Somewhere a cigar manufacturer burst into tears, and he does not know why.
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The whiskey and champagne merchants are also in trouble.
Honestly, given the sort of things the man did in his time as a war correspondent, I'm surprised he didn't die in OTL. As it is, he's either dead or wandering the dark continent sticking his nose where it doesn't belong.
And yes, the Duke of Marlborough was annoyed when it happened.
The writing laptop is back, sans hard drive. New hard drive and everything installed.
...IT LIVES!
Need to see if I need to rebuild the map now but...at least the game is working.
Need to see if I need to rebuild the map now but...at least the game is working.
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The map did indeed need rebuilding but honestly it was for the good because a few more options have opened up. Unfortunately for the US.
And, briefly, for Australia.
As covered by many other AARs, the map as standard does not represent the historical reality of the empires all that well (in regards to who actually controlled what, and where). So I have striven to reflect the general gist of that, or at least make a somewhat clearer distinction between colonies (controlled by the empires centrally and from far away) and vassal states, puppets, settler colonies etc (which control their own business either because they've gotten big enough to do so or because the empires kept the old power structure around and simply put themsevles on a higher tier than the old top guy).
Eygpt for example is mostly controlled by...Well, Egypt. Its a vassal, or more rather, a rather tightly controlled puppet, of the british empire, and so has its own army and economy but is otherwise rather firmly told what to do by London. Alexandria and suez are directly controlled by the British to reflect how much more, both legally and in practice, they ran those areas.
Meanwhile over the Canal, British Arabia is a vassal state given control over much of their holdings there, informal empire style. There are bits under more direct control, and the aim of the game here is stability for a troubled region, and resource extraction deals for British firms.
I've done similar surgery elsewhere, like with French Algeria and morroco. Now...this was much more of a vassalage situation than in the rest of French Africa, and so they are ever so slightly more independent. The coastline belongs to France but there are other actors that need to be controlled.
This can all be tweaked as we go forward but I think the broad strokes seem to work quite well. The general idea is that the European empires do not in fact utterly control the minutiae of counties in the colonies, but either have set up colonial authorities, where it makes sense to, or do directly control them (British crown colonies for example).
And, briefly, for Australia.
As covered by many other AARs, the map as standard does not represent the historical reality of the empires all that well (in regards to who actually controlled what, and where). So I have striven to reflect the general gist of that, or at least make a somewhat clearer distinction between colonies (controlled by the empires centrally and from far away) and vassal states, puppets, settler colonies etc (which control their own business either because they've gotten big enough to do so or because the empires kept the old power structure around and simply put themsevles on a higher tier than the old top guy).
Eygpt for example is mostly controlled by...Well, Egypt. Its a vassal, or more rather, a rather tightly controlled puppet, of the british empire, and so has its own army and economy but is otherwise rather firmly told what to do by London. Alexandria and suez are directly controlled by the British to reflect how much more, both legally and in practice, they ran those areas.
Meanwhile over the Canal, British Arabia is a vassal state given control over much of their holdings there, informal empire style. There are bits under more direct control, and the aim of the game here is stability for a troubled region, and resource extraction deals for British firms.
I've done similar surgery elsewhere, like with French Algeria and morroco. Now...this was much more of a vassalage situation than in the rest of French Africa, and so they are ever so slightly more independent. The coastline belongs to France but there are other actors that need to be controlled.
This can all be tweaked as we go forward but I think the broad strokes seem to work quite well. The general idea is that the European empires do not in fact utterly control the minutiae of counties in the colonies, but either have set up colonial authorities, where it makes sense to, or do directly control them (British crown colonies for example).
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Um...all that above, except for Burma. WHICH MUST BE CONTROLLED DIREXTLY BY BRITOANFMHFOANE DUAO.
or the game crashes.
So...um...in the universe story of this AAR, the British government are just in love with Burma and need to hold it close always.
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The AAR now contains pictures and photos! No more solid walls of text!
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Ah...I miss this show.
Anyway, should be the first of several chapters on the Earl of Atherleigh and his crazy first premiership today, which covers what UK was doing in the 1890s and early 1900s. That is, attempting to ending the Great Game by force, violently disagreeing with the Amercians, and violently disagreeing with the russians (again).
I have also fallen down a rabbit hole of alt history in regards to 'British Persia'. As it fits in with the general chaos of the 90s, we shall find some way to include some of it here.
