Hi everyone,
when I had to cease writing my last TL, Feeble Constitution, I was certain that I would never again write another TL. It had been my fourth TL, and great fun, too, but it was just so much work, and I was sure I would never be able to again find sufficient time for writing without neglecting my job or my family.
But here I go again! Turns out, I’m addicted to this. To keep things limited, though, I’ve decided to make this a TL in 8 installments only. Here is the plan:
It’s going to be a timeline about successful revolutions in 1848, focusing primarily on Germany. Well, “successful” means they bring about far-reaching changes, not necessarily implying that it’s all for the better.
The TL builds on another unfinished TL from this forum, Primavera d’Italia by @Tarabas and @LordKalvan What this implies is that, before things really take off into my new direction in Germany here, the Italian revolutionaries have already been way more successful than IOTL, uniting behind a confederal solution with a president-type King of Italy and defeating the Habsburg armies decisively, forcing them to the negotiation table. For more details, read their excellent TL!
This TL also builds on another little episode from Primavera d’Italia, which Tarabos, Lord Kalvan and I had come up with together anyway: the Offenburger Blutnacht. It’s going to be an important point of reference for the First Installment, therefore I will quote their description for context then (see below).
The general framework of this TL is that each installment will be from ATL 2023, when Europe celebrates or commemorates (depending on your political-historical perspective) the 175th anniversary of the revolutions. Each installment will be by a different allohistorical author, espousing a different political and historical perspective on TTL’s post-1848 history each time.
And, and here comes the complicated twist:
Each of these installments / texts will be in the form of TTL’s “alternate history”. This means that the installments will actually be DBWI. I have, nevertheless, decided not to post this TL in “Shared Worlds”, because all my authorial comments and any discussion in the thread is not supposed to be “in context”, i.e. it doesn’t require us role-playing that that alternate history that I’m telling as background has actually really happened. Each installment will reflect and speculate on what would have happened if things had gone differently than they went ITTL – and these “divergences” will, in the best tradition of DBWIs, be much closer to OTL’s course of events than TTL’s canon. Thus, what “actually happened” ITTL will indirectly emerge from these speculations and their comparisons with what they declare as real history (but which is, of course, just this allohistorical timeline that I am sketching).
Given that all eight texts are looking back at 1848 from alt-2023, you can imagine that I have sketched the entire history of the world throughout the 175 years in between – although this sketch is, necessarily, very, very general. This sketched framework I shall try to stick with, come what may in terms of criticism and suggestions, because otherwise the entire edifice would collapse and it would be a LOT more work for me, which I do not feel up to shouldering. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not open to suggestions at all: The sketch is, as I said, rather rough and has many blanks all over the world and in much of the details. Thus, if you come up with suggestions about specific events, places or time spans, I’m always open to discuss them and even to include them if they’re not likely to change the broad strokes of the course of world history that I have already composed.
Now, without further ado, let’s plunge right in! Hope you enjoy it!
Installment One: What if Hecker had not been shot?
This year, we are celebrating the 175th anniversary of our Revolutions, along with many other European countries. 1848 marked a historical watershed in many countries: constitutions were established, liberties enshrined, political participation widened. Of all these revolutionary transformations, those in our country stand out in uniqueness. Not only because the French and the Dutch, Danes, Romanians and others obtained their freedoms with relatively little bloodshed, while our struggle for national unification and independence, freedom and democracy lasted for two exhausting years and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of national martyrs.
It also stands out because, of all the revolutions that swept our continent, the German one was not only the one facing the worst odds, but also the one most likely not to unfold as a real revolution at all.
