Indicus's maps, wikiboxes, &c thread

[Indicus]

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....

 

[Indicus]

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.

 

[Indicus]

 

[Indicus]

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.

 

[Indicus]

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.

 

[Indicus]

The origins of the Partition of India are enormously controversial and heavily disputed; nevertheless, in 1946, the leader of the Muslim League Muhammad Ali Jinnah brazenly declared, "We will either have a divided India or a destroyed India", and the following year, both occurred. A line was drawn carving out Pakistan from India by a man who knew little of the ground situation, and even if he did there was no clean way to draw such a line with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other. The result proved to be horrific. Mass rioting broke out, and Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh religious fanatics saw a clear opportunity to create a pure society through ethnic cleansing. Hindus and Sikhs on Pakistan's side of the border, and Muslims on India's side, fled onto trains to the other side, as they realized the only alternative was to be slaughtered. Entire peoples were created, such as the Punjabis of Delhi and the Mohajirs of Karachi. The result was massive amounts of destruction, and both India and Pakistan were left broken societies, left to make the long road to recovery. There are many who say they have yet to recover; there are still others who say they never will.

Pakistan was, further, left with the issue of being divided into two halves, one western and one eastern. The western half, centred around Urdu-Punjabi culture and dominant within the Muslim League, and the eastern half, centred around Bengali culture and having a majority of the population. In the western half, virtually all Hindus and Sikhs fled to India; the eastern half, even with mass flight, was 18% Hindu. This political division very quickly made itself known on the national level, when Bengalis who made up a majority of the state advocated parity between Bengali and Urdu. This quickly irked Jinnah, who himself abandoned his native Gujarati for Urdu and believed Bengalis should accept Urdu hegemony. In a speech given in Dhaka on April 21, 1948, where in addition to declaring Partition exclusively featured anti-Muslim violence, accusing his opponents of being communists, and declaring every Muslim should join the Muslim League, he declared that Pakistan's national language ought to be only Urdu and tarred those who said otherwise as enemies of Pakistan. This brazen statement was met with horror by Bengali society at large, causing agitations, all the while Jinnah refused attempts to enact any sort of compromise. Ultimately, with the constitution yet to be written, these protests dissipated.

At the same time, Islam was quickly framed as the founding principle of the nation. In a speech to the Karachi Bar Association on January 25, 1948, Jinnah declared that the issue of the constitution was resolved 1,300 years ago and it would be framed on the basis of sharia. Furthermore, he set up a Department of Islamic Reconstruction led by Muhammad Asad (formerly Leopold Weiss), and he requested assistance from Hassan al-Banna, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, on writing a constitution to frame Pakistan's government as purely Islamic. At the same time, Jinnah spurned Islamic doctrine. He drank wine, ate pork sausages, and had a large collection of Saville Row suits. How could he justify such an asymmetry? Fundamentally, it was because to him Islam did not necessarily denote a religion; instead, it denoted a Perso-Arabic culture which, in the subcontinent, involved Urdu. That Bengalis do not fit such a culture and instead are "culturally Hindu", was the principal reason behind Bengali tensions.

The project of the writing of the constitution proved difficult. As Governor-General, Jinnah could not directly affect affairs of the Constituent Assembly despite his immense cult of personality, and thus instead it proved enormously inept. After India promulgated a constitution in 1949 to come in effect the next year, Jinnah realized there was a need to expedite the writing of the constitution. Using both his cult of personality and his power as Governor-General, he organized a special committee consisting of yes-men who write his desired constitution. According to this, Pakistan was to feature a very strong presidency - with few doubting who the president would be - and a very weak parliament. With Jinnah having a very low opinion of politicians other than him, the prime minister was to be abolished and instead the cabinet would be responsible to the president. Furthermore, the provincial governments were to include very weak powers, and the Bengali language was not to be official. Though this was met with an uproar, Jinnah successfully got this constitution passed in late 1951.

The result was rioting in East Bengal. It took a wave of suppression and mass arrests to end this, and this necessitated delaying elections. But at the same time, Jinnah came to realize some sort of compromise was necessary. And so, he declared that, within East Bengal, Bengali would have constitutionally-recognize provincial status, and that on the national level, an appropriately "Islamized" Bengali written with Perso-Arabic script would be a secondary language of business. Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who broke away from the Muslim League and formed the Awami League over Jinnah's emphasis on Islam in state, quickly emerged as the leader of this Bengali regionalism.

In 1953, Pakistan faced yet another issue when Acting President Jinnah received a petition advocating the marginalization of members of the Ahmadi sect of Islam. This, Jinnah refused, and the result was mass rioting across Punjab. Jinnah denounced this publicly, declaring Ahmadi fellow Muslims who ought to be treated as such. However, few of the rioters agreed with this - indeed, that was why they were rioting - and so it continued. It took Jinnah declaring martial law to end these protests.

Finally, by 1954, a presidential election could be held. It quickly turned into a contest between Jinnah of the Muslim League and Suhrawardy of the Awami League. That Suhrawardy received endorsements from Hindu groups led his party to be nicknamed the "Hindu League", and the perception of his party being that of Hindus and "cultural Hindus" led him to be regarded as the candidate of Hindus. At the same time, Jinnah's extreme popularity in west Pakistan meant most saw his victory as self-evident. If there was evidence there was less popularity in East Bengal, it could be easily disregarded. For indeed, who would vote out the founder of the nation?

The results of the election showed that many would.



Across western Pakistan, for lack of any real competitor Jinnah won by massive margins, in some subdistricts by 90%+ margins; only in Balochistan did Suhrawardy make up a notable margin. In Kalat and some areas of the North-West Frontier Province, where due to rebellion elections were tough to hold, some fraud occurred, but for the most part this was a fair margin, representative of the intense reverence of Pakistanis towards Jinnah as well as the lack of political organization outside the Muslim League. In East Bengal, the story could not be any more different. It was not only Hindus who voted for Suhrawardy; it was a majority of Bengalis. But this majority was nowhere near the majorities Jinnah won by in west Pakistan, and there were enough Biharis in East Bengal and (at this juncture) pro-Jinnah Bengalis that despite East Bengal making up a majority of Pakistan's population, Jinnah won. But the margin was nowhere near what people thought, and it showed that Jinnah's status was far more insecure than commonly believed.

In the coming years, this proved a powerful driver for the adjustment of electoral laws and democratic backsliding; if even with Jinnah at the nation's head the Bengalis could come within spitting distance at taking the presidency, it was revealing of Bengalis having too much potential power. This displayed itself very quickly in the parliamentary elections in the coming weeks, where East Bengal was made to use proportional representation which no other part of Pakistan used. In the following years the Muslim League was entrenched as Pakistan's vanguard party. Though this all ensured that the Muslim League got to continue leading the nation, it also led many Bengalis to wonder if, indeed, being part of Pakistan was really a good thing....

 

[Indicus]

The Sarbat Khalsa is a deliberative assembly which represents and governs the Sikh religion, having the authority to issue gurmatas that are typically considered binding on Khalsai Sikhs. As Sikhism is predominantly a Punjabi religion, almost all members are elected by Punjabi gurdwaras; some representatives are elected from other countries in India, and there is some discussion on including the diaspora.

The first iteration of the Sarbat Khalsa emerged in the wake of the death of Sikh leader Banda Singh Bahadur in 1716; to organize the Sikh panth, a few years later in 1720 a deliberative assembly was called to organize common policy against the Mughals. To preserve the very fractious unity of the Sikhs, Sarbat Khalsas proved highly necessary. In 1733, a session accepted an offer from the Mughals for a jagir and a nawabship over the province of Lahore, which was the first time religious and temporal Sikh sovereignty were merged together. In 1748, this resulted in the organization of the Sikh order into 11 feudal theocratic republics, or misls, bound together as a Sikh confederacy which made common policy in regularly-called Sarbat Khalsas with representatives from each of them. In this period, the assembly effectively turned into a forum for discussion, and nothing more.

