AH Discussion: The Sun Never Sets

This is a discussion page for my British Empire TL - The Sun Never Sets.

This is a simple thread to discuss the specifics of my TL, The Sun Never Sets. An alternative timeline about the survival of British Empire, the largest empire in history.

I will be posting the draft here. The draft begins with a relatively obscure PoD in 1883 and ends with a surviving British Empire that does not break up or is subsumed into an 'Indian Empire'.

I wish to publicly hold a discussion about the PoD and how the story unfolds so as to get your opinion about the OTL events influencing the TL to make it a rigorously delineated and through Time-Line.

Granted some would say that holding such a discussion would make this TL a part of the Shared Worlds but this thread is merely to discuss ideas about how the thread is to progress and obtain information about the ground realities from experts in various fields, i.e., you from all over the globe.

While researching this TL over the past month since i posted on Kvasir's thread about the effect of 'no British involvement in the Great War on the sub-continent' I realized that there is a lot more to good alternate history than just finding trends similar to OTL and jumping the gun. There are certain facts on the ground that cannot be ignored.

In my original draft of the TL i tried my best to stick to a result oriented approach, as to how to best modify a situation to get a result but i now realize that such an approach is very flawed and results in a very ham-fisted and cobbled together appearance of the TL.

To get a more smoother transition and thus a more reliable and believable ATL getting the facts on the ground straight is vital. And that is were i seek your help. I can't possible finish all the research necessary to actually figure out the entire TL for myself in my lifetime but i can surely ask you for any possible related information.

After all its easier to stitch rags up than to weave the same out of thin air.

So without any further ado i preent to you my very very rough draft.

Comments and Criticism are very welcome.

Regards Kalki
 
There is a little known Act called the Ilbert Bill passed in 1883 in British India by the then Viceroy of India Lord Ripon. It basically allowed Indian native magistrates to try the British-origin civilians residing in the sub-continent. Needless to say this caused a great deal of pain to the Viceroy when the British and the Anglo-Indian population in the sub-continent united in opposition to it and launched vitriolic attacks against the Viceroy.

This caused him to lose a great deal of political support back home and eventually drowned out his calls for better administration of the British possessions in the sub-continent.

My PoD is that in 1883 when this act was being conceptualized he realizes that it could politically back fire spectacularly and as such just keeps such 'politically extreme' ideas to himself. Let's just assume politically more pragmatic minds prevail in the discussion of whether to pass such a bill or not.

Another side effect of not indulging into a political slugging fest with his opponents was that the Indian and British bureaucrats supportive of the Viceroy and who shortly after formed the Indian National Congress, never really gained the same level of experience in how to go about organizing a political organization. As such the Indian National Congress formed during the rule of Lord Ripon's successor was a politically a slightly different entity.

This results in him losing no more political influence back home than he already had due to his previous 'radical' reforms in the subcontinent. He channels the remainder of five-year tenure as the Viceroy into implementing more important reforms like crafting a more robust famine relief response into the Indian Famine Code.

More importantly his work with the Famine code made the politically Liberal Lord Ripon realize that one of the important reasons for famines in the sub-continent was not scarcity of food but rather the scarcity of government action, the gross mismanagement of administration and laissez faire approach to macroeconomic management of the sub-continent.
But of course he never really had the time to address these issues as he was succeeded by Lord Dufferin at the end of the former's tenure in 1884.

Lord Ripon however had tried these issues to his successors attention before he left for the home country. But Lord Dufferin was soon occupied by more pressing matters, specifically the Panjdeh incident.

The Russian Empire had steadily expanded south into Central Asia reaching down till Merv in 1884. The story of how that came about is itself very interesting, but is unrelated to our little imaginary bubble. In OTL and ITTL a russian contingent marched down from Merv on the 30th of March, 1885.

OTL the battle on the Kushk River was a massacre. Russian troops under General Alexander Komarov wiped out 'to the last man' 600 afghans. ITTL the result was no different except for the death of the 2nd cousin of the then ruler of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan.

ITTL, just as in OTL, Abdur Rahman Khan was in Rawalpindi in British India (now Pakistan) in a meeting with the Indian Viceroy. The cousin was foolish enough to go into battle but he was dead nevertheless and this called for action. What in OTL the afghan ruler had dismissed as a mere 'border skirmish' was now a matter of avenging his family's honor. And honor is all that a Pashtun has.

