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Cape Republic: Hendrik de Booij
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Maharashtra: State of Satari
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Satari is a constituent state of Maharashtra, which also encompasses the entirety of the Maharashtra-Goa border and surrounds Goa with the exception of the coast.

Satari state is much shaped by its relationship to Goa. Following the Portuguese conquest of Goa, the region adjacent to Goa came to be known as the "Land of the Moors", in reference to the various Muslim kings which came to rule over the region in this period. During the Goan Inquisition which reached its peak in the seventeenth century, it became a place of refuge. When the Goan authorities threatened to smash Hindu idols, those idols were taken across the border for safekeeping; memories of this linger on in village festivals in which idols are taken to and from shrines across the border. When the Goan authorities banned Hindu marriage, couples would marry in the "Land of the Moors", to the irritation of the authorities which aimed at conversion. It was this relationship, as a borderland between Portuguese Goa and the Deccan, which shaped the region now known as Satari state.

However, the region did eventually fall to Portuguese rule. In return for sanctuary against Mysorean conquests, in 1764 the Raja of Soonda ceded various territories, and in 1783 and 1788 the Raja of Savantvadi ceded more territories in return for Portuguese assistance. These territories were then integrated into Goa, forming a region, the "New Conquests", distinct from the "Old Conquests". By this point, the religious fervour of the Portuguese government had cooled and policies of enlightened absolutism meant the suppression of the Jesuits which had played an important role in converting the Old Conquests, and as such the New Conquests were able to retain their Hinduism. Nevertheless, this conquest forced the Portuguese authorities to meet and comes to term with a Maratha aristocracy local to the region. The most powerful aristocratic family was the Rane clan, based out of Satari, which repeatedly rebelled against the government and forced it to accept concessions[1]. These rebellions quickly acquired a very different character after the Goan Revolution broke out in 1830. With the sundering of colonial links between Goa and Portugal, the Rane family rebelled yet again to extract concessions. However, against the considerably weaker republican government, it proved able to launch attacks across Goa, and its success led it to grow yet more prominent. It acquired enormous territories, and in 1831 the Rane clan swore fealty to the Maharashtrian Peshwa in Puna. This implicitly brought the eye of the British Raj, whose subsidiary alliance with Maharashtra meant that the Rane clan too was suzerain to the British, and resulted in the British adjudicating a peace settlement giving the New Conquests to the Rane clan.

The outstanding success of the Satari revolt, which succeeded beyond the Rane clan's dreams, led to the formation of Satari State, with Dipaji Rane as its Sardar. However, its success had consequences in Goa itself, where Hindu Goans were accused of being fifth columnists, and the Goan constitution's disenfranchisement of Hindus owes much to this moment. At the same time, Goa's status as a de facto British protectorate which emerged in this period meant that it became a trade entrepot, and trade routes inevitably marked their way across Satari State. This enabled the growth of a merchant class, one which was economically tied to Goa even if resentful of its overt anti-Hinduism, and its exclusion from the court in Satari city and ties to merchants in Puna and other parts of Maharashtra led to the first stirrings of Maharashtrian nationalism and liberalism. Ram Mohan Roy's presentation of a draft Charter of Liberties and Securities to the Peshwa saw petitions by the merchants of Satari and Sankhali. At the same time, in Goa, a movement advocating religious equality for Hindus emerged, and this also saw the support of these merchant classes; yet, it allowed the Goan government to suppress Hindu rights movements on the basis of them being "under the control" of foreign merchants, and that these merchants were Brahmins and Shudras alienated the powerful Hindu Kshatriya classes of Goa. These ties were only decisively severed by the great Hindu Goan politician Pretâp Sinğ, whose Religious Liberty Association prohibited money coming from foreigners as a move to prevent the Goan government from accusing them of being mere Rane puppets. This movement decisively succeeded with this strategy, but in the act it also detached the Satari merchants from their ties into Goan politics. This meant that, after the Great Indian Famine of 1876-78 inspired a frenzy for administrative reform and centralization within Maharashtra, those merchants supported it; when the eventual result was a Maharashtrian parliament, this meant that, once and for all, Satari would look to Puna for its politics, not to Mormugao, and the good relations inspired by Goa's Hindu emancipation did nothing to prevent this.

Satari later saw, in conjunction with many other Maharashtrian states, a movement for a local legislature, which eventually marked its success after 1927. The codification of the Concani language in Goa had little effect in Satari; despite its spoken variety being far more similar to Concani than Marathi, the people of the state overwhelmingly rejected it in favour of retaining Marathi.

Today, Satari is very much shaped by being a borderland between Maharashtra and Goa. There remain distinct similarities in the spoken tongue of Satari and Goa, and there is a clear correspondence in festivals among Satarians and Hindu Goans. Economic ties remain prominent, and the movement for unifying Goa into Maharashtra has a clear centre in Satari. But nevertheless, Satari ultimately looks east to Puna, not west to Mormugao.




[1] In OTL, the Rane family rebelled against the Portuguese government twenty times between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, with their last rebellion being in 1912 and ending with them being deported to Portuguese Angola.
 
Revolutionary Britain: Board of National Colleges
rect1395.pngThe Board of National Colleges is a government board in the British Isles which is responsible for administering National Colleges, a network of elite post-secondary schools, only open to British citizens, which trains students for jobs within the Public Service. Representative of its ambiguous placement within the bureaucracy, it is, as such, constituted by members coming from the various National Colleges, in addition to members appointed by the Public Service Secretary, and it is presided and chaired by figures appointed by the Minister of Education, in a makeup established to grant authority over it to the Education Ministry, while ensuring the representation of the Public Service in addition to the National Colleges themselves.

The National College system originates with the British East India Company. As it conquered vast swathes of India in the late eighteenth century, it suddenly found itself having gone from a trading company into a state within a state. This, and the potential rise of vast numbers of patronage positions, quickly received the attention of many in Britain itself - famously, in 1783, the Fox-North Coalition proposed a law which established an executive commission in charge of appointments to British India, only to fail after Tories accused Charles James Fox of proposing this law as part of a plot to take over the British Isles using the patronage of the British Raj to make himself dictator, and stirred up a frenzy which saw the Tories come to power, which they only relinquished in 1827. The sudden need for public service personnel to administer the British Raj required the training of officials, which resulted in the creation of the East India Company College in 1806, which sought to do exactly that with the finest tutors British money could buy. This was supplemented with an examination system inspired by that of China, to ensure that civil service placements required some degree of merit. The East India Company College, a relatively small institution which aimed to train (British) personnel for the public service in the Company Raj, is generally considered the first National College, though this is sometimes disputed with the Inns of Court.

Following the Popular Revolution in 1827 and the overthrow of the Frederician regime, the new administration sought administrative reform. With the monarchy replaced with a figurehead administration and the executive branch fused into Parliament, the potential for patronage and corruption suddenly seemed much greater with the public service. The public service quickly ballooned in size with the rise of the New Poor Law, a new Health Code, the establishment of county police, and the expansion of public works. With the nationalization of the East India Company in 1833, the College which was associated with it became an educational institution for public servants; in this regard, Haileybury College still stands to this day. In 1835, a commission looked into how the public service could be refined and the danger of patronage lessened, and it ultimately came to the conclusion that this was best done with the institution of a system of examination inspired by Imperial China. This quickly received the scorn of many, who alleged that examinations were "un-British", "Oriental", and "barbaric", but nevertheless in 1836 the Whitbread ministry forced through the institution of a system of public examinations for public service jobs.

In the same period, the issue of legal reform came to the surface. The common law was codified and replaced by a series of law codes in this period, inspired by the writings of Bentham. But in this period also came a suspicion of lawyers, much inspired by Jeremy Bentham who viewed them as the embodiment of the "sinister interest" which prevented all legal reform and the rise of democracy. A commission revealed that the Inns of Court, in which lawyers are educated, was an institution devoid of virtually all education to the extent that all legal education was by self-study, and this inspired their 1836 reconstitution into a Legal University with the goal of training lawyers. Its specific goal, of training lawyers, has led many to call it the "first National College" (in addition to its older epithet as the "third English university"), but lawyers are primarily employed in the private sector and indeed, it was only in 1899 with C. J. F. Martineau's ambitious reforms that the Indigent Advocates, employed by the state to ensure anyone would be legally represented, were formed. The scandal, and the reconstitution of Inns, inspired discussion to exclude lawyers from being able to become judges, and in 1837, the government established the Magisterial College, which aimed specifically to train judges for employment. While initially lawyers simply enrolled in the Magisterial College to become judges, over time the two fields have diverged and today the judiciary and the bar require two entirely distinct (if intersecting) fields of study.

Further expansion of the bureaucracy following the establishment of a health administration and streamlining of electoral administration in the 1840s resulted in the expansion of examinations, and Haileybury College became far larger and expansive in what it taught. During Wilfrid Lawson's long field of tenure as Prime Minister (1846-1856), the need for a professionalized diplomatic corps during the New Granadine War of Independence resulted in the rapid expansion of the foreign service and Haileybury's educational institutions becoming larger. However, the independence of the public service rapidly came under strain in this period, and the ultimate defeat of Lawson's Radicals in the 1856 election was caused in no small part by accusations that he sought to use the patronage of the public service to make himself dictator. Lord John Russell's second tenure as prime minister saw moves towards ensuring the independence of the civil service, and when the Radicals won back power in 1860, they pursued a program of streamlining the civil service. Haileybury College was reduced to training foreign and colonial service personnel, while separate colleges, most notably National Administration College, were created to train local administrators. In addition to military academies, these quickly became informally known as "National Colleges", in reference that most of them included "College" in their name, as well as their national purpose to train administrators. They also quickly created an informal board around the Education Ministry, as part of the same frenzy that also saw rapid expansion of the university system. Under Prime Minister C. J. F. Martineau, in 1901 this board was formalized to create the form that exists today.

The top-level National Colleges include as follows, note that smaller National Colleges, which are also represented on the Board, are excluded:
  • Haileybury College
  • Magisterial College
  • National Administration College
  • Health and Indigent Studies College
  • National Military College
  • National Navy College
  • National Aerial Military College
  • National College for Political Sciences
  • National Rocketry and Aeronautics College
 
Revolutionary Britain: Secret Ballot Act 1844
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The Secret Ballot Act 1844 was a law establishing the secret ballot as the system of election in the British Isles.

Historically, in parliamentary elections, the British Isles used a system of election in which voters stood on hustings and publicly declared the vote. Though there were regulations in place to prohibit the interference and intimidation by public arms, in practice unofficial intimidation existed by employers and landlords. At the municipal elections, a variety of other election methods were used, including open balloting, but in general municipal elections were oligarchical in character. However, this slowly became more and more unacceptable over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as the corrupt nature of the British political system received scorn by believers in Enlightenment ideals, and the lack of vote secrecy was one common criticism. As the United States and France implemented open ballot systems, this voice increased, and following the Popular Revolution putting an end to the Guelph monarchy in 1827, this voice became a crescendo.

Yet, during the convening of the Convention Parliament, it failed to achieve official status. This has to do with a few reasons. First, the Popular Revolution was, to many, a revolution seeking to restore the balance of political power after the perceived aggrandizement of power by the monarchy, and the secret ballot was naturally not part of this agenda. Second, many believed the public vote was a good thing, as they believed the vote was not a right held by the individual, but a trust accountable to the community as a whole. Finally, the Constitution of 1829 was fundamentally the work of a union of Whigs and Radicals, and while the Whigs were uniformly believers in a public ballot, the Radicals of the time were just as disunited on whether the vote should be secret as they were on every other issue.

The belief in a public vote, however, was gradually whittled away in the immediate post-revolutionary period. British election culture was long marked by a raucous atmosphere; the Westminster constituency, one of the few to have a genuinely popular constituent political culture in the pre-revolutionary Parliament, often had deaths caused by electoral violence and the election hustings were ritualistically destroyed by mobs after every election. The Popular Revolution saw a massive enfranchisement of voters and the creation of single-member constituencies; in combination, this made elections far more competitive than they had ever been and caused the spread of this very same political culture. Elections were bloody affairs everywhere, and as the novelty wore off many chose to stay away. More than a few times, polling offices were overrun by mobs which attempted to send false electoral returns for their candidate. It horrified many, and made Britain even fewer friends on the continent than it already had.

Attempts were made to stem this. In 1835, the Whitbread administration formalized the electoral administration into a single National Elections Office led by an Election-Master-General, along with District Elections Offices subsidiary to it, and Polling Elections Offices subsidiary in turn with it, with uniforms to emphasize their separateness from other administrative institutions. It also established a centralized address system to ensure the verification of locales of voters. Despite accusations of this being a "French-style" centralization, it nevertheless passed through Parliament. Furthermore, during the election period, each polling office would have an Elections Jury, a body of citizens selected randomly with the duty of examining the process of elections and reporting on them; on a unanimous vote it had the power holding a re-poll. In this era the jury was deeply beloved and its "purity" was an obsession of virtually every political faction, and some even proclaimed that the purpose of the entire British constitution was to put twelve good men into a jury; this was a blatant attempt to use this lustre to increase confidence in the electoral process. In the atmosphere of the time it was highly improbable that an entire jury would hold a re-poll, but on occasion it did happen for purely political reasons, and this led to the Secret Ballot Act making them purely advisory. But for the most part, these measures increased confidence in the electoral process. But the violence continued.

As violence broke out, calls for a secret ballot increased. In 1834, a ballot system based on the US - the "secret ballot cast in open" - was implemented in municipal elections. However, any measure of secrecy was quickly obviated by the use of differing-sized and -coloured ballots which made it an open ballot system in effect. Many noted this, and began to theorize on other ballot systems. George Grote created an elaborate contraption that would mark a hole in a paper; others proposed the use of a machine which would have slots corresponding to candidates in which voters could thrown balls in; this would be detected mechanically. But neither the Hobhouse nor Russell administrations supported the secret ballot, and when the Radical Party of Whitbread came to power in 1844, it was they who implemented the secret ballot as a measure to cut down on violence. It received a surprising amount of Moderate support for that very reason.

By the Secret Ballot Act 1844, the secret ballot was made official for all elections. It was in many ways an adjustment of the American-style open ballot used in municipal elections. This procedure consisted as followed: Upon an election, voters would be directed to a polling booth made secret with a curtain; many ironically compared them to Catholic confessional booths. There, a voter would find a table with stacks of papers, designated ballots, on which are printed the names of a candidate with as many stacks as candidates, along with an envelope, and the voter would then put a ballot into the envelope and secure it shut with a stamp, the "Penny Electoral". The voter would then take the envelope out of the booth and, in public, put it into the ballot box. A ballot box was a box of cast iron or wood, with a lid that could be locked and a slot-hole which could be closed with a lockable slat. Upon the completion of a local election, with the election jurors in observance, the polling district clerk would close the ballot box slat and seal it with the Seal of Parliament. This ballot box would then be moved, through a secure yet publicized mode of transport along a pre-agreed efficient route, to the election office of the district being polled for, where they would be counted. Members of the public would be admitted the office to observe this process. Here, all ballot boxes would be checked to determine if they are accounted for, and the seals would be checked; then, the ballot box would be opened. In a long process, envelopes would be opened, and if each envelope contained only one appropriate ballot, they would be counted. Upon the completion of the counting process, the returns would be posted outside doors, published in the national gazette, and the Elections Clerk would officially declare the returns in public.

This law, enshrining the modern secret ballot into existence, proved revolutionary. In an instant, at last elections were tamed. No longer was horrific violence part of the electoral process; it was now an exception. This was decisively proven in a special election a few weeks after the act received magisterial assent, which was so calm, so lacking in chaos, that to many it barely seemed like an election. Furthermore, the secret ballot prototyped in this law spread around the world, and today the secret ballot is considered a necessary part of democracy. In this way, the Secret Ballot Act is one of the most important laws of history.
 
