Malê Rising

[Ganesha]

Another great update. What happened to Mauritius and Reunion ITTL, I've forgotten? Are they still French?

Cheers,
Ganesha

 

[Iserlohn]

Another great update. What happened to Mauritius and Reunion ITTL, I've forgotten? Are they still French?

Cheers,
Ganesha

Mauritius was already British ITTL even before the POD (Britain annexed it following the Napoleonic Wars). Reunion, as far as I know, is still French just like the Comoros.

 

[othyrsyde]

So I take it this TL hasn't reached its conclusion yet, thankfully.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

I just wanted to pop in and say that while I haven't been commenting much on this thread due to intermittent net access, I open this timeline every time I get a connection.
I'm going to be melancholy when this concludes- the journey of following this story along has been like waiting on the docks for a new Dickens serial.

 

[SuperFrog]

There isn't a story-only thread, but there are two shortcuts. First, once you get past the first few pages, all the updates are illustrated, so you can skip the comments and read the story by looking for pictures. Second, there's an index of updates here that will get you nearly all the way.

There's a lot of good discussion in the comments, BTW - one of the best parts about writing this story, for me, have been the conversations - but I can certainly understand that 336 pages worth of them would be intimidating.

Please keep reading, and thanks to everyone else who has commented.

Alright, I'll be sure to read this soon, preferably when its to modern day, if thats going to be any time soon.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Another great update. What happened to Mauritius and Reunion ITTL, I've forgotten? Are they still French?

Mauritius was already British ITTL even before the POD (Britain annexed it following the Napoleonic Wars). Reunion, as far as I know, is still French just like the Comoros.

Correct - Réunion was one of the French overseas departments that voted overwhelmingly to stay that way.

Réunion is actually one of the places that might seem most familiar to a traveler from OTL: the African-French-Indian demographic and cultural mix are much the same, and the political relationship with the metropole is very similar. On the other hand, Réunionnais society is considerably less stratified, there's more of a Vietnamese and Algerian presence, and there's more migration back and forth between Réunion and other French departments where Réunionnais restaurants are a growth industry.

So I take it this TL hasn't reached its conclusion yet, thankfully.

Alright, I'll be sure to read this soon, preferably when its to modern day, if thats going to be any time soon.

It hasn't happened yet, but it will be soon - most of the world is up to the present day already, and we're down to the last three regions, although there will also be a series of valedictory posts to finish things off.

I'm going to be melancholy when this concludes- the journey of following this story along has been like waiting on the docks for a new Dickens serial.

Me too - it's time to finish the story and move on, but this has been a labor of love for the past four years. I appreciate everyone who's followed the story to the end.

India and Southeast Asia this coming weekend; in the meantime, here's another story.

 

[yokkang]

Happy Super Belated Birthday!

Any particularly good ones? I could stand to do some more reading in that area.

Right now I'm slugging through "Siberia, Siberia" by Valentin Rasputin. It might be the translation, or maybe it's a quirk of Russian narrative construction that I'm just going to have to get used to, but I feel like the entire thing is written in the same narrator voice that sets the opening scene of a sci-fi movie, or maybe that resolves a Doogie Howser episode to summarize what NPH has learned. I mean, I'm still going to finish it - it's been great for characterizing one of the regions of the world that's the most obscure to me - but between Male Rising and Lands of Ice and Mice most of my interest lies rather further from the Trans-Siberian Railway than the book has traveled as of yet. The other books I found are deep in the recesses of a cardboard box right now, because I suck at moving, but I'll certainly share once I read them.

Kazuo Manea, The Roviana Dog (Auki: New Malaita, 2003)

I feel like a Russian from TTL would be quite conflicted reading this. On the one hand some of these scenes make institutionalized Big Man politics sound like an even more localized version of council democracy. On the other hand, a unanimous vote giving people the power to force cooperation without consultation or negotiation sounds a lot like the circumstances that led to a second revolution in Russia. That, and I'd imagine that a Tolstoyan Russian would be aghast to see something provide so little empowerment when, at first glance, it sounds a lot like an organically forming, dynamically responsive version of narodnik governance.

Tomorrow I will live in an apartment by Auki harbor, the gift of the council of captains.

I feel I am become an ancestor already.

If this were a forum ITTL and we were all graduate students in a program studying modernization and the social impact of institutional development in the Global South, I feel like this story would be one of the top three go-to books for humanizing quotes or characterizing excerpts at the headers of a new chapter. I hope that's not too weird a place to go with this, but that thought tied for first when I finished reading, along with "Oh wow, that sounds a lot like han in Korean cultural anthropology", and "Oh wow, that was amazing".

Actually, that gives me two very different questions to think about, too: first, if TTL's academic and cultural milieu ever lead to something approximating OTL's La Raza Cósmica or La Raza de Bronce. OTL the concept evolved in Mexico during the 20s and 30s, I believe, and spread from there. But ITTL I wonder if a race-based national appeal like that would even be considered useful, in the face of increased political empowerment at home and decolonized economic integration abroad. And then there's the far more deeply entrenched cultural ties to respective mother countries that have been discussed...

Upon contemplation, I'd imagine that if it's conceived at all, it would be proposed as a continuum of multi-continental inheritances, with the Afro-Atlantic community tying it all together in the middle... Echoes of Actually, on the other other hand, I just remembered - cultural ties to the Mother Country means that *California is considered Chinese-American in the same way that the Midwest is considered German-American, right? And then there's the Erythrean aspirations of the Empire of East Africa, and the Indian and Malaysian contributions to the Cape, not to mention the Vietnamese presence meeting the Afro-Atlantic one in Senegal, in TTL's more integral Francophonie... I think I just answered my own question, phew. This sounds like something that would take a lot of work to seem relevant to the day-to-day lives of all the people involved.

There were only two directions the commonwealths could go: either the consensus would be broken or a new one would form. Rwanda with its quasi-anarchist theology, and Ankole with its ethic of Carlsenist mutual aid, moved quickly toward the latter [...]

This brings me back down to Earth - and my second question: to what degree do you think land reform has been more successful ITTL simply because there are fewer people overall, and more evenly distributed besides? IIRC Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa despite most of the people living on farms in rural areas, and I've read (caveat: on Wikipedia) that Tanzanian fear of foreign landgrabs is one of the main roadblocks to the closer integration of OTL's East African Community.

The people of *China, *Japan and *Korea - or *India, *Indochina, and Nusantara, for that matter - don't have OTL to compare to, of course, but I wonder if there will be quite the perception of East and South Asia as being one misstep away from Malthusian-style collapse. Would *China and *India ever even need to worry about breaching the one billion mark, for that matter? That, and I know absolutely nothing about the historical demography of Latin America or the Middle East, both of which now have stable great powers with healthy social democracies that would facilitate the demographic transition...

I don't have a tidy referencing quote for this, but I finally got around to finishing 1493, and it had a pretty fascinating interlude about Hong Liangji ( 洪亮吉), an 18th century Qing bureaucrat and scholar. He had his moment in the spotlight when he got banished for Imperial mismanagement in the face of population pressures. He never structured his thoughts in the same way as Malthus, but apparently still moved towards a much clearer connection between overpopulation's woes and ecological pressures adding up to a final soil exhaustion and agricultural collapse. I can't help but wonder if a China with a descendant of Confucius as head of state and no Cultural Revolution would have dusted off "Zhi Ping Pian" and burnished nationalist Chinese credentials by pointing out "this one Chinese philosopher you've never heard of that saw 20th century land reform coming!" (the most obscure clickbait possible, lol).

 

[Al-numbers]

...And I'm DONE!! The installments page of Malê Rising is now fully updated up to the Cafavy poem.

I have to say, this is probably one of the most detailed timelines I've ever seen on this site, and probably of all the fiction I've read. I have the biggest respect for you Jonathan, for keeping it up for so long.

Also, happy super-late belated birthday.

 

[SuperFrog]

...And I'm DONE!! The installments page of Malê Rising is now fully updated up to the Cafavy poem.

I have to say, this is probably one of the most detailed timelines I've ever seen on this site, and probably of all the fiction I've read. I have the biggest respect for you Jonathan, for keeping it up for so long.

Also, happy super-late belated birthday.

That will be super helpful! Thanks

 

[Al-numbers]

That will be super helpful! Thanks

You're welcome! And speaking of which, I've been thinking of making another 'link' on the Malê Rising Wiki page that will compile every side-story, offshoot, and spin-off the timeline has produced and/or influenced (The Invisible Cities/Gazetter of Time, The Stars That Bore Us, First Do No Harm, etc.)

