Chapter 30: Imperialism Isn't So Great
We're very lucky that the Australian political system was resilient enough to shake off a bad head of government or two. Alternatively, we weren't so much lucky as we were prudent in our attempts to create a balanced government in which one person did not wield too much power over affairs.
The venerable Protectionist Party of Australia had gained quite a bit of support from the brief fling without a proper head of government, simply by reversing some of Lasker's most damaging policies. Australians from Alice Springs to New Zealand rejoiced at the redistribution of the budget, but the people of Indonesia were obviously less thrilled, even if the end result was about proportional by population. On the other hand, after years of war economy (and about a year or two of not-completely war economy but still pretty close), the finally peaceful Australian nation finally had a way to resolve the issue of differential treatment, segregation, discrimination throughout Indonesia; the sort of thing that could cause a colonial empire to explode long before it could naturally shrivel up and die. Luckily for us, the Protectionists actually pulled their weight and played a major role in reforming the colonial administration. Now, I'm not a moderate conservative, even by the standards of the 1910s, but I know better than to ignore this sort of thing even though I'm not exactly in the same political orbit as these fellows. After all, I've agitated against partisan politics in the past even though it's not as much of an issue in Australia as... for instance, Canada.
I am willing, though, to put a disproportionate amount of the deserved praise upon Rebecca Rossolini, whom after decades of maneuvering and campaigning finally became our first Prime Minister in 1916. Rossolini had grown old and frail, but she must've figured that after doing so much for women in our country she could also help out the men and ambiguous third-gendered people of the country (don't laugh, I'm pretty sure there's a bunch in New Guinea). If you ask me, the main reason she got reelected was not in fact related to her venerable record as a politician, but primarily because of the whole reaction to her predecessor - after politically interventionist, expansionist social democracy, dialing back the socialism and warmongering and reducing taxes seemed like a good idea. Compare her, if you will, to her previous electoral opponent in Claude Crosby, who was something of a traditionalist leading socialists. Buzzwords aside, the executive and legislative branches of our government were rarely in sync even when they grudgingly cooperated. Rossolini's election, though, meant that a conservative (if still egalitarian and particularly feminist) bloc had representation and repute in Australia that we hadn't seen since our colonial days.
In many ways, Rebecca Rossolini had to deal with the fallout of Lasker, as she inherited an office that had been significantly weakened in favor of parliamentary discussion. After all, we couldn't afford to have two Laskers in a row, could we? To reclaim some of her executive power, she would reason, she had to make her political party of choice stronger, and true to previous trends she worked through the idea of inclusiveness. Ambitious conservatives and centrists found themselves dealing with ideas they'd never even considered and working to secure the loyalty of demographics that were rather less European (and especially Anglo-European) than prior. As part of their attempts to "represent the entire country", they renamed themselves the Country Party.
What's the word, Australians? Are we going to see a City Party next? How about a Garden Party? I hear the gnomes have turned that one into their primary lobbying organization.
Needless to say, this was a very shrewd idea on their part, because the tariff policies that had inspired their original name were... fairly irrelevant in this day and age. Ironically, as the conservative politicians of Australia tried to universalize their support, their rivals throughout the political spectrum went in the opposite direction, focusing more on single small issues than they would've even in the immediate aftermath of the British war. Those who managed to resist the call of the Country Party tended to become as rigid and inflexible as said party's greatest supporters.
Either way, a few months of solid effort towards this end had their greatest effect in Indonesia yet again. Bali and the other small islands of Nusa Tengara were the first parts of the empire to undergo what was quickly labeled "normalization", in which all the residual colonial policies of the last seventy years were swept away and replaced with a model that treated the islands as if they were just another state of Australia.
Federalists and particularists combusted in the streets.
To be fair, Bali is geographically, ethnically, and religiously different from the Australian mainland in ways that should be obvious to even the most casual observer. However, the various colonial laws of Australia were not exactly something to be proud of - even though we insist that we were the nicest colonial power on the block, various inefficiencies and injustices gave the indigenous Indonesians a great deal to complain about. I'd say a lot of these issues were perpetuated by ambitious local governors who were out for little more than a share of plunder and a handful of coffee beans. Even the "nice" ones had their weird little idiosyncrasies that ruined things for everyone - failure to import machinery in the hopes that it would lead to some sort of agrarian utopia, sympathetically favoring one supposedly persecuted minority over another, etc. In retrospect, putting in mainland policies that might not work in the jungles (unless they were imported from Cooktown) was not going to solve much on its own. However, these policies usually enfranchised large swathes of the population that weren't covered under Indonesian colonial laws, and ensuring plenty of local interest in politics is a good path to reform.
Rebecca Rossolini did not favor the same amount of military interventions that her predecessors had, but after our role in dismantling Britain, we couldn't completely abandon the other continents of the world to their own fate; our nominal role as colonial administrators in Africa and real hegemony over the Suez Canal would speak to that. No matter how you describe it, the political climate of Australia was not particularly conducive to war; not even the ones we could win (okay, fine, ALL of them) were exactly popular. Case in point - the German Empire declared war upon Scandinavia, apparently as revenge for their invasion, and asked us to help beat the nation up. Nobody in our country wanted to get involved in that potential powder keg. Some time later, we would hear that the Germans had annexed Denmark, thus endangering the entire Scandinavian union.
You monsters! Soren Kierkegaard spits upon you.
Before you ask, I do not believe this had anything to do with the "Pan-Germanic" movement that held some weight in the more extreme bits of that country's politics. However, this wanton act of aggression did kind of discourage us from what had previously been unending centuries of courting the Germans and further towards supporting the Pax Gallia that France sought, at least in its own neighborhood.
