People’s Union) rapidly gained popularity among the Mexican peasantry. In the case that they eventually win an election or otherwise gain power, I’m sure you can guess what happens next.
As an independent and sovereign nation, Mexico has now officially made it, and regardless of where the future brings this very interesting country, I’m sure I’ll have more to talk about when it comes to Mexico. Until then, however, I must say adios y hasta luego!
In the two and a half years that this timeline has been running, I don’t know if I’ve ever done an update on the Ottoman Empire, so how about I get that out of the way?
The Ottoman Empire by the 20th Century had been around for over 600 years, having begun at the tail end of the 13th Century. The first few centuries of the empire’s existence was one of constant growth and expansion, conquering Constantinople in 1453 (thus marking the official end of the Eastern Roman Empire) and stretching from Yemen to Algeria to Hungary at its height in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Beginning in the 18th Century, however, the Ottomans began to be outmatched by their European counterparts, and they started losing some of their European territories, including most of the Balkans (or Rumelia as the Ottomans called it), culminating in the loss of Greece in the Greek Revolution of the 1850s.
What really kicked off the period of reform, however, was the Ottoman loss in the First Global War. While the military had begun its reforms after the Greek Revolution, it was only part way through by the time the First Global War started. After the war, the Ottoman military went full-on into becoming a modernized fighting force. For example, the old Devshirme system was done away with, being replaced with a standard recruitment system. The military also hired western advisors to aid in the modernization process. Reforms weren’t limited to the military, however, as the legal code was also revamped, replacing the decentralized Millet system with a standardized, religiously neutral legal code. New infrastructure such as telegraphs and railroads were built across the empire, as well as beginning the process of industrialization within the empire. When it came to the structure of the government, the Ottoman Empire was still an absolute monarchy, but there were growing reform movements to turn the empire into a constitutional monarchy, although it was debated to what degree the Sultan would have political power.
While reform progress could be slow and difficult at times, it ended up paying off in the end, as the Ottoman Empire came out victorious in the Second Global War, regaining land from Greece, Bulgaria and Dacia. This brought new vitality and confidence to the empire, giving it the strength to survive further into the 20th Century. What also helped the empire’s prospects at long-term success was the discovery of oil in Iraq and Kuwait, which provided an economic boost to the empire and, assuming it was managed properly, would continue to pay dividends well into the future. Once in a long and seemingly unstoppable decline, the Ottoman Empire had now arrested said decline and was looking to recover at least some of its former glory, and assuming that it keeps its current upward trajectory, the Ottoman Empire could be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come...
While the years following the end of the Second Global War were a time of prosperity and patriotism in the victorious countries, things were significantly less rosy in the losing countries. Not only had they lost many men and seen large parts of their countries be reduced to rubble, but all that pain and suffering was only compounded by significant loss in the peace treaty. This made countries like France, Cisalpina, Naples and Illyria very bitter, resentful and unstable, as they were both looking to regain their former glory and were facing internal unrest.