What say you all?

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Ali Wahid, Modern Southeast Asia (Batavia: Aiza Khalid Univ. Press, 2013)

… The southeast Asian treaty union that developed during the 1950s and 60s [1] was something new under the sun: a federation of federations. Many of its members, including Nusantara, Malaya and, after 1975, Indochina, were themselves multinational unions, and some of their members, as well as the Philippine Republic, were themselves federal. This made southeast Asia a model of layered government, but also, like Europe, a model of jurisdictional confusion. It took time to reach a consensus about what competences should be held by different levels of government, and even today, the union offices in Singapore spend a disproportionate amount of their caseload sorting out overlapping jurisdictions.

One classic example of the confusion was the effort to standardize and unify the Malay-based trading languages used throughout the region, in much the same way as Modern Hindustani. The project involved governments at all levels as well as universities and boards of scholars, and there were controversies over both the proposed standards and over who would get to approve the final product. The 1986 unveiling of Bahasa Melayu Ejaan Persatuan, as it was called, was as much a triumph of diplomacy as academia, and the new standard dictionary reflected its eclectic roots: it included Dutch loanwords from Nusantara, English from Malaya and Portuguese from Timor as well as the Arabic religious and political terminology that was most common in Malaya but also used by Abacarists and the Hadhrami community in Nusantara. Chinese terms were relatively uncontroversial, because most of them related to cooking, but the debate over which words from local Austronesian languages to retain raged on for years.

The drawn-out, politicized process by which Ejaan Persatuan was created may be part of the reason for its limited success. Most of the Malay-speaking cantons and federations of the union have adopted it as a standard, and in the countries where Malay is not an everyday language, it is the version taught in the schools. But outside government, its use is generally confined to formal settings: Ejaan Persatuan is used in education, broadcast media and to some extent in literature, but day-to-day speech and business are conducted almost exclusively in the local dialect. Malay has developed a diglossia similar to Arabic, in which the literary standard sometimes varies greatly from the language spoken in particular provinces and regions…

… Aside from coming to terms with its multiple layers of government, three main challenges faced southeast Asia in the last third of the twentieth century: economic and cultural integration, New Guinea, and the princely states. The elimination of barriers to movement and work, which was nearly complete after the treaty revisions of 1960, meant that the large cities became even more polyglot than they had been before. In Nusantara and Malaya, the established Chinese and Hadhrami minorities and the descendants of centuries of inter-island migration were joined by Filipinos, Vietnamese and Cambodians, and an equal number of Nusantaran migrants moved north to Saigon and Manila.

The new diversity was not only greater but qualitatively different from what the region had known before. In the core areas of the union, some form of Malay was the language of business and the great majority of people were Muslim, but now the Christian Philippine Republic and the Buddhist countries of Indochina were major partners, and though the difference between Tagalog and Malay was not that great, the Indochinese languages were much further apart. Some of those who moved across these barriers found adjustment difficult, and the Chinese, who were present throughout the region, suddenly found themselves cast in the role of cultural mediators…

… Western New Guinea, in the meantime, was still in many ways a country apart: Nusantara claimed it as the Netherlands had before, but its control had never been firm. By the 1970s, this was changing in the coastal regions, where a form of Malay had been the lingua franca for centuries and where the logging and mining towns brought together settlers from the more metropolitan regions and Papuans looking for work. The interior, though, was still largely impenetrable, and many of its tribes had never been contacted.

During the late 1980s and after, the western highlands were increasingly incorporated into Akmat Ipatas’ network of market towns and truce roads. [2] Unlike the eastern highlands, though, southeast Asian merchants – primarily from Nusantara, but also from Malaya and the Philippines, and including many overseas Chinese – began settling in the market towns rather than merely visiting them. Their numbers were never great – no more than a few hundred in 2000 and three thousand in 2010 – but they had an outsized importance in spreading Islam and Christianity to the highlands and incorporating Malay into the regional trading language.

The merchant settlers also possessed the ability to call on their home countries’ military forces if they were attacked, and by the end of the century, the Nusantaran and Filipino armies and the forces of the Malay states were actively involved in defending the western market towns and ensuring that the endemic warfare between highland tribes didn’t endanger their nationals. Some highland merchants welcomed this, especially since the southeast Asian states made no pretense to rule, but others viewed it (and continue to view it) as a danger. Some towns on the eastern side of the border have banned foreigners from settling, with a few going so far as to close their doors to southeast Asian traders, and although the Asian trading companies have thus far made do by forming partnerships with German and local merchants in these cities, the exclusions may yet be a source of conflict in the future…

… The princely states were already a problem in 1970, and only became more of one in the next two decades. Some had long been democratic – indeed, some, like Makassar, had been leaders in the region’s democratization – but as more of them succumbed to popular unrest during the 1950s and 60s, the holdouts became all the more intransigent. A number of them withdrew from both the Nusantaran federation and the treaty union and coalesced around Brunei, which never had been a part of either. The unrest in these states often spilled over the borders, causing trouble for the security forces in Nusantara, Sulu and Sarawak.

The autocratic princely states that did remain in Nusantara were even more troublesome, because they demanded federal aid in suppressing their rebellions, and after the Court of Arbitration’s ruling in Yeke v. Portugal [3], the federation had little choice but to provide it. The Nusantaran parliament turned to the federal courts and internal disciplinary mechanisms to push these states toward democratization, but these processes were slow, and stronger measures, such as a constitutional human rights clause similar to the All-Indian Union’s, were blocked by member states that feared a creeping loss of independence. In the meantime, the Nusantaran Army was all too often forced to turn its guns on its own people.

Not until the mid-1980s did this dynamic change. By that time, the Court of Arbitration had retreated from the Yeke ruling, enabling the federation to withhold aid against domestic uprisings. In 1990, also, the long negotiations to add a human rights section to the Nusantaran constitutional treaty bore fruit, with the member states finally agreeing on safeguards that would ensure their continuing autonomy. After this, a few more states quit the federation, but the majority of holdouts saw the writing on the wall and acquiesced to civil liberties and participatory government.

But that wasn’t the end of the princely-state crisis, because unrest continued in those states that remained outside the union. During the 1990s and early 2000s, many succumbed and returned to the fold due to a combination of internal pressure and Nusantaran economic sanctions, but a few – including Brunei, which remains stubbornly absolute and where oil wealth enables the monarchy to ignore sanctions – continue to hold out. The distrust created by the period when the federation followed the Yeke ruling has yet to dissipate completely, and

… In the Philippine Republic, a similar struggle was playing out, not against princes but against feudal landlords. Land reform had been promised and occasionally attempted since the revolution, but the landowners’ great wealth and power within their domains enabled most of them to resist, especially since they had a strong presence in the legislature and dominated local government. The federalization of the Philippines proved a two-edged sword in this respect: it protected regional cultures and ensured that there would be a layer of government more responsive to local concerns than the Manila-focused parliament, but it also enabled some of the landlords to turn their provinces into virtual fiefdoms. By the 1970s, the peasants in a growing number of provinces had lost patience with the stalled efforts at land reform and began taking matters into their own hands with farm occupations and rent and tax strikes.

The provincial governments reacted as might be expected, arresting leaders of the peasant movement and using the police as well as privately recruited paramilitary forces to retake occupied farms. The peasants fought back, holding in place where they could and retreating to the mountains where they couldn’t, and in the 1980s, much of rural Luzon was effectively a war zone. The national government and the courts were placed in an awkward position: it couldn’t tolerate a nationwide uprising, but the landlords too were in breach of the land reform laws of the 1920s and 1950s, and their use of paramilitary forces was as illegal as the farm occupations and guerrilla attacks.

During the 1980s and early 90s, the government used a combination of stick and carrot: on the one hand, it appropriated funds to buy out the landlords and develop rural cooperatives, while on the other hand, using the military to suppress guerrillas and paramilitaries. It was able to redistribute a considerable amount of land, but it met with passive resistance from the provinces and active resistance from the peasant movement, and the landlords attacked many of the new cooperatives lest they become centers of peasant activity. Without clear political direction, the army often floundered, and corruption meant that local commanders could sometimes be induced to take sides.

