Origins of the Great World War --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last night my Transdimentional abstractor picked up this fragment from a history textbook in an alternaate timeline in which Germany never was formed and the USA suffered a humiliating defeat in its civil war. It is apparently a history of something called the Great World War. Although the war started in 1922, it's obvious the PODs are in the 19th Century. Most of the book was hopelessly metascrambled, but the narrative picks up with an overview of events after the end of the civil war, in this timeline also referred to as the "North American War" because of the apparently decisive involvement of Britain and France in the conflict.
Hopefully I can get some more snippets while the quantum flux in the refractoreator cells are still pulsating. We shall see.
I started this report in the pre-1900 area, bur since the War itself happened in the 20th century, I moved it here.
Developments in the United States, 1873-1931
In United States, two somewhat contradictory political trends developed after the end of the North American War. On one hand, the short lived military coup and suspension of constitutional rule in 1866-67 set a precedent for military involvement in civil affairs and a substantial expansion of governmental authority. Although the US remained in theory a constitutional federal republic, all postwar Federal and State governments exhibited a significantly reduced respect for the authority of the court system and the Constitution. When faced with civil, military, or natural emergencies, it became a non-controversial practice for elected governments to temporarily suspend constitutional rights and processes, reschedule elections or the transfer of authority to newly elected officials until the emergency has abated, and delegate executive and legislative functions to temporary emergency commissions of non-elected civil and military officials. This process was eventually codified in the 15th, 16th, and 17th amendments to the US Constitution. Nonetheless, the US remained, by world standards, a fairly open, egalitarian, and democratic society. None of the four Temporary Emergency Councils established between 1870 and 1931 ever attempted to hold authority beyond the designated emergency period or prohibit the return to power of the previous elected regime.
Countering this centralizing trend, however, was the undeniable precedent set by the successful Southern secession from the old Union. Secession, and the threat of secession, became a tactic increasingly used by State, and even local, governments to obtain concessions on critical issues from the federal government. In all cases but two over the next century, the potential secession of individual states was quickly resolved by federal concessions that permited the state to remain in the Union. The two exceptions reflected particularly unique economic or diplomatic concerns. The 1876 Deseret independence movement in Utah was quickly and brutally crushed by the federal government because of Utah’s critical importance as part of the corridor connecting California to the rest of the United States and the fact that the long-term loyalty of its Mormon inhabitants to the US was questioned. Not only was the rebellion crushed, but all Utahans claiming affiliation with the Church of Latter Day Saints were forcibly exiled to adjoining British Lakota Territory. The 1901 secession of New York City from both the State of New York and the United States to form the so-called Gotham Free State as a result of disagreements over increased federal and New York State taxation on stock transactions was tolerated because of concerns that a war would devastate the financial heart of the city and plunge North America and the rest of the western world into depression. After tense negotiations, the US accepted secession only when Gotham agreed to pay $150 million to both New York State and the US government, and cede the conduct of its diplomatic and defense affairs to the US Government.
Except for the transfer of Kentucky and South Missouri to the Confederacy in 1874 and the secession of the Gotham Free State in 1901 there was essentially no significant revision to the borders of the United States until the World War of 1922-31. Colorado was granted admission to the Union In 1873. After the Deseret War, the largely depopulated Utah District was developed as a military district and reservation for American Indians and resident non-citizens resettled from other parts of the country.
Deprived of both its southern plantation agriculture and much of what would have been its agricultural heartland in British Lakota, the United States’ development as an industrial power was accelerated. Without a strong conservative rural base to counter increased urbanization and secularization, the country’s social and cultural complexion was driven almost entirely by the rise of urban capitalism and manufacturing, immigration from Germany, Ireland, and portions of eastern Europe, and the concomitant rise of socialism among the urban working classes. With the Fair Labor Acts of 1891-92, the US became the first industrial county to enact sweeping social welfare legislation aimed at blunting the appeal of radical socialism. By 1900, the USA had developed into the second strongest industrial power in the world (after the British Empire), and a leader in universal literacy and scientific innovation.
As a combined result of the country’s defeat in the War of Secession, increasingly authoritarian central governments, resentment over the Paris Peace Treaty, and the presence of generally hostile European empires easily situated to threaten both the eastern states and the California Corridor, the US developed a militaristic cast very different from its early history. Finding the retention of a large national army necessary to secure its borders, universal conscription was retained along with pay measures designed to foster a large permanent professional officer corps. Following rapproachment with the Confederacy, much of this army was stationed in California and the Corridor Territories to protect this very vulnerable part of the nation from British, Lakota Indian, and French/Mexican aggression. The development of a large navy was also necessary to provide a naval presence in the Great Lakes, protect far-flung commercial interests and overseas possessions, and establish a secondary fleet in California not dependent on transit through the French-owned Trans-Colombia Canal. Drawing on the country’s scientific and industrial prowess, and lacking much of the static tradition embedded in the military establishments of Britain, the French Empire, Russia, and other world powers, the US led the world in the military introduction of mechanical battletractors, machine repeating guns, turretships, dirigible balloons, and aeroflyers. Coupled with the fact that, by 1910, the USA had by far the longest and most advanced railway system in the world, the country had easily reached parity with the larger, but less technologically sophisticated armies of the British and French Empires.
Deprived of its vast under populated western territories, but still retaining an extremely high birthrate, the eastern United States became a densely-populated and heavily urbanized area, dependent on California, and trade with Canada, British Lakota, and the Confederate States for most of its agricultural produce. In addition, by the early 20th Century, population pressure within the eastern states led to a number of severe anti-immigration laws and the forced emigration of all remaining non-white people. The forced outflow of people reached its maximum in 1910 with the Citizenship Reform Act, in which non-US born citizens naturalized after 1900, as well as all of their native-born children, are designated as resident non-citizens and made liable for automatic deportation if they are jobless, on any form of state or federal social welfare, non-fluent in English, adherents of any faith than Christianity or Judaism, or convicted of any felony crime. Most of these people eventually find refuge in the Mexican Empire.
Also beginning in the mid 1880s, and stemming from many of the same demographic factors, the US developed a modest overseas empire, to provide a possible outlet for excess population, provide a source for raw materials and agricultural produce, and a dependable customer for US manufactured goods. In part, US colonialism was also an outgrowth of the African Emigration policies in place since the 1873 peace treaty with the CSA. As the US was a latecomer to colonialism, American colonies tended to develop in areas not already claimed by other European states. Outright colonies were established in Southwest Africa, Liberia, the American Ebony Coast, Samoa, and Hawaii. In 1898, Cuba Puerto Rico, Dominca, and other minor Spanish possessions in the Caribbean were occupied to forestall their absorption into the French Empire following the conquest of metropolitan Spain in the brief Iberian War. As China was gradually partitioned by European States in the late 1880's, the US claimed protectorates over Taiwan and Hainan Island. Finally, in response to Russian claims on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the US established a US protectorate over the main island of Honshu in 1900.
Developments in the Confederate States, 1873-1931
From the outset of its history, the Confederacy suffered from the somewhat ad hoc nature of its origin, its aristocratic and elitist political leadership, the constitutionally-mandated survival of chattel slavery, and the relative infancy of its political institutions. Confederate central governments from the end of the War of Secession to the early 20th century were alternatively highly authoritarian or weak and indecisive, prohibiting the development of a strong and consistent national identity. Unlike the US, which gradually established universal male suffrage by 1900, the Confederacy continued to place numerous property ownership and residency requirements on the right to vote, essentially limiting political power to less than 20% of the white male population.
Secession movements, which were a relatively minor irritant in the USA, gradually led to the disintegration of the CSA as a coherent political entity by the turn of the century. The 1881 secession of Texas from the Confederacy and its subsequent invasion and occupation of the Five Nations in the Indian Autonomous Territory was not resisted by the central government. In a dispute with Alabama over fishing rights, Florida left the Confederacy in 1885. Following the brief Franco-Texas War in 1886-87 and the incorporation of Texas into the Mexican Empire, the remaining States in the Confederacy attempted to renew and strengthen their confederation in the abortive Constitutional Convention of 1890. The failure of this convention ensured that the Confederate States remained a politically backward and diplomatically impotent loose association of States. By the end of the century, the Confederacy survived as an independent entity only because the US would not accept the return to the Union of slave states with large non-white populations and saw diplomatic value in preserving the independence of the southern confederacy as a buffer between itself and the expansionist French-Mexican Empire to the southwest. In fact, it was only the threat of US military action which prevented the French from occupying largely francophone Louisiana in 1891.