The Long 19th Century - The Earl of Atherleigh
The Long 19th Century – The Earl of Atherleigh
Excerpt from ‘Great British Statesmen of the 19th Century’, by Arthur Woodcock
It has become common parlance in academic circles to speak of the Radcliffe family as a somewhat cumulative whole, rather than individuals, perhaps in order to avoid the accusation of ‘great man history’. This is understandable, as it is and has proven very easy to speak of, for example, the first Duke of London, in such tones as to imply the whole world of his time revolved around him, as much as another historian might Napoleon, Augustus or, if he is daring, Christ.
We miss something in not considering the men of that house as people. As much as they are complex and multi-faceted, each major member also seemingly encapsulated the very spectre of the age in which they lived. The first Duke, a grand statesman who commanded and reshaped the world in his own image, ambition and prestige and military glory draped around him like a cloak. The third, an enigmatic schemer, quietly working with a few close advisors, aides and politicians to control and negotiate the formation of much of the modern world.
We miss something in not considering the men of that house as people. As much as they are complex and multi-faceted, each major member also seemingly encapsulated the very spectre of the age in which they lived. The first Duke, a grand statesman who commanded and reshaped the world in his own image, ambition and prestige and military glory draped around him like a cloak. The third, an enigmatic schemer, quietly working with a few close advisors, aides and politicians to control and negotiate the formation of much of the modern world.
And the Fourth Duke, whom was and is generally known as ‘the Earl of Atherleigh’, having held that title for much of his life. What was he? He was again the embodiment of a new generation, jingoistic, militaristic, imperialist and bombastic. His successes, and his failures, and his many actions and decisions which lie in the murky waters between, can be assigned as much to the society he found himself in as his own person.
If you were a Briton in the 1870s, you had probably known little else other than peace, relative economic security, a withdrawn Victoria on the throne and a government quietly but utterly enthralled by the Third Duke of London. Arthur Radcliffe the Second (to shorten his name and titles considerably), a man whom had never held government office aside from a brief stint as a civil servant working in the Treasury, was nonetheless the power behind ‘everything’, or so it was reckoned by the people of the day (and, in earnest, by many modern historians). Upon gaining the dukedom quite unexpectedly in his youth, he spent his time repairing his family’s never very large fortunes, and found himself in time quite the oddity in both being a high ranking nobleman and also of the burgeoning capitalist class.
Being a Radcliffe, he was already ingratiated to the highest circles of Tory politics and society, and found himself over the 1840s slowly turning from reluctant participant and advisor to the centre of a vast web of alliances and supplicants. For the next few decades of unrest on the continent, war in faraway places, economic slumps and booms, the ‘man in the closet’, as he was nicknamed, was effectively in command in the City, in Parliament, and of the realm.
And so we return to the 1870s. The Duke is now Governor of the Bank of England. The economy is beginning to wobble slightly as new competition from the continent cuts into the UK’s market shares. Other things are changing too. The old balance of power is threatened by Austrian weakness, French instability and Prussian expansionism. The United States, which had been safely preoccupied with a civil war, was now unified and once again hungry for expansion. The wave of nationalism and liberalism that had swept the world twenty years before was once again beginning to rise. In Britain, a new generation whom had known little but the great explosion of wealth, population, technology and power, saw a world and an empire that looked suddenly vulnerable, uncertain, and, importantly, malleable.
The Earl of Atherleigh was one such man. He had already been an athlete, a soldier, an explorer, an amateur engineer and enthusiastic devourer of the major works of the Enlightenment and the Romantics. He saw the issues that had and would continue to trouble his father, the old tory party, the present Whig government and dreamed of resolving them all. A giant of a man, with a beard to match, he had his ambitions, the support of the younger Tories of much the same mind as himself, and of course, the vast wealth the Radcliffe family now possessed.
What he did not have was the support of his father.
Much has been made of the disputes and later rivalry of Atherleigh and London. To some degree, it most certainly was a fierce and burning argument of ideology, control, and personal dislike. However, given the later acts of Atherleigh as Prime Minister, it seems he was not above taking direction from the elder man, nor bowing to his requests on occasion, or if it suited his own purposes. To some degree, their butting heads was academic for much of the 1870s, as the Tories spent much of the decade out of power, but for a variety of reasons, some of which may well be lost to history, Atherleigh finally had his way in 1878, when he not only became leader of the party but almost immediately afterwards won a landslide general election. Bolstered by his mandate and majority, the Earl of Atherleigh finally had his chance to make his mark on the world.