If you looked at Europe in the spring of 1847, just a year before the revolutions took their course, you would not have believed that the German monarchs and their oppressive governments would really face a united and determined opposition in just one year’s time. Bad harvests and crop diseases were causing famine across the continent, petty craftsmen threatened in their livelihood by the burgeoining industries protested violently, while industrial production suffered a downturn, too, creating unemployment and abject poverty in the sprawling urban-industrial regions in turn. The suffering continent was in agony and just one step away from uproar, yes. But just as the greatest crisis of the old order was drawing near, the main oppositional political forces in the German lands seemed to drift farther and farther apart from each other, sometimes mistrusting the other more than they mistrusted their governments. The Hallgartenkreis, which had been the most important forum of dialogic exchange between various oppositional factions from all over the German lands since 1832, had no longer brought together moderate liberals and radical democrats in the past two years as cautious moderates like Friedrich Daniel Bassermann and Heinrich von Gagern had no longer frequented it, leaving only the Radicals still meeting there. From their exile in Brussels, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had enthusiastically proclaimed in a manifesto that “the specter of communism” was haunting Europe, and Bassermann was warning against sans-culottist anarchism in the “Deutsche Zeitung”. As dissatisfaction and despair grew across the German lands, radical democrats and moderate liberals had already begun to prepare for two separate conventions, both of which were supposed to take place in the comparatively liberal Grand Duchy of Baden. The Left had chosen Offenburg for their meeting. The meeting of the moderates was supposed to take place in Heppenheim – but it was cancelled by a committee presided over by Johann Adam von Itzstein after the bloodbath of Offenburg and Hecker’s martyrdom there. Cancelling the Heppenheim convention happened firstly out of fear that another such tragedy might occur – but secondly, and much more importantly, it happened because key Southern German liberal thinkers like Itzstein and Karl Mathy had lost their faith in achieving their reform agenda by working towards concessions from the governments and concluded that, if the old regime was too rigid and tactless and unable to prevent a popular revolution against it, then the sensible moderate politicians would have to lead it onto an orderly path. Thus came about the rapprochement between liberals and radicals, in which Robert Blum, Heinrich von Gagern and Mathy played important roles at this stage, the common support for demands based on the “Offenburg Charter”, including the establishment of national guards, which proved of utmost value in the military confrontations that followed.
But what if Friedrich Hecker had not been shot? What if the authorities had had the common sense not to create martyrs, and had sent spies instead of dragoons, and let the assembled radicals meet, and disperse again, perhaps apprehending and indicting one or two among them afterwards for good measure?
We have no way of gaining certainty about this question. But if Hecker had not been killed, the moderate “halves” would have met separately from the radical “wholes”, and there would have been two conflicting strategies vis-à-vis the state governments and the path to national unification. We are so used to the party duopoly of Liberals and Democrats, to their perennial rivalry and mutual accusations of betrayal of the national cause, the first of which the Democrats insist was committed in 1850 by the Liberals, that we tend to forget that these differences had emerged markedly before the Revolution already. It is indeed rather the two or three years before and during the Revolution and the ensuing war and their alliance between the various moderate/liberal and radical/democratic factions that stands out as the historical oddity. If the bloodbath of Offenburg had not occurred and had not welded the rivalling oppositional factions back together, their enmities might have persisted uninterrupted, and that would have certainly influenced the course of 1848ff. Revolutionary turmoil might still occur after the events in France and Italy, but an opposition divided among itself might have been more easily suppressed. Or, if the powers of the old order had not just had the good sense not to shoot at unarmed civilians, but also to offer concessions when popular pressure increased, they might have been able to avert a bloody political conflict in 1848 altogether and embarked on a path of incremental change over the following decades.
The revolutions of 1848 happened, and succeeded, because of political, economic, social, religious, and cultural changes that went much deeper – generally speaking. But the dynamics of a revolution are always unpredictable, as we have only recently witnessed in the Ottoman State. If Hecker had not become a martyr, if the government of Baden had not squandered the moderates’ trust in that black night in Offenburg – then Germany might not have inherited France’s reputation as the continent’s leading manufacturer of revolutions. The course of its history might even have resembled more closely that of our arch-rivals across the Channel. Small causes can sometimes bring about great effects.
***
And with TTL’s formulation of the Butterfly Effect, I’ll conclude the first installment. I am curious to hear about your opinions!As I said, I took the idea of the Offenburger Blutnacht from the TL Primavera d’Italia, along with that TL’s entire take on events in Italy and its war with Austria; that is all canon for TTL, too. You can read up on @LordKalvan’s and @Tarabos’s tale of the Offenburger Blutnacht here.
From mid-March 1848 on, a PoD ensures that this TL diverges from the course of events outlined in Primavera d’Italia. I will divulge that PoD in the Second Installment. Therefore, a few of the descriptions given in the quoted passage from Primavera d’Italia do not belong in the canon of TTL. Here, I present you with a modified quotation from their TL here to mark what exactly is canon ITTL:
when I had to cease writing my last TL, Feeble Constitution, I was certain that I would never again write another TL. It had been my fourth TL, and great fun, too, but it was just so much work, and I was sure I would never be able to again find sufficient time for writing without neglecting my job or my family.
