Thande
Donor
Thanks, I have corrected it. A consequence of how I will always tend to copy-paste the whole word rather than insert symbol when it comes to grave accents in French words. Acute ones on the other hand, they're easy.
Look to the West: Thread III, Volume IV (Tottenham Nil)!
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Thanks, I have corrected it. A consequence of how I will always tend to copy-paste the whole word rather than insert symbol when it comes to grave accents in French words. Acute ones on the other hand, they're easy.
Alex Richards
Donor
I've set up my laptop so that CTRL+3 switches the layout to one of the international ones. It has built in methods for doing all the accents (grave is apostrophe followed by the letter for example).
Hah, called it with the Zorro refference (but not the gender). Does she like slashing "Z" into things with her sword? 
Also, I concur with the honourable member, you do so spoil us with your updates Doctor Thande. (will comment more once I've had the chance to read the last two updates properly ).
Also, I concur with the honourable member, you do so spoil us with your updates Doctor Thande.
(will comment more once I've had the chance to read the last two updates properly ).Excellent update Thande. As fascinating as he Great American War has been, I do hope you'll bring us up to speed on the Great Jihad. As for the name of the people doing the jihading, I'm a bit surprised that Mujahideen hasn't become the preferred term.
I apologize for the fact that most of my critiques are purely lexical, but by this point in the TL events have diverged so wildly that they've already outstripped my somewhat meager knowledge of the time period. LTTW isn't really constrained by OTL in the same way anymore.
Jeez the ENA, British, and French seem to be constantly screwing up diplomatically it is absurd. First the Bougray incident and Benton's dumb assassination plan, now we have the French firing on Guyanese boats and the Toucan's "stand your ground" idiocy. At first I thought the Americans, British and French would easily win the Great American war but at this rate I am fairly certain they will lose.
Also the hints as to the Great Jihad in India and the Unification and Patrimonial wars in Europe are interesting and I can't wait for you to elaborate on them. The former I imagine will be Saxony's attempt to unify Germany, though it could be a showdown between Hapsburg Italy and Bourbon Kingdom of the Three Sicilies. As for the Patrimonial war, I have no idea perhaps something involving Russia and the rest of the Hapsburg Empire.
Also the hints as to the Great Jihad in India and the Unification and Patrimonial wars in Europe are interesting and I can't wait for you to elaborate on them. The former I imagine will be Saxony's attempt to unify Germany, though it could be a showdown between Hapsburg Italy and Bourbon Kingdom of the Three Sicilies. As for the Patrimonial war, I have no idea perhaps something involving Russia and the rest of the Hapsburg Empire.
Thande
Donor
I debated between mujahideen or jihadis but decided the latter was the more likely term to be used by a European source in this era, which I thought would tack an English plural onto the end rather than using the original language (c.f. "Shi'ite" as opposed to "Shia").
I hope that doesn't come across as overly one-sided. It wasn't that unusual in this time period for stuff like this to happen in OTL, the most obvious example being the Trent Affair of course. Suffice to say there will be considerable screwups on both sides.
You're really spoiling us with this flow of updates! Just one thing it would be "le beau royaume" in the title of the first book.
Thande
Donor
Thanks, I'll edit that. My unerring ability to get every single French word's gender wrong unless I looking up, despite it being a 50/50 shot, strikes again
Alex Richards
Donor
I thought the Patrimonial wars were about the Pope?
Yes, Three Sicilies going after Latium IIRC.
Actually it seemed pretty realistic to me. It seems like a lot of wars at the time in OTL were either started or escalated by some diplomatic screwup.
I thought the Patrimonial wars were about the Pope?
My bad, I should have reread some of the past updates before posting
. Still I assume I am correct on the Unification war.
Right, yes. Now I'm trying to figure out how the Hapsburgs and Bourbons battling gets tied in to the Great American War. Must be those darn Spaniards.