…
Excerpt from ‘The Sublime Porte’s Decline: The Breaking of the Balkans’ by Ewan Feeler
Excerpt from ‘The Sublime Porte’s Decline: The Breaking of the Balkans’ by Ewan Feeler
…the tumultuous decade reached its zenith in 1878, when the nations of Europe finally signed an agreement of settlement in the region, with an eye to both prop up the ailing Ottomans and fend off what was perceived as an aggressive and expansionist Russian Empire. The agreement is notable for not only demonstrating firmly that the fate of the Ottomans was now more in the hands of foreign powers than its own, but also for the first foreign act of diplomacy spearheaded by newly elected British Prime Minister Lord Atherleigh, and his Foreign Secretary Robert Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury.
The firm intervention of the British indicated to the world, correctly, that the various overlapping interests and disputes between the Russian and British Empires was once again becoming a grave concern for the latter. Whilst relations between the two great powers had improved since the end of the Crimean War, the high point being the purchase of Russian America in 1865, in exchange for a gigantic sum of £150 million to balance the Tsar’s books, the two were now once again in direct competition. The British were, in effect, using the Ottomans as a gigantic shield to defend the middle east and India from Russian aggression, and were also not above dismembering the empire itself if it suited them, forcing the handover of Cyprus as a British overseas territory.
Whilst the crisis in the Balkans had involved negotiations with Prussia, Austria and the British, and thus the Russian army had to tread relatively carefully in fighting for their claims in Bulgaria, the British had no such limitation when Russia sent envoys to Afghanistan. Atherleigh’s response was swift: the British invaded the country and quickly defeated the Amir, Sher Ali Khan. A subsequent rebellion the next year was also brutally crushed, confirming both a British presence and greater control over Afghanistan. The world was put very much on notice that this was a new turn in British Foreign Policy, one of direct and strong interventionism, protectionism and control.
When news of the Treaty of Akhal broke in 1881, the British were again concerned that Russia had too much sway over the Qajar Iran, known in the West as Persia. This led to the Second Anglo-Persian War, which was fought for several months in 1882, and left the country an effective vassal state of the British, though with its specific legal status, borders, authority and sovereignty in great dispute. This would continue to be a headache for the British for the next 30 years.
With all their neighbours and former sphere now the playthings of European powers, the Ottoman humiliation of the 70’s was topped in 1882 by the British not only ordering troops to occupy Persia but also Egypt. Crushing the Egyptian nationalists, restoring the recently deposed king, and taking control of the country’s infrastructure and finances, it was the final nail in the coffin for the Ottoman pretence at Great Power Status.
It was also so outrageously brazen that it made the British Empire the enemy of Europe overnight. Whilst the British did have many interests and investments in the country, and the Prime Minister had offered the token, and surprisingly truthful excuse of ‘resolving the national debt and economy of a confused nation’, this naturally did not comfort the other European powers, many of whom either had their own debts owed by Egypt or colonial affairs on the African continent that now seemed suddenly at risk of random British intervention.
The resultant ‘Scramble for Africa’, and the then recognised status of British Egypt, as well as the dividing of a continent long thought to be within the Ottoman sphere, turned the general impression of the Ottoman Empire as ‘the sick man of Europe’ to a complete nonentity, a status it would hold until the entry of the sultanate into World War One in 1915.
…
Excerpt from ‘The Scramble for Africa: Salisbury’s Success and Atherleigh’s Luck?’, by Gregory Gonard
Excerpt from ‘The Scramble for Africa: Salisbury’s Success and Atherleigh’s Luck?’, by Gregory Gonard
When the Earl of Atherleigh, fresh from two brief and successful colonial wars in the Middle East, ordered troops in Egypt, it was commonly received and perceived by his contemporaries that he had begun to overreach himself. Egypt, unlike Persia or Afghanistan, was not an established British subject being defended from Russian expansionism. It was a large and major investment of many different Great Powers, and also technically still a vassal state to the Ottoman Empire, threatening to drag open the wounds only recently closed by the 1878 agreement in the Balkans.