So something of a state of war existed between the Russian Empire and Afghanistan at the height of the Great Game between Britain and Russia. The situation had to be handled delicately.

Lord Dufferin, then Viceroy of India was previously the ambassador to Russia and as such advocated a diplomatic solution to avoid war between the two empires. Lord Ripon, who in the meanwhile had become the First Lord of the Admiralty advocated a more direct response. Lord Lytton, Lord Ripon's predecessor as the viceroy of India died of pneumonia in the winter of 1884 ITTL, OTL he had lived on till 1891.

Oh BTW, the fall of the second Whig government under Gladstone in 1885 was butterflied away as the relief force for General Gordon arrived on December 25th, 1884, ITTL's late 19th century version of a Christmas miracle.

In the ensuing breakout General Gordon was convinced by Colonel Stewart, who was not murdered on a secret mission, to not throw away his life and live to defeat the Mahdi another day.

The Mahdi army was met in battle outside the gates of Khartoum and the army managed to retreat in order while taking some losses. But this gave the British just the window of opportunity to evacuate city. Four days later the Mahdi Army returned and the city surrendered, but General Gordon had managed to slip away.

Coming back to Afghanistan. So ITTL Lord Ripon was a lot more influential when the matter of the Panjdeh incident came about and the afghans themselves were looking for British support in their little vendetta on the Russians. Lord Dufferin in these circumstances had to be creative and authorized the deployment of three regiments into Afghanistan.


What was unique was that the three regiments deployed were mostly native regiments who were sent in as more of a show of force versus being of any actually military value, strategically speaking.

Nevertheless the commander of the expedition was inspired by the tales of Genral Gordon's adventures in Sudan and proceeded to engage the advancing Russian troops in small skirmishes.

This of course fared poorly for the commander as the native troops from the sub-continent were not as well equipped or trained as their Russian counterparts, resulting in a high casualty rate for the British Indian troops.

Fortunately before the matter could escalate any further the British had managed to bring the Russians to the negotiating table thanks to Lord Dufferin. Him being previously an ambassador to Russia helped every bit as much and then some in this endeavor as it had in OTL. And thus we have pretty much the OTL end to ITTL's Great Game.

Of course this entire crisis did in the end result in the fall of the Second Gladstone government.

Another development from this crisis was the availability of actual combat experience and combat reports about the performance of the Indian troops against the Russians. While predictable higher losses did occur but the Russian's did their share of bleeding. After all with the help of the Afghan auxiliaries and because of numerical superiority the native troops pushed the Russians back to around the modern day town of Kushka before the fighting ended after 4 months around the time the Russians and the British agreed upon establishing the Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission. All of this with a fraction of the domestic and international political after-effects of using Western Troops instead of native troops.

The next major development in our TL was of course the Return of the King... Erm, General Gordon! While the not so little border skirmish in Afghanistan was winding down, General Gordon managed to convince the now Tory Government to send an expedition into Sudan to exact his revenge. Lord Ripon who had been gaining influence among the Whigs, knew General Gordon first hand and supported him in this endeavor.

Not willing to risk too many precious British lives in such a venture, General Gordon was given a generously sized British Indian Army detachment to support the expedition, including one of the three regiments which participated in the short-lived Afghan expedition. Lord Dufferin, ever the political weather vane instructed the then Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, Lord Robert to provided the troops. He of course had to gain from getting in return less green troops for his ambitions in South Asia and a bit more political clout back home. Not to mention the Indian troops were better suited for operations in the punishing heat of Sudan.

In the mean while, Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, i.e., the Mahdi hadn't died from typhoid in Sudan and had massacred the population of Khartoum in spite of their surrender four days after Gordon left. He had began raids into upper Egypt and was still a threat.

Fortunately for Gordon he did not have to wait too long for his vengeance. 7 months into the campaign at the Second Battle of El Teb. After a year long campaign against numerically superior foe in a hostile territory the Mahdiya state lay dead and rebellion in Sudan had been crushed.