By the 1990s, the army was resented by both sides, but in the end, it provided the breakthrough: in 1994, its mission was extended to election security, and it ensured that the federal and provincial elections that year were clean. In a majority of provinces, a coalition of parties and independent candidates aligned with the peasant movement came to power, and in the federal election, this coalition was strong enough to join with the urban left. In 1995, the new legislature enacted a law of compulsory purchases as well as procedural reforms that broke the ability of landlords to control local elections. Resistance in the courts and from the paramilitaries continued for years, but by the turn of the millennium, the distribution of land was under way, and it continues today. And the songs, literature and art of this period added to a culture that was already becoming influential elsewhere in Asia…

… The southeast Asian treaty union today is, as it was in 1970, a collection of friendly rivals. The Philippines and Indochina remain the most distinct, although people in the cities – even very French Saigon and very Spanish Zamboanga – increasingly speak standard Malay as a second language. These regions are also the most outward-looking, with Indochina strongly connected to China, India and Europe and the Philippines to Japan. In the past forty years, the Philippines have also increased their ties to the Japanese frontier states, particularly Micronesia and Formosa: these were the more culturally creative and outward-looking parts of the Japanese empire between the 1970s and 90s [4], and were thus where much of the interaction between Japan and the Philippine Republic took place. Naturalized Filipinos in both states – especially in Micronesia, where there had been a Filipino presence for centuries – played a part in the Japanese political revolution of the 1990s, and Manila, now a world city, welcomed Micronesians, Ryukyuans, Russians from Kamchatka and the Kurils, and even Hawaiians. The Philippines, more than any other part of the treaty union save New Guinea, were an Asia-Pacific state, and it showed on the streets and in the media.

The core areas of the union are also cosmopolitan, but in a different way. They too have polyglot cities, and their political ideas come from as far as Europe, Africa and the Ottoman world, but they look more within the region than outside it, and have increasingly come to see themselves as parts of a pan-Malay civilization. They are prosperous, with Batavia and the Singapore-Johor Bahru metropolitan area having amenities that any city would be proud to boast. They are also highly educated, and in the past thirty years, rural development has become a major priority. Inequality between regions remains stubborn, especially in the late-reforming princely states, and corruption is a perennial problem, but the population is politically engaged, and it has a strong weapon in the civil-disobedience tradition of Aiza Khalid and the women of Java. One day at a time, southeast Asia is moving into the future…

*******

​

Vitayvan Daravong, On the Borders of Siam: Southeast Asian Conflicts in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (Luang Prabang: Kan Hianhu, 2014)

… By 1970, the socialist republic of Siam had become a de facto military regime. The army, which already enjoyed near-total autonomy in the frontier provinces and controlled much of the economy [5], was increasingly influential in the legislature and bureaucracy. Retired and even serving officers were elected, often unopposed, in rural parliamentary districts, and generals were appointed to senior civil service posts immediately upon their retirement.

The recession of the 1970s only helped the military consolidate its power. Small and medium-sized businesses, hampered by regulations from which military enterprises were effectively immune, failed in large numbers and were bought out by the army at discount prices. In Japan, the shakeout of the 1970s created a zaibatsu state [6]; in Siam, it enabled the army to take near-absolute control of the country. There was still a pretense of electoral democracy and responsible government, but by 1980, only candidates supported by the army dared run, and their policies reflected military priorities. Between 1977 and 2001, only one prime minister was a civilian, and he belonged to a bureaucratic family that had been closely aligned with the army for decades.

As the army solidified its control, it began developing a new ideology to support its rule. This ideology continued to pay lip service to socialism and to support the welfare state, but its main ingredient was strong Siamese nationalism, and it also co-opted Buddhism as a nationalist symbol. The Buddhist monasteries had been apolitical during the socialist period, but now, induced by privileges and power, they became part of the state apparatus, and their preaching took on an increasingly social-nationalist cast.

Given the importance that Buddhist institutions still had in education, this made the Siamese state more cohesive at the core. But at the same time, it increased the unrest on the frontiers. The pressure on the hill tribes to become culturally Siamese intensified – they were now officially classified as “backward areas” and an increasing number of their traditional practices were outlawed – and the cycle of repression and resistance grew more brutal. Also, for the first time, the state put pressure on the Malay and Thai Muslims of the southern provinces, closing mosques due to alleged subversion and firing Muslim civil servants from their jobs.

By the mid-1980s, the low-grade warfare that had taken place in the northern hills for two decades had turned into open battle, and it was joined by a guerrilla conflict in the south. The war in the highlands often spilled over frontiers: the tribes had little regard for borders and many of them had allies in Burma and Laos, and the Siamese army didn’t hesitate to pursue them if they took shelter in neighboring countries. Laos, which Siam still claimed, considered the incursions particularly alarming and invoked the Indochinese federation’s defense treaty, while Burma, seeing a chance to get its historic eastern provinces back, actively aided the rebellion. In 1987 and again in 1992, the Burmese and Siamese armies clashed directly over a period of weeks.

The Court of Arbitration tried to intervene on several occasions, but the conflict was a particularly challenging one for it to police. The length and ruggedness of Siam’s northern frontier made it prohibitive to station peacekeepers, and there were often ambiguities about who was at fault for violating the border. In addition, Siam’s first nuclear test in 1985 raised the stakes dramatically, and while the court could theoretically call on the great powers’ nuclear arsenals for mutually assured destruction, it was reluctant to risk triggering a confrontation where it might have to make good on that threat. Thus, while the court stationed monitors and was able to broker ceasefires on the two occasions when Siam and Burma engaged in limited war, the conflict as a whole remained stubbornly beyond resolution.

This was brought into relief by the failed peace talks of 1993. The Court of Arbitration and the Consistory went to considerable lengths to bring the parties to the table, offered incentives if a peace treaty were signed, and put forward several plans for regional autonomy. Many of the hill tribes were willing to accept, and after sufficient bribery, Burma agreed to give up its claims in exchange for open commercial and cultural access. But the Siamese government, driven more than ever by nationalism and secure in its nuclear fortress, proved intransigent, and by the end of the year, the talks had collapsed and full-scale fighting resumed.

Bangkok’s hard line was also aided by the relative lack of domestic opposition. The nominal opposition parties had long since been co-opted, and any real opposition was held down by a combination of state repression and despair over the fate of previous revolutions. And the rebel ideologies – influenced by Abacarist Islam in the south and by the politicized, Ahmadi- and shamanic-inflected Buddhism of Laos in the north – had little appeal in the Siamese heartland. They did gain some following in the lowland areas of Chiang Mai province, which would prove critical later, but beyond that, they were purely local phenomena.

This would change only in the later 1990s. After the failure of the peace talks, the Court of Arbitration imposed economic sanctions which bit increasingly as the decade passed: by 1995, the Siamese heartland had fallen back into recession. In the meantime, as the hill tribes became better-armed and took control of greater swathes of territory, more and more soldiers were needed to keep the rebellions in check, and conscription began to take its toll on well-connected urban families as well as the rural collectives.

The final straw, however, would be another war with Burma in early 2001. In the opening days, the Burmese forces and their hill-tribe allies shattered a badly-led Siamese division, opening a path to Siamese-held territory and even threatening Chiang Mai. The Siamese general staff panicked and detonated several five-kiloton nuclear weapons in the Burmese path. The blasts caused relatively few casualties – their purpose was to create a contaminated zone, cause landslides and close the passes to the Burmese army rather than to destroy populated areas – but it came as a shock to the international community. More than that, rumors about fallout spread through the downwind areas, including Chiang Mai city, and both civilians and soldiers believed they had been poisoned.

The use of fission bombs immediately threatened to bring the Indian Union, of which Burma was by now an associate, into the war. Even more, they catalyzed protests in the Siamese streets where previous developments had not. In Chiang Mai, a coalition of junior officers, common soldiers and local notables seized control of the city and declared a provisional government. In Bangkok and the densely populated heartland, now under Court of Arbitration-enforced blockade and facing the looming possibility of armed Indian and Consistory intervention, hundreds of thousands took to the streets and several army units called to suppress the protests fought each other instead. A week after the detonations, the military handed power to a caretaker government and called elections.

