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Don't go there man! Just kidding
That is some serious economic growth. Diversification indeed!
It's part population growth, but it's also partially the incorporation of more valuable goods into the Australian economy, like spices and tropical wood.
Epic update! Indonesia seems to be the perfect spot to start with all the conquest after all. Of course though, the real prize would be in taking the Dutch colony in Java, the jewel of the Dutch Empire.
From a gameplay stance, it's not too difficult to take over the Dutch colonial empire. There's usually about 10-20 brigades on the islands, but I can handle them. After that, it's just a matter of getting enough warscore to take colonies. For a country like Australia, it's a bit of a slog to get to the Netherlands proper, but it can be done.
I believe the Australian government in this AAR would seize as much territory as they can get away with.
Congratulations, InvisibleSandwi! You're the new Best Character Writer of the Week! Be sure to go and greet your adoring fans – and remember to pass on the award next Sunday.
This is quite an honor! I'll endeavor to maintain (and hopefully exceed) the standard of character writing I have displayed in this AAR.
Congratulations! Well deserved
Thank you!
Glad to see you are enjoying the AAR.
Chapter 5: Australian Integration
1850s Australia was sorely lacking in political guidance from Ivan Seversky. On the other hand, the guy may not have remained as popular if he hadn't ditched politics in his prime. Seversky announced his intent to abdicate his second term in December 1848, despite the fact Australia's dramatic growth had concealed any flaws he might've had as an administrator. Personally, I think he just got bored with his lifestyle; after the country had chosen a successor, he retreated to his adopted home in Perth and dabbled in poetry and art. He made a few religious icons that the Australian Orthodox church is rather fond of; they usually pull them out when they feel like claiming our morals are in decline.
This did not leave the rest of Australia's political scene much time for electoral campaigning, as the magistrates Seversky had lead set a fairly arbitrary deadline of March 1st, 1849 for vote tabulation. Because of some serious limits in the growing railroad system, the candidates in the west and the candidates in the east had trouble spreading their messages much beyond their half of the country. Tabulation revealed a nation momentarily enamored with its local governors, but political fervor in the west resulted in a citizen of Perth named Reginald Strathmore edging out the rest of the prominent candidates by about 3% of the vote, including perennial hopeful Henry Young. It took him a while to get to Sydney, but he was quick to alter the government to fit his desires.
Best to vote in someone who can read AND write.
Strathmore continued a trend of Australian leaders from unexpected places - compared to relatively youthful Seversky, Strathmore was old enough to remember the Napoleonic wars (having been born in 1798), had taught chemistry at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland, and ended up in West Australia when Lord John Russell had suggested setting up a system of higher education for the growing colony. With his sudden swerve into politics, Strathmore had the opportunity to develop more than just teaching in Australia. I find that Reginald Strathmore shared many of Ivan Seversky's 'nationalist' views, in that he spent much of his term trying to centralize the Australian state and develop its self-sufficiency. One major exception was that he was rather unsympathetic to Australians of non-British origin; perhaps this was a symbol of changes in Australian demographics. After the revolutions of the late 1840s, immigration from continental Europe to Australia reached an all time low as many liberals decided to stay home and seek reform from within. Meanwhile, continued interest from Great Britain and Ireland lead to more homogenous Australian immigrants - a trend the locals definitely noticed.
Now, it might just be the diversity socialization I got in primary school, but I find the concept of an ethnically homogenous Australia rather unappealing. Strathmore, on the other hand, must've thought it'd be awesome, since he tried to assimilate Australia into his idealized view of British culture. One of the first things he did (apparently in an attempt to prove that we were an integral part of the British Empire) was to send correspondence to London asking for some more British advisers and technicians to participate in the government. London delivered, especially since Chairman Strathmore put a huge emphasis on education that wasn't there before in the government.
For instance, Strathmore was responsible for chartering the first four Australian universities. Sydney already had a post-secondary college when he came onto the scene; over time, the University of Sydney became the absolute most prestigious in Australia. The other three - the University of Kalgoorlie, the University of Melbourne, and the Russian Academy of Perth (which no longer offers coursework in Russian, except for Russian language classes) followed quickly; by 1854, thousands of Australians flocked to their campuses. By 1860, the universities were beginning to take in international students. I'm told the quality of teaching at the Strathmore Four has... gone downhill since those early days. They remain highly reputable universities that attract rich families from around the world, but this just makes the students slow, unreceptive to actual learning, and prone to oozing clothing starch on hot January days. Then again, what do I know? I went vocational once I graduated from secondary school. Maybe their snobbery's justified, since they did kind of bootstrap the rest of our educational system back in their glorious pasts. Oh well.
