TruthOfAngels
quiet! the robots are busy discovering truth
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Would definitely read, that sounds a fascinating idea.
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Alternate History General Discussion
- Thread starter Elektronaut
- Start date
- Location
- North Alabama
Wondering if something is going on with Turtledove's upcoming Wages of Sin as I've gotten three emails from Amazon in the last week moving the release date from mid-December to mid-January next year, then early January, and now back to mid-December of this year. I've encountered the odd release date change and delivery issues, especially since 2020, but nothing like this.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
- Location
- Sandford, Gloucestershire
- Pronouns
- She/They
Sorry I missed this when you replied.
This sounds like a really good idea. Go for it.
What did you have in mind for the sides in a second civil war. Is it one happening post our present or a re-run of the OTL Civil war but the USA and CSA have more modern weapons.
The original idea was one I'd used in another epistolary-style (email) AH draft: basically, a worse 9/11 leaves Cheney as President, things go much worse foreign and domestic policy-wise, a SCW breaks out in '08 when he refuses to recognize Warner/Feingold as having won the Pres. election that year. The Gettysburg squad finds the rift not long after Cheney's defeat in mid-2014. The idea eventually fizzled, but before it did, I had a thought about writing, essentially, a "UNION Wins" version of GOTS (thanks to a re-read of GOTS around the time, perhaps the last before I realized how "EHHH" the book was, at best), and began spitballing how the two ideas could be connected...
I think GOTS's strengths are largely independent of its premise/AH gimmick, while its weaknesses are tied pretty closely. Let me explain. Oh wait I did. There's the oft-mentioned Leeabooism, and where I think that directly hurts the story most is making the time travelers puppy-kicking idiots. Having seen the Kirov antagonists do time travel warlord villany much better makes it even more apparent.
Anyway, I like the idea of through time manipulation, the North wins quickly... so quickly and easily that, as quite a few people wanted to, the slavery issue could be stuffed back in the bottle. Of course there the pressure keeps building...
Indeed, and one of the key elements being considered for the story is how people from our time have to deal with what is, for the vast majority of them, a stunning/despicable level of casual/open racism in all of America, not just the South, and how Lincoln in ATL 1861-62 wouldn't be as strong on or have evolved to the stances on emancipation and black civil rights that he did from OTL 1863 onward. They might stomach no slavery beyond current borders, and plans for gradual compensated emancipation, with private/semi-public options created for black education, landholding, equal wages, etc., in the event of an early Northern victory. However, there would certainly be some from our time who'd want to push for immediate freedom, equality and all other rights that (in law if not always in reality) are the norm in our time, something which the bulk of 19th century American whites, North and South, would never accept. Makes for interesting tensions/pressure, as you say, and the possibility of a break between Lincoln and the time-travelers...which, in turn, lets the real threats, from our time and this ATL, operate with less chance of discovery.
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ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
This would be very difficult to pull off properly - by modern standards, pretty much everyone in the USA of 1860 was incredibly racist. Even the most conservative of conservatives in our time would be so absurdly liberal, by the standards of the 1860s, that he'd be seen as a loony. The smart move might be to break down barriers gradually, perhaps by the methods you suggest, but it would make the travellers seem unheroic - they're not instantly moving to put down slavery, no matter how pragmatic the decision, and that would make them look villainous.
Two thoughts - any time travelers worth their salt would be able to dig up enough knowledge to kick-start a 1914s level tech base fairly quickly. They can set up factories and use them to intergrate a black/white workforce; they can make a big show of being fair to everyone, rather than openly hiring blacks alone (which would be seen, fairly or not, as incredibly threatening). They could also buy plantations and turn them into co-ops, although that would be a great deal harder. The plantations owners always saw themselves as more of a landed gentry, rather than just businessmen, and giving up their soil would cost them their idenity.
A more subtle attack, spread the boil weevel.
Historically, the boil weevel reached the US in the late 1890s and infested most of the South by 1920, devastating the cotton crop. introducing it earlier might ruin the plantations well ahead of schedules, leaving their owners impovished. Your heroes could then offer to buy the slaves and ship them north, even if the plantations themselves are not up for sale.
Chris
Something I wondered that maybe someone here can answer:
While researching stuff I have discovered that Lloyd George proposed inviting representatives of the Bolshevik government (if not EVERY Russian government) to the Paris peace talks since attempts to stop them failed repeatedly so fuck it,might as well try and live with them and have them be a part in the talks which surprisingly wasn’t that unlikely of a possibility.
But that’s not what I wanted to ask (though imagining Chicherin arguing with Clemenceau would be a hell of a thing)-what I wondered is: did Kolchak or Denikin even have Foreign Ministers? I know they ran shit like Genghis Khan at best but did they ever have like an actual cabinet of sorts or did they just communicate with the outside world via military attaches?
Actually,would Lenin even say yes to this? Would he send Chicherin or Trotsky due to the later being more important? And what can they ask for beyond getting recognition and settling existing borders?
@napoleon IV
While researching stuff I have discovered that Lloyd George proposed inviting representatives of the Bolshevik government (if not EVERY Russian government) to the Paris peace talks since attempts to stop them failed repeatedly so fuck it,might as well try and live with them and have them be a part in the talks which surprisingly wasn’t that unlikely of a possibility.
But that’s not what I wanted to ask (though imagining Chicherin arguing with Clemenceau would be a hell of a thing)-what I wondered is: did Kolchak or Denikin even have Foreign Ministers? I know they ran shit like Genghis Khan at best but did they ever have like an actual cabinet of sorts or did they just communicate with the outside world via military attaches?