Revolutionary Britain: Structure of the House of Commons
Structure of the House of Commons

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The modern House of Commons dates in 1848, following the burning of the old Parliament buildings by Orangemen in 1834. As part of the construction of a new Parliament on the design of John Soane, a House of Commons chamber on neoclassical lines was constructed. The central room itself consists of levelled benches in a horseshoe layout; this exists as a compromise between the "opposing benches" layout of the old House of Commons, which emphasized intensity in debate, and the hemicycle layout of antiquity, which was revived by the neoclassical revivalism stoked by the Popular Revolution and a perception of this being scientific. These benches are laid out such that they have room for full capacity; in practice, as only a fraction of this meets in regular sessions, the top benches are typically left empty. Seats in the House of Commons are exclusive to Members of Parliament duly elected by election districts; the only exception to this is the Cabinet, consisting of the Prime Minister, as well as the Treasury, Defence, Foreign, and Interior Ministers, which is given a permanent invitation to sit in the Ministers' Bench as guests.

The Ministers' Bench is the portion of the House of Commons in which the Cabinet has the right to sit. Formerly, ministers were allowed to be elected as ordinary members of Parliament, but following the Popular Revolution, this right was abolished as part of the radical aim of the exclusion of "placemen" and ministerial corruption from the Commons. However, the Whig belief that a ministerial presence in the Commons allowed it to be put into check resulted in the Frame of Government incorporating a compromise of ministers sitting as non-voting members. The Ministers' Bench is, in contrast to the green of the remaining benches, draped in red cloth; this is because green was viewed as the colour of the people while red was viewed as the colour of the government; to represent the difference between minister and representative, this colour scheme was adopted.

Beyond this, the Commons includes a Speaker, who is seated in a chair. The Speaker is elected by the Commons and presides over it as a non-member; following ancient custom, Speakers are dragged into the chair. Formerly, Speakers were ordinary Members of Parliament, but after the Popular Revolution this was reformed as part of restoring Parliament's representative character. The Speaker is required to be a non-partisan figure, in practice a retired statesman or civil servant is elected to this position after a general agreement. Sitting below the Speaker is the Table of the House of Commons, where the Clerk and the Legislation Minister sit to provide aid to the general House and their advice. Furthermore, to bring the House into session, the Serjeant-at-Arms places the Mace of the House onto the Table; it is removed when it is out of session.

Upon a motion of Parliament, the House votes by division. Members vote by walking towards the Speaker, and to halls to the left or right of him to vote yea or nay, respectively, on the motion. Members are warned of a vote through the ringing of division bells, which are placed across Parliament and in nearby pubs and restaurants, and afterwards they have ten minutes to vote. The halls lead to the respective division lobbies in which their vote is recorded by tellers and members of the public. If a member stays in their seat, they are recorded as a "present" vote.

Behind the Speakers' Chair is the Office of the House of Commons. Here, the Legislation Minister sits in off-hours. The job of the Legislation Minister is to review bills and amend them to harmonize them with existing laws and suggest improvements, in addition to receiving proposals from the general public and presenting laws proposed by members of the judiciary. Furthermore, the minister also provides resources from the Commons' various reference libraries to any member that requires it, in addition to promoting the printing of the law code and the Gazette of the Register to provide to the general public. In effect, the minister is a servant of the Commons, who also has a great deal of soft power.

Furthermore, there are various viewing galleries. One gallery is designated for reporters, including reporters in the employ of the Gazette of the Register, which records all proceedings and publishes them to the public. Others are reserved for the general public, known as Strangers within the Commons, for observation. Originally the Commons was to include a very large gallery where the Office of the House is now located, but this was removed because a large viewing gallery was viewed as "Jacobinical", as one of the causes of the violence of the French Revolution. In the much smaller viewing galleries that exist, any noise of approval or approbation is strictly prohibited, and they may be cleared at the move of at least five MPs.

All entrance and exit to the Commons requires one to walk across Commons Hall, a grand hall dedicated to the history of British liberty, presented by various monuments. With the exception of a painting of the barons forcing King John to accept the Magna Carta and a statue of Charles James Fox, all of these monuments are to the seventeenth struggles between Crown and Parliament, which the revolutionaries of 1827 viewed as valiant predecessors. Most grand of all is a tapestry of Speaker William Lenthall's famous resistance to Charles I in 1642. This is all meant to impose upon all those who enter and exit the Commons a belief in upholding the privileges of that famed body.
 
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Revolutionary Punjab: Punjabi Revolution map
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The roots of the Punjabi Revolution come in the unification of Punjab itself by Ranjit Singh, coronated as its Maharaja in 1801. The core was unified through his pure military conquest of the old Sikh theocratic republics, and he quickly pushed its borders further. He pushed into Peshawar and the Khyber Pass, he forced the king of Patiala to submit to his authority, he took over Sindh, and his Jammu Rajput allies took over Kashmir and Ladakh on his behalf. It was a path to power which necessitated a powerful military, and as the British successfully conquered North India in the early 1800s and the Afghans smarted over the loss of Peshawar, this required it to be maintained. As the power and might of the British Empire became more and more apparent, Punjab was forced to modernize its military, and it employed French veteran officers to this end. It established the Fauj-i-Khas, an elite modernized corps with French officers and French language commands, as well as another brigade staffed by British deserters. As the Punjabi Empire proceeded over the next few decades, modernization continued. More and more of the military was modernized, while Punjabis were sent to France to be educated. Managing the Empire proved to be a very complicated affair, and it was effectively prevented from expanding at this point.

But cracks became more and more apparent. The military became increasingly political, an order in and of itself. The decentralization of the subsidiary hill states, Patiala, and Bahawalpur made common policy difficult to implement. And young Punjabis, educated in the west, brought with them new ideals of republicanism that threatened to destabilize Punjabi society. In the 1850s one certain young prince, Dalip Singh, organized a coterie of Punjabi liberals around him, and though this coterie did little more than issue petitions for reform, it brought consternation among the authorities. Following the rise of Jawahar Singh to the throne in 1864, this consternation forced them into internal exile to Jammu in 1871. But then came the Great Indian Famine of 1876-78. Though its effects were nowhere near as horrific as they were in the British Raj, they were bad, and though Punjab did suspend all exports quickly, the decentralized and feudal form of the state resulted in sluggish and intemperate relief. Dalip Singh promoted panaceas - industrial development, free trade, and the creation of a parliament. Many listened. In 1879, Punjab repulsed a massive Afghan invasion with great difficulty. In 1881, an ambitious young general, Prem Nath Kaul, presented evidence of a coup involving most leading generals. This made him the commander-in-chief of Punjab, and he quickly posted troops across Lahore in the name of crowd control. He established a correspondence with Dalip Singh in the name of reforming the state, and in 1882, this plan went into action. He marched with hundreds of his most loyal soldiers into the royal palace, removing Maharaja Jawahar Singh from power, stripping him of the royal turban with his bare hands, and pushing him into perpetual exile in the Raj. In his place, Dalip Singh was coronated with the reformist title of "Maharaja of the Punjabis", and convened a Constituent Assembly. The Punjabi Revolution had begin

Dalip Singh quickly came into conflict with the Constituent Assembly. He wanted more power than the Assembly was willing to give. At the same time, he sought to dispose of General Prem Nath Kaul, who he viewed as a danger to his power, and inevitably this led Prem Nath Kaul to correspond with leading figures of the Assembly. In 1883, Dalip Singh personally visited the Constituent Assembly and all but dictated the constitution it could write. This was the last straw, and with that Prem Nath Kaul flew the flag of revolution once more. Again, he marched into Lahore Palace, removed Dalip Singh's turban, and with it his power, and forced him into perpetual exile in Europe. The Constituent Assembly was now free to write any constitution it wanted, and the 1883 constitution established republic with a system of assembly government with - most strangely - the constitution itself crowned as Maharaja of Punjab in a move intended to evoke the Guru Granth Sahib's position as the guru of the Sikh religion. Many were horrified at this end of Punjabi monarchical government with all its revolutionary, and the British plenipotentiary to Lahore tried to convince Prem Nath Kaul to crown himself Maharaja - Kaul angrily refused, condemning monarchy as tyrannical and against the will of God. To others, however, it was electrifying, a moment of modernity, strength, and resistance to colonialism. Across the Raj, in the Malay world, and beyond, republicans and democrats purchased pictures of Prem Nath Kaul to hang in their houses. The "Punjabi example" was rapidly cited by would-be revolutionaries across Asia. But the declaration of a republic led to subsidiary leaders attempting to break away. In Patiala, the local ruler crowned himself "Maharaja of Punjab" in his own right and made moves to attract British support, the Nawab of Bahawalpur issued a request for British protection, and the Pahari region of Punjab continued to recognize Dalip Singh as legitimate. Prem Nath Kaul, now commander-in-chief of the republic, immediately set foot to Patiala.

In Patiala, British troops (in practice most of them were so-called "Mahrattas") quickly entered on invitation, in violation of the terms of the Treaty of Agra (1868). Prem Nath Kaul's vast army rapidly smashed through the British lines and arrested the king of Patiala. Although a cousin was made Prefect of Patiala, this marked the end of Patiala as a state. Marching to Bahawalpur, Prem Nath Kaul did the same there, although it proved a more difficult process to assert Punjabi authority over this larger state. This forced Britain to terms, and by the Treaty of Delhi (1885), it was forced to respect Punjabi territorial integrity. An Afghan force which attempted to march across the Khyber Pass to conquer Peshawar was halted at the massive Battle of Peshawar, and this forced Afghanistan to likewise respect Punjabi territorial integrity by the Treaty of Kandahar (1887). However, the Pahari rebellion proved tougher. This consisted of dozens of small states in very mountainous terrain, all stubbornly refusing to accept Punjabu republican authority, all the while receiving secret aid from the British Raj and its princely states. Prem Nath Kaul found it tough to conquer them all. First marching to Jammu where the rebellion was headquartered, his army had the town placed under siege; in one of his most infamous acts, his army then broke his siege, in an event than caused brutal street warfare that almost entirely destroyed the town; the modern city of Jammu consists mostly of fin-de-siecle neoclassical architecture as a result. But this successful conquest failed to break the rebellion as a whole. Another famous event occurred in 1888 at Kangra, where Prem Nath Kaul was able to attain a surrender through threats, and his army famously intervened to stop an anti-Muslim pogrom. This was all hard-fought, but by 1890 for the most part the Pahari region was brought under Punjabi control. However, many parts remained free from it up until the great railway projects of the 1890s.

Returning to Lahore a hero, Prem Nath Kaul was disturbed at the disarray and instability of the assembly. He believed it nothing more than civilian instability, and he was convinced that if he and his military came in and governed Punjab temporarily, it could put the nation on a path of liberty and order. And so, in 1890, he issued a proclamation declaring he would take control of the government, to thundering crowds. His officers took control of the assembly and forced it to make him the new Sadr-i-Sarkar (head of government). With that, the Punjabi Revolution came to an end. With a strong hand, Sardar Prem Nath Kaul ruled the nation, building new railways and schools. He codified Punjabi in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script made especially for printing, with full representation of vowels; this script influenced reform projects in Turkey and the Malay world. He pushed Punjabi onto the speakers of "irregular dialects" in the Pahari region, even while pushing a recognized status of Sindhi, Kashmiri, and Persian into law. He secured secularism and, despite being an extremely devout Hindu, he secured the acceptance of the Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu clergy of this new status quo and forced those who didn't out of power and, in some cases, out of the nation. He granted recognition to three parties - the ruling Jamhuriyat Sabha, the rightist Insaaf Sabha, and the leftist Kamchari Ate Kisan Sabha - while banning all others, and forcing all legislators and functionaries an oath of loyalty to the republic and hatred to monarchy and feudalism. Prem Nath Kaul died in 1903, both respected for his reforms and loathed for his authoritarianism. He caused one last controversy when the British Raj dragged his feet over his ashes being placed into the Ganges, all out of fear of this being an example to would-be revolutionaries; it ultimately accepted a toned-down ceremony in 1907, but this did not stop a crowd from gathering and chanting "Prem Nath Kaul Zindabad" in opposition to the Raj.

Punjab was forever remade; whether this was for better or for worse, only time can tell.
 
Presidents of the United States

1801-1809: Thomas Jefferson (Republican)

1800: (with Aaron Burr) def. John Adams/Charles C. Pinckney (Federalist)
1804: (with George Clinton) def. Charles C. Pinckney/Rufus King (Federalist)


1809-1817: James Madison (Republican)
1808: (with George Clinton) def. Charles C. Pinckney/Rufus King (Federalist)
1812: (with Elbridge Gerry) def. Charles C. Pinckney/Rufus King (Federalist)


In office, Madison broadly continued the policies of his predecessor. He continued Jeffersonian economic policy, and in this period the Federalists collapsed. The First Bank of the United States was allowed to lapse. While tensions with the United Kingdom proved worrying to some, with impressment and British alliances with the Shawnee in the Old West, ultimately nothing came of them. However, he was faced with much tensions - Spanish control over Louisiana and with it New Orleans led to Kentucky and Tennessee feeling semi-detached from the republic, and though the Wilkinson conspiracy was uncovered and halted, dissatisfaction continued. Nevertheless, Madison left office a general success.

1817-1825: James Monroe (Republican)
1816: (with Daniel D. Tompkin) def. Rufus King/John E. Howard (Federalist)
1820: (with Daniel D. Tompkin) def. DeWitt Clinton/John E. Howard (Federalist)


At first, Monroe continued to follow Republican doctrine, and he proved more of a rigid constructionist than Madison ever was. Republican dominance over the nation's politics continued - but that changed when, in 1820, over the Aroostook dispute in Maine, violence broke out and war seemed imminent. This sparked much resent in New England, deeply tied to the British economy, including discussion of secession among some Federalists. The 1820 election saw a slight Federalist revival, but afterwards tensions with Britain cooled and the Federalists in practice became a regional New England party. Monroe sought to unify the nation and end partisanship, and to many it was a goal he seemed to be successful in. But the 1824 election chaos proved this wrong.

1825-1829: William H. Crawford (Republican)
1824: (with Nathaniel Macon) def. John Quincy Adams/Samuel Smith (Republican), Smith Thompson/Samuel Smith (Republican), John C. Calhoun/Nathan Sanford (Republican)

In this election, the congressional nominating caucus failed to impose its selection of Crawford as the official Republican candidate, and instead state conventions nominated their own candidates. The resulting chaos ended up with a hung Electoral College, and in the ensuing contingent election Crawford got elected by the House as President. This controversy would result in the Thirteenth Amendment, which amended the presidential election process so that the president was elected by "presidential districts" carved out by each state, the electors were abolished entirely, and both the president and vice president were simply elected by a joint session of Congress in the case of a hung college.

Crawford's tenure was immediately met with tensions; not only did British impressment return with its war with France in this period, but more pertinently Spain closed New Orleans to American access. With Secretary of State Henry Clay a firm expansionist, this came to be regarded as a reason for war, and Clay successfully got a resolution of war through Congress. American troops swiftly crossed the Mississippi and took over Saint Louis from Spanish forces. An attempt at a more southern approach to New Orleans at first succeeded, but Spanish ships took it back; the United States lacked the fleet to combat this. A Spanish bombardment of Charleston scared many, even if an attempt at landing troops failed. But nevertheless, a great number of towns in Luisiana were taken over by American troops, even if the Spanish remained firm in the lower region. An American charge into the Floridas proved a great deal more successful, Spanish control always being more tenous. This war proved to be a victory, even if more hard-fought than expected; in the peace settlement, Spanish negotiators attempted to keep Lower Luisiana, while American negotiators attempted to get a Rio Grande border for Luisiana; these efforts were met in compromise when the Sabine was agreed to be the border between American Luisana and Spanish Texas.