For example, France. France lost over a million men in the fighting, and much of Northern France were reduced to rubble (including parts of Paris itself). They’d lost their access to the Rhine in Alsace-Lorraine and a large chunk of their industry in Wallonia, which made rebuilding the French economy all the more difficult. In addition, France had to pay war reparations to the victors, which added to the already sizeable French debt. All of this led to the Late 1910s and 1920s being a very, very rough time for France…
After the loss in the war, fingers began being pointed in every direction. Some blamed the King for being weak and signing the humiliating treaty (even though the Germans and British had proposed partitioning France if they didn’t surrender), some blamed the generals for not realizing how war in the 20th Century was to be fought. The Left was targeted for criticizing the war, thus lowering morale, while The Right was targeted for being overconfident and not accepting that they couldn’t beat the Germans and British at the same time. Cities like Lille, Amiens, Rouen, Nantes and, of course, Paris had to be in large part rebuilt after the war, and while it would put hundreds of thousands of people to work, it also cost a fortune and a half. As mentioned in Part 85, King Louis-Denis passed away in 1921, being succeeded by his 54 year old son François. Francois, in his coronation speech, stated that his ultimate goal was to retake Wallonia and Alsace and to restore French honor. However, François was not stupid, and he knew that he could not go to war against the Germans anytime soon. Rather than go to war, François looked to achieve French goals through other means, like diplomacy. For example, François knew Britain’s tendency to want to preserve Europe’s balance of power, and thus pursued a rapprochement with The British. François persuaded the British monarch (probably not the same person as IOTL, it’s been 300 years since the POD) to open negotiations, with the ultimate goal of signing a mutual defense treaty against the German states and canceling French war reparations. While he didn’t achieve either goal in full, he did get a non-aggression pact and a reduction in war reparation payments, and boy did he ever need a reduction in France’s financial burden, because there was also a lot to deal with at home…
In Part 85 of this series, I mentioned that France faced troubles in both the economy and in civil unrest, and I’ll go into that in more detail here. The years following the end of the war in 1916 were chaotic and unstable in France. The old status quo (Constitutional Monarchy with the King holding significant political power) lost its credibility after the loss in the war, and debates over what direction to take heading into the coming decades raged. There were three main factions in post-war French politics. First, the reformers. The reformers were in favor of keeping the French monarchy, but reducing it’s scope and handing more power to the Estates-General (which had evolved to become a full-on parliament over the course of the 19th Century) and the Chief Minister (basically France’s equivalent to the Prime Minister), while either limiting the king’s power or making him a figurehead. When it comes to the role of the Catholic Church (still the official religion in France without the revolution), the reformers were fine with the church having a role, as long as it wasn’t completely dominant. Second, there were the reactionaries. The reactionaries wanted France to reclaim her national glory and get revenge on the Krauts, and they wanted it ASAP. Naturally, this would involve curbing the Estates-General in favor of a combination of the King and the Military, as well as restoring more power to the church. Finally, there were the radicals/revolutionaries. While there had been a radical undercurrent in French politics since the Late 18th Century, the radicals had never become as prominent or popular in France as they were in the period following the Second Global War. The radicals were opposed to the continuation of the monarchy, wanting it to be replaced by a republic, as well as a restructuring of French society and fully secularizing the medical and educational systems. Strikes became extremely common, and sometimes turned into full-on battles between striking workers and police. For example, Lyon was the site of strikes-turned-riots in the summer of 1919, with enraged workers occupying the center of the city for three weeks, before the French army put it down. Similar rebellions occurred in cities across France, but none were as large as the Paris Revolt of 1922…
While working on the rebuilding and renovation of Paris, the construction workers were often assigned long hours for underwhelming pay (it’s not like the French had a ton of money at this time). So, what else to do but go on strike? I mean, going on strike is to France what baseball is to America, it’s the national pastime. Well, the strikers and police soon came into conflict, with brawls and fights taking place on the streets of Paris. In May of 1922, one of these brawls turned nasty, as through a chain of unfortunate events and turns, police and strikers ended up opening fire on each other. Sources and first-hand accounts are unclear as to whether the cops or strikers fired the first shot, but rumors and tales of police firing upon strikers went wild throughout France, especially in Paris. Protests and riots erupted in cities all across the country, with a civil war becoming a distinct possibility. In Paris, the strike turned into an all-out rebellion, capturing much of the city and declaring the Cité Autonome de Paris (Autonomous City of Paris).
Having just ascended to the throne the previous year, this was the perfect trial by fire for King François. From the heavily fortified and defended Versailles Palace, François spoke with his advisors and generals as to how the recapture of the capital should proceed. Meanwhile, just a stone’s throw away, the Parisian rebels set up their defenses and prepared for the coming onslaught. While the rebellion had a sizable degree of support in the cities (particularly in the ruined north), the rural areas were still largely a monarchist bastion, and thus weren’t big fans of what was going on in Paris. In July of 1922, the French military officially launched the recapture of Paris. For the second time within the span of a decade, the streets of the City of Light was the site of intense urban warfare, with the city’s rebuilding being set back significantly by the violence and thousands of lives lost in the battle. However, by early September, the rebels capitulated, the leaders exiled, imprisoned or executed and the capital under government control once again.