Not to say that we completely ignored all wars. When it became apparent that the Indian Empire was going to be around for quite a while, our government immediately launched programs designed to normalize our relations with the peninsula and hopefully create a counterweight in our alliance system to contain the Chinese juggernaut.
Except for the lack of boots on the ground, this was closer to Lasker's misguided ideals than they looked.
For that to work, though, they would've had to unify more of the peninsula, and frankly, everyone in India knew that. Most of the willing unionists had already joined their little project, though, so the only solution that the Nizam in Hyderabad saw was war and annexation. His first target was the little fragmented kingdom of Dravidistan to his south... and his east. The result? Complete and utter disaster, as the fragmented empire was unable to bring its power base in the north to bear upon the southernmost of Indians due to a lack of naval anything at all. Meanwhile, the numerically limited but crafty Dravidians resisted the initial onslaught from the heartland, buying enough time for a massive Tamil revolt to sever a crucial piece of Indian territory and place it in the hands of the regionalists. It did not escape anyone's attention that some of the small princely states of India had done far better than the center in adopting to European technology. Why this was the case is a story for a historian of the subcontinent.
I love the smell of Karnataka in the morning. Smells like... wait, did someone's elephant just explode? Vishnu, what have I gotten myself into?
When India was properly humiliated, the next up to challenge them were the Marathas, whose rejection of Indian unity had split the nascent empire in half. They were interested more in the center of the continent, and particularly in purging it of centuries of Islamic influence, which would then be replaced with a revitalized, reformed, standardized Hindu faith. In short, something of a religious nutjob state, just with a bit more of a Deccan twist than you would expect outside the Deccan peninsula. Naturally, since the influence of Hyderabad had given Islam disproportionate prestige in the Indian state, the Marathas made it their first target, hoping to kick it out of its traditional heartland entirely. With any luck, they would repeat the traditional Maratha narrative up to where they gained hegemony over India, but without losing to the again distant British.
Given the relative balance of power in the peninsula, though, the Marathas were truly doomed. While Dravidistan could count on its geographical location and Hyderabad-India's lack of physical continuity to turn itself into at least an easily defensible regional power, the Maratha Confederacy had none of those geographical advantages. While their troops and equipment were also superior to those of their enemy, their bad tactical position meant that about half of their army was encircled in the space of a few months. The other half mounted a series of "heroic" offensives way out of proportion to their reduced size and strength, particularly around the cities of Indore and Bangalore. If it weren't for us poking our fingers around the subcontinent, the Marathas might still have their own state today. But such was not to be, as a part of our reduced military budget was now devoted to a novel "Lend-Lease" program that sold military machinery, doctrine, and training to the various nations of the world that Australia wanted to succeed militarily.
We'll give you money and men if you make sure all roads lead to Adelaide.
Hyderabad-India soon became the world's largest manufacturer (under our license) of the A7-Tamerlane rifle that we'd used to such great effect against Indian, British, and Chinese troops. Combined with a lot of other hardware, India went from having a horribly backwards military to being at least reasonably on par with its neighbors within only a few months. Never underestimate the ability of millions of Hindu craftsmen to manufacture a ton of arms with their multitude of arms! While the state would have various other teething issues, the removal of the hostile Maratha government from the premises would at least render it more stable than before.
Gujarat giveth and taketh its sovereignity at will.
This meant more Australian businessmen in India than any time before our initial break with Britain, and it also meant a swarm of missionaries descended upon the subcontinent to take advantage of its religious freedom-by-necessity (since otherwise the Hindus would overthrow the government). Australian Anglicans and other Protestants weren't too interested in converting the masses of India, but the Russian Orthodox community quickly flooded the local states with missionaries, where they found at least a few converts amongst pretty much everyone except the Bengalis, who were the one major exception to the whole Indian religious freedom shtick because the Muslims were so prevalent amongst their numbers.
Either way, this helped to usher in a new religiosity in Australia, at least amongst the Orthodox population. Usually confined to the communes of West Australia, these old believers had found their traditions increasingly under fire from the urbanization and growing transport networks that modernity had brought them. That's when they became all insular and fundamentalist. From Dampier, from Geraldton, from Fremantle, and so forth, fiery orators and patriarchs suddenly spoke of the rise of the "Census Christian" - an unassuming Australian who would insist he believed in the Trinity, take communion on Easter, and give gifts on Christmas, but who was otherwise completely secular and untouched by the light of the Holy Ghost. With the loss of the old pentarchy and the third Rome to communists, they argued, Orthodox Christianity's only option was to regroup in Australia, where it could then form the seed of a new, greater still Australian exceptionalism, and my god I have been reading way too much of their propaganda in the name of research.
For god's sake, I almost had wine instead of vodka the last time I went to a bar!
Either way, it's been decades and the Orthodox revival's still been going strong, sort of. Every few years, some prominent celebrity finds Jesus and makes a couple of icons to celebrate. I don't know - maybe they sincerely feel religion is improving their lives, and maybe it actually is. I just find it kind of odd how recent the phenomenon is. Getting back to the international context, I wouldn't be surprised if the first missionaries' efforts in India created enough Christian community to make a feedback loop that put huge swathes of people under Orthodox hegemony. Perhaps it's the rise of vocal minorities in later chapters that makes me think of this? Anyways, it would play a bit of a role in the evolution of our international relations, but not before Rossolini had served her two terms.
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