This election also changed the party. The flaws of the Jeffersonian system were exposed with the war, and Secretary of State Henry Clay in particular changed from being a strict constructionist to a supporter of a restored Bank of the United States, internal improvements, and a tarriff. A stroke in 1828 meant Crawford ruled out a second term; this left its result for grabs.

1829-1837: Henry Clay (Republican, then Reform)
1828 (with John Sergeant) def. John C. Calhoun/Nathan Sanford (Republican), Thomas Hart Benton/Philip P. Barbour (Republican)
1832 (with John Sergeant) def. Thomas Hart Benton/Francis Granger (Old Republican), Solomon Southwick/William Jackson (Anti-Catholic), John C. Calhoun/None (Nullifier)


Winning on his successful record prosecuting a war as Secretary of State, Clay also had support from Federalist remnants for his newly nationalist agenda. His tenure saw much industrial growth as the Market Revolution and the full benefits of Mississippi access were achieved. Clay made Orleans, known to the Spanish as Lower Luisiana, a state with a striking guarantee of Catholic rights. Furthermore, in 1830, with Britain ruled by a newly revolutionary regime, Clay launched into negotiations with it, and in a convention successfully set the border between the United States and British North America west of the Lake of the Woods at the 49th Parallel, and the border between Maine and Nova Scotia to include the entire Aroostook region. He wrapped up his supporters as the "Reform Party", and successfully restored the Bank of the United States. He also established a quite high tariff, which South Carolina was quick to attempt to nullify. He also attempted to attract Irish voters, who came as refugees following the famine of the 1820s, but this effort failed. The 1832 election saw Henry Clay win over an opposition consisting of Martin Van Buren's unification of anti-Clayite interests, the Anti-Catholic Party that emerged as nativist backlash, and a Nullifier Party. South Carolinian interests were mollified when Clay got passed a less high tariff.

In the wake of this election, Henry Clay sought to unify with the Anti-Catholic Party. He sought to redirect Irish immigrants to Orleans to blunt the impact of their immigration and Anglify the state, but in the long term they turned French and Spanish. In practice this process did succeed, and the Anti-Catholics did merge with the Reformers. Clay's tenure proved successful. But then, in 1836, during the routine admission of Missouri as a state, an antislavery congressman added a rider requiring it manumit its slaves; it passed the House amidst controversy, but died in the Senate. This controversy ultimately forced Clay himself to speak on the issue. Though he was anti-slavery, he was a slaveowner and a Southerner, a fact which was already clear when he looked the other way when he looked the other way at the South illegally exporting slaves to Portuguese Brazil. And this came here as well. He asserted the "inviolability of this species of property", spoke of the contendedness and "convenience" of slaves in Kentucky, favourably compared the "black slaves" of the south with the "white slaves" of the north, and asked gentlemen if they would "set their wives and daughters to brush their boots and shoes, and subject them to the menial offices of the family". It proved alienating to the North, and it resulted in the Reform party convention being ill-attended; instead northern states agreed on their own presidential slate.

1837-1841: Zebulon Pike (Old Republican, then Patriot)
1836: (with Martin Van Buren) def. John Quincy Adams/Richard Rush (Northern Reform), Willie Person Mangum/Richard M. Johnson (Southern Reform)

The Old Republicans, later known as the Patriots, were a party formed out of the opposition to Henry Clay, and it was formed ultimately thanks to Martin Van Buren's great skills as a party leader. Finding Zebulon Pike, a hero of exploration and of war, Van Buren ensured that he would be the leader of this new party, intended to oppose Clay's "neo-Federalism". It proved successful amid the Reform split and Pike's popularity. But first of all, it needed to resolve the Missouri issue. Henry Clay, having returned to Congress, proved far more conciliatory and he proposed a compromise according to which Missouri would be made a free state in exchange for slavery in Arkansaw Territory being assured upon its statehood, as well as a stronger Fugitive Slave Law. Pike also immediately became controversial when he proposed removing Indians east of the Mississippi, in contrast to Clay's support of letting them be killed by settlers. To prevent Southern interests from being irked further, he also ensured they'd be expelled in the north of the remaining Luisiana Territory rather than in the area adjacent to Arkansaw. This proved very controversial, and very brutal towards the indigenous peoples themselves, but he got this act passed.

However, Pike proved less successful when it came to the Bank of the United States. He failed to get reforms of it past Congress, and when an economic panic hit, caused by overspeculation in the new western territories, bad relations with the Bank of the United States were pointed to as a cause. Pike was defeated in the next election, but nevertheless he remained a very well-respected man for his career prior to his presidency.

1841-1849: Daniel Webster (Reform)
1840: (with John Bell) def. Zebulon Pike/Martin Van Buren (Patriot)
1844: (with John Bell) def. John Tyler/George M. Dallas (Patriot)


In power, Webster restored Clay's economic policies to their full extent. He focused on foreign policy far more in practice during his tenure. He attempted to buy San Francisco, but Spain rebuffed this offer quite harshly, believing it would be the first step towards an American conquest of their empire. But still wanting a Pacific port, he instead moved on to Britain, attempting to get a piece of the Columbia region despite the Southern interest wanting no part in this. Furthermore, the United States had little claim, of discovery or otherwise, over the region. But after much skillful negotiation, Webster got Britain to agree to giving the United States a perpetual lease over the Olympic Peninsula in return for a payment; Webster nevertheless hoped to bring the rest of Columbia under American rule through migration, to that end helping carve out a trail to the Rockies. This immediately boosted American commerce in the Pacific. It is generally considered a success.

In his second term, however, the southern slaver interest sought its own expansion. It organized a filibuster attempt in Cuba, which included support from some American troops volunteering, with the alleged aim of stopping a race war. But this filibuster failed. Webster had those who participated prosecuted, which proved controversial among those southerners who supported it. But other Southerners viewed Spain as fellow slaveowners and thus a natural ally, and they found new reasons to align themselves with the Reform Party as a result. It helped ensure a Reform victory in 1848.

1849-1853: John J. Crittenden (Reform)
1848: (with Rufus Choate) def. Levi Woodbury/John A. Quitman (Patriot)

Crittenden's term was mired by a large corruption scandal related to the Bank of the United States, and though he immediately attempted to fix the issue, many alleged the issue was fundamentally deeper. It crashed his popularity, as well as the Bank of the United States more generally; furthermore, a sudden influx of gold from the California Gold Rush occurring in the Viceroyalty of New Spain after 1851, made the Bank of the United States look a lot less necessary. The boom this gold influx caused was one which the Reformers received little credit for. It all resulted in a defeat to a popular Navy man.

1853-1861: Robert F. Stockton (Patriot)
1852: (with Thomas Jefferson Rusk) def. John J. Crittenden/Rufus Choate (Reform)
1856: (with Thomas Jefferson Rush) def. John McLean/Millard Fillmore (Reform)


Stockton was already a well-known name. He fought in the Luisana War in a hopelessly outmatched navy, and later he fought against slavers in Liberia in accord to his very moderate antislavery principles. He was also a member of the fiercely expansionist Young America movement. In power, he reformed and de-emphasized the Bank of the United States in accord with Patriot principles, which the gold influx from California made much more viable, while at the same time backing internal improvements and helping to create a railroad boom that he himself was invested in. American ships in this period went around the world, all the while Stockton talked a big game about international revolution, including sending a fleet to Buenos Aires to prevent Spain from reconquering it during the Third Platinean War of Independence. He also sought expansion, in accord with elements of the slave interest despite his separate goal of American prestige; to that end, after an American ship was seized in Galveztown by Spanish authorities, Stockton ignited an outrage and successfully had the Neutrality Act repealed to allow filibusters, in practice often consisting volunteers from the American army, to be done legally. Filibuster attempts failed in Spanish Texas when the semi-Hispanicized Irish population dominant there refused to participate, while in Cuba the disarray they caused resulted in slave revolts. The South immediately backtracked, especially after Stockton alleged it could be used to stop the trans-Caribbean slave trade. After some discussions, Spain agreed to giving US some basic basing rights, which Stockton treated as a grand victory. But Stockton nevertheless won in 1856 by his party portraying his opponent as a "radical abolitionist".

In his second term, however, the railway boom crashed as it became clear many railway companies with booming prices were unprofitable, and this caused an economic panic. At the same time, Stockton's investments did well, leading to many dirty accusations. Furthermore, Illinois banning slavery in 1858 resulted in the South becoming increasingly disgruntled at Stockton's belief in eventual abolition of slavery. This caused the Patriots to lose in 1860, even if the result was closer than many expected.

1861-1865: Edward Bates (Reform)
1860: (with Henry Gardner) def. James Guthrie/Daniel S. Dickinson (Patriot)

Perhaps Bates was elected less for what he was than what he was not. He was not a Patriot in a time of economic freefall. It was less a mandate than it was a vote against the other party. Despite his party losing cohesion due to Stockton's adoption of some of their policies, Bates nevertheless passed policies. He ended the suspension of the Neutrality Act and opposed further filibuster attempts. Despite being a slaveowner, he was also something of an antislavery man, beyond just the extent of Clay, and his party, already facing weak cohesion, bickered and bickered as a result. Bates found it hard to manage. With the prior death of Clay, the Reform Party lost their erstwhile leader, this weakened cohesion yet further, and Bates did little of note.

However, in 1864, the Internal Provinces of New Spain, that is Texas, New Mexico, the Californias, and the Sierra Madre, declared their independence from Spain as "Buenaventura"; it also banned slavery, as a result of slavery in the region primarily being the purview of regime-aligned people. This included attacks on the plantations of East Texas, in many ways an extension of Cuban plantations. Bates nevertheless declared his support for Buenaventura, horrifying many in his party who viewed it as an attack on slavery. The Reform Party refused to give Bates the nomination in the next election; though he accepted this, much of his party did not, and the damage was done.

1865-1869: Joseph Lane (Patriot)
1864: (with Andrew Johnson) def. Richard Taylor/Robert C. Winthrop (Reform), William H. Seward/Salmon P. Chase ("Free Soil"/"Republican"/"Justice"/"People's")

Winning against vote-splitting between the Reform Party and the hastily formed alliance between Reform splitters and existing antislavery elements, the doughface Lane immediately declared neutrality in the Buenaventuro War of Independence and revoked. Despite it, American volunteers from the North joined up with the "Comunero" rebels in considerable numbers, making the Buenaventura issue controversial within the halls of Congress itself, and Lane was accused of being an agent of the Slave Power. With the South horrified by Buenaventura fighting a war against slavery itself, it sought to prevent any American aid whatsoever, and to that end Lane prosecuted American volunteers harshly for violating the Neutrality Act despite not treating southern aid for Spain with any of the same attention; juries often nullified such trials. The South, immediately worried at slavery's potential defeat, sought to expand it within American borders. East Florida and Cimarron were admitted as states despite clearly fradulent referenda that included many non-resident voters. Furthermore, the Kansas Territory was opened to slave settlement, and after a court case, slaves were allowed "free transit" across states, to allow slaveholders to cross Missouri. It was all massively controversial and furthered the organization of antislavery elements. After Buenaventura won its independence, Lane harshly criticized it as a rebel regime, to the anger of the North, and Kansas became the sight of mass violence as veterans of the Buenaventura conflict sought to settle there and shot their guns once more. It was all too much, and it made Lane the epitome of the doughface. It led to a decisive Patriot defeat in 1868. Many feared for the sparks flying. And on February 10, 1868, they did.

1869-1869: Andrew Johnson (Patriot)
(with None)

1869-1877: Henry Winter Davis (Justice)
1868: (with Benjamin Wade) def. William M. Gwin/Jefferson Davis (Patriot), Emerson Etheridge/Thomas Ewing (Unionist)
Note: After a mob occupied the capitol, a rump Congress convened on February 10, 1868, decertified the results of the 1868 election, and in a "contingent election" declared Gwim as president


When Justicialists won the election, many southerners declared the result illegitimate, pointing to violence associated with it, and they plotted secession or coups. Lane himself cast doubt on the election, and he talked with southern Fire-Breathers, for he agreed with the Southern cause. South Carolina hastily declared its secession from the United States, all the while the southern-dominated outgoing administration all but sympathized with them. On February 10, 1869, Southerners interrupted the counting of the electoral vote, and under their guard Southerners and Lane-style doughfaces met. Getting around the constitutional quorum requirement by creatively interpreting Article I Section V to allow them to expel nonattending congressmen, they invited South Carolina back into the union. Finding the certificates for the election mysteriously misplaced, they threw out the results of the election entirely, and in a contingent election declared William Gwin the next president of the United States.

In the North many called about fraud and unconstitutionality, and the real victor of the election, Henry Winter Davis, convened the rest of Congress in Philadelphia a week later. Here, meeting all constitutional quorum requirements they certified Davis as the legitimate winner, and also impeached Lane from office, allowing his fiercely constitutionalist vice president to take power for less than a month. Under Johnson, the first few battles were fought, preventing raids from Kentucky into the Midwest. And on March 4, in Philadelphia, Henry Winter Davis became president.

Henry Winter Davis was an unusual choice for the leader of an antislavery party. He was a Marylander, and though he hated slavery, it was only in the Henry Clay sense, and he often spoke ill of "rabid abolitionists". But he did support recognition of Buenaventura and trumpeted their struggle as like America's own, along with opposition to the Kansas Act and the statehoods of Cimarron and East Florida. His nomination was a moderate measure. But that did not keep the South from seeing blood, and after he won a long and complicated campaign, they nevertheless attempted to abrogate his election. The ensuing American Civil War proved to be long and tough. And though he began an extremely moderate-minded man, the Civil War very quickly radicalized him, surprising everyone.

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Revolutionary Punjab: Railway-Building in Punjab, 1867-1930
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Punjab was, at its origin, a country surrounded on one side by the expansionist British Raj, and on the other by Afghanistan; as such, the creation of a vast railway network was a necessity for military deployment, in addition to the benefits it brought for trade. As such, in 1867, the Punjabi Empire initiated the first of its railway projects, constructing a short railway between Lahore and Amritsar. Today, with the expansion of Lahore to swallow the entirety of Amritsar, this railway falls entirely within city limits, but at the time it did not, and it played the important use of allowing the government to take control of the religious clergy headquartered there more effectively. The next great railway project of the Punjabi Empire was one from Lahore to Multan, as part of a wider project of a Lahore-to-Karachi railway that would allow for a connection to the ocean. The Lahore-to-Multan railway would see its construction begin in 1873, with the assistance of French engineers, and it saw its completion in 1879 despite worrying costs and inefficiencies in the project, an early example of the rot that had set into the Punjabi Empire. These costs perhaps killed enthusiasm for railway construction in the Late Empire period, but the effects of these existing lines were immense as they connected Lahore, Amritsar, and Multan in a way they had never been before.

Then in 1882-3, following two military coups, the Punjabi state became a republic, but at the same time it was faced with rebellions and invasions by Britain and Afghanistan that threatened to partition and destroy it. And though the Afghan invasion was halted and forced to turn back, though Patiala and Bahawalpur was kept from seceding, and though eventually the hill states would be brought to heel, the sluggish response to all of this showed critical failures of the Punjabi state that could be fixed with better transportation. Thus, though the assembly government that preceded Prem Nath Kaul's military coup has a reputation as anarchical in nature, it initiated a vast period of railway construction, as well as the creation of national schools to train them. Railways were constructed from Multan to Karachi, finally accomplishing the Indus River Delta link. Another was constructed to the border city of Quetta, in a railway that was vital for defence against the Afghan and Baloch threat, and another to Peshawar for much the same reason after the invasion of it was quelled. Following the end of the Patiala rebellion, Punjabi railways were constructed from Amritsar to Patiala, Ambala and Jind against the British threat, despite protests by the British who feared this would be used as part of support of a pan-Indian rebellion. And finally, railways were constructed to Jammu, destroyed by Prem Nath Kaul's army but soon to be rebuilt as a very different and modern city.

