The German Imperial Marriage: The Sun of Inti Shines Over a New Era
A follow-up of the scenario I've started here:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/map-thread-xxi.522105/page-310#post-23651179
The world in 1804
After the War of the German Unification, endind in 1744, with likely the largest geopolitical shock in Europe since the Reformation, three other wars would shape the second half of the XVIII century.
France ended on the losing side of the WGU, failing to prevent the marriage of the now Emperor Frederick IV and Maria Theresa, and so the reconsolidation of Imperial power, whose existence now as a mostly coherent state ended for good any French dream of Continental hegemony.
But, in a way, the result of the war was a blessing in disguise for France: The Kingdoms of Belgium and of Lorraine, estabilished as internationally-recognized neutral states to serve as a German buffer against France, also ended serving as French buffers against Germany. Meanwhile, in Italy, the Savoyard aquisition of Milan put an end to the Habsburg presence in Italy. For the first time, France could be secure that there were no imediate threats on their borders, allowing them to downsize their continental military commitiments and focus more on colonial ones.
This would come to be very useful when, in 1756, land disputes between French and British colonists on the Ohio Valley exploded in the War of the Two Oceans, that would pit the British on one side, and a Franco-Spanish alliance on the other. The war would end overall stalemated, with some minor land transfers mostly streamlining both borders in Europe and colonial zones of influence in North America and India. The Treaty of Brussels, that ended it, put the following terms:
-On North America, Britain would get the lands between the Appalachians, the Mississippi (minus it's Nouvelle Orléans-dominated mouth), and the Great Lakes, so winnning the Ohio Valley, original reason of the war. The French would also give up on any claims on Newfoundland and neighbouring islands.
-Meanwhile, the French, in North America, would get back Acadia and get Rupert's Land, the latter joined to the colony of Canada.
-On the Caribbean, the Spanish got Belize and the Mosquitia from the British, while the latter got Florida, and Trinidad from the former, while also getting Granada and the Grenadines from the French. Yurumein (Saint Vincent) was confirmed as neutral, being ruled by the Garifuna.
-India was divided on four zones of influence, with outposts being exchanged if needed: Portugal with the the northwest coast; The Netherlands with the southwest plus Ceylon; France with the southeast; and Britain with the northeast.
-In Europe, the British gave up Menorca (but absolutely not Gibraltar) to the Spanish, and the Channel Islands to the French. The British also renounced the Irish throne, where Charles Edward Stuart lauched a successful Franco-Spanish backed rebellion during the war, with him now becoming King Charles III of Ireland, while renouncing any further claims on the English and Scottish thrones.
Some years latter, in 1777, the Khan of Crimea, Şahin Giray, faced a rebellion by his nobles due to his attemps at modernizing the country's administration. He appealled to the Porte to help him in restoring the order (pointing in secret that a weak Khanate would open opportunities for further Russian encroachment). The Russians, meanwhile, not interested in seeing a strenghtened Khanate, and seeing the rebellion as an opportunity, supported it, covertly at first, but, after a clash between Russian irregulars (some, let's say, Little Green Men) and Ottoman troops, the Crimean War exploded.
Sweden and PLC had both ended on the wrong side of the WGU, losing lands to Russia, who took the German side, and itched for revenge. But, despite the latter's former help, Frederick and Maria Theresa were now looking for the geopolitical future of their new Empire, and, on their view, a decadent Ottoman Empire and the middle powers of Sweden and the PLC were preferable to German interests in Center-Eastern Europe than an increasingly assertive and strong Russian empire. So, arguing unlawful Russian intromission on internal Ottoman affairs, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, and the PLC took the Ottoman side on the Crimean war. The now German-led alliance would impose, with Frederick's military genius, a crushing defeat on the Russians. The Treaty of Riga, ending the war in 1781, would have the following terms:
-Şahin Giray is, once again, confirmed as Khan of Crimea. With the rebelling nobles destroyed by the war, he finally got the chance to start advancing his reforms.