However, it could be that Strathmore pushed the universities as an attempt to get more Europeans interested in Australia. The most effort anyone put into anti-immigration laws in the 1850s was the occasional proposition to massively favor British and Irish citizens. Even after massive bursts of settlement, there were still large swathes of 'free' land for anyone who was willing to risk Aboriginal anger. Once the more optimistic, reform oriented mood inspired by the Springtime of Nations really took hold in continental Europe, the anti-immigrationists began to really pat themselves on the back. In later years, they would be more vicious, pulling out 'fifth-column' rhetoric and other things, but for now there were too many foreigners for that to be safe.
Still, some of the more hardcore oldschool Australians (particularly folk around Sydney) must've felt too cramped from the dramatic population growth, and they looked increasingly far abroad for relatively unoccupied land. Enough of them ended up in New Zealand that the United Kingdom had to negotiate a similar autonomy and self-governance treaty to that of Australia to keep order and protect the natives.
Isn't it adorable? The blue dot to the northwest is Norfolk Island.
New Zealand's Maori population has done relatively better at preserving their culture and languages than Australian aborigines. I think this is entirely because fewer people immigrated there than to Australia, although I'm not entirely sure.
Australian citizens were becoming rather more influential outside their home continent with time. Despite not being allowed to engage in diplomacy with continental Europe, Australians began to play a rather significant presence - primarily through commerce and industry. The Dutch were the first to 'benefit', when we started expanding our shipping and rail lines from Bali and Sulawesi into the rest of Indonesia. With access to more efficient transportation, the East Indies began making the Netherlands rather more money, but some of this also went into the pockets of Australian citizens. We responded by... you guessed it, building more railroads; some of them in the Netherlands proper! In fact, there's a rather major passenger train in Amsterdam named after governor Ferdinand Ragland, who had arguably been tempered a bit from his mercenary days by his need to keep Bali under Australian control. Sort of an optimistic time for everyone involved; one that lead to plenty of coffee and spices for Europeans.
Australian businessmen also invested in the immediate neighbors of the Netherlands; in particular, the railroads and factories of the Ruhr Valley owe us a blood debt... but we'll probably never collect on it.This isn't just another instance of Kalgoorlie gold lubricating the gears of the finance world - through economic collaboration, the Australian colonies would eventually earn the friendship of Germany. Looking back at the 1850s, I can see why they might've wanted to. Keep in mind that this was before proper German unification; Prussia and the British Isles had went through periods of relative friendliness and alliance, but the Australian colonies reached out to Prussia in a way that could've been a violation of the 1844 Anglo-Australian treaty.
On April 23rd, 1851, Richard Strathmore sent a diplomatic communique to London requesting the permission of the colonies to formally establish diplomatic relations with Prussia. This was one thing, but Strathmore just so happened to send his message through a new transoceanic telegraph system. The novelty of this system was so immense that few actually paid attention to the contents of Strathmore's request... which set a bad precedent for the adoption of later communications inventions like radio and television.
...why are you looking at this page like that?
Very well. Mere weeks before Strathmore sent his historic message, enterprising fellows from the Perth Communications Company (which actually got started as a railroad-based postal system) had finished laying a telegraph cable on the seafloor from Darwin to Waingapu in Sumba, finishing the last (and longest) leg of a project to create a telegraphy system linking Australia and Bali. While small courier steamships could make the voyage in a few days, this system cut down the communications barrier to a few minutes, although initially this only was particularly helpful to the northernmost parts of Australia. Either way, it was not long until this system was extended further - by May, an operator in Darwin could contact Makassar; by July, Singapore, and by the end of 1852, an experimental line set up rapid communications between the East India Company (through Calcutta) and the headquarters of the Australian government (in Sydney). Ironically, if the telegraph system hadn't spread so fast, I think we might've had to start governing the country from Darwin. As it was, Darwin grew significantly as a result of being Australia's first "high-tech" city, and almost all of Australia's diplomatic communications were routed through it for several decades.
