That assumes the second gunbarrel amendment actually passes. An interesting question is what would happen if they tried to wait out the US without passing the first one.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
"Recabarren's main flaw, indeed, was his relative lack of nationalism - he was too married to the ideas of world revolution and the "international general syndicate" that was starting to become the core organizing idea of the hard left in the late 1910s"
Once the Socialist Republic gets running. I predict there is going to be a mini cold war in the Americas between Integralist Brazil and Syndicalist Chile for decades to come (Kinda like OTL with Iran and Saudi Arabia)
Ferdinand: The Last Emperor
"...how many historians hold Ferdinand largely, if not solely, responsible for deepening the Hungarian Crisis from the death of his uncle onwards, in large part taking the semi-consensus view that it was on his shoulders alone to deescalate tensions and find a compromise. This ignores that Ferdinand's advice from his Prague Circle was very poor (even if they often told him what he wanted to hear), that Germany and to a lesser extent Italy were beginning to outwardly and openly meddle in Hungarian affairs throughout the spring and summer of 1918, and that he also did not have many partners to compromise with in Hungary. It also must be noted that one of the most severe provocations between the dissolution of the Diet and the murder of Prince Franz lays at the feet of Karolyi.
The December Crisis which led to the Diet's dissolution was perhaps an inevitability of the various machinations of the prior year, but were inherently a political dispute in which both sides drew hard red lines that they became increasingly unable to walk away from. Andrassy hoped that, with the Compromise extend temporarily until 1920 and the legislature suspended, he could begin a grand negotiation with Karolyi to lower temperatures and come to some kind of agreement as to what would come next, and overtures throughout the spring of 1918 through intermediaries in Milan led to no tangible outcome but persuaded Andrassy, who was no naive babe in the woods, that no more surprises loomed and that with more nudging Karolyi and Jaszi could see reason and embark on a "yearslong odyssey" to find a "constitutional solution" to the crisis enveloping the Dual Monarchy, with himself in the role of the great compromiser, Ferenc Deak.
Such ideas were put to rest quickly and ruthlessly, as Karolyi took an action from which there was no turning back. One of the great disputes that had poisoned the atmosphere of late 1917 was Ferdinand's coronation in Vienna and his tentative plans for a coronation in Bohemia sometime the following year; that the first had occurred without a subsequent ceremony in Budapest was not surprising, but the idea that Bohemia would get a coronation before Hungary was a grievous insult, and one that Greens suspected was deliberate. The Prague coronation was, it turned out, just rumor - one perhaps spread by Magyar nationalists - but it scratched the right itches for Ferdinand's enemies, who already saw him as a Magyarphobe and Slavophile and were willing to believe just about anything about him. Ferdinand made things noticeably worse on May 26, 1918, when he acknowledged the fact that he had not traveled to Budapest to wear the Crown of Saint Stephen - one of Europe's holiest relics and the very symbol of Hungary herself - and thereafter recite the coronation oath. He expressed mild regret, before pivoting to blame "the politics of the hour" and obliquely suggested that he did not want to "provoke the sentiments of the hot-blooded" by going through with the coronation until "the current disputes are resolved, or moving towards doing so."
Could Ferdinand have deescalated by being coronated in Budapest? Maybe. It was not a small gesture to the Hungarian street, and it was one that irritated even Romanians and Slovaks who took pride in the pageantry and sacred symbolism of the Crown of Saint Stephen. While Ferdinand had been on the throne just over a year, he was nonetheless the first Habsburg monarch to not have been crowned King of Hungary since Joseph II in the late 18th century and that he seemed in no hurry to secure that key piece of legitimacy told many Hungarians everything they needed to know - that Ferdinand II was not their Ferdinand IV in anything other than name, and that he was their imperial overlord, not sovereign king. Were Hungarians the co-equals of the Dual Monarchy, or a conquered people? Did Ferdinand spit on the Compromise he was so attached to?