The unification of Punjab by Ranjit Singh in 1801 saw the Sarbat Khalsa effectively abolished, when he refused to call any other. But beneath the surface, the religiously pluralistic rule of Ranjit Singh saw a nostalgic belief in the days of Sikh theocracy, and a wish that the greatness of the Punjabi Empire could have been met by a more explicitly Sikh state. For the most part, these feelings were satisfied by the seat of Sikh authority, the Akal Takht, flexing its muscles, as well as some Punjabi rulers leaning into the Sikh religion more than others. Most famously, this occurred when Maharaja Ranjit Singh was publicly chastised for marrying a Muslim nautch girl. But as the Maharajas attempted to exert control over religious places of worship to centralize the state, and as the failure of the Punjabi Empire on a variety of issues escalated, calls for the convening of the Sarbat Khalsa escalated. During the Punjabi state failure during the Great Indian Famine of 1876-78, there were even some attempts to convene such an assembly, but the Akal Takht refused to participate and the assembly was dissolved by the army. The 1882 coup saw some discussion of convening a Sarbat Khalsa to write a constitution, and even after a more pluralistic constituent assembly was convened there was some discussion over making the Sarbat Khalsa a constitutional institution. But ultimately, following the 1883 coup the new republican constitution ensured that Punjab would be secularist. The decision to treat the constitution as the enthroned true ruler of Punjab, in a parallel to the Guru Granth Sahib being the permanent Sikh guru, saw some discontentment, and the attempt of the Maharaja of Patiala to make himself an explicitly Sikh emperor saw some Sikh clerical support. But ultimately, that the early republic faced the immediate threat of British and Afghan invasion meant Sikh institutions gave it full support.

This full support did not, however, mean that it didn't flex its muscles, and during the unstable governments of the early republic, the Akal Takht was a social institution that politicians of all stripes wanted support from. Furthermore, this brought it in conflict with caste Sikhism is nominally a religion that rejects caste, but in practice it exists in a society which has it, and as a result it has proven harder to reject. As a result, though many low-caste Hindus and Muslims converted to Sikhism to escape their social position, they found themselves in much the same situation. Sikhism was initially a religion most prominent with the Khatri merchant caste, but as it expanded it saw itself in a tussle between the agrarian Jats who flocked en masse to it. Prem Nath Kaul, the driving force of the Punjabi Revolution, fiercely rejected caste and famously cut off his own Brahmin thread as a demonstration of this. And the army he organized featured large numbers of low-caste Mazhabi Sikhs. As he engaged in military campaigns to bring Patiala and the hill states to heel, his army forced temples, gurdwaras, and mosques to admit low-caste people to all positions within them, and he declared caste a feudal remnant. This interference in gurdwara management met attention from the Akal Takht, which denounced "Pandit Kaul". But in practice, this did not affect him. But this meant that, when Kaul launched his 1890 coup d'etat and made himself dictator, relations between the state and Sikh institutions turned frigid.

With this, the Akal Takht launched regular denunciations of the government - denunciations that, in practice, had little effect - and it attempted to gain power. To that end, in 1891 it convened the Sarbat Khalsa, with members nominated by various gurdwaras despite opposition by government-aligned Sikhs. Sikhs aligned to the government tended to be Khatris, while gurdwaras tended to send Jat representatives, and this resulted in some degree of caste conflict. As a result, this brought the government into immediately complicated territory. As Prem Nath Kaul launched into anti-caste efforts, he always justified his stance on the basis of Sikhism's theoretical opposition to caste, and when he arrested Sikh clerics on charges of casteism, he dared the Sarbat Khalsa to violate Sikh principle. And his promotion of Mazhabi Sikhs to high positions saw much anger, but anger that the Sarbat Khalsa had to mask. Furthermore, when Prem Nath Kaul attempted to promote a new variant of the Perso-Arabic script in place of the Sikh liturgical script, this saw staunch opposition by the Sarbat Khalsa. And when Prem Nath Kaul attempted to electrify the Golden Temple, the Sarbat Khalsa refused on the basis that electricity was "un-Sikh" and that to electrify the Golden Temple would be worship of electricity. This conflict, which threatened both the state and the Sikh religion, finally saw resolution in 1896 in a concordat which recognized the Sarbat Khalsa as a religious institution. Furthermore, more quietly, the Golden Temple was electrified.

But all the while, some disputes continued. Prem Nath Kaul and his successor Azimullah Azad expanded irrigation networks and opened up much land for farming. The anti-caste policy of the government resulted in the bulk of this land going to the landless, who were mostly low-caste. As a result, in new cities such as Kaulabad and the land around them, low-caste people now had a much higher status than previously, and low-caste systems of worship, in Sikhism including worship of the (low-caste) purported writer of the Ramayana, Valmiki, were suddenly brought into the limelight. However, such forms of worship were simply unacceptable to the Sarbat Khalsa, and it refused to accept such gurdwaras into the Sikh religion. This, however, heavily weakened the position of the Sikh religion as, suddenly, nominally-Sikh functionaries and deputies were excluded from the faith. That this unsubtle caste-based discrimination violated Sikh theology exposed blatant hypocrisy. And so, in 1930, the government forced the Sarbat Khalsa to come to an agreement. According to this, Valmiki would be considered in the same light as figures of Sufi Islam and Bhakti Hinduism, a saint who preceded the ideas of Sikhism. Though explicit idols and statues of Valmiki were declared forbidden, pictures of him were not. This was accepted, and though in practice those Valmiki gurdwaras with idols and statues of Valmiki simply moved them into Valmiki Hindu temples where Sikhs are allowed to pray, it brought Mazhabi Sikhs decisively into the fold.

In the 1940s, during the height of the xenophobic anti-Hindustani refugee Rawalpindi Compact, the Sarbat Khalsa proved supportive, and it was even willing to oppose those refugees who were Sikh. That such waves saw staunch opposition from many Sikhs saw gurdwara elections become deeply politicized, and following Rawalpindi Compact collapse in 1947 this was reflected within the Sarbat Khalsa. This saw moves to include non-Punjabi representatives within it, though they were excluded from all Punjabi state functions. And with that, the Sarbat Khalsa attained its modern form.

 

[Indicus]

From its foundation in the seventeenth to its triumph in the eighteenth to its subsidiary alliance with the British in the nineteenth, over the centuries Maharashtra changed greatly as an entity. Even as British subsidiary alliance provided the Maharashtrian elite with much wealth, many were discomfited by the loss of the nation's historic greatness. Where had the people who flew the saffron banned from Attock to Cuttack gone, and why were they now serving as footsoldiers of the Britishers in China? Furthermore, the great price of the elite's newfound wealth became clear with the Great Famine of 1876-78. The horrors of this great famine occurred across India, but nowhere were they more apparent than in the Deccan, where entire districts were depopulated with hunger and emaciated families had to not only survive with what little food they could find but also fight off cannibal gangs. This was greatly exacerbated by British export policy, fixed in treaty with Maharashtra, which required free trade in grain. Thus, districts which could not feed themselves had to export the bulk of their grain. When Vasudev Balwant Phadke attempted to fight against this by organizing bands of warriors to kill the middlemen exporting grain to the ports, the reaction of the government was to execute him. When the famine came to an end, this horror forced the Maharashtrian elite to determine why this had occurred.

Quickly, the finger was pointed at the nature of the government. At the top was nominally the Chhatrapati, the direct descendant of the much valorized founder of Maharashtra, Shivaji. But in practice, all knew the true ruler of Maharashtra was none other than his nominal head of government, the Peshwa, who served for life on a hereditary basis, and he kept the Chhatrapati in perpetual house arrest. Every once in a while, there was some discussion among the old Maratha clans about overthrowing the Peshwa, and that the Peshwa was a Brahmin and the Chhatrapati the direct descendant of the quintessential Maratha aggravated these tensions. But nothing came out of these discussions. Until 1881, when letters flew around the nation calling for a consultative assembly, and Chhatrapati Rajaram II, wishing to regain his power, signed a decree and got it past the Peshwa's guards. And so, in 1882, a National Convention was held in Puna, with an eclectic group of representatives from various city councils and feudal lords of various sizes. In character, it was surrounded by the atmosphere of a village fair. Here, however, it advocated something a little different from merely restoring the Chhatrapati; rather, it advocated the establishment of constitutional government. And so, in 1883, it issued a draft for a constitution, a charter establishing a federation with formal institutions, and this the Chhatrapati was forced to accept since it, indeed, did enhance his own power while also circumscribing it. And the Peshwa, on the backfoot, saw the way things were going and accepted this too, even as he was reduced to the first among equals in an aristocratic-oligarchic council. This charter, however, was refused by the Rajasthani, Bundeli, Gujarati, and Vidarbhi lords, thus reducing its power to the old heartland.