When Prem Nath Kaul returned to Lahore after the suppression of the Pahari revolt, he took the railway along with his army, and when he plotted a military coup against a government he thought risked the Punjabi state with its alleged weakness, he used the telegraph lines associated with it to ensure far-flung commanders would be loyal to him personally. And so, in 1890, as he stormed the assembly and had it declare him the chief of government, the transfer of power was far more peaceful and calm in the provinces as one would expect. And in power, he would expand Punjab's railway network yet further. Lines were constructed across the Pahari region, where they coarsed through valleys in grand spectacles of military engineering, a project that also had the aim of preventing further rebellions. These railway lines would link together parts of the Pahari region that were once isolated due to the great mountains to the extent of being virtual islands into the wider Punjabi polity like never before. He constructed further railway links along the Afghan border, but perhaps most famously he constructed railways in the Pahari region, and in Kashmir. The construction of these railways at these altitudes was a very risky business, feats of remarkable engineering, and many died to see Paonta Sahib and Srinagar connected by railways like never before. It was all quite a remarkable feat, one that connected Punjab like never before. And indeed, when he died in 1903, this railway network was so thorough that his immediate successors constructed few others, in favour of updating the existing ones to standards. The great corporate consortiums Kaul had used to finance his railways were separated from the government, and the railways themselves were nationalized in 1913. Other lines were the development of private corporations, primarily.

The social effects of these railways were immediate. It connected the Punjabi state like never before. And because the railways were hyper-centralized around Lahore, it made it the centre of the state like never before. Though the distance from Multan to Dera Ismail Khan is 190 kilometres, from Multan to Lahore is 312 kilometres from Dera Ismail Khan to Lahore is 330 kilometres, the rail links between both cities to Lahore but not to one another made it much faster to reach Lahore than to one another until the creation of a railway between them in 1948. In this way it helped to make Lahore central to the Punjabi state. It ensured that Peshawar would no longer look across the Khyber Pass to Jalalabad for its identities and other such matters, but instead to other parts of Punjab, for economic and societal links. But above all, it opened the door for unprecedented internal migration. As irrigation projects opened up unprecedented amounts of land in this era, people could now come swiftly and easily to their new farmlands.

In the Pashtun lands, ethnic Punjabis came in vast numbers; though there had long been a trickle, it had been small, but here it was a vast barrage of people who chose to dwell beyond just the cities. Perhaps surprisingly, many of them would come to speak Pashtun as their first language and Punjabi as their second, in an effort that was both cultural assimilation and the creation of a wider Punjabi society. Furthermore, while many of the Muslim migrants quickly conformed to existing Pashtun religious customs, the Hindus and Sikhs chose to keep their religions, and this therefore was the creation of the Pashtun Hindu and Pashtun Sikh peoples. It was the migrants who spearheaded the successful language movement for the recognition of the Pashtun language as co-official in certain western departments, and when Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan came in exile in 1926, these migrants readily flocked to them; they were among those joined his army to take back Afghanistan in 1934.

In Karachi, migration of ethnic Punjabis would quickly turn the small Sindhi-speaking town into a vast metropolis which often prefers the Punjabi tongue. At the same time, migrants brought their very different religious traditions with them; among Muslims, this created very different mosque traditions, but ones that were fairly recognizable, but among Hindus and Sikhs, the gap was much larger. Sindhi non-Muslims are often known as "Nanakpanthi Hindus", people who while being idol-worshippers also strongly revere the Sikh gurus and cover the heads in the Sikh fashion when they enter temples. Many decades of Sikh rule had made many ethnic Punjabi Hindus revere the Sikh gurus as well even if perhaps on political rather than religious terms, but at the same time there existed a strong Hindu streak that regarded Guru Nanak as an uneducated, unlearned bumpkin. It was the former element, and not the latter, that became dominant among Punjabi Hindu migrants to Sindh, but the latter existed and caused tensions. At the same time, Sikh migrants tended to regard their religion on separate terms from guru-revering Hindus, and this perhaps separated Hinduism and Sikhism to an extent foreign to Sindh.

In Kashmir, migration of ethnic Punjabis was viewed by some as an "invasion"; though there had long been tourists and the like along with cross-migration both to and from the Majha, this was a much larger wave. Here, these migrants would come to speak Kashmiri as their first tongue and Punjabi as their second, and they became culturally similar to those in their new lands. But religiously, it was a bigger issue. Islam is dominant in Kashmir to an extent it is not in Punjab as a whole, and as such it is often structurally rigid. And though ethnic Punjabi Muslims did conform to many of this, it did also come with large religious strains that affected Kashmiri Islam and perhaps weakened some of its rigidity. But it was the Sikh and Hindu migrants that changed the land more. The Sikhs quickly overwhelmed the existing tiny and insignificant Sikh minority and created the modern Kashmiri Sikhs, with religious sentiments very much like those of the Majha. But as for the Hindus, it caused panic. There is an autochthonous Hindu population known as the Kashmiri Pandits that made up eight percent of the population prior to the migrations; they are highly insular in nature and are met with both admiration and revulsion by Hindus elsewhere, and migrations long ago meant that there were many Kashmiri Pandits far away from Kashmir. Most famously Prem Nath Kaul himself was proudly one of them, even if politically he was very separate from them. Often victims of pogroms, they chose to keep their religious customs private to not antagonize the minority. They also hold very distinct and unusual religious customs centred around Shiva rather than the Vishnu (and specifically Rama) that ethnic Punjabi Hindus prefer, even while being immensely respected for their immense knowledge of the Sanskrit language - indeed, the Mughal emperor Akbar gave them the title of "Pandit" in respect to their learned nature. The Hindus that came had very religious customs, they were not insular, and they practiced their religious customs openly, and this continued to be the case even after they came to speak Kashmiri as their first language. When it became increasingly clear migration would result in these Hindus outnumbering the Kashmiri Pandits, a fear began to set in that the Kashmiri Pandits would eventually cease to exist. To stop this, Kashmiri Pandit community leaders assembled as religious councils and took to various means. They prohibited what they called "Lahoris" from being members of Kashmiri Pandit congregations or visiting Pandit temples, and they harshly weighed against intermarriage with these "foreigners". These sentiments angered the migrant Hindus themselves and caused more than a little violence, but ultimately they were successful; today Kashmir has two separate Hindu communities with separate temple networks: first, the Pandits, and second, the so-called Lahoris. And though there are more Lahori Hindus than Pandits in modern Kashmir, the continued existence of the latter is assured.

There was a lot more migration than this as vast irrigation efforts opened up lots of land for farming, most notably in Bahawalpur where an unprecedented amount of land was opened up far from the rich Sutlej valley. And indeed, cultural differences between Majhi and provincial Punjabis had to be smoothed over, even when both such groups spoke forms of Punjabi. But this migration helped to create a unified Punjabi polity, as well as a unified Punjabi society in time. And it was the power of the railway that made it possible.
 
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Revolutionary Punjab: Grand Occident of Punjab
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The Grand Occident of Punjab is the predominant Masonic organization of Punjab and is the oldest natively-established Masonic organization in all of India. Known for its divergence from standard Masonic norms, it is part of the Continental rite and is heterodox even from that.

Punjabi Freemasony was formed gradually over the 1860s, when Punjabi students studying in France, after having been inducted into its Grand Orient, returned to Punjab. Socializing as a Punjabi branch of the Grand Orient, in 1871 they made the decision to form their own Grand Lodge. They chose to call it the Grand Occident, in an ironic reference to the Grand Orient of France, and here, by its very makeup of young graduates with Enlightenment influence, it quickly became deeply politicized. In 1875, the Punjabi imperial government banned the Grand Occident, forcing it underground where its political liberalism turned radical and, during and following the Great Famine, revolutionary. Masons achieved a following within the army, including a young ambitious colonel by the name of Prem Nath Kaul; his rapid ascent over the 1870s to general gave them vast influence in state, and other Masons were quick to discuss with him the need for revolution. The conspiracy theories promoted by some that the Grand Occident created the Punjabi Republic are a lie, but the same sorts of people that helped cause the revolution were members of the Grand Occident. And finally, in 1882 that grievance turned into a military coup that initiated the Punjabi Revolution.

During the 1882-3 "People's Monarchy" period the Grand Occident came out of the woods and many Masons became deputies of the Constitutional Convention; when Maharaja Dalip Singh treated the Constitutional Convention as a mere consultative assembly, it was they who were the most indignant and wanted him out. They strongly backed the 1883 coup and the subsequent declaration of the Punjabi Republic; Freemasons helped raise money from the army in the dark years of the republic's birth, when it seemed as if Punjab was doomed to be partitioned between Afghanistan and Britain. This period saw the birth of the nepotistic and cronyist networks that shaped the early Grand Occident, as it increasingly became an old man's club. Furthermore, the Sikh clergy, which viewed the Freemasons as a rival religion with a clergy and a mythos that due to its inclusion of Solomon seemed Islamic, called all Sikh Freemasons traitors to the faith. The 1890 coup which saw the end of the Assembly era and the rise of Prem Nath Kaul's dictatorship would see the Grand Occident co-opted into the state, and Kaul became its Grand Master. He also successfully resolved the religious crisis with the Sikh clergy and got them to accept the existence of Sikh Freemasons.

In this period, the Grand Occident strengthened its association of the state; though there were many non-Freemasons within the elite, it provided a step up with its networks. It also provided a useful vehicle for socializing and unifying the classes of the state in a nominally non-hierarchical establishment. As such, Masonic lodges spread across the nation in the Kaulist era, and the grand Masonic Palaces became symbols of grandeur with their typically Occidentalist Neoclassical setup. When Prem Nath Kaul died in 1903, the Grand Occident took the step to declare his widow Priyadarshini a member in her own right, in blatant disregard of the Constitutions which prohibited women from joining. While this wasn't quite a revolutionary steps as it was becoming a topic of discussion within French Masonry and widows had often been allowed in with various fictions, this step in and of itself was a scandal and it served as an important precedent for other women being allowed in smaller lodges. For this, the Grand Lodge of England rescinded amity with the Grand Occident, in what proved to be the beginning of the disputes which caused the great split between Anglo-American and Continental Masonry; afterwards, the Grand Occident declared itself in amity with Continental Masonry. This furthered the division between Punjabi Masonry and the colonialist Masonry of the British Raj. With this division, it went yet further, admitting open atheists into lodges and discarding the old mythology of its roots in Solomon's temple and deist language, on the belief that it was quasi-Islamic. This caused scandal and resulted in the formation of overlapping but separate lodges that sought to keep that matter; today, most of them have turned quasi-religious and Sufi-Bhakti in nature.

But resent at its status continued, and this inspired the rise of conspiracy theories that alleged it to be a deep state, as well as more reasoned resentment of its status as an opaque network of nepotism. The Hindustani War of Independence of 1937-39, which took a heavily anti-Masonic attitude towards the colonialist Masonry of the British Raj even as members of the provisional government hastily discarded their robes, had considerable spillover in Punjab and its ideas spread; though the 1940 victory of the Rawalpindi Compact had much to do with nativism and xenophobia towards Hindustani refugees it was also driven by anti-Masonic attitudes. It quickly disentangled Masonry from the state and sharply reduced its influence. And within the consolidated opposition, Freemasonry was deemphasized as Anti-Masonry was part of it, while even Masons understood there was a certain level of unpopularity with it. As such, the consolidated opposition's victory in 1947 and the subsequence collapse of the Rawalpindi Compact did not mean Freemasonry recovered its influence in state. But nevertheless, it remained a very influential fraternal order, and there have been recurring scandals between Punjab and Hindustan as the Hindustani constitution's ban on secret societies has resulted in Punjabi diplomats often falling foul of them and being accused of spreading "neocolonialist networks of Freemasonry" - even as Punjabi Freemasonry owes far more to the French revolutionary tradition than the British pseudo-apolitical one.

Today, the Grand Masonic Temple of Punjab, with its vast imposing architecture in the centre of Lahore, serves as a monument to Punjabi Freemasonry, while the Grand Occident's vast charitable role means that it is often present at all levels of society to a degree that cannot be underestimated. If it is not as influential as it once was, it is still influential enough - but as a great social club with semi-mysterious rituals, not as a deep state.
 
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Revolutionary Britain: National University of the United States
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The National University of the United States is a confederation of 26 American educational institutions, confederated as a single university issuing uniform degrees.

The principle of a national university first emerged immediately after independence. During the constitutional debates, there were proposals for granting Congress the power of creating a university in order to establish a properly secular institution that would set standards for across the nation, but these efforts failed. Later on, various proposals were attempted but failed in Congress due to disagreement over the exact scheme and over its very constitutionality, despite receiving the endorsements of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Crawford during their associated presidencies. After this initial period, discussion over the formation of a national university subsided, as other issues were brought to the surface. For a time, it appeared as if the idea of a national university was dead.

However, this changed when, in 1826, the British scientist James Smithson died; included in his estate a section that would bequeath his estate to the United States of America, in the case that his nephew Henry James Hungerford would die without children, in order for the nation "to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men". This declaration was made all the more abnormal by that James Smithson was the illegitimate son of the Dukes of Northumberland, and he had never stepped foot in the United States in his life. For a time, this provision was a curiosity, and the real estate went to Henry James Hungerford, who moved to France and often called himself the "Baron de la Batut" in what made him a comical figure, seemed as if he would spend the entire estate. However, he died in 1835, and President Henry Clay quickly sent commissioners to retrieve the estate, despite some opposition to letting a foreign man give his money and the precedent it would set; notably, John C. Calhoun feared it would serve as a precedent for the abolition of slavery through compensation given by such a bequest. The Smithsonian estate went to the British court system, to resolve the dispute over it and what it meant for it to go to a country. While formerly, the infamously slow Court of Chancery would have been responsible for resolving this case, the Popular Revolution in 1827 and the subsequent judicial reforms resulted in a much faster rate of cases, and the Amerophilia brought to the surface meant that the estate was swiftly dispatched in favour of the United States. Richard Rush subsequently invested this vast estate into the British stock market, at a gradual rate to ensure it wouldn't flush the market with supply, and in the massively volatile post-revolutionary British market he was able to enlargen this bequest to nearly two times the equivalent Harvard bequest of the era.

Richard Rush finally returned to the United States with this exorbitant sum of money. The British coinage, the post-revolutionary "Britannias", had to be dramatically melted and recoined as American "Eagles" as they were not legal tender. A massive debate sprung up around this new estate and what exactly it meant to form "an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men". To some this meant a national university, to others a museum, to still others a research institution, or a library, or a teaching college, or an agrarian college. This debate became vast and raucous when it was brought up, and various bill attempts failed. Finally, in 1843, a compromise bill finally got passed establishing the Smithsonian Institution as a hybrid between a museum, a scientific research institution, an observatory, a library, and a higher educational institution. Its first Secretary was Joseph Henry, a visionary American scientist who sought to use the Smithsonian endowment to its fullest extent. He funded scientific expeditions to the Arctic, he established a journal that put America on the map of science, and he helped create an American sphere of science. Though he accepted there was an educational faculty, he sought to minimize it in favour of making the Smithsonian something more national in nature. It perhaps minimized that dispute that still existed over it seeming like a national university with its power to accredit, even if officially it was only an institution in Washington City.