Ironically, at the exact time that Ferdinand sowed doubt with the Austrian newspapers that he would travel to Budapest - security concerns were part of the factor, too, as the Emperor had never forgotten his Magyarphile cousin's spectacular assassination thirty years earlier - he was in fact making plans to invite Karolyi to return from Milan and begin working towards a solution, and the coronation was something that Ferdinand considered a carrot to dangle for the Greens. If that was his plan, he miscalculated how willing Karolyi was to indulge, but even in such a miscalculation Karolyi's denunciation of him on May 31 for "refusing to take his solemn crown and abrogating his duty to Hungary." On June 2, a curious document began circulating Magyar exile circles in Milan, titled Kervenyt a Koronaert - the "Petition for the Crown," one of the most inflammatory and impactful writings in European history since the 99 Theses nailed to the church doors by Martin Luther:
"In the event that an heir refuses to coronate himself before his people, can it be said that he has refused the Crown? And if he refuses the Crown and the holy oaths that tie him to it and the throne it represents, can it be said that he has left the throne empty? These are the questions which the House of Habsburg must answer - and the questions the Magyar people must begin to ask." This opening stanza to a three-paragraph missive was designed to be hypothetical and rhetorical, but its meaning was plain as day - it was an open argument that Ferdinand was effectively renouncing the throne of Hungary and, by extension, that of Croatia-Slavonia, and implied that Hungary sought a new King. A less aggressive version of the Kervenyt appeared in Budapest which simply asked why Ferdinand had not accepted a coronation and demanded he do so, but the Milanese draft was the one published - with Karolyi's signature listed first and largest, as a Magyar John Hancock - across Europe.
No royal house in Europe was willing to entertain the idea that the Hungarian crown was indeed open - even Heinrich of Germany, a firm Magyarphile, rejected the Kervenyt outright and dismissed it as a "crude insult to Europe's oldest and noblest dynasty." But it was a remarkable escalation, one from which there was no return, in that Karolyi was seen in Vienna and elsewhere as now essentially advocating for the abdication of Ferdinand at least in Hungary, and rejecting him as an illegitimate ruler if he did not bend. The renewal of the Compromise now seemed to be the least of the Dual Monarchy's concerns.
The Kervenyt proved to be the last straw for Victor Emanuel, who upon reading it and realizing its plain implications convened an emergency Cabinet meeting, wherein Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando argued, over objections from the more militant foreign minister Sidney Sonnino, that the clear course of action was to immediately expel Karolyi out of fear of a genuine geopolitical crisis. The King agreed, and on June 10, the Carabineri arrived at the house where Karolyi was staying, asked him to pack his suitcases, and board the next train to Switzerland; over the next week, every other Milan Magyar that had put their signature to the Kervenyt were asked to do likewise, and with that the Milan Magyars became the Zurich Magyars. In many ways, Switzerland was a more ideal exile anyways - it had long been a repository for European problems after Belgium ceased serving that function decades earlier - and Karolyi took to enjoying long ways along the shore of the lake. It was on one of those such walks, without warning in the late afternoon of June 28 - thirty years to the day of Crown Prince Rudolf's assassination in Budapest - that he was approached by a man he had sworn he had seen at the market the day before, and he recoiled as the stranger brandished a pistol and opened fire. One bullet grazed Karolyi's shoulder, the other lodged in his left rib; it was only by a miracle that the next two shots missed, and that a nearby banker out for a stroll attacked the assassin with his cane and bludgeoned him into submission until the police could arrive.
Karolyi's doctors elected to stitch up his shoulder wound and were able to remove the bullet from his broken rib safely; though he lost a fair deal of blood, he would survive, albeit weakened for weeks. The assassin spoke German fluently and insisted to the police on his Swiss citizenship, giving the name Lukas Friedenberg, claiming to hail from a village near Lake Konstanz; that aroused Karolyi's suspicions even further upon hearing this and that the man could give no evidence he was in fact Swiss, deducing that his would-be killer was an Austrian agent hired to come into Switzerland and shoot him dead now that he was not under Italian semi-protection, and that was the conclusion most Greens both inside and outside of Hungary arrived at, too..."
- Ferdinand: The Last Emperor
The December Crisis which led to the Diet's dissolution was perhaps an inevitability of the various machinations of the prior year, but were inherently a political dispute in which both sides drew hard red lines that they became increasingly unable to walk away from. Andrassy hoped that, with the Compromise extend temporarily until 1920 and the legislature suspended, he could begin a grand negotiation with Karolyi to lower temperatures and come to some kind of agreement as to what would come next, and overtures throughout the spring of 1918 through intermediaries in Milan led to no tangible outcome but persuaded Andrassy, who was no naive babe in the woods, that no more surprises loomed and that with more nudging Karolyi and Jaszi could see reason and embark on a "yearslong odyssey" to find a "constitutional solution" to the crisis enveloping the Dual Monarchy, with himself in the role of the great compromiser, Ferenc Deak.
