Union and Liberty: An American TL

[wilcoxchar]

Here's the next update. I wanted to do a bit different writing style here and do the Latin America update in the form of an academic essay. But some real life stuff came up and I lost the drive to write the full essay (why am I writing a fictional essay again? ), so here's a couple of the excerpts that I actually finished.

Part Seventy: Ibero-American Nationalism[1]

Fractious Nationalism in Mexico:
The ideas of nationalism and the nation-state that arose in the 19th century have greatly affected the world in which we live in over the past two centuries. The rise of this abstract concept that an ethnic group deserves its own sovereign self-governing entity has inspired numerous wars and revolutions on all of the continents. There are various cultural differences in the effect that nationalism has had in different places in the world, however. In the United States, the idea of the American nation has meant embracing the multicultural society that assisted its rise and adapting itself with each wave of immigration. In the Austrian Empire, on the other hand, nationalism manifested itself as a force that tore the country apart and brought down the Habsburg dynasty. In Ibero-America, the ideals of nationalism have been used as both a unifying and a destructive factor for the collective states of the region.

The early spread of the nationalistic ideal in Ibero-America came during the Napoleonic Wars. With the occupation of much of the Iberian Peninsula by the French, revolutionary minded leaders in the Spanish colonies began the war to liberate their countries and gain independence. Over the next decade, these wars were successful and the provinces of the Spanish Empire broke free from their mother country. However, with no central authority over these vast regions, the countries soon declined into squabbling, both amongst each other and internally. Soon after, the larger countries began to break apart.

The best and most extreme example of this fractious nationalism in 1800s Ibero-America is the case of Mexico during the first half of the century. Soon after it gained its independence, Mexico was beset by conflict between the centralists who wanted a strong government in Mexico City and the federalists who wanted power to be spread through the provinces. The rash measures imposed by Santa Anna weakened the integrity of the national government and sparked numerous rebellions by federalist provinces in 1835. The Mexican-American War only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the federalists as the central government proved it could not govern its far-flung regions. As California, Texas, the Rio Bravo Republic, and Yucatan broke away, Mexico City continued to face problems among its remaining provinces. By the middle of the 1850s, the federalists in most of the provinces had gained control of the local offices, but the national government in Mexico City refused to submit to a federalist election.

By 1858, many Mexican politicians were calling for the dissolution of the United Mexican States, and when the major cities in Sonora ousted the Mexican officials, the country quickly collapsed as other states broke ties with Mexico City. The Mexican collapse is an interesting case of nationalism, because there is seemingly no inherent reason for each country to go its own separate way beyond the division after the Mexican-American War. However, the federalist officials had been promoting the uniqueness of the individual states for some time prior to the Final Collapse in 1858. For example, the state of Jalisco used the blue agave plant and the famed refinement of the agave into tequila to help forge the new country’s national identity, even putting the agave plant on the nation’s flag. Often, the newly independent states would appropriate pre-colonial tribes as a unifying factor among the people in order to craft the identity of the country. In this way, the collapse of the United Mexican States becomes clearer when the factors of emerging national identities and their use by political leaders are taken into account.


The Formation of Mokoguay:
While fractious nationalistic ideals dominated Ibero-America during the beginning of the 19th century, the latter half saw these desires for smaller independent countries wane as the economic reality of the times made larger, more cohesive states more viable than smaller, more fractured states. This economic cooperation led to closer ties between the Meso-American countries, as well as contributing to the establishment of the Parana River basin as an international waterway in 1865. Further unionist feelings among the people of these regions allowed centralist regimes in Brazil and Argentina to take control of the national governments of those two countries, and also led to the creation of new political unions and new states in Ibero-America.

The first country established by the unionistic nationalism of latter 19th century Ibero-America was the state of Mokoguay. As the economic ties between the Paraguay, the Republic of the Rio Grande, and Uruguay progressed, their policies became more and more tied. Seeing the opportunity, Paraguayan president Francisco Solano Lopez used the small stature of the three countries to engineer a union between them in 1873 to protect against aggression from Brazil and Argentina. Argentina had previously had designs on reintegrating Uruguay, and Rio Grande had broken off from Brazil only fifty years before, so the leaders of both countries agreed. While the countries were about equal in size and population, Paraguay was the dominant country of the three in industry and continued to dominate the union throughout the century. The name of the new country, Mokoguay, comes from the Guarani term for “two rivers”, representing the Parana and Uruguay Rivers as the central systems of the country.

In 1882, the new conservative government under Ignacio Martin de Aguirre enacted protectionist laws for trading along the Parana and Uruguay Rivers, violating the original 1865 agreement between Argentina, Paraguay, Rio Grande, and Uruguay, and now between Argentina and Mokoguay. Lopez protested the closing demanding that the rivers be reopened or that the countries be compensated, but Aguirre denied the requests. Lopez sought the assistance of Bolivia, which agreed as the Aguirre regime was also attempting to coerce the gauchos in the northwest of Argentina into moving money to Buenos Aires instead of the natural route toward Bolivia.

Brazil did not intervene in the Platinean War due to internal struggles between republicans and forces loyal to Emperor Pedro II. While Argentina had the upper hand initially, the use of ironclads purchased from the United States by Mokoguay helped Bolivia and Mokoguay gain control of the Parana River. Meanwhile, sporadic fighting in the high plains of western Argentina occurred while the Bolivian government supported insurrection by gauchos and federalist Argentines disloyal to the Aguirre government. Overall, the war lasted 4 years and over 300,000 soldiers died in the war, but in 1886, Argentina conceded defeat. Mokoguay gained the territory east of the Parana River while the river itself was confirmed by Aguirre as an international waterway. The rebellious federalists and gauchos in the southern Chaco also held the Second Congress of Túcuman in 1887, which established the new Federal Republic of Túcuman and was supported by Bolivia. This state soon became dependent on Bolivia for support as well as a source of contention between Bolivia and Argentina.

[1] Presented as excerpts taken from the English translation of "Unionistic and Fractious Nationalism in Ibero-America" by Enrique Sandoval, Universidad de Montevideo Editorial, 1987.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Time for another main update.

Part Seventy-One: Tipping the Scales

A Million Little Parties:
As the Republican and Democratic parties settled into their respective positions in the Third Party System, regional parties and smaller national parties began gaining popularity. Tensions between the two parties and the dominance of the Republicans in the North and the Democrats in the South led to a level of dissatisfaction in the politics of both major parties. The first appearance of minor parties in Congress since the National War occurred after the midterm elections of 1878. The Redback Party, which promoted moving the dollar off of any metallic standard, was at first the most successful minor party, gaining 8 seats in the House of Representatives in 1878. The rise of minor parties in the elections of 1878 gave control of the House of Representatives to the Democratic Party as many of the minor parties were in the North.

The Redback Party gained much of its support in the Old Northwest. It's main leaders were James B. Weaver of Iowa and Edward Gilette of Indiana. The Redback Party gained a number of representatives in the following decade and reached its height in the early 1890s, when the party had 18 members of the House of Representatives and 2 senators. The Redback Party ran counter to the bimetallic platform of the Republican Party and the gold standard platform of the Democratic Party. The Redback Party achieved its voting base largely from rural agricultural voters, but lost its appeal once other minor parties began coopting moving off of a metal-backed currency on their platforms.

While the Redback Party was the most prominent party of the era, there were several other notable minor parties. The Temperance Party was the main political front of the growing moderation movement to ban alcohol and was popular mostly among religious revivalists. The Prohibition Party became the first party after the National War to nominate a candidate for executive office from a former Confederate state in 1892. This era also saw the beginning of the rise of far leftist parties in the United States. The American Socialist Party, the Union Labor Party, and the American Workers' Party were all formed during the 1880s. The leftist movement would continue to grow in urban areas in the early 20th century.


The Election of 1880:
After the Democratic Party gained control of the House of Representatives in 1878, they blocked most efforts by Burnside or the Republican members in the Senate to enact any other important legislation. With the Republican Party's lawmaking ability curtailed, the election of 1880 proved to be a difficult one for them. Accopmanying these issues were the growing feud between President Burnside and Congressman Blaine over the reasons for the Republicans' losing ground.

The feud came to a head in the Republican National Convention when the nominations for the Vice Presidential candidate were being allocated. Blaine had been winning the ballot as he was a nationally known Republican, but Burnside made a statement that if Blaine were nominated, he would not accept the presidential nomination as he was unwilling to campaign with Blaine. After Burnside's statement at the convention, the ballot slowly shifted toward Benjamin Harrison of Ohio who was confirmed as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate on the ninth ballot.

While the Republicans were miring over the conflict within the party, the Democrats were hitting their stride. The Democratc National Convention nominated former Union general Winfield Scott Hancock for president and Illinois senator John M. Palmer. Palmer was a noted advocate for liberal economic policies while Hancock was revered in the North for his successes in the National War. In an ironic twist, many Southern states still ended up voting for the Democratic Party even though Hancock was their presidential candidate because of poor campaigning by Burnside and the continued stigma of Fremont's policies in the South. Hancock defeat Burnside for the presidency and became the first president elected on the Democratic ticket since before the National War.

Hancock/Palmer: 175 EVs
Burnside/Harrison: 154 EVs

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time! This one's a tech update, and has some big hints about the society of the future in the TL. Added footnotes.