This would prove the be the peak of France’s postwar strife. After the independence of La Floride as a republic, many of the more moderate republicans emigrated to Florida (particularly to major cities like Richelieu or Nouvelle-Orléans), while more radical republicans who weren’t arrested during the fighting went into exile in the new Russian Republic. However, as a sort of olive branch, the King reluctantly agreed to hand more political power to the Estates-General and the Chief Minister, although the King still had a veto (albeit one that could be overridden with enough votes) and had to provide approval for France to go to war.
In the other major losing countries, there was a similar story. While Spain, Cisalpina and Naples weren’t as devastated by the war as France, they still saw a large degree of instability and turbulence after the loss in the war. For example, the Basque and Catalan minorities in Spain saw their respective independence movements grow rapidly after the war, having become dissatisfied with being subject to the Castilian majority. Clashes between nationalists and Spanish law enforcement became unfortunately common, although this died down when Spain granted more autonomy to Catalonia and Navarra (the mainly Basque region) in 1926. Cisalpina, which was an industrialized country like France, saw labor strikes and urban clashes. Further south in Naples, the economy was still largely agricultural (apart from a small set of industries around the capital), and many in the country still lived as peasants. Neapolitan farmers and peasants continued to emigrate after the war, mainly to Latin America. There were increasing demands to modernize the economy and land system in Naples, but the country wasn’t hit hard enough by the war to see as much chaos as was hitting France and Cisalpina.
Anyway, the years following the war were a time of regrouping for the defeated nations, to get back up on their feet, sort out the stuff they needed to and build back from the destruction and humiliation of the war. As we head into the Mid 20th Century, we will see what the fate of these countries will be, but for now, I’ve got to bid you adieu.
I’ve been stuck around 1930 for a good 30 updates now, so I think it’s about time we move on in the timeline. The 1930s, while not the scene of many major wars and conflicts, was still quite an interesting time on a global scale.
To begin, how about the economic crisis? Well, the Panic of 1928 that ended the golden years in the victorious countries hit hard in the first half of the decade, but began to clear up towards the latter part of the ‘30s. Labor and Left-leaning parties saw a tremendous boost during the Panic years, although the hard left was still largely locked out. Social programs like pensions, a medical service and public works jobs were established across the industrialized world during this era, reshaping the political sphere in the process. While it’s debated by economists as to how effective the programs really were, they were wildly popular with the average citizen, which led to the center-left dominating the decade. Private and religious charities also played a huge role in keeping people afloat in the hard times, with churches holding free soup kitchens and homeless shelters being supported by charities.
Geopolitically, this era saw some interesting shifts as well. For example, the Anglo-French rapprochement continued to develop, with trade between the two countries increasing dramatically and the relations between Prussia/North Germany and Britain souring. On the other side of Eurasia, Japan seeked to gain the recognition it was due as a legitimate great power, and thus expanded its sphere of influence across East Asia. The Japanese made Korea and the rump Qing state in Manchuria into effective clients, sent advisors to Southeast Asia and tried to further their interests in the behemoth that was the newly revived Ming China.
Speaking of Ming China, I think I should give that a bit of airtime as well. For most of its history, China was the world’s most powerful nation, but the 19th and Early 20th Century was not kind to The Middle Kingdom (I’ve gone over it in previous updates, so I’ll spare you the details). Needless to say, the Ming 2.0 were out to Make China Great Again (or MCGA for short).