The British, being the concerned colonial overlords they were, decided that the correct course of action was, in fact, for ALL of the British Empire to cultivate good relations with Prussia, and not just Australia. Chairman Strathmore seems to have been a bit noncommittal on this. A full alliance would have defeated the point of British foreign policy, but Australian commercial ties were expanded on, scientific collaboration was encouraged, and (most importantly) Britain turned a blind eye to Prussian military operations on the continent, which were getting... quite aggressive, to put it politely. After a minor diplomatic scandal in which the kingdom of Bavaria had tried to press a claim to Coburg, the Prussian government embarked on a comprehensive plan to consolidate their influence in the northern half of Germany. As Australia tried to develop their relations, the Prussian military forcibly clove Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark, and pressured some of the smaller duchies to accept full integration into their country.
The Prussian government was rather shrewd; when Austrian politicians began complaining about events within the German Confederation, they received jingoistic nonsense in return. Meanwhile, Prussia began funding Hungarian guerrilla movements, most likely hoping to keep Austrian attention out of Germany.
I'm afraid I can't quite say what the Swedish were thinking by joining Austria. Don't blame me - this book isn't supposed to be about Sweden.
This may have blown up in their faces, as the (also quite jingoistic and nonsense-oriented) emperor of Austria, Franz Karl, declared war on the Prussians on November 19th, 1851. This didn't affect much of anything in Australia, although it's probably worth noting that the average citizen's opinion on the war went something along the lines of "Austria is totally lame, dudes. That's why I left!".
This would've been official if Australia was fully independent.
Many richer Australians made private donations and/or sales to the Prussian cause, but given the (admittedly shrinking) distances, I don't think these had much effect. On the other hand, the working class of the country opposed the war entirely since the rich were draining Australian funds without giving the country a chance at martial glory. I'm sure they would've opposed a direct Australian intervention as well, but I'd rather not get too far into it.
The distances also affected Australian ambitions in the only other "German" country of note, although Switzerland doesn't seem as Germanic as its neighbors. The Swiss Confederation had the honor of hosting the 1851 World's Fair in Bern, and we made an effort to attend. There was some debate about what sort of exhibit to send, but it ended poorly with a rather poorly thought out, culturally insensitive display of Australian aboriginals winning favor over Balinese gamelan and a collection of landscapes painted by prominent Australian artists.
*facedesk*
The display was, in fact, so bizarre and foolish that some of the Swiss organizers thought our exhibit had been sabotaged by forces unknown. Others simply accused us of racism, and the Aborigines themselves considered it a great humiliation for their people.
Either way, despite significant progress in infrastructure and our first stirrings of international diplomacy, 1853 opened with Reginald Strathmore at the nadir of his popularity, and anger against the government; even the university students were against Strathmore, and with their new, fancy educations, they could be especially eloquent in their criticisms of his government. Strathmore decided to blame any problems Australia had on the local/colonial governments, and called for electoral reform. From 1853 onwards, the various parliaments of Australia's colonies would have their terms standardized at two years for no other reason than the very concept of standardization itself - needless to say, when dozens, even hundreds of representatives find their job suddenly on the line...
While it had never really happened before due to untamed distances and limited voter turnout (I mean, why vote when it takes days to get to the polling place and each day you don't spend on the job takes a nugget of gold out of your pocket?), the 1853 elections were the first to really capture the Australian imagination, perhaps since the amount of electoral seats contested was so much higher than in previous years. Factories shifted production from important industrial goods to useless electoral curios, like woodcuts and figurines of the candidates. Newspapers wrote lurid tales of debauchery more fanciful than any work of fantasy about candidates their editors didn't like. I had the gall to describe this frenzy as "normal by the standards of contemporary European politics". That doesn't reflect well on me, but the country's behavior doesn't reflect well on itself!
Squabbling supporters cancel each other out.
Strathmore ended his electoral campaign safe in his own office, smug about how his critics had stopped paying attention to him, but the parliaments under him told a far different story. Without an Ivan Seversky to charismatically lead them, the odd mixture of monarchists, Slavophiles, warmongers, and the occasional classical liberal that had made up the Nationalist party flew apart from their own tensions. In their place? Stuffy British people with degrees in Please Elect Me, I'm Quite Dignified from the University of This Will Earn Me The Respect of The House of Lords. I'm sure some of them were capable career politicians, but this was a rather dramatic change in tone from the wild days of Seversky. By the end of the elections, Tory-inspired fellows had won a majority of the seats in parliament, and of them, the old Protectionist Party had the most seats. With a minister sympathetic to one of their major causes, the stage was set for Australia to become an insular, dour hermit kingdom... right? I would've guessed that was going to happen if I'd been around at the time, but I would've guessed wrong.