The French Third Republic was furious. They already were antagonised by the British usurping their planned investment in the Suez Canal, and had many other heavy investments and debts owed by the kingdom of Egypt. With their population and government still smarting from their defeat and partial occupation at the hands of Prussia a decade prior, which had indeed brought down the Second Republic, the French were unwilling to countenance further weakening of their grip anywhere in the world. This led the British to rely on Austrian and German support to counterbalance the French. Unfortunately for Atherleigh, German Chancellor Bismarck had a laundry list of prices to be paid for his silent acceptance of the issue, the least of which were African colonies for the new German Reich.
Having successfully united Europe against him, and made himself dependant on their goodwill, Atherleigh turned to his by then rather long-suffering Foreign Secretary, the third Marquess of Salisbury. Lord Salisbury, never the greatest fan of the formal or informal empire, nevertheless was given two goals:
- Find a way to neutralise Bismarck and get the UK off the hook for his continued support.
- Get everyone else to recognise the British position in Egypt.
Salisbury was aided by the fact that the British officials and civil servants sent to Egypt genuinely were sorting out the kingdom’s finances, and soon would clear all her debts to France and elsewhere. This would technically remove all outside interest in Egypt, at least monetarily. He also had a degree of time and ample political support; the Prime Minister’s escapades in the Middle East and being seen to ‘defeat’ Russia had encouraged a fresh election and an even larger majority. Atherleigh had the mandate, which meant Salisbury, for now, had full support.
Africa was, by this point, beginning to be deeply penetrated by European colonists, explorers and ‘missionaries’ (both real, and the former two roles in varying degrees of convincing disguise). These were for the most part, private affairs, with their home empires being duly required to defend their claims only after the operation had been set up. The continent was, therefore, an utter mess of competing interests, claims, stakes and holdings, of questionable legal and practical value. Yet, of course, the colonial empires also could not afford to simply abandon these highly popular and, in many cases, incredibly lucrative, schemes. The most famous of these private empire-builders was Britain’s own Cecil Rhodes, infamous even in his day for how far he was willing to push morality and the British government in securing dominion over Africa and protecting his vast wealth.
Salisbury detested the man, and his ilk, but unfortunately for him, Rhodes was a financial partner in various schemes belonging to the Duke of York, and was a firm favourite of Atherleigh. Not only did the Foreign Secretary therefore have his two official goals to contend with, he also had the unspoken but no less vital task of ensuring however he resolved the issue, it did not curtail or threaten British interests and exploitation, now or in the future.
The only realistic solution was for Africa to be openly and clearly divided into separate spheres of influence and territory, and for Britain to not dispute at least some of the claims of France and Germany. In this effort, he finally had some luck in that Bismarck, whom had also spotted the inevitable problem, and having no real love for colonies in the first place, agreed to help organise such a congress. Such a huge set of negotiations would involve every great and minor colonial power in Europe, including the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, whom Britain had very friendly relations with, the Netherlands, whom had a vast interest in the Congo by this period, and the Kingdom of Italy. The latter, newly minted upon the Concert of Europe, saw its chance to climb the next rung of the ladder in becoming a major European nation
The Scramble For Africa came to a head with the Berlin Conference of 1885, though various agreements between powers were only ratified and agreed upon much later. In general, Salisbury did very well out of the affair, buying off Germany early on with some claim swaps (and privately selling such plans to Atherleigh as strategically void. Germany after all, was no naval power) and leaning heavily upon Portugal to give up their dreams of what would become southern Rhodesia in exchange for more land on the coast and some money.
His greatest success was probably with containing France, the other large player in African affairs, potentially even more so than the British themselves. Algeria and Morocco would remain French vassals, but the latter would retain a degree of independence as a kingdom, and the former lost control of its coastline to direct French rule. Madagascar meanwhile stayed with France, but all other islands surrounding it were given to the British. This was good enough for the Third Republic to not swiftly become the Fourth, but it was a near thing. France, and Paris in particular, would remain unstable and mutinous for much of the rest of the century, with scandal after scandal connecting to the highest officials in the land (the most infamous, the Dreufuss Affair, was by no means an outlier).
Critically, for the Republic and British both, the French were also not allowed to expand into the Sudan, which had been in an unstable rebellion against Egyptian rule for some time. This however would not be confirmed and seen off before the 1890s, by which time attention of all the great powers was elsewhere, though still on colonial issues….
Critically, for the Republic and British both, the French were also not allowed to expand into the Sudan, which had been in an unstable rebellion against Egyptian rule for some time. This however would not be confirmed and seen off before the 1890s, by which time attention of all the great powers was elsewhere, though still on colonial issues….
