English Canada/French Carolina: A Timeline

Reader mode
Part 120: Balance of Power
  • Index
    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 120: Balance of Power​
    The decades following the Second Global War in Europe were an interesting time. With millions of people having died and millions more being physically or psychologically scarred, war wasn’t an appealing option to most Europeans. However, that doesn’t mean that all of Europe’s nations decided to hold hands and sing kumbaya. Rather, the 1920s-1950s were a time of diplomatic intrigue and economic competition and consolidation between the different spheres of influence.
    First off, there were three-four main powers in European politics during this time. The first were the Germans. While Germany was divided between the Prussians in the north and the Austro-Bavarian union in the south, the two major German states had stopped fighting and started cooperating to dominate Central Europe. The political and economic union known as Mitteleuropa consisted of both of the main German states, plus neighboring states like Rhineland, Carpathia, Hungary and Poland. German businesses established industries and offices in the member states, Polish, Czech and Hungarian students studied in Berlin or Vienna and German became the lingua franca (or lingua germanica) across Central Europe. However, expanding outside of the German-adjacent regions was harder. For example, Eastern Orthodox countries were more drawn to Russia than to the Germans (especially when Russia became less anti-clerical and more conciliatory towards the Orthodox Church), and attempts to incorporate the majority French Wallonia into Mitteleuropa failed (on another note, the original Mitteleuropa update that was Part 86 is now effectively irrelevant and not part of the EC/FC canon). However, pretty much all of Central and Northern Europe was part of the broader Germanosphere.
    The second major power in Europe were the French, who led a sphere of Romance-speaking Catholic countries like Spain, Cisalpina and Naples. The exceptions to this alliance were Venice, whose past conflicts with the other Italian states led them to lean towards the Germans, The Papal State, who didn’t care for taking sides in temporal geopolitics, and Portugal, whose past wars with Spain and long-standing alliance with Britain led them to become adjacent to the broader Anglosphere (I’d imagine TTL’s British tourists would get drunk in the Algarve or Madeira rather than Ibiza or Malaga). In order to counter the German Mitteleuropa, France, Spain, Cisalpina and Naples formed the new Latin Bloc as a means of economic and military cooperation, with the headquarters being put in Marseille.
    The third of Europe’s major powers were the big bear to the east, the Russians. In the decade after the Russian Civil War, the radically liberal politics of the new Russian Republic alienated it from the rest of Europe, especially the anti-clerical elements of the Republic. However, with Russia’s softening stance towards the Orthodox Church, the rest of the Orthodox world started to warm up to the Russian Republic. This was especially true in Orthodox Slavic countries like Ukraine (who don't have the anti-Russian sentiment of OTL, which comes from the Holodomor) and Bulgaria, who saw Russia as their cultural brothers. Russia also pledged to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine, which drew Ukraine away from the Germans and towards the Russians (you can throw the quip about Ukraine having an alliance with the German states in a previous update away). Romania also drifted into the Russian camp, and Greece, a fellow Orthodox Republic, was quick to hop on the Russian bandwagon. In the Caucasus, Georgia and Armenia both became part of the Russian sphere, and over in the Balkans Illyria leaned more towards the Russians than the Germans, as the Orthodox Serbs were the largest segment of the population.
    Finally, the last major European power was the British. Truth be told, the British didn’t have a ton of influence in mainland Europe. While areas like Norway could logically be part of the British sphere, its ties to Denmark, which bordered Prussia and thus had to suck up to them, kept Norway in the German sphere. The Netherlands also could’ve been in play for the British, but they too bordered the Germans, and so the Dutch had to placate the Prussians. As mentioned a few paragraphs ago, the only country in mainland Europe that the British put in their sphere of influence was Portugal. Beside, the British had more interest outside of Europe, such as in their fellow Anglo countries and dominions like America, Australia, Patagonia and Natal or their colonies in India, The Philippines and parts of Africa.
    Despite the German ambitions to permanently dominate Europe, the continent was too large and divided to come under the control of any one country. Between a French west, German center and Russian east, Europe seemed to be set for both greater cooperation and integration into regional blocs on the one hand and more competition between blocs on the other. Whether this would mean some future military conflict is yet to be seen, but Europe is in for an interesting time indeed.
     