In the years that followed, the Chhatrapati and Peshwa consistently clashed among one another, while the elite represented in the Praja Sabha attempted to play them off one another to enlargen their own power. For a time it worked. But then, in 1887 came to the throne the young Shahu III, and seeking to gain power he had ideas he was thinking of as heir. He quickly recognized the status of Brahmins in education and administration, as well as grievance by other upper castes and the status of untouchables. To this end, in 1888, he gave a speech declaring the status of Brahmins and Sayyids in Maharashtrian society deplorable, and he declared he had every intention of changing this. He declared that every Maharashtrian not a Brahmin was a Maratha, in the legacy of the great Shivaji, who he declared a god. To that end, in 1889, he inaugurated the first Shiv Sabha in Satara to honour the legacy of his ancestor, and by doing so implicitly attempting to raise himself to the same near-divine level. His agents and supporters created many others across the nation, and quickly they announced candidates for Praja Sabha elections. With full support from the Chhatrapati's agents, in contrast to the Peshwa who lacked anything resembling this, they swept the Praja Sabha. And with that, Shahu III quickly got to work.

He announced new schools, open not to Brahmins but to everybody else, and in a particularly explosive move he declared the establishment of new reservations in government jobs for non-Brahmins. The Peshwa was shoved aside, and with it untouchables like the Mahars were relieved of the horrific persecution they suffered at his hands. But this quickly went further. With him recognizing that the most prominent institutions in Maharashtra were the temple and mosque, he declared they should be removed from the hands of those who currently operated them, the Brahmin of the temple and the Sayyid or other Ashraaf of the mosque. This very quickly turned into Brahmins being forced out of temples with state force. In many cases, temples were razed down and their idols placed in newly-constructed ones on their ruins. Those to serve in them were a group of new people - Brahmins from North India, or newly-trained priests from among non-Brahmins, so-called "Maratha Brahmins". All the while, the Bhakti movement with all of its focus on less esoteric forms of worship quickly spread and became more common, to fill the void created by the weakening of priests, and that Shivaji was undoubtedly a man in the Bhakti mold meant this quickly gained steam. Similarly, among Maharashtrian Muslims, upper-caste Muslims found their status challenged, as their dubious claims of foreign descent were turned against them by a state intent on promoting a more Indic identity and a unique Maharashtrian Islam. One byproduct of this was that the Muslim reform movement, which often viewed low-caste Muslims as unwashed masses unworthy of new reforms, had little impact in Maharashtra.

In many cases, this wave against Brahmins resulted in rioting, shocking the state. But nevertheless, through all of this, the state was able to spread its control around temples and mosques, and through it centralize. Shahu III continued to be a vigorous reformer, whose monopolization of the legislative process led him to create new schools, colleges, and universities. He created new banks, and he banned child marriage. He created new railways across his nation, and when it looked as if debts to the British would be unpayable, he successfully negotiated the transfer of Orissa, nominally run by him but really under Nagpuri rule, to the British in return for relief of these debts. By his death in 1929, Maharashtra was a very different place. But all the while, his reformism reached his limits. That all non-Brahmins were grouped together as "Marathas" meant only a specific group, upper non-Brahmins, got all the benefit of reservations and education, and tensions between them and other so-called "Marathas" came to the surface as it became apparent they were just as capable as virulent casteism as any Brahmin. Though the worst abuses of untouchability were stopped, the practice continued. It must come to no surprise that untouchables and other low-castes started to reject any Maratha identity instead of another label that would allow them to assert themselves. At the same time, Shahu III's refusal to accept anything but the vague form of constitutional government left many wanting more.

And so, during the great crises of the 1930s and 40s, Maharashtra was ill-prepared. The Hindustani War of Independence saw the Hindustani people rebel against both the British and princes, and that some of the princes brutally killed by their own subjects were ethnically Maharashtrian and that Maharashtrian soldiers were bound by treaty to fight for the British, meant sudden division in society. Various Shiv Sabhas made declarations both for and against the war. And the Praja Sabha ceased to be a mere puppet institution as it instead saw raucous debates. The revolution in Andhra in 1941 made these problems worse, as Hyderabad was overthrown and replaced by a Telugu nationalist associationist republic. In both cases, Maharashtra saw large numbers of refugees enter. The Shiv Sabhas saw splits between those who sought to reform to avoid such events occurring in Maharashtra, and those who wanted to keep those ideas out. This division asserted itself as Shiv Sabhas expelled members not in accordance with the majority, and those expelled formed their own organizations. By 1942, Shiv Sabhas effectively split into two organizations, and this became recognized in fact with further political organization. With Maharashtra unilaterally breaking its alliance with the British, this division and the rising low-caste movements would profoundly transform Maharashtrian society....

 

[Indicus]

The Philippines used the Spanish flag during the Spanish period; during the British occupations, it used the Union Jack along with the various ensigns it used. During the Third British occupation (1851-5), Lord Cochrane attempted to legitimize his occupation by declaring a Philippine republic, and to that end he created a flag using the colours of the Venezuelan flag but in a lozenge layout, as well as a sun in the middle to represent the illumination of the Philippines but likely inspired by the use of a sun symbol by Platine revolutionaries. However, this attempt failed and the flag was quickly forgotten as the British occupation came to an end in 1855.

With the Young Filipinos launching Philippine Revolution in the 1870s, a great many flags were used. They often used a red background due to its association with rebellion, as well as the prior use of red pennants by Filipino merchant ships. On these flags were placed a number of things - letters to stand for the Philippines, or for the Young Philippines (Batang Pilipinas), or with the emblem of the Freemasons. One flag in particular was emblazoned with the pre-Spanish Baybayin script letter for pa, standing for the Philippines - this was representative of a desire among many revolutionaries to entirely denounce Spanish influence. Following the Pact of San Miguel in 1881 and the exile of Filipino revolutionaries to Formosa, this flag became the most common, and when they returned to resume the revolution in 1884 it was seen in many of their campaigns.

Following the French intervention in 1887, the Philippine Constituent Assembly drew up a flag consisting of a red banner with yellow and blue bars, as well as a yellow sun with a Baybayin pa within it. Though some were worried that the use of Baybayin script, a script used for Tagalog, would imply Tagalogization, for the time being many did not see it that way. This flag was quickly spread across the nation and the sun was quickly used as a national emblem. With the positivists who governed the Philippines establishing many vast cold and imposing buildings devoted to science, they always ensured to stamp them with the sun emblem. While flags did and still do have an important place in the Philippine Independent Catholic Church, with all bishops' robes emblazoned with it. And in the most official depictions of the flag, the yellow is represented by gold leaf - the most famous depiction of this is within the Presidential Palace. But ultimately, as the Filipino state attempted to turn Tagalog into the lingua franca in place of Spanish, it came with calls to revive Baybayin. These moves resulted in the establishment of a new "reformed" Baybayin script, and it was used on many buildings; that few understood it meant it was often decorative in nature. Such moves resulted in the motto, in English "love, order, progress", which had been turned from Latin to Tagalog "pagibig, kaayusan, pagsulong" some years before, to be represented officially exclusively in Baybayin script:



In 1913, the decision was made to put this motto on the flag itself, onto the lower blue bar, to represent the Tagalog nature of Philippine society. This portended the state emphasizing not only Tagalog, but also Baybayin. This quickly proved deeply alienating, and ultimately in 1924 it resulted in the Cry of Pampangan initiating the Philippine Civil War. The Federalistas flew a black flag with a white sun, a stark symbol representative of the fight to the death that they desired. Ultimately they proved victorious with French assistance, and though they did issue a general amnesty, they excluded Centralistas from all power. This in turn caused a revolt by Centralistas in 1930, which flew a version of the flag which emphasized the Baybayin pa, as a symbol of Centralismo. At the same time, the Philippine flag became less important, as provincial politicians increasingly acted like feudal lords, and French-controlled lands received permission to run their own law. After the Federalistas sought to avoid further Centralista revolt through allowing for some free political activity, in 1935 the Centralista candidate Ramon del Fierro won after receiving enough endorsements from feudal lords and also winning in the free elections of cities. And though, after a few years of centralizing his rule, he continued with a more democratic form of the Centralista agenda of positivism and centralization, he refused to touch the flag.

Zamboanga was a city the French received provisionally as part of their deal with the Filipino revolutionaries, and they got control over it after the departure of the Spanish. Here, they allowed some flying of the Filipino flag, as it was technically part of the Philippines; in practice, however, the French flag was dominant, and this only became the case further with the migration of Chinese, Malay, and Tamil people into the city who saw Philippine control as the technicality it was. Instead, one flag became prominent as an unofficial symbol of Zamboanga permitted by the French - a French flag with a yellow sun in the middle. As Chinese, Malay, and Tamil people merged into Zamboangueño culture and the people came to speak French-influenced Chavalcano, this symbol quickly acquired a symbolism beyond that permitted by the French. As a result, when del Fierro successfully negotiated the return of Zamboanga to the Philippines in 1939, there was some resistance at a presence that seemed alien. Though much of that has been blunted by Zamboanga's crucial trade ties to the rest of the nation and its status as a federal province, the flag remains flown by many today.

