Most of you on here probably know of The Battle of Dorking: one man's screed against bad defence planning (in his view) and the founding text of "invasion fiction", the 19th century what-if-Britain-is-invaded genre that would eventually lead to The War Of The Worlds. Evil hordes of maybe-it's-the-Prussians descend on "near-future" 1870s Britain and beat us up after two to three days of warfare across Surrey before London is captured.
Fun thing though, the actual novel (available free and out of copyright) is someone remembering it fifty years on, when our great but built-on-sand golden age was dashed because we were complacent about being too hard to invade. So now I'm wondering not just how we get there - a "rising in India" and "the difficulty in America" that sees troops sent there (thousands captured at Canada!) and half of remaining army in Ireland "to check the talked-of Fenian invasion", a German annexation of Holland and Denmark by "Secret Treaty" following defeat of France, implied alliance with Russia, development of a new naval weapon the Royal Navy can't fend off - but what's next.
- Britain is told it has to pay a massive ransom for starting the war, meaning high taxes and is still "paupers to this day"; the Royal Navy disarmed en masse; and for a while, the government signing a law that allows the invading troops to get free quarter in YOUR house. Fifty years on, trade and manufacturing are ravaged
- Emigration from England is rampant now (including the narrator's grandchildren_. We're told following the war, "the people who made money by buying and selling the natural treasures of the earth, [went] to go and live in other places, and take their profits with them"
- "Canada and the West Indies gone to America ; Australia forced to separate ; India lost for ever, after the English there had all been destroyed, vainly trying to hold the country when cut off from aid by their countrymen ; Gibraltar and Malta ceded to the new naval Power ; Ireland independent and in perpetual anarchy and revolution"
- France has risen from their own conquest
- Our lead blames Britain's desolation on being too dependent on free trade and colonies and not itself. Worse still, we had seen power go to "the lower classes, uneducated, untrained to the use of political rights, and swayed by demagogues".
What's this 1920s likely to look like? Where's it going to go? (Is Britain still even a democracy by 1870s standards, considering The Lower Classes In Charge is blamed for defeat?)
Fun thing though, the actual novel (available free and out of copyright) is someone remembering it fifty years on, when our great but built-on-sand golden age was dashed because we were complacent about being too hard to invade. So now I'm wondering not just how we get there - a "rising in India" and "the difficulty in America" that sees troops sent there (thousands captured at Canada!) and half of remaining army in Ireland "to check the talked-of Fenian invasion", a German annexation of Holland and Denmark by "Secret Treaty" following defeat of France, implied alliance with Russia, development of a new naval weapon the Royal Navy can't fend off - but what's next.
- Britain is told it has to pay a massive ransom for starting the war, meaning high taxes and is still "paupers to this day"; the Royal Navy disarmed en masse; and for a while, the government signing a law that allows the invading troops to get free quarter in YOUR house. Fifty years on, trade and manufacturing are ravaged
- Emigration from England is rampant now (including the narrator's grandchildren_. We're told following the war, "the people who made money by buying and selling the natural treasures of the earth, [went] to go and live in other places, and take their profits with them"
- "Canada and the West Indies gone to America ; Australia forced to separate ; India lost for ever, after the English there had all been destroyed, vainly trying to hold the country when cut off from aid by their countrymen ; Gibraltar and Malta ceded to the new naval Power ; Ireland independent and in perpetual anarchy and revolution"
- France has risen from their own conquest
- Our lead blames Britain's desolation on being too dependent on free trade and colonies and not itself. Worse still, we had seen power go to "the lower classes, uneducated, untrained to the use of political rights, and swayed by demagogues".
What's this 1920s likely to look like? Where's it going to go? (Is Britain still even a democracy by 1870s standards, considering The Lower Classes In Charge is blamed for defeat?)