The collapse of the Siamese regime, coming on top of the Hungarian regency council’s fate [7], has thus far ensured that this second use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield was the last. Other nuclear powers have taken on board the lesson that use of their arsenals will rebound politically against them. The Court and the Consistory have also learned to be more forceful in situations where nuclear weapons might potentially be used. But the end of the third Siamese-Burmese war was not, to say the least, a shining moment in the history of international law: both structural factors and timorousness ensured that the international bodies played a reactive rather than an active role. The Siamese government’s downfall was due more to domestic than international politics, and if it hadn’t fallen, the results might have been disastrous. The proper response of collective security institutions to nuclear threats is still one of the most pressing debates in global diplomacy, and one that admits of no easy resolution…

… The November 2001 election brought in a broad coalition of liberals, centrists, socialists and moderate nationalists, and they approached peace talks in a much more compromising spirit than the government of 1993. They came in with an offer of autonomy, constitutionally-enshrined cultural rights, subsidies for underdeveloped provinces and a regional cooperation treaty – the sort of proposal that would have ended the conflict had it been made eight years earlier. But there was too much water under the bridge since then, not only the nuclear incident but the years of military atrocities in the highlands and the south. The rebels had effective control over much of the disputed territory, and they were unwilling to give it up. With the neighboring countries and the great powers in an unforgiving mood, Bangkok lost its bid to keep the country together: ultimately, it had little choice but to let the southernmost provinces join the Malay federation, recognize unions of hill tribes along the Burmese and Laotian borders, and grant free city status to Chiang Mai and its immediate hinterland.

These concessions, inevitable as they were, provoked a furious backlash from the nationalist camp and from the hard-line Buddhist clergy, ensuring that the coalition would be swept out of power in 2005. The right wing – albeit a nominally socialist right wing which has continued to support rural collectivism and social welfare – has remained in power with commanding majorities ever since, and though Siam has not returned to dictatorship, it is a heavily nationalist and authoritarian state. Some of the breakaway areas have fared still worse. The hill tribes bordering Laos are peaceful, and Chiang Mai has become a polyglot trading center where progressive Buddhism has been influenced by the ideas originally brought to Laos by the lost Indian regiments, but the northwest frontier has seen endemic fighting between tribes aligned to Burma and China, those who reject both patrons, and in a few cases, drug lords gone political. The Consistory is more active in this region than in nearly any other, and whether it can bring peace to the Shan and Karen hills remains to be seen…

*******

​

Bhim Singh Aluwalia, From the Vales of Kashmir to the Malabar Coast: A History of the All-Indian Union (Hyderabad: Osmania, 2012)

… In 1973, Sikandar Bakht Bahadur, the Mugal prince who was twice prime minister of the Indian Republic and who had arguably done more than anyone since the revolution to shape India’s twentieth century [8], stepped down from the premiership to accept the presidency of the All-India Development Union. This was (as it still is) a largely ceremonial position, but it was one of great symbolic importance, and the Last Mughal Emperor later said that this rather than either of his premierships was the pinnacle of his career. He was titular head of a union that comprised one sixth of humanity and included territories greater than any Indian monarch, or even the Raj, had ever ruled, and that, even more than political power, was something he viewed as his feudal destiny. In his life, he was called Last Mughal Emperor, the New Mughal Emperor and the Carrion Bird, but when he died in 1980, he was remembered as the Prince of India.

Perhaps fittingly, the 1970s were a hopeful time in the Union. The recession was considerably milder there than in most other regions, and in some places there was even growth: the businesses that depended on international trade had to retrench and reform, but India’s huge domestic market and growing local demand provided insulation, and the previous generations’ investment in education and high-technology industries was paying off. The member states were increasingly unified on the world stage: they were internally independent, retained their separate Consistory membership and conducted their own trade missions, but increasingly did their other diplomacy through the Union offices. The requirement that foreign policy be mutually agreed meant that no member’s priorities would be left off the table, and they discovered that a united front carried a great deal of influence in the world. There could be no doubt now that India, collectively, was a great power, and when Sikandar Bakht Bahadur, in his last official act, signed the treaty that changed the All-India Development Union’s name to the All-Indian Union, the public from Colombo to Gangtok saw it as the harbinger of a bright future.

But clouds were already on the horizon, both domestically and on the borders. In the west, the Persian revolution of 1975 brought to power a left-religious coalition with which Persia’s Baluchi client states were ill at ease. The Baluchi princes had no desire to return to the Indian orbit, and formed a federation of their own that was loosely aligned with Oman, but the federation was a weak one and instability from the Persian- and Ottoman-inspired opposition was beginning to spill across Indian borders. In addition, by the end of the 1970s, terrorist attacks by Deobandis in the Afghan hills had already drawn Indian military forces, from both the Republic and the northwest frontier states, to protect the road to Turkestan. [9]

The Afghan commitment was not particularly great, but it would trigger a serious domestic crisis. The armies of the northwest frontier states were poorly equipped and ill-suited to carry out their share of the mission, which meant that the Republic was forced to pick up the slack. The Republic, annoyed at this state of affairs, suggested that there was little reason for the small princely states to have armies at all, and that they should instead contribute troops and money to a common Union military force that would respond to threats collectively. Some of the member states – including, critically, Hyderabad, Nepal and Madras, all of which had sufficient military strength to be influential in forming a joint defense policy – warmed to the idea quickly, but others feared that this was a ploy for the Republic to gain dominance, and even in the states where the government was willing, many officers feared loss of their jobs.

The storm broke in Bikaner in 1982, shortly after the parliament voted in favor of merging its military into a Union force. Three days after the vote, the army seized power, deposed Maharajah Karni Singh, and declared a provisional government. The deposed monarch, who had fled just ahead of the squad sent to arrest him, arrived in Delhi later in the day along with those members of the government who had also been able to flee. Before the week was out, the Indian Republic had acceded to Karni Singh’s request for aid, and the maharajah returned to Bikaner City with the Republic’s troops at his back. The restored government, now believing that its security lay with the Republic, joined the princely union of Rajputana at the end of the year.

This last move was a step too far. Few condemned the Republic for defending a fellow Indian state from a coup, but when stubbornly independent Bikaner, which had kept its independence through the revolution and the upheavals of the 1920s and 30s, acceded to the Republic, it reignited old fears that Delhi wanted to unify the subcontinent by force. The Republic’s government would fall over the affair in June 1983, and the prime minister of the time would later say that it was a mistake to proceed so quickly, but the damage was done. Negotiations for a joint military force would remain stalled for years, and when an all-Union military treaty finally was ratified in 1990, the new army’s headquarters would be in Hyderabad rather than joining the Republic’s high command in Lucknow. An increasing number of the Union’s offices also moved to Hyderabad during the 1980s and 90s, and although some agencies remained in other cities, it was clear that Hyderabad and not Delhi would become the Union’s informal capital.

The Bikaner affair also ignited Deobandi militancy in northwest India. As in Afghanistan, Deobandi anti-modernism became a focus of opposition to a reformist union that many feared was going too far. And as attacks spread from Afghanistan to India and then to southern Turkestan, the Deobandi militants became intertwined with organized crime. One of the more unfortunate effects of the Indian War of Independence was a continuing valorization of revolutionary violence, and embracing a political cause was a way for criminal gangs to legitimize themselves. Over the generations, dacoits had claimed to act against feudalism and had taken positions on both sides of the caste struggle: now, some took the mantle of the Deobandis and others claimed to protect the people from Deobandi terror. In most cases, their political stances were purely opportunistic, but they still made the dacoits harder to root out, and in some regions, added an alarming sectarian element to the struggle.

In the meantime, challenges were also arising in the northeast. Rangoon, which had been a free city under Indian protection since the revolution, lost its Indian majority by 1980 as more lowland Burmese moved in to seek work. This made India’s hold less tenable, and as Burma became stronger, it demanded the city’s return. At the same time, some of the northeast frontier states, including Manipur as well as the smaller Christian and Buddhist-dominated states, were nearly as close to Burma in terms of culture and geography as they were to metropolitan India, and cultivated links to Burma as a counterweight to the Indian Republic.

Here, with a little aid from Siam, the Union was able to square the circle. In 1987, the members of the Union agreed that if Burma were to accept associate membership, the Republic would relinquish sovereignty over Rangoon, which would remain a free city but would have a Burmese high commissioner. Burma greeted this offer cautiously – its battles against India were not long in the past – but an alliance with India would help protect it against the Siamese threat, and would also provide a framework through which it could build cultural and economic ties to the northeast Indian states. In the end, Burma acceded, and the Republic withdrew from Rangoon on 1 January 1988: the subsequent era of cooperation would go well enough that in 2003, Burma became a full Union member.