 

[Indicus]

The Malê script is a script by Bahian Muslims used to write Portuguese. Nago Muslims, who speak a variant of Yoruba, also use this script, and historically it has been used for Brazilian Hausa and Fulfulde as well. Historically Bahian Muslims have used it for all purposes, but with the rise of public education usurping the status of the madrassa, as well as mass literacy, it has been de-emphasized in favour of Latin script. Nevertheless, it is still used in the Grand Madrassa of Salvador, as well as within the oldest Bahian mosques.

While Arabic script was used for in the time to write the Andalusi languages, including that from which Portuguese evolved from, the Reconquista put an end to that. The modern usage of Arabic for Portuguese began much later, when African slaves were imported into Brazil. These slaves were largely Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or of related cultures, and many of them were Muslim. The massive death rate of Brazilian slaves meant that no Muslim community could establish itself anywhere in Brazil, but gradually in Salvador there were enough Muslim slaves released who chose to stay that there emerged a Muslim community, known as the Malê, in the city. Indeed, this community even converted other freed slaves. They achieved a measure of wealth, and with it they established small mosques and educated themselves in Arabic as much as they could. They wore several symbols, such as amulets of paper with Quranic verses. When the Bahian War of Independence erupted in the 1830s, the Malê happily joined the rebellion, and when it succeeded with French arms, they fully supported the new republic. The abolition of slavery subsequent migration of many first-generation slaves back to Africa did not include comparatively many Malê slaves, as they tended to be more creolized and had a better position in Salvador. The first legislative assembly even had one Muslim representative, representative of the radicalism of the new state.

With their existence legitimized, the Malê quickly established more open institutions. They established a madrassa and a mosque in their neighbourhood of Salvador, forever ensuring that they would be an urban community. In the initial formation of the new community, while a majority were Nago and spoke it, there were enough minorities that they needed a lingua franca. Though many would have preferred Arabic in such a role, and certainly the clerics used it, common people used Portuguese in such a role. The madrassa also used it even as they tried to push Arabic; furthermore, they used it in writing. Thus, Malê script was born, a script derived from the forms of Arabic script used for African languages but evolving in its own manner and, at this point, unstandardized. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Catholic Church in Bahia and its replacement with a state-led independent church, Malê people proselytized Islam to other freed slaves although this was done with middling success and the Malê remain a small minority. Furthermore, with the Portuguese being forced to import slaves from the United States due to French ships attempting to suppress their slave ships in Africa, there were no longer new Muslims coming from beyond the shores. As slaves of different ethnicities married one another, their children spoke Portuguese, although the creole Portuguese they spoke was distinct. And thus, by the 1870s, the Malê became one community largely speaking Portuguese, even though it still had a large Nago minority.

However, in the 1870s the American Civil War, breaking over slavery, received international attention. Much of this attention also went to the "black nations" of the Americas, namely Haiti, Grenade, and Hairouna. Though Bahia's abolitionism and independence was hardly as radical as theirs, it received much of this attention. This attention was international enough that it also received some from the "natural leaders" of the Hanafi maddhab, the Caliphate of Sokoto. Ruling as it did much Hausa and Yoruba land, it naturally looked to Bahia. In 1876, it sent a cleric to educate the Malê in proper Islam. Though factors such as the Malê's abolitionism and Sokoto being slaveholding caused tension, ultimately he went native and ceased to be Sokoto's representative, though Bahia's policy of balancing foreign interests to maintain independence meant he was often treated as such. He wrote a lengthy book on the proper fiqh and, to ensure it would spread among all, he wrote it in Portuguese with a standardized alphabet, which quickly became the norm.

This set the norm for decades. However, in the 1930s, education became more accessible for the average Bahian, and this resulted in many Malê students getting their education in them rather than the madrassas. This slowly reduced the widespread used of Malê script, even as it furthered their national integration. By the 1960s, even many mosques started using Latin script. By the modern day, Malê script has ceased to be anything other than a decorative script, and a marker of Muslim identity.

 

[Indicus]

The Constitution of Punjab is the supreme law of the Punjabi Republic. It superseded the administration of the Punjabi Empire. It comprises of 5 sections which delineate the frame of the republic, although these sections have been extensively modified. Its first section defines human rights in a charter inspired the most by France's Declaration of Rights of Man. It also defines the official languages. The second section defines a Punjabi as well as citizenship requirements, the size of the nation and the secular nature of the state. The next three sections define each of the three powers of the nation - legislative, executive, and judicial - and their relationships with one another. It is second only to the Goan constitution as the oldest constitution in Asia still in force.

Punjab's first constitution is often considered to be the hukamnana of the Sikh Sarbat Khalsa organizing the religion, in practice headquartered in Punjab despite its original pan-India dreams, into an organized pseudo-polity in 1716. In practice, however, this was not a true polity due to Mughal and later Afghan invasions and occupations. In 1748, the Sikh panth was organized into 11 republics, or misls, which were of a theocratic nature and only loosely allied with one another. Finally, in 1801, Ranjit Singh of the Sukerchakia misl was crowned Maharaja of Punjab and, through a combination of conquest and negotiation, established Punjab into an empire. He did not truly abolish the old misls, but in practice their institutions fell into abeyance. Instead, the empire was organized into a mixture of governorates and princely states, and as it expanded further into Pashtun and Sindhi lands, this only got haphazard. The theocratic nature of the state fell into abeyance as Ranjit Singh sought to include Hindus and Muslims into his empire, which required the enumeration of pluralism. His successors more-or-less continued these policies, even as their own discrete patterns of religious patronage tended to be different from one another, and even as the rising tides of religious revivalism threatened this arrangement. However, the Great Indian Famine of 1876-8 showed the massive deficiencies of this arrangement as a lack of a centralized civil service meant aid management was haphazard, while at the same time the economy was sufficiently interconnected that massive crop failures affected the whole nation. At the same time, epidemics were widespread across the nation. Many looked to solutions for this. The French-educated liberals who wrote western-style potential constitutions now had a much larger audience, and so did those Sikh revivalists who desired the re-establishment of the union of state and the Khalsa. Among those who wanted a regeneration of the state was the general Prem Nath Kaul. At once learned in much Punjabi culture and French-educated, he had a unique vision, and as he rose as general he had every intention to implement it. Finally, in 1882, he stormed the imperial palace and threw Maharaja Jawahar Singh out of the palace and, after publicly stripping him of his turban, out of the nation. He propped liberal prince Dalip Singh onto the throne with the more democratic title "King of the Punjabis", and had a Constituent Assembly convened.

This Constituent Assembly was, at this point, highly diverse in its modes of election. Some were appointed by vassal princes, and others were elected by city councils. In some small cases, there were even events similar to general elections. But nevertheless, Maharaja Dalip Singh attempted to get a constitution through to them, a constitution deeply inspired by liberal monarchism which sought simultaneously to provide a privileged place for the Khalsa while guaranteeing full liberty for the non-Sikh majority. But that he all but dictated the constitution to them disturbed not only the most radical voices he needed to carry, but also General Prem Nath Kaul. And so, in 1883, he stormed the royal palace once more, and he removed Dalip Singh from power. For good measure, he arrested the princely delegates in the Constituent Assembly, and he organized a committee to quickly write a constitution. There were some important measures they had to meet - it had to be firmly secularist, and it had to be fully democratic up to western norms - and these were met. In its preamble, the constitution evokes God - but it carefully uses the non-sectarian "Rabb", originally an Islamic phrase but also commonly-used term in Sikhism and thus by many Hindus. It declares the separation of religion and state, and though India has no clear concept mapping onto the term "religion", the constitution used "panth", a term meaning a spiritual path typically founded by a single guru. It abolished the vassal princes, though the framers had every intention of integrating them into administration, and replaced them with French-style departments. Under universal male suffrage, a Legislative Assembly, or majlis-i-qanun, was made central, and they were to elect the Sadr-i-Sarkar or "Chief of Government", simply known as the "Sardar" in the common parlance. Most peculiarly, however, it declared the Constitution the true sovereign of Punjab and granted it the power of king. This peculiarity was implemented because, firstly, Sikhs revere their holy book the Guru Granth Sahib as their living guru (and the martial order of the Nihangs treat the Dasam Granth written by Guru Gobind Singh in the same manner), and secondly, the idea that republics should be ruled by laws but not men is central to liberal ideology. But the largest reason was that Prem Nath Kaul understood these liberal ideas were all radically new, and it would take time for them to be accepted. To tie the constitution to the common ideas, he sought for it to be treated similarly to the Guru Granth Sahib, but with secular rituals inspired by positivist ideas of religion revering not God but humanity. Perhaps due to this, the constitution's official book was written in Sikh liturgical script, Gurmukhi, rather than a commonly-used script. And so thus, this constitution was enacted into law across the nation. The vassal rulers refused to sign on, and the result was their rebellion with British support, along with a coterminous Afghan invasion. The chaotic early republic period came to a beginning.