-The Ukrainian Hetmanate is restored as a fully-independent country, while also getting Sloboda Ukraine from the Russians. (some in te PLC did wished to absorb it back, but this was opposed by the Germans, who didn't wanted to see it growing too much; by the local Cossacks, with even the most anti-Tsarist ones being absulutely against being ruled by a Catholic power, and by others in the PLC itself, that considered that Ukraine would no longer be digestible by the PLC).
-Sweden got back the Karelian lands they had lost to Russia in the Great Northern War and the WGU.
-The Baltic provinces become independent as two kingdoms (largely under German influence): The Kingdom of Livonia and Courland, under the House of Biron, and the Kingdom of Estonia, under the House of Mecklenburg (who, in exchange, give up their German lands to the Imperial domain).
While the Crimean War ended, another conflict started, far away from the European centers of power, but one that would come to capture the imaginations of it's growing political idealists.
In November of 1780, the curaca Túpac Amaru II started his independence war against the Spanish Crown. Five months later, rebels in New Granada raised themselves against the Crown. The War of South American Independence had fully started.
The British and Portuguese would come to the rebels' support, while Spanish attempts to drag France to their side, by appealing to the Family Pact, fell on deaf ears.
The two initial separatist movements, by Túpac Amaru II on the former Inca lands, and by the Comuneros in New Granada, would be joined by separate movements led by local caciques in Moxos and Chiquitos, that would come to create separate states. Argentina and Chile, by themselves, had only minor separatist movements, but, isolared from the remaining Spanish Empire by the rebellion in the Andes, would be captured and forced into independence by the anti-Spanish alliance.
The war would come to end in 1786, with the Treaty of London. It determined:
-The independence of Tahuantinsuyo, New Granada (Panama, loyalist during the whole war, stays with Spain), Moxos, Chiquitos, Argentina, and Chile;
-On the Caribbean, the British would get Belize, Mosquitia, and San Andres and Providencia back from Spain;
-On South America, Portugal would get the Seven Missions area, while Britain would get Chiloe, the Banda Oriental, and the Falklands, with Argentina and Chile also giving up on claiming Araucania and Patagonia in favor of the British.
-In Africa, Portugal would get back Ano Bom and Fernando Pó.
After the Argentine independence, the province of Paraguay, with is heavy Guarani population and the deep rivalry between Asunción and Buenos Aires, would refuse to be part of the new country and declare it's own independence, with the Argentine attemtp to retake it being defeated by the locals and the Portuguese, the first to recognize Paraguayan independence.
Meanwhile New Granada would, just after independence, implode into a civil war between centralists and federalists, ending with the latter winning. During the war, the freedmen of Chocó declared their independence from New Granada, with the latter failing to recapture it even after the end of the civil war. Unlike OTL Haiti, there were no massacres of the White population, due to the situation in Chocó never reaching the brutality of the Haitian Independence War. Most Whites still left Chocó for New Granada when it became clear the latter had failed to reclaim the former, due to their unpleasant feeling on living under a Black-led state.
Both the British and the French, despite not getting everything they wanted, end the XVIII century quite satisfied with themselves, both commanding respectable transoceanic empires, albeit, in the latter, intellectuals are pointing their institutions are still quite behind of thse of the former, with Louis XVI attempts at reform ending frustrated by noble opposition. The Netherlands and Portugal could also claim to end the XVIII century better than they started.
In Central-Eastern Europe, Germany is clearly the new shining power, with Frederick IV ending his life, in 1786,being lauded as The Great, the greatest German leader since the first Frederick, the Barbarossa. The PLC, since the estabilishment of the hereditary Wettin monarchy in 1744, has been also on a upswing, with German-supported reforms (to strenghten the PLC against Russia) ending with the liberum veto and the overall disfunctionality of the Sejm. Poland ends the XVIII century as the France of the East, a prosperous agrarian economy feeding the burgeoning German population and industry. Meanwhile, in Sweden, the success of the Crimean War in undoing at least part of the XVIII centry Swedish losses to Russia has allowed Gustav III to firmly consolidate himself as an absolute monarch.