I won't lie, I thought you'd forgotten about the Great Jihad - or maybe it had wound up like the infamous China update that took two years to write. I'm so glad it's shown up again.
It'll be interesting to see why the Great Jihad is considered a separate conflict, whilst the various European conflicts get folded into the Great American War.
It'll be interesting to see why the Great Jihad is considered a separate conflict, whilst the various European conflicts get folded into the Great American War.
Timing maybe? Yes, things are already pretty hot in India, enough to divert and detain half the RN fleet detailed to California, but we're also told that while Villon is running things in France it is only prologue to the real action:
So this might merely be to say that Villon is not going to linger much longer in office since the mess he's made will lead to the fall of his government in very very short order (leaving another administration to try to clean it up). But then again he might hang on for some years yet, perhaps most or all of the duration of the GAW, however long that is...all we are told is, the Asian mess might look bad now, but however bad it is, it will be orders of magnitude worse sometime after Villon is gone from power. However long that takes means the duration of the buildup to the Great Jihad takes longer--presumably making it quite the awful spectacle by the time it peaks.
Having mentioned being off balance regarding who to root for ITTL, Thande has been doing a fine job of keeping me reeling. I was just making my mind up to like the ENA again (and recommend a campaign of conquest of Carolina and Louisiana, continental and insular parts both, based on raising up the African populace) when their military efforts turn out more often than not to be scripted by the Three Stooges, with Laurel and Hardy running the diplomatic corps. And specifically making a botch of the whole slave uprising strategy. (Well, it's hard to be more OTL American than the Stooges, and Laurel and Hardy make for a nice bit of transAtlantic brotherhood.
) I have to say having the USPA actually lean toward the slaver alliance side is pretty upsetting and odd. I might not have properly digested the effects of the Meridian conquests of Brazil and other Amazonian tracts; perhaps indirect rule of their equatorial clients has opened up a channel for a slavery lobby. Also of course I may have simply been blind to the degree that TTL's Linneanian racist anthropology was integrated into the Latinate society of the USPA, leaving even populist movements open to align with the more modern Burdenist ideology--this posing little problem in relations between Criollo and more deeply Indio Meridians, nor setting up hurdles for their colonial regime in the Philippines and Formosa, but leading to the "Othering" of South Americans of African descent. Perhaps this form of racism is not dominant, nor even exactly a comfortable fit for them (I hope not
) but it might be easier for them to ally, or anyway align, with a New Spanish Empire that is drifting in that direction itself. Of course there too I think I detect some hints of an uncomfortable polarization of the Empire, with the kingdoms of Mexico and Guatemala having been drawn toward the Carolinian point of view for some time now, but the more distant southern kingdoms looking askance at the direction the north kingdoms are heading.So perhaps I should think of TTL Latin America (with its Dutch enclave) as polarized, in a spectrum from Burdenist Mexico down to still democratic-republican southern Meridia, but this spectrum also serving as sort of a political filter--with no one region torn into stark contrast between strongly opposed neighbors (except for French Cayenne of course) a sort of chain of alliances, one neighbor with another, can bind together extremes that could not hold with each other if they were immediate neighbors. Southern Meridia does not have the sort of proximity to the extremes of slavery that the northern ENA confederations had to Carolina; for them it is largely a matter of international relations without regard to slavery or Africans.
Still it seems odd as hell to me that the Meridans would rather kick they Yankees while they seem down and distracted than turn their antipathy more toward the enemy that has much more recently and on a much larger scale kicked their behinds, and sits holding formerly USPA land--and is ideologically opposed to the Meridian mythos of democratic republicanism and anti-royalism.
Sometimes I figure Thande just wants to play mix and match with ideology just to make the claim that the OTL ones don't have any internal logic driving them, they are just Foucaultian "discourses" that arose out of the patter of politicians running long cons on the populace.
Since I do think there is a dialectical logic running through the evolution of the conflict between conservative and progressive movements in the history of the modern era, perhaps I am blind to the currents that run in this timeline.