Now, the original Ming dynasty was very conservative and traditional (Chinese culture in general was very steeped in traditional values), and to be clear, Ming 2.0 was still going to stick to their Confucian guns. However, the new Ming emperor did see the need to incorporate Western and modern elements. For example, the Ming established a new Imperial Legislature, although a lot of power remained in the hands of the Emperor. Faster transport and communication via railway, telegram and the rising transportation methods of automobiles and aircraft allowed for the Legislature to be based in Nanjing. The Ming brought in advisors to help modernize the military and to aid in China’s nascent industrialization, which if successful would make the Ming one of the world’s great powers very quickly. They also built a modernized navy, in order to expand their reach into the Pacific and compete with the Japanese and Anglos on the high seas, with cities like Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, Xiamen and Guangzhou becoming home to large shipyards, as well as upgrading their ports to become major trade centers.
Further north in the rump Qing Manchuria, the dynasty’s credibility was shaken to the core. While the concept of the Mandate of Heaven didn’t hold as much weight as it used to, losing the vast majority of their territory to a dynasty that had fallen centuries ago was a humiliation to say the least. The Qing emperor had to trade the forbidden city for a still comfy but much less grand palace in Changchun (not to be confused with Wang Chung), which became the new Qing capital. Being severely weakened and racked with distrust, The Qing ultimately came under heavy Japanese influence. For example, the Qing ceded the port city/peninsula of Dalian to Japan, in return for heavy Japanese investment in the country. Railways were constructed, industries established and the Qing military revamped, in case of any future conflict with either Russia or the Ming. The Qing hadn’t renounced their claims to the rest of China, and the Ming claimed Manchuria as a rightful part of their domain, so both sides viewed a future conflict as a likelihood, if not an inevitability.
In other parts of Asia, the independence movements continued to grow. I’ve already gone over this, but the colonial populations in South and Southeast Asia were getting increasingly restless, especially due to the weakening of the European powers during the war and the rise of Japan showing that the White man’s game could be played by anyone. Meanwhile, the discovery of Oil in the Middle East began to enrich the monarchs of the area, particularly the Ottomans, who began a period of resurgence after the war (as I’ve already covered). In Africa, European colonies remained mainly on the coast, while native states like Toucouleur, Kanem-Bornu, Ashanti (no, not that one) and especially Ethiopia began a process of incorporating Western influence and technology, while simultaneously keeping much of their native identity. African states, like the Asian states before them, began hiring advisors to upgrade their militaries, building railways and oftentimes adopting legislatures. In other parts of the continent like the Sahara, Congo Jungle and East African savanna, the various populations mostly maintained their traditional ways of life, for the most part untouched by modernity (that may or may not change in the future, though).
In South America, the 30s continued to be a time of growth, both politically and demographically. All of South America (aside from Dutch Suriname) was politically independent at this point, albeit still connected diplomatically and royally to their former European overlords. This European connection continued throughout the 1930s, as millions of Europeans (especially Iberians and Italians) immigrated to South America, which the South American elites were all in favor of. Apart from some fighting in Guyana and the Pampas (both of which were draws), South America was spared from the destruction of the war, thus making the continent look like an island of stability when compared to Europe (not a sentence you get to say everyday). Now, to be clear, South America is still much poorer than most of Europe at this point, but the future looked promising for the continent at this point in time.
Finally, it’s time to move on to North America. Due to the economic crisis, population growth slowed down greatly in the Commonwealth of America, as immigration was halted and birth rates plunged. Still, the population of the Commonwealth grew from 170 million in 1930 to 190 million in 1940. This growth was not evenly distributed, as the population of the east coast cities began to stagnate while the west coast surged, in large part because of migrants from out east, and this trend saw no signs of slowing down or stopping. In La Floride, debates and conflicts over the direction the country should take (particularly in terms of the economy, the relationship with the commonwealth and the status of the large Afro-Floridian and Mixed Race minorities) continued to rage, while in Mexico, the massive regional and ethnic divisions began to be more noticeable now that the country was independent. As per usual, I’m not sure how to end this long overdue update, so I’ll see you guys next time.