To the north, the implementation of the Union’s human rights treaty proved difficult in the Nepali rajyas. Unlike India, which had actively promoted (and sometimes coerced) democratization in its princely states, Nepal had adopted a policy of benign neglect, which meant that many of them were little changed from the nineteenth century. They had much farther to travel in satisfying the human rights clauses, and many dragged their feet in doing so, causing predictable unrest. And in the heartland of India itself, as well as on the frontier, the Adivasis – the indigenous tribal peoples – took up the struggle that the lower castes had waged in previous generations, demanding land tenure, job opportunities, development, and collective representation in Union institutions.

All this added up to another set of growing pains: just as India had a rocky transition out of colonialism, and just as the rationalization of the princely states and the construction of a regional federation had been difficult, so too was the Union’s growth into a great power. But India was equal to these challenges. Like Turkestan and the reforming Afghan government, the Union approached the Deobandis with a combination of military pressure and conciliation, enlisting the aid of those Northwest Frontier states that had moderate Deobandi governments and had learned to work within the human rights clauses. By 2010, the threat of Deobandi militancy had receded substantially, although it remained a problem in the Northwest Frontier and the Indus Valley and still required a military commitment. At the same time, constitutional reforms of the 1990s met many of the Adivasis’ demands, and economic growth and strong laws against discrimination enabled them to take part in India’s development. And another reform of 1998, the creation of an All-India Human Rights Court in which individuals could sue member governments, opened the door for systemic change in the rajyas and the frontier states.

And even amid its troubles, the Union continued to advance. The All-Indian Union today is the world’s fourth largest economy, and although inequality remains a problem, the extreme poverty that once prevailed in the countryside is largely a thing of the past. Education, health and life expectancy statistics are not far short of the developed world, especially in the richer states and regions. The films of Tollygunge, Madras and Cochin reach worldwide audiences, and the Union’s web of associations stretches to eastern and southern Africa, Mauritius, Southeast Asia and the Dominion of Trinidad and Guiana. There are more growing pains ahead, and the social struggles continue, but if Sikandar Bakht Bahadur were alive today, he would not be displeased at what he saw…
_______

[1] See post 6145.

[2] See post 6678.

[3] See post 6368.

[4] See post 6670.

[5] See post 6145.

[6] See post 6670.

[7] See posts 6544 and 6563.

[8] See posts 5247 and 5963.

[9] See post 6594.

 

[Practical Lobster]

Ah, this is excellent! As always.

To what degree are there still sanctions on Siam, if the social-nationalists are back in power? It seems like after a nuclear show of force the reprisals would remain severe for a long time, but I guess this timeline doesn't have our timeline's history with nukes. Still though...

Both India and Indonesia seem much calmer and more prosperous in our timeline - but I have to wonder, how authoritarian are city-states like Singapore? I know a lot of human rights legislation has been enacted, but what all does this entail?

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

I feel like a Russian from TTL would be quite conflicted reading this. On the one hand some of these scenes make institutionalized Big Man politics sound like an even more localized version of council democracy. On the other hand, a unanimous vote giving people the power to force cooperation without consultation or negotiation sounds a lot like the circumstances that led to a second revolution in Russia.

It's actually a bit of both. Collusion between Big Men can make public opinion on particular issues irrelevant (as in the story), but they don't agree on every issue. And there are limits on collusion - if a group of local Big Men does something really unpopular, the people can withdraw support from all of them and raise up new ones in their place. That would be a rare event, equivalent to a revolution, but it has happened from time to time, and the possibility acts as a deterrent to Big Men who are tempted to ignore their constituents too much.

With that said, the system is in need of reform - it was designed at a time when Big Men were nearly always rivals and where loss of following was greatly to be feared, and it doesn't work as well (at least in terms of public participation) when the default is for Big Men to work together. The reformists' ire isn't directed at Big Man governance as such, but there's a movement in Malaita, and to a lesser extent Roviana, for a formal constitution and independent courts.

So, yes, "quite conflicted" would sum up a Russian reader's feeling.

If this were a forum ITTL and we were all graduate students in a program studying modernization and the social impact of institutional development in the Global South, I feel like this story would be one of the top three go-to books for humanizing quotes or characterizing excerpts at the headers of a new chapter. I hope that's not too weird a place to go with this, but that thought tied for first when I finished reading, along with "Oh wow, that sounds a lot like han in Korean cultural anthropology", and "Oh wow, that was amazing".

I wasn't thinking of that when I wrote it, but the analogy fits, although with Malaita a much smaller country and with its political system based on personal and familial loyalty, there's a much more personal connotation to the concept of injustice.

BTW, the in-universe Malaitan author may well have encountered the concept of han, given that Korean and Solomon Island traders work in some of the same places and there's been some cultural diffusion.

Actually, that gives me two very different questions to think about, too: first, if TTL's academic and cultural milieu ever lead to something approximating OTL's La Raza Cósmica or La Raza de Bronce.

You did answer your own question. ITTL, over time, both nationalists and internationalists have come to view culture rather than race as the fundamental foundation of peoplehood - a conception that is misguided in its own way and has led to both strange pairings and strange divisions, but has made perceived racial distinctions more fluid and less socially meaningful. The concept of a united mestizo people (with or without marginal regions) may exist, but it would be expressed in cultural rather than racial terms.

This brings me back down to Earth - and my second question: to what degree do you think land reform has been more successful ITTL simply because there are fewer people overall, and more evenly distributed besides? IIRC Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa despite most of the people living on farms in rural areas, and I've read (caveat: on Wikipedia) that Tanzanian fear of foreign landgrabs is one of the main roadblocks to the closer integration of OTL's East African Community.

The people of *China, *Japan and *Korea - or *India, *Indochina, and Nusantara, for that matter - don't have OTL to compare to, of course, but I wonder if there will be quite the perception of East and South Asia as being one misstep away from Malthusian-style collapse. Would *China and *India ever even need to worry about breaching the one billion mark, for that matter? That, and I know absolutely nothing about the historical demography of Latin America or the Middle East, both of which now have stable great powers with healthy social democracies that would facilitate the demographic transition...

That's part of it, but I'm not sure it's that simple - part of the reason the demographic transition ended earlier ITTL was because it began earlier, so there was a period during the early and middle twentieth century - at a guess, up to the 1960s or so - when populations were generally higher than OTL. Earlier and more widespread urbanization and industrialization in the global South, which took many people off the land, also played a large part in relieving pressure and making land reform easier. And the demographic transition may be a leading indicator in some ways - even though populations were still growing quickly in the 30s through 50s due to better health and longer life expectancy, family sizes were already declining, so it was obvious that the land wouldn't have to be continually subdivided. And, of course, stronger peasant movements functioning in more equitable political systems were able to enforce more of their demands.

In any event, I doubt that either India or China exceed one billion population ITTL (although both are close), and you are correct that Asia isn't thought of as a Malthusian time bomb. The overpopulation dystopias that were trendy in OTL during the 70s were never written ITTL, because it was obvious by then that the demographic transition had turned the corner.

I don't have a tidy referencing quote for this, but I finally got around to finishing 1493, and it had a pretty fascinating interlude about Hong Liangji ( 洪亮吉), an 18th century Qing bureaucrat and scholar. He had his moment in the spotlight when he got banished for Imperial mismanagement in the face of population pressures. He never structured his thoughts in the same way as Malthus, but apparently still moved towards a much clearer connection between overpopulation's woes and ecological pressures adding up to a final soil exhaustion and agricultural collapse. I can't help but wonder if a China with a descendant of Confucius as head of state and no Cultural Revolution would have dusted off "Zhi Ping Pian" and burnished nationalist Chinese credentials by pointing out "this one Chinese philosopher you've never heard of that saw 20th century land reform coming!" (the most obscure clickbait possible, lol).

This needs to happen. Claiming historical figures and writings as forerunners is nearly universal, I'd say, and Hong Liangji would be perfect for 1970s China.

To what degree are there still sanctions on Siam, if the social-nationalists are back in power? It seems like after a nuclear show of force the reprisals would remain severe for a long time, but I guess this timeline doesn't have our timeline's history with nukes. Still though...

The sanctions on Siam weren't for their form of government or for having nukes - they were for aggressive warfare, repeated violation of the Burmese and Laotian frontiers, and contempt of Court of Arbitration orders. The current Siamese government isn't doing those things, and they've paid damages to Burma, so they're back in the family of nations, although their neighbors keep a close eye on them.