Science and Technology #2

Elemental Discoveries:
The nineteenth century was a time of great scientific advancement in the fields of chemistry. As such, during this era came the discovery of many new elements and ways to detect and organoize the list of elements. Using new methods to isolate and identify individual elements that had evolved with the Industrial Revolution, scientists in Europe were able to discover many new elements that gave further insight into the similarities between properties of certain elements and led to the first standard classification of all known elements.

The major elemental discoveries that occurred during this period were made largely by a few scientists using the new technique of spectral analysis. The main scientists to use this method were German chemist Robert Bunsen and English chemist William James Herschel[1] while Herschel was a doctoral student of Bunsen's at the University of Göttingen. Together, Herschel and Bunsen pioneered the method of examining the emission lines of compounds to determine their constituent elements, and thus discovered four new elements in the 1860s. They isolated the alkali metals bunsenium and herschelium[2] through their blue spectral lines in 1862. Thallium was discovered by Bunsen and Herschel in 1865. After the European Wars broke out in 1866, Herschel left Göttingen to continue his education in Great Britain. In 1867, Bunsen identified a fourth element which exhibited a dark blue spectral line. The element was named borussium[3] because of this dark blue color and the recent conquest of the city of Gottingen by Prussia.

Along with all the new elements being discovered, some scientists began noticing similar properties between certain groups of elements. Scientists such as Swedish chemist August Kekule started to try to come up with ways to categorize the known elements in a standard table that would easily display the similar elements and would provide an easy way to classify all the elements that had been discovered. Kekule published his version of what is now the periodic table of elements in 1870. It was organized by ordering the elements by their relative masses and putting elements with similar properties in the same column. With this method of organization, the discovered elements formed seven roughly neat columns and formed the basis for the table we use today.


The Viennese Scientific Exodus:
For much of the 19th century, the city of Vienna and the University of Vienna had been the pinnacle of scientific thought in the Austrian Empire and one of the major locations of scientific discovery and advancement in Europe at the time. However, the fall of the Habsburg dynasty after the European Wars and the rise of the Viennese Workers' State led to several important scientists leaving Austria to other countries in Europe.

Most of the brilliant minds who left Vienna in the 1870s went to Germany where they continued their work at the larger universities in Berlin, Göttingen, Munich, and Heidelberg. Geologist Ferdinand Zirkel went to the University of Berlin where he later would travel on topographical surveys of the African Great Lakes and ascend Mount Kilimandscharo. Botanist Rudolf Schrödinger[4] and physicist Johann Mendel continued their work at the University of Munich.


The Communication Revolution:
The most influential technological advancements in the 1870s and 1880s, however, were in the field of communication. The growth in use of the telephone in Italy and France during the 1860s inspired Nikola Tesla to work on communications technology. Tesla left for Rome in 1871 after only a year at the University of Vienna, and stayed in Italy for fifteen years before leaving for the United States. From 1888 to 1899, Tesla pioneered innovations in telephone communication and led Union Telegraph and Telephone, the United States' oldest telephone company. Tesla's chairing of UT&T helped to expand the lines owned by the company throughout the entire country from its original network in the Northeast of the country. By 1900, UT&T had become a communications giant within the United States.

Along with the telephone, the invention and innovations made related to the typewriter also led to the revolution in communication in the early 20th century. Much as the telephone allowed individuals to speak to each other over long distances, the typewriter allowed much easier and faster writing up and printing of documents. The typewriter standardized many of the grammatical conventions in the American language today, and gradually led to the informal adoption of American for most government and business transactions in the United States. Additionally, the typewriter allowed women to enter the workforce en masse for the first time as many women began their careers as typists transcribing dictated messages.

Around the turn of the century, several inventors combined the ideas behind the telephone and the typewriter to create machines that could receive messages from afar and immediately transcribe the message onto a sheet of paper. These became known as teletype machines, and were originally used primarily by news networks and stock exchanges to maintain updates of real time information from around the world. In the Great War, the militaries of the world adapted the teletype machine for general communication to relay tactical and strategic information from the front lines. After the Great War, companies took advantage of the communications infrastructure created during this time and began serving individual teletype machines that allowed two individuals to send typed messages instantly from one location to another.

[1] Grandson of William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus. In OTL William James Herschel did some pioneering work with fingerprinting.
[2] Bunsenium = caesium, herschelium = rubidium
[3] Borussium = indium
[4] Rudolf is the father of Erwin Schrödinger

 

[wilcoxchar]

Since I'm going home for spring break tomorrow, time for another update. My laptop is acting up again, but I managed to upload almost all of the timeline-related stuff so I should be able to keep this going while it's getting repaired.

Part Seventy-Two: In Darkest Africa

The West African Dilemma:
The 1870s and 1880s brought a large period of colonial expansion by all the powerful nations in Europe as technological advances allowed serious expeditions into the deep heart of the African continent. Medical advances against tropical diseases such as malaria made it possible for larger settlements by European countries while larger steamships and refrigeration allowed easier transportation of goods to and from the African outposts and made it possible for Europeans to advance further into the interior of the continent. As West Africa was the closest region of Africa south of the Sahara. it was the first to experience the new-found expansion by the colonial powers.

France, being the most powerful country on the Mediterranean Sea and already possessing several outposts in West Africa, benefited the most from the new round of imperialism. Starting in the 1860s, exploratory missions were sent from Algeria, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. In the 1870s, France had affirmed its control over the African coast between Liberia and the British Gold Coast, and began expanding inland where they soon ran up against the Toucouleur Empire. In the next decades, the French colonial forces in Dakar and Grand Bassam waged a costly war against the Toucouleur, but finally captured the capital of Segou and established full colonial rule over the upper Niger River region in 1894.

Meanwhile, the port cities on the Gold Coast that belonged to the British and the Danes[1] were developed by those countries. Sekondi and Cape Coast served as valuable harbors for British ships traveling the long route to Cape Colony and India. The British Gold Coast expanded inward in the late 19th century as well after several wars with the Ashanti. After the European Wars, the Danes grew closer to the French and expanded the Danish Gold Coast eastward along the coast toward the French colony in Lagos. The renewed colonization efforts in the region also brought tensions between the colonizing empires. As the British colony in Camaroon expanded north, it came into contact with French colonies on the lower Niger River. During the Congo Conference, France cede to Britain control of the land east of the Benue River, but the remainder of the Benue watershed as well as the Niger Delta still remained disputed between the two empires.


The Congo Conference:
While the colonial empires of Europe were expanding into the interior of West Africa, they were also commissioning explorations of the Congo River basin. As countries set up trading posts and made trade agreements with the native tribes along the river, contentions rose as to the official ownership of the region. By 1890, many of the great powers of Europe had established trading posts along the Congo River, and as the various colonies on the coast expanded inland, the jurisdiction of the colonial holdings prompted a minor crisis when some European countries claimed land overlapping with other powers' river ports. To solve the crisis, French Foreign Minister Napoleon Eugene Bonaparte[2] called for a general conference among the powers to solve the African colonial issues and especially focusing on the Congo. The Congo Conference was held in Paris in 1893.

The main focus of the Congo Conference was of course the territorial status of the Congo River Basin and of the river itself. Early on, the representatives of the several powers attending - France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the United States[3] - agreed that the Congo River would remain an international waterway and that countries would be allowed to navigate the river at will. Despite this, many countries with colonies in the area still demanded land that bordered the river in order to facilitate their trade along the river and extraction of the rubber and other resources that were present in the Congo Basin. France gained the upper hand in the conference and obtained the majority of the land around the river. Germany, which had mostly established colonies in east Africa, claimed land north of the Ulindi River and south of the latitude of Lake Albert, giving Germany the port of Neuwilhelmshafen[4] on the Congo. Great Britain came away from the conference with connections from both Cameroon and from the south, but the southern territory proved to be blocked from the remainder of the river downstream by a series of rapids.

While the area of the river upstream from Lake Bonaparte[5] was navigable, the mouth of the Congo was blocked from this portion of the river by a long series of rapids. However, this region could still serve as a valuable port for the surrounding area. After much deliberation, the members of the Conference decided to give control of the area to lesser important countries with holdings in the area to ensure the neutrality of the Congo mouth. The Belgian colony centered on the city of Cabinda slightly north of the Congo Mouth was expanded, while the north bank of the mouth was turned over to administration by the United States. Under American administration, the city of Banana directly on the mouth surpassed the more inland city of Boma as the area's main harbor city after a railroad was constructed from Boma to Banana. The south bank of the Congo estuary was affirmed as Portuguese territory and continued to be administered from Luanda.

[1] The Danish Gold Coast is centered on the old Danish coastal forts, which in OTL were given to the Brits in the 1860s. These included Fort Cristianborg in what is now Accra and went east to about where the Ghana-Togo border is.
[2] Louis-Napoleon's son.
[3] Some American adventurers had established trading posts on the Congo, which is why they were invited.
[4] OTL Kisingani, DRC.
[5] OTL Pool Malebo, where Kinshasa and Brazzaville are.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Got the next update done. A bit more on Africa, and I'll post footnotes tomorrow since there's a lot of place and people names here. I didn't get into the actual colonial administration as much as I wanted to, but I can always come back to it later.

Part Seventy-Three: The Kaiser's Place in the Sun

Madagaskar Run: Another point of contention between the colonial powers in the late nineteenth century was the ownership of the large island of Madagaskar off the coast of eastern Africa. The French had established Fort Dauphine as a presence on the southern tip of the island, but starting in the 19th century other European powers gained interest in Madagaskar. The monarchs of the island courted the powers and Great Britain, Germany, and Portugal all had settlements on the island by 1880. As Queen Ranavalona III and Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony[1] of Madagaskar continued to court the European powers and westernize the country, the competing claims of Europe kept them from establishing lasting sovereignty over the island.