It is impossible to discuss the postwar economic, cultural and demographic development of the Confederacy without considering the unique and crippling affect of African slavery on the country. Identified by all Southern nationalists as the principal reason for the separation of the Confederacy from the US, and established as legally-mandated institution in the 1862 Confederate Constitution as well as by the constitutions of all its constituent States and allied Indian nations, slavery took on the nearly religious status as an absolute requirement for Confederate identity. When it became apparent that African slavery and plantation agriculture made little economic sense in much of Texas, leading the state government to establish a program to promote compensated emancipation for their chattel, the central government threatened expulsion from the Confederacy. After Texas opted on its own to secede in 1881, the Confederate government had little objection and offered no resistance, essentially determining that the rest of the country was better off without these apostates.
The survival of slavery in the Confederacy was also tied to an unrealistic and increasingly anachronistic idealization of plantation agriculture and aristocratic institutions. Intellectually recognizing that industrialization and increasing egalitarianism was part of the engine driving the rise of the US and Britain as the preeminent economic powers, but loathe to follow these examples, the Confederate States became increasingly inward-looking and isolationist, much as Imperial China had become before its partition. Only the fact that the US saw it in its interest to have an independent Confederacy on its southern border saved the South from a similar fate.
The survival of slavery also created an extraordinarily repressive environment in those states where black slaves outnumbered the white population. Most white southerners, even the majority who did not own slaves, lived in daily fear of slave rebellions, and as the Confederacy became increasingly isolated as the only remaining slave society in the western world, many laws were enacted to eliminate what limited flexibility owners had previously been allowed to treat their slaves in a liberal and humane manner. All Confederate states made it a felony punishable by long prison sentences for an owner to free slaves or provide for manumission in their wills. Any slaves no longer wanted by their owners or left in probate became the property of the State governments to be resettled to Africa, utilized in State-owned industrial facilities (see below), or sold at state auction. Most of the States made these laws retroactive, meaning that all free black residents had to leave the country or be again forced into slavery. Most of these people were deported to Africa or Mexico. All States prohibited teaching any black person to read and write or calculate more than simple arithmetic sums. All but two states prohibited religious education to slaves, and made it a crime punishable by death for slaves to be baptized or live in what appeared to be stable monogamous family relationships.
Working against the desire to maintain slavery, however, was the simple fact that it was becoming an economically unviable institution. The market for Southern cotton had plummeted following the development of mechanical harvesting machines which made cotton from other areas of the world much cheaper. No other plantation crop was nearly as suited to intensive slave horticulture, and those that were had been taken over by machine harvesting. By 1900, if given the choice, most slave owners would have gladly freed their slaves if it was legally permissible to do so. It was not unheard of for a few financially-strapped owners to resort to the simple expedient of killing off their expensive property, although this was socially frowned upon in much the same way as animal cruelty was. Most slave owners, who liked to consider themselves decent Christians, tended to ostracize their colleagues who resorted to such unpleasant actions, making it relatively rare.
In an unusual move, several States experimented in the early 1920’s with industrialized slavery. Making use of slaves specially purchased for the purpose and those probated or confiscated from bankrupt plantations, they established specialized industrial plants containing integral housing, food-producing, breeding, and medical facilities for the slave laborers. Typically the management and daily operation of the plants themselves was contracted out to private firms, with the State leasing the workers to the plant managers and handling their upkeep. Some of the most far-reaching examples, such as the massive Tyson’s Corner battletractor construction complex in northern Virginia, were intended to be virtually self-contained communities. Typically, slaves were housed in sex and age-segregated dormitories, employed in age and sex segregated work floors, and provided essentially no opportunity for contact with anyone outside their units. Breeding was controlled by the expedient of selecting the most physically adept, yet most compliant, males and females on a yearly basis and placing them in semi-private breeding chambers built for the purpose. In general, this project was a dismal failure. The State’s interest was in dehumanizing the slaves to the maximum extent possible, while the private plant operators found, that without some minimal education and initiative, worker productivity was so low they could not hope to compete with traditional factories. In addition, experienced plant foremen, used to working with their employees as human beings, could not adapt to the States’ requirements to minimize as much as possible any fraternization or flexible treatment of the slaves. Finally, the complex nature the training needed to efficiently and reliably produce complex items such as the license-built US Mark V Colossus battletractors assembled at Tyson’s Corner required a level of worker literacy and education that the State governments were unwilling to allow.
By the beginning of the World War in 1922, the combined effects of a backward social system, African slavery, and a weak federal union made the Confederacy little more than a series of loosely aligned republics, completely dependent of the United States for survival as independent states. The Confederate military, which had performed so well in the War of Secession, was allowed to languish. Only a few regions, such as northern Virginia, central Alabama, and Kentucky had developed any industrial base, and this was largely the result of US financial investment. Although the Confederate States of America was one of the many casualties of the World War, it is hard to imagine that it would have survived for many more years even had the world remained at peace.
Regional and World Events 1867-1922 and the Causes of the Great World War
Europe
Following the end of the North American War and leading up to the Great World War, European states were increasingly drawn into the orbits of the two major world powers, Great Britain and the French Empire.
Driving this was the development of France as an aggressively expansionist dictatorship following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-72. During the decade leading up to this war, Prussia, under the overall direction of its ruthlessly ambitious Chancellor, Prince Otto Von Bismarck, had been positioning itself to become the chief power among the German-speaking states. In fact, following wars with Denmark in 1864 and Austria in 1866, Bismarck had set his sights on nothing less than the unification of all “Germany” under Prussian rule. Thinking victory in a war with France would create even greater movement toward this German empire of his dreams, Bismarck engineered a war between the French Empire and Prussia. Initially, the well-trained and modern Prussian armies experienced great success, marching to Paris by early September of 1870.
Unfortunately for Bismarck, however, the Prussians narrowly missed capturing Napoleon III himself at the battle of Sedan, and he was able to make his way to Paris with nearly 80,000 troops. During the subsequent year-long Prussian siege of Paris, Napoleon became the symbol of French resistance, galvanizing the population of Paris to throw aside their class differences and come to the aid of their nation. Finding the city unwilling to capitulate and coming under increasing criticism at the court of Wilhelm I, Bismarck eventually ordered an ill-advised attempt to seize Paris by force. This attack did not make headway against the heavily entrenched and fanatical French defenders, and then the Prussians were then completely taken off-guard by the entry of Austria into the war on November 16, 1871. At the same time, Napoleon’s army mounted a massive counterattack against the Prussian troops encircling the city, breaking through the front lines and falling upon the weakly defended rear areas.
After Austrian armies successfully invaded Saxony and moved north into Prussia toward Berlin, Bismarck was forced to resign by King Wilhelm, but by then Prussia was a defeated nation. The next spring, French and Austrian columns marched through the Brandenburg Gate and dictated peace terms to a vanquished Prussia at the Hohenzollern palace at Potsdam.
Under the terms of the Potsdam Treaty, Prussia was forced to abandon all of its territorial gains made after 1864 and cede Westphalia and other western provinces to France. The Austrian Empire occupied Catholic Bavaria, Wurttenburg, and Baden, making the Hapsburg empire the dominant Germanic power. Many of the small kingdoms in central Germany were merged into the Federation of Hanover, which became an Austrian satellite. The provinces of Schleswig and Holstein were returned to Denmark. With its power assured by virtual control of Germany, Austria was able to grant increasing autonomy to its Hungarian, Bohemian, Moravian and Slavic regions, greatly reducing ethnic tension in central Europe and the Balkans.