As mentioned in the update, exactly what to do about nuclear weapons now that they've been used twice is still a hot-button issue. There's a universal disarmament movement, of course, but the great powers don't support it, and restricting nukes to only the great powers (as, in theory, is the legal regime IOTL) isn't politically viable with everyone else. The major controversy is between those who believe that a rigorous regime of inspection and accountability is all that's necessary, and those who think that a more restrictive legal framework and an overwhelming collective-security response against nuclear blackmail are needed.

Both India and Indonesia seem much calmer and more prosperous in our timeline - but I have to wonder, how authoritarian are city-states like Singapore? I know a lot of human rights legislation has been enacted, but what all does this entail?

Singapore is majority-Chinese as in OTL, and there was (and to some extent still is) a lot of admiration for Ma China there. On the other hand, there are also parties affiliated with the Chinese left and the democracy movements that grew up in the 60s and 70s. As well, it's part of the Malayan federation, and the government thus doesn't have the kind of absolute control over local politics that it has IOTL. It's not a perfect democracy (quite a few states in the region aren't) but it has real participatory institutions.

The human rights treaties generally cover the basics - freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of religion, freedom from arbitrary arrest, fair trials, and the like. Most treaties also include provisions for racial and gender equality and, where applicable, non-discrimination on other grounds such as caste or religion. The rule of law and democratic governance are also seen as basic human rights, although in practice there's some leeway with the latter.

More expansive conceptions of human rights, often including positive rights, are common at the national and provincial levels, and there are some framework Consistory treaties that are enforceable against signatories, but there isn't yet enough of a consensus for them to be customary law or to be constitutionalized at the regional level.

...And I'm DONE!! The installments page of Malê Rising is now fully updated up to the Cafavy poem.

And speaking of which, I've been thinking of making another 'link' on the Malê Rising Wiki page that will compile every side-story, offshoot, and spin-off the timeline has produced and/or influenced (The Invisible Cities/Gazetter of Time, The Stars That Bore Us, First Do No Harm, etc.)

What say you all?

Thanks again for keeping up the list! And as for the other, those stories are born of the Malêverse even if they're not part of it, so there's no harm in cataloging them somewhere. (It's kind of amazing, actually, how many of the stories I've written lately came from ideas that were originally conceived as part of the Malêverse.)

I have to say, this is probably one of the most detailed timelines I've ever seen on this site, and probably of all the fiction I've read.

I'm trying to create a complete world here, and to pay attention to social and cultural as well as political history. One thing I've learned in the course of four years writing this is exactly how big a job that is.

 

[Kevin R.]

Great update!

God, Siam has had a tough time. It kind of reminds me of OTL's Myanmar junta on steroids, between the repression of the hill tribes and Muslims and the ideological foundations of the regime -- ironic, given how the regime wound up going down in a war with Burma. And even with democracy, it doesn't look like there's a lot of room for change in the foreseeable future.

The nature of Siam also got me wondering about how Buddhism is viewed in the West. In OTL, it's stereotyped as kind of a fluff-bunny religion, one that's committed to peace, harmony, non-violence, egalitarianism, and tolerance, mainly because the strains that got popular in the West (many of them derived from Zen) tend to lean in that direction. Here, however, the notoriety of the Siamese regime likely means that the nastier, fundamentalist side of Buddhism, the side that in OTL often gets overlooked (outside of investigative reports about repression in Myanmar and Sri Lanka), is likely to also be well-known. The greater religious and racial tolerance of TTL likely means that the more liberal strains of Buddhism still have credibility, but at the same time, the religion as a whole won't have anything like its OTL hippie reputation. This might lead some other faiths, ranging from "social church" Christianity (in the vein of OTL's Jesus Freaks) to neo-paganism, to claim some of the counterculture cred that Buddhism had in OTL.

And on that note, neo-paganism is likely to be an extremely interesting subject in the polyglot world of Malê Rising, with its greater prevalence of folk religions along with fusion between various faiths of many types in many areas. It's not out of the question to think that somebody ITTL is gonna take this religious blending to its logical conclusion and create some form of vaguely pagan, Wicca-esque pantheism, proclaiming that all the world's gods, demi-gods, angels, and avatars are merely aspects of one metaphysical force of some kind. And given the nature of this world, I would not be surprised if it manages to break out of the tiny countercultural niche that paganism and pantheism inhabit in OTL.

 

[Libertad]

Wow, that's an amazing update JE.

Obviously, I am waiting for the update regarding the Philippines and I am not disappointed. It's a strange mixture of familiar and the very strange. The US colonial era created such a strong impact alongside the Second World War and the Cold War that this is a truly strange looking Philippines for an OTL Filipino visitor. I am not surprised of the Philippines as a country with problems in land reform, as a bridge between worlds and as a cultural power since those are what define the Philippines IOTL, with Filipino TV shows mesmerizing international audiences from China to Zambia, Nigeria and Uganda and Filipino songs hitting charts abroad but the US part is truly missing ITTL. A state promoted Manila-centric Tagalog-based indigenous national culture and language replaced it along with a Malayan revival through a rediscovery of precolonial roots. Then came the influence of Japan, which is stronger ITTL due to the economic links. The Spanish heritage is also not diluted, especially with Zamboanga nearby and an earlier independent Philippines creating links in Latin America across the Pacific. The contacts with Japan, the problems in Siam, the Indian Revolution and the Sino-Russian War also made sure that Manila is going to become an immigrant magnet since ITTL's Philippines will not impose exclusionary acts on Chinese and Japanese immigration. You are spot on in terms of the Philippines as the most cosmopolitan Southeast Asian state ITTL. It's just going to be that. I suspected as much. You got this accurately and it's all realistic. It's just frustrating that I am going to have a hard time adjusting my conversational Tagalog to the circumstances ITTL. I have to use a "more formal" and "deeper" Tagalog than usual and it's going to take a lot out of me because IOTL Tagalog/Filipino is "Taglish". So many English words. Interchangeability of Tagalog and English. I am going to look like a Filipino-American FOB for an ITTL Filipino.

Economically, it's obvious that this country is far wealthier than its OTL counterpart. It's interesting that this country is definitely wealthier by per capita basis than Nusantara, I'm sure, and it's head start over other Southeast Asian countries was not destroyed ITTL. It's even wealthier than countries like Russia ITTL! Am I right about this? There are the benefits of earlier independence, the Japanese economic zone replacing US investment ITTL and though it might be a smaller share than that of the OTL Americans, it is compensated by having no World War II devastation. Manila is the second most destroyed city in World War II after Warsaw AFAIK. The country never truly recovered from that despite the 1950s industrialization. There is nothing like this ITTL. The looting of the national treasury by the Marcoses is also not present ITTL. The looting set the country back by 30 years in terms of development. There are no Muslim and Communist insurgencies though the peasant insurgencies replaced them. But the "caciqueism" and the associated "political dynasties" being big pains in the butt are definitely realistic. You got it right in terms of land reform becoming a big problem. I also suspected as much in this case. Land reform though also set the country back in terms of industrializing and becoming wealthier. But I'll take this Philippine Republic, even if ITTL Filipinos will laugh at me when they hear me speak and think of me as a Filipino-American FOB or tourist.

The land reform struggles are an excellent socio-political background for a flowering of culture that's going to be exported overseas plus the regional cultural struggles and the Malayan revivals. I can see an almost similar phenomenon like these news reports ITTL, though the international audience might be more Oceanian, Japanese and Latin American than African.

http://asianjournalusa.com/pinoy-soap-operas-a-big-hit-from-china-to-africa-p8778-67.htm
http://www.rappler.com/entertainment/38328-filipino-seryes-hit-cambodia
http://kickerdaily.com/filipino-drama-series-are-a-hit-in-uganda/

I also sense that there is going to be a counterpart of "Anak" ITTL, in terms of a Filipino song becoming an international hit especially in Asia and the song translated into various languages. I am not sure of Anak becoming a hit in the US Billboard charts or even becoming a no. 2 hit of the 1980s worldwide as claimed. But I can definitely see a version of Anak ITTL, maybe a bit less Western influenced and a more "pasyon" and kundiman based song. But the Western influence can still be there anyway. We have Latin America. We have US blues music. US pop music is definitely going to be there as an international influence. The Anak counterpart can be as is just like how you can hear it in these links.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anak_(song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXEiOyi071I - original (1977)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-04L3wzSPs - Chinese version (Kenny Bee 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H8aw2i4xpY - Japanese version (Juro Sugita 1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2WlrXDtiuI - Japanese live version by Yuko Nakazawa, formerly of Morning Musume!! I am surprised of this one. And there's Balalaika by my teenage crush Koharu Kusumi in the end of the video! It's 2006! Hahaha!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgWxsh6RsbA - Korean karaoke version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aori9Y7r3b0 - Comical conversation in Korea about Anak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM9BU1JjsOw - KPOP group J-morning cover in Filipino language

I can also feel that Philippine music ITTL is going to be folkish with those traditional Filipino rhythms and vocals based on "pasyon" in terms of how Anak was song or something like this song 1996 Bayani Ka by Grace Nono:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7BItp9HupA

I recommend listening to this song. This might be one of the closest songs we can have IOTL for a Filipino pop song in Maleverse.