Unfortunately for the natives, the Europeans were mostly kept at bay by Rainilaiarivony's success at playing the European countries off each other. With the death of the Prime Minister in 1884, European influence over the island steadily grew as the competing colonial powers began to resolve their differing claims. In 1887, Portugal rescinded its claim. The British were the next to give up their claim during the Congo Conference in exchange for support of British expansion into southern Africa. Two years later, German armies acted and moved from the German settlement of Rostenbucht[2] on the northwestern coast of Madagaskar and deposed Queen Ranavalona and established German control over the island. The native monarchy was soon replaced by German colonial administration under Hans Kowalski.

The sudden expansion of Germany into Madagaskar caused a dramatic reaction in France. Since the French had a presence on the island from the founding of Fort Dauphine in the 1600s, it had been assumed in many circles that Madagaskar would end up in the French colonial sphere. While several members of the French government initially raised an uproar over the German move, President Andre Clermont did not take any action to dispute the German invasion. Clermont's indecision regarding French colonial ambitions in Madagascar was a large contributor to the end of the long Bonapartist reign in the election of 1898 and the rise in Boulangism in France during the early 19th century.


United Ostafrika: Along with Madagaskar, Germany also looked north from its already established African colonies. The colonization of the region around Mogadischu and the need for easier contact with Oman led Germany to expand further into the Horn of Africa. The coastal cities of Puntland were conquered in the 1870s as Germany desired new coaling ports between Zanzibar and Muscat. In the ensuing decade, a German expedition to the Gulf of Aden brought German control to the cities of Berbera, Dschibutie, and Härar. The conquest of these cities which had held out against Ahmara and French influence from the Ethiopian Highlands meant an end to independence for much of the region and that German colonial interests in eastern Africa began pushing up against French interests.

While this created some contention between the two nations, they soon settled on a boundary between their East African colonies in the Treaty of Freiburg in 1891. France granted some concessions to Germany to give the latter access to the Congo River in the Congo Conference, which extended the German territories in East Africa. After these disputes were settled, the German government began consolidating its administration of the colonies. The Mogadischu governorate was made a subregion and placed under the administration of the governorate of Zanzibar in 1899. Four years later, the entire area of German colonization, including Madagaskar and Oman, were consolidated under the newly created Deutsche Ostafrika. Hans Kowalski, now well known in Germany for his explorations and efficient management of Rufiji and Madagaskar, was appointed the first Hauptgoverneur[3] of Ostafrika.

The development of German Ostafrika had already begun during the 1880s and 1890s as Germany used the agricultural land in Ostafrika for coffee and rubber plantations. To expedite the movement of the rubber and coffee to the main port cities in Ostafrika, railroads were built connecting the highlands of Tanganjika and Kerinja[4] to Mombasa, Pangani, and . The railroad was extended to Mogadischu, Neuwilhemshafen, and Rufijimund by 1900. After the creation of a unified Ostafrika administration, the core of Germany's African possessions further grew economically with the discovery of gold near Bismarcksee[5]. The discovery of gold and the creation of Germany's colonial governorates made Ostafrika the largest and most prosperous of the European colonies in Africa at the time.

[1] The OTL Prime Minister of Madagascar during the late 19th century leading up to France's invasion.
[2] On the left bank of the Bombetoka Estuary, across from OTL Mahajanga.
[3] Hauptgoverneur means "all-governor" or head governor.
[4] Kerinja = Kenya
[5] OTL Northwestern Tanzania, where the Sekenke and Kirondatal gold mines are.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Hooray! Update time! Footnotes will come later.

Part Seventy-Four: Iberian Shifts

The Alfonsine Reforms in Spain:
Spain's defeat in the Second Napoleonic War was an even larger defeat in prestige for the regime of Queen Isabella II. Spain had suffered many losses in the war for nothing and had been forced to cede Minorca, considered an integral part of the country as one of the Belaeric Islands, to France. Additionally, the balanced system in the Cortes Generales between the Partido Moderado and the Partido Progresivo that had endured for all of Isabella's reign had begun to break down. The Carlists had been experiencing a resurgence in the north as part of a resistance against French occupation while in other regions of the country, the monarchy and both old parties had lost much of their legitimacy after the Second Napoleonic War.

Dissatisfaction with the political status quo in Spain grew quickly and by 1871 many Carlists were openly calling for the abdication of Isabella. Along with the Carlists, many liberal politicians started calling for her abdication and in 1872 Leopoldo O'Donnell[1] of the Union Liberal was elected as Prime Minister. O'Donnell was an advocate for the Queen's abdication and brought much of the Cortes against the Queen. With this much weight behind the call, Queen Isabella relented and abdicated in favor of her son Alfonso, who was crowned Alfonso XII in July of 1872[2].

Upon Alfonso's coronation, he began collaborating with Prime Minister O'Donnell in embarking on liberal reforms. Alfonso granted further governing functions to the Cortes Generales and moved the role of the king further toward that of a figurehead. During the 1870s and 1880s, Alfonso also used the royal treasury to fund the construction of factories to improve the Spanish economy after the European Wars. These factories were accompanied by a nationalized royal railroad system spanning all of Spain. Alfonso also brought Spain back into the colonial game, expanding Spanish interests in Morocco, Camaroon[3], and consolidating Spanish control over the Philippines.


Morelian Collectivism:
In Ibero-America, the struggle between the conservatives and liberals in many countries continued through much of the 19th century. However, in the latter half of the century a new ideology arose and was thrown into the mix. Based around the socialist ideals gaining popularity in Europe, the movement that would become Morelian collectivism started in the Mexican states with Benito Juarez.

Juarez had become the leader of the Mexican state of Oaxaca and crafted his presidency around the beliefs of Mexican Revolution leader Jose Maria Morelos. As the first mestizo leader in Oaxaca, Juarez enacted land reform legislation in Oaxaca that gave the many landless peasants a means to make a living. Juarez also incorporated Christian teachings into the basis for his reforms to appeal to the clergy, using references from the Bible as a justification for advancing socialist ideas. Juarez was a popular president in Oaxaca, but also became a popular leader abroad with his pushes for a united Mesoamerican country.

Beginning in the 1870s, the discovery of Mayan temples by explorers and the need for economic cooperation created a resurgence in a unifying nationalism in Mesoamaerica. With the recreation of Gran Colombia, several of the smaller nations became worried about imperial expansion of Gran Colombia to the north. Juarez, who dreamed of a united Mesoamerican state, brought the Central American countries together in the Conference of Tehuantepec in 1887. Most of the attendees of the conference agreed to the formation of a united federal republic. The Federal Union of Meso-American Republics, was formed in 1888 and consisted of the countries stretching from Oaxaca to Nicaragua. The only refusals to join came from Veracruz and Costa Rica; the more Anglo elite in Veracruz were worried about the Ibero influence on the port, while Costa Rica declined due to Nicaragua's refusal to give up territorial disputes and had already secured protection from the United States and felt the FUMAR would not serve its interests. Since Juarez declined the Mesoamerican presidency due to his age, Porfirio Diaz, also of Oaxaca, was elected to the position.

During the presidencies of Porfirio Diaz and his successor Justo Rufino Barrios[4], Morelian collectivism was spread to the constituent republics beginning with agrarian reforms in the other provinces of the country. Outside the FUMAR, Morelian collectivism became popular in other Ibero-American countries with large mestizo and indigenous populations such as Bolivia. Morelian political movements were formed in most Ibero countries and contributed to the spread of nascent socialism from Europe to the Americas.

[1] Leopoldo O'Donnell was actually a Prime Minister of Spain in OTL. Those Irish-Spaniards sure do get around. :O
[2] After Alfonso was crowned, there was a brief Carlist War, but it was too minor to be mentioned.
[3] The Rio Muni colony that became Equatorial Guinea. It's expanded a bit.
[4] OTL President of Guatemala who had visions of reuniting Central America.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Next update is finally done! Footnotes will come tonight or tomorrow.

Part Seventy-Five: The American Worker

Census of 1880:
During the 1870s, the United States continued its recovery from the National War and experienced a period of growth in the country's population and industry unseen in previous decades. This time of expansion is greatly reflected in the 1880 census. For the first time, the United States reached a population of over 60 million. This was a result of the large amount of immigration to the United States from Europe after the wars on the continent in the late 1860s and the chaos afterward. Many American cities saw a large period of growth between 1870 and 1880. In particular, New York became the first city in the United states to surpass one million people.

One of the main reasons for the large population increase in the country in the 1870s was the continuing recovery of the former Confederate States during that decade. Increased manufacturing along the Gulf Coast and along the Mississippi River attracted freed slaves as well as European immigrants. In particular, the cities of Shreveport, Memphis, Mobile, and Gadsden saw a large jump in their populations during the 1870s. Cuba also experienced a large increase going from just over 1 million inhabitants to over 1.5 million people in the decade. The large Irish influx to Havana in the latter 19th century led to the city one of the largest Gaelic communities in North America outside of Laurentine countries[1].

The 1870s also continued the gradual movement of people to the west. The populations of cities along the northern Pacific coast, the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and the Rio Grande continued to rise as people trekked west. However, the 1870s saw more towns in the Great Plains booming as the railroads were laid across the country. Cattle towns such as Chisholm in Houston and Laramie in Pahsapa grew as ranchers were more easily able to deliver the cattle to the burgeoning meat packing districts in Saint Louis, Memphis, and Chicago. The Colorado Silver Boom also created boom towns in the Rockies in Colorado and New Mexico, but many of these were short-lived and became ghost towns after the minerals ran dry.