After decades of quiet scientific advancement, the Smithsonian would be faced by the American Civil War in 1869. Following the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Southern mob and the following rump Congress revoking the results of the election, the southern mob that now controlled the city turned on Joseph Henry, who they viewed as a foe of the South for his moderate antislavery views. Joseph Henry was, as a result, forced to flee Washington City to Philadelphia. The constitutional president Henry Winter Davis headquartered there quickly employed Henry as his chief science advisor, which continued even after Washington City was taken back by Constitutionalist forces and Henry got to return to the Smithsonian. In this role, he sponsored spying hot-air balloons, even as he found the American administration too abolitionist. Finally, the American Civil War saw its completion in 1876 after great difficulty, and in the same year Joseph Henry died. It was the end of an era for the Smithsonian.

With the end of the Civil War, discussion of a National University made a comeback on the belief that it could unify the nation. The Smithsonian, the closest institution to that, saw its educational component ramp up, as it came to include many more graduate students, often actively involved in research. In 1878, it was finally accorded the title of "National University of the United States" as a full-fledged constituent college, with the aim of incorporating other constituent colleges, and with them generally focused on science. The first such institution was the Joseph Henry Institution in Albany, New York. And though the Supreme Court ruled national universities unconstitutional, in short succession the Eighteenth Amendment made it legal once more, and over the late nineteenth century many constituent colleges were established across the country, though the Smithsonian continued to be far more prestigious than the other institutions while also playing decisively non-university functions such as its operation of multiple world-renowned national museums in the Washington City area. The construction of a massive marble tomb in the fashion of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus to James Smithson at the National Mall only added to its grandeur.

Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the National University became a premier educational establishment in the United States, even as it often acted as twenty-six separate universities. It generally set the lead for scientific post-secondary education through its prestige, with only the old Colonial Colleges being willing to depart from its norms; the effects of this are disputed. But nevertheless, from the bequest of a British scientist seething at his status in his native land as an illegitimate son of an aristocrat, the National University of the United States has become something grand in scope.
 
Maharashtra: State of Shivajinagar
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The State of Shivajinagar is a constituent state of Maharashtra.

The city of Shivajinagar was originally founded as Khadki by the great Deccan warrior king Malik Ambar in 1610, who famously established a great canal system to provide water for the city in what remains a great feat. Though at the time the town was a minor outpost, it rapidly grew after the Mughal prince and viceroy for the Deccan Aurangzeb established it as his capital, renaming it "Aurangabad" after himself. After Aurangzeb became the Mughal Emperor in 1658, he made Aurangabad the capital of the entire Mughal Empire and it served as a base from which he conquered Peninsular India for his imperium, an act which though giving the Mughals great glory did help cause their great decline in the years that followed. Famously, he constructed Bibi ka Maqbara, a mausoleum to his favourite wife that, due to the need for monies for military campaigning, resembles a smaller Taj Mahal. As the Mughals disintegrated in the eighteenth century, Aurangabad served as a capital for a great Nizam which, though nominally a governor of the Mughal Empire, was effectively an independent state; however, due to the city's closeness to the growing and sprawling Maharashtrian state, he was forced to move to Hyderabad, creating Hyderabad State.

Aurangabad would be hotly contested between Maharashtra and Hyderabad in the years that followed, a contest that only ended with the Maharashtrian victory in the Battle of Kharda in 1798. The subsequent Anglo-Hyderabadi War confirmed that Hyderabad would never be able to take it back. In the years that followed, both Aurangabad and the land now known as Shivajinagar State served as a sort of quasi-borderland between Maharashtra and Hyderabad, with the city also being one of the centres of Dakhni culture even if at the time it was considered simply a regional variant of Hindustani culture. Often, administrators for the region were taken from the various states in modern-day Hindustan that declared themselves nominally suzerain to the Chhatrapati. This helped make it distant from far-away Puna. However, this all came crashing down due to the Great India Famine of 1876-78. The Famine's horrors were concentrated in this area, while at the same time the distance meant the response was largely ineffective and deeply tied to the even more ineffective response out of Hyderabad. The political crisis that followed, when the Chhatrapati convened a national convention in 1883 in an attempt to restore his power against his Peshwa and the subsequent backfiring when it instead ratified a moderate constitution establishing a federation, resulted in Aurangabad now having a much stronger political tie.

Yet, as the moderate constitutionalism turned into Marathi cultural nationalism, the name "Aurangabad", derived as it did from one of Maharashtra's greatest enemies, was viewed with hatred. And so, in 1892, Aurangabad was named instead "Shivajinagar", after the great warrior-king and founder of Maharashtra Shivaji, while a great equestrian statue of him was erected outside of Bibi ka Maqbara. Administrators were now appointed from inside the federation. And though there was no desire to replace the Dakhni culture with a more Marathi one, the status of Marathi was greatly strengthened. It all began to create resentment, and it led to calls for establishing Shivajinagar and the rest of the region as a constituent state. But time after time, the Maharashtrian government only gave small concessions such as a regional appointed council and local recognition of Hindustani as co-official; it did not want to give it autonomy, which it believed would result in the state switching sides and joining up with Hyderabad. This state of affairs continued on and on, until 1936 and the breaking-out of the Hindustani War of Independence.

As the Maharashtrian rulers in Hindustan that refused to declare for the new republic were forced out, as aristocrats were brutally killed by their own peasants in social revolution and as others fled, wealthy refugees came flooding into Shivajinagar. It was, after all, the city closest in culture to Hindustan in Maharashtra. While initially they became extreme reactionary royalists, this feeling began to break as the war in Hindustan continued. Though the failed peace treaty of 1937 attempted to give them rights to return in some sort of status, negotiation over what this meant helped to cause the reignition of war in 1938; the subsequent war saw the Britishers and their allies forced out of Hindustan entirely, and yet more refugees came flooding in.

Among them was the Nawabs of Banda. They were descended from Ali Bahadur (also known as Krishnarao), the son of the famous marital union between Peshwa Bajirao I and the Bundeli princess Mastani, and after priests refused to induct him with the Brahmin thread, he was raised as a Muslim. From here, he became a leading noble in the royal court in Puna, but the refusal of others in the court to accept him resulted in him being kicked upstairs to become the Maharashtrian governor of Banda. He went on to serve the empire in this post for seven years until his death at the age of 27 at the catastrophic battle of Panipat. His son Ali Bahadur I continued to serve as a royal governor in Banda; his successor Ali Bahadur II was given the title of "Nawab" in an attempt to raise him above other princes in the vicinity. In this role they served until 1936, when the peasants of Nawab Ali Bahadur III forced him out of his palace; he subsequently moved to Shivajinagar, where he established something resembling a royal court in exile. When the possibility of returning to Hindustan was closed after 1939, he was forced to dissolve this royal court, and instead he became involved in municipal politics. His status as a "Muslim Marathi" meant he was simultaneously a link between the Islamic-tinted city of Shivajinagar and the wider Maharashtra. He inevitably became something of an unofficial chieftain of the city and wider region. He also began to advocate establishing the region as a state, under him, and in a noteworthy proposal advocated making what was hitherto considered the Hindustani dialect of the Deccan the separate language of Dakhni, to help establish a separate identity. But it continued to be refused due to fears it would help create a separate identity that would merge with Hyderabad.

This changed with the Andhra Revolution, the overthrow of the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1941, and the establishment of the associationist Andhra Workers' and Peasants' Republic. It forced much of its traditional elite, which largely but not exclusively spoke Dakhni, into Shivajinagar. And though it appeared as if they would stay provisionally, the failure of the joint Anglo-Maharashtrian invasion of 1942 to kill it in its crib and the subsequent end of the Anglo-Maharashtrian alliance, made such a possibility hard to ponder. The old Hyderabadi elite subsequently joined up with the existing Dakhni nobility of their city and Nawab Ali Bahadur III aligned them under his personal leadership. With Hyderabad replaced with a scary-looking ultra-radical Telugu nationalist republic, the spectre that a Shivajinagar state would align itself with any neighbour now ceased to exist. Though many feared Razakars, counterrevolutionary militias and irregulars responsible for brutal war crimes in the Andhra Revolution, would be able to get away with their crimes by simply fleeing to an autonomous Shivajinagar, this spectre would be resolved when the War Crimes Tribunal of Hindustan was expanded to include Maharashtra, with pan-India ambitions. And so, in 1945, a separate Shivajinagar state was established, and as its Nawab was Ali Bahadur III. He died the following year.

Subsequently, Shivajinagar proved to be, in many ways, a highly independent-minded state. The migrant nobility, often lacking land as it does, often supports politics more radical than one would expect. Though the state's borders meant that it was and is majority-Marathi, the Dakhni culture and language dominant in the area punches above its weight. The migration of Hindustani workers southwards has not been met with the same xenophobic hatred that it did in other parts of Maharashtra and instead they tend to assimilate into Dakhni culture easily, and indeed the post-1963 policy of attempting to replace Hindustani migrant workers with Balinese ones has not been met with the resounding support it has had in other parts of Maharashtra. Famously, it saw the election of a Sikh man, Amarinder Singh, as its Diwan, the only Maharashtrian state to ever have as its chief minister anything other than a Hindu or Muslim. He is descended from the family that once ruled Patiala as Maharajahs before being forced out following the Punjabi Revolution and a failed attempt to place all of Punjab under their leadership in the 1880s; after fleeing to the British Raj, they established themselves as landowners in modern day Hindustan, where they were forced out again after they failed to declare for the Hindustani Republic in 1936, after which they made their way to Shivajinagar, where they live today. It is perhaps representative of modern Shivajinagar, at once a backward-looking hub of former elites and a forward-looking frontier to the future.
 
Revolutionary Britain: Franco-Portuguese War
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The Franco-Portuguese War (1871-2) was a war in which France conquered and seized the vast majority of Portugal's colonial empire while also ensuring that the Portuguese slave trade would come to an end.

Relations between the French Republic and Portugal had long been bad at best. In the 1820s, France sponsored a liberal revolution in Bahia which turned into a slave revolt across Brazil; it led to the establishment of the Bahian Republic as an independent abolitionist state in 1828, as well as the general wrecking of slavery across Portuguese Brazil. The massive death rate as well as the large gender imbalance of Brazilian slavery meant that it required the constant importation of slaves; with France having seized Bahia and with French ships taking special action to repress the Portuguese transatlantic slave trade in part due to humanitarianism and in part national interest, it meant that Portugal had to look elsewhere to find access to a consistent supply of slaves. It looked to the United States, and in this period a trans-Caribbean slave trade began, where American slaves were imported to Brazil; though this was technically against American law, the American government looked the other way. The only real attempts to suppress the trans-Caribbean slave trade occurred following the Portuguese conquest of Salvador, Bahia in 1850, when France went to war with Portugal again and launched attacks on Portuguese slave ships in the Caribbean, but with southern Brazil breaking away from Portugal and the failure of the Portuguese attempt to reconquer Bahia, the new peace meant these French attacks came to an end. The other great attempt to suppress this slave trade occurred in the 1850s, when President Stockton attempted to promote the American takeover of Cuba as an anti-slave trade measure, an effort which failed.

The trans-Caribbean slave trade only came to an end in 1869 when, in the United States, a pro-slavery mob attempted to nullify the 1868 election, an effort which caused a civil war. The Constitutionalists, in control of the rather industrious north, launched a blockade of the South controlled by the Richmondites, and that it had the navy to enforce it meant the trans-Caribbean slave trade came to a screeching end. Portugal was, as a result, forced to look to Africa once more, and expand the tepid slave trade into something larger. Slaves in this period came from Portuguese territories, namely Angola, Mozambique, and Whydah, in an attempt to portray the transatlantic slave trade as nothing more than an internal affair. However, French ships attempted to suppress this through inspections of slave ships; this was also part of an attempt by the French Consul Charles Laffitte to start a war. When Portugal refused to take the bait and start a war with a nation it would surely lose against, France continued to escalate. Finally, in 1871 France declared war on Portugal in the name of antislavery.

This war was one which France quickly dominated. It initially went to work suppressing the transatlantic slave trade and came it to a screeching halt. It bombarded Portuguese Whydah and forced the Portuguese to fail, although it failed to take the fort when the Kingdom of Dahomey conquered it before the French could launch an amphibious attack. It also launched swift attacks on Daman and Diu, conquering all of the remaining territories of Portuguese India. In Brazil, French troops conquered the disputed territory of Portuguese Guinea and bombarded the various ports of Portuguese Brazil. In Africa, however, France had a tougher time. It launched attacks on Angola, and it launched amphibious invasions of Luanda and Benguela in a war effort that saw many casualties from fighting as well as disease, though it was successful. An invasion of Portuguese colonies in and around Mozambique went differently, however. Though the fort of Lourenco Marques was swiftly occupied, attempts to launch attacks into Sofala failed as the prazos, feudal territories run by Afro-Goan-Portuguese mixed-race elites with slave chikunda armies loosely aligned to Portugal, rallied against the French and stopped them from attempting a landing. An attempt to conquer Mozambique Island failed for much the same reason, even if France caused much damage. More successful was French gun-running to the anti-Portuguese coastal Angoche Sultanate, which allowed them to fight much harder against the Portuguese.

Quite notable was the French attempt to take over Portuguese Macau. Though France destroyed the Portuguese fleet stationed there, the Chinese government immediately protested this and launched its own fleet to intercept the French. France, having no desire to go to war with China, backed down. However, the Chinese government, wanting to restore its own sovereignty over its territory, launched an army that took over Macau from the now much weaker Portuguese force.

Though large elements of the French and Portuguese governments wanted to go further with the war, ultimately Portugal wanted to salvage some of its colonial empire while France believed it had done more than enough to destroy Portuguese slavery. The subsequent peace treaty recognized the new facts on the ground, greatly reducing Portugal's colonial empire to its Brazilian holdings (minus Portuguese Guinea) and its colonies in and around Mozambique.

Subsequently, postwar, the transatlantic Portuguese slave trade came to a total end; attempts to transfer slaves from Mozambique entirely failed due to French inspections of slave ships. With the American Civil War being won by the antislavery Constitutionalists, American slavery came to an end and with that the Portuguese slave system entered into a death spiral as its high death rate meant that without more importation it would come to an end. In Grao-Para, Portugal attempted to replace African slavery with forced indigenous labour, which only intensified with the rise of gutta-percha and rubber as an industry in the region, with all the horrific labour it meant. The labour system grew harsher and harsher, and by the 1890s it became an international scandal. This led to the 1894-5 international intervention in Grao-Para, where an international force consisting of France, Britain, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy invaded the region and occupied it; this forced Portugal to the negotiating table, and Grao-Para was made an international codominium, and Portugal was forced to enact freedom of the womb across all its territories. However, though the governance of International Grao-Para was an improvement, it still saw brutal colonialism until its final independence. Portugal in this period now focused its colonialism along the Zambezi, centralizing the prazos and establishing control as far as Mashonaland; Matabeleland successfully retained its independence by playing the French, Dutch, British, and Portuguese off of one another. In practice, however, Portuguese colonialism north of the Zambezi valley came to a screeching halt and instead the Zanzibari Sultanate was able to expand its influence southwards and inland, while aiding the allied Angoche Sultanate. Portugal also attempted to strengthen its subsidiary alliance with the King of Kongo, but the newfound independence he had with a much weaker Portugal made this tougher; nevertheless, Portugal was able to take over much of the Congo river basin and governed it brutally until independence.