Part 110: Some Damned Foolish Thing In The Balkans
After the end of the Second Global War in 1916, Europe was exhausted from all the fighting. For as bitter as the losing countries were, they were too war weary to attempt a rematch with the victors, while said victors were content with what they got and needed time to recuperate from the conflict. Some of said losers were the Balkan countries of Illyria, Greece and Bulgaria, who had lost territory to Venice, Hungary, Austro-Bavaria, Albania and, most humiliatingly, The Ottomans. Losing territory to the Turk embittered the Greeks, Bulgarians and Dacians, all of whom had once been under the heel of the Ottomans, and didn’t want to see their fellow countrymen back under Turkish rule. Meanwhile, The Ottomans knew that their neighbors were resentful of them, and thus invested their newfound oil wealth into upgrading their military and infrastructure, in case war were to break out. Over the course of the 1920s and 1930s, the defeated countries began to rebuild, hoping to get a chance for revenge. The Balkans were a powderkeg, only needing a single spark to ignite into flames…
Well, in the autumn of 1942, we got our flashpoint. You see, the parts of Macedonia and Thrace that the Ottomans had reconquered during the Second Global War had seen a good degree of (re)Turkification. Many Turks had set up shop in the area and now made up a sizable minority in the area that was still majority Greek. While the Greeks living under Ottoman rule weren’t exactly happy to be under the heel of the Turk again, The Ottomans didn’t go too hard on them at first. However, in 1942, the Ottoman administration announced new changes to the governance of Macedonia and Thrace. These measures were meant to further integrate the conquered territories into the Ottoman Empire, and some of them were quite… contentious to say the least. The most unpopular of these proposals was to forbid the teaching of Greek in schools, in order to Turkify the population. A similar thing applied in the ethnically Bulgarian territories that the Ottomans had reconquered. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the Greeks, who went out en masse to protest the policy. In the coastal city of Kavala, things took a dark turn. Greek protesters got into conflicts with the Ottoman police, things got violent, and the Ottoman police ended up opening fire on the rowdy crowd. Over a dozen people were left dead with many more injured, and people were outraged. Mass rallies of hundreds of thousands occurred in Athens and Thessaloniki demanding vengeance, while the Ottoman government put the Greek regions of their empire under military occupation. The surrounding countries of Bulgaria, Dacia and Armenia all threw their support behind the Greeks, as their own grievances with the Ottomans now had the opportunity to be resolved, thus forming the Balkan League. Meanwhile, the Albanians decided to back the Turks, fearing future retribution from their neighbors, while Illyria backed the Greeks in order to get some of their land back. Despite attempts at a diplomatic solution to the crisis, no solution was found, and by the end of 1942 the Great Balkan War had begun…
Factions of the Great Balkan War:
Turko-Albanian Alliance: Ottomans and Albania
Balkan League: Greece, Bulgaria, Dacia, Armenia and Illyria
Heading into 1943, the Balkans had once again erupted into war, as the Ottomans (plus Albania) fought off a coalition of vengeance-seeking nations who’d lost to them just a few decades prior. The Greeks, Bulgarians, Illyrians and Dacians were all looking to reclaim lost territory, while the Armenians decided to roll the dice and join in too. Looking at this from an observer’s perspective, this looked to be a fair fight, maybe even favoring The Ottomans. However, wars don’t always go the way you’d expect them to, and that was definitely the case in this conflict, because for the Ottomans, this war was a complete failure.
Now, I know I just did an update about the revitalization of the empire after their victory in the Second Global War, but that’s not to say that the Ottomans didn’t have any problems. For one, they had Greek, Bulgarian, Dacian and Armenian minorities within their countries that all hated being under the boot of the Turk, and would no doubt rebel and side with their people’s respective countries (the opposite was true as well, as there was a sizeable Turkish or Muslim population in much of the Balkans). In addition, there were entire regions of the empire with very few ethnic Turks, instead being populated by Arabs and/or Kurds. While most of the Arabs (outside of Lebanon, where it was split between Christians and Muslims) and nearly all of the Kurds were Sunni Muslims, Southern Mesopotamia had a Arabic-speaking Shia Muslim majority, and they weren’t exactly thrilled about Sunni Turks controlling their oil.