History moves in strange ways, folks.
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Very entertaining stuff, as ever. Interesting to hear of Oz dipping her fingers in the European pie. I would have thought you'd perhaps look to pursue a more isolationist policy – though I guess one's benevolent colonial overlords would have a certain say in things.
Looking forward to more from our kooky historian!
Looking forward to more from our kooky historian!
Good update as always. Shame you were outshone in the World Fair, but that should not matter! Also into the matters of European affairs...from my experiences from my South African AAR, you should only go into the affairs of Europe where you know you have a good chance and when the odds are ever in your favor. Subsides work, I guess to fund the Prussians going at it yet again with the Austrians, because to be honest, Hungary (or some of the other Slavic and non Slavic states in Austria) never appear on their own in game, much less having a foreign power back them up and release them in a war.
Shame you were outshone in the World Fair, but that should not matter! Also into the matters of European affairs...from my experiences from my South African AAR, you should only go into the affairs of Europe where you know you have a good chance and when the odds are ever in your favor. Subsides work, I guess to fund the Prussians going at it yet again with the Austrians, because to be honest, Hungary (or some of the other Slavic and non Slavic states in Austria) never appear on their own in game, much less having a foreign power back them up and release them in a war.
I'm really starting to like our narrator. Lets hope the Tories don't make things too boring.
Very entertaining stuff, as ever. Interesting to hear of Oz dipping her fingers in the European pie. I would have thought you'd perhaps look to pursue a more isolationist policy – though I guess one's benevolent colonial overlords would have a certain say in things.
Looking forward to more from our kooky historian!
The way I see it, the relatively more 'colonized' state of Australia's Indonesian backyard (as well as good relations with Britain) have lead the locals to be more interested in European politics. In the upcoming episode, there's some major shifts in European borders that strike deep into the Australian psyche.
Subbed.
Welcome aboard!
Good update as always.
Australia in its current state, although rich and capable of bullying small nations, is not yet ready to ship over an armada of doom to Europe, but money for Prussians is definitely an option. Mind you, sponsoring Hungarian liberation only goes so far if you're not directly leading a war effort. Later in games with POP Demand Mod, everyone gets access to the "Dismantle Nation" CB, which can completely and utterly wreck some countries.
Even if the pseudo-Tories are in power, not all Australians are going to like it.
Also welcome aboard! Next update should up in less than an hour.
Chapter 6: The Australian Culture Wars
I think I've made it clear that between the onset of massive migration, but before the 1850s (at the very earliest), there were at least two Australias, perhaps even more. I'd tend to boil any extraneous ones down to the wild West and the effete East. Regardless of how many you believe in, the multiple Australias imbued their residents with different morals, ideals, and even different socioeconomic backgrounds after a while. Now, even then, no Australia could survive without all the others assisting it, but that's just ordinary large-scale economic integration. No matter how fractured your political borders are, it's going to happen to some degree. Just to make sure we're all on the same page, I've got a comparison of the two Australias.
West Australia (which, in cultural terms, extended even into Queensland) was generally sparsely populated, with the exception of the cities of the Southwest. Most economic activity revolved around resource gathering - logging, mining, stone quarries, and so forth. It has always been less industrialized than the East, and the industries it does have tend towards processing the local goodies into transportable forms. It's also something of a multicultural hotspot, since most of the non-Anglo immigrants came here seeking the wealth of the various booms. The greater distances one had to travel in order to reach the various pieces of civilization meant that various linguistic/ethnic/religious enclaves could grow larger and more organized before having to deal with the nation's assimilationists. Many of those groups fought back... and that's why all my really good friends speak Russian at home.
East Australia, on the other hand, may as well have been Little Britain. It's a bit ironic, I suppose, since it's a longer journey to get there. However, the eastern parts of Australia had several decades of significant European settlement by the time people began exploiting the other half of the continent. There were already fledgling patrician families with access to British wealth on call to enforce the old ways once flight to Australia began. On the other hand, most of the easterners didn't have gold money to buy finished goods, so they had to take more initiative in building factories and manufacturing whatever they wanted. The easterners therefore urbanized faster, came into contact with each other more often, and assimilated into a vaguely British looking norm.