But here I go again! Turns out, I’m addicted to this. To keep things limited, though, I’ve decided to make this a TL in 8 installments only. Here is the plan:
It’s going to be a timeline about successful revolutions in 1848, focusing primarily on Germany. Well, “successful” means they bring about far-reaching changes, not necessarily implying that it’s all for the better.
The TL builds on another unfinished TL from this forum, Primavera d’Italia by @Tarabas and @LordKalvan What this implies is that, before things really take off into my new direction in Germany here, the Italian revolutionaries have already been way more successful than IOTL, uniting behind a confederal solution with a president-type King of Italy and defeating the Habsburg armies decisively, forcing them to the negotiation table. For more details, read their excellent TL!
This TL also builds on another little episode from Primavera d’Italia, which Tarabos, Lord Kalvan and I had come up with together anyway: the Offenburger Blutnacht. It’s going to be an important point of reference for the First Installment, therefore I will quote their description for context then (see below).
The general framework of this TL is that each installment will be from ATL 2023, when Europe celebrates or commemorates (depending on your political-historical perspective) the 175th anniversary of the revolutions. Each installment will be by a different allohistorical author, espousing a different political and historical perspective on TTL’s post-1848 history each time.
And, and here comes the complicated twist:
Each of these installments / texts will be in the form of TTL’s “alternate history”. This means that the installments will actually be DBWI. I have, nevertheless, decided not to post this TL in “Shared Worlds”, because all my authorial comments and any discussion in the thread is not supposed to be “in context”, i.e. it doesn’t require us role-playing that that alternate history that I’m telling as background has actually really happened. Each installment will reflect and speculate on what would have happened if things had gone differently than they went ITTL – and these “divergences” will, in the best tradition of DBWIs, be much closer to OTL’s course of events than TTL’s canon. Thus, what “actually happened” ITTL will indirectly emerge from these speculations and their comparisons with what they declare as real history (but which is, of course, just this allohistorical timeline that I am sketching).
Given that all eight texts are looking back at 1848 from alt-2023, you can imagine that I have sketched the entire history of the world throughout the 175 years in between – although this sketch is, necessarily, very, very general. This sketched framework I shall try to stick with, come what may in terms of criticism and suggestions, because otherwise the entire edifice would collapse and it would be a LOT more work for me, which I do not feel up to shouldering. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not open to suggestions at all: The sketch is, as I said, rather rough and has many blanks all over the world and in much of the details. Thus, if you come up with suggestions about specific events, places or time spans, I’m always open to discuss them and even to include them if they’re not likely to change the broad strokes of the course of world history that I have already composed.
Now, without further ado, let’s plunge right in! Hope you enjoy it!
Installment One: What if Hecker had not been shot?
This year, we are celebrating the 175th anniversary of our Revolutions, along with many other European countries. 1848 marked a historical watershed in many countries: constitutions were established, liberties enshrined, political participation widened. Of all these revolutionary transformations, those in our country stand out in uniqueness. Not only because the French and the Dutch, Danes, Romanians and others obtained their freedoms with relatively little bloodshed, while our struggle for national unification and independence, freedom and democracy lasted for two exhausting years and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of national martyrs.
It also stands out because, of all the revolutions that swept our continent, the German one was not only the one facing the worst odds, but also the one most likely not to unfold as a real revolution at all.