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Righto! The Long 19th Century chapters can explore the backstory and world details, The Jager War will push the story forward, and ultimately give way to the end of the war and the crisises which lead to Ouster being forced into the horror of late 1920s Weimar politics. Photos, maps and so on should come with or soon after most chapters, since it really does seem to make the AAR look better (obviously quite a few game shots can be used after a certain point also), but you'll have to wait this time because I'm about to go on holiday. Just thought this was something for you all to mull over whilst I take a week off.
Ta-tah!
Ta-tah!
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The Long 19th Century - The Spanish-American War
The Long 19th Century – The Spanish-American War
Excerpt from a lecture given by Dr van Housler, at King’s College, London
Tensions had been running high between the US and the outside world for much of the 19th century. Whilst they had a soft spot for France, and little to do with Austria or Germany (beyond taking in millions of immigrants), the rest of Europe had relations with the US varying from somewhat friendly (the Netherlands), to outright hostility. It was no surprise that Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom found themselves at odds with the Americans. The former would never be forgiven for selling Alaska to another European power, especially the British. The latter would never be forgiven for a lot of things, amongst which were the exceedingly harsh terms handed out after the war of 1812, the humiliation of the US Navy during the 30s, the under the table support for the South during the Civil War, and repeated attempts to block American business in the Pacific. As for Spain, the United States was less hostile and more…avaricious.
After defeating Mexico in a war to decide how large Texas would be (the answer turned out to be: very), the US had finally completed its expansion ‘from sea to shining sea’, and was looking for more world to conquer. Over the vast Pacific Ocean lay the riches of Asia, and a very delectable looking set of Spanish possessions that were underdefended by an often-rebellious local population. And on the other side of the country, right off the coast, was a large island rich with sugar, tobacco and other rich farmland.
Essentially, the Spanish Empire appeared weak and vulnerable, and also served as a great symbol of colonial oppression for the American public to latch onto. Calls for war, and support of every reported uprising, especially in Cuba, were rife throughout the 1870s and 80s. However, business leaders’ opinions were decidedly more mixed. The American economy was in the midst of recovering from a recession, and a potentially quite large war across two oceans could offset all the gains made thus far.
Meanwhile, Spain could not countenance either genuinely fighting for the empire, nor selling it to the Americans. Such moves would set an already divided and struggling kingdom into potential revolution, with the government not sure which decision would be worse.
However, Spain had some allies in their struggle. Mexico had rehabilitated its view of Spain since independence, seeing the US as the one true enemy to their continued existence, and the British Empire under the Earl of Atherleigh’s interventionist government had various reasons to back their European neighbour up. Atherleigh himself probably had visions of equalling his great-grandfather’s achievements in 1812, and also once and for all curtailing the American sphere of influence to their own country, settle the remaining Canadian border issues, and boot the US out of the Pacific. In essence, he would do in North America what he had done in Africa and the Middle East, and use a mixture of diplomacy and force to remake it in his own image.
These three allies of convenience rather surprisingly also quickly bonded together both during the resulting war and afterwards, with Spain and Mexico having a culture exchange program with each other, and the British pouring millions in investments to both countries. Aside from the Three Emperors Pact in Europe, it was the largest and strongest alliance in the world at the time, and far longer lasting.
The war itself, declared by the US in 1895 when the Spanish government refused to sign a Congressional resolution demanding their withdrawal from Cuba, was nasty, bloody and short. The Royal and US navies had been itching to really fight each other for decades, and promptly fought in several pitched battles across multiple theatres, though the UK eventually won out in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the relatively simple ferrying over of American troops to destroy small and weak colonial militias was rendered far more complicated by the Mexican and Canadian armies on opposing borders, each out for blood. The US federal government, facing a two-front war on its own soil, an escalating conflict with the British Empire, and upon hearing that it was rapidly losing the naval war on both oceans, began to seek terms.
Sensing blood in the water, Atherleigh counselled the Spanish to continue the war till the end of the year, to see what they could shake out of the Americans. The Mexicans paid a price for this tactic, losing two large battles to the American army in the autumn of 1895. However, they made the US pay dearly for their success. When the Canadian army was reinforced with British troops, and they crossed over into New England and Illinois, it was all over. The economy was faltering, the east coast was full of fleeing and panicking civilians, and Congress was fearful they were about to see a repeat of the burning of Washington.