  • Index
    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    ECFC Europe Diplomatic Blocs.png

    Geopolitical situation in Europe circa 1950
    • Grey: Prussia/Austro-Bavaria
    • Light Grey: German Sphere
    • Blue: France
    • Light Blue: French Sphere
    • Green: Russia
    • Light Green: Russian Sphere
    • Red: Britain
    • Light Red/Pink: British Sphere
     
    Gabingston

    Gabingston

    I know this has nothing to do with this TL, but can we get an F in the chat for @Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth ? He wrote Place In The Sun, which is one of the best timelines I've ever read on this website, but he has decided to leave the website permanently, thus ending the timeline.
    F
    He's back, and re-doing Place In The Sun.
     
    Last edited:
    Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Hey there guys. The next update is going to be on Asia (well, East and Southeast Asia, but this segment is going to be more general), so I’m gonna give some of my thoughts and ideas regarding decolonization and the future of Asia:
    • I’ll begin with the results of those two polls I had a while back. The first poll I had was about when Asia should be decolonized. Out of the nine votes, four of them chose the 1960s, with two each choosing the 1950s and 1970s and one lone voter choosing the 2000s and/or 2010s. Thus, most decolonization of Asia will take place between the 1950s and 1970s, with a peak during the 1960s. The second poll was on how the decolonization would take place. Voters overwhelmingly chose to have decolonization have a mix of a peaceful exit on the part of the Europeans, self-governance within European empires and violent revolution on the part of the natives.
    • As for what countries/colonies will get independence through violence, my guess is probably India. I’ve written that British India is becoming increasingly restless and pro-independence, and I could very well see that spilling over into an all-out revolt in at least some parts of British India. AFAIK, the British had better relations with Muslims in India than with Hindus, so I think it would be the Hindu heartland of the subcontinent that would rebel, while the Muslim parts would gain independence peacefully, possibly remaining within TTL’s equivalent to the British Commonwealth. This could possibly be TTL’s equivalent to the French wars in Algeria and Southeast Asia, a humiliating way to lose your colonies. As for the French Southern Indian colony, they might be inspired by their northern counterparts and rebel, or France, not wanting to have a debacle like in Northern India, might just give them independence. I could also see parts of Indonesia rebelling against the Dutch.
    • I think the most likely part of Asia to remain part of its colonial empire would be the Philippines. In contrast to the mainly Hindu India and the mainly Islamic Indonesia, The Philippines would’ve become overwhelmingly Christian by this point in the TL. This would mean that the British would feel more comfortable keeping the Filipinos within the empire than with non-Christian colonies. In addition, the Philippines became heavily Anglicized during OTL’s 50 years of American rule, and that’d be even more true with 200-ish years of rule by the British. The Philippines might just end up with a situation similar to the British Dominions, with their own parliament and prime minister, while the British monarch remains the head of state. I also imagine that there’d already be a sizable Filipino diaspora in America and Australia by this point. I could also see the Dutch keeping parts of the East Indies, possibly as a homeland for the mixed-race Indo population (although they might just emigrate to New Holland instead).
    • One last thing, I’m thinking of making India and Indonesia more divided post-independence than IOTL. Obviously, with South Asia being ruled not just by the British but also by the French, Portuguese, Dutch and even the Danish, India is going to be more divided. However, I’ve thought of keeping some of the Princely States like Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad and Mysore independent, as well as having a further balkanization of the subcontinent along ethnic lines, with areas like Punjab, Sindh and a united Bengal being independent states. Most of Northern India would be part of the main Hindi-speaking state, probably called Hindustan or maybe Bharat. Over in Indonesia, I’d expect many of the larger islands like Java, Sumatra, Borneo and Sulawesi to become independent countries, while areas like the Sunda Islands and the Moluccas might be grouped into larger federations.
    • Overall, this post-colonization Asia would be quite different from the larger states like India and Indonesia that emerged in our world. I’d like to hear what you guys think about this outline for the future of Asia post-colonization, and please leave your suggestions if you have them. I’ll see you in the update this coming week.
     
    Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Asia Map 1950.png

    Map of Asia in 1950, right before the start of decolonization
    (Also, the color scheme I use finally added a British Philippines color, so I figured I might as well use it at least once).
     