The Rise of Labor:
As large-scale manufacturing began to develop in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution, skilled laborers in various professions began organizing to push for better conditions in the factories. From this base, the labor movement was born. Early in the 1800s, smaller groups of workers focused on individual professions combined with similar groups in other cities or similar industries to create the first large-scale trade unions in the United States. After attempts at unified labor organizations in 1835 and 1842 failed due to economic troubles, the National Federation of Labor was created in the 1850s combining several northeastern trade unions. The NFL was primarily a loose coalition of craftsman unions, but developed quickly as many people gained employment during the National War. After the war, the NFL continued to become a force as it began politically pushing for labor reforms such as a shorter workday, guaranteed pay, and government enforcement of working conditions.

Shortly after the National War, many former slaves and other African-Americans began working in factories in prominent Southern cities, particularly in Louisiana and Houston. In order to protect the rights of these workers, Norris Wright Cuney[2] founded the National Federation of Colored Labor in 1873 as an offshoot of the National Federation of Labor. The NFCL fought for the rights of employment and education for blacks and organized many black groups in factories in Southern cities. While the NFCL received some support at the outset from larger labor groups, the support dwindled soon after. The dominance of Democratic politicnas in the South during this era made bringing black labor issues to the attention of Congress very difficult and the NFCL struggled for much of its early history.

The unions had achieved some success in getting better factory conditions during the intial Republican presidencies in the 1860s and 1870s. However, the rise of the Bourbon Democrats as the dominant wing in the Democratic Party and the victory of Winfield Scott Hancock in 1880 led to a relaxation of these laws. The main sectors affected by Hancock's legislation were western mining companies, which had been imposing harsh working conditions on the miners to extract ore as quickly as possible. In retaliation, miners began organizing and holding strikes in the 1880s. The first major strikes, the 1883 Raton strike and the Carbondale Miners' Strike in 1886[3], were against poor and dangerous working conditions in the mines. These early strikes were put down by the companies and local police forces, but led to greater political activity by laborers and particularly miners around the country.

[1] The Laurentine countries refers to the countries north of the United States, so Canada, Acadia, etc.
[2] Cuney was an OTL African-American activist and union leader in the 19th century.
[3] In Raton, New Mexico and Carbondale, Illinois.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Okay, got the part of this update minus the 1884 election done. Will put the poll up now.

Part Seventy-Six: Money and Power

The Gold Standard:
With the victory of the Democrats in the 1880 election, one of the new Democratic administration's priorities was to bring the United States onto the gold standard as almost all of Europe had done. In 1881, the House of Representatives passed the Cleveland-Gibson Act, which would demonetize silver and phase out silver currency in favor of gold currency and place the United States completely on the gold standard. However, the act faced much opposition from politicians in the western United States and from businesses such as mining and railroad companies with interests in the silver coming from the Rocky Mountains. The opposition was powerful enough in the Senate that the Cleveland-Gibson Act only received 36 votes for and was voted down with 48 votes against.

However, the Democratic Party would not be deterred and sought to restrict the use of silver currency once again two years later in 1883. A recession in 1882 had presented another opportunity to decry the bimetallic standard. Congressman Grover Cleveland, one of the authors of the failed act two years prior, brought another bill to the House of Representatives that was less harsh than the earlier bill but still made restrictions on the use of silver as a currency. The new Coinage Act of 1883 reduced the size of silver coinage and transferred much of the silver coin production to trade dollars. The news silver trade dollars were minted mainly in Ferroplano and Tacoma and were mostly used in trade with California, Mexico, and East Asia. While the Fifth Coinage Act did satisfy some in the gold standard movement, it angered miners in the Rockies and did little to shelter the country from the drastic fall in silver prices as the European Monetary Standard solidified that continent's movement to the gold standard. Immediately after the passage of the act, a slight recession hit the United States that lasted into early 1884 as bankers and monetary speculators reacted to the act.


Election of 1884:
The 1884 election was a watershed election for the United States. The Democratic victory in 1880 had upset the long-running Republican dominance of the presidency and forced the Republicans to realign themselves. With the Democrats taking a solid hold of many former Confederate states and gaining popularity with business interests in the Northeast, the 1884 Republican National Convention had a slight air of desperation. James G. Blaine, a divisive figure in the 1880 convention, was quickly dismissed on the ballot as many in the party blamed him for the loss to Winfield Scott Hancock. After five ballots, Vermont senator George Edmunds won the nomination for the Republican presidential candidate. Edmunds was chosen for his reputation in Congress among industrial workers. John Sherman, former Treasury Secretary under President Burnside, won the nomination for the vice presidential candidacy[1].

In most of the country, the general campaign was centered around the debate over the gold standard. In the summer of 1884, Hancock made several speeches in the Northeast regarding the benefits of the gold standard and how the United States was one of the few countries to not adopt the practice. The Democrats blamed the 1883 recession on the bimetallic system as well as the economic uncertainty created by the attempts to block the legislation in Congress. However, Edmunds and the Republicans retorted that the recession was the result of anticipation of a move toward the gold standard and the potential reduction in the supply of currency. Edmunds also blamed the low tariffs were hurting the production of American goods. Edmunds especially mentioned the declining price of agricultural products in a speech in Decatur, Demoine to help gain the farmers' votes. The Republicans' targetting of Hancock's administration worked and the Republicans won decisively. Much of the South remained Democratic, however, and Hancock only lost Maryland and his home state of Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point. Had Hancock won those two states, the electoral vote would have been a tie and the election would have gone to the House.


Here is a link to the poll that decided the election result.

[1] George Edmunds and John Sherman were in OTL the main authors of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time. I found precedent for my original plan, hooray! The two sections really don't have anything to do with each other, but I didn't want to have the New Mexico update by itself.


Part Seventy-Seven: Crossing Rivers

New Mexico and the Trans-Pecos:
Since the Colorado gold rush, the population of New Mexico territory increased by the tens of thousands every decade. While there was an initial movement to create a state out of the territory in the early 1860s, the National War put a hold on any plans New Mexico had for statehood. After Colorado was admitted as a state in 1876, the movement for statehood for New Mexico was rekindled. However, the process stalled as Congress continually failed to act on any legislation regarding statehood for New Mexico.

As the debate over the gold standard came to a head, New Mexico grew more prominent in politics. Some Republican politicians began pushing for the admission of the territory as a state to give more support to the Republican bimetallist platform, but the Democratic victory in the 1880 elections pushed the admission of New Mexico back even further. During that time, the territorial legislature started wondering whether it was worth it to keep the southern area of the territory south of El Paso. The Trans-Pecos as the region was called was for the most part uninhabited with only a few small towns marking the land route between San Antonio and El Paso[1]. The New Mexico territorial legislature and members of Congress were unsure of what to do with the Trans-Pecos region when the possibility of statehood came up in 1885. The decision was finally made to have the Trans-Pecos revert to unorganized territory[2] while the remainder of New Mexico was granted statehood in February of 1886, bringing the forty-third state into the Union.


High Above the River:
While there had been many developments in ground transportation up to the 1880s, bridging some of the wider rivers still proved a great difficulty to engineers. In many cities along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, for instance, ferries remained the most used way to cross the river up into the early 20th century. However, beginning in the 1870s, new innovations in bridge construction enabled bridges to span newer and longer spaces. Particularly, the greater use of suspension bridges and advances in their construction allowed for much longer single spans between supports.

While suspension bridges had been built previously, they were mostly over minor distances and smaller rivers. The first modern suspension bridges to be built across major rivers were the Brooklyn Bridge and the Eads Bridge in Saint Louis. The Brooklyn Bridge was the first bridge to connect the island of Manhattan with Brooklyn. It was built with a used new developments to sink the supports for the towers far into the ground below the East River. The bridge's span came to 1,587 feet[3] and was the longest suspension bridge span in the world at the time of its completion.

However, the Brooklyn Bridge's record span was surpassed only three months later upon the completion of the Lewis and Clark Bridge, the first bridge in Saint Louis to cross either the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers[4]. The bridge, designed by architect and engineer James Eads, was the first suspension bridge with a span of over 1,600 feet. While its supports were on land and so did not present any design challenges, the Lewis and Clark Bridge was the first major bridge to use primarily metal construction, rather than wood or stone. With ribbed steel towers 280 feet tall, the Lewis and Clark Bridge dominated the Saint Louis skyline and became a symbol of the city.

[1] This is true even now in OTL. The region has a total population of 830,000 and the El Paso metro area has a population of 775,000.
[2] OTL precedent for this comes from the reversion of the eastern Dakotas to unorganized territory after the admission of Minnesota in 1858.
[3] Slightly shorter than the OTL Brooklyn Bridge.
[4] TTL's Lewis and Clark Bridge is at the location of OTL's Eads Bridge.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Got the update done. Another sporting one, politics will return in the next update.

Culture #3: The World of Sports

The Olympics Leave Greece:
After the first modern Olympics were held in 1882, the International Olympic Committee made the decision to move the games out of Greece. They hoped that having the games held in different countries would help to attract interest in the Olympiad. Because of influence by IOC president William Penny Brookes, it was decided that the Second Olympiad would be hosted in London in 1886. The 1886 were set to coincide with the International Colonial Exposition in London. Along with colonial pavilions by the British East India Company and other British colonies, athletes from several British colonies competed in the Olympics. Some of the new countries with athletes competing for the first time in the Olympics in 1886 included Argentina, Canada, the Netherlands, British India, and Australia.