Atherleigh’s terms were a mixture of pragmatic and brutal. The Mexican/US border would remain unchanged, but the federal government would pay reparations for every life taken in its defence, and further reparations for the loss of Texas. The Spanish Empire would be formally recognised by the United States government as legitimate, and both Mexico and the British Empire affirmed a fifty-year guarantee to defend it from outside aggression.
As for Atherleigh, he got his victory. The various contentions and pushbacks American settlors, states and federal government had succeeded in acquiring over the past century were revoked, including two thirds of the Oregon disputed area, the excess gifted back to the colony of British Columbia in southern Canada. The US was left with the southern portion of the territory, which became the state of Oregon a few years later. Every US possession in the Pacific was stripped from them and granted to the British Empire in perpetuity. Finally, the US was forced to acknowledge the Hawaiian island chain as falling under the British sphere of influence and protection. The Kingdom of Hawaii would later receive the surrounding islands as a gift from the British Crown, in exchange for becoming a protectorate (although, in this specific case, it was essentially defence guarantee and stipend from the British rather than anything particularly onerous).
The US was heavily chastened once again by a British PM, and firmly ejected from any delusions of creating a colonial empire of their own…for now. Atherleigh had achieved what he had set out to do when first obtaining the premiership, find and hit the imperial complications head on, and see what breaks first. He was however playing a dangerous game. He had thus far humiliated the Russian and Ottoman empires, backhanded the Americans, and made the British possessions and status in the Middle East far more complicated. The British public had also seemingly had enough, and his time in office came to an end in May 1898, a few weeks shy of a full twenty years of premiership. The triumphant Whig/Liberal party promised a return to peace, soft power and stability at home.
It is unlikely that anyone, not even the Earl himself, would have predicted that he would be called back into High Office again five years later.
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So Britain made the US give up Washington and Oregon? Two whole states?
Yeah no - that’s Alsace-Lorraine levels of revanchist crazy that would result from it. The US would pretty much declare war the second the UK got embroiled in WWI.
Yeah no - that’s Alsace-Lorraine levels of revanchist crazy that would result from it. The US would pretty much declare war the second the UK got embroiled in WWI.
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Oregon state is still with the US. Washington got ripped from them. In essence, the territory was split almost in half, rather than favouring the US along the 49th parallel. But none of it had become states of the union yet, it was still essentially frontier territory, though increasingly full of colonists from both sides of the border.
And yes, the US is pissed. However, they're not quite the power they were in OTL even discounting the war, given that the 1812 result ended with them losing the great lakes and recognising, briefly, an Indian country beyond their borders. That's two big wars the US got slapped in.
But yes, the US and UK will not be friends in this AAR. And this will have big impacts on the game.
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Does Africa post-scramble in this time-period look roughly the same as OTL (except for differing amounts of autonomy)?
With how antagonistic US-UK relations are after this war, I wouldn't be surprised if American lend-leases to Europe during WW1 are less readily given.
Oh, I just realised I had specific notes on this from a year ago when the prompt was first being developed. At that time, the idea was that the chanhes would be the UK would be in a rivalry with the US for some reason, and Europe had some room to breath and develope because everyone's attentions were elsewhere in the 30s.
A lot of detail was then hashed out after research and more planning in the past month, and then a lot got cut as not relevant from the history book chapters.
But I did at some point plot out exactly how the US colonised and expanded across the continent and the impact of not having the great lakes had on the country.
To answer your question, again (sorry!), much like OTL, the western frontier was unclaimed (aside from Amercian Indians who of course did not count). The lousiana purchase and the war of 1812 gave a rough idea of where both the british and amercians could expand and not get in each others way (TTL, several hundred miles further south than OTL, in a straight line west to rhe Pacific).
However, Mexico was in the way. This meant the US colonists were either fighting them, the Indians and each other, or going diagonally north instead, leading to the 'Oregon dispute area' which comprised modern day Colombia, Washington and Oregon.
In OTL, the latter two were claimed in full as states in the 1880s. For various reasons, they bascially just had Oregon plus a bit of southern Washington in their possession in TTL, which then became one big state when the British firmly locked the door on going any further north.
Yes, this does mean the US northern border is an utter mess of states that were already established (and thus the british were sensible enough not to mess with) whilst also making it far from the straight OTL line.