As for France, with its new territories, it was able to expand its influence. Though its gain of Daman and Diu was of little influence other than giving it slightly more access to British-dominated Indian markets, its gain of Angola enabled a period of colonial expansion as it expanded across the Ouimboundou and Ouambo chiefdoms. When relations between the French and the Dutch suddenly became hostile after the 1880s, it also meant that France proved a major player in the Namib region against the Dutch, which neither country was truly able to conquer but became zones of influence. When German landowners in the area declared a "new state" in "personal union" with the German Empire, France immediately forced them out with heavy force, and German landowners were forced to abandon their land. At the same time, the French alienated the Portuguese speaking elites in Luanda and Benguela, consisting of mesticos and assimilados, by being far more foreign than the Portuguese; Portuguese speakers' high presence in the Angolan independence movement, and that modern Angola speaks Portuguese more than French, is a result of this. In Lourenco Marques, renamed Laurent Marc, France immediately established links with both the Gaza Empire to its north, who it gave large numbers of guns to, as well as with the Transvaal Republic. The 1870s saw the creation of a road between the Transvaal and Laurent Marc which enabled trade; this trade became a gigantic flood following the discovery of gold in the Transvaal in the 1880s, and Laurent Marc rapidly became nothing more than a nominally French appendage of the Transvaal; it even gained a large population of Dutch speakers due to all the trade, even if few of them owned land as a result. Economic links resulted in the establishment of a customs union with the Transvaal and British Natalia, and finally these economic links resulted in a negotiated transfer of Laurent Marc to the Transvaal, renamed Auralia after its gold, in 1937. While Portuguese Guiana simply became part of French Guiana (and now the Republic of Guyane) and was used as a jumping-off point for French influence in International Grao-Para.

French colonialism was clearly driven by heavily cynical attitudes justifying bloodthirsty desire for empire and conquest. Nevertheless it did make an improvement beyond Portuguese colonialism even while not being anywhere near enough, and it was also a blow against slavery even if one smaller than many would believe.
 
Revolutionary Britain: Map of the Philippine Republic and its Environs
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The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries proved to be periods of immense change for the Philippines. Long centred around the trade with China and the rest of East Asia, most famously the Manila Galleon between Manila and Acapulco, over the eighteenth century new crops were introduced to the isles, most particularly tobacco. This slowly turned the Spanish Philippines from a great trade entrepot into a resource colony in its own sake. Furthermore, Christianity in this period became entrenched as the faith of the Filipino people, as the older baybaylan faith came to an end with mass conversion, while Latin script became firmly entrenched as the script for the various Filipino languages. In 1762, a decisive moment came when the British took over Manila, as part of their warring with the Spanish during the Seven Years' War. Attempts by the British to gain local support entirely failed after Manila was brutally sacked, and Spanish forces quickly organized resistance in the name of the Catholic religion that successfully kept the British from expanding beyond the reach of their cannons in Manila. Furthermore, mass sepoy desertions sapped their strength. The result was that in the peace treaty Manila was traded away, and Spanish control resumed.

In its aftermath, the Spanish reorganized their colony, and they were quick to accuse the Chinese of supporting the British occupation, using this to justify persecution and new legal disabilities. This had numerous effects, most notably that the mestizo descendants of Chinese and native unions found it better to consider themselves indio, in contrast to elsewhere in Southeast Asia where they were more typically considered Chinese. At the same time, in the coming decades the Spanish further centred the Filipino economy around resource colonialism rather than just East Asia trade, granting a Basque company a monopoly for development in 1785. None of this, however, was enough to stop the arrival of an East India Company fleet to Manila in 1798 and the ensuing second British occupation. For the next eight years, Britain fought a long war against Spanish forces, and this time they proved more capable of occupying ports in the Visayas due to sheer numbers. However, at the same time, brutal British sacks sapped popularity immensely and attempts to gain local support floundered. Furthermore, Indian sepoys deserted in large numbers once again, caring little about this long war for masters they cared little about. And finally, after the end of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1804, by 1806 the last of the British troops left the Philippines.

Yet, over the course of this battle, the British greatly weakened Spanish grasp over the Philippines. The Spanish would face a number of local rebellions over the next few decades, and often Spanish rule did not simply resume but required defeating or conciliating local landowners or municipal councils. And at the same time, the first stirrings of Filipino nationalism came through over much of this. And more pertinently, the Spanish grasp over the economy was greatly weakened; farms were devastated, and export ports required reconstruction. This required a great deal of both skilled and unskilled labour, and the Spanish looked to China. Despite the Spanish again blaming the perfidious Chinese for supposedly supporting the British and launching a new round of persecution as a result, the need for the monies to flow outweighed this, and a great wave of Chinese migration to the Philippines arrived as a result. These new Chinese were often separate from older arrivals due to cultural divergence as well as that they often spoke Teochew rather than Hokkien. But they came nonetheless, and despite Spanish concerns over their "paganism" resulting in heavy-handed proselytization, they carved out a niche in trade, both internal and external, and as middlemen.

As most of them were men, this caused widespread intermarriage with locals, resulting in a new population of Chinese mestizos that identified with indios rather than the Chinese. Their interaction with the outside world meant they learned of ideas of liberalism and nationalism, often because the Spanish suppressed such ideas harshly. And so arose the so-called "Old Filipinos", the first generation of Filipino nationalism. They were centred around Manila but existed throughout the Spanish Philippines, and their goals were modest even as word of the independence of Venezuela electrified them. They wanted equality for all castes under the law, the opening of the friar orders to all the races, and some local government. But even this was too much for the Spanish authorities, and they were quick to crack down upon newspapers and political meetings, even while co-opting some of the new class. But nevertheless, a new civil society existed across the Philippines, a republic of letters that could only make the Spanish shudder.

This order was decisively interrupted with the eruption of war between Britain and Spain in 1848 over the New Granadine independence. Britain, despite being ruled by a new radical-liberal order, was now quick to use this as an excuse to launch some imperialism, and in 1851 a British fleet led by Lord Cochrane took over Manila. Learning from the brutal sacks which hampered the previous two occupations, Cochrane attempted to make this transition of power as orderly as possible, but it was insufficient in stopping the crimes bound to occur with imperial conquest. And the near-immediate British use of Manila as a trade entrepot for the pseudo-legal opium trade with China did not help matters. Attempting to salvage the situation, he attempted to gain local support by declaring the Philippines an "independent republic" with its flag a slightly adopted version of that of Venezuela. But this was, for the most part, viewed as a joke even by the liberals he intended to attract to his cause, and in this he wasn't helped by local tales of the first two British occupations as brutal events. And while the Spanish were far weaker relative to the British this time around, they quickly organized locals into regiments, even while ignoring the ideals spreading in them.

And from Mexico and Jabayi came a Spanish fleet, intent on retaking the Philippines. Meeting them first at Palanan Bay, Lord Cochrane made history - not in the good sense. Cochrane ordered a ship packed with sulphur, towed adjacent to the Spanish fleet, and burned; the effects of this were apparent when out came a poison gas directed by the wind, which forced the Spanish fleet into a frantic retreat from the gas of death. And though Cochrane attempted to ensure this would not harm civilians, the wind was a force he could not direct, and as it sent the sulphur gas to the land, it reached Palanan. Though dispersal kept it from being deadly or actively harmful, nevertheless the inhabitants of Palanan were forced to evacuate for days. Further attacks by the Spanish fleet were ones Cochrane had other innovations against, and through the use of cyanide shells he won a great number of battles through the terror of chemical warfare. But this was not enough to take over the entirety of the Philippines, and in treaty talks in 1854, Britain again traded it away for more immediate goals; the international criticism caused by Lord Cochrane birthing modern chemical warfare only made it less tenable.

In the next half-decade, the Filipino soldiers who gave their blood for the Spanish watched as, for all their pain, the Spanish changed administration little. Friars continued to be predominately-peninsular, legal equality failed to be achieved, and any constitutional government remained far-in-reach. This reached breaking point in 1860 when Filipino troops deposed the governor and declared General Juan Gerona, a notable veteran of the war, governor. After a period of legal limbo, finally the Spanish government and the Real Audiencia of Manila reluctantly accepted this experiment. And so, in this period, a truly Filipino government came to be. The press was freed, local councils and even an unofficial assembly of consultation were established, and far-reaching agrarian efficiency reforms were enacted. But this came at the great cost of Spanish colonial profits. Colonialism is a form of government that has always enriched the colonizer, and the Philippines established some small resemblance to self-rule reduced that. Finally, this reached a breaking point when, in 1868, the Real Audiencia of Manila arrested Governor Gerona and subjected him to a period of investigation. This investigation "revealed" various criminal offences, and after pondering the topic, in 1871, he was executed with the full approval of the king on these dubious charges. And this caused a massive army mutiny. The Philippine War of Independence had begun.

The various secret societies operating in and out of the army consolidated with these mutinies as the Young Philippines, and they quickly organized the various mutineers into the national army of the newly-declared Philippine Republic, with a new flag proudly displaying the pa of Baybayin script as a symbol of Filipino separateness from Spain. In this period rebels successfully took over much of the western Visayas, as well as southern Luzon. Most notably, they took over Zamboanga. Yet, charges on Manila failed, and a takeover of Cavite in 1874 lasted eight days before a Spanish bombardment campaign unseated them. At the same time, the Pope being in exile in Madrid meant he was quick to excommunicate and issue papal bulls against any rebellions opposing the Spanish. But even as presidents-in-arms died in battle, and even as the Spanish prototyped new techniques of arresting entire villages and confining their inhabitants to camps, the Young Filipinos continued to fight, even as attempts to request various nations for assistance failed. But finally, by 1881, the Young Filipinos saw their treasuries drained, and in 1882 they signed a peace treaty with the Spanish in return for a new flow of money.

Moving to Formosa, technically a faraway province of the Qing exiled in Manchuria but in practice a French colony, the Young Filipinos successfully purchased new arms and got new training. Returning to the Philippines, they continued the Philippine War of Independence. But even this time, Manila remained free of their grasp. Finally, in 1886, requests for foreign intervention finally paid off when a French fleet entered Manila Bay; the French need to regain East Indies trade routes after the Dutch broke off their alliance made such intervention necessary. When word of this intervention came to Spain, fears of a land war with France led to an immediate informal agreement whereby Spain would evacuate the Philippines. However, it would not recognize the Philippines, the Pope continued to treat the new government as rebels, and the Spanish colony of Cochinchina hung over the new state like the sword of Damocles. But nevertheless, the Philippines formed one of the first modern democratic republics in Asia; the title of first modern democratic republic in Asia is fiercely contested between it, Punjab, and Goa, depending on definitions of "modern", "democratic", and "republic".

The new government was now intent on resolving these issues. It sought to relieve itself of the issue of a new Spanish conquest through recourse with France. According to a new agreement, France would be given a lease over Zamboanga and Subigue Bay for fifty years, and the Philippines was to be given old French ships and assurances of protection, in return for France diminishing the Spanish threat; this came when France successfully forced Spain to return Cochinchina to Viet Nam. But papal recognition did not come; instead, the Philippine government was forced to declare the formation of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church, with full custody of Catholic institutions in the nation. This tended to increase regional divides, as various regions and in particular the eastern Visayas did not sign on to this new church, as they had well-developed friar orders with some native enrollment. But quickly, this new church became the majority Filipino church; in practice, many did not even notice the change of church, especially as the change of the mass to the vernaculars and the rise of Positivist influence came later. But it very quickly linked up with Independent Catholic movements in Goa and Ceylon, and later to the Independent Catholic movement established following the codification of papal infallibility.

And so, with independence semi-secure, the new administrators of the nation, who formed what can only be described as an oligarchy, sought to reform the nation. In this, they were deeply affected by the ideology of Auguste Comte's positivism, which advocated the transformation of society towards a scientific system through a system marrying order and progress; some of Comte's sillier ideas, like the formation of a Catholic-style religion worshipping humanity rather than God, or a brand-new calendar rivaling the French Republican Calendar in terms of absurdity, were ones they tossed out without a moment of thought. The positivist oligarchy quickly created many new educational institutions on the model of French national schools, with the primary goal of educating engineers and scientists. Their architecture was cold and imposing and featured grand statues of scientific figures and above all Newton, with the intention of imposing upon the common citizen the power of science. New telegraph lines and railways were laid out and, with the later rise of photonics, wireless transmitters were constructed to connect islands like never before. But warning signs were there. To create all this impressive infrastructure, the government had to borrow money from the French, money they hoped to pay back in the future with their benefits. But the French had a different goal; they wanted to debt-trap the Philippines and turn it into a major artery of the new French colonial system in Southeast Asia. And as coal and gutta-percha from Aceh was imported and as Filipino merchants became commonplace in the ports of the other great French ally in Southeast Asia Johor, and as France effectively strongarmed the Philippines to give up its dreams of conquering the sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu, it became clear that the Philippines was not quite free to choose its own destiny.

At the same time, the decline of the great generation of independence with the rise of the twentieth century saw a new one emerge. The oft-hostility of the Filipino government towards the Spanish government was not enough to outweigh the fact that, compared to Tagalog, the Spanish language put all the provinces at an equal disadvantage, but the new generation did not care; they believed only Tagalog should be the language of the nation. And this came with similar views towards the superiority of Tagalog culture. With the 1910s bringing them slowly to power, they put their plans into action. The Philippine Independent Catholic Church no longer gave mass in the language of the congregation; instead it was strictly in Tagalog. Tagalog now became a mandatory subject in schools across the nation; in addition to local language, yes, but it was a clear part of a trend. And Spanish was to be phased out of the nation entirely in 1925. These efforts continued to escalate, as language departments of universities were suppressed and Tagalog signage was made mandatory. Some even spoke of going further, of entirely replacing the Latin script with Baybayin, and to this end a new Act of the Cortes was passed making its instruction in school mandatory towards such a goal. This also came hand-in-hand with centralization efforts, to suppress the Visayan elite in particular. But this was all just too much.

Crisis came in 1924 when, with the Cry of Pampanga, a general declared his desire to reorganize the Philippines into a much more decentralized framework, and this came hand-in-hand with an all but expressed desire to strengthen regional elites and turn them into what were effectively feudal lords. He also advocated the primacy of Spanish and full recognition of regional languages so long as they met a percentage in their region. With that cry, he received support not only from Pampanga but from much of the Visayas - Negros was the chief exception - and with that the Philippine Civil War began. For a time it looked like this rebellion was going to be killed in its infancy, but then the French intercepted the Centralistas' fleet, destroying much of it. As a result, despite the Federalistas' dismal organization and the constant issues they faced due to their Visayan nationalist allies also plotting independence, they were buoyed by French support, and finally, by 1927, French troops bombarded Manila into surrendering. And so, with that, the Federalistas promulgated a new constitution which recognized the demands of the Cry of Pampanga, and they signed a convention with the Roman Catholic Church which allowed them to re-establish their hierarchy, with a far weaker position in the nation. Yet, at the same time, despite the general amnesty, Centralistas continued to exist and plot the restoration of their regime; with elections effectively coronations of the new landed elite, they only had the option of rebellion. This rebellion struck in 1930, and it was quickly repressed. But the Federalistas wondered how to suppress them.

In this period, the Philippines effectively became a French colony in all but the formal sense. The French leases of Zamboanga and Subic Bay were now for perpetuity. French conglomerates bought up much of Negros and other islands well known for production, and they brought Tamil workers from French India to work on them. With the Philippines facing rising and rising colossal debt it could not pay off, in 1931 it was forced to default and a French-appointed Public Debt Administration effectively became a third chamber of the Cortes. It turned independence into a joke, even as national institutions continued to exist. And the Centralistas saw all that was occurring, and they were more and more horrified. In 1932, they launched another rebellion, and though it too got crushed, the Federalistas was forced to ponder on better tactics to suppress them. After some talks in which the Centralistas requested democratization in a purely self-interested belief it could bring them back to power, the following year an Act of the Cortes established substantive tangible efforts towards democratization. And finally, in 1935, the presidential election brought the youthful Ramon del Fierro to power.