Such ideas were put to rest quickly and ruthlessly, as Karolyi took an action from which there was no turning back. One of the great disputes that had poisoned the atmosphere of late 1917 was Ferdinand's coronation in Vienna and his tentative plans for a coronation in Bohemia sometime the following year; that the first had occurred without a subsequent ceremony in Budapest was not surprising, but the idea that Bohemia would get a coronation before Hungary was a grievous insult, and one that Greens suspected was deliberate. The Prague coronation was, it turned out, just rumor - one perhaps spread by Magyar nationalists - but it scratched the right itches for Ferdinand's enemies, who already saw him as a Magyarphobe and Slavophile and were willing to believe just about anything about him. Ferdinand made things noticeably worse on May 26, 1918, when he acknowledged the fact that he had not traveled to Budapest to wear the Crown of Saint Stephen - one of Europe's holiest relics and the very symbol of Hungary herself - and thereafter recite the coronation oath. He expressed mild regret, before pivoting to blame "the politics of the hour" and obliquely suggested that he did not want to "provoke the sentiments of the hot-blooded" by going through with the coronation until "the current disputes are resolved, or moving towards doing so."
Could Ferdinand have deescalated by being coronated in Budapest? Maybe. It was not a small gesture to the Hungarian street, and it was one that irritated even Romanians and Slovaks who took pride in the pageantry and sacred symbolism of the Crown of Saint Stephen. While Ferdinand had been on the throne just over a year, he was nonetheless the first Habsburg monarch to not have been crowned King of Hungary since Joseph II in the late 18th century and that he seemed in no hurry to secure that key piece of legitimacy told many Hungarians everything they needed to know - that Ferdinand II was not their Ferdinand IV in anything other than name, and that he was their imperial overlord, not sovereign king. Were Hungarians the co-equals of the Dual Monarchy, or a conquered people? Did Ferdinand spit on the Compromise he was so attached to?
Ironically, at the exact time that Ferdinand sowed doubt with the Austrian newspapers that he would travel to Budapest - security concerns were part of the factor, too, as the Emperor had never forgotten his Magyarphile cousin's spectacular assassination thirty years earlier - he was in fact making plans to invite Karolyi to return from Milan and begin working towards a solution, and the coronation was something that Ferdinand considered a carrot to dangle for the Greens. If that was his plan, he miscalculated how willing Karolyi was to indulge, but even in such a miscalculation Karolyi's denunciation of him on May 31 for "refusing to take his solemn crown and abrogating his duty to Hungary." On June 2, a curious document began circulating Magyar exile circles in Milan, titled Kervenyt a Koronaert - the "Petition for the Crown," one of the most inflammatory and impactful writings in European history since the 99 Theses nailed to the church doors by Martin Luther:
"In the event that an heir refuses to coronate himself before his people, can it be said that he has refused the Crown? And if he refuses the Crown and the holy oaths that tie him to it and the throne it represents, can it be said that he has left the throne empty? These are the questions which the House of Habsburg must answer - and the questions the Magyar people must begin to ask." This opening stanza to a three-paragraph missive was designed to be hypothetical and rhetorical, but its meaning was plain as day - it was an open argument that Ferdinand was effectively renouncing the throne of Hungary and, by extension, that of Croatia-Slavonia, and implied that Hungary sought a new King. A less aggressive version of the Kervenyt appeared in Budapest which simply asked why Ferdinand had not accepted a coronation and demanded he do so, but the Milanese draft was the one published - with Karolyi's signature listed first and largest, as a Magyar John Hancock - across Europe.
No royal house in Europe was willing to entertain the idea that the Hungarian crown was indeed open - even Heinrich of Germany, a firm Magyarphile, rejected the Kervenyt outright and dismissed it as a "crude insult to Europe's oldest and noblest dynasty." But it was a remarkable escalation, one from which there was no return, in that Karolyi was seen in Vienna and elsewhere as now essentially advocating for the abdication of Ferdinand at least in Hungary, and rejecting him as an illegitimate ruler if he did not bend. The renewal of the Compromise now seemed to be the least of the Dual Monarchy's concerns.