Some of the highlights of the Second Olympiad came from the new events that premiered in 1886. One of the most popular new competitions of the London Olympics was in cricket, which had grown in popularity in Great Britain and her colonies. Teams representing Great Britain, France, and Australia held a round robin series of test matches[1]. It ended up that the final game between rivals Britain and Australia was the deciding match for the gold medal as they had both beaten the French team. Other new sports were added that were also of particular interest to the British attendees. These included archery, equestrian events, rowing, and football. In the rowing event, the Balliol eights team won the gold medal for Great Britain, beating out the Columbia team which won silver.

Football also saw its Olympic debut in London as Great Britain, Belgium, and the United States sent teams to compete. The matches were the first international matches played between teams representing the British Isles and the United States. Two teams from Great Britain, Sheffield FC from England and Queen's Park from Scotland, along with Harvard University from the United States and Klub Atletik Gent from Belgium competed in the games. Harvard University made it to the gold medal match by defeating Queen's Park 3-0, but lost to Sheffield FC 6-1 in the gold medal match. Queen's Park defeated K. A. Gent for the bronze medal. As both teams were from Britain, both the gold and the bronze were given to Great Britain while the United States brought back silver.


A Whole New Ball Game:
After the formation of the Mesoamerican Union, interest in the pre-Columbian cultures of the isthmus spiked in the country. The government encourage this interest, as many leaders thought that the revival of Mayan elements would help to create a national unifying culture in Mesoamerica. At the time, several ballcourts had been discovered throughout Mesoamerica and the southern Mexican states. In 1890, Augusto Gamboa, a professor at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, adapted the discoveries made at the ballcourts to create a new more modern version. Gamboa devised a set of rules for what he called Poktapok after the closest Mayan term for the pre-Columbian version and played the game in a small court with a traditional rubber ball which players attempted to get through a ring mounted on either side of the court. The game was originally played with seven people on a side. While players were holding the ball, they were not allowed to move from their position and had to throw it to other players on their team[2].

The first game was played between two sides at the Universidad de San Carlos near the end of 1890. Over the next decade, the game spread throughout Mesoamerica. While there were few attempts to organize professional leagues across Mesoamerica, several teams were created and in 1901, the first successful professional league was formed. The Liga Nacional de Poktapok first had six teams, each representing the capitals of the country's six provinces. The first seasons were played in outdoor fields with temporarily set up end hoops, but starting in 1905 permanent courts were built. The league expanded to ten teams by 1910, and poktapok spread to Costa Rica and the southern Mexican states during the 1910s and 1920s. Poktapok became one of the most popular sports in Central America and today there is a minor following of the sport in Cuba and other areas with large Mesoamerican immigrant populations.

[1] The matches were held over a month, but back then they only played three matches per series. And yes, I've probably got some of the terminology wrong, so feel free to correct me.
[2] This is similar to the original rules of basketball in OTL, which Naismith partly based on the findings of the Mayan game (according to what I read on Wiki). Poktapok will probably replace basketball in TTL.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time! I hope I got the economic effects right.

Party Seventy-Eight: Silver

The Silver Depression:
Beginning in 1885, the discovery of new deposits of silver and gold in northern Kootenay reinvigorated the gold rush in the northwestern United States. Combined with other major silver discoveries around the world such as at Castroveta in southern California[1], silver production increased drastically from the 1880s to the end of the century. Annual global extraction of silver had been at approximately 30 billion ounces for most of the century, but annual production jumped to 120 billion ounces in the later decades. The Castroveta mine alone produced over 6 million ounces of silver between 1883 and 1900. The rate of silver production increased so quickly during the 1880s and 1890s that it caused a sudden collapse in the value of silver. Silver had stayed at approximately the same value from the 1780s to the early 1880s, but between 1886 and 1888 it lost almost a quarter of its value[2].

The sudden drop of the value of silver had a ripple effect that traveled around the world in the following years. The first sign of what would become a cascade of bankruptcies in the United States was the collapse of the Wheeling and Allegheny Railroad in March of 1886. The following year saw the collapse of several other railroads which had overextended themselves in the previous decade, and precipitated numerous bank runs as the value of the dollar continued to fall due to its connection with the price of silver. In early 1887, Secretary of the Treasury Morgan Comstock advised that the United States increase the amount of silver it purchased in order to increase the price of the metal. While a bill was passed by Congress to buy an addition million ounces of silver per month, it was not enough to counteract the fall of silver prices. Additionally, the effects of the Silver Depression in the United States had begun to spread abroad.

The first countries to be affected were those in east Asia and some of the Mexican states that were still on a silver standard. Japan and China were the worst affected countries in the late 1880s. Korea was quick to adopt the gold standard after it secured reparations from China after the Sino-Korean War and was less affected. When the depression hit Europe, most countries were only somewhat affected at first. Russia's economy barely fell during this period because of concurrent gold rushes in Siberia and Alyeska. But despite the depression ending in the United States in 1891, American and global economic growth remained sluggish for the next two decades. It would not be until the outbreak of the Great War that the global economy would completely recover from the effects of the Silver Depression[3].


Party of the People:
The end of the 19th century also saw a rise in the newly formed People's Party. Founded in 1886, the party sought to appeal to the many agricultural workers in the Great Plains and Old Northwest states. Like the Redback Party, the People's Party advocated for the removal of any metallic standard and the adoption of a paper currency. Other issues that the People's Party took up as part of their platform were the direct election of senators as opposed to state legislatures and women's suffrage.

Like many minor parties in the United States, the People's Party found much of its success through running for elections on fusion tickets. During its formative years, the People's Party co-opted the platform of the more established Redback Party in many states in order to gain at least some representation in the state and national legislatures[4]. In the 1888 and 1892 elections, the People's Party nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa for president together with the Redback Party. The success of the Redback Party in the Old Northwest and the People's Party in the Great Plains helped both parties nationally even though they were extremely small compared to the Democrats and Republicans. During the 1890s and 1900s, however, the People's Party began to absorb the Redback Party as the two parties' platforms became almost identical.

The People's Party gained traction during the Silver Depression as voters flocked to its populist platform. Like the Republican Party at the time, the People's Party pushed for better conditions for workers and business regulations. However, while the Republicans mainly tried to pass legislation for the betterment of industrial working conditions, the People's Party emphasized miners and farmers. Throughout the Panic of 1886 and the following recession, unemployment in the United States rose to over 12 percent. The People's Party benefited from the hard economic times, and by 1900 the People's Party had become a force on the national stage. In 1901, the People's Party changed its name to the name it holds to this day; the Progressive Party.

[1] The OTL Silver King Mine in Arizona
[2] This is what happened to the OTL price of silver. I don't have specific dollar values because the data I found was in OTL 1998 dollars, and I'm not sure how much inflation will happen before modern day.
[3] The Silver Depression has elements of the Long Depression and the Panic of 1893 in its cause and effects. My reasoning is that since the Long Depression was averted earlier, it has greater effects now.
[4] Fusion tickets will be popular among smaller parties, either with other minor parties or with the bigger ones.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update's finished! I'll add footnotes later.

Part Seventy-Nine: Oriental Happenings

Asian Immigration:
East Asians have been migrating to the Americas in large numbers for nearly one and a half centuries. While Filipinos began arriving in the Spanish colonies in Ibero-America in the 16th century, other East Asians did not start coming to the Americas for the most part until the 19th century. As Japan, Korea, and China opened to the west, contract workers from these countries traveled with the ships going from Asia across the Pacific and settling in the Americas. In the United States, most East Asian immigrants settled in Champoeg, Oregon, and Fremont and worked on the railroads extending along the Pacific and toward the Rockies. Additionally, a few thousand Chinese and Filipino immigrants also settled in Cuba before the National War and worked on the sugar plantations. By the end of the 19th century there were almost 40,000 Asians in the United States, mostly from Korea and China.

However, the United States was not the only North American country to receive Asian immigration during the 19th century. Throughout the later 19th century, many Asians migrated to California. Most of these migrants entered the country through San Diego or Zhenbao in Yerba Buena. The majority of the 80,000 Asians[1] who had come to California by 1900 worked on the railroads or the mines in the interior of the country at some point. Almost 50,000 of the Asians who had come to California were Chinese, with almost all of these coming from the southern provinces. Another 20,000 arrived in California from the Philippines, and would attract further Filipino immigration to California in the 20th century. The few Japanese that moved to California primarily settled in the Californian portion of the Hawaiian islands.


Sino-Korean War:
For over two hundred years, the Qing Dynasty ruled China. But in the 19th century, the Qing began to wane as unrest in China and foreign intervention undermined the royalty in Beijing. The 1850s saw a revolt in what is now Dzungaria. Hui, Uighur, and Dzungar peoples in western Xinjiang rose up and created the short-lived state of Kashgaria[2]. They resisted the efforts of the Qing to recapture the far western provinces for over ten years and for a time had aid from other Central Asian tribes and even Russia. However, further troubles were to face the Qing dynasty later in the century when the Korean Peninsula rebelled against Chinese subjugation.