France’s victory in the 1870-72 war made Napoleon III the most popular French leader since his famous uncle, a popularity he and his successors used to make France the dominant power in continental Europe. Following Napoleon III’s death in 1875, he was succeeded by his son, Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Bonaparte, who soon thereafter vacated the imperial throne and established himself as a more-powerful dictator with the title, First Counsel of the Directorate. Although fairly liberal on economic and social policies, Jean Bonaparte was a rampant French nationalist and embarked on an even more aggressive foreign policy than his father. This policy was coupled to a virulent anti-Semitism which led to the forced resettlement of most French Jews to French Palestine. In 1876, Belgium was invaded and incorporated into the French Empire, a move which almost led to a war with England, and in 1898 France took advantage of a struggle for royal succession in Spain, invaded the country, and installed a French-leaning monarch. Italy, only recently unified, remained nominally independent, but became to all intents and purposes a French vassal.
During this period, French influence also spread in North and Central America. The Republic of Texas came under French-Mexican control in 1887, and only firm opposition from the US kept Maximilian’s empire from absorbing the Confederate states of Louisiana and Arkansas as well. To facilitate the construction of the Trans-Colombia canal, France also established a protectorate over Colombia, and was able to install compliant governments elsewhere in Central and South America. Many areas of sub-Saharan Africa also fell under French control, as did large areas of southeast Asia and adjoining portions of China. By 1900, only the British Empire was larger than that of France.
Unexpectedly, Jean Bonaparte reassumed the imperial throne in 1902 as Napoleon IV, presumably to ensure that his 42-year old son would take power upon his death. Following a brief, but sharp, civil war the Directorate prevailed, however, and Bonaparte and his children were forced into exile in Austria-Hungary. The Directorate then formally abolished the monarchy and established a rotating executive from amongst its members to exercise dictatorial power. This arrangement soon collapsed, and in 1908, Military Minister-Director Henri Phillipe Petain wrested power from the other Minister-Directors and named himself sole Dictator-Director. Petain then ruthlessly purged the Directorate of any possible opposition and ruled France with an iron fist until the outbreak of the Great World War.
British North America
The expansion of British North America into former US territories in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (split into the Mountain Pacific Dominion and the Autonomous Tribal Territories - also known as British Lakota), drastically changed the role of Britain on the North American continent. Under a series of treaties with the northern Plains Indian tribes, the dominion of Lakota was established as a largely self-governing preserve for indigenous Plains Indians, as well as others gradually resettled from other parts of Canada. In establishing and fostering Lakota, the English intended to provide a buffer between much of the eastern US and the Empire’s new western territories, as well as to establish potential threat to the California Corridor to counter possible future US attempts to invade eastern Canada. In this regard, Britain succeeded immeasurably, as the United States was inordinately afraid of an invasion by well-armed and equipped Indian “savages” allied with the British Empire.
However, Lakota was not one of the more notable successes of British imperialism. Initially, the British failed to account for the extreme cultural, linguistic, and economic differences among the many tribes occupying and resettled in Lakota, and by 1880 found themselves bogged down in an attempt to forge a meaningful confederation from over 50 hostile tribes, most of whom followed, or soon adapted, an equestrian nomadic lifestyle not amenable to permanent alliances and easy administration by imperial officials. Attempts to foster a sedentary agricultural lifestyle in Lakota completely failed, and except for scattered military outposts and Canada-West Company trading centers in some of the old US territorial towns, a meaningful imperial infrastructure tying Lakota to the rest of the British Empire was slow in developing.
In 1890, British policy abruptly shifted to one that militarily supported the regionally dominant Sioux-speaking tribes in a bid to unify the territory by force. Over the next 10 years, the well-equipped and supplied Sioux were able to overcome all overt resistance from the other tribes and establish a single Lakota polity in the Autonomous Tribal Territories, but at the cost of their own independence. Like the Sikhs and Gurkhas of south Asia, other warlike native peoples employed by the British to enforce imperial rule and help fight the Empire’s wars throughout the world, the Sioux became a symbol of British Imperialism, not a truly independent people
By the onset of the Great World War, the Sioux had completely abandoned their previous nomadic lifestyle, and had begun to function effectively as imperial administrators operating from new towns established near the older British forts and trading posts. The extinction of the American bison as a result of the Imperial hide and meat trade had also forced other tribal peoples to shift to a subsistence based on the equestrian herding of domestic cattle, sheep, and even llamas imported from Peru. Many Sioux warriors had received grants of land or livestock by virtue of their military service to the Crown and had begun to function as a local aristocracy, employing people from other tribes to manage their vast herds. They also routinely sent their male children to English or Canadian schools and largely adopted the English language, although in a form that was nearly unintelligible to other English speakers due to the retention of many native words and a thick accent. Operating from their fort-towns, the Sioux developed into a highly effective mounted police and cavalry, and their religion - a new militaristic blend of Tribal spiritualism and Anglican Christianity known as the Spirit Way - soon spread throughout Lakota, providing a unifying force never before present in the area. The Sioux had also increasingly begun to permit, and even foster, European and Asian immigration into Lakota to provide the agricultural base they knew their country needed but were unwilling to stoop to themselves. These trends, which probably would have finally stabilized Lakota as a fully functioning Dominion of the British Empire, were cut short by events of the World War.
Mexico
The events of the North American War were instrumental in the gradual rise of the Mexican Empire as a regional power, albeit as a subordinate party to France. This was directly tied to the breakup of the United States, the demise of the US Monroe Doctrine, and resultant instability in the Confederacy. The Emperor Maximilian, who was installed by France in 1864, had been extremely unpopular with the vast majority of Mexicans except for the small Creole elite. Had the United States been victorious in the War of Southern Independence, it is highly unlikely his rule would have survived.
However, with the recovery of New Mexico as provided by the Treaty of Paris, Maximilian suddenly became a symbol of Mexican resurgence against the hated gringos del norte. Mexican nationalists among the Creole and Mestizo upper and middle classes flocked to his support. Maximilian exploited this sentiment, promising to recover even more northern lost territories. Always something of a romanticist, he also sought to draw upon Mexico’s ancient past as a source of his authority, and promoted himself as a savior to the Indian lower classes as well. While this did not go over well with his creole supporters, it did help solidify Maximilian’s identification as a Mexican nationalist, despite his own Austrian heritage. His most clever moves lay in appointing the Oaxaca lawyer and liberal activist Benito Juarez as his Interior Minister and in initiating a series of modest land reforms in central Mexico. This served to blunt liberal/revolutionary opposition to his rule.
To compensate conservative Creole landlords, he offered to provide them with new encomiendas carved out of the recently acquired northern territories. Other, more symbolic, elements of this nativist movement included a return to Mexico City’s Aztec name “Mexico-Tenochtitlan”, and the elevation of Nahuatl (the aboriginal central Mexican language still spoken by many Indians) to an equal status with Spanish as an official language of the Mexican Empire.
Following the unexpected death of his first wife Carlotta in 1875, Maximilian took a Nahuatl-speaking Meztiza wife and she bore him a son in 1877, who was named Michael-Friedrich-Cuauhtemoc, in memory of the last Aztec emperor and leader of the final Aztec resistance to Cortez. In 1899, at the death of Maximilian, he assumed the throne as Emperor Cuauhtemoc II.
As Emperor, Cuauhtemoc continued the nativist trend of his father, but began to further alienate the upper and middle class Creoles by increasing the scope of land reforms. In 1910 he also established the first elected Mexican congress since the days of the old republic, and sought to remold Mexico as a modern constitutional autocracy, along the lines of France before the dictatorship of the Directorate. Childless and unmarried (a fact which led to considerable speculation about his sexuality) Cuauhtemoc sought to provide Mexico with a worthy successor to himself through electoral or administrative processes. In this, he was resisted by his younger brother, Felix-Johann, who felt his rightful place on the throne of Mexico would be denied. Felix-Johann was closely identified with some of the more reactionary elements of Mexican society, and in 1914, he and his supporters attempted to assassinate Cuauhtemoc in a violent coup attempt at a military parade at Chapultepec Palace. Cuauhtemoc escaped serious injury, but the palace coup eventually expanded into a full scale civil war. Concerned by the instability in Mexico, the French intervened forcefully to support Cuauhtemoc in return for his pledge to keep imperial secession within the royal family upon his death. Felix-Johann was exiled to Argentina and his 10-year old cousin, Eduardo-Moctezuma was named Prince Regent and heir to the throne. A side effect of this civil war was the drastic increase in the size of the French army stationed in Mexico, which proved to be quite useful upon the outbreak of war with the US and Britain.