The Kervenyt proved to be the last straw for Victor Emanuel, who upon reading it and realizing its plain implications convened an emergency Cabinet meeting, wherein Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando argued, over objections from the more militant foreign minister Sidney Sonnino, that the clear course of action was to immediately expel Karolyi out of fear of a genuine geopolitical crisis. The King agreed, and on June 10, the Carabineri arrived at the house where Karolyi was staying, asked him to pack his suitcases, and board the next train to Switzerland; over the next week, every other Milan Magyar that had put their signature to the Kervenyt were asked to do likewise, and with that the Milan Magyars became the Zurich Magyars. In many ways, Switzerland was a more ideal exile anyways - it had long been a repository for European problems after Belgium ceased serving that function decades earlier - and Karolyi took to enjoying long ways along the shore of the lake. It was on one of those such walks, without warning in the late afternoon of June 28 - thirty years to the day of Crown Prince Rudolf's assassination in Budapest - that he was approached by a man he had sworn he had seen at the market the day before, and he recoiled as the stranger brandished a pistol and opened fire. One bullet grazed Karolyi's shoulder, the other lodged in his left rib; it was only by a miracle that the next two shots missed, and that a nearby banker out for a stroll attacked the assassin with his cane and bludgeoned him into submission until the police could arrive.
Karolyi's doctors elected to stitch up his shoulder wound and were able to remove the bullet from his broken rib safely; though he lost a fair deal of blood, he would survive, albeit weakened for weeks. The assassin spoke German fluently and insisted to the police on his Swiss citizenship, giving the name Lukas Friedenberg, claiming to hail from a village near Lake Konstanz; that aroused Karolyi's suspicions even further upon hearing this and that the man could give no evidence he was in fact Swiss, deducing that his would-be killer was an Austrian agent hired to come into Switzerland and shoot him dead now that he was not under Italian semi-protection, and that was the conclusion most Greens both inside and outside of Hungary arrived at, too..."
- Ferdinand: The Last Emperor
I love the update!
It seems that the War Clock is going slowly towards the midnight, as both sides do communication mistakes (Prague rumour, mainly), are too stubborn for their own good, and seem like that every good move they do will be misunderstood and cause eight bad things to happen.
Also, I think that the would-be assassin of Karolyi being a lone-wolf Austrian loyalist or a mad man would really fit the theme of this war being caused by stupid misunderstandings and mistakes.
NOTE: According to my calculations, next update might see us finally meet the unstable, paranoid, arrogant and anxious New Sultan in the Empire!
It seems that the War Clock is going slowly towards the midnight, as both sides do communication mistakes (Prague rumour, mainly), are too stubborn for their own good, and seem like that every good move they do will be misunderstood and cause eight bad things to happen.
Also, I think that the would-be assassin of Karolyi being a lone-wolf Austrian loyalist or a mad man would really fit the theme of this war being caused by stupid misunderstandings and mistakes.
NOTE: According to my calculations, next update might see us finally meet the unstable, paranoid, arrogant and anxious New Sultan in the Empire!
Things are surely surely going downhill for the habsburgs. Just hoping they can salvage something.
You can reaonsably wait out on the second one; there is no way the US leaves without the first, after the Hughes and Root administrations expended so much capital making it the raison d’etre of the occupation
Decent analogy. Ideologically at least those two countries are completely incompatible.
Teehee
Yeah, as i wrote this I started thinking it’s more interesting if Lukas Friedenberg’s motivations are never really confirmed. Maybe he’s an agent of the Schonnbrunn - or maybe he’s just some nut job with a gun. History is borne out of such conspiracy theories, after all…
Heh
Holy hell. Kronprinz Franz of Bavaria gets murdered!
Now thats something.
If this is a mass murder of a royal family, that would be a huge deal for such a vital nation in that time period
That's for Ferdinand, can't wait to see if Blessed Karl is a different story
.....ok fair point.
Does now bring up the question of exactly HOW MUCH of the Hapsburg family is able to escape A-H, and where else they go...
Of course, I think it's fair to say the Habsburgs are being Romanov'd
The African Game: The European Contest for the Dark Continent
"...one of the most important factors in the outbreak of the Central European War occurred nowhere near Europe but rather deep in the African interior, though its echoes are still heard today, in both continents.