An effect of this was the proposal of several reforms by General Gordon which aimed to improve the effectiveness of the British Indian Army. These included inclusion of more Indian junior officers, more avenues for advancement, better training, etc., Some of this were implemented in the Indian Services act of 1889. He also gained a life-long appreciation for the colonial troops serving under him and their 'martial spirit'.

Gordon himself had a certain personal beliefs such as personal honor and re-incarnation and his experience with the Indian troops who believed in much the same, like the Rajput's and the Gorkha's code of service, duty and personal honor, did help in this matter. He later got himself transferred to India where he was appointed as the Commander of the Bombay Army, accompanied by a young Lieutenant Colonel named Herbert Kitchener he had run into in Sudan. He successfully convinced Lord Robert, commander of the British Indian Army to implement quite a few of the reforms he proposed.

His book about his exploits in Sudan, quite the bestseller, helped foster the idea that maybe, just maybe, the Indian troops aren't the worthless rabble they are often made out to be.

Next major development in our TL is the Campaign in Upper Burma, where British Indian Army troops were used by the British to annex what remained of Burma. This task was a tad bit more difficult than OTL as the Burmese had obtained a tad bit more equipment from the French than OTL and Lord Dufferin realizing that it would be better and cheaper if more native troops were used than European ones. This was the campaign where 'Gordon's reforms' as they were unofficially called, started to bear fruit. Despite serious opposition, an organized guerrilla campaign, and an unfavorable terrain the British Indian troops did distinguish themselves.

Berlin Conference was held pretty much as it was in OTL.

The Second Boer war broke out in 1899, the Boers made startling advances and pushed back the British forces. In this dark hour, the empire called upon its hero the great General Gordon and the ever ready, now Lord of Khartoum, Gordon took charge. Soon after replacing the able and respected but outwitted General Redvers Buller he died on the battlefield in January 1900. Lord Robert took command soon after. The rest of the campaign proceeded along pretty much the same as in OTL. Except more Indian troops would be deployed in rear formations and as support troops, which sadly enough were the formations most targeted by the Boers during the guerrilla phase of the war.

Lord Kitchener's attitude during the war had been fortunately more reasonable. His experience of having worked in the sub-continent did have an effect on him. The genocidal concentration camps, which were unbeaten in their inhumanity until the gulags and Aushcwitz of OTL came around were done away with. The camps ITTL made to house the Boer prisoners were much more ably managed and he hit on the idea of winning the hearts and minds of people to win a war years before our modern day commander learnt the same lesson in OTL.

On January 30th 1902, several volunteer ambulance drivers were caught in a crossfire and among the casualties was a young and promising Indian barrister practicing in Pretoria by the name of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

In the end the Boer war played out much the same except for a lesser, but still nonetheless unfortunate, loss of life.

Moving on to the early 20th century, we come to the Boxer Rebellion.

OTL and ITTL the boxer rebellion kicked off in 1898 when the Dowager Empress Cixi, always pulling the string behind the throne, put the young Emperor Guangxu under house arrest and took charge.

In 1900 court opinion had turned in favor of the Boxers who the supports wanted to use to free the Qing Empire of foreign influence. By May 30th the situation had started spiraling out of control when a large Boxer force began moving towards the capital.

Alarmed the British Minster, Claude Maxwell MacDonald, requested for military assistance to be provided. On May 30th a multi-national force comprised of 75 French, 75 Russian, 75 British, 60 U.S., 50 German, 40 Italian, 30 Japanese, 30 Austrian and 120 British Indian troops left by rail to Beijing.

Things went from bad to worse when the rail line was blown up on June 4th, derailing a train to Beijing carrying a small British and American contingent and a group of junior diplomats from various western countries carrying important diplomatic dispatches.

This caused the foreign troops stationed in the Legation Quarter to go on alert as it meant that an attack could be imminent. Nevertheless within a week, on June 10th the Secretary of the Japanese delegation was attacked and killed by soldiers of General Dong Fuxiang who were guarding the southern gate of the city.

The situation further deteriorated when the German Minister Clemens von Kettller, ordered a young Boxer boy arrested and had the German troops interrogate him. Believing the boy to have been killed by the Germans the Boxers swarmed around the Legation Quarter and besieged it.