    Gabingston

    Gabingston

    PGSBHurricane said:
    On the other hand, the elimination of slavery was more or less on their terms (at least in comparison to OTL which was one of the big driving factors of Jim Crow in the first place) and there is no one drop rule so mixed raced people and wealthier blacks are probably better off ITTL. It also wouldn’t surprise me if La Floride went down the Brazil route and encouraged interracial relations as to reduce the overall level of “blackness” so to speak. If so I would expect a high level of biracial or multiracial people to exist.
    Click to expand...
    That's actually something I've been thinking of. The average African-American has about 20% European ancestry according to genetic studies, and many of them have significantly more than that. Beyoncé, for example, is of partial French descent (that's where her name comes from, it was her Louisiana Creole mom's maiden name) and has a rather fair complexion, so she'd be considered mixed race in La Floride. I'd expect about 30% of La Floride's population circa 2021 to be of African descent, but the question is what percentage of them would be considered Black and what percentage would be considered Mixed. My guess is that the ratio of Black to Mixed would be about 2:1, so about 20% of Florida's population would be Afro-Floridian while 10% would be Floridian Creole (the term I'll likely use for the mixed European/African population of La Floride). It depends on whether interracial relations and marriage was commonplace like in Brazil or taboo like in the U.S., my guess is that it'd be somewhere in between.
     

    Mister Mister

    Gabingston said:
    That's actually something I've been thinking of. The average African-American has about 20% European ancestry according to genetic studies, and many of them have significantly more than that. Beyoncé, for example, is of partial French descent (that's where her name comes from, it was her Louisiana Creole mom's maiden name) and has a rather fair complexion, so she'd be considered mixed race in La Floride. I'd expect about 30% of La Floride's population circa 2021 to be of African descent, but the question is what percentage of them would be considered Black and what percentage would be considered Mixed. My guess is that the ratio of Black to Mixed would be about 2:1, so about 20% of Florida's population would be Afro-Floridian while 10% would be Floridian Creole (the term I'll likely use for the mixed European/African population of La Floride). It depends on whether interracial relations and marriage was commonplace like in Brazil or taboo like in the U.S., my guess is that it'd be somewhere in between.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah, probably.
     

    Mister Mister

    About British India, here the number of Muslims and Hindus might be equal, so, what that could mean? On one hand stronger influence of Muslims, and weaker of Hindus, so maybe power sharing is more likely? On the other hand, maybe Hindus will want their own country ITTL?
     
