June 15, 1843. I haven’t been able to write in my diary for awhile, so much has happened. Our esteemed Kaiser Franz has passed on, and let’s just say our new Kaiser Ferdinand could use good advisors even more than the last. I recently read the recent “Ranking of the Great Powers” done by some British professor, those English names are always so difficult to remember! It appears Austria is not even considered to be a Great Power anymore. The professor ranked us 13th, after Sweden and Belgium. Belgium!
June 1, 1845. I hope I’m not jinxing things by saying that 1845 has gone well so far. Our rail network is expanding rapidly, and our colonial bureau recently celebrated the construction of their first colonial mission.
(Long break in story where just about all I do is fight rebels).
December 13, 1851. It seems that the craziness which has characterized the past several years is finally subsiding. Our armies have suffered heavy casualties, and we haven’t even had a proper war, just rebellion after rebellion. Occasionally the rebels were strong enough to temporarily take over a province, but we’ve managed to come out intact. Hopefully everyone with an -ISM has finally been shot. One change we have made is to remove the requirement of landownership for voting. This has been tried in other nations and it really does seem to prevent the lower classes from revolting. Although it may take some time for the upper classes to get used to peasants voting.
Despite the rebellions, we have made considerable progress in building our railroads and expanding our Kamerun colony. The coastal part of Kamerun is now officially Austrian territory, and progress has been made in colonizing the interior. I had been skeptical of the colonialism earlier, but Kamerun has some interesting resources we’d have to import otherwise. Vienna coffeehouses are now selling Kamerun grown coffee, and there’s this remarkable substance called rubber. Not exactly sure what its use is, other than removing pencil marks. But some say its unique properties make it a potential major commodity, like steel or cement.
Our industrial growth has been hampered by the difficulty of obtaining machine parts from the world market. Our science director has started a project to research Precision Work and Interchangeable Parts, which are key technologies needed for building our own machine parts factory. Unfortunately many of our skilled laborers have already left our realm in search of employment. If only we could lure them back somehow…
May 29, 1853. Well, we’ve done it. Austria has declared war on Oman. Our colonization efforts in Kamerun are proceeding according to schedule, but further expansion into the center of Africa is blocked by France. We have sent two divisions to capture Oman’s territory on the east coast of Africa, and two more are preparing to attack Oman itself.
October 15, 1853. I can’t believe it. Oman has actually dared to land an army onto Austrian soil. Nothing we can’t handle, but they’re in a remote part of Dalmatia and it may take awhile to get troops there. The rest of Europe is embroiled in an unrelated war. Russia finally declared war on Turkey, and the rest of Europe has rallied to one side or the other. Austria has managed to stay neutral so far, despite diplomatic offers from both sides, but we do have an alliance with Greece and they may drag us into the war.
November 17, 1854. The war with Oman has come to a stalemate. Their landing force in Dalmatia was soundly defeated, but the small fleet that brought them there managed to keep our transports bottled up in the Adriatic. They couldn’t sink our ships, but we couldn’t sink any of theirs either. Our two divisions in East Africa took possession of Oman’s territories and claims there (except Zanzibar) but there was nothing else they could take without the transports. Our prestige took a significant net loss from this war, as it is being said that we were bested by an uncivilized nation. It’s not a fair statement as we gained 4 provinces and lost none, but people are saying it anyway. But we have what we wanted: territory on the east coast of Africa where there is little competition from the other European powers.
November 18, 1854. The peace treaty with Oman was officially signed today. For some reason they insisted on keeping the province of Lindi, giving us Zanzibar and Sokotra instead.
February 2, 1855. Yesterday our great nation declared war on Walachia. With the Turks distracted in the Great War with Russia, it seems like a good time to attack.
February 13, 1855. The Ottomans did declare war, as we thought they might. What surprised us was that Spain declared war on us also. This could be bad. Apparently they had given Walachia a guarantee of independence which we had forgotten about.
Oooooooops. Strangely enough, the United States declared war on Mexico on the same day as our declaration of war. This war has embroiled several of the American nations. Hardly any nation in the civilized world remains at peace.
April 19, 1856. Walachia is now an Austrian dominion, but we had to give up some territory to keep the Turks, having accepted last month a white peace with Russia, from invading. The Ottomans were willing to accept peace in exchange for Kotor in Dalmatia, plus Zanzibar and Sokotra in the Indian Ocean. Strangely enough, we seem to have the respect of Europe again. We still have to pacify Spain, however.