Born in Cebu to a poor background, he initially sought to enroll in the seminary but quit over a crisis of faith; with the knowledge he obtained from his education, he was able to enroll as an unusually old student in legal education, and from there he became a lawyer well-known for his wit. He remained distant from politics during the Philippine Civil War, but afterwards he became quickly very averse towards Federalista control of the nation and joined up with Centralistas. During the 1930 rebellion, although he refused to rebel, the private militia of a local aristocrat nevertheless stormed his house and killed his good friend. After this, del Fierro no longer felt safe in Cebu, and instead he chose to move to Manila. Escaping the 1932 rebellion by fleeing to the country, he was then involved in the negotiations for democratization, and finally in 1935 as a relative unknown uninvolved in the civil war, the Centralistas nominated him for president, and he surprisingly won.

In power, del Fierro initially continued existing policies; his most notable action was to add a new tax for a fund to pay off the Philippines' immense debt, instead of following the bad faith suggestions of the Public Debt Administration. Indeed, relieving the debt was his great mission. The unpopular tax greatly diminished his popularity. The Croatian War erupted in 1937 between France and Germany, over Croatia's unilateral declaration of independence; it was here that del Fierro truly shined when he negotiated directly with the French government with Paris via photonic transmission, rather than the government in Zamboanga, and finally, he achieved an offer with the war looking dire for the French. In return for a total relief of Philippine public debt and the return of Zamboanga, the existing monies of the debt relief fund would be sufficient in addition to the recruiting of Filipino soldiers on the side of the French. Furthermore, the French presence in Subigue Bay would be reduced to merely the naval base by 1960. This was agreed by both parties; both parties knew the French would be perfectly willing to betray it. But the war continued, and even as Filipinos died for the French, del Fierro strengthened Filipino control over its new territories, and he successfully incentivized various French landowners to sell off their land to Filipinos. He also unified provinces into larger, increasingly arbitrary units that allowed him to play regional oligarchies off of one another. And finally the Croatian War came to an end in 1941. Though del Fierro braced himself for a French intervention, it did not come, for France's desire to reclaim control over its pseudo-colony was now weakened. Furthermore, the discovery of rare earth elements in French New Guinea focused French colonialism with all its brutality there, rather than in the Philippines.

And thus, Ramon del Fierro spent the remainder of his presidency promulgating further reform. He broke up large estates and granted land to the landless. He opened new irrigation networks and created new dams for electricity generations. He famously declared, "Dams are the churches of the modern Philippines", and by doing so he summed up the sentiments of the era. He opened up new educational and medical institutions. But he could only do so much in his remaining years, for his two-term limit was to be hit in 1945. But he still had so much of his agenda to complete. And so, he attempted to revise term limits, and give himself one more term. When this amendment attempt was defeated in the Cortes, he attempted to make legal arguments to justify going around this; in one notably ridiculous argument, he claimed that re-election was a human right. But this was refused, and in 1945 he finally left office reluctantly and retired to his old home at Cebu, letting his successor lead the nation. His re-election attempt aside, he has a generally positive legacy.

And so, finally, the Philippines had a chance to plot its destiny itself.
 
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Revolutionary Punjab: Asli Dharam
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Asli Dharam is a Hindu reform movement that seeks to "restore" an "original" Hinduism that it alleges was distorted by the Bhakti movement and later the rise of Sikhism, technically international in scope but in practice almost entirely restricted to Punjab.

It fundamentally emerged out of great religious confrontations in Punjab in the late nineteenth century. The line between Punjabi Hinduism and Sikhism was (and is) highly blurred, with Hindus in particular often revering the Sikh Gurus, covering their heads in temples, and going to gurdwaras as much as mandirs. The politicization of the Sikh religion in the late Punjabi Empire period, with the rise of purist Sikh movements, most famously the Nirankari movement which sought to harken back to the day of Guru Nanak, came at the expense of this mixed religion and slowly began to cause a Hindu counterreaction and growth of movements that sought to emphasize the Vedas as the root of Hinduism. Come the Punjabi Revolution in the 1880s, the end of the the royal court saw the Nirankari movement move to the streets and beyond to far beyond Lahore. And so did the growth of Hindu counter-movements.

It was in the city of Sialkot that Asli Dharam saw its birth. A young man named Suresh Chand Vaid, the son of pharmacists, watched as Nirankari preachers de-emphasized the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Puranas he believed were at the very root of the Hindu religion, and he watched as people listened to them. Wanting to challenge this, he abandoned his family's pharmacy and went to a religious teacher to be taught in the full ways of the Vedas, Upanishads, and Puranas. Upon learning of them, in 1884 he wrote a most explosive book which defended the Vedas, Upanishads, and Puranas against those who sought to deemphasize it, and most scandalously criticized not only all of the Sikh gurus but also the saints of the old Bhakti tradition they came out of, as he felt they moved Hinduism away from ancient tradition. He later added an addendum where, in accord to Punjabi national ideology, he praised Guru Tegh Bahadur as a political martyr of universal religious liberty, but this did not change his harsh criticism of Sikh theology. And so, in 1886, he declared his new religious creed, seeking to restore the Sanskrit ritualism of what he thought pre-Bhakti Hinduism to be, and established its headquarters in Amritsar, then as now the capital of Punjabi religious life. He quickly sent missionaries to promote his message, and it received some good reception and was able to establish Asli Dharam temples in most major Punjabi cities, and even attempted to convert the Kalasha people to it. But it also saw much hatred among many Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs all for its opposition to the great Sufi-Bhakti tradition. More than a few times, sword-wielding mobs would threaten them if they did not revoke their theology, and more than a few times the police and administration was indifferent to this.

Following the 1890 coup d'etat and the establishment of a dictatorship by General Prem Nath Kaul, Asli Dharam was now forced to adapt to the new circumstance. Many of its books were regulated, and he would attempt to push them to adopt Punjabi national ideology while accepting that their theology was directly opposite to his. They now erected Perso-Arabic plaques alongside their Devanagari ones, even if they harshly resisted attempts to force them to replace their holy texts with Perso-Arabic text versions. They now accepted Punjabi as having a place in their schools, even as they exalted Sanskrit above all. They now toned down some of their criticism of some Sikh Gurus due to their importance to Punjabi nationalism, and they now made sure to praise them for their political actions and bravery if not their theology. Upon the ratification of the Civil Code, they accepted this and abandoned their attempts to draft a code of so-called "Hindu law". And when Prem Nath Kaul issued the Anti-Caste Law, Suresh Chand Vaid's last name was denotified as casteist and administrators randomly assigned him the name of "Swatantra", or Freedom, and it is by this name he has been known by posterity. It ensured that Asli Dharam would have a place in the nation, even as a sect much frowned upon by many.

Over the decades, Asli Dharam would attempt to grow in the British Raj but it was harshly cracked down upon as a potential tendril of "Punjabi republicanism". By and large, this ensured it was only following the collapse of the British Raj it achieved some success - even as its theology and strong ties to the Punjabi government sometimes made this tough. When the nativist Rawalpindi Compact took ahold of Punjab in the 1940s, this ensured that it had little success in Hindustan or among Indo-Caribbeans; it was only after its collapse it could succeed. And even as it spread, it found much difficulty as its Vedic essentialist attitudes made many resistant. In Maharashtra, it faced difficulty against the many Bhakti attitudes there, and in Bengal it was overshadowed by many other, more modernist, religious movements. Fundamentally, it was a religion with a place in Punjab, and outside, it was just another esoteric movement.

But yet, it has been able to carve out a section of the complex Punjabi religious landscape. And that is an achievement.
 
Revolutionary Britain: First Enthronement Bill
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The First Enthronement Bill was, an attempt to restore the monarchy under Adolphus, the Duke of Cambridge by the first administration of Lord John Russell. However, it failed, and in the act it ensured the monarchy would remain forever dead.

The Popular Revolution in 1827 left the throne vacant. With King Frederick having fled the mobs in the fear they would come for him, the newly-convened Convention Parliament had to determine what would replace it. At first, the Whigs who took the leading ground sought for a continued monarchy, only with a new line in power, to prevent the revolution being too radical. To that end, they attempted to ask the deposed Frederick's brothers. At first asking William, these talks were at times amenable but his staunch support of the war effort against France combined with his belief that the proposed parliamentary reform laws went much too far, proved the death knell. The next in line, Ernest Augustus, was discounted offhand because he was well-known as being an extremely-reactionary Orangeman. And though many feted Adolphus, the Duke of Cambridge, as a good pick for king, his military experience led extreme radicals to allege he would make himself dictator, and such cries made many fear enthroning him would embolden them into turning the Popular Revolution into something more French and extreme. This excluded all immediate figures in line. In a rather more creative pick, William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, a great-grandson of George II was proposed. However, he was less a credible pick but a figure of amusement, nicknamed "Silly Billy" for his pomposity and tendency to say the most ridiculous things; furthermore, he opposed the revolution and parliamentary reform. From there, various other proposals were suggested. Some attempts were made to anoint a German princeling, with Leopold, son of the ruler of the Thuringian statelet of Sax-Coburg-Saafeld, being proposed to this end, but this was staunchly opposed on the streets on the basis that he was foreign and therefore a wannabe dictator. Others proposed making a British aristocrat of royal blood the ruler, with a most famous attempt to enthrone the Earl Castle Stewart, a descendant of the Stuarts that ruled the unhappy British Isles long ago before being overthrown, but they refused and these attempts were generally mocked. And so, bereft of options, instead the revolutionary aristocrat Lord Folkestone was selected as so-called "Lord Chief Magistrate" alongside a Council of Regents, with the understanding they would eventually concede power to a true king. This was intended as a provisional measure, to prevent the British Isles from breaking into civil war due to the uncertainty of it all. But, like all provisional things, things did not go as planned.

This selection ensured the ratification of the Charter of Liberties and Securities and the Frame of Government peaceably, and in 1829 the British Isles definitively transitioned to a more democratic form of government. But for a long time, Britain was addled with many disputes that ensured the monarchy issue could not be resolved. Governments were unstable, and the formation of the Radical Party under Samuel Whitbread, with its de facto belief in not restoring the monarchy, led many to fear this state of affairs would be permanent. One of the issues which broke John C. Hobhouse's attempt to unify all believers in the new reformed constitution was the monarchy issues. And come 1840, Lord John Russell successfully unified Moderates between the Traditionalists and Radicals and brought them into power, and they sought the restoration of the monarchy. However, their position was weak, and even after it strengthened after the 1841 elections, they had grave disagreements on who should be made the monarch. The Peelites and Huskissonites supported simply restoring the monarchy "as it was", with a full restoration of the powers lost under the Frame of Government. To them, Whiggery was simply not a good thing, even if the Huskissonites were more open to its principles. While Lord John Russell and his fellow Whig-Moderates proposed continuing the new limits on powers, as they had a fundamentally Whiggish understanding of monarchy under which Parliament should be much superior to the monarchy. These issues led to delays after delays on the issue, until in 1843, they finally had a compromise each side was equally unhappy with. And so, Lord John Russell proposed this new act, which would make Adolphus, the Duke of Cambridge the new king.

However, it suddenly received a barrage of criticism. It did codify many of the unofficial limits that had existed on the monarchy, but it nevertheless left a great deal of powers out, and many feared it would lead to a growth of royal patronage within the halls of Parliament. And so, for this, the Radical Wilfrid Lawson harshly condemned the bill as highly improper and condemned the Duke of Cambridge as militaristic, while the Radical backbenches accused Russell of wishing to create a dictatorship. While the Traditionalist MP for Liverpool William Gladstone called it godless and republican in nature and alleged the reason the Popular Revolution had occurred at all was that the executive was not strong enough; he not only wanted the restoration of the monarchy as it was, but also for it to regain many of the powers it had lost since the mid-eighteenth century. Furthermore, the dispute over the bill led to rioting in the streets, horrifying many who feared the bill would lead to revolution. Most decisively, it did not get the support of many of the Tory-Moderate backbenches, and as a result, when it came to a vote, it was decisively defeated, effectively leaving Lord John Russell a lame duck.

British instability continued on, until finally in 1846 Wilfrid Lawson's Radicals secured a large majority. This inaugurated a decade-long period of reform, in which Lawson exalted Britain's non-monarchical form of government as grand and liberating, while he also dramatically altered almost all political institutions. By the time he faltered and the Moderates were able to take back power in 1856, though Russell did propose a new enthronement bill, he would find that the British Isles was very different indeed....
 
Revolutionary Britain: 1872 American Election
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The United States presidential election, 1872, was the 22nd presidential election in American history. Held in the middle of the American Civil War, it was one of two presidential elections held in the land of the United States, this one being the Constitutional presidential election and the other being the one held by the unconstitutional slaver-dominated Richmondite government.

The civil war was held in the aftermath of the events of the 1868 election, when the certification of Henry Winter Davis' election was interrupted by a pro-southern mob which convened southern Congressmen and, despite them failing to meet the quota, treated itself as a legal Congress and overturned Davis' election. The rest of Congress was convened in Philadelphia where, meeting constitutional quotas, it ratified Davis' election. These two governments were immediately drawn into conflict, with the pro-southern government launching raids onto the Midwest from Kentucky and giving arms to a slaver mob that took over Baltimore. This situation, looking extremely dire for the Constitutional Government, would nevertheless improve for them when it successfully took over Washington City and forced the slaver government to retreat to Richmond, after which it has been known to posterity as the Richmond Government, and this was a great blow for it. But much was still in doubt. The ratification of the Emancipation Act by the Constitutionalists in 1870, which granted freedom to all slaves in Richmondite lands, was met with both joy and horror at the time. And in 1871, an attempt by Patriots in Congress to decertify Justicialist wins from the next congress would only be stopped by the military, with the government remembering what all this fictitious decertification had caused last time. All the while, Richmondite attacks on Pennsylvania continued, Constitutionalist attempts to advance further in Virginia or into Kentucky failed, and even its blockade only proved partially successful as Portuguese and Spanish ships often violated it. And so, come 1872, a Constitutionalist victory seemed far in doubt.

In this atmosphere, Davis chose to establish a national unity ticket. Though in 1868 he was appointed by the Justicialists in the first place because he was a moderate southerner who was barely antislavery, come 1872 he became far more radical in his opposition towards slavery, and even sometimes advocated racial equality. And so, as a result, he needed to select a moderate running-mate, to that end selecting John Cochrane as part of a unity ticket centred around further prosecution of the war. While on the other hand, the Patriot National Convention was won by Peace Patriots, who advocated a full restoration of the Union "as it was", including slavery, nominating the Peace Patriot New Yorker George H. Pendleton towards that end. With the war not looking good for the Constitutionalists, many were supportive of such a restoration of the Union, and to many it seemed even with Davis getting War Patriot support his victory was much in doubt.

But then later in 1872 came numerous grand victories in the western front, which saw Kentucky almost entirely fall into Constitutionalist hands, as well as the establishment of a substantial presence in Tennessee. It showed that, perhaps the war could be won within a reasonable timeframe, and it shook the Richmondites to their very core. Suddenly, Pendleton's peace message was not so appealing. And so, this resulted in an absolute Davis victory in every state not in rebellion, while the methods by which presidential districts were drawn per state meant that almost all of them were won by Davis in turn. And thus, the Constitutionalists would continue to fight.