With only 550 men to defend the Legations Quarter and even more limited ammunition the diplomats found themselves facing off thousands of angry Boxer rebels. Fortunately for them the leader of the Chinese forces was General Ronglu of the anti-Boxer camp, but he too was powerless to stop them forever. But he did manage to distract and delay them.

The besieging forces’ attitude to the foreigners changed many times from clearly hostile to passive and waiting.

An expeditionary force under Admiral Seymour was launched from the port city of Dagu to Beijing. It promptly managed to degenerate in to a disorganized mob and only managed to survive in its retreat because it came across the undefended and previously unknown armory at Xigu fort.

There they survived for 15 days under constant heavy fire from besieging Chinese forces until relieved by a second expeditionary force which arrived.

40-days into the siege General Ronglu was found dead in his bath tub and pro-Boxer general Dong Fuxiang and Prince Dong took command, with the support of the Dowager Empress Cixi.

End of Part 1 of Draft

P.S. apologies for my atrocious grammar.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
First, this looks interesting so I'd like to subscribe.

Second - 1883? Krakatoa, Bombay Natural History Society or Vasudeo Phadke?
(Or none of the above...)

Edit - whoops, clearly none of the above.
 
I had actually been considering shooting you a PM to see if this time-line was still being made. Obviously it is, and I'll be reading with interest.
 
@Saporeth

True. all three events are either too close to the PoD of the ilbert Bill not being tabled or precede it so no changes from OTL.

As per forum convention it is better to keep all geological events unchanged so as to not over-complicate things.

As for Karakatoa, the resultant drop in productivity was observed in OTL and as such can be a stimulus for Lord Ripon creating a more robust famine prevention guidelines. Famines after all are a man-made phenomenon. People back then believed it to be a symptom of the Malthusian theory of overpopulation and natural disasters cutting back population to more sustainable numbers.

Of course it was easy for the Europeans to sit back and enjoy their abundance while the 'unwashed, uncultured natives' died in droves. The Krakatoa explosion did drive home the idea that maybe thousands dying is not normal as the Malthus suggested.

Such barbarity is incomprehensible to our modern minds but that is the Victorian Era for you.

Fortunately Lord Ripon was a liberal, a liberal radical to some, and a staunch supporter of the progress of the people of the sub-continent. It is entirely conceivable he would use this shift in thought back Home to forge a new approach to handling famines in the sub-continent.

@Thoresby Thank you. I hope we can together contribute our minuscule share to ensuring that the sub-continent will never again be a 'space-filling empire' in the future TLs on this forum. Hope you enjoy! :)

@Komnenos002 Thank you for your kind words. I surely hope that with your help this TL will add flavorful variety to the TLs on this forum.

I will begin work on the next part in earnest. :)
 

Saphroneth

Banned
@Saporeth

True. all three events are either too close to the PoD of the ilbert Bill not being tabled or precede it so no changes from OTL.

As per forum convention it is better to keep all geological events unchanged so as to not over-complicate things.

As for Karakatoa, the resultant drop in productivity was observed in OTL and as such can be a stimulus for Lord Ripon creating a more robust famine prevention guidelines. Famines after all are a man-made phenomenon. People back then believed it to be a symptom of the Malthusian theory of overpopulation and natural disasters cutting back population to more sustainable numbers.

Of course it was easy for the Europeans to sit back and enjoy their abundance while the 'unwashed, uncultured natives' died in droves. The Krakatoa explosion did drive home the idea that maybe thousands dying is not normal as the Malthus suggested.

Such barbarity is incomprehensible to our modern minds but that is the Victorian Era for you.

Fortunately Lord Ripon was a liberal, a liberal radical to some, and a staunch supporter of the progress of the people of the sub-continent. It is entirely conceivable he would use this shift in thought back Home to forge a new approach to handling famines in the sub-continent.
True, geological PoDs are indeed for the ASB section, by forum policy.
And yeah, it's very upsetting to our modern ears. That doesn't mean we don't ignore terrible things these days, though.
(I'm actually reading a book about disasters and their effects, and it's fairly clear there ARE some real disasters which are too nasty for our relief efforts to do more than mitigate the damage, like a really big volcanic eruption along the lines of Laki... but then, we do understand mitigation.
Part of me wonders whether the old iron age policy of fortified cities having years of food supply, to hold out against siege, was a factor in famine survivability.)
 