In many respects, the Mexican Empire remained throughout its history supported by the French, who had since the 1870's stationed a large and potent army along Mexico’s new northern frontier with the United States. This army, supplemented by Mexican forces, came in handy as the Confederate States began to disintegrate in the 1880's. A short, quick invasion brought Texas back into the Mexican fold, along with the former Confederate Indian territories. Only forceful US diplomatic action prohibited additional invasions of Confederate Louisiana and newly independent Florida. The US, however, was unable to resist additional French/Mexican expansion to the south, and by 1910, all of the formerly independent republics in Central America, as well as Colombia, had been brought under nominal French control, either as protectorates or outright colonies.
By the outbreak of the World War, Mexico, with French assistance, was on its way to becoming a significant regional power in its own right. Joint operation of the Trans-Columbia Canal with France provided a steady source of income to Mexican coffers, and the discovery and subsequent development of the Texas oil and gas fields promised to radically transform the Mexican economy. Also important was the discovery of the world’s only commercially exploitable deposits of nonflammable helium gas, which, with the rapid development of military and naval aerodirigible airships after 1900, soon grew to be of military significance. With the outbreak of war in 1922, control these strategic assets became the principal focus of most French and US military activities.
Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans
Unlike Great Britain, which had evolved into a fairly democratic constitutional monarchy; France, which alternated between periods of fairly liberal monarchism and dictatorial republics; and the United States, which had become increasingly autocratic while retaining the formal trappings of constitutional democracy; Russia ‘s governing and social systems underwent no significant changes throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1920, the country retained a largely feudal economic system outside of the large cities and was ruled with absolute authority by the Romanov dynasty. The life of the average Russian peasant was hard, brutal, and short. Yet, measured by its own standards, the Russian Empire was a phenomenal success. The ruling elite amassed amazing wealth, and lacking any meaningful political institutions to limit their power, the czars could exercise power and authority their British, French, Austrian, and Hungarian royal colleagues could only dream about. While the bulk of the rural population lived in feudal ignorance and poverty, the upper and middle class inhabitants St Petersburg, Moscow, and a few other large cities witnessed all the advantages of modern capitalism and industrialism.
In many respects, the western nation which most resembled the Russian Empire was the Confederate States. Like Russia, the Confederacy was ruled by an aristocracy intent of retaining power through the repression of its agricultural labor force. In both cases, the aristocracies had a strong sense of their innate superiority and moral authority to rule. However, there were a number of key differences leading to the success of Russia and the failure of the Confederacy. Russia had no democratic tradition whatsoever, whereas the Confederate elite was heir to a fairly strong tradition of representative democracy, a factor which limited the actual political power of the Southern aristocracy and their willingness to exercise truly dictatorial power. In Russia, the upper and lower classes were joined by a common ethnicity and history as “Russians”. In addition, the adherence of both master and slave to the Orthodox Church created an avenue, however small, for the Russian aristocracy to maintain a somewhat benign paternalism in its relationship to the masses. To a very small extent, several institutions such as the military and the church provided some potential for social mobility to the serf class. In the Confederacy, however, no bonds, even that of basic humanity, was recognized between white southerners of any class and their black slaves. In short, the Russian Empire was the natural evolution of a fairly coherent society which, although very repressive by other European standards, provided all its inhabitants with a sense of their proper places. The Confederacy was the creation of, by Russian standards, a very democratic and liberal American aristocracy, some of whom actually had reservations about the moral basis of their slave society yet who could not imagine ending it. Had the World War not intervened, it is possible to imagine the Russian Empire gradually evolving into a more modern liberal society; such an evolution would have been impossible in the Confederate States.
In spite of its relative backwardness, in 1900 Russia was among the leading producers of steel, coal, and oil in the world; boasted the second largest army in Europe; and its navy was among the most powerful afloat. Further, the czars were not above using their military power to expand the influence of their empire. Of all the imperialist powers, Russia made the greatest inroads in Asia following the partition of China. Manchuria, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Tibet and Korea were all annexed, as were the Kurile Islands and Hokkaido of Japan. Only the US occupation of Honshu kept the Russians from absorbing all of Japan as well. In the 1870's Russia rebuffed several efforts by Britain to purchase Alaska, allowing them to retain a strategically important position in North America. With the collapse of Prussia, the Russian Empire made further inroads in Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, threatening the Austro-Hungarian Empire and antagonizing its ally, France. Only the threat of war with England kept Russia from annexing Sweden and Norway.
The expansion of Russian influence in the Balkans is believed to be one of the main causes of the Great World War. The Russian Empire had always considered itself the protector of Slavic and Orthodox peoples in southeast Europe, and as the power of the Ottoman Empire began to wane, Russia began to fill the void. Although this development was unsettling to both Great Britain and France, both were willing to tolerate it until, in 1919, the Russian Empire invaded Anatolian Turkey itself. This event, and the initial response by France and Austro-Hungary, probably did more than anything else to lead the world into the amazing multi-sided conflict known today as the Great World War.
The Origins of the Great World War of 1922-1931
The World War is unusual in modern history in that the principal warring states were divided into at least four mutually hostile coalitions, which shifted on a regional basis and as the war progressed. These alliances were based solely on expedience and had no relationship to any ideological or political systems the warring powers may have shared. The war was not sparked by any single event or series of related events, but instead coalesced into a single worldwide conflagration from a number of initially unrelated regional rivalries, some of which had broken out into open hostilities as early as 1914. The ending date of the war is also somewhat arbitrary, as several civil wars and local conflicts not terminated by the Rome Peace Treaty of 1932 have continued to the present day (1950).
Although by 1922, virtually every major and minor nation was involved in hostilities, it can be reasonably argued that the prewar policies of three principal countries: France, Russia, and the United States, were most responsible for expanding a series of unrelated regional conflicts into a global war. France was actively expanding its empire in directions guaranteed to result in conflict with Great Britain and the United States. Russian expansion in the Balkans, Turkey, and central Asia was a threat to British, French, and Austro-Hungarian interests, and the increasing militarization of Alaska extended this threat to Great Britain in North America as well. The United States, while not overtly expanding in ways threatening the other major powers, had made it very clear since the 1870's that its policy was to regain its lost western territories by whatever means possible. This made the spread of war virtually inevitable once Britain and France became preoccupied with each other in other parts of the world.
In most respects, the most heavy responsibility lay with the French Empire, in that the policies of Napoleon III and his successors virtually guaranteed a war with Great Britain, and that a war between the only two powers with extensive worldwide colonial holdings would become a “world” war by default. Also, by aggressively seeking to bring most of western Europe under direct French control in a way which clearly impacted the security of the British home islands, France ensured that any war with the British Empire would not only be limited to far-flung and relatively unimportant colonial outposts, but would be waged within the European heartland as well. Finally, by fostering Mexican aggression in North and Central America, France had virtually assured war with the US and CSA, even had the US not been seeking to regain territories lost in the North American War.
Great Britain, on the other hand, was probably the state with the least to gain and most to lose of the major combatants. By 1920, the British Empire had reached its maximum limits, and British policy was geared more to maintaining its empire and ensuring global stability than changing maps. England did not want war, and only the British government made any significant efforts to seek diplomatic solutions to the growing worldwide tension. However, Russian and French expansionism directly threatened British interests in Europe, creating a resigned sense in Parliament and in the Royal Court that war was inevitable. Perhaps unwisely, Britain drew a series of “lines in the sand” explicitly threatening war if they were crossed by France or Russia. When they were, England reluctantly went to war. Within a year however, several French actions, most notably the frightful aerodirigible bombings of London and outrages such as the Gibraltar Massacre galvanized the British government and population into a fight to the finish against the French Empire. Except against the hated French, British military activity was general limited to the passive defense of its existing territories and providing naval, technical, and logistic support to the armies of its main allies, most notably Turkey in its war against Russia in Central Asia.