As previously stated, the two Australias were entirely dependent on each other for survival. While naval shipping improved throughout the 1840s and 1850s, East Australia could not afford to import raw materials from the rest of the world without endangering the profitability of its factories. Meanwhile, West Australia was too dependent on the production of luxuries like gold and tropical wood to do anything much but import even the most basic goods from the rest of the world, and due to the extreme distances involved, "rest of the world" usually meant the eastern Australian colonies. Now, this sort of regional integration has happened worldwide. Another example within former British colonies comes from the United States of America, and the city of Chicago. Chicago served as a huge hub of processing industries that turned the raw materials of the Midwest and Great Lakes into intermediaries used by the great manufacturing cities of the USA. It eventually forged important ties with financial centers like New York, and therefore became inextricably linked to the world economy.
If that seems like a fanciful aside, just be aware that Sydney, Perth, Darwin, and many other coastal cities also got the lion's share of globalization money through their combination of financial connections and their access to major resource markets. In 1840, or even 1850, these cities (even relatively large Sydney) must have seemed like peripheries only valuable for their ports and railroads, but they eventually became the key to Australian commerce throughout the world. Europeans came to Perth, Americans came to Sydney, and as previously mentioned, Darwin became our gateway to Asia.
A look at Sydney's demographics in the mid-1850s. The 'metropolitan area' was home to nearly 300,000 people, although Sydney proper was closer to 60,000 at the time. Many were involved in the wool and lamb industries, many were politically conservative, and most of the immigrants who weren't from the British Isles were from some sort of America.
Before any of this could really happen, though, Australia needed to detach itself from the periphery of the British Empire and become the center of an empire in its own right. For that, we needed further extensions to our sovereignty and independence... and to secure full independence, we had to unify as a nation.
Some people are a bit too zealous about debt collection.
An opportunity arose in late 1854 when the Portuguese declared bankruptcy. This was almost certainly a side effect of Kalgoorlie gold - countries that didn't handle the increased money supply well tended to go into recession spirals. The Portuguese had ended up with significant debt to major creditors throughout the world; in an attempt to handle this, they'd levied significant tariffs on colonial imports. This had backfired, as it'd pushed significant pieces of their colonial empire (particularly in Mozambique) out of cash crops and back into hardcore subsistence mode. Eventually, the monarchy gave up on trying to salvage the situation and declared bankruptcy. Few dared to even consider confiscating Portuguese assets, as the historic Anglo-Portuguese alliance still held and was likely to continue doing so in the future.
Australian expansionism had not been, and would never be satisfied with the Balinese and Sulawesi excursions. Attempts to annex the sultanates of Borneo and Sumatra had been stymied when the British established their foothold in Brunei; the Australian government under Strathmore did not want to press the issue lest their privileged status be suddenly withdrawn. Other territories in the realm were perceived to be thoroughly within the British, Dutch, or French spheres of influence, but on Flores and its surrounding islands, there were a few weakly guarded islands belonging to a nation strapped for even the most basic financial resources. When Pedro V (under the advice of his father and regent Fernando II) proposed to sell a few minor colonies, the British had to pull out favors to keep their continental rivals from getting too much out of this.
Meanwhile, Reginald Strathmore decided the best way to handle the jingoistic cries for further Australian expansion (which mostly came from the west) was to purchase the Portuguese East Indies. The idea must've been to control the Lesser Sunda Islands, which, while not particularly rich or heavily populated, seemed easy to secure, subdue, and assimilate into the joys of Australian culture. The term you're looking for is 'foothold'. With Australia acting as Britain's proxy in Indonesia, though, expansion remained diplomatically challenging, but it was through small proposals like this that our country strengthened its position in the region.
OOC: I don't know if this is in vanilla, but Portugal can sell Flores and Timor to whoever owns Kupang for 50,000 pounds, so long as relations are good and important technologies are researched. I did not own that province, but Australia is willing to pay a lot more for the privilege of the islands.