As Prem Nath Kaul personally led campaigns against the Patiala and Pahari princely states to conquer them, this enabled the relatively free operation of the republic. The electoral system came into full bloom, as messes of candidates saw election to the Legislative Assembly in those areas not in rebellion or Afghan occupation in an extremely free system. At the same time, the provisions on separation of religion and state were difficult to implement because the term "panth" has a narrower meaning than the English word "religion", and non-Bhakti Hinduism and non-Sufi Islam were comparatively harder to compress into such a mold. At the same time, as Prem Nath Kaul was involved in the extremely difficult process of integrating Patiala and the Pahari states, and to this end he held elections which, despite high turnout due to the novelty, simply elected his chosen candidates. This further muddled the legislature and made it yet more chaotic, while at the same time religious institutions gained heavy influence in the legislature despite provisions on secularism. Furthermore, the weak administrative service meant the human rights provisions of the constitution simply could not be implemented. These major deficiencies were quickly viewed by Prem Nath Kaul when, after saving the republic from being murdered in its crib, he returned to Lahore. And so, in 1890, he launched a coup. Taking control of large parts of the city and getting the loyalty of the army, he forced the government to resign and, with the assistance of his legislative placemen, he became the new Sardar. And with that, he could finally get to work in modelling his nation.

Firstly, he sought to make secularism an understood concept. To that end, he organized a religious conferences with various Sunni movements, as well as with Shia Islam, and also one with what he understood as "traditionalist" Hinduism. These conferences organized their movements into panths or equivalents. Furthermore, to ensure the people would be tied to the state, he established customs around the constitution itself. They were distributed around the nation, and as civil service and post offices got established he ensured each of them would contain the constitution seated atop a throne. Every Republic Day, he held a grand darbar in Lahore held not in any small hall but in public, in which the Constitution was anointed in a manner similar to a royal coronation, concluding with its crown removed and smashed. Smaller celebrations were to be held in each prefecture and sub-prefecture. Other civic rituals were invented to be focused around the constitution, including new ghazals. While at the same time, the rise of the Freemason movement saw new Masonic lodges open with constitutional thrones as well and even more elaborate rituals invented around them. When the quasi-religious Masonic element was removed and turned into a separate network of lodges, its own throne was made to include, at the top, the constitution, and below it the Dasam Granth, the Masnavi, and a collection of Tulsidas' hymns. When Prem Nath Kaul established script reform which made a standardized form of Perso-Arabic script the only official one, the original copy of the Constitution was replaced by one much fancier, with every page illuminated, and written exclusively in Perso-Arabic. It is this which remains the constitution of Punjab

Following Prem Nath Kaul's death in 1903, his successor Azimullah Azad inaugurated a civilianization of the Punjabi state. The position of the military was made weaker, a process which also saw the rise of oppositionist political movements which he proved willing to allow to compete elections. He also saw an effort taken towards implementation of human rights, as well as the release of political prisoners. This process also saw the popularization of civic custom as the military element was intentionally replaced with a civic element. Furthermore, the constitution was amended so that candidates only had to swear an oath condemning monarchy and feudalism, rather than the far longer oath they were required to swear, while electoral signup was revised to make it harder for the government to interfere. Following the transfer of power in 1912, the constitution survived; this was demonstrative of its success.

Over the 1930s, a crisis began to emerge. The remarkably broad citizenship provisions clashed with emerging anti-refugee sentiment as they came over the Hindustani War of Independence; following the rise of the anti-refugee Rawalpindi Compact to power in 1940, it amended the constitution to ensure that refugees could never be naturalized, even stripping many of citizenship to this end. It was, perhaps, evocative of the shattering of constitutional norms. The constitution was at risk, and the courts' attempts to step in were crushed by the government simply refusing to follow its orders. Following the collapse of the Rawalpindi Compact in 1947, the constitution saw a series of amendments which were aimed at ensuring these abuses of powers could never be repeated; the basic structure was specifically entrenched and the remaining refugee population was enfranchised. The success of this reform movement is such that the constitution has not faced any major reforms since then.

 

[Indicus]

The Grand Lodge of the British Isles is a Masonic Grand Lodge which governs Masonic lodges in the British Isles, as well as in many of its former colonies, and this is done chiefly through intermediary Provincial Grand Lodges.

Freemasonry in the British Isles has its origins, ultimately, in the medieval era. As with other occupations in the era, stone masons, or as they tended to be known in the era, freemasons, were organized into guilds, but unlike other occupations their only employers were the Crown and the Church. This meant they migrated in groups for new work and stayed at groups of tents they called "lodges". Due to them only having a few employers, stone mason guilds tended to be far simpler in organization than other guilds, and they tended to be as a result more egalitarian. Furthermore, due to their associations with organs of a state, they tended to view themselves as exceptional relative to the rest of society. The secret handshakes and rituals that they invented like other guilds were quickly centred around alleged grand pasts connecting them to King Solomon.

While in England the stone mason guilds fell into decline due to the end of the monasteries, in Scotland they instead received state patronage and regulation over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Furthermore, gentlemen and other non-masons began to join masonic lodges, and by the eighteenth century they overshadowed actual masons within these lodges. These Masonic Lodges creeped down the border, and in 1717 they formed a Grand Lodge in England. The next few years saw Anderson publish his Constitutions, which standardized Freemasonry and, more notably, allowed any monotheist of any stripe to become a Mason. The next few decades saw the Ancients schism from the existing lodges who they derisively called Moderns, and they believed in restoring a more "pure" Freemasonry. Both forms spread across the empire, and even beyond. As Freemasonry erupted across Continental Europe, it attracted subversive radicals and was condemned as an anti-church by the Catholic Church, and this has given it its modern reputation; in contrast, in the British Isles and the Empire, it was heavily establishment and sought aristocratic and royal patronage, and its leadership was chiefly Anglican as a result.

Over time, Modern and Ancient Freemasonry in the British Isles were effectively brought under the same hands of royal patronage. In 1813, they were finally unified, with the Duke of Kent as the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England. The Duke of Kent was the brother of King George IV and his brother King Frederick. Consequently, when in 1827 a mob stormed the Tower of London, King Frederick fled along with many of his aides, and a Constituent Assembly was convened, Freemasonry lost much of its elite. The Grand Lodges of England, Scotland, and Ireland effectively collapsed, and each Masonic Lodge was effectively separate from one another. In the extremely chaotic atmosphere of the early revolutionary state, this resulted in an immediate danger. It is known that many lodges signed on to the Orange Order and became Orange Lodges, and many of them participated in violence in this era. Some ex-Masons even participated in the Burning of Parliament, although when the backlash against it caused the destruction of the Orange Order some of them signed on to the Scarlet Order's mission of establishing a very powerful monarchy under a broad electorate. In general, the secret nature of these lodges resulted in much state anxiety, even from those who were Freemasons themselves. This came particularly from Radicals, who ironically viewed the Freemasons as a body of counter-revolution. As a result, over the 1830s, they made efforts to stitch together Masonic lodges into a network, and in 1838 they finally unified their provincial networks into a single Grand Lodge of the British Isles. This new Grand Lodge left out many lodges, and in particular it left out the ones who felt allegiance to the Hanoverians over the Water. But, for the most part, the great confusion of British Freemasonry came to an end.