The post-Malcolm-Jagow German Mittelafrika was, as it had been as Portuguese Austral-Africa, German largely only on paper; the Portuguese had taken a considerably lighter hand in the Zambezi basin than they ever had in West Africa or even the hinterlands of Lourenco Marques, and personalist relationships with kings and chieftains in the Katanga Highlands and the river valley had been critical to maintaining the peace over their lengthy and poorly-guarded road networks, widely regarded as the most dangerous in Africa. German goals were, immediately, to construct a more substantive rail connection all the way to Katanga from Benguela's fine port, and tasked the chief master of "Bushcraft" in Africa to secure it - Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, [1] the longtime Commander-in-Chief of the Schutztruppe in Kamerun who had immediately upon the Anglo-German Convention's signing in 1916 been dispatched to the new Mittelafrika colonies to secure peace.
Lettow-Vorbeck is an oft-romanticized figure in Germany and German-speaking Africa even today; with his upturned-brim safari hat and tight moustache he cut an imposing figure in a land exotic to many Europeans, and he was known for his bravery and love of Africa itself, his ability to adapt to country that provided little sustenance, and he was widely admired by his askaris, or native African fighters whom he recruited into the ranks of the Schutztruppe. While Lettow-Vorbeck was a man of his time and held many racial views that would be rejected today, he nonetheless treated soldiers under his command well, cared for their welfare, and his eventual command of both Umbundu and Chokwe allowed him to speak directly to African officers and earned the admiration of his charges. [2]
Part of his legend, of course, was borne out of the Katanga Mission of 1918, in which he gathered a large force of askaris for a formal military tour of the colony's interior. Many chiefs had, in the two years since Malcolm-Jagow, never met a German other than scattered missionaries (invariably Catholic from South Germany or the Rhineland, so as to not disturb the delicate balance of Portuguese missions) who were dispatched primarily as translators to begin teaching African intermediaries German rather than Portuguese as the colony's new lingua franca; Lettow-Vorbeck considered this a particularly sensitive task, especially as many rulers throughout the interior had grown to respect the Portuguese and were understandably apprehensive about this new arrangement in which they had had no say. The key to this mission however was in Katanga, the grand prize of Mittelafrika, on the borders of the Congo Free State, and Lettow-Vorbeck's army arrived there on June 8, 1918 to treat with the King Mwenda, a distant relative of the warrior-king Msiri who had led Katanga into Portuguese arms in the late 1880s to protect from Belgian encroachment. The meeting, by all accounts, went well, in no small part thanks to Lettow-Vorbeck's understanding of African tribal and regal dynamics and Mwenda quickly deducing that the previous status quo was unlikely to change much. Had this been the end of it, the Katanga Mission would likely have been less than a footnote in history books of Africa, let alone Germany and Europe.
But that was not to be, for on June 14th, German askaris raided two or three settlements along the Sankuru River on the border of Katanga, allegedly inside of the Congo Free State, and killed in the fray were several African, and two Belgian, members of the Force Publique..."
- The African Game: The European Contest for the Dark Continent
[1] Another reminder to read "8mm to the Left" if you can
[2] Of course, he also 100% participated in the genocide of the Herero people (and possibly the Moros ITTL what with the German possession of Mindanao), so let's not romanticize him too much
The post-Malcolm-Jagow German Mittelafrika was, as it had been as Portuguese Austral-Africa, German largely only on paper; the Portuguese had taken a considerably lighter hand in the Zambezi basin than they ever had in West Africa or even the hinterlands of Lourenco Marques, and personalist relationships with kings and chieftains in the Katanga Highlands and the river valley had been critical to maintaining the peace over their lengthy and poorly-guarded road networks, widely regarded as the most dangerous in Africa. German goals were, immediately, to construct a more substantive rail connection all the way to Katanga from Benguela's fine port, and tasked the chief master of "Bushcraft" in Africa to secure it - Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, [1] the longtime Commander-in-Chief of the Schutztruppe in Kamerun who had immediately upon the Anglo-German Convention's signing in 1916 been dispatched to the new Mittelafrika colonies to secure peace.