Actually,would Lenin even say yes to this? Would he send Chicherin or Trotsky due to the later being more important? And what can they ask for beyond getting recognition and settling existing borders?
@napoleon IV
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- Port of the Mouth
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Kolchak had a full Council of Ministers as the White Government, and his Foreign Ministers at the time of the Paris Peace Conference were Ivan Sukin (until December 1919) and then Sergey Tretyakov (until the collapse of the government in January 1920).
Denikin's Supreme Council in southern Russia did have a 'Department of Diplomacy' for foreign and intra-provincial affairs, but it's a bit tricky to find sources on who was doing what, but by the time of the Peace Conference, Denikin kowtowed authority in foreign affairs to Kolchak, though if he was invited individually I imagine Struve would have been sent in his steed.
Thanks!
I also wonder if Lenin and co,instead of treating this offer as just an opportunity to own the West,actually took this seriously-maybe their situation was slightly worse economically and militarily they’d agree to a ceasefire with Kolchak/Denikin like the Big Three asked them to and,at least temporarily,accept this situation.
Though I do wonder if Kolchak/Denikin would ever agree to this,given how nutty they were.
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The problem here is that at the time, the Allies were waging war against the Bolsheviks, and Lenin would- quite rightly!- be distrustful of an offer to go to the Peace Conference as in his mind he had already signed a peace treaty, and the Western Allies would have shot him or Trotsky first chance they got.
Kolchak's problem here is that the Americans staunchly refused to recognise him because Kerensky told Woodrow he was a wasterman, and were more concerned with Japanese territorial ambition, while the British (to who he was for all intents and purposes basically the puppet of) would only recognise him if they could also secure American recognition, which they couldn't.
The question has already been answered, but I will add that, in fact, the main White governments suffered from administrative bloat at their tops: they had oversized cabinets as every hanger-on wanted their own sinecure, while on the ground they lacked sufficient staff to implement their decisions. One is reminded of San Theodoros under General Alcazar.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
The question has already been answered, but I will add that, in fact, the main White governments suffered from administrative bloat at their tops: they had oversized cabinets as every hanger-on wanted their own sinecure, while on the ground they lacked sufficient staff to implement their decisions. One is reminded of San Theodoros under General Alcazar.
"Very well, I shall make you a corporal!"
Chris
In Alternate Soviet Russia bowl games you!.
(one of my sillier Surviving USSR PODs involves the August Coup or something like it being snarled by a giant western spectacle like that or a pro wrestling PPV or something that causes the date to be pushed back which in turn causes it to fail before it starts...)
(one of my sillier Surviving USSR PODs involves the August Coup or something like it being snarled by a giant western spectacle like that or a pro wrestling PPV or something that causes the date to be pushed back which in turn causes it to fail before it starts...)
Also of Haiti's army which, when it was disbanded (not the first or last time) in 1915, apparently had around 9,000 people in it, 308 of whom were generals.
Reading Robert Darnton’s book on the events that led to the French Revolution, it’s amusing to me that the abolishment of the parlements, something that alternate history fans always say was a good thing, just massively blew up in everyone’s face.
Very few magistrates wanted to be apart of Maupeou’s new regime, the ordinary people thought it was a gross overreach, anonymous authors and intellectuals just lambasted it from every angle, and some hack playwright basically brought the whole thing crumbling down by publishing memoirs, no one took it seriously after they saw what he had to say.
Does show that history is much more complex than we like to imagine, if this played out in an AH story, then it would be an unequivocal good, they’d have no problems finding people to staff it, and the benefits would massively out way the negatives, of which there would be absolutely none and except a few discontent aristocrats.
Honestly, I feel as if the end of Louis XV to the early days of Louis XVI’s reign is basically a real life refute of alternate history cliches. Just abolishing obstacles to absolutism isn’t gonna mean it’s gonna be smooth sailing, and reforms that are supposed to be good can still backfire horribly on you, despite you thinking it’s progressive and for everyone’s sake.
Very few magistrates wanted to be apart of Maupeou’s new regime, the ordinary people thought it was a gross overreach, anonymous authors and intellectuals just lambasted it from every angle, and some hack playwright basically brought the whole thing crumbling down by publishing memoirs, no one took it seriously after they saw what he had to say.
Does show that history is much more complex than we like to imagine, if this played out in an AH story, then it would be an unequivocal good, they’d have no problems finding people to staff it, and the benefits would massively out way the negatives, of which there would be absolutely none and except a few discontent aristocrats.
Honestly, I feel as if the end of Louis XV to the early days of Louis XVI’s reign is basically a real life refute of alternate history cliches. Just abolishing obstacles to absolutism isn’t gonna mean it’s gonna be smooth sailing, and reforms that are supposed to be good can still backfire horribly on you, despite you thinking it’s progressive and for everyone’s sake.
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I like to call this the "Space Shuttle Effect", after a saying I liked that said basically: if the oft-criticized Space Shuttle program had been canceled and replaced before launch, AHers would be talking about the missed opportunity- "It's a reusable spacecraft that can pay for itself with commercial launches in between government activities!" We only saw the hopeful projections, and would be unlikely to see the obvious snarls and changes that come with anything with real friction-ie everything.
Likewise I never tire of telling Avro Arrowites that their plane would have never fired a shot in anger (and for good reason given its defense against nuclear bombers role) and would have been considered an expensive white elephant if it actually had entered series production.