In 1885, the pro-western reformer Kim Ok-gyun[3] used his influence over King Gojong to end the tributes paid by Korea to the Qing. On Kim's advice, Gojong soon rebelled against the Chinese and began the Sino-Korean War as China fought to reassert its dominance over the peninsula. The French soon joined in the war and sent a portion of their navy to assist the Koreans. With French assistance, the Korean army helped push back the Chinese invasion. The furthest Chinese advance reached Yongbyon in September of 1885 before being repelled by Korean and French riflemen. A month later, the bulk of the Chinese fleet had been defeated at Dandong and the French had landed troops on Hainan. The war lasted into the spring of 1887. By the time of the peace negotiations, Hainan had been occupied by France with several southern ports bombarded while the Korean army had reached Yingkou and had landed an army at Dongying.

The Treaty of Namp'o was signed to end the Sino-Korean War in April of 1887. King Gojong pressed for hard terms on the Chinese to make up for centuries of Korea's tributary status. Gojong was supported by France, who wanted to secure significant territory in East Asia and gain trade concessions. With rebellion brewing in the western provinces again as well as in the south, Beijing had to accept the negotiations. Under the Treaty of Namp'o, Korea received the Liaodong Peninsula as well as Taiwan and the treaty port of Fuzhou. France received the Changshan Islands, Hainan, and the port cities of Yantai, Xiamen and Guangzhou. The concessions made by the Chinese to open up treaty ports led to several other nations forcing China to open other ports to them in the coming decades.

[1] The total of around 120,000 Asians coming to the US and California is about on par with OTL; the 1900 census shows about 100,000 Asians in the US at the time.
[2] A short-lived state led by Yakub Beg.
[3] An OTL pro-western advisor to King Gojong.

 

[wilcoxchar]

And since I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow, here's the next update for you all!

Part Eighty: The Election of 1888

Election of 1888:
The Silver Depression took a toll on the United States economy during the Edmunds administration that put the Republicans in a difficult position during the following elections. In 1886 as unemployment rose and silver prices continued to drop, the upcoming midterm elections looked bleak for the Republican Party. The large Democratic minority in the House of Representatives managed to disrupt attempts to pass legislation aimed at alleviating the economic crisis because it did not place the United States on the gold standard. Both parties also suffered some defections during the 1886 elections, as members of Congress dissatisfied with either major party switched allegiance to the newly founded People's Party. The most prominent of these defections came from Illinois Congressman Adlai E. Stevenson[1], who had been nominated by both the Republican and Populist tickets but after 1886 made his official affiliation with the People's Party. The Republicans lost the House to the Democrats in 1886 and John Carlisle of Illinois was elected Speaker.

By the time 1888 rolled around, the Silver Depression was in full swing. Unemployment had risen to over 10 percent by January of 1888, despite efforts by the Edmunds administration to right the American economy. Labor strikes had also escalated in the years since the Silver Depression. The Pennsylvania Driller Strike in early 1888 brought the oil extraction industry in the region for weeks. With the country continuing to struggle into the summer of 1888, the Democrats nominated Grover Cleveland for the presidency and Thomas Bayard of Delaware[2] for the Vice Presidency. The Republicans stuck with Edmunds and Sherman, assuring the American people that the economic recovery was coming soon and that the Republicans would improve the conditions of the American worker. The People's Party, which would evolve into the Progressive Party, also participated in the presidential election for the first time, fielding James Weaver and Adlai Stevenson as its candidates. Despite the claims by the Republicans, the American public overwhelmingly returned the Democrats to the White House. The 1888 election also marked the first time that the Southern states all voted for the same party since before the National War.

Cleveland/Bayard: 236 EVs
Edmunds/Sherman: 103 EVs
Weaver/Stevenson: 0 EVs


[1] Not sure if I'm going to have future generations of Adlai Stevensons, so I didn't put the number afterward.
[2] Son of former VP James Bayard.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time! This one's shorter than usual and only has one section because I couldn't really think of another topic to go with it.

Part Eighty-One: Liquid Gold

Liquid Gold:
The late 19th century saw the beginning of the use of hydrocarbons in fuel and lighting. The discovery of fields of oil and natural gas led to several booms in the United States. The first oil boom in the United States was in western Pennsylvania. After the discovery of oil in Titusville in the 1850s, people flocked to the region north of Pittsburgh. However, the Pennsylvania oil boom was only the first in United States history. In the 1890s as much of the country was slowly recovering from the Silver Depression, major energy booms struck two states and helped to spark their economies again.

The first boom began in eastern Indiana in 1889. The original discovery of natural gas in Indiana occurred in 1885 while mining for coal, but the significance was not discovered until four years later. The first drill in the Muncie Gas Field[1] was set up near Muncie, Indiana, and soon there were thousands of gas and oil wells set up across the eastern half of the state. The Indiana Gas Boom led to large economic growth in Indianapolis as well as northern Indiana and northwestern Ohio as the gas was shipped to the Great Lakes. Some of the gas extracted from the field was used for the lighting of cities in the Old Northwest, but this was soon surpassed by electric lighting. However, the natural gas continued to be used in electric power plants in the Old Northwest, and some cities such as Indianapolis and Muncie still have historic Gaslight Districts[2] to commemorate the boom.

The second great energy boom of the 1890s occurred in the state of Houston. There had been suspicions for a long time that there might be oil under southern and eastern Houston, but several attempts to drill in the region had run dry. The first oil find was in 1892 by a team headed by Pattillo Higgins, who founded the Beaumont Oil and Gas Company which later became part of the Gulf Oil Corporation. The extraction and refining industries exploded over the next decades as more discoveries were made in Houston and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast of the United States. The need to refine the extracted oil led to economic booms in coastal cities on the Gulf as well. The port city of Galveston surged to become the largest city in Houston by 1910 and a Texan industrial hub.

[1] In OTL the Trenton Gas Field.
[2] These Gaslight Districts retain their late 19th century architecture and are still lit by gas lighting.

 

[wilcoxchar]

It's update time! Footnotes will be added later tonight.

Part Eighty-Two: Consequences of the Silver Depression

Striking Forward:
The Silver Depression, along with having a devastating effect on the United States economy, created significant social problems and pressures as well. Particularly, the tensions between corporations which were becoming increasingly consolidated and labor and worker organizations continued escalating as worsened economic conditions continued. Renewed efforts by President Cleveland and Democrats in Congress to put the United States on the gold standard only increased labor unrest in the western United States as miners decried the potential loss of their silver profits.

The unrest resulted in several strikes during Cleveland's presidency and throughout the 1890s as unrest among miners in the west grew into a general labor unrest in the entire country. In 1890, the first major railroad strike in the United States hit the Missouri and South Platte Railroad. On May 1st, 1890, railroad workers in Saint Louis, Chicago, and Saint Joseph planned demonstrations protesting wage cuts and extensions of work hours enacted by the railroad as part of the Silver Depression. Within a week, workers on the Union Pacific Railroad also started striking and the strikes had spread through much of the Old Northwest. The strikes lasted just over a month as the strikes were put down by company-paid militias and federal troops.

Despite the growing threat of strike to the country's economy and a backlash among the Democratic administration, there were some advances in labor conditions during Grover Cleveland's presidency. These advances primarily occurred at the state level, such as in New Jersey. Spearheaded by Republican governor Leon Abbett[1], several bills were proposed and passed by the New Jersey state legislature in the early 1890s. In 1891, New Jersey became the first state to ban child labor in factories. The law required that people working in manufacturing facilities had to be over the age of fifteen. Abbett also signed a minimum wage law into effect in 1893, but the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Stephen Johnson Field held that a law enforcing a minimum wage violated the right to freedom of contract guaranteed under the due process clause of the Fifteenth Amendment[2].


Oregon Ho!:
The Silver Depression also created a new wave of westward migration. As economic conditions worsened, many lower class workers, especially from the Old Northwest and the South traveled on the railroads west to Oregon Territory. They were joined by prospectors following the discovery of silver and gold deposits in Kootenay. With this new influx of people along with a small but steady stream of immigrants from Asia, cities along the Pacific coast and the Columbia River boomed in the 1880s and 1890s. Tacoma, Astoria, and Langley developed into important ports for the United States with Tacoma serving as the primary Pacific port for the country during the early 20th century.

In 1891, Congress passed the Enabling Act of 1891, which allowed for the territorial legislatures of Oregon and Kootenay to create state constitutions and be admitted to the union. Cleveland passed the act in the hopes that with the large amount of immigration from the pro-Democratic southern states, the new states would give a more Democratic representation in Congress and give the Democrats more votes in the 1892 election. Oregon and Kootenay were both admitted as states to the United States in October of 1891. However, with continuing discontent over the slowly recovering economy and the influx of East Asians, the two states went Republican in the 1892 election.

[1] An OTL Democratic governor of New Jersey who did a lot to advance working conditions in the state.
[2] I loosely based this case on OTL's Lochner v. New York.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Got another update done! Footnotes to be added tomorrow.

Part Eighty-Three: Births of Political Movements

The Birth of Women's Suffrage:
The women's suffrage movement in the United States began in the early 19th century. Individual women were the first to begin campaigning for the right of women to vote. Abigail Fairbanks, one of these early proponents, spread the idea of women's suffrage through a series of lectures she gave across the United States. Little action was taken, however, until the 1850s. The Worcester Convention held in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1852 was the first major convention on women's rights' and suffrage, and attracted over 250 people including then Massachusetts state assemblyman Charles Francis Adams, son of president John Quincy Adams. Four years later, another convention on women's suffrage was held in Bristol, Pennsylvania with Quaker activist Lucretia Mott and assemblyman Adams as the main speakers. The movement gathered some strength in some circles in the Northeast prior to the National War, but dwindled during the war.