If you looked at Europe in the spring of 1847, just a year before the revolutions took their course, you would not have believed that the German monarchs and their oppressive governments would really face a united and determined opposition in just one year’s time. Bad harvests and crop diseases were causing famine across the continent, petty craftsmen threatened in their livelihood by the burgeoining industries protested violently, while industrial production suffered a downturn, too, creating unemployment and abject poverty in the sprawling urban-industrial regions in turn. The suffering continent was in agony and just one step away from uproar, yes. But just as the greatest crisis of the old order was drawing near, the main oppositional political forces in the German lands seemed to drift farther and farther apart from each other, sometimes mistrusting the other more than they mistrusted their governments. The Hallgartenkreis, which had been the most important forum of dialogic exchange between various oppositional factions from all over the German lands since 1832, had no longer brought together moderate liberals and radical democrats in the past two years as cautious moderates like Friedrich Daniel Bassermann and Heinrich von Gagern had no longer frequented it, leaving only the Radicals still meeting there. From their exile in Brussels, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had enthusiastically proclaimed in a manifesto that “the specter of communism” was haunting Europe, and Bassermann was warning against sans-culottist anarchism in the “Deutsche Zeitung”. As dissatisfaction and despair grew across the German lands, radical democrats and moderate liberals had already begun to prepare for two separate conventions, both of which were supposed to take place in the comparatively liberal Grand Duchy of Baden. The Left had chosen Offenburg for their meeting. The meeting of the moderates was supposed to take place in Heppenheim – but it was cancelled by a committee presided over by Johann Adam von Itzstein after the bloodbath of Offenburg and Hecker’s martyrdom there. Cancelling the Heppenheim convention happened firstly out of fear that another such tragedy might occur – but secondly, and much more importantly, it happened because key Southern German liberal thinkers like Itzstein and Karl Mathy had lost their faith in achieving their reform agenda by working towards concessions from the governments and concluded that, if the old regime was too rigid and tactless and unable to prevent a popular revolution against it, then the sensible moderate politicians would have to lead it onto an orderly path. Thus came about the rapprochement between liberals and radicals, in which Robert Blum, Heinrich von Gagern and Mathy played important roles at this stage, the common support for demands based on the “Offenburg Charter”, including the establishment of national guards, which proved of utmost value in the military confrontations that followed.
But what if Friedrich Hecker had not been shot? What if the authorities had had the common sense not to create martyrs, and had sent spies instead of dragoons, and let the assembled radicals meet, and disperse again, perhaps apprehending and indicting one or two among them afterwards for good measure?
We have no way of gaining certainty about this question. But if Hecker had not been killed, the moderate “halves” would have met separately from the radical “wholes”, and there would have been two conflicting strategies vis-à-vis the state governments and the path to national unification. We are so used to the party duopoly of Liberals and Democrats, to their perennial rivalry and mutual accusations of betrayal of the national cause, the first of which the Democrats insist was committed in 1850 by the Liberals, that we tend to forget that these differences had emerged markedly before the Revolution already. It is indeed rather the two or three years before and during the Revolution and the ensuing war and their alliance between the various moderate/liberal and radical/democratic factions that stands out as the historical oddity. If the bloodbath of Offenburg had not occurred and had not welded the rivalling oppositional factions back together, their enmities might have persisted uninterrupted, and that would have certainly influenced the course of 1848ff. Revolutionary turmoil might still occur after the events in France and Italy, but an opposition divided among itself might have been more easily suppressed. Or, if the powers of the old order had not just had the good sense not to shoot at unarmed civilians, but also to offer concessions when popular pressure increased, they might have been able to avert a bloody political conflict in 1848 altogether and embarked on a path of incremental change over the following decades.
The revolutions of 1848 happened, and succeeded, because of political, economic, social, religious, and cultural changes that went much deeper – generally speaking. But the dynamics of a revolution are always unpredictable, as we have only recently witnessed in the Ottoman State. If Hecker had not become a martyr, if the government of Baden had not squandered the moderates’ trust in that black night in Offenburg – then Germany might not have inherited France’s reputation as the continent’s leading manufacturer of revolutions. The course of its history might even have resembled more closely that of our arch-rivals across the Channel. Small causes can sometimes bring about great effects.
***
And with TTL’s formulation of the Butterfly Effect, I’ll conclude the first installment. I am curious to hear about your opinions!As I said, I took the idea of the Offenburger Blutnacht from the TL Primavera d’Italia, along with that TL’s entire take on events in Italy and its war with Austria; that is all canon for TTL, too. You can read up on @LordKalvan’s and @Tarabos’s tale of the Offenburger Blutnacht here.
From mid-March 1848 on, a PoD ensures that this TL diverges from the course of events outlined in Primavera d’Italia. I will divulge that PoD in the Second Installment. Therefore, a few of the descriptions given in the quoted passage from Primavera d’Italia do not belong in the canon of TTL. Here, I present you with a modified quotation from their TL here to mark what exactly is canon ITTL:
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). This also explains why in our TL