    Part 121: Developments and Decolonization in Southeast Asia
  • Index
    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 121: Developments and Decolonization in Southeast Asia​
    For hundreds of years, parts of Southeast Asia had been ruled by European colonial empires from the other end of the world. Whether it be the Portuguese in the Sunda Islands, the Prussians in eastern New Guinea, the British in Malaya and the Philippines or the Dutch all over the East Indies, insular Southeast Asia was very much under foreign dominance. However, by the middle of the 20th Century, the empires in Southeast Asia were beginning to be more and more unsustainable, as the populations in the region grew and pro-independence sentiment became more and more prevalent. While the Europeans had originally shown up for trade and profit, the colonies were becoming more trouble than they were worth, so beginning in the 1950s, the decision was made to gradually pull out of Asia.
    Going country by country, I’ll start with the British colonies in Southeast Asia. As mentioned, the British in Southeast Asia controlled the entire Philippine archipelago, plus several coastal cities in the Malay peninsula (with the country of Malaya as a British protectorate) and a ton of islands in the Pacific Ocean. With a growing population in the Philippines, however, the status of the archipelago within the empire became something that needed a resolution. Now, with the Philippines being both mainly Christian (about 2:1 Catholic to Protestant) and having become heavily Anglicized during the two centuries of British rule (especially in the major cities like Manila and Cebu), the Philippines was considered a prime candidate to become fully self-governing while remaining part of the Empire. Thus, on New Year's Day in 1958, the Commonwealth of The Philippines was established as an independent dominion within the British Empire, having its own parliament and prime minister while the British monarch remained head of state. English and Tagalog became the two national languages of the country, while other languages like Cebuano and Ilocano gained regional status. Over in Malaya, the British released Malaya from their protectorate status and handed over the cities of Penang, Malacca and Singapore in 1966, while maintaining otherwise close relations. As for the Pacific islands that were under British control, they remained part of the Empire and were incorporated as the British Pacific Territories, being given local self-governance while having their defense done by the British.
    Now, the Germans, specifically the Prussians. Prussia was late to the colonial game and thus didn’t get any colonies in the East Indies proper. However, they did have a batch of colonies in New Guinea and Melanesia, acquired during the Mid-Late 19th Century. While millions of Germans had emigrated during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, only around 100,000 of them permanently went to Oceania (many of them being convicts). However, with the small native populations in these islands, that was enough to tip the scales in many cases. For example, about 50,000 Germans permanently settled in New Caledonia (or Neukaledonien in German), whether as free settlers or convicts, and even that relatively small amount was enough to tip the island into having a majority German population. While New Caledonia was the only place to become majority German, other areas like Fiji, Vanuatu and the New Guinean Islands gained notable German minorities, who were mainly administrators, planters, merchants or missionaries, plus their families.
    The main German colony in the Pacific, though, was the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. This massive island had been colonized by the Dutch and the Prussians during the Late 19th Century, but it’s the Prussian part that I’m gonna focus on for now. The main Prussian bases in New Guinea like Fischafen, Königshafen, Morobe and Erakone were all located on the coast, and not many Prussians went into the interior, which remained a mystery into the 20th Century. However, with more medical advancements against tropical diseases and the new ability to survey from the air, the New Guinean Highlands were now open for exploration, one of the last large uncontacted regions of the world. Prussian explorers and missionaries ventured out of the lowlands and up into the valleys and plateaus that made up the New Guinean Highlands, while pilots took off from airfields in the coastal bases to get a birds eye view of the unknown.
    To their surprise, they didn’t find hunter-gatherers, but agriculturalists. The tribes of the highlands had been practicing agriculture for thousands of years, something that wasn’t expected for a region this isolated from the rest of the world. The highlanders grew crops like taro, yams, bananas and sugarcane on a scale larger than any outsiders would’ve thought was possible, and while they didn’t have any large cities or state structures, they were definitely more developed than what the explorers were probably expecting.
    So, with these new discoveries, more parties and expeditions were sent to secure the highlands and make contact with its residents. Deals were struck with the many tribes in the area (often by coercion, this is colonialism we’re talking about), new infrastructure to connect the highlands to the coast was built, missionaries moved in to preach the gospel and new towns and bases were founded. Soon enough, the highlands of eastern New Guinea were incorporated into Prussian New Guinea. Because of the mild climate of the highlands, many German settlers in New Guinea moved from the coast to the highlands, mainly to administer and integrate the new territories.
    Despite only having a population of a few million in 1950, the island of New Guinea was possibly the most ethnically and linguistically diverse country in the world, having more languages than anywhere else in the world. With so much linguistic variety and fragmentation, German (or more specifically a German-based creole) became a wide-spread lingua franca (or lingua germanica) within the colony. Due to the low populations in the South Pacific, the Prussians (who had a population somewhere around 60-70 Million by 1970) were able to hold on to their colonies up to that point, but there were proposals to turn them into several different independent states with the Prussian King as a common figurehead.
    Now, the Portuguese. While the Portuguese were the first European colonial power in Southeast Asia, they’d long been surpassed by the British and Dutch, and at this point they were playing second fiddle within their own empire to the Brazilians. As a result, the Portuguese colonies in Indonesia only consisted of the islands of Flores and Timor. These two islands, while sizable, weren’t nearly as large in land or population as, say, Java or Sumatra, so the Portuguese were able to maintain control of the islands up through the 1970s. However, the status of the islands was up for debate. Some wanted to fully integrate them into Portugal, making them overseas provinces, while others wanted to give them a status as self-governing dominions within the greater Luso-Brazilian empire. By the point I’m ending this segment of the timeline (1975), that status is still unsettled, but the dominion option is looking to be the likeliest one.