So, the war began. Both sides of the war were midway through the process of industrializing, so they were both on the same technological and equipmental level. Many of the officers and generals from the Second Global War were still active (although getting quite old, considering that the war was over 25 years ago by this point), so both sides had experienced leaders. Finally, due to the lingering war weariness, none of the other European powers got involved in the war. This was really a fair fight, but here’s how things went wrong for The Ottomans.
The war began with the Greeks, Bulgarians and Dacians attacking into the Ottoman territory in Mainland Europe, while the Illyrians (and a minority of Greek and Bulgarian troops) pushed into the already surrounded Albania, completely occupying the country by the end of 1943, although Albanian guerillas continued to fight on in the backcountry, harassing Balkan League troops (in retrospect, Albania joining the war was a really bad idea). Meanwhile, the Ottoman and Greek navies clashed in the Aegean, while Ottoman and Bulgarian/Dacian navies duked it out in the Black Sea.
Where things really got messy, however, was in the civilian sphere. Because both the Balkans and Anatolia were so ethnically mixed, there were minorities on both sides that were caught on the wrong side. Needless to say, it did not end well. For example, the Aegean coast of Anatolia still had a large Greek population, particularly around Izmir/Smyrna. Well, the Turkish citizens of the region went out of their way to harass and oftentimes attack their Greek neighbors, going as far as pogroms at times. On the flipside, Turks and other Muslims in Bulgaria and Greece were subject to abuses and violations as well at the hands of Bulgars or Greeks, going as far as physical attacks and even anti-Turkish/Muslim riots.
Another reason the Ottomans lost was because of shrewd diplomacy and deal-making on the part of the Balkan League. For example, they promised the Kurds and Arabs independent states if they revolted, which they did once the Ottomans started losing badly. The Greek-majority islands in the Aegean that were under Ottoman Rule rebelled and came under the control of the Greeks once more, as was the case in Cyprus. Meanwhile, The Ottomans were both facing advancing Balkan League forces and internal rebellions, while having to deal with waves of Turkish and other Balkan Muslim refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries (while Greeks and other Christians left the Ottoman Empire en masse for the same reason). This was all overwhelming for the empire, and as the Balkan League closed in on Constantinople in Late 1945, the Ottomans threw up the white flag and called it a day.
After three years of war, the Balkans were finally at peace again, and it was officially time to draft a peace treaty. The two sides agreed to meet in the culturally and historically significant city of Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the city Greek nationalists had wet dreams over reconquering. The victorious Balkan League obviously had the upper hand in negotiations, but in order to keep the negotiations from becoming a Balkan League wishlist, the Ottomans convinced the Balkan League to allow diplomats from various European countries to serve as mediators. With the negotiations set up, it was time for the diplomats to get to diplomatizing.
The Balkan League proposal went as such: The Ottomans were to be completely kicked out of Europe, with Dacia, Bulgaria and Greece splitting up their territories. Notably, Greece would reconquer Constantinople, with some Greeks even advocating the formation of a new Byzantine Empire. Greece were also to reacquire their pre-SGW islands in the Mediterranean, such as Cyprus. Armenia would gain a lot of territory in Eastern Anatolia and new independent states such as Kuridstan and Iraq would be formed south of Anatolia. In addition, Albania would be significantly reduced in size, with the Greeks, Illyrians and Bulgarians chipping away at their outer territories.
Really, this proposal served as the aforementioned Balkan League wishlist/wet dream, and there was no way they were going to get everything. What the Ottomans especially objected to was the Greek seizure of Constantinople, to which they basically said “not a chance in hell”. The Ottomans also objected to the Greek seizure of the Aegean coast of Anatolia and to the complete eviction of the Turks from Europe, with not even a European Turkish state being formed. The Ottomans, knowing they’d lost the war, offered to return the land they’d taken in the Second Global War, hoping that would satiate the Balkan League’s land lust. Still, the Balkan League were looking for more than just a reset to 1910, so they still demanded more.
In the end, here is how the treaty wound up:
All Ottoman territory acquired after the Second Global War will be returned to their previous owners.