The Grand Lodge quickly sought to spread across the empire. With many lodges in British North America dead, loyal to Hanoverians, or effectively American in nature, it established many new ones with new Provincial Grand Lodges in capitals of colonies. In particular, in Lower Canada, the new Freemasonry became quickly dominated by Francophone anticlericals who defied Catholicism's opposition to it, in contrast to the pre-revolutionary form which was mostly Anglophone and Protestant. In India, the need to stitch together alliances after the costly Anglo-Burmese War as well as the continued ghazi attacks in reaction to missionary activities resulted in Freemasonry being viewed as a way to create bonds between Indians and the Raj. While Freemasons in the Raj were already admitting Muslims and Parsis, they stopped short of admitting Hinduism due to its polytheism and the issue of caste. With the era seeing the rise of Hindus who brought its monotheism to the surface and regarded caste as a social rather than religious practice, the new lodges admitted Hindus. And thus was the birth of Freemasonry as an ideology of empire.

During the Anglo-Spanish War of the 1840s and -50s, Freemasonry played a role in funding the war effort, and soldiers took it with them as far afield as the Philippines. And with the disestablishment of the churches in 1853, the closeness of Freemasonry with power, among both the Radical and Moderate parties, led many to nickname it the new national church. At the same time, the Grand Lodge of the British Isles zealously guarded its role as the chief lodge of the empire, refusing to allow for the formation of any other Grand Lodges at the same level (though splinter lodges emerged anyways). As the British Empire continued to expand, new lodges popped up wherever they went, and they made moves to include "natives" as part of them though they could not generally proceed beyond the second level. Some dreamed of making Freemasonry the bedrock of a new universal religion, and as certain Masonic rituals slowly became a part of British civil practice, they believed those days were coming. But ultimately they did not, as many did not take Masonic ritualism seriously, and the inherent white supremacist nature of British Freemasonry made this impossible. But yet, its reach was impressive, and it did bring together classes of the Empire like few institutions did. When some advocated the unification of the colonies with the British Isles in an American-style union, Freemasonry strongly supported it, but nevertheless ultimately such attempts were unsuccessful.

With the rise of women's rights movements, Freemasonry's restriction on female membership saw scorn; though in France some level of female membership was always accepted, the same was not true in the British Isles. Some mixed-gender lodges saw their establishment, and though there was some discussion on including them into the imperial Masonic network, ultimately this did not come to be. And indeed, when the Grand Orient of France made moves on including more women, the British reaction was to declare the French irregular. Similarly, attempts to include atheists were refused.

With the emergence of liberal movements in the nonwhite colonies, ironically Masons played a role in this. They attempted to leverage their Masonic connections for liberalism, and when their white brethren refused any discussion of this as "political", they decided to form their own independent lodges. Such lodges popped up in India, Natal, and West Africa with alarming alacrity, though most got suppressed. And at the same time, an anti-Masonic impulse rapidly formed, as its association with the colonial state made it hated. Such sentiments erupted in 1937, with the Hindustani War of Independence; though led by many members of independent lodges, the leading anti-Masonic attitudes led them to hastily burn their robes and join in calling for the death of Freemasonry. Ultimately, the Hindustani rebels proved victorious, and a great mob destroyed the Provincial Grand Lodge of Allahabad in celebration. The Hindustani constitution continues to contain very strong provisions banning secret societies as a result of this.

Elsewhere, decolonization saw Freemasonry indigenized and separated entirely from British tradition. But nevertheless, the lustre of imperial Freemasonry was gone. And with it came backlash at home. The Associationists were long critical of it as a middle class-led movement, even though some of them were members of it, but they were now part of a wave that aimed at "separation of lodge and state". This wave did successfully weaken Freemasonry's role in the state, although this wave ultimately swallowed itself as this force attracted conspiracy theorists who discredited the whole movement. And it forced Masons to allow tours of their lodges and support much charitable work, as part of showing themselves as being a social club. But nevertheless, much formerly-Masonic ritual remains part of civil practice, and it is very easy to find Masonic symbols across buildings in the British Isles.

 

[Indicus]

Carl Friedrich Gauss was a man with a long and illustrious career. Born in 1777, he was a child prodigy in mathematics. This attracted attention from the Duke of Brunswick, who sent him to university, where he made a great number of discoveries. He proved that a polygon could be constructed with a ruler and compass if the number of its sides was the product of Fermat primes and a power of 2, he proved the law of quadratic reciprocity and the prime number theorem, and he published a textbook which turned number theory into a true discipline all by the age of 21. For the rest of his life, he continued to work on mathematics, and he worked on other fields as well. In astronomy, he helped confirm the discovery of Ceres and independently developed the Fast Fourier Transform for interpolating orbits. In statistics, he discovered the normal distribution, as well as the method of least squares. To carry out land surveys, he developed the heliotrope, to measure positions by reflecting sunlight over vast distances. And finally, he was involved in the early development of magnetism.

In 1828, Alexander von Humboldt suggested to Gauss to apply his talents to magnetism, and in its wake, he made a number of notable discoveries and inventions. He created a magnetometer, to determine the strength of magnets, he discovered that magnetism obeys the inverse square law, and he measured Earth's magnetic field. But most notably, in collaboration with physicist Wilhelm Weber, he constructed the world's first electric telegraph to use induction in 1833. That Joseph Henry's discovery of induction made electric telegraphy viable in a manner that was impossible with static electricity is undeniable, but it required significant development. To test this, they constructed a wire connecting Gauss's and Weber's offices in the University of Gottingen, which transmitted electric current to make an electric needle on the other end move either positively or negatively. At first using this to set up a common time, they quickly realized they could transmit the alphabet using a common binary code, and thus is the origin of the Gauss-Weber code, often simply known as the Gauss code, consisting originally of 25 characters.

This quickly attracted the attention of the Hanoverian government. The Popular Revolution had resulted in the Hanoverian dynasty being removed from the British throne, and this resulted in the formerly-absentee dynasty being forced into exile in Hanover. This naturally made it very suspicious of revolution as well as the French nearby, and that the electric telegraph could help secure the electorate was quickly foreseen; that Gauss was well-known for his conservative politics reassured them that this was no university attempt to foster revolution. As a result, Elector Edward invested much money into the electric telegraph. The Gauss-Weber Code was further developed into a full system for the German language, and by the late 1830s it was spreading along with railways across German cities. By the 1840s, it was being used to create vast telegraph networks, not only in Germany but in France and even in the British Isles. New telegraphs were made to print code on paper tape, using short and long pulses rather than positive and negative currents to represent binary code, and from there it spread around the world. In 1844, the Gauss-Weber code was further used in Hanover to communicate using the very same sun mirrors Gauss had used to survey land, and this spread for more ad-hoc long-range communication.

And with that, electric telegraphs spread around the world. Vast oceanic cables were laid out around the world, and suddenly communication across continents was far quicker than before. And though the telegraph era would one day come to an end with the rise of photonics, the age of interconnectedness it inaugurated has never ended.

 

[Indicus]

The Council of State is an official council which advises the Chief Magistrate on the use of her powers, and it consists of eleven appointees. Most of them may be done at her discretion with the unofficial restriction that they must be nonpartisan, but three are from the civil service. The Clerk of the Council of State is the head of the British civil service, and his two Vice Clerks are also members of the Council.

The Council of State is rooted in the Privy Council of the old monarchy. The Privy Council is itself rooted in the medieval-era royal court; as it was divided into multiple bodies with a degree of independence from the monarchy, the Privy Council consisted of those who were directly tied to the monarchy, which accumulated executive, judicial, and legislative powers in one body. As the medieval era turned to early modernity, the Privy Council could therefore be used as a tool to circumvent Parliament and the courts. The most infamous example of this is the Star Chamber, a judicial body formed of Privy Counsellors which meted out extreme punishments to enemies of the King; ever since its abolition during the Puritan Revolution, it has become a metonym for tyranny.

The Privy Council was abolished during the Puritan Revolution, and a Council of State governed during the Commonwealth. When Oliver Cromwell established himself as monarch of the British Isles in all but name, it became his privy council. When the Stuarts were restored, the old Privy Council was restored as part of the process of overturning the Revolution. In practice, power was increasingly centralized into a committee of the Privy Council nicknamed the Cabinet. Following the Glorious Revolution, power was centralized further into them, and following the rise of the Hanoverians and the ascent of Robert Walpole as the British Isle's first Prime Minister, the Cabinet became the chief executive body, often meeting in the absence of the monarch.

The Privy Council effectively became a super-council, overshadowed by its committees. As a whole it nevertheless made Orders-in-Council, legislation strictly subsidiary to Parliament, but typically this was decided by the Cabinet. As the eighteenth century continued, because the monarch never removed members from the rolls except in rare situations, it included not only incumbent cabinet ministers but also former ones. Nevertheless, there were situations in which cabinet ministers were removed from the privy council rolls. Famously when in 1798 Charles James Fox gave a public toast to "our Sovereign's Health, the Majesty of the People", he was removed from the Privy Council for what was viewed as an extreme act of disloyalty.