Lettow-Vorbeck is an oft-romanticized figure in Germany and German-speaking Africa even today; with his upturned-brim safari hat and tight moustache he cut an imposing figure in a land exotic to many Europeans, and he was known for his bravery and love of Africa itself, his ability to adapt to country that provided little sustenance, and he was widely admired by his askaris, or native African fighters whom he recruited into the ranks of the Schutztruppe. While Lettow-Vorbeck was a man of his time and held many racial views that would be rejected today, he nonetheless treated soldiers under his command well, cared for their welfare, and his eventual command of both Umbundu and Chokwe allowed him to speak directly to African officers and earned the admiration of his charges. [2]
Part of his legend, of course, was borne out of the Katanga Mission of 1918, in which he gathered a large force of askaris for a formal military tour of the colony's interior. Many chiefs had, in the two years since Malcolm-Jagow, never met a German other than scattered missionaries (invariably Catholic from South Germany or the Rhineland, so as to not disturb the delicate balance of Portuguese missions) who were dispatched primarily as translators to begin teaching African intermediaries German rather than Portuguese as the colony's new lingua franca; Lettow-Vorbeck considered this a particularly sensitive task, especially as many rulers throughout the interior had grown to respect the Portuguese and were understandably apprehensive about this new arrangement in which they had had no say. The key to this mission however was in Katanga, the grand prize of Mittelafrika, on the borders of the Congo Free State, and Lettow-Vorbeck's army arrived there on June 8, 1918 to treat with the King Mwenda, a distant relative of the warrior-king Msiri who had led Katanga into Portuguese arms in the late 1880s to protect from Belgian encroachment. The meeting, by all accounts, went well, in no small part thanks to Lettow-Vorbeck's understanding of African tribal and regal dynamics and Mwenda quickly deducing that the previous status quo was unlikely to change much. Had this been the end of it, the Katanga Mission would likely have been less than a footnote in history books of Africa, let alone Germany and Europe.
But that was not to be, for on June 14th, German askaris raided two or three settlements along the Sankuru River on the border of Katanga, allegedly inside of the Congo Free State, and killed in the fray were several African, and two Belgian, members of the Force Publique..."
- The African Game: The European Contest for the Dark Continent
[1] Another reminder to read "8mm to the Left" if you can
[2] Of course, he also 100% participated in the genocide of the Herero people (and possibly the Moros ITTL what with the German possession of Mindanao), so let's not romanticize him too much
So, writing the final chapter of my thesis right now (I promise this relates!) and it suddenly strikes me that in OTL Archbishop John Ireland passed away in September of 1918. This means that he - once a Catholic Chaplain of Minnesota units during the Civil War - lived long enough to see the outbreak of the GAW and nearly made it to the end when it's conclusion was all but ordained. Assuming that he willed himself to last a bit longer until the war concluded (and whatever else one wants to say about Archishop John Ireland, the an had a herculean strength of will), I like to think he died happily, knowing that his old foes, the Confederacy, had been utterly defeated.
This is kind of important because, in OTL, Ireland was one of the few members of the Church heirarchy who was a member of the Republican Party and who was actually friends with both McKinley and Roosevelt. I suspect, in the ATL, he probably forms a friendship with Hughes as well and may have had some influence on the President during the war. Why does that matter? Even in OTL, Ireland preached (literally) strong support for equal civil rights in the United States, even long past Reconstruction when such views went out of fashion and were no longer politically viable. And so - given the outbreak of the war here, I would not be shocked if he wasn't one of the first beating the drum for Abolitionism and trying to present the war as a veriable crusade aganst slavery and the slave holders. I can only imagine how much he'd probably have thrown himself into the war effort: organizing fund raising, selling bonds, encouraging enlistment, etc.
Indeed, I wouldn't be shocked if this effort didn't even begin before the war. Ireland was big into colonization in OTL (trying to encourage poor Irish to move from the cramped cities in the East and settle on farm land in the West. This ... did not go particularly well), and I could see that he put thosse same energies in other directions in the ATL. Would he have used the resources of his Archdiocese to help support a Neo-Underground Railroad? Oh, I think he would have. And would he have set up a colonizaton society to help former slaves in the Confederacyy emigrate to the US and set up farming communities in Western Minnesota? Well, it would certainly fit his character and drive.
Now, all of this is in the past of where the TL currently is, so its a bit of a moot point. But these ideas still came to me while researching and writing today (and served as a nice excuse to get distracted from my actual writing
). To sum it all up, I kinda hope Ireland lived long enough to see the end of the war, I'm glad he doesn't live long enough to see Root screw the pooch and the Red Summer, and I suspect that 1) there is most definitely going to be a statue of John Ireland in St. Paul in this ATL (the Patriotic Bishop who fought to bring an end to the evil of slavery) 2) I wouldn't be shocked to see a canonization effort for him in the future (much to the chagrin of Rome) 3) There may be a number of African-American rural communities in Western Minnesota of varying levels of success that did not exist in OTL.