Oh btw i had little cookie for you guys.

British Indian regiments were divided on the lines of 'martial races' so a Gurkha regiment would be comprised of solely Gurkha's from Nepal and a Sikh regiment would be comprised solely of Sikh's from Punjab and so on. So the company level force i had deployed as an extra bit will be comprised mostly of troops from one part of India or another.

Doesn't sound like much, but it is basically like having German troops versus Scots. I know that is a crude simplification but you get the drift.

So which British Indian Regiment do you suggest we get the 100-odd extra troops from that were deployed to defend the Legation Quarters?

Also one more nugget one of the 'Gordon Reforms' passed was to allow first JCOs and later NCOs from various regiments to be deployed in the other regiments, for example a Rajput sergeant coordinating Maratha troops, etc. This was done to achieve better interoperability between the regiments and to address shortages of NCOs in the Sudan expedition.

The Sudan expedition required the deployment of smaller units in fighting the short lived insurgency in Sudan once the Mahadi was killed in battle. As such NCOs became more and more important as a go between the Officers, Indian and British and the native troops.

To achieve it, the NCOs would have to be taught basic English to act as a and the troops kind of caught on from there.

This might help create a situation where English is a lot more widely spoken in the native troops in the short-term and the sub-continent in the long-term than it was in OTL.

What do you guys think about this development?

P.S. - Also the lessons learnt in fighting the short-lived insurgency in Sudan did come in handy in South Africa nearly a decade later.
 
True, geological PoDs are indeed for the ASB section, by forum policy.
And yeah, it's very upsetting to our modern ears. That doesn't mean we don't ignore terrible things these days, though.
(I'm actually reading a book about disasters and their effects, and it's fairly clear there ARE some real disasters which are too nasty for our relief efforts to do more than mitigate the damage, like a really big volcanic eruption along the lines of Laki... but then, we do understand mitigation.
Part of me wonders whether the old iron age policy of fortified cities having years of food supply, to hold out against siege, was a factor in famine survivability.)

That. Yes that is exactly the kind of questions i like. :D

Let's see

Well pre-industrial era cities were much smaller, barring exceptions, and as such providing for them in sieges was not much of a problem. An industrial city however was a different being entirely.

yes it might help the cities in the short run, but what of the country side? Most of the population lived diffused over much of the countryside.

So yeah it had its plus points but also some major drawbacks.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
That. Yes that is exactly the kind of questions i like. :D

Let's see

Well pre-industrial era cities were much smaller, barring exceptions, and as such providing for them in sieges was not much of a problem. An industrial city however was a different being entirely.

yes it might help the cities in the short run, but what of the country side? Most of the population lived diffused over much of the countryside.

So yeah it had its plus points but also some major drawbacks.

True, yes, though I suppose the lower population in general would help. If you've got (say) a country with three cities, each with 5000 inhabitants, and 250,000 farmers (big, I know, but probably about right for a late bronze/early iron society as this means a ratio of about 16 peasants to one non-peasant... might work, who knows) then in a situation where there's a famine and production is roughly halved, there's a shortfall of about 150,000 man-years of food.
Ten years of supply in the cities is actually about that scale. Four or five years is much less, of course, but that's the kind of ballpark which could be somewhat alleviated by people "starving" instead of being starved and by "gathering" in non-farmed areas.
We also forget how resilient people are to long periods with little food, so long as they're not in a situation of complete dearth.

In any case, it helps, and having a less-than-completely utilized land footprint helps too.
 
@Saphroneth

yes i guess it does. So i guess we can conclude that wide spread famines were more of an industrial-era thing, in their scope and scale i mean. Pre-industrial cities were much better equipped at dealing with famines.


BTW i will have a brief update up abut the legation quarter siege shortly. :)
 

Saphroneth

Banned
@Saphroneth

yes i guess it does. So i guess we can conclude that wide spread famines were more of an industrial-era thing, in their scope and scale i mean. Pre-industrial cities were much better equipped at dealing with famines.