In 1827, with the Popular Revolution, King Frederick fled and so did much of his administration. This left the Privy Council virtually devoid of members, with only the Whig members of the 1812 Moira ministry meeting. Led by Lord Erskine, who served as Lord High Chancellor in the Moira ministry, they met as the Privy Council along with some other notable Whigs. Here, they declared the convening of a Convention Parliament to determine the new government of the British Isles. During the provisional period, this Privy Council, with Lord Erskine as its president, committed itself to the tough job of governing the British Isles for the time being. The Convention Parliament framed for the British Isles a new government, along with an ambitious and far-reaching Charter of Liberties and Securities, and many residual powers of the Privy Council were removed while the Cabinet was made an official council. For the first time, Britain had a constitution.

The Frame of Government officially forbade any holders of offices of profit from being Members of Parliament, and for the first time this included the Cabinet; left unstated was whether this included Privy Counsellors who had emoluments. Following the 1829 election, members of the new Privy Council resigned from Parliament although cabinet ministers sat in Parliament as non-voting members. In the extremely chaotic atmosphere of the era, votes of no confidence were common but the wide Whig-Radical majority prevented unseating of the government. But in 1831, this ran out. Believing himself unfairly shunted from government, Samuel Whitbread organized a coalition between his Mountain Whigs and Radicals both within and without his government, and they successfully ousted the government in a vote of no confidence. Samuel Whitbread successfully secured himself as the new prime minister, and his coalition was the root of the modern Radical Party. But left unstated was what would occur to the old Privy Councillors. Though Lord Althorp ran for parliament immediately after his loss, the government declared his position as a lifelong member of the Privy Council made this impossible; that he had emoluments from such a role made him ineligible. Though he was irked by this, he nevertheless accepted this and resigned from the Privy Council. This therefore set a precedent, that upon an electoral defeat partisan members of the Privy Council would resign.

But as governments rose and fell, there emerged a division within the Privy Council, between those who shifted by administration and those who were permanent. Those permanent included those advisors of the Chief Magistrate and clerks of the increasingly-sizeable civil service, and those who rotated included members of the Cabinet and those directly subject to it. This division only expanded as the civil service increased in scale, and the tenure of Wilfrid Lawson securing the British Isles as republican led to this arrangement being considered a permanent one. But this division was not quite set by law. It took until the administration of C.J.F. Martineau for this division to be set by law, as part of his general reform of the systems of government. It established a Council of State to advise the Chief Magistrate on the exercise of residual powers. In 1927, it played a crucial role in the Chief Magistrate's extremely controversial decision to dissolve Parliament. With the Frame of Government declaring the assent to any law reducing the liberties and securities of the British people a form of treason, the Press Bill which seemed to threaten freedom of speech quite literally put his life on the line. The irregular election saw the ruling government defeated, but with his impartiality torn to shreds the Council of State advised the Chief Magistrate resign. Thus, the Council of State served its purpose. Since then, it has become more obscure. Councillors of State tend to include fewer old lawyers and instead more eminent personalities. But it remains an institution with high stature.

 

[Indicus]

The College of Conservators is a French government body which serves as the house of constitutional review for the legislature, in addition to serving the function of electing and removing the Grand Elector, who serves as France's ceremonial head of state for twenty-year terms.

Following the 18 Brumaire coup in 1799 by General Joubert and the dissolution of the French Directory, the newly-pliant Councils of Five Hundred and Ancients gathered a constitutional committee to write a new constitution that would hopefully conclude the French Revolution. Led by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, it put the constitutional theories that he, with experience throughout the French Revolution, had crafted in mind. According to this, the voting population of France, of five million, would draw up lists of communal notables with a tenth of their number, which in turn would draw up lists of departmental notables with a tenth of their number, which in turn would draw up lists of national notables with a tenth of their number. To organize the government, a College of Conservators would then select from these lists all members of judicial and legislative bodies, as well as electing the Grand Elector to serve as head-of-state-for-life who would then select consuls to run the executive branch. To select the Grand Elector, it was to hold a secret ballot each year, with the results stored in urns, and six urns at a time would be kept with old urns emptied; upon a vacancy in the Grand Electorship, it would vote on which urn to count its ballots, and its leading candidate would be made Grand Elector. Furthermore, it would extend its number through co-option, including the power to make any citizen of France a Conservator against their will (which in the act would force them to vacate all their public offices). It was a mode of government which Sieyès alleged could avoid the dangerous centralization of power and conflict of bodies that led to ruin during the Convention and Directory periods by disseminating power across numerous bodies which would nonetheless be in tandem with one another, and that it was a thinly-disguised oligarchy appealed to some after the tumult of the revolution. But nonetheless, this constitution got ratified, and so the first College of Conservators was constituted with Sieyès as its first Conservator.

For a time, this arrangement worked. While meeting intermittently, the College nonetheless exerted massive pressure by constituting all the bodies of government, and thus established France in the early nineteenth century as a decisively moderate state. The ambitious program of the ratification of the Cambacérès Code, as well as the expansion of French commerce all around the world following the end of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1804, saw France reap the benefits of stability and modernization. But disdain towards the blatantly undemocratic nature of the government nonetheless made itself known in the lists, and it saw expression among oppositionist Tribunes such as Benjamin Constant. Ultimately, this stability could not last, and when a French armada headed to the Caribbean was intercepted and nearly destroyed by a British fleet in 1822, war broke out between Britain and France. As this turned into a grand European war, the French administration proved less than satisfactory with dealing with these threats. In 1824, dissatisfaction with this turned into mass calls for recall of the government and its replacement for another, and to the horror of many this led to a Jacobin conspiracy inciting mob violence in Paris. While crushed, this led to the recalling of the College in an emergency session, and it officially removed the government by recalling Grand Elector Roederer and replaced it with one of moderate reformers. This period then saw numerous dramatic reforms, chiefly one allowing for direct election of the Legislative Body that ratified laws based on proposals from the Council of State or Tribunate, but also by reducing list sizes to give the people more say in the selection of their government officials. These reforms made France into a constitutional state with a broad electorate; it also weakened the College dramatically as the government ceased to be their mere property and instead it had to consider the will of the people. But nonetheless, it remained a influential body.

And this brought it into conflict. With the end of the war in 1830 and France being at peace once more, and now with friendly relations with the revolutionary state in the British Isles, the newly-wealthy middle classes saw in the College a body directly opposed to their interests. Over the 1830s, Consul Lafitte attempted to weaken them, but his party flew apart and he got little further than reducing the numbers of national notables to reduce their say over the legislature. This project was completed, however, by Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, who won election based on his record as a general and effectively forced the Grand Elector to appoint him by winning the support of most members of the list of national notables. Through various threats, he forced the College to accept a constitutional amendment that would drastically reduce their power: the list of national notables would be elected directly by the people, and it would consist of 100 names of which half would be appointed to the Council of State and the other half to the Tribunate. In addition to the directly-elected Legislative Body, this effectively turned France into a quasi-bicameral state, and it made it impossible for anyone not commanding a majority of national notables to be consul. Now bereft of its power to nominate members, it reduced its powers to election of the Grand Elector and constitutional review of legislation. In practice, it could only use constitutional review sparingly, lest it cause a grand outrage, and all review needed to be forwarded by the Tribunate first as part of the legislative process - this limited that power. But it could be used.

Due to the appointment process of the College by co-option and its appointments being for life, it was insulated from public opinion. As a result, when the Radicals broke a long period of Unionist dominance and made their way into power in 1898, they faced an issue of the College being almost entirely Unionist. When it came time for the Radicals to present their sweeping reform agenda of funding unprecedented welfare reforms, though they got their reforms past the Legislative Body, the Unionist-controlled Tribunate requested constitutional review and the College declared them unconstitutional. Following two irregular elections and the College blocking the reforms each time, the College was finally forced to accept the law. But the outrage was such that it also led to numerous reforms. First, Conservators were now term-limited, with ten year terms offset such that each year would see ten new Conservators appointed assuming each seat is filled. Secondly, for each new nomination the Council of State, the Tribunate, and the Legislative Body would each nominate candidates and the College would be required pick one of them. Finally, the power of the College to constitutionally review laws was harshly limited. For a law to be forwarded to it, it would require two-thirds of the Tribunate to object, rather than a mere majority. The College was forced to accept this, and put to a referendum it won a decisive majority. Since then, the College has become a far less powerful body, more important as a ceremonial electoral college and an emergency check on power than as an organ of government.