This is kind of important because, in OTL, Ireland was one of the few members of the Church heirarchy who was a member of the Republican Party and who was actually friends with both McKinley and Roosevelt. I suspect, in the ATL, he probably forms a friendship with Hughes as well and may have had some influence on the President during the war. Why does that matter? Even in OTL, Ireland preached (literally) strong support for equal civil rights in the United States, even long past Reconstruction when such views went out of fashion and were no longer politically viable. And so - given the outbreak of the war here, I would not be shocked if he wasn't one of the first beating the drum for Abolitionism and trying to present the war as a veriable crusade aganst slavery and the slave holders. I can only imagine how much he'd probably have thrown himself into the war effort: organizing fund raising, selling bonds, encouraging enlistment, etc.
Indeed, I wouldn't be shocked if this effort didn't even begin before the war. Ireland was big into colonization in OTL (trying to encourage poor Irish to move from the cramped cities in the East and settle on farm land in the West. This ... did not go particularly well), and I could see that he put thosse same energies in other directions in the ATL. Would he have used the resources of his Archdiocese to help support a Neo-Underground Railroad? Oh, I think he would have. And would he have set up a colonizaton society to help former slaves in the Confederacyy emigrate to the US and set up farming communities in Western Minnesota? Well, it would certainly fit his character and drive.
Now, all of this is in the past of where the TL currently is, so its a bit of a moot point. But these ideas still came to me while researching and writing today (and served as a nice excuse to get distracted from my actual writing
). To sum it all up, I kinda hope Ireland lived long enough to see the end of the war, I'm glad he doesn't live long enough to see Root screw the pooch and the Red Summer, and I suspect that 1) there is most definitely going to be a statue of John Ireland in St. Paul in this ATL (the Patriotic Bishop who fought to bring an end to the evil of slavery) 2) I wouldn't be shocked to see a canonization effort for him in the future (much to the chagrin of Rome) 3) There may be a number of African-American rural communities in Western Minnesota of varying levels of success that did not exist in OTL.The quick and skinny is that it split Portuguese Africa between Germany and Britain after Portugal’s last and most severe loan default. Britain gets OTL Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and eastern Zambia; Germany gets Angola, Katanga, and western Zambia, while Portugal retains small enclaves at Cabinda and Loanda
Also sees Germany and Britain recognize each other’s claims and spheres of interest in Asia and the Americas
At the very least, I imagine that as we’d discussed before you’d see a LOT more Black Catholics due to endeavors like this, and that could have a big impact in places like, say, Boston or ChicagoSo, writing the final chapter of my thesis right now (I promise this relates!) and it suddenly strikes me that in OTL Archbishop John Ireland passed away in September of 1918. This means that he - once a Catholic Chaplain of Minnesota units during the Civil War - lived long enough to see the outbreak of the GAW and nearly made it to the end when it's conclusion was all but ordained. Assuming that he willed himself to last a bit longer until the war concluded (and whatever else one wants to say about Archishop John Ireland, the an had a herculean strength of will), I like to think he died happily, knowing that his old foes, the Confederacy, had been utterly defeated.
This is kind of important because, in OTL, Ireland was one of the few members of the Church heirarchy who was a member of the Republican Party and who was actually friends with both McKinley and Roosevelt. I suspect, in the ATL, he probably forms a friendship with Hughes as well and may have had some influence on the President during the war. Why does that matter? Even in OTL, Ireland preached (literally) strong support for equal civil rights in the United States, even long past Reconstruction when such views went out of fashion and were no longer politically viable. And so - given the outbreak of the war here, I would not be shocked if he wasn't one of the first beating the drum for Abolitionism and trying to present the war as a veriable crusade aganst slavery and the slave holders. I can only imagine how much he'd probably have thrown himself into the war effort: organizing fund raising, selling bonds, encouraging enlistment, etc.
Indeed, I wouldn't be shocked if this effort didn't even begin before the war. Ireland was big into colonization in OTL (trying to encourage poor Irish to move from the cramped cities in the East and settle on farm land in the West. This ... did not go particularly well), and I could see that he put thosse same energies in other directions in the ATL. Would he have used the resources of his Archdiocese to help support a Neo-Underground Railroad? Oh, I think he would have. And would he have set up a colonizaton society to help former slaves in the Confederacyy emigrate to the US and set up farming communities in Western Minnesota? Well, it would certainly fit his character and drive.
Now, all of this is in the past of where the TL currently is, so its a bit of a moot point. But these ideas still came to me while researching and writing today (and served as a nice excuse to get distracted from my actual writing