 

[Sulemain]

IT Siam reminds me of OTL Imperial Japan.

Random thought I bet the Hamilton musical got made earlier ITTL.

 

[Badshah]

Thanks for the shoutout, JE! (From the Vales of Kashmir to the Malabar Coast, indeed)
Certainly the multinational supra-unions are going to be an interesting vanguard for possible future political arrangements; I'd imagine ITTL 2050, there might be a combination of the Eryhtrean Union, the Indian Union and the Southeast Asian Union as a sort of Indian Ocean Economic Development Union. Sitting in an international relations classroom we see a lot about the anarchical society, and TTL is seeing that idea slowly dissipate into a fog of divisible sovereignty; one might be more inclined to call it a fishing net of sovereignty given how allegiances are playing out throughout the world.

One thing I've found is that the centre in these governments is very weak however, and its ability to respond in times of crisis might be held up by very thick layers of red tape- for example, it's seems like conciliation is a must in dealing with conflicts not in spite of the government, but because of how reliant the government is on local centres of power. That can be both a good and a bad thing- people might see the central government as accountable for things that the central government just doesn't have the power to do- a phenomenon that does occur OTL, allowing provincial leaders to play off local sentiments against the centre to increase their own power and lead to more corruption in the long run. On the other hand, places with increased literacy, and political altruism might see more political activism that entrenches the public's role in government; enough in fact that the clan loyalties that plague Asia won't be as strong in the centre. The 'Nehrus' or 'Bhuttos' in this TL would be way more entrenched as regional dynasts rather than national ones, although there will be a slip here and there.

I had a question surrounding the German Empire- you said earlier that the Hohenzollerns wouldn't always be Emperor- who were the non-Hohenzollern leaders of Germany?

EDIT: I guess a minor footnote would be that the Nizam of Hyderabad would have long usurped royal status, as Osman Ali Khan tried so very hard to do- he would probably adopt the title King of Hyderabad ITTL, especially since if he didn't, his nominal overlord would be Sikhandar Bakht .

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

God, Siam has had a tough time. It kind of reminds me of OTL's Myanmar junta on steroids, between the repression of the hill tribes and Muslims and the ideological foundations of the regime -- ironic, given how the regime wound up going down in a war with Burma. And even with democracy, it doesn't look like there's a lot of room for change in the foreseeable future.

IT Siam reminds me of OTL Imperial Japan.

Both were models, along with some of the more authoritarian periods in OTL Thailand. The autonomy of the military and the presence of serving officers in the cabinet are from Imperial Japan, while the war against the hill tribes and the Buddhist nationalism are more Burmese (and Sri Lankan). And yes, the irony of the Siamese regime collapsing after a war with Burma was intentional.

Needless to say, Siam is one of the more Westphalian states remaining in the modern world.

Change, if it happens, will be a generational process, as time passes and voters grow up who don't remember or feel strongly about the events of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. There are also some cities and towns that are opposition strongholds and might become rallying points. But this will take decades, and even then may be doubtful, given that Siam ITTL has a similar sense of humiliation to China IOTL, the Buddhist theology of possession created by the military regime has sunk deep roots, and the experiences of past republican episodes haven't given the Siamese a great deal of faith in democracy.

One other thing that hasn't happened and won't happen ITTL is the view of Bangkok as a Southeast Asian sin city - under the socialists and then the military, it was fairly strait-laced, and has stayed so under the right-authoritarians. I'm not sure if any city in that region will have the place in popular imagination that Bangkok did IOTL: the Muslim cities and Manila are culturally wrong for it, Singapore and Saigon are all business (and also culturally wrong), and Chiang Mai and Vientiane are more hippie than decadent. Maybe Rangoon or... Mandalay? Or maybe not.

The nature of Siam also got me wondering about how Buddhism is viewed in the West. In OTL, it's stereotyped as kind of a fluff-bunny religion, one that's committed to peace, harmony, non-violence, egalitarianism, and tolerance, mainly because the strains that got popular in the West (many of them derived from Zen) tend to lean in that direction.

That and Tibet, never mind the pre-1950 feudalism. There's not a lot of nuance in the OTL Western view of Buddhism.

Here, however, the notoriety of the Siamese regime likely means that the nastier, fundamentalist side of Buddhism, the side that in OTL often gets overlooked (outside of investigative reports about repression in Myanmar and Sri Lanka), is likely to also be well-known. The greater religious and racial tolerance of TTL likely means that the more liberal strains of Buddhism still have credibility, but at the same time, the religion as a whole won't have anything like its OTL hippie reputation.

The hippies are still there in Chiang Mai and Laos, and possibly Tibet or Mongolia as well. There's also a great deal of syncretic folk-Buddhism floating around, much of it brought to the West by East Asian immigrants; I mentioned in post 6486 that an indigenous American folk-Buddhism has developed which incorporates many Abrahamic faith traditions and in which Americana has taken the place held by shamanic objects in Japan or China. That sort of thing - and other syncretic fusions like the Transbaikal faith - has a good deal of hippie appeal.

But you're correct that the more oppressive side of Buddhist theology will be more widely known, and that the Western view of Buddhism will be more nuanced and less idealized. And as you say, this will create room for more countercultural faiths from other traditions: lots of Jesus freaks, certainly, as well as cabalists and Sufis of various stripes, adoptions from Asian shamanism and West African animism, and various eclectic fusions.

I mentioned European neopaganism in post 6563 - it's a niche tradition, but it certainly exists. The influence of the Mari (who are the real deal - not neopagans, but the last Europeans with an unbroken pagan tradition) has given neopaganism a narodnik and environmentalist flavor, and I'd guess that along with the Germanic and Slavic traditionalists, there are others who've combined environmentalism, feminism, anarchism and magical-realist storytelling into something New Age-y. Neopaganism will be a spectrum, but something Wicca-like seems almost inevitable.

It's a strange mixture of familiar and the very strange. The US colonial era created such a strong impact alongside the Second World War and the Cold War that this is a truly strange looking Philippines for an OTL Filipino visitor... I am going to have a hard time adjusting my conversational Tagalog to the circumstances ITTL. I have to use a "more formal" and "deeper" Tagalog than usual and it's going to take a lot out of me because IOTL Tagalog/Filipino is "Taglish". So many English words. Interchangeability of Tagalog and English.

Tagalog ITTL has much less English, a lot more Japanese (and possibly Chinese), and even more Malay than OTL. The Tagalog spoken in the Philippine Republic is also a "purer" language in the sense that code-switching with another language isn't common, although Filipinos living abroad might code-switch into Japanese or Malay. (What you will see are Chinese, Japanese and Nusantaran immigrants in Manila code-switching with Tagalog, and that might have some influence on street language.)

Economically, it's obvious that this country is far wealthier than its OTL counterpart. It's interesting that this country is definitely wealthier by per capita basis than Nusantara, I'm sure, and it's head start over other Southeast Asian countries was not destroyed ITTL. It's even wealthier than countries like Russia ITTL! Am I right about this?

Parts of the Philippines are richer than others - Manila is a wealthy traders' and bankers' city, while the less developed rural areas are still poor - but yes, it's considerably richer than OTL, and probably comparable with Russia or TTL Korea. There were losses from the revolution in the 1910s, and corruption and feudalism have been a continuing drag on growth, but as you say, there hasn't been anything comparable to WW2 or Marcos. It's safe to say that the stereotype of the Filipino contract worker doesn't exist ITTL: there was labor emigration earlier in the 20th century, but today most of the expats are professionals and businessmen, and as you correctly guess, the Republic is a country of net immigration.