I rather like Adamantine California and its romantic origins thus far, but I have little confidence it will endure without adopting some bizarre position or other that seems downright revolting to me eventually.
And while the ENA's remaining loyal Confederations collectively make a formidable power, I have my doubts it can project that power to the West coast of the continent overland, with both the routes westward Thande has had them dispatch forces that way (and the third route between them) all vulnerable to Indian harassment. Especially the southern route through Santa Fe and Tuscon seems like something that might look passable on a map, but that the Mexicans ought to be able to interdict not only with formal Mexican forces--but with recruited and allied Indians as well. Numerically the native peoples don't add up to a whole lot of soldiers; perhaps even the Navajo are going to be outnumbered as a whole people compared to the size of the ENA armies-but with such peoples enlisted to fight for their native soil on behalf of a Mexican and New Spanish regime that pledges to enforce their continued possession of those lands against Yankee encroachment, alongside solid KoM and Guatemalan regiments, I don't see why the southern prong of the ENA westward thrust is not being blunted, slowed down a lot if not blocked completely, by these acting in concert. I'd even think the middle route (not yet mentioned in the narrative) past Lake Tahoe into the Great Valley would be hard to pass.
Then even if we grant that the Indian auxiliaries might be hard to recruit and too small to stop the southern thrust, if the ENA troops can then win their way through the Great Basin, coming into what is called OTL "Southern California," we know there are a great many Carolinians settled there, and they've attracted many Mexican loyalists there to accept their point of view about plantation slavery; although no doubt settlement there is still scanty, it will be a lot of Californian-Mexicans to meet whoever makes it through the mountains and across the deserts and past the raiders and holding actions in the passes, they'll face a real war, aided only by slaves who dare take the opportunity to self-liberate.I figure whatever else the New Spanish lose in California, they won't ever lose the south. Meaning, the southern ENA salient will either get chewed up before getting there or in some big string of battles in the south, or they divert north to enter the Great Valley.
Thande
Donor
I'm not going to get into it in detail yet, but your assessment of the UPSA's involvement is actually how it is meant to be viewed in-universe, and the fact that it seems that way to the reader is therefore good from my POV. Recognition of and reation against ideological inconsistency and 'pragmatisme' of the Meridian government plays a very, very important role in the formation of a certain ideology, hence why the writer of one of these segments mentioned that if Trimble hadn't been able to prove Benton's involvement in the Buenos Aires attacks (and thus dragged the UPSA into the war) then the 20th century would be unrecognisable. The writer's actually not referring to what will happen in North America, but what will happen in South America.I have to say having the USPA actually lean toward the slaver alliance side is pretty upsetting and odd. I might not have properly digested the effects of the Meridian conquests of Brazil and other Amazonian tracts; perhaps indirect rule of their equatorial clients has opened up a channel for a slavery lobby. Also of course I may have simply been blind to the degree that TTL's Linneanian racist anthropology was integrated into the Latinate society of the USPA, leaving even populist movements open to align with the more modern Burdenist ideology--this posing little problem in relations between Criollo and more deeply Indio Meridians, nor setting up hurdles for their colonial regime in the Philippines and Formosa, but leading to the "Othering" of South Americans of African descent. Perhaps this form of racism is not dominant, nor even exactly a comfortable fit for them (I hope not
So perhaps I should think of TTL Latin America (with its Dutch enclave) as polarized, in a spectrum from Burdenist Mexico down to still democratic-republican southern Meridia, but this spectrum also serving as sort of a political filter--with no one region torn into stark contrast between strongly opposed neighbors (except for French Cayenne of course) a sort of chain of alliances, one neighbor with another, can bind together extremes that could not hold with each other if they were immediate neighbors. Southern Meridia does not have the sort of proximity to the extremes of slavery that the northern ENA confederations had to Carolina; for them it is largely a matter of international relations without regard to slavery or Africans.