Last night my Transdimentional abstractor picked up this fragment from a history textbook in an alternaate timeline in which Germany never was formed and the USA suffered a humiliating defeat in its civil war. It is apparently a history of something called the Great World War. Although the war started in 1922, it's obvious the PODs are in the 19th Century. Most of the book was hopelessly metascrambled, but the narrative picks up with an overview of events after the end of the civil war, in this timeline also referred to as the "North American War" because of the apparently decisive involvement of Britain and France in the conflict.
Hopefully I can get some more snippets while the quantum flux in the refractoreator cells are still pulsating. We shall see.
I started this report in the pre-1900 area, bur since the War itself happened in the 20th century, I moved it here.
Developments in the United States, 1873-1931
In United States, two somewhat contradictory political trends developed after the end of the North American War. On one hand, the short lived military coup and suspension of constitutional rule in 1866-67 set a precedent for military involvement in civil affairs and a substantial expansion of governmental authority. Although the US remained in theory a constitutional federal republic, all postwar Federal and State governments exhibited a significantly reduced respect for the authority of the court system and the Constitution. When faced with civil, military, or natural emergencies, it became a non-controversial practice for elected governments to temporarily suspend constitutional rights and processes, reschedule elections or the transfer of authority to newly elected officials until the emergency has abated, and delegate executive and legislative functions to temporary emergency commissions of non-elected civil and military officials. This process was eventually codified in the 15th, 16th, and 17th amendments to the US Constitution. Nonetheless, the US remained, by world standards, a fairly open, egalitarian, and democratic society. None of the four Temporary Emergency Councils established between 1870 and 1931 ever attempted to hold authority beyond the designated emergency period or prohibit the return to power of the previous elected regime.
Countering this centralizing trend, however, was the undeniable precedent set by the successful Southern secession from the old Union. Secession, and the threat of secession, became a tactic increasingly used by State, and even local, governments to obtain concessions on critical issues from the federal government. In all cases but two over the next century, the potential secession of individual states was quickly resolved by federal concessions that permited the state to remain in the Union. The two exceptions reflected particularly unique economic or diplomatic concerns. The 1876 Deseret independence movement in Utah was quickly and brutally crushed by the federal government because of Utah’s critical importance as part of the corridor connecting California to the rest of the United States and the fact that the long-term loyalty of its Mormon inhabitants to the US was questioned. Not only was the rebellion crushed, but all Utahans claiming affiliation with the Church of Latter Day Saints were forcibly exiled to adjoining British Lakota Territory. The 1901 secession of New York City from both the State of New York and the United States to form the so-called Gotham Free State as a result of disagreements over increased federal and New York State taxation on stock transactions was tolerated because of concerns that a war would devastate the financial heart of the city and plunge North America and the rest of the western world into depression. After tense negotiations, the US accepted secession only when Gotham agreed to pay $150 million to both New York State and the US government, and cede the conduct of its diplomatic and defense affairs to the US Government.
Except for the transfer of Kentucky and South Missouri to the Confederacy in 1874 and the secession of the Gotham Free State in 1901 there was essentially no significant revision to the borders of the United States until the World War of 1922-31. Colorado was granted admission to the Union In 1873. After the Deseret War, the largely depopulated Utah District was developed as a military district and reservation for American Indians and resident non-citizens resettled from other parts of the country.
Deprived of both its southern plantation agriculture and much of what would have been its agricultural heartland in British Lakota, the United States’ development as an industrial power was accelerated. Without a strong conservative rural base to counter increased urbanization and secularization, the country’s social and cultural complexion was driven almost entirely by the rise of urban capitalism and manufacturing, immigration from Germany, Ireland, and portions of eastern Europe, and the concomitant rise of socialism among the urban working classes. With the Fair Labor Acts of 1891-92, the US became the first industrial county to enact sweeping social welfare legislation aimed at blunting the appeal of radical socialism. By 1900, the USA had developed into the second strongest industrial power in the world (after the British Empire), and a leader in universal literacy and scientific innovation.
As a combined result of the country’s defeat in the War of Secession, increasingly authoritarian central governments, resentment over the Paris Peace Treaty, and the presence of generally hostile European empires easily situated to threaten both the eastern states and the California Corridor, the US developed a militaristic cast very different from its early history. Finding the retention of a large national army necessary to secure its borders, universal conscription was retained along with pay measures designed to foster a large permanent professional officer corps. Following rapproachment with the Confederacy, much of this army was stationed in California and the Corridor Territories to protect this very vulnerable part of the nation from British, Lakota Indian, and French/Mexican aggression. The development of a large navy was also necessary to provide a naval presence in the Great Lakes, protect far-flung commercial interests and overseas possessions, and establish a secondary fleet in California not dependent on transit through the French-owned Trans-Colombia Canal. Drawing on the country’s scientific and industrial prowess, and lacking much of the static tradition embedded in the military establishments of Britain, the French Empire, Russia, and other world powers, the US led the world in the military introduction of mechanical battletractors, machine repeating guns, turretships, dirigible balloons, and aeroflyers. Coupled with the fact that, by 1910, the USA had by far the longest and most advanced railway system in the world, the country had easily reached parity with the larger, but less technologically sophisticated armies of the British and French Empires.
Deprived of its vast under populated western territories, but still retaining an extremely high birthrate, the eastern United States became a densely-populated and heavily urbanized area, dependent on California, and trade with Canada, British Lakota, and the Confederate States for most of its agricultural produce. In addition, by the early 20th Century, population pressure within the eastern states led to a number of severe anti-immigration laws and the forced emigration of all remaining non-white people. The forced outflow of people reached its maximum in 1910 with the Citizenship Reform Act, in which non-US born citizens naturalized after 1900, as well as all of their native-born children, are designated as resident non-citizens and made liable for automatic deportation if they are jobless, on any form of state or federal social welfare, non-fluent in English, adherents of any faith than Christianity or Judaism, or convicted of any felony crime. Most of these people eventually find refuge in the Mexican Empire.
Also beginning in the mid 1880s, and stemming from many of the same demographic factors, the US developed a modest overseas empire, to provide a possible outlet for excess population, provide a source for raw materials and agricultural produce, and a dependable customer for US manufactured goods. In part, US colonialism was also an outgrowth of the African Emigration policies in place since the 1873 peace treaty with the CSA. As the US was a latecomer to colonialism, American colonies tended to develop in areas not already claimed by other European states. Outright colonies were established in Southwest Africa, Liberia, the American Ebony Coast, Samoa, and Hawaii. In 1898, Cuba Puerto Rico, Dominca, and other minor Spanish possessions in the Caribbean were occupied to forestall their absorption into the French Empire following the conquest of metropolitan Spain in the brief Iberian War. As China was gradually partitioned by European States in the late 1880's, the US claimed protectorates over Taiwan and Hainan Island. Finally, in response to Russian claims on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the US established a US protectorate over the main island of Honshu in 1900.
Developments in the Confederate States, 1873-1931
From the outset of its history, the Confederacy suffered from the somewhat ad hoc nature of its origin, its aristocratic and elitist political leadership, the constitutionally-mandated survival of chattel slavery, and the relative infancy of its political institutions. Confederate central governments from the end of the War of Secession to the early 20th century were alternatively highly authoritarian or weak and indecisive, prohibiting the development of a strong and consistent national identity. Unlike the US, which gradually established universal male suffrage by 1900, the Confederacy continued to place numerous property ownership and residency requirements on the right to vote, essentially limiting political power to less than 20% of the white male population.
Secession movements, which were a relatively minor irritant in the USA, gradually led to the disintegration of the CSA as a coherent political entity by the turn of the century. The 1881 secession of Texas from the Confederacy and its subsequent invasion and occupation of the Five Nations in the Indian Autonomous Territory was not resisted by the central government. In a dispute with Alabama over fishing rights, Florida left the Confederacy in 1885. Following the brief Franco-Texas War in 1886-87 and the incorporation of Texas into the Mexican Empire, the remaining States in the Confederacy attempted to renew and strengthen their confederation in the abortive Constitutional Convention of 1890. The failure of this convention ensured that the Confederate States remained a politically backward and diplomatically impotent loose association of States. By the end of the century, the Confederacy survived as an independent entity only because the US would not accept the return to the Union of slave states with large non-white populations and saw diplomatic value in preserving the independence of the southern confederacy as a buffer between itself and the expansionist French-Mexican Empire to the southwest. In fact, it was only the threat of US military action which prevented the French from occupying largely francophone Louisiana in 1891.