BTW i will have a brief update up abut the legation quarter siege shortly. :)

I think pre-industrial societies tended to suffer from either multi-year famines, social collapse (i.e. breakdown in distribution) or plagues, which could be devastating.
 
Update #1

Let us discuss the Legation siege. There were 409 troops in OTL protecting around 473 foreign civilians and around 2800 Chinese civilians. The Chinese Refugees were Christian converts.

When Prince Duan assumed command of the Boxer and Imperial Chinese forces there was a short lived power struggle between him and General Dong Fuxiang. Two men with giant egos can scarcely share a room.

So there was some confusion between how to proceed with the situation. The fact there was a relief force fortified in one of their forts to the south complicated the strategy further.

General Dong pushed for an attack at the relief force and then for a move against the ‘foreign devils’ holed up in the capital. Prince Duan on the other hand pushed for the immediate attack on the Foreigners holed up in the Legation Quarter and collects some brownie points with the empress.

This of course resulted in a delay on both accounts giving the foreign forces more time to dig in for the coming assault. News had arrived in earnest of General Rong Lu demise and the commander of the Legation forces Sir MacDonald quickly capitalized on this.

He immediately doubled up on the defenses and as in OTL the French contingent actually managed to get their hands on an old cannon which used to guard the eastern approach road between the Russian and American embassies.

The Hanlin College at the North East corner of the Legation quarter provided an excellent view of approaches form the North and the East and such with the extra forces compared to OTL did not have to be abandoned. This of course saved several priceless and irreplaceable texts which had burned down in OTL in a fire during the siege.

Ammunition and arms were short but the situation was not as acute as in OTL as the Americans and the British had both bought along a little extra. British brought it so as to support their massive Indian and British combined contingent.

However each of these little advantages would prove vital in the coming days.

In the meanwhile the Chinese Boxer boy captured by Minister von Kettler was killed when he stabbed a German guard and tried to escape. Fortunately the news of this incident did not escape the besieged quarters. But it was of little consequence as the boy was already believed to have been murdered y the Boxers besieging the Quarter.

Once news reached that the German contingent of the Seymour Expedition had been fired upon by General Dong Fuxiang‘s forces on their approach to Beijing, the combined multinational fleet fired upon the Dagu fort to secure their retreat, just as in OTL leading to the change in the impasse that had been there between the Chinese General and the Prince.

General Dong would lead most of his troops south to defeat the besieged Seymour expedition and Prince Dong would assault the Legation Quarter.

On the night of July the 13th Prince Duan’s forces attacked the Quarters viciously. Every man, woman and child was pressed into defending the barricades protecting the Legation quarter.

ITTL American troops on the Tartar wall to the South were pushed back and the wall was retaken by a combined force of German Americans and British Indian troops. They held the line against numerous assaults on the wall till the end. ITTL a young American Lieutenant Smedley Butler defending the wall against General Dong Fuxiang’s Kansu Braves would distinguish himself in combat.

The multinational coalition in the meantime decided to send two larger relief forces to liberate the Seymour expedition and the Legation quarters. Over 40,000 troops were moved in as the first wave with the British (From Singapore) French (From Saigon), Japanese and Americans (From Philippines) providing more troops later. A significant part of the British relief force was comprised of British Indian troops deployed in the Malay peninsula and in Burma. (Pretty much OTL) The Russians also invaded from the north into Manchuria and sent a sizable contingent from Port Arthur to assist in relieving the besieged Admiral Seymour.


All in all a significantly larger force was deployed in China to relieve the Legations than OTL, which came in handy considering the resistance they faced on their march to Beijing.

Prince Duan and general Fuxiang did intend to use artillery to blast their way into the Legation but the rapid approach of the multi-national force towards the capital forced them to use the artillery against the advancing foreign forces. It was just enough to give the empress time to flee to Xian.

This did not mean the Legation forces had it easy. They were subjected to wave after wave of assaults for ten grueling days from July 30th till the multi-nation force finally arrived outside Beijing on August 20th.

The massive ITTL quickly captured the city and reached the Legation to see that the Legation forces were half-starved and near collapse. The legation forces had sustained massive casualties with an overall casualty rate near a 100%. Over 300 of the defending troops had been killed as had about half the foreign civilians. Not to mention hundreds of the Chinese Christian who took up arms to defend the Legation Quarter alongside the foreign forces.