    Finally, we’ve got the behemoth of the Southeast Asian colonies, the Dutch East Indies. Despite being a rather small country, the Netherlands were able to gradually colonize the majority of the East Indies, controlling all of Java and Sulawesi as well as most of Sumatra and Borneo, plus numerous other islands in the Sunda and Maluku archipelagos. Much of this conquest hadn’t been done by the Dutch government, but by the Dutch East India Company before it went kerplunk around the turn of the 19th Century, after which its assets had been acquired by the Dutch government, including its land in South Africa and the East Indies. Since then, the Dutch government had run an area that was far larger than the Netherlands in both land and population. However, by the 1950s, it was becoming clear to the Dutch government that the control over the East Indies was becoming more trouble than it was worth. For one, with a rapidly growing population, the economic cost of running the region was becoming much too high to continue colonization. With the rising colonial populations also came rising nationalism across the Dutch East Indies, whether it be ethnic, religious, island-based or for a united East Indies. Thus, starting in the 1950s, the Dutch gradually began to pull out of the East Indies. The first domino to fall was also the biggest, that being the incredibly densely populated island of Java. As more Javanese became educated, there was a corresponding rise in anti-colonial and pro-independence viewpoints, and considering that Java’s population was nearly three times that of the Netherlands in the 1950s, the Javanese believed that they could win their independence, whether through peace or through war. Protests in favor of independence became increasingly common throughout the 1950s, sometimes turning into riots and even outright battles between Javanese militias and Dutch colonial soldiers. However, in 1956, the Dutch colonial leaders and Javanese independence leaders came to meet at the table to negotiate, and agreed that Java would receive independence the following year. Thus, in 1957, the Republic of Java became an independent country, with the capital in the old Dutch center of Batavia, which readopted the older name of Jayakarta. Next up was Sumatra, the second largest of the East Indian islands by both land and population. After similar negotiations, Sumatra became independent of Dutch rule in 1960, with the capital being placed in Palembang. Borneo, the largest East Indian island by land, was split between the Dutch-controlled south and the independent Sultanate of Brunei in the North. Dutch Borneo gained its independence in 1963, taking the native name of Kalimantan with Banjarmasin becoming the capital due to its relatively central location. Nearby Celebes gained independence the following year, adopting the more native name of Sulawesi and putting the capital in the city of Makassar.
    However, that was it for the main East Indian islands. Aside from those four big islands, the Dutch East Indies was made up of a bunch of small-to-medium sized islands with smaller populations. The Dutch controlled the islands of Sumba and Sumbawa in the Lesser Sundas, the entirety of the Maluku Islands and the western half of New Guinea. These islands in total only had a few million people, which was much more manageable for the Dutch than the 60 million that lived in Java at the time. Dutch missionaries (both Protestant and Catholic) had also been quite successful in converting many of the islanders to Christianity, which made them staying a part of the Dutch Empire more appealing to both the Dutch and the islanders, as they now had something big in common. After the independence of the main islands, the Dutch began debating what to do with these smaller islands. With the advent of long-distance air travel, it was now feasible to travel from the Netherlands to the East Indies in only a day, rather than several weeks by ship, thus making integration of the islands as core parts of the Netherlands with full representation possible. Being a republic, the Dutch didn’t have the option of a common head of state that the British, French, Portuguese or Prussians had when maintaining ties to the colonies. Thus, the Dutch decided on a mixed strategy, creating an independent state in the Islamic parts of the remaining East Indian colonies while integrating the mainly Christianized islands as an overseas province of The Netherlands itself. Thus, the northern and central Molucca Islands were split off as the independent Republic of Moluku and Sumbawa was split off as the Republic of Sumbaway, while Sumba, the Southern Moluccas and western New Guinea were made into overseas Dutch territories. They had extra autonomy and had their own local administration, but all residents of these areas became full Dutch citizens and could now move to the Netherlands proper without any restrictions. They were also now able to elect representatives to the Dutch States-General, who were now able to travel to Amsterdam within a relatively short period of time. The Dutch government encouraged the Indos, a mixed-race ethnic group of European and Indonesian origin numbering about 300 thousand, to relocate to the Dutch East Indian islands. Compared to the long voyage to the Netherlands proper or having to go through the immigration process to go to New Holland, resettling in the islands was an attractive option for many Indos. Of the nearly 300,000 Indos that left from places like Java and Sumatra, about 30% went to the Dutch Indonesian islands, where they became the main administrators, businessmen and professionals. In the remaining Dutch East Indian islands, the Dutch began to heavily invest in education and infrastructure, attempting to turn these lightly populated backwaters into tropical Hollands. With the investment from the motherland, the economies of these islands began to soar, although it was still a good way behind the Netherlands proper. Within a few decades, places like Waingapu, Sorong and Hollandia became warmer and browner versions of any mid-sized Dutch city, while rural areas remained more undeveloped, especially in the vast New Guinean interior, where it was largely a similar story to what I laid out with the Prussian colonies to the east. Essentially, the Dutch cut most of the East Indies loose, but in turn gained closer ties with the areas they kept.
    This is the first update in a series on the decolonization of Asia. It was delayed a little bit from OTL, and some more areas ended up staying under European control, but I think it was bound to happen at some point, the populations are just too large to rule permanently. Next up, the Indian Subcontinent, where things will be a bit more… messy. This is officially the longest update thus far, with over 2300 words, surpassing the recent Floridian update by two hundred. I’ll get to work on the Indian update soon, and I’ll have an updated map with a decolonized Southeast Asia accompanying this update, but I’m gonna have to call it here. Have a great day, everyone, I’ll be back soon with some more EC/FC.
     
  • Index
    • Reader mode
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Top
    Top