The United Kingdom offered Strathmore a deal - the Australians would pay 500,000 pounds sterling to London, the United Kingdom would use that money to officially purchase the Portuguese East Indies, and the territories would then be transferred to Australian control. Frankly, this was idiotically indirect, and Australians at the time knew it. 500,000 pounds is equivalent to about (as of 1972) 30 million Australian dollars; whether or not that was a valid price for the islands is still up for debate. The financial costs of this introduced a rather substantial deficit into Australian finance that would take years to fully pay off. For now, the colonial governments sold bonds to their citizens, raised taxes, improvised various means with which to pay the debt. Meanwhile, the same citizens (mostly elites) who had called for control of Flores and Timor now took to the increasingly paved streets, and rallied for full Australian diplomatic independence. Australia, according to them, had to take its place as a full partner of the British Empire (instead of a mere constituent) in order to ensure its greatness. Not much of a political platform, but even the most nonsensical and incoherent political movements can gain power when their representatives and governors agree with them. In the short term, these 'independence' movements took in many of the classical liberals formerly associated with the Seversky-era Nationalist Party. Eventually, the ideas of small government, laissez faire economics, and vaguely individual rights and liberty themed justifications for colonialism overtook the independence movement (because some ideas were just plain popular), and the liberals organized themselves into the Australian Whig Party. They would lay relatively low until the 1860s, but given their origins in exhortations to violence...
Perhaps more interesting in the historical context was how the Australian Whigs were the first political party to bridge the huge geographical gap in Australia. The party was home to many orators who were capable of spinning political views to appeal to both sides of the 'spectrum'. For instance, to the West, a smaller, more efficient government meant less meddling in the affairs of ethnic minorities, but to the East, it meant more profits for industrialists and workers under them. The Whigs also benefited from playing up their emphasis on religious freedom and other personal liberties; they were not particularly different from their British namesakes. It seems logical enough that British political trends would take some precedence with the continued weight of British and non-British immigration... sometimes, history makes sense. Don't be too shocked.
Still, in the mid-1850s, the Australian Whigs were little more than the spark in the eye of the classical liberals seeking to advance Australian independence, and most of the future constituents hadn't realized they might want what they'd end up offering. Over 200 low-middling politicians congregated in seemingly neutral Adelaide (which, in many ways, was on Australia's internal cultural border) through June 1855 to discuss how to develop independence without provoking tensions with Britain. It did not go well in the slightest.
Lessons learned: Political squabbles may look entertaining, but they're really quite dangerous to your nation's continued health!
The first problems arose as this congress's members discussed how to unify the loose confederation of colonies into a coherent nation state. One politician (who would wake up one day to find he'd become George Salisbury, the first proper Prime Minister of Australia) proposed that each colony would immediately become a state within the Australian nation, and that a national capital would be chosen from those of the nation's constituents. This won over about half of the audience, but the other half ended up captivated by a policy that would've created smaller administrative divisions centered around major cities, and left the political system of the nation less centralized. Honestly, I don't think either approach would have any major advantage over the other, but clearly our illustrious statesmen would not agree with me. As the debate rose to a heated pitch, someone threw a gavel at someone else. Those two people's names have been lost to time (suggesting that we never even knew who'd provoked the violence), but the ensuing violent brawl has not been. One mayor even managed to get himself killed in the fight; by necessity we remember Heinrich Stanislaus when we remember the failed Adelaide congress.
Australian newspapers, upon hearing of this bloody mess, immediately seized upon the opportunity and published hundreds, if not thousands of pages of nonsensical garbage. After all, terrible non-journalism was already part of Australia's legacy, and you wouldn't want to assault Australia's rich history, would you? I'd say the Adelaide brawl cost us about 2-3 years of actual independence, and that's entirely because of the jerks running the newspaper presses. It didn't help that with increasing literacy and affluence, more Australians were reading newspapers. Strictly speaking, it may be better than them reading nothing, but bad reading material ruins minds. On the other hand, while the journalism industry had yet to emerge from the toilet, we did at least see the beginnings of actual Australian literature, as the presses began printing novels written by well-assimilated immigrants. There were a rather lot of 'adventure' novels on terrible, pulpy paper... to be honest, I'm rather partial to some of them. While British youth had to content themselves with Varney the Vampire (!?) and Sweeney Todd, Australians in the mid-1850s could, for a mere penny, dip into the adventures of the Polish Brigade against the 'savages' (read: deliberately misunderstood, slandered Indomalayans) of Borneo and Sumatra. I think we still have the advantage in youth literature, although the lady who wrote the series (Annabelle Gladys Tennant) would insist she just wanted to write something that would encourage delinquent youth to enlist in the army and make something of their lives.
Mrs. Tennant was almost certainly swept up in the various outbursts of national fervor that marked the 1850s, but as a wealthy lady of high society, I don't think she wanted to get her boots dirty by joining street demonstrations. That makes her a pretty good example of why independence did not come in 1855 - for most Australians, self-strengthening was still the name of the game. Reginald Strathmore must've thought so too - his 'response' to the riots and violence was to fund schools for children; he must've thought the situation would sort itself out if everyone met his standards for intelligence and scholarly wisdom.