It is impossible to discuss the postwar economic, cultural and demographic development of the Confederacy without considering the unique and crippling affect of African slavery on the country. Identified by all Southern nationalists as the principal reason for the separation of the Confederacy from the US, and established as legally-mandated institution in the 1862 Confederate Constitution as well as by the constitutions of all its constituent States and allied Indian nations, slavery took on the nearly religious status as an absolute requirement for Confederate identity. When it became apparent that African slavery and plantation agriculture made little economic sense in much of Texas, leading the state government to establish a program to promote compensated emancipation for their chattel, the central government threatened expulsion from the Confederacy. After Texas opted on its own to secede in 1881, the Confederate government had little objection and offered no resistance, essentially determining that the rest of the country was better off without these apostates.
The survival of slavery in the Confederacy was also tied to an unrealistic and increasingly anachronistic idealization of plantation agriculture and aristocratic institutions. Intellectually recognizing that industrialization and increasing egalitarianism was part of the engine driving the rise of the US and Britain as the preeminent economic powers, but loathe to follow these examples, the Confederate States became increasingly inward-looking and isolationist, much as Imperial China had become before its partition. Only the fact that the US saw it in its interest to have an independent Confederacy on its southern border saved the South from a similar fate.
The survival of slavery also created an extraordinarily repressive environment in those states where black slaves outnumbered the white population. Most white southerners, even the majority who did not own slaves, lived in daily fear of slave rebellions, and as the Confederacy became increasingly isolated as the only remaining slave society in the western world, many laws were enacted to eliminate what limited flexibility owners had previously been allowed to treat their slaves in a liberal and humane manner. All Confederate states made it a felony punishable by long prison sentences for an owner to free slaves or provide for manumission in their wills. Any slaves no longer wanted by their owners or left in probate became the property of the State governments to be resettled to Africa, utilized in State-owned industrial facilities (see below), or sold at state auction. Most of the States made these laws retroactive, meaning that all free black residents had to leave the country or be again forced into slavery. Most of these people were deported to Africa or Mexico. All States prohibited teaching any black person to read and write or calculate more than simple arithmetic sums. All but two states prohibited religious education to slaves, and made it a crime punishable by death for slaves to be baptized or live in what appeared to be stable monogamous family relationships.
Working against the desire to maintain slavery, however, was the simple fact that it was becoming an economically unviable institution. The market for Southern cotton had plummeted following the development of mechanical harvesting machines which made cotton from other areas of the world much cheaper. No other plantation crop was nearly as suited to intensive slave horticulture, and those that were had been taken over by machine harvesting. By 1900, if given the choice, most slave owners would have gladly freed their slaves if it was legally permissible to do so. It was not unheard of for a few financially-strapped owners to resort to the simple expedient of killing off their expensive property, although this was socially frowned upon in much the same way as animal cruelty was. Most slave owners, who liked to consider themselves decent Christians, tended to ostracize their colleagues who resorted to such unpleasant actions, making it relatively rare.
In an unusual move, several States experimented in the early 1920’s with industrialized slavery. Making use of slaves specially purchased for the purpose and those probated or confiscated from bankrupt plantations, they established specialized industrial plants containing integral housing, food-producing, breeding, and medical facilities for the slave laborers. Typically the management and daily operation of the plants themselves was contracted out to private firms, with the State leasing the workers to the plant managers and handling their upkeep. Some of the most far-reaching examples, such as the massive Tyson’s Corner battletractor construction complex in northern Virginia, were intended to be virtually self-contained communities. Typically, slaves were housed in sex and age-segregated dormitories, employed in age and sex segregated work floors, and provided essentially no opportunity for contact with anyone outside their units. Breeding was controlled by the expedient of selecting the most physically adept, yet most compliant, males and females on a yearly basis and placing them in semi-private breeding chambers built for the purpose. In general, this project was a dismal failure. The State’s interest was in dehumanizing the slaves to the maximum extent possible, while the private plant operators found, that without some minimal education and initiative, worker productivity was so low they could not hope to compete with traditional factories. In addition, experienced plant foremen, used to working with their employees as human beings, could not adapt to the States’ requirements to minimize as much as possible any fraternization or flexible treatment of the slaves. Finally, the complex nature the training needed to efficiently and reliably produce complex items such as the license-built US Mark V Colossus battletractors assembled at Tyson’s Corner required a level of worker literacy and education that the State governments were unwilling to allow.
By the beginning of the World War in 1922, the combined effects of a backward social system, African slavery, and a weak federal union made the Confederacy little more than a series of loosely aligned republics, completely dependent of the United States for survival as independent states. The Confederate military, which had performed so well in the War of Secession, was allowed to languish. Only a few regions, such as northern Virginia, central Alabama, and Kentucky had developed any industrial base, and this was largely the result of US financial investment. Although the Confederate States of America was one of the many casualties of the World War, it is hard to imagine that it would have survived for many more years even had the world remained at peace.
Regional and World Events 1867-1922 and the Causes of the Great World War
Europe
Following the end of the North American War and leading up to the Great World War, European states were increasingly drawn into the orbits of the two major world powers, Great Britain and the French Empire.
Driving this was the development of France as an aggressively expansionist dictatorship following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-72. During the decade leading up to this war, Prussia, under the overall direction of its ruthlessly ambitious Chancellor, Prince Otto Von Bismarck, had been positioning itself to become the chief power among the German-speaking states. In fact, following wars with Denmark in 1864 and Austria in 1866, Bismarck had set his sights on nothing less than the unification of all “Germany” under Prussian rule. Thinking victory in a war with France would create even greater movement toward this German empire of his dreams, Bismarck engineered a war between the French Empire and Prussia. Initially, the well-trained and modern Prussian armies experienced great success, marching to Paris by early September of 1870.
Unfortunately for Bismarck, however, the Prussians narrowly missed capturing Napoleon III himself at the battle of Sedan, and he was able to make his way to Paris with nearly 80,000 troops. During the subsequent year-long Prussian siege of Paris, Napoleon became the symbol of French resistance, galvanizing the population of Paris to throw aside their class differences and come to the aid of their nation. Finding the city unwilling to capitulate and coming under increasing criticism at the court of Wilhelm I, Bismarck eventually ordered an ill-advised attempt to seize Paris by force. This attack did not make headway against the heavily entrenched and fanatical French defenders, and then the Prussians were then completely taken off-guard by the entry of Austria into the war on November 16, 1871. At the same time, Napoleon’s army mounted a massive counterattack against the Prussian troops encircling the city, breaking through the front lines and falling upon the weakly defended rear areas.
After Austrian armies successfully invaded Saxony and moved north into Prussia toward Berlin, Bismarck was forced to resign by King Wilhelm, but by then Prussia was a defeated nation. The next spring, French and Austrian columns marched through the Brandenburg Gate and dictated peace terms to a vanquished Prussia at the Hohenzollern palace at Potsdam.
Under the terms of the Potsdam Treaty, Prussia was forced to abandon all of its territorial gains made after 1864 and cede Westphalia and other western provinces to France. The Austrian Empire occupied Catholic Bavaria, Wurttenburg, and Baden, making the Hapsburg empire the dominant Germanic power. Many of the small kingdoms in central Germany were merged into the Federation of Hanover, which became an Austrian satellite. The provinces of Schleswig and Holstein were returned to Denmark. With its power assured by virtual control of Germany, Austria was able to grant increasing autonomy to its Hungarian, Bohemian, Moravian and Slavic regions, greatly reducing ethnic tension in central Europe and the Balkans.