Still it seems odd as hell to me that the Meridans would rather kick they Yankees while they seem down and distracted than turn their antipathy more toward the enemy that has much more recently and on a much larger scale kicked their behinds, and sits holding formerly USPA land--and is ideologically opposed to the Meridian mythos of democratic republicanism and anti-royalism.
Sometimes I figure Thande just wants to play mix and match with ideology just to make the claim that the OTL ones don't have any internal logic driving them, they are just Foucaultian "discourses" that arose out of the patter of politicians running long cons on the populace.
Since I do think there is a dialectical logic running through the evolution of the conflict between conservative and progressive movements in the history of the modern era, perhaps I am blind to the currents that run in this timeline.
I rather like Adamantine California and its romantic origins thus far, but I have little confidence it will endure without adopting some bizarre position or other that seems downright revolting to me eventually.
And while the ENA's remaining loyal Confederations collectively make a formidable power, I have my doubts it can project that power to the West coast of the continent overland, with both the routes westward Thande has had them dispatch forces that way (and the third route between them) all vulnerable to Indian harassment. Especially the southern route through Santa Fe and Tuscon seems like something that might look passable on a map, but that the Mexicans ought to be able to interdict not only with formal Mexican forces--but with recruited and allied Indians as well. Numerically the native peoples don't add up to a whole lot of soldiers; perhaps even the Navajo are going to be outnumbered as a whole people compared to the size of the ENA armies-but with such peoples enlisted to fight for their native soil on behalf of a Mexican and New Spanish regime that pledges to enforce their continued possession of those lands against Yankee encroachment, alongside solid KoM and Guatemalan regiments, I don't see why the southern prong of the ENA westward thrust is not being blunted, slowed down a lot if not blocked completely, by these acting in concert. I'd even think the middle route (not yet mentioned in the narrative) past Lake Tahoe into the Great Valley would be hard to pass.
Then even if we grant that the Indian auxiliaries might be hard to recruit and too small to stop the southern thrust, if the ENA troops can then win their way through the Great Basin, coming into what is called OTL "Southern California," we know there are a great many Carolinians settled there, and they've attracted many Mexican loyalists there to accept their point of view about plantation slavery; although no doubt settlement there is still scanty, it will be a lot of Californian-Mexicans to meet whoever makes it through the mountains and across the deserts and past the raiders and holding actions in the passes, they'll face a real war, aided only by slaves who dare take the opportunity to self-liberate.I figure whatever else the New Spanish lose in California, they won't ever lose the south. Meaning, the southern ENA salient will either get chewed up before getting there or in some big string of battles in the south, or they divert north to enter the Great Valley.
Hmm, I thought as much - the Great American War is the first chain in the reaction to the formation of the Combine. Though, judging from previous posts, it's going to take a while for Societism as the people of the "present" of TTL to emerge, which is probably not going to be what señor Sanchez had in mind, a la Marx...
I also originally thought that the Meridians would side with the ENA over the ESA, and try and snaggle Peru and maybe bits of New Granada over into its sphere. However, it looks like, when it comes to the Falklands, *Argentineans will be Argentineans.
I wonder if this will lead to Britain regaining the administration of a few colonies that fell into American rule following the Inglorious Revolution. I'm also wondering about this Third (and hopefully last) Glorious Revolution - anything to do with the independent Scotland
mad Thande's been hinting at for ages, perhaps?I can't help but think that the independence of Superia and the establishment of that Adamantine republic in whatever Tasmania is called ITTL may have something to do with the Great American War. After all, Thande did hint at the war spreading to Australia - possibly the Batavians vs. the French? Maybe even naval battles involving the Meridians and the British/French. All very complicated.
Also, judging from what I remember from Thande's first draft LTTW maps, I think Spain is in for at least one more revolution in the future.
I dont get the ENA invasion routes. The logistics would suck totally. No waterborne transport, no rail (yet? That far west?).....
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