Davis, over his second term, presided over a far more decisive war effort, as the war turned permanently against the Richmondites. He saw a ban on slavery and the groundwork being laid for an ultra-radical reconstruction effort. And, in his final year in office, he saw the takeover of all Richmondite territory and a mass flight of them to Portuguese Brazil as the Constitutionalist army advanced. He saw the decisive end to the civil war. After his term as president was over, Davis was almost immediately elected to the Senate to continue to serve his nation; as the South saw a wave of white supremacist terrorist attacks, he got to work on a bill towards its suppression. But characteristically, he overworked himself on this bill, and in 1878 he was found dead, slumped over his desk on a draft of his bill. And so died a hero of the union.
 
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Revolutionary Punjab: Ashav Panth
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Ashav Panth is a Hindu sect centred in Punjab. It is ultimately rooted in the pre-Islamic faith of the Nuristan region of Afghanistan, systematized with the Vedas, and influenced by the Bhakti Hinduism of Punjab.

The whole region of what is now Nuristan to Chitral was once known as "Kafiristan" as it lingered on with pre-Islamic religion, similar to both Zoroastrianism and Vedic Hinduism. Over time, conversion to Islam reduced this region to what is now Nuristan by the late nineteenth century and its tribes were ruled by the tolerant Muslim Mehtar of Chitral. When the Punjabi Empire, seeking to expand its borders and precede an Afghan conquest, conquered the Mehtar of Chitral in 1871, it sparked a large amount of disarray in the whole region, all the while the Afghans sought to expand their own borders. And so, Punjabi battalions led by General Prem Nath Kaul entered Kafiristan with the goal of keeping it under their control, and they quickly sought to get the people's loyalties. The language gap was, though large, not insurmountable, and the religious similarity of the region's religion to Hinduism was quickly grasped as soldiers were quick to respect it. This contrasted with the largely Pashto-speaking Afghan soldiers who wanted to convert the peoples of Kafiristan to Islam, and this ensured Punjab was able to convert Kafiristani loyalty to the Mehtar of Chitral to loyalty to the Maharaja of Punjab. However, ultimately Punjab had reached the end of its distant lines and the Afghan onslaught was impossible to defend against, and so General Prem Nath Kaul led an effort to transport tribes across to Chitral where they'd be able to practice their religion without any jizya. Though it is not well-known quite how many of them left, it is known it was a very large fraction of Kafiristan's population. The eventual Afghan-Punjabi treaty recognized Afghan control over Kafiristan and in its wake, by the 1880s it was for the most part converted to Islam through a combination of force and the jizya tax.

Come to Punjab, Kafiristani tribes were resettled in various regions. Many of them were settled in Chitral just alongside the Kalasha people who shared their unique religion, while others were settled in and around Peshawar or far in the interior near what is now Kaulabad and Insaafpur, where they were given land titles over much forest (later exempted from land-clearing). For the most part, they survived the 1876-78 famine quite well as they knew how to deal with such horrific traditions, and come 1882-3 this caused the Punjabi Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy. This resulted in a deeply chaotic period of societal realignment and change, and much of this inspired new religious movements. And so, here, one man named Hanuman Singh Chaudhary, deeply influenced by his Kafiristani neighbours, attempted to systematize and interpret their religion and myriad uncodified customs as Vedic-descended. It was easy to draw a line between chief gods Indr and Imre as the Vedic Indra and Mara, respectively, but it was harder to justify their animism and nature worship. This he did through analogies to Punjabi folk religion, as well as Krishna's famous instruction to the villagers to worship groves. In a most ridiculous stretch, he compared the Kafiristani practice of adding horse heads to graves to the Vedic conception of the horse as the sun god Surya's standard. But ultimately, he wrote his religious views in a great book, completed by 1886, and decisively abandoned his Sikhism in favour of this faith he termed "The Path of the Horse", or in the Punjabi mandated by the government, "Ashav Panth". Notably, he renamed himself "Mandi", and following his last name's denotification by the Anti-Caste Law, he was now known as "Mandi Singh Pindi" Through this he gave the Kafiristanis, or as they were now known, "Ashavpanthis", a strong justification for their faith as more than just a default customary religion. And despite their faith not fitting into Punjabi conceptions of religion, it nevertheless ensured it would be regarded as a regional form of Hinduism.

In the decades that followed, Ashavpanthis expanded their membership beyond just Kafiristani refugees and descendants through the use of elements of the Bhakti Hindu tradition and reverence towards saints like Ravidas and Guru Nanak; they came to include Punjabi Hindus who, as per the tribal system of division of faith members, were treated as separate tribe. This accelerated Kafiristani integration into Punjabi culture. At the same time, it interacted with the Navadharma religious faith coming from Bengal; with its desire to unify all the world's religions, the evidence of a religion similar to both ancient Hinduism and ancient Zoroastrianism was significant as a looking-glass to the past. However, Ashavpanthis resisted conversion to Navadharma or being used as a historical artifact, and thus this religious interaction has been almost entirely one-way.

But nevertheless, Ashav Panth has provided an eclectic vehicle for a faith that might have died to prosper, change, and expand in number.
 
Jacobin India
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France long had a presence in India, but it would only be following the Seven Years' War that it truly had an empire in it. With the decisive defeat of the British in that theatre (even as it lost outside India), France suddenly not only governed numerous ports, but also Bengal through a puppet. Only a few years later, in 1769, it would also gain vast influence in Oude with recognition from Delhi and, with support from Mysore's effective ruler Hyder Ali, over much of South India. When the Nabob of the Carnatic, in alliance with the British, attempted to overthrow French encirclement in the 1770s, it was slapped down hard, French and Mysorean troops swiftly descended onto the capital and in 1779 the Carnatic was divided between Mysore and France. This gave France influence over Tanjoure as well. But increasingly the French aimed at enlargening their influence over Hyderabad, and using its ties with the British as a fig leaf it then went to war with it and, by 1786, French troops successfully forced the Nizam to grant them the entirety of Hyderabad's coastline, and the Marathas ate much of its remainder. And so, by 1789, France now had a vast empire in India, a land it understood little.

But 1789 was also the year of the French Revolution. At first, it had little effect on India, and though the election to the Estates-General saw some Bengali badraloque elites advocate a right to vote in these elections, they were monopolized by whites. And even at this early stage, there was some Oriental admiration of India in France, with the Bagaouade Gita receiving praise from some radicals - radicals who had barely read it. But then in 1792 came the declaration of a republic, and this all changed. Suddenly, the French armies in India mutinied against their royalist commanders, killed them with fresh new guillotines, and with support from Paris, they now led India. Initially Indian feelings were that these new bosses would be little different, but they were quickly affected by revolutionary temper. When the puppet Nabob of Bengal attempted to use this opportunity to rebel against his masters, he was not only discovered, but he would be publicly guillotined, an action that shocked many; they would be even more shocked, when the governor declared the end of Indian monarchy and the establishment of a republican order under French protection. It destroyed the existing axes of legitimacy and replaced them with something new. When the Nabob of Oude arrested the French solders "protecting" him to prevent himself from suffering the same fate, a French army came from Patna and removed him from power; the bulk of his court was executed by public guillotine.

Now truly in charge of a giant swathe of India, the Jacobins now had to interpret India's societal structures in their own term. India contains a complex social institution known as djati focused around hereditary occupation, each of which with differing social status within their immediate community, and this was conceptualized and stitched together in a variety of ways such as the ouarna system of fourfold division of society in ancient Indou texts, as well as dubious claims of foreign descent. While many French people previously perceived this as a racial system, calling it caste in analogy to the Spanish system of race, to the Jacobins this was nothing more than an Indian system of "barbarized" guilds. And so, as part of the declaration of abolition of the guilds, so were djati. French officials entered village after village, and declared their end; when villagers resisted, they often sent in the army to force them to submit, and if they refused, the leaders of djati councils found themselves guillotined. Furthermore, the turban which often displayed social status was declared abolished, in favour of the egalitarian Phrygian cap of "republican honour". This was all continually enforced by the French, who substituted zamindar tax collectors for themselves. This caused widespread social chaos and realignment, as well as the sudden rise in banditry. With the abolition of Christianity in France and the rise of the Cults of Reason and the Supreme Being, the institutions of the French empire in India got weirder. Invocations of the Virgin Mary by the state were replaced with invocations of the Indou war goddess Dourga, and in accord to the Radjepout practice guns were blessed in her name. The name of the Indou god Parchouram, who killed much corrupt aristocrats in his stories, was viewed as a corrupted memory of a Cromwellian heroic figure from antiquity, and he was quickly idolized by the French. While the Goddess of Reason was quickly conflated with the Indou goddess of knowledge Sarasouati, and Temples of Reason quickly became non-idolatric temples to her. At the same time, the deist Cult of the Supreme Being was often associated with Islam, a true Islam in contrast to the obscurantist Sufi-inflected Islam of India; when knowledge of Wahhabism came, it was arbitrarily and illogically conflated with this deism. Understanding Islam little, famously the French attempted to commission a great statue of Muhammad from Muslim stone masons; this laughable understanding of Islam caused massive riots. These new movements confused many Indians, utterly befuddled at these interpretations of their religions, while the French zeal to spread them caused revolt that was crushed harshly.

Furthermore, French rule saw new law. During the pre-revolutionary period, to make sense of the "heathen" Indou religion, France sought its original texts, and it believed it found them in the form of the Manousmriti, an ancient compendium of various laws from different ancient states. It contradicted itself, notably both restricting divorce and providing procedure for it, but this was often held up as such. With the rise of Jacobinism, its inherent inegalitarianism saw many view it as a decline of India's "original" republicanism of the Indou god Crichena, who they believed to be a distortion of an ancient republican of his Iädoua clan. And so, inspired by drafts of civil codes coming from Paris, the Jacobins issued "Les loix de Manou originales", meant to be the "original" Indian law. This law had, in truth, little connection to anything Indian, and its implementation confused many Indians even as customary courts were forcibly abolished. But as Indians were forced to go to these courts, they had to understand this law and conceptualize them in their terms; this would have a lasting impact as they morphed in translation into Indoustani, Telougou, and Tamil and changed meaning.

But even as French India was a deeply and utterly chaotic land in this era, many sought to expand the revolution. And so, soldiers utterly uncontrolled by the central government quickly entered the kingdom of Roïlkande, bordering French Oude, and conquered it. Influenced by conceptions of the "Frankish yoke" of a German-descended aristocracy over the Gallic-descended French people, it did this in the name of overthrowing the "Pachetoun aristocracy" of the land. In practice, however, the new guillotines they established killed Indian-descended and Pachetoun-descended aristocrat alike, and flight from the French advance was just as diverse in nature.

With the rise of the Directoire in 1794-5, this chaotic realm was brought under control. New centrally-appointed governors were sent to rule over the land, along with new soldiers under their command. They aimed at centralizing the French empire in India, but this also necessitated removing Jacobin soldiers. With many being unwilling to lose their status as fiefs, they quickly fled the advance. Many soldiers joined up with native states, leading the charge in reforming and modernizing their armies. Others, however, sought to establish their fiefdoms elsewhere. And so, in this period, Jacobin invasions occurred in Hyderabad, although they failed to conquer it, and instead it came to French forces following them. Others invaded Orissa, under weak Maratha control. The nominal "republic" they established saw many of the chaotic reforms, but in addition came a special focus towards the city of Pouri's famous idol of the Indou god Djaggarnate and the famous festival where it was put on a chariot dragged by devotees. This was viewed as characteristic of Indou "heathenness", while many Europeans believed due to nonsensical accounts that this festival included human sacrifice on the chariot's wheels. As such, the new Jacobin authorities declared the end of human sacrifice in this festival; this, few noticed because no such human sacrifice existed. But, it quickly became more radical. The sacred wooden idols of Djaggarnate, destroyed annually and replaced with replicas, was Jacobinized and now it was topped with a Phrygian cap. This scandal, of tainting with representations of the divine, caused a municipal revolt removing the Jacobins from the city. But also came French troops following the Jacobins, and they swiftly occupied Orissa. They declared the Djaggarnate rituals could proceed as normal.

But the most horror came when Jacobins, pushed out of Roïlkande, crossed the Ganges and Djamouna. Here, they conquered Delhi itself and declared the end of the Mughal Empire and its replacement by a "republic". Most infamously they executed Chah Alam II by guillotine, an event that causes shock. Though he had already been blinded by the Roïla Pachetounes in 1788 and he was a Maratha puppet afterwards, this shocked virtually everyone. Even Tipou Sultan, the firm modernizing French-allied ruler of Mysore who was known as the only Jacobin king, who established a puppet republic in Goa, and who routinely mocked the Mughals for their weakness, was shocked and horrified by this, and almost universally there came a call for their overthrow. And this the French swiftly answered, invading Delhi before the Marathas could answer sooner. Here, they declared that the Mughal Emperor could resume his rule over Delhi, and across India as a spiritual ruler. But the shockwaves continued to shatter across India, and most notably the Marathas refused to recognize this and those territories they nominally held on behalf of the Mughal emperor they now declared held in their own right.

But at the same time, the Directoire continued the bizarre structures of legitimacy that were established. Durga continued to be evoked in places where the Virgin Mary would be, and the new Temples of Reason and of the Supreme Being were not tampered with. The Jacobin understanding of the Indou religion continued. But this period saw the growth of one thing in particular, Masonic temples. But in India, they were understood as temples in the religious sense, focused on a theology of parables centred around a formless god and the character Solomon, and they quickly misunderstood this as quasi-Muslim. Inevitably, Freemasonry was considered a Sufi-Baqueti order by Indians. Many Indians, with this understanding, established their own Masonic temples. And thus began a new religious order.

In 1799, the Directoire came to an end, and in came Napoleon Bonaparte at the head of a vigorous new order. He sought in general to run society in an ordered model, meshing together new ideas with the old, and in India, this was no exception. Seeking to end the religious confusion, he declared the inauguration of a Choura of Indous and Muslims in French territory, headed by the Mughal emperor, to agree on law. In practice, this consisted of clerics who responded to him. They then ratified a new law code presented to them, already written by French-aligned Bengali badraloque. Notably, it declared the Mughal Emperor both the Caliph and Indoupati (Lord of the Indous) of India, simultaneously a conservative and revolutionary gesture seeking to conciliate the Sufi-Baqueti nature of resistance. Furthermore, banditry was resolved by the French administration, while Jacobin soldiers still in territory were forced to surrender or leave. This, however, caused yet more widespread chaos. From Hyderabad, Jacobin soldiers brutally sacked Nagpoure and Aurangabade, until their nonexistent lines were destroyed. From Delhi Jacobin soldiers sacked Goualioure and in that they helped cause the decline of the Scindias; an attempt to do the same in Radjastane was stopped by Djachouante Rao Olquar of Indore in the massive Battle of Baratpoure, widely compared to the Maabarata in sheer scale. And other French soldiers simply deserted and joined the Sikh Empire.

Yet, as Napoleonic control proved decisive, colonialism was now restored to full force, to a new generation. The famines of the pre-revolutionary era, caused by state policy of cash crops and export, saw a vicious return, and in this manner they likely killed far more people than any Jacobin fief. The destruction of the djati system was in practice replaced by pure French overlordship, proving far more unequal in every way. The new religious sentiments continued to proliferate and they often gained radically different form; increasingly they were directed against the French. Because the French attempted to replace it with the bicorne, the Phrygian cap became a symbol of the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity, even if those ideas were understood in quite different terms. And so, underneath the surface there was an anger at the French. It must come to no surprise, therefore, that in 1814, when King Louis XVIII called many French solders from India to protect his regime, the colonial regime entirely collapsed; when Napoleon did the same to more soldiers as part of his Hundred Days, French rule withered away outside main ports. With the collapse in power caused by the end of French rule, the hole was filled in part by the Maratha Empire and by Mysore, but also by something else - Sufi-Baqueti-Masonic quasi-republican monarchies. Thus, India would never be the same.
 
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