France’s victory in the 1870-72 war made Napoleon III the most popular French leader since his famous uncle, a popularity he and his successors used to make France the dominant power in continental Europe. Following Napoleon III’s death in 1875, he was succeeded by his son, Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Bonaparte, who soon thereafter vacated the imperial throne and established himself as a more-powerful dictator with the title, First Counsel of the Directorate. Although fairly liberal on economic and social policies, Jean Bonaparte was a rampant French nationalist and embarked on an even more aggressive foreign policy than his father. This policy was coupled to a virulent anti-Semitism which led to the forced resettlement of most French Jews to French Palestine. In 1876, Belgium was invaded and incorporated into the French Empire, a move which almost led to a war with England, and in 1898 France took advantage of a struggle for royal succession in Spain, invaded the country, and installed a French-leaning monarch. Italy, only recently unified, remained nominally independent, but became to all intents and purposes a French vassal.
During this period, French influence also spread in North and Central America. The Republic of Texas came under French-Mexican control in 1887, and only firm opposition from the US kept Maximilian’s empire from absorbing the Confederate states of Louisiana and Arkansas as well. To facilitate the construction of the Trans-Colombia canal, France also established a protectorate over Colombia, and was able to install compliant governments elsewhere in Central and South America. Many areas of sub-Saharan Africa also fell under French control, as did large areas of southeast Asia and adjoining portions of China. By 1900, only the British Empire was larger than that of France.
Unexpectedly, Jean Bonaparte reassumed the imperial throne in 1902 as Napoleon IV, presumably to ensure that his 42-year old son would take power upon his death. Following a brief, but sharp, civil war the Directorate prevailed, however, and Bonaparte and his children were forced into exile in Austria-Hungary. The Directorate then formally abolished the monarchy and established a rotating executive from amongst its members to exercise dictatorial power. This arrangement soon collapsed, and in 1908, Military Minister-Director Henri Phillipe Petain wrested power from the other Minister-Directors and named himself sole Dictator-Director. Petain then ruthlessly purged the Directorate of any possible opposition and ruled France with an iron fist until the outbreak of the Great World War.
British North America
The expansion of British North America into former US territories in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (split into the Mountain Pacific Dominion and the Autonomous Tribal Territories - also known as British Lakota), drastically changed the role of Britain on the North American continent. Under a series of treaties with the northern Plains Indian tribes, the dominion of Lakota was established as a largely self-governing preserve for indigenous Plains Indians, as well as others gradually resettled from other parts of Canada. In establishing and fostering Lakota, the English intended to provide a buffer between much of the eastern US and the Empire’s new western territories, as well as to establish potential threat to the California Corridor to counter possible future US attempts to invade eastern Canada. In this regard, Britain succeeded immeasurably, as the United States was inordinately afraid of an invasion by well-armed and equipped Indian “savages” allied with the British Empire.
However, Lakota was not one of the more notable successes of British imperialism. Initially, the British failed to account for the extreme cultural, linguistic, and economic differences among the many tribes occupying and resettled in Lakota, and by 1880 found themselves bogged down in an attempt to forge a meaningful confederation from over 50 hostile tribes, most of whom followed, or soon adapted, an equestrian nomadic lifestyle not amenable to permanent alliances and easy administration by imperial officials. Attempts to foster a sedentary agricultural lifestyle in Lakota completely failed, and except for scattered military outposts and Canada-West Company trading centers in some of the old US territorial towns, a meaningful imperial infrastructure tying Lakota to the rest of the British Empire was slow in developing.
In 1890, British policy abruptly shifted to one that militarily supported the regionally dominant Sioux-speaking tribes in a bid to unify the territory by force. Over the next 10 years, the well-equipped and supplied Sioux were able to overcome all overt resistance from the other tribes and establish a single Lakota polity in the Autonomous Tribal Territories, but at the cost of their own independence. Like the Sikhs and Gurkhas of south Asia, other warlike native peoples employed by the British to enforce imperial rule and help fight the Empire’s wars throughout the world, the Sioux became a symbol of British Imperialism, not a truly independent people
By the onset of the Great World War, the Sioux had completely abandoned their previous nomadic lifestyle, and had begun to function effectively as imperial administrators operating from new towns established near the older British forts and trading posts. The extinction of the American bison as a result of the Imperial hide and meat trade had also forced other tribal peoples to shift to a subsistence based on the equestrian herding of domestic cattle, sheep, and even llamas imported from Peru. Many Sioux warriors had received grants of land or livestock by virtue of their military service to the Crown and had begun to function as a local aristocracy, employing people from other tribes to manage their vast herds. They also routinely sent their male children to English or Canadian schools and largely adopted the English language, although in a form that was nearly unintelligible to other English speakers due to the retention of many native words and a thick accent. Operating from their fort-towns, the Sioux developed into a highly effective mounted police and cavalry, and their religion - a new militaristic blend of Tribal spiritualism and Anglican Christianity known as the Spirit Way - soon spread throughout Lakota, providing a unifying force never before present in the area. The Sioux had also increasingly begun to permit, and even foster, European and Asian immigration into Lakota to provide the agricultural base they knew their country needed but were unwilling to stoop to themselves. These trends, which probably would have finally stabilized Lakota as a fully functioning Dominion of the British Empire, were cut short by events of the World War.
Mexico
The events of the North American War were instrumental in the gradual rise of the Mexican Empire as a regional power, albeit as a subordinate party to France. This was directly tied to the breakup of the United States, the demise of the US Monroe Doctrine, and resultant instability in the Confederacy. The Emperor Maximilian, who was installed by France in 1864, had been extremely unpopular with the vast majority of Mexicans except for the small Creole elite. Had the United States been victorious in the War of Southern Independence, it is highly unlikely his rule would have survived.
However, with the recovery of New Mexico as provided by the Treaty of Paris, Maximilian suddenly became a symbol of Mexican resurgence against the hated gringos del norte. Mexican nationalists among the Creole and Mestizo upper and middle classes flocked to his support. Maximilian exploited this sentiment, promising to recover even more northern lost territories. Always something of a romanticist, he also sought to draw upon Mexico’s ancient past as a source of his authority, and promoted himself as a savior to the Indian lower classes as well. While this did not go over well with his creole supporters, it did help solidify Maximilian’s identification as a Mexican nationalist, despite his own Austrian heritage. His most clever moves lay in appointing the Oaxaca lawyer and liberal activist Benito Juarez as his Interior Minister and in initiating a series of modest land reforms in central Mexico. This served to blunt liberal/revolutionary opposition to his rule.
To compensate conservative Creole landlords, he offered to provide them with new encomiendas carved out of the recently acquired northern territories. Other, more symbolic, elements of this nativist movement included a return to Mexico City’s Aztec name “Mexico-Tenochtitlan”, and the elevation of Nahuatl (the aboriginal central Mexican language still spoken by many Indians) to an equal status with Spanish as an official language of the Mexican Empire.
Following the unexpected death of his first wife Carlotta in 1875, Maximilian took a Nahuatl-speaking Meztiza wife and she bore him a son in 1877, who was named Michael-Friedrich-Cuauhtemoc, in memory of the last Aztec emperor and leader of the final Aztec resistance to Cortez. In 1899, at the death of Maximilian, he assumed the throne as Emperor Cuauhtemoc II.
As Emperor, Cuauhtemoc continued the nativist trend of his father, but began to further alienate the upper and middle class Creoles by increasing the scope of land reforms. In 1910 he also established the first elected Mexican congress since the days of the old republic, and sought to remold Mexico as a modern constitutional autocracy, along the lines of France before the dictatorship of the Directorate. Childless and unmarried (a fact which led to considerable speculation about his sexuality) Cuauhtemoc sought to provide Mexico with a worthy successor to himself through electoral or administrative processes. In this, he was resisted by his younger brother, Felix-Johann, who felt his rightful place on the throne of Mexico would be denied. Felix-Johann was closely identified with some of the more reactionary elements of Mexican society, and in 1914, he and his supporters attempted to assassinate Cuauhtemoc in a violent coup attempt at a military parade at Chapultepec Palace. Cuauhtemoc escaped serious injury, but the palace coup eventually expanded into a full scale civil war. Concerned by the instability in Mexico, the French intervened forcefully to support Cuauhtemoc in return for his pledge to keep imperial secession within the royal family upon his death. Felix-Johann was exiled to Argentina and his 10-year old cousin, Eduardo-Moctezuma was named Prince Regent and heir to the throne. A side effect of this civil war was the drastic increase in the size of the French army stationed in Mexico, which proved to be quite useful upon the outbreak of war with the US and Britain.