Strathmore was able to recruit more teachers in the east than in the west. Needless to say, they had rather... British ideas about how to educate kids.
This actually fed the violence further, as he managed to offend the West by imposing English as the primary language of study. There were concerned parents out in Kalgoorlie who simply wanted to educate their children in Russian or Polish or Yiddish or whatever, even if they eventually had to make sure their children were fluent in English for survival's sake.
Two major spikes here - the first was caused by Strathmore's university push, and the second was caused by Strathmore's primary school initiative. I'll admit it - he seems like something of a one-issue chairman to me.
Still, while many of them complained, most Australians who had something meaningful to say about their educational institutions enfranchised themselves by teaching. The education sector outgrew Australian population growth by a significant margin, although most teachers in Australia were still affiliated with religious institutions. This was less notable in the universities, but despite Strathmore's efforts, secular teaching was slow to catch on. These education efforts would continue to receive significant funding, but nationwide literacy hovered around 45-50%; this would not change substantially until compulsory education was introduced - and this was something Reginald Strathmore was not willing to do.
Another factor that fed Australian nationalism was the resurgence of what is best described as 'other' nationalisms. The mid-1850s saw the rise of new nations in Europe from what were initially scattered kingdoms and principalities at best. Ironically, these were almost always at the borders of Habsburg Austria (which will for the rest of this chapter be referred to as Österreich, because I don't want you getting confused and spouting German at me) The first salvo in the 'Unification Wars' had been fired a few years ago, with the unification of Wallachia and Moldavia into a pan-Romanian kingdom. The next ones came after the Prussians thrashed the Habsburg army into a dreadful mess.
The humiliating defeat Österreich suffered (with the help of Australian money) from this war might have gone relatively unnoticed, but for Prussian promises to liberate the submerged Kingdom of Hungary. Someone must've convinced the King of Prussia that dismembering Österreich that thoroughly would result in nasty political fallout and more Russians on the local doorstep, so those promises went unfulfilled in favor of extracting money and political concessions out of Österreich. The Hungarians were rather disappointed with this turn of events, to say the least; for a few months you could not speak a word of German in Budapest without risking death, so immense was the revolution. They managed to tie up the depleted Habsburg army for over a year, and pockets of resistance continued to trouble the empire for some time.
While Österreich was busy policing itself, the nearby kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont made the bold move of FERTing in Franz Karl's face and invading the Habsburg Empire's constituent kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia on August 3rd, 1854. The Austrians panicked and called for assistance from their Italian allies. Two answered the call; one (Modena) was almost instantaneously occupied. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies was somewhat more successful, mounting a naval invasion of Sardinia. I presume this makes the house of Savoy damn lucky that they relocated their capital to Turin, which was entirely unscathed during the war with Österreich.
Not even the German states would come to Austria's aid. Prussian virtues, anyone?
The limited resistance of Habsburg loyal troops could not stop the armies of Sardinia-Piedmont from marching to Vienna and successfully besieging it. With Hungarian guerrillas still stirring up trouble in the east, Österreich was forced to cede Lombardy to Sardinia. After about a year of smug, the Sardinian government finally proposed unification of the various Italian territories they influenced or owned. After negotiating a marriage treaty binding the houses of Savoy and Bourbon, the Kingdom of Italy was formally declared on April 25th, 1856. Due to the significant privileges Neapolitan and Sicilian citizens accrued from this treaty, Italy began its life rather decentralized. It would take a few decades (and a few more wars) for the government to properly centralize the state and forge a passable Italian identity.
Italy's unification is important to Australia primarily because it provided us with an example of how to unify ourselves. The Savoyards' success in negotiating a diplomatic settlement with the Two Sicilies kept many Australians from trying to imitate the military approach that had won Sardinia-Piedmont much of Italy. Opponents of rapid independence used the teething of the nascent kingdom to support gradualism, claiming that the Australian colonies had already done great things with their current levels of autonomy. I suppose they have a point - the colonies already had relatively large economies for their small size, to the point that they could support armed forces and Strathmore's utopian (if still relatively minimal) social policies.
Still, in a climate of growing nationalism and irredentism, you can't blame Australians for not wanting to be left behind.
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Intriguing manoeuvres in Europe, indeed. My first Vicky game was with Sardinia-Piedmont, so I always like seeing them do well. It will be interesting to see how their warring affects Austria, though.