The Ottomans got their asses saved by the Germans and friends on the Crimean War, but, if anything, this has made them even more complacent, and the Porte does end the XVIII century with a palpable sense of decadence and weakening of central institutions (something no declared friends of the Porte will come to take advantage of in the future, not at all!) Only in Crimea, with Şahin's reforms, and increasingly economically integrated into the German bloc, that an upswing can be felt.
Spain and Russia, meanwhile end the XVIII century with a very bitter taste on their mouths. With Spain having lost half of it's colonial empire, there is a bitter debate on what went wrong: Reactionaries blame both French "treason" and Charles III's Enlightenment sympathies, while reformists claim the problem was that the reforms didn't went far enough, and that,
maybe, the problem is with absolutism in general, even if "enlightened". Russia, meanwhile, has seen almost all of it's gains since the Great Northern War undone. This, together with Catherine II's, the one who failed the Empire, Enlightenment sympathies, has been convincing a large part of the Russian nobility and intelligentsia that the Russian attempt at becoming "European" was, ultimately, a fool's errand: The future of Russia is, as it should have always been, in the East.
On India, the Maratha Empire, that earlier in the century looked set into building the first Hindu empire since the Gurjaras, have now being reduced to their core lands, by the combined effors of the British, Portugese, French, Hyderabadis, and Mysoreans, with most of their imperial lands either conquered or vassalized by these, or becoming, with their support, independent states, as it has happened with the Kingdom of Nagpur, and the Rajasthani Confederacy.
New ideas on the air
It's no secret that the Enlightenment movement started a lot of criticisms on the current forms of govertment and overall estabilished political orthodoxy, and new speculation on how they should ideally operate. While some countries, like Germany, Sweden and Crimea, end the century quite satisfied with enlightened absolutism, in others, like France, there is an increasing discomfort with how things are done overall, and, in Spain, outright despair.
Some experiments with the new political ideas have been started, in more peripherical countries. The Rajasthani Confederacy, in a first outside the cultural West, has written a Western-inspired constitution to organize it's federal government (but, it must be made clear, most of it's institutons, specially inside it's member states, are still firmly traditional).
Britain and the PLC are, of course, the main exemples for those interested in constitutional monarchism, with the monarch in the former being almost entirely ceremonial, while, in the latter, it retains strong executive powers. Among the newly-independent countries in South America, while Moxos and Chiquitos are full-blown absolutist, and Paraguay, theoretically a republic, has fallen to military strongmen, Argentina and Chile have gotten British-style constitutional monarchies (headed by minor Bourbons), only with written constitutions, instead of just custom, while Tahuantinsuyo, with the huge figure of Túpac Amaru II, has become a PLC-styled one, with Túpac Amaru as it's emperor (albeit, on the other side, due to the heavy popular participation on the independence war, it has also one of the broadest franchises in the world, even if the parliament has less powes v. the Emperor).
On the British continental North American colonies, while appetite for independence was limitated, due to the continued French presence, there was still a strong interest in self-government, eventually solved with the colonies there being organized into two self-governing dominions, the Dominion of New England, embracing the free-farming colonies of the north, and the Dominion of Great Virginia, embracing the plantation colonies of the south. A similar deal was extended by Charles III to Venezuela, the last Spanish possession in South America, at the end of his reign, partly as a reward for it's continued loyalty, partly to disincentivize new rebellions.
Meanwhile, outright republican experiments are popping here and there. In Europe besides the long-existing republics in the Alps and Italy (albeit the latter ones have gone full oligarchic by this point), new republics have blossomed in Corsica (with the French having gotten a draw on TTL's version of the 7YW, they had no interest to go after the British by taking Corsica) and Ukraine, the latter adopting a quite modern theory of separation and limitation of powers, albeit still with a indirect and somewhat restricted franchise. Meanwhile, in South America, New Granada, after it's civil war, crystalized into a federal republic, taking it's cues from Switzerland. Chocó, meanwhile, became a more direct democracy, inspired by Corsica, and quite celebrated among the nascent Abolitionist circles.
Democratizing experiments have been also attempted at the heart of the Europe, with the Dutch and Genevan attempted revolutions, but both ended crushed with foreign help, the first by the Germans, the second by the French.
But, so political idealists hope, the Winds of Change will still come, if not today, then some day near.