In many respects, the Mexican Empire remained throughout its history supported by the French, who had since the 1870's stationed a large and potent army along Mexico’s new northern frontier with the United States. This army, supplemented by Mexican forces, came in handy as the Confederate States began to disintegrate in the 1880's. A short, quick invasion brought Texas back into the Mexican fold, along with the former Confederate Indian territories. Only forceful US diplomatic action prohibited additional invasions of Confederate Louisiana and newly independent Florida. The US, however, was unable to resist additional French/Mexican expansion to the south, and by 1910, all of the formerly independent republics in Central America, as well as Colombia, had been brought under nominal French control, either as protectorates or outright colonies.
By the outbreak of the World War, Mexico, with French assistance, was on its way to becoming a significant regional power in its own right. Joint operation of the Trans-Columbia Canal with France provided a steady source of income to Mexican coffers, and the discovery and subsequent development of the Texas oil and gas fields promised to radically transform the Mexican economy. Also important was the discovery of the world’s only commercially exploitable deposits of nonflammable helium gas, which, with the rapid development of military and naval aerodirigible airships after 1900, soon grew to be of military significance. With the outbreak of war in 1922, control these strategic assets became the principal focus of most French and US military activities.
Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans
Unlike Great Britain, which had evolved into a fairly democratic constitutional monarchy; France, which alternated between periods of fairly liberal monarchism and dictatorial republics; and the United States, which had become increasingly autocratic while retaining the formal trappings of constitutional democracy; Russia ‘s governing and social systems underwent no significant changes throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1920, the country retained a largely feudal economic system outside of the large cities and was ruled with absolute authority by the Romanov dynasty. The life of the average Russian peasant was hard, brutal, and short. Yet, measured by its own standards, the Russian Empire was a phenomenal success. The ruling elite amassed amazing wealth, and lacking any meaningful political institutions to limit their power, the czars could exercise power and authority their British, French, Austrian, and Hungarian royal colleagues could only dream about. While the bulk of the rural population lived in feudal ignorance and poverty, the upper and middle class inhabitants St Petersburg, Moscow, and a few other large cities witnessed all the advantages of modern capitalism and industrialism.
In many respects, the western nation which most resembled the Russian Empire was the Confederate States. Like Russia, the Confederacy was ruled by an aristocracy intent of retaining power through the repression of its agricultural labor force. In both cases, the aristocracies had a strong sense of their innate superiority and moral authority to rule. However, there were a number of key differences leading to the success of Russia and the failure of the Confederacy. Russia had no democratic tradition whatsoever, whereas the Confederate elite was heir to a fairly strong tradition of representative democracy, a factor which limited the actual political power of the Southern aristocracy and their willingness to exercise truly dictatorial power. In Russia, the upper and lower classes were joined by a common ethnicity and history as “Russians”. In addition, the adherence of both master and slave to the Orthodox Church created an avenue, however small, for the Russian aristocracy to maintain a somewhat benign paternalism in its relationship to the masses. To a very small extent, several institutions such as the military and the church provided some potential for social mobility to the serf class. In the Confederacy, however, no bonds, even that of basic humanity, was recognized between white southerners of any class and their black slaves. In short, the Russian Empire was the natural evolution of a fairly coherent society which, although very repressive by other European standards, provided all its inhabitants with a sense of their proper places. The Confederacy was the creation of, by Russian standards, a very democratic and liberal American aristocracy, some of whom actually had reservations about the moral basis of their slave society yet who could not imagine ending it. Had the World War not intervened, it is possible to imagine the Russian Empire gradually evolving into a more modern liberal society; such an evolution would have been impossible in the Confederate States.
In spite of its relative backwardness, in 1900 Russia was among the leading producers of steel, coal, and oil in the world; boasted the second largest army in Europe; and its navy was among the most powerful afloat. Further, the czars were not above using their military power to expand the influence of their empire. Of all the imperialist powers, Russia made the greatest inroads in Asia following the partition of China. Manchuria, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Tibet and Korea were all annexed, as were the Kurile Islands and Hokkaido of Japan. Only the US occupation of Honshu kept the Russians from absorbing all of Japan as well. In the 1870's Russia rebuffed several efforts by Britain to purchase Alaska, allowing them to retain a strategically important position in North America. With the collapse of Prussia, the Russian Empire made further inroads in Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, threatening the Austro-Hungarian Empire and antagonizing its ally, France. Only the threat of war with England kept Russia from annexing Sweden and Norway.
The expansion of Russian influence in the Balkans is believed to be one of the main causes of the Great World War. The Russian Empire had always considered itself the protector of Slavic and Orthodox peoples in southeast Europe, and as the power of the Ottoman Empire began to wane, Russia began to fill the void. Although this development was unsettling to both Great Britain and France, both were willing to tolerate it until, in 1919, the Russian Empire invaded Anatolian Turkey itself. This event, and the initial response by France and Austro-Hungary, probably did more than anything else to lead the world into the amazing multi-sided conflict known today as the Great World War.
The Origins of the Great World War of 1922-1931
The World War is unusual in modern history in that the principal warring states were divided into at least four mutually hostile coalitions, which shifted on a regional basis and as the war progressed. These alliances were based solely on expedience and had no relationship to any ideological or political systems the warring powers may have shared. The war was not sparked by any single event or series of related events, but instead coalesced into a single worldwide conflagration from a number of initially unrelated regional rivalries, some of which had broken out into open hostilities as early as 1914. The ending date of the war is also somewhat arbitrary, as several civil wars and local conflicts not terminated by the Rome Peace Treaty of 1932 have continued to the present day (1950).
Although by 1922, virtually every major and minor nation was involved in hostilities, it can be reasonably argued that the prewar policies of three principal countries: France, Russia, and the United States, were most responsible for expanding a series of unrelated regional conflicts into a global war. France was actively expanding its empire in directions guaranteed to result in conflict with Great Britain and the United States. Russian expansion in the Balkans, Turkey, and central Asia was a threat to British, French, and Austro-Hungarian interests, and the increasing militarization of Alaska extended this threat to Great Britain in North America as well. The United States, while not overtly expanding in ways threatening the other major powers, had made it very clear since the 1870's that its policy was to regain its lost western territories by whatever means possible. This made the spread of war virtually inevitable once Britain and France became preoccupied with each other in other parts of the world.
In most respects, the most heavy responsibility lay with the French Empire, in that the policies of Napoleon III and his successors virtually guaranteed a war with Great Britain, and that a war between the only two powers with extensive worldwide colonial holdings would become a “world” war by default. Also, by aggressively seeking to bring most of western Europe under direct French control in a way which clearly impacted the security of the British home islands, France ensured that any war with the British Empire would not only be limited to far-flung and relatively unimportant colonial outposts, but would be waged within the European heartland as well. Finally, by fostering Mexican aggression in North and Central America, France had virtually assured war with the US and CSA, even had the US not been seeking to regain territories lost in the North American War.
Great Britain, on the other hand, was probably the state with the least to gain and most to lose of the major combatants. By 1920, the British Empire had reached its maximum limits, and British policy was geared more to maintaining its empire and ensuring global stability than changing maps. England did not want war, and only the British government made any significant efforts to seek diplomatic solutions to the growing worldwide tension. However, Russian and French expansionism directly threatened British interests in Europe, creating a resigned sense in Parliament and in the Royal Court that war was inevitable. Perhaps unwisely, Britain drew a series of “lines in the sand” explicitly threatening war if they were crossed by France or Russia. When they were, England reluctantly went to war. Within a year however, several French actions, most notably the frightful aerodirigible bombings of London and outrages such as the Gibraltar Massacre galvanized the British government and population into a fight to the finish against the French Empire. Except against the hated French, British military activity was general limited to the passive defense of its existing territories and providing naval, technical, and logistic support to the armies of its main allies, most notably Turkey in its war against Russia in Central Asia.