After the National War, the women's suffrage movement began to gain steam again after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Lincoln court's ruling on Fox v. Bennett. Some suffrage activists began claiming that the disenfranchisement of women amounted to involuntary servitude and was thus unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. The York Convention in Pennsylvania in 1876 gave birth to the White Rose Movement[1], the first national movement advocating the right of women to vote. The movement grew across the country and in 1884 achieved its first major success, getting the Champoeg state legislature to pass a law in 1879 that "granted the right to vote in all statewide and local elections to both men and women". The movement gained traction more quickly in the less populated western United States, and Colorado and New Mexico Territory enfranchised women in 1880 and 1882, respectively.

As the White Rose Movement grew in strength, national political parties started taking notice. In the 1880 and 1884 elections, the small Equal Rights Party ran candidates for the presidential and Congressional elections in a few states, but did not receive very many votes. In the 1888 election, the newly formed People's Party campaigned with women's suffrage as part of its platform. The growing popularity of the People's Party in the western United States during the 1890s gathered acceptance of women's suffrage and led to more states passing laws granting women voter participation at some level of elections. By 1900, nine states had granted women full political participation, and five more had allowed women to vote in municipal elections.


The Birth of Anarchism:
The Silver Depression enabled many smaller ideologies to rise into the mainstream as people around the world turned to more extreme political beliefs in the hopes of a recovering economy. Socialist ideologies such as Morelian collectivism and Progressivism gained popularity in the Americas among those who believed that the cause of the economic troubles of the late 19th century was too little regulation of businesses. There were also prominent thinkers who believed that the government was at the heart of the problem. Out of this belief formed the basic tenet of anarchism. But like all broad political beliefs, anarchism had many different branches.

The most well known anarchist ideology today is insurrectionism. Insurrectionism arose primarily from the works of Max Stirner and Bruno Bauer[2], who like Karl Marx were students of Hegel during the early 19th century. Stirner and Bauer's writings about the eventual overthrow of a statist system were influential on later insurrectionists and served as a call to violent action against world governments. In 1886, Emperor Wilhelm I of Germany was assassinated by Polish anarchist Janusz Opalinski[3]. Further attacks by revolutionary anarchists were made during the 1880s and 1890s against business leaders and other members of the state.

Other branches of anarchism urged not for a violent revolution against the state but for the voluntary abolition of the national government as a concept. Some of these ideologies had similar ties to some forms of socialism and advocated a return to solely local governance. Enrico Malatesta, a 19th century Italian anarchist whose works formed the basis for Poleisism, wrote that "the governing structure that best meets the needs of all people is that of the city-state or poleis." The poleis, according to Malatesta, was the point at which a people were most involved in social and political participation and therefore was the ideal entity for distributing goods to a people. Anarchist movements such as Poleisism continued to grew in the early 20th century, and became especially popular after the Great War.

[1] Named for the White Rose of York.
[2] Two OTL influential early 19th century anarchists, though I'm not sure what branch they'd fall under.
[3] Wilhelm's I death leaves Frederick III as emperor.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time!

Part Eighty-Four: A Decade of Change Begins

American Imperialism: The presidency of Grover Cleveland saw the beginning of true American imperialism overseas. While there had been previous expeditions such as those of William Walker, few of these were actually sanctioned by the United States government and the country as a whole had remained isolationist within a global context. During the 1890s, however, the United States increased its commercial and political interests in overseas colonies. In early 1893, Congress and President Cleveland approved a decision to have the United States attend the Congo Conference in Paris as advocates for American businesses with interests in the Congo River.

Cleveland's appointed representative at the conference was a former Confederate general and staunch Democrat, John Tyler Morgan[1]. Morgan was a senator from Alabama who had just been reelected to a third term in the Senate, and was a strong supporter of American expansion abroad. During the negotiations, Morgan attempted to gain the United states some land in the Congo. The Morgan Report sent to Washington after the conference stated that this was to secure land in which American businesses could operate and benefit from the trade on the Congo. Some modern historians, however, suggest that Morgan's motivation was to enable another movement of blacks to the African continent similar to the colonization of Liberia in the early 19th century.

Morgan was able to gain the United States a foothold on the African continent when it was decided that the mouth of the Congo River would be given to a country neutral to European interests. An area at the mouth of the Congo River was given to the United States, which created the Unincorporated Congo Territory to administer it. Frank Seiberling was appointed the first governor of the Congo Territory in 1894 and gave many concessions to businesses for extraction of rubber and other tropical resources. The biggest company to take advantage of the new Congo Territory was the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company[2], which contributed to the automobile boom in the Old Northwest.


Census of 1890: During the 1880s, the population of the United States continued the pattern of monumental growth in the 19th century. Over the decade, the country's population increased from 63 million to over 78 million. Most of this increase came from natural growth of the United States population. Due to the Silver Depression, the decade saw a smaller than normal number of immigrants arriving in the United States. However, those that did immigrate included the first significant migration of people from East Asia, especially from China, the Philippines, and Korea.

Along with the growing national population, the populations of the states also changed dramatically during the 1880s. In 1880, only New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio had over three million people. By 1890, there were eight states with over three million people, primarily in and around the Old Northwest[3]. This reflected the movement of people up from the South looking for work or better pay, as well as industrial booms that arrived with the combination of coal coming from the Appalachians, iron from Marquette, and the Indiana Gas Boom. Even so, New York remained the largest state in the Union at 7.8 million people, over ten percent of the country's population. Finally, Kootenay and Oregon had each reached over 60 thousand people and were admitted as states in 1891.


Election of 1892: The continuation of the Silver Depression through the end of the 1880s caused the economy to once again be at the forefront in the 1892 election. The Democratic nomination was not an easy one for Grover Cleveland. While the party was unified on its economic platform, there was a deep divide when it came to foreign policy. Cleveland and those supporting him opposed American expansion and intervention abroad, but many others in the Democratic Party wanted to embrace imperialism and expand American influence. These Eagle Democrats as they were known rallied around Ohio senator William McKinley in his attempt to gain the nomination instead of Cleveland. However, Cleveland won the nomination at the Democratic convention in Chicago after seven ballots with his appointment of Eagle Democrat John Tyler Morgan to the Congo Conference and retained Bayard as his Vice Presidential candidate.

For the Republicans, there were many politicians who were considered potential candidates. The main contenders going into 1892 were New Jersey governor Leon Abbett, former Indiana governor Benjamin Harrison, and former Attorney General Robert Todd Lincoln. In early 1892, Abbett officially bowed out of the race for the nomination, stating that he felt his efforts would be best focused at the state level. However, at the Republican national convention in Baltimore, Abbett officially endorsed Harrison, pushing Harrison to the nomination on the second ballot. The convention nominated Henry Dawes of Massachusetts as Harrison's running mate.

The campaign of 1892 largely focused on the economy and the cause of the Silver Depression. Harrison and the Republicans put the blame for the depression on the Democratic resistance to regulating businesses and allowing for unnecessary speculation, especially in Western lands and in the railroad companies. Cleveland and the Democrats blamed the coinage of silver and the falling silver prices for devaluing the United States dollar. In hindsight, both parties were correct in part and there were a number of causes to the Silver Depression. However, at the time, many Americans in the east and south sided with the Democrats on the reasons for the depression. Although blaming the silver movement alienated the Democrats in Oregon Country and in the West, the beginning of the recovery and the division of opposition voters between the Republican Party and the Populist Party gave the Democrats a slight advantage on election day. Cleveland barely won a second term with 198 electoral votes, one more than what was needed for a majority[4]. The 1892 election also gave the Populist Party its first electoral showing, with 14 electoral votes from winning Colorado, New Mexico, and Demoine.

Cleveland/Bayard: 198 EVs
Harrison/Dawes: 180 EVs
Weaver/Stevenson: 14 EVs


[1] As part of a compromise between Cleveland and the Eagle Democrats to avoid the party looking divided during an election year.
[2] Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber ITTL too, so as in OTL, a rubber company is named for him.
[3] New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Massachusetts, and Cuba.
[4] And the Democrats narrowly won Calhoun and Cuba thanks to the Progressives siphoning off some Republican votes.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Got another update finished. We're going back to Europe!

Part Eighty-Five: Alpine Instability

A New Emperor; A New Germany:
After the assassination of German Emperor Wilhelm I, his son Frederick III took the German Empire in a new direction. Frederick had long been a champion of the liberal cause while he was Crown Prince, and now looked to turn Germany into a more democratic state. Soon Frederick became at odds with Chancellor Bismarck over several social issues. While Bismarck distrusted the Catholic and socialist elements in the new German Empire and had succeeded in getting the Reichstag to pass laws banning outwardly Catholic and socialist parties, Frederick III supported the repeal of these laws and greater political participation in the Reichstag. While Frederick had kept Bismarck as chancellor to avoid further weakening of the state after the assassination of Emperor Wilhelm, the gap between the two politicians' political views led to Frederick sacking Bismarck as Chancellor in 1894 and appointing Friedrich Naumann in his place[1].

With Bismarck now out of politics, there were changes in both domestic and foreign policy. Chancellor Naumann was a liberal imperialist and agreed with Frederick III on many of the policies that Germany should implement. In 1896, the Freipartei Reforms enabled the free creation of political parties within Germany and repealed the bans on Catholic and socialist parties. In the Reichstag election the next year, the revived Zentrum Partei gained 32 votes and the Sozialdemokratiscke Partei gained 16 votes in the Reichstag. The KDP was most popular in Bavaria and Württemberg, while the SDP gained 19 votes. Zentrum supported the Papacy in Rome in the Modern Schism and used that as an opportunity to diffuse some anti-Catholic sentiment against the party and show that it supported a secularisation of the church[2]. However, the liberal parties in the Reichstag would remain in control for the next couple decades as the National Liberal Partei maintained its dominance.