Speaking of the countryside, BTW, the Philippines may be one of the few places outside Central America where Fraternalism has appeal, given the tradition of radical Catholic politics and the need for peasant cooperatives to band together for self-defense. I'd expect that there would be a moderate-sized Fraternalist party in the legislature and that some of the rural communities will model themselves on Honduras.

But the "caciqueism" and the associated "political dynasties" being big pains in the butt are definitely realistic. You got it right in terms of land reform becoming a big problem. I also suspected as much in this case. Land reform though also set the country back in terms of industrializing and becoming wealthier.

I think it would be inevitable, given the social and landowning structure of the Philippines in the 19th century, that land reform would be a major issue and that it would crop up not once but several times. It may even come up again: the caciques' power has been broken, but they're still there and still very rich.

Land reform does have costs in terms of economic development, but agricultural cooperatives will allow some economies of scale to remain.

The land reform struggles are an excellent socio-political background for a flowering of culture that's going to be exported overseas plus the regional cultural struggles and the Malayan revivals... I can also feel that Philippine music ITTL is going to be folkish with those traditional Filipino rhythms and vocals based on "pasyon" in terms of how Anak was song or something like this song 1996 Bayani Ka by Grace Nono... This might be one of the closest songs we can have IOTL for a Filipino pop song in Maleverse.

Thanks for the link - that was very good, and not at all what I usually think of when I think of Filipino music. There might be more like that, with Malay influence, and also more folk protest songs, television dramas about the revolution and the land wars (and Manila society), and similar things.

Thanks for the shoutout, JE! (From the Vales of Kashmir to the Malabar Coast, indeed)

Yes, I used your book, which is appropriate since many of the Indian events in the update are based on ideas that we discussed. (It occurs to me that I should have footnoted you in the update, and I apologize for not doing so. I am gratefully acknowledging your assistance here.)

Certainly the multinational supra-unions are going to be an interesting vanguard for possible future political arrangements; I'd imagine ITTL 2050, there might be a combination of the Eryhtrean Union, the Indian Union and the Southeast Asian Union as a sort of Indian Ocean Economic Development Union. Sitting in an international relations classroom we see a lot about the anarchical society, and TTL is seeing that idea slowly dissipate into a fog of divisible sovereignty; one might be more inclined to call it a fishing net of sovereignty given how allegiances are playing out throughout the world.

That could happen over time, certainly - as mentioned in the update, the southeast Asian treaty union is already a union of unions, and others might eventually overlap to the point where they merge. There are some politicians (Laila Abacar is one of them) who actively work toward this outcome: they call it "the four-freedoms world," and believe that it would be an organic, bottom-up form of world government. Differing ideas and expectations of regional governance will likely prevent this from becoming a worldwide reality in the 21st century, but it could easily happen on a smaller scale.

One thing I've found is that the centre in these governments is very weak however, and its ability to respond in times of crisis might be held up by very thick layers of red tape- for example, it's seems like conciliation is a must in dealing with conflicts not in spite of the government, but because of how reliant the government is on local centres of power. That can be both a good and a bad thing- people might see the central government as accountable for things that the central government just doesn't have the power to do- a phenomenon that does occur OTL, allowing provincial leaders to play off local sentiments against the centre to increase their own power and lead to more corruption in the long run. On the other hand, places with increased literacy, and political altruism might see more political activism that entrenches the public's role in government; enough in fact that the clan loyalties that plague Asia won't be as strong in the centre.

This is all true. In some places, it may lead over time to a more defined set of competences at each level of government, which will reduce the synergy from overlapping jurisdictions but also make clear what responsibility, and therefore what credit or blame, belongs to each unit. On the other hand, this may be less necessary where (as you say) the process of revolution and protest has created a politically engaged and independent public which is less loyal to provincial dynasties and which is also more aware of the true balance of power between the provinces and the center. These may consider local autonomy and constitutionally-enforced conciliation worth the bureaucratic drag, especially since changing ideas of sovereignty have led to different expectations.

I guess a minor footnote would be that the Nizam of Hyderabad would have long usurped royal status, as Osman Ali Khan tried so very hard to do- he would probably adopt the title King of Hyderabad ITTL, especially since if he didn't, his nominal overlord would be Sikhandar Bakht .

No, he certainly wouldn't want that. I think you're right that he would adopt a royal title: I assume he'd use Sultan, or would he choose a Western title instead?

I had a question surrounding the German Empire- you said earlier that the Hohenzollerns wouldn't always be Emperor- who were the non-Hohenzollern leaders of Germany?

There was some discussion about that, and I believe I said that the Hohenzollerns wouldn't necessarily remain the German imperial house if they were unacceptable to the Reichsrat. I mentioned in post 5069 that the Hohenzollerns put up a dodgy heir in 1944 and were forced to substitute another candidate after the Reichsrat made clear that they would otherwise choose an emperor from another house. If that ever did happen, the royal houses of Hanover and Saxony would probably be the top contenders, although Baden or even one of the smaller duchies might succeed if one of them had an outstanding candidate.

Anyway, we're down to the last two academic updates. The next one will deal with the Ottoman world, Persia, and North Africa: it will be a "since 1955" update and there's a lot to work out, so it will probably take two weeks and there will be a narrative set in 1980s Alexandria in the meantime. After that, the regional updates will end where they began, in West Africa, and we'll move on to the finale.

I'd be grateful for two more comments in the meantime so that the update won't be at the end of the page.

 

[Al-numbers]

Well hello there, Malaya. Fancy seeing you in this update!

Overall, this TL's Southeast Asia is especially intriguing, especially from the perspective of someone who lives right in the middle of it. TTL's Malaya would be a weird place to experience, especially as the OTL Bangladeshi immigrants would be now replaced with TTL Cambodians, Vietnamese and Filipinos. With all the influx, I guess fusion noodle stalls would become the focal point of local immigrant night life, rather than the Indian mamak stalls of OTL.

The alternate Malay language would also be a jolter, especially if I would walk down a street in the JB-Singapore megalopolis and hear it all first hand (side note: the Johor-Riau Malay was adopted as the standard for IOTL Malaysia). But seeing the Persatuan's limited reach into the countryside, I can at least take heart that the Negeri Sembilan dialect would still be around as OTL! Kalo bole, nak jadi chigu skolah kek' Kolo Pilah~

As for southern Thailand, there goes my hope for a peaceful Pattani. At least the region managed to have a shorter conflict period.

P.S: It's Persatuan Ejaan Bahasa Melayu. I'm thinking you used Google Translate to get that, unless that is how Malay is spelled ITTL.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

TTL's Malaya would be a weird place to experience, especially as the OTL Bangladeshi immigrants would be now replaced with TTL Cambodians, Vietnamese and Filipinos. With all the influx, I guess fusion noodle stalls would become the focal point of local immigrant night life, rather than the Indian mamak stalls of OTL.

Don't forget Javanese, Makassarese, Bugis and the occasional very lost-looking West Papuan. There would of course be an Indian presence, but this would be the established Tamil community rather than more recent Bengali immigrants.

Noodle stalls, yeah - they're not just for Nonyas anymore. There will probably also be a lot more bleed-over between Malayan and Javanese cuisine.

The alternate Malay language would also be a jolter, especially if I would walk down a street in the JB-Singapore megalopolis and hear it all first hand (side note: the Johor-Riau Malay was adopted as the standard for IOTL Malaysia). But seeing the Persatuan's limited reach into the countryside, I can at least take heart that the Negeri Sembilan dialect would still be around as OTL! Kalo bole, nak jadi chigu skolah kek' Kolo Pilah~

You'd hear regional dialects in the cities too. It's like Arabic - you'd hear Persatuan Malay on television and at school and it would be the literary standard, but the only people who'd actually speak it to you on the street are people who learned Malay as a second language or who are from another state. Informal speech would go on as it always has, although in a place like JB-Singapore where there are eight million people and most of them originally came from someplace else, there probably would be a lot of defaulting to the standard.

BTW, am I correct in understanding from a few minutes of googling that the Negeri Sembilan dialect is Minangkabau?

P.S: It's Persatuan Ejaan Bahasa Melayu. I'm thinking you used Google Translate to get that, unless that is how Malay is spelled ITTL.

I asked an Indonesian (the Persatuan Ejaan idea was his - my initial thought was "Bahasa Kesatuan"), but the mistakes in word order were my own. Thanks for the correction.