Eastern Thrace will be partitioned between Greece in the south and Bulgaria in the north.
Constantinople will become an independent city-state spanning both sides of the Bosporus Strait. The Ottoman Empire will relocate its capital to Bursa.
Bulgaria will annex Northern Thrace, while the majority Turkish land along the Black Sea coast will become the new independent Turkish state of Rumelia, with its capital in Varna.
Armenia will annex the region around Lake Van.
Kurdistan and Iraq will become independent countries.
The Bosporus Strait, Sea of Marmara and Dardanelles Strait shall be accessible to both Balkan League and Ottoman ships.
Greece will reacquire Corfu from Albania.
Illyria and Bulgaria will gain their disputed territories from Albania.
The treaty was ratified in May of 1946, and yet another round of wars in Southeastern Europe was over. I’m sorry that I’ve not been posting a lot lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft as of late, so I’ll try to get some more stuff (such as an updated map) out soon, and until then, have a nice day.
While I’ve gotten through the Great Balkan War and the ensuing Treaty of Constantinople, I feel as though an update talking about the aftermath of the war and the treaty is necessary before I move on to other things. With such large changes in borders, there were bound to be profound changes in the demographics and politics of the entire region.
First on the chopping block are the massive demographic changes in the region, particularly the fate of the Balkan Turks. The Ottoman Empire had possessed territory in Europe for 600 years by the time they were ejected from the continent in 1946, and in that time the Turkish population in Europe had grown to number in the millions. Now, aside from the new Turkish state of Rumelia, these European Turks were effectively homeless, living in countries that viewed them with hostility. Meanwhile, there was still a large Greek population living in parts of Anatolia, and still Bulgarians and Dacians living in Rumelia. After years of war, these minorities were viewed as fifth columns at best. For example, Rumelia restricted citizenship to Muslims, disenfranchising the large Bulgarian (and smaller Greek and Dacian) minority in the country. This began a mass migration of Bulgarians out of Rumelia, and the Rumelian government invited Turks and Muslims from other countries in the area to replace them. In return, Bulgarians, Greeks and Dacians from the Ottoman Empire or Rumelia were given instant citizenship if they were to migrate to their respective ethnic nations, which scores of them did. The Ottoman Empire took in hundreds of thousands of Turks and other Balkan Muslims in the period after the war, many of them settling areas vacated by their previous Greek inhabitants. By 1960, much of the previously diverse Balkans and Anatolia had become much more homogenous (although not to the same extent as IOTL, as there was never any sort of official, mutually agreed upon policy of population swapping). The Greco-Anatolian population that once numbered well over a million was down to just a quarter of a million by 1960 (and still declining), while Greece, Bulgaria and Dacia were nearly devoid of Turks.
Speaking of the Turks, how were they doing after they lost? Well, they were down but not out. Yes, losing their territory in Europe (especially Constantinople) and in parts of the Middle East stung, they weren’t completely screwed. For one, while they’d lost a lot of Iraqi oil, they still had large oil deposits in Kuwait and Syria (and for that matter, Kuwait still gave them access to the Persian Gulf). They also maintained control of the Levantine Coast, and still had access to the Suez Canal and Red Sea. The Ottomans built new railways to reconnect Kuwait to the rest of the empire by rail, and began developing that area’s oil industry. When it comes to the relations the Ottos had with the Arab inhabitants of the area, it’s complicated. On one hand, in an attempt to secure the loyalty of Arabs living in the empire, Arabic was designated as a co-official language of the Ottoman Empire alongside Turkish. On the other hand, the Ottomans resettled a good chunk of the European Turkish migrants into the oil-producing or strategically located areas within the Arab parts of the empire, which rubbed a lot of said Arabs the wrong way.
The Great Balkan War had reshaped much of Southeastern Europe and the Near East, and had greatly weakened an empire that had been a great power for centuries. Populations shifted as the map was redrawn, and a new status quo in the Eastern Mediterranean was being formed. I’ve got to get this update in, so I’ll leave it there. Have a wonderful day, I’ll see you next time.