In foreign policy, the ousting of Bismarck and the appointment of Naumann as Chancellor marked a shift from expansion of the German Empire abroad to expansion in the European continent[3]. In 1896 under support from Emperor Frederick and Chancellor Naumann, a referendum was held in Moravia that resulted in the annexation of the country into the German Empire. Three years later in 1899, Germany invaded the Viennese Workers' Republic. Within two months, Linz and Vienna were occupied and Vienna was annexed. After the annexation, the Habsburgs called for their restoration to the Austrian throne, however friction between the conservative Habsburgs and Emperor Frederick led to Austria becoming simply a region of the German Empire. After the incorporation of Austria, it became a center for the Social Democratic Party in Germany in the early 20th century.


The Return of a Kingdom:
For a decade, the government of the state of Illyria had been dominated by a German-speaking Styrian elite that ignored much of the desires of the country's Slovene people. In March of 1887, demonstrations in Ljubljana and Maribor for greater rights and representation of Slovenians led to violence and clashes between the police in the cities and the demonstrators. In months, the Slovenian population had revolted against the government in Klagenfurt and several cities raised the flag of the duchy of Carniola above their town halls.

By the end of 1887, a Slovene militia had taken control of much of the southern area of the country. As the militia advanced on Graz and Villach, the government in Klagenfurt appealed to the surrounding countries for help. However, the Germany and Italy declined to assist Postermann and the Slovene militia soon threatened Klagenfurt itself. Postermann surrendered his position as the leader of Illyria, and the Slovene militia now had to determine what government they would adopt and who would lead it. Several options were considered, but the Slovenes settled on a constitutional monarchy. Anton Alexander of the Slovene House of Auersperg[4] was elected to become the king. Auersperg appointed Janez Kozler as the country's first Prime Minister according to the constitution.

[1] An early 19th century liberal German politician.
[2] Secularisation in terms of the separation of the church's influence from Catholic-oriented political parties.
[3] Bismarck had avoided the expansion of Germany in Europe to establish good terms with all the major European powers.
[4] Anton Alexander would not last very long as king, being succeeded by his TTL son Adolf

 

[wilcoxchar]

Hooray, update time! And it's more minute details to flesh out the world!

Part Eighty-Six: Business is Booming

The Growth of Department Stores:
Throughout the 19th century, production of goods was shifting from the small-scale individual process of cottage industries to the large-scale continuous industrial production of factories. During that century, a similar transition also occurred in the sale of goods. As the country grew more urbanized, large retail stores grew up in the bigger cities. Technological advancements such as refrigeration, the spread of railroads, and mechanized factories themselves allowed goods to be kept for sale longer, lowered the costs of production, and provided more goods to wider markets. Additionally, advances in construction techniques allowed for larger retail spaces and the sale of a wider variety of goods within a single location. This expansion of production all led to the growth of department stores in the United States and around the world.

Many of the first successful department stores in the United States had their flagship stores in New York City. The first department store in the city was the Marble Palace on east Broadway. The Marble Palace was founded by Alexander Turney Stewart in the 1840s on east Broadway[1]. The Marble Palace featured large glass windows in the storefronts and offered a wide variety of dry goods at fixed prices. Stewart and other businessmen started numerous department store chains over the next few decades, such as Kronecke's, G. H. Hartford, Taylor and Dart's, and several others. The original stone building that house the original Kronecke's store at Houston Street and 2nd Avenue in New York City led to a number of stores opening in the area. The building also still contains one of the few Kronecke's department stores left under the original name.

However, the real boom in national department stores did not begin until the latter decades of the 19th century. This is when now well known department stores sprang up and started expanding their stores throughout the country. One of the largest retail chains that began in this era is Gauguin's. The chain was begun by Frenchman Paul Gauguin after he became a successful stockbroker in Paris and New York[2]. In the 1870s, Gauguin started the first store in the chain in New York. Offering a number of both American and European goods, the store was successful and Gauguin soon opened other department stores in Philadelphia, Boston, and Buffalo under the same company. While expansion slowed to a crawl during the Silver Depression, Gauguin's survived the economic downturn unlike many of the earlier department stores. The success of Gauguin's department stores skyrocketed during the 1890s and by the beginning of the 20th century, Gauguin opened chains as far away as New Orleans and Saint Louis. Gauguin's and other department store chains would help to create a culture of consumerism in the early 20th century.


The Founding of Coca-Cola:
While the industry of the region along the Mississippi River recovered relatively quickly from the National War and had a decent manufacturing sector by the beginning of the 20th century, much of the rest of the South continued to lag behind in development and remained reliant on cash crops and an agrarian economy. The major exceptions to this sluggish economic development were along the Gulf Coast in such port cities as Mobile and Pensacola, but one inland region also managed to recover quickly from the National War. Supplied by the mineral wealth of the southern Appalachians, the region stretching from Birmingham in Alabama to Atlanta in Georgia grew into an industrial epicenter in contrast to the rest of the Inland South.

One of the major companies to be established in the Birmingham-Atlanta region in the late 19th century was the Coca-Cola soft drink company. Coca-Cola was first created and marketed by north Georgia entrepreneur Andrew Wallace and later grew as a product and company under the watch of businessman Asa Candler[3]. The name Coca-Cola derives from the original formula, which contained a mixture of coca leaf extract and the west African cola nut. Popularity of the soft drink took off in the 1890s during the growing Temperance Movement when it was marketed as an alternative to alcohol. The first bottling plant was constructed in Birmingham, Alabama in 1896, by which time Coca-Cola had become extremely popular at drug stores across the South.

[1] The Marble Palace existed and exists in OTL at 280 Broadway, and was one of the first department stores in NYC.
[2] Yes, that Gauguin. He was a stockbroker in Paris in OTL too, but after a recession became an artist.
[3] Andrew Wallace is a fictional figure, Asa Candler helped Coca-Cola's growth in OTL as well as TTL.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time before I head off to my last class of the day! I'll add footnotes later today. I'm also not sure if I'm making things in Britain too repressive to be plausible, but part of it is that the US history textbooks are somewhat demonizing Victorian British politics.

Culture #4: Victorian Britain

The 1890 Olympics:
With the success of the Athens and London games, the Olympics were becomimng not only a well known international sporting event but a desirable cultural event for the host city. In the 1888 meeting of the International Olympic Committee in London, several European cities sought the rights to host the 1890 Olympics. The members of the committee organized the first organizing and bidding process to decide which city would host the Olympics at this meeting. The three cities that submitted bids for the 1890 Olympics were Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. After the first round of voting, a majority of the committee selected Berlin to be the host of the 1890 Olympics.

The spectacular opening ceremony was presided over by Emperor Frederick III and Otto von Bismarck, and showed Berlin and Germany off as an industrial powerhouse. Much of the city had been electrified and a new electric tram system was unveiled. The 1890 games saw the first appearance for several nations surrounding Germany including Denmark, Austria, and Moravia. The Ottoman Empire also competed in its first Olympic Games in 1890, after the Sultanate permitted athletes to attend the games in 1889. The two Turkish athletes competed in the 1500 m dash and the discus throw, but did not get any medals.

Some of the highlights of the 1890 Olympics were in tennis and the marathon. In singles tennis, the gold medal match was between German native Frederick Stolberg and British Wimbledon champion William Renshaw. Renshaw beat Stolberg after a difficult match. However, in doubles, William and his twin brother Ernest Renshaw were knocked out by Americans Basil de Garmendia and Beals Wight. The 1890 Olympics also saw the debut of women's tennis as an Olympic event. Hedwiga Nedved, a German tennis player from Bohemia won the gold in the women's singles tournament, defeating Charlotte Anderson of Great Britain. In the marathon, Greek runner Evangelos Veloulis won the gold medal at age 17, beating out Hungarian Gyula Kellner and American Francis Duquesne, who had won the first running of the marathon in 1882.


Art of Great Britain:
During the 19th century, British art and literature developed somewhat in isolation to the rest of the continent. This is especially evident in the major works of British literature of the late 19th century. During this period, the British Isles underwent a revival of the Gothic novel as a reaction to the more lighthearted romantic literature of the early 19th century. These Victorian Gothic novels were darker than other contemporary works such as Tennyson's. The greatest author of this era has to be Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula and The Snake's Pass. Stoker is also notable for being one of the only Irish writers of the period who was successful in Britain.

Along with the writings of the great Gothic authors, Britain also had a large upswing of social literature. Many liberalist writers decried the treatment of the Highland Scottish and the Irish by the Conservative governments of Great Britain during the 1800s. However, they were often ostracized by the higher segments of society for a desire for mob rule should the working classes be allowed to vote. With such stagnation among the Parliament during the 19th century, many writers took to underground publications to encourage the middle and working classes to push for an expansion of the franchise and the granting of more rights to Catholics within Great Britain. The response by the Conservative governments was to seek out these papers and have them shut down for libel or unlicensed publishing after the passage of the Newspaper Licensing Act of 1867. The most famous case of this is the 1875 raid on the D & D Publishing Company in Oxford which killed three workers including Charles Dickens, one of the owners. The other owner, Charles Dodgson, went on to operate the Wonderland Press, another underground newspaper.