These people had been through a month and a half in hell and lived to tell.

The rapid advance by a force of two American, a British and a British Indian Sikh and a Russian regiment from the staging area in Tientsin would help relieve the trapped Admiral Seymour a day later.

This did end the war however.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Bumping up!
It's surprising that the OTL Legation siege doesn't get more attention than it does - it's a very strange event, and also one of the kind which is practically made for an action film (though it'd have to spend a deal of time on the Chinese side of things, too).
 
This is very interesting Kalki. I'm afraid I have little to offer in terms of discussion :eek:, but I will be subscribing nonetheless. And I don't think I've even heard of the POD before, so it is very fresh :).
 
It's surprising that the OTL Legation siege doesn't get more attention than it does - it's a very strange event, and also one of the kind which is practically made for an action film (though it'd have to spend a deal of time on the Chinese side of things, too).

55 Days at Peking with Charlton Heston :D
 
@Komnenos002 Thank you for your kind words. I surely hope that with your help this TL will add flavorful variety to the TLs on this forum.

I will begin work on the next part in earnest. :)

I can't really help much, what you've written is at such a spectacular level of detail I simply lack to knowledge to do much brainstorming.

One thing I am curious though, is what is going to happen to the white Dominions. The gist I got from the other thread is that this timeline will address an India that both remains part of the British Empire, and doesn't receive democratic representation.

If the Dominions are either granted representation in a federal state, or are treated as equales/comrades in a vastly expanded Commonwealth with teeth, it would stand in dreadful but interesting contrast to the status of India in this timeline. India remaining the crown jewel of the Empire helps make the economic arguments of remaining aligned with Britain more palatable as well. The sheer size of the market and trade India represents means that Canada/Australia/New Zealand remaining loyal to the motherland, doesn't necessarily hamstring their own economic development.
 
It's surprising that the OTL Legation siege doesn't get more attention than it does - it's a very strange event, and also one of the kind which is practically made for an action film (though it'd have to spend a deal of time on the Chinese side of things, too).

This is very interesting Kalki. I'm afraid I have little to offer in terms of discussion :eek:, but I will be subscribing nonetheless. And I don't think I've even heard of the POD before, so it is very fresh :).

55 Days at Peking with Charlton Heston :D

I can't really help much, what you've written is at such a spectacular level of detail I simply lack to knowledge to do much brainstorming.

One thing I am curious though, is what is going to happen to the white Dominions. The gist I got from the other thread is that this timeline will address an India that both remains part of the British Empire, and doesn't receive democratic representation.

If the Dominions are either granted representation in a federal state, or are treated as equales/comrades in a vastly expanded Commonwealth with teeth, it would stand in dreadful but interesting contrast to the status of India in this timeline. India remaining the crown jewel of the Empire helps make the economic arguments of remaining aligned with Britain more palatable as well. The sheer size of the market and trade India represents means that Canada/Australia/New Zealand remaining loyal to the motherland, doesn't necessarily hamstring their own economic development.

@Saphroneth yes they did in fact make it into a movie in the 60s i believe.

@NthBelisarius Oh i am sure you can add to the discussion of the progression of the TL. The story of the TL is also open for discussion and not just the TL. There is General Gordon, Sudan, the Second Boer War, Gandhi's demise and even the Boxer War with General Smedley Butler. Hope you enjoy the TL. :)

@IndefatigableRN Why that is exactly what i was saying to Saphroneth here. Thank you for the name! :)

@Komnenos002 You have been mistaken; I never intended for India never to have representation. I simply wish for there never be any independence for India ala OTL, or that there should a sheer domination of Indian influence on a united British Empire/Federation as some of the other TLs on this forum.

I intend to seek a balance between the two opposing views and create, with your help the most realistic 'British Empire survives and prospers' TL possible. In short call me a Brit-wanker and and an India-wanker :p

Hope you enjoy the TL and the numerous events form the Sudan expedition to the Second Boer War to the Boxer War and many more to come. :)

I am little late so sorry for the brief replies. If you have any questions, comments or criticisms feel free to post. I will answer when i get back from the Hospital in the evening. :)
 
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