Aside from that, solid developments at home. The Portuguese débâcle was humorous to read about – as is a lot with our narrator, whom I still enjoy immensely.
Aside from that, solid developments at home. The Portuguese débâcle was humorous to read about – as is a lot with our narrator, whom I still enjoy immensely.
Australia moves ever closer to full independence.
I assume a lot of former citizens of 'Österreich' (Lombardians, Hungarians) are arriving at the Australian equivalent of Ellis Island? What with all the warring there?
Btw, I don't think the decision to buy Portuguese Timor exists in vanilla (at least I've never seen it).
I assume a lot of former citizens of 'Österreich' (Lombardians, Hungarians) are arriving at the Australian equivalent of Ellis Island? What with all the warring there?
Btw, I don't think the decision to buy Portuguese Timor exists in vanilla (at least I've never seen it).
Good update as always!
As a vicky2 player who has had over 1,153 hrs on record, I can safely say that the decision to buy Portuguese Timor does not exist in the regular versions of Victoria 2, although perhaps there is such a decision for that in the POP demand mod.
As a vicky2 player who has had over 1,153 hrs on record, I can safely say that the decision to buy Portuguese Timor does not exist in the regular versions of Victoria 2, although perhaps there is such a decision for that in the POP demand mod.
Early feedback, since I've determined I will not be able to make this week's installment. I've been handling some personal business, including but not limited to commissioning some artwork for an upcoming book I'm publishing, and the business end's taken a large amount of my time.
There's a good chance Austria's going to get kicked out of the rest of their Italian holdings; perhaps even including the Dalmatian coast depending on how successfully their wars go. However, PDM also has a Congress of Berlin chain that sometimes allows Austria to annex Bosnia, so things might turn out historically for Austria for a few decades more, unless a particularly nasty intervention occurs.
I believe most of the warring there is the typical V2 European squabbling. However, migration in PDM is generally more pronounced and consistent, especially in the backwards monarchies of Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the Australian equivalent of Ellis Island in this timeline is probably Perth.
That's good to know. It's a nice decision, although I don't think it gets taken very often (presumably by the Netherlands).
Intriguing manoeuvres in Europe, indeed. My first Vicky game was with Sardinia-Piedmont, so I always like seeing them do well. It will be interesting to see how their warring affects Austria, though.
Aside from that, solid developments at home. The Portuguese débâcle was humorous to read about – as is a lot with our narrator, whom I still enjoy immensely.
There's a good chance Austria's going to get kicked out of the rest of their Italian holdings; perhaps even including the Dalmatian coast depending on how successfully their wars go. However, PDM also has a Congress of Berlin chain that sometimes allows Austria to annex Bosnia, so things might turn out historically for Austria for a few decades more, unless a particularly nasty intervention occurs.
Australia moves ever closer to full independence.
I assume a lot of former citizens of 'Österreich' (Lombardians, Hungarians) are arriving at the Australian equivalent of Ellis Island? What with all the warring there?
Btw, I don't think the decision to buy Portuguese Timor exists in vanilla (at least I've never seen it).
I believe most of the warring there is the typical V2 European squabbling. However, migration in PDM is generally more pronounced and consistent, especially in the backwards monarchies of Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the Australian equivalent of Ellis Island in this timeline is probably Perth.
That's good to know. It's a nice decision, although I don't think it gets taken very often (presumably by the Netherlands).
Australia is booming quite nicely, it can only be a matter of time before you march to full independence.
It was only a matter of time after they struck Australium in Kalgoorlie.
As an Australian and a proud Melbourian, I have to decry the limited AAR time my fair city has in the story of the founding of our great nation, if the foul harbourside rabble and those western peasants only useful at toiling in mines can be mentioned, heck even the backwater that is Darwin, I demand our proper recognition!
But really nice AAR, how did you manage to get your central territories? In vanilla you always had the Brits colonise the interior, which was annoying.
Just for those playing at home, the West has always had talks about seceding claiming they provide far more than they get in return. Sort of like a Oceanic Texas.
But really nice AAR, how did you manage to get your central territories? In vanilla you always had the Brits colonise the interior, which was annoying.
Just for those playing at home, the West has always had talks about seceding claiming they provide far more than they get in return. Sort of like a Oceanic Texas.
Only got through the first update so far, but this looks like am excellent AAR with a very interesting choice of country. Subscribed!