As of 1936, I reckon the US has around 42 States, maybe a few more if they divided up the west a bit differently. But that's probably it unless they win a big war. No alaska, no Hawaii, no washington, no Puerto Rico and no Cuba.
Sort of. I imagine it was a bit different to how the OTL map ended up because the Netherlands were a bigger deal, Spain was just about big enough to get something, and Germany's colony selection was at least to some degree somewhat arbitrary.
However, as all that would be wiped and changed again by ww1 and its aftermath, I only really bothered to figure out the 1920s and onwards map. In THAT map, Spain and Portugal indeed have a few more bits, the Netherlands got all of OTL Belgium's Congo plus a tiny bit extra biting into Rhodesia, and due to various deals between the british and Dutch governments, South Africa is not so big and Rhodesia is much larger in the south.
There are also two spoiler arrangements or dealings which I can't really go into yet, but one is a fairly minor if exceedingly petty one-upmanship type affair. And the other is a much bigger deal, although becomes something of a farcical affair all of its own.
The HOI4 AI really enjoys pitting the UK and US against each other, as anyone who read Imperial Cheese will know. Not always through warfare either. I merely decided to give them more excuses to do so, and much greater scope. As the two most overpowered AI and countries in the game (in my experience anyway), having them be bitter enemies is going to be good for game balance and drama. It also gives more bite to any European conflict, as those two may well not be riding over the hill to save 'the goodies'. Or indeed, the baddies.
As for ww1, the UK is halting Amercian trade with Europe, or checking every ship. That's the sort of thing that helped begin the 1812 war, and causesd all kinds of trouble in the past. With the generation in charge of the US at that point being veterans of the 1895 war...things may indeed get rather ugly.
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Ok, I'm back!
Photos and images need to be added to the last two updates, and then one final history book chapter on the russo Japanese war, and then we're all caught up and ready to go into Poland.
Interesting times lie ahead.
Photos and images need to be added to the last two updates, and then one final history book chapter on the russo Japanese war, and then we're all caught up and ready to go into Poland.
Interesting times lie ahead.
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Finally caught up with this. Really excellent work, Butterfly. A treat to have some proper character-based narrative to enjoy, with the academic glosses keeping everything sprightly. Enjoying the gradual exposition of our alt-world; as discussed often and variously over the past year (or more!) ‘Democratic’ Germany really does require a fair amount of historical fudging, and it’s gratifying to see all of the threads fall one by one into place.
Anyway, looking forward to getting back to our own German Lawrence, who I must admit I’d been thinking of as such even before we got to the Jägers and this discussion:
The world-historical spirit is strong in him, evidently.
Best of luck for the resumption! Sorry to hear of all the obstacles you’ve already had to overcome in the writing, but glad to see the thing still lives.
Anyway, looking forward to getting back to our own German Lawrence, who I must admit I’d been thinking of as such even before we got to the Jägers and this discussion:
The world-historical spirit is strong in him, evidently.
Best of luck for the resumption! Sorry to hear of all the obstacles you’ve already had to overcome in the writing, but glad to see the thing still lives.
Like my friend and associate DB I too have caught up on this and have enjoyed doing so. Mildly baffled anyone would accuse Rhodes of being in it for the money, of all the things you could entirely justly accuse him of that is surely a long way down the list.
Good to see the US getting a proper shoeing if only for a bit of variety, on which note I can imagine the place will be culturally very different. None of the crushing of the German background migrants, if anything it will be recent Anglos who feel pressure to assimilate and prove they are not still loyal to the mother country. If there even are that many in the first place, why would anyone emigrate to such a failed state of a place?
Just a war to skim through and then weird alt-Weimar. If nothing else I forsee Berlin and Washington sharing a drink and cursing the British for constantly beating them at war, all the while failing to learn the obvious lesson "Don't start a war with them in the first place".
Good to see the US getting a proper shoeing if only for a bit of variety, on which note I can imagine the place will be culturally very different. None of the crushing of the German background migrants, if anything it will be recent Anglos who feel pressure to assimilate and prove they are not still loyal to the mother country. If there even are that many in the first place, why would anyone emigrate to such a failed state of a place?
Just a war to skim through and then weird alt-Weimar. If nothing else I forsee Berlin and Washington sharing a drink and cursing the British for constantly beating them at war, all the while failing to learn the obvious lesson "Don't start a war with them in the first place".
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