The College of Conservators meets at the Tuileries Palace. The Tuileries has long been connected to the Louvre and serves as part of the museum most of the year, but it contains a debate chamber for the College, which meets intermittently. During its sessions, the halls connecting the Louvre to the Tuileries are closed. Conservators, wearing their formal dress of a tunic and red cape meant to be reminiscent of ancient Rome, enter the debate chamber. Here, they begin their sessions after electing a president by lot. Their sessions are typically ones of general review of the government, unless it has been convened irregularly by the Tribunate to review the constitutionality of laws. More particular are the annual sessions in which it holds secret ballot elections for grand elector, in which the results of these annual ballots are kept in an urn and, if there were already six urns, the oldest urn is destroyed without revealing its contents. The new urn is then sealed and labelled with its year, with urns kept securely away. Upon the death, resignation, removal, or expiry of term of a Grand Elector, the College votes on which urn to open, and the candidate with the most votes is then inaugurated as Grand Elector.

 

[Indicus]

 

[Indicus]

Following a long period as a Congressman and Senator, Henry Clay ascended to the post of Secretary of State in the cabinet of William Crawford in 1825. This was due to that Clay was at the time a strict constructionist much like him, and because he had shown himself to be skilled at foreign policy in the Senate. As Secretary of State, Clay dealt with the difficult foreign policy of the era, of a new European war afoot and of the difficulties in keeping the Mississippi border between Spanish Luisiana and the US open. He focused particularly on the latter, because as a Kentuckian he knew quite well the importance of the Mississippi. When Spain closed New Orleans, Clay made a last-ditch effort to negotiate, and when this failed he got Crawford on board a war with Spain. In brief, the Luisiana War (1825-28) saw the United States outmatch the Spanish on land, and it saw it hopelessly outmatched on sea. As a result, the US swiftly took most of Luisiana as well as the Floridas, but it found it almost impossible to stop Spanish ships from bombing Charleston and retaking the mouth of the Mississippi multiple times. But nonetheless, Spain was beaten in a land over which it never had firm control, and the two powers concluded a treaty which granted the United States control over Luisiana and the Floridas; Clay's attempts to get a border up to the Rio Grande failed, however. But nonetheless, this war was an enormous success for the United States, dramatically expanding its territory. And yet, it exposed numerous American state failures. The war caused currency and monetary disarray, and the American Navy was shown decisively to be small and incapable of a serious match with any European country. Clay ceased to be a strict constructionist as a result of them, and he moved towards a more expansive view of the government.

Crawford suffered a stroke in 1827; come 1828, he discounted a run for re-election. Instead, Clay ran for the presidency, and having credit for the Luisiana War's successes, he swept the field over a divided opposition. In his presidency, he immediately pushed a series of reforms. First, he established a Second Bank of the United States, to manage the national debt and issue monetary notes as on the Hamiltonian model. Using his mastery of parliamentary procedure in a Congress increasingly sympathetic towards such a position, he successfully constituted such a bank, despite the opposition it engendered. Second, he established a national naval academy, and it came in tandem with a dramatic naval expansion. Furthermore, he invested in internal improvements, with a special focus towards acquired Luisiana, and they served to connect the nation. But in 1832, he made an extremely controversial decision. Towards the end of a plan of import substitution, he sought a protectionist economic policy, and the Tariff of 1821 established unprecedented economic protection. But though popular in New England, it caused mass controversy in the South dependent on the export of slave-produced goods to other countries (particularly Britain). In the South, there were already many alleging the Clayite program of expanding the national government would one day destroy slavery (despite Clay being a slaveowner), and this stoked such fears.

In South Carolina, many spoke of the doctrine of nullification, of the right of states to nullify national law. John C. Calhoun, who previously had a record as a nationalist, endorsed nullification, and it received the direct endorsement of the South Carolinian legislature. And though its appeal in the rest of the South was much weaker, the sentiments of outrage over the Tariff continued. Thus, Calhoun ran for president in 1832, seeking the consolidation of the South and parts of the West against Clay's overreach, under a platform of nullification. He was immediately hamstrung when the so-called "State Rights" caucus in Congress, consisting of Congressmen opposed to the tariff but not to the degree of supporting nullification, held a convention in which it nominated Hugh L. White as president. While in the North, the former Governor of New York and longstanding politician DeWitt Clinton, at the age of 62, made a run for president, claiming Clay to be a crypto-Federalist - in practice, this was a vanity run by a man who dearly wished to be president. Yet, here too things got more complicated as the Anti-Catholic Party, consisting of those opposed to the recent Irish Catholic migrations caused by the famine, organized their own slate for the presidency; their power in parts of New England made them formidable. Attempts by Van Buren, who viewed Clay as little more than a Federalist and sought to establish a "true Republican" party in opposition, entirely floundered due to all these tickets.

This extreme fracturing caused attempts to tie up tickets; that the Nullifiers and State Righters were both entirely southern with overlapping vote bases made attempts to tie up imminent. Following the Thirteenth Amendment, elections were held per state by "presidential district" in popular vote, and so some attempts were made to negotiate district registration agreements between the two. But this backfired when Clay's talked of this as proof that State Righters were simply nullifiers in false garb, and the spectre of this diminished these attempts to prevent vote cancellation. While in the North, the Anti-Catholics entirely discarded the possibility of cooperating with Clinton as he previously had Catholic support; furthermore, he was a Freemason, which to many Anti-Catholics was almost as bad as being a Catholic.

At the same time to all of this, Clay's supporters brought up the spectre of a hung college. They claimed a vote for, say, White may lead to Clinton coming to power despite this being opposite to State Righter interests, and vice versa. This helped to ensure Clay gained supporters from those who found him the lesser evil. While Clay's base in the West and Upper South generally stood still, despite some encroachment on the latter; Clinton generally failed to properly attract New Englander migrants to his party. Furthermore, Clay's status as a slaveholder and a few choice remarks on "rabid abolitionists" meant that he was not a nonentity in most of the South.

All of this meant that Clay won a sweeping margin in the election despite controversy over his ideals and platform.



The election would be hampered further when Clinton died of a heart attack before electoral votes were to be certified by Congress; it simply certified his votes anyways, and they declared that in the case that the winner of a presidential election would die before certification, they would simply consider the office devolved on the vice president.

Clay's victory was ultimately down to him being the only truly national candidate. In the years that followed, this lesson was learned at heart by Van Buren, who sought to create an opposition party representing the old Republican values, and he ultimately succeeded in this goal. Furthermore, with it being proved the nation was behind him, Clay got passed a compromise tariff that ended the Nullification Crisis decisively. This was one of many things that earned him the title of the "Great Compromiser". But ultimately, the sectional division of the states came up once more within a few years of this election; slavery, here a mere subtext, would burst onto the national stage over the admission of Missouri. And few would see this coming...

 

[Indicus]

The Bank of England was first established in 1694 in the Kingdom of England. In the wake of a crushing defeat of France, King William of Orange desired a vast fleet to avenge it, but this required a series of loans. To back subscription to this loan, the English government established the Bank of England as a public-private partnership; privileges given to the Bank included the issuing of promissory notes, as well as possession of state monies. From these beginnings, the Bank of England helped finance the many projects that made England, and later Britain, powerful. The successes of this bank resulted in it getting repeatedly rechartered. But nonetheless, this loan and other loans continued to be managed by it, and in an age when national debt was viewed as a curse, this led to discomfort. Only later was the national debt viewed as a blessing rather than a curse.

Over the eighteenth century, the Bank of England financed Britain's rise to empire. Notably, the rise of the business opportunities of colonialism inspired a bubble which popped in 1772 when John Forsyth was bankrupted shorting East India Company stock, which hit his partners and inspired a credit crisis which resulted in the closure of many British banks, while the Bank of England was left with dangerously low reserves. When the badly damaged EIC requested a loan from the Bank of England, it got one. But to pay it back, it needed to increase its trade; lobbying Parliament, it got ratified the Tea Act which reduced tea duties to the Thirteen Colonies to allow the EIC to undercut illegal competitors; this proved to be one of the Acts of Parliament that led to the American Revolution.

During the American Revolution, the Bank of England proved prosperous as it financed the war effort; even George Washington maintained a share in it. This period of prosperity continued, and with the warfare brought on by the French Revolution, it continued yet further. But then, in 1796, the Great Irish Rebellion began, and to assist it a French army led by General Hoche landed in Bantry Bay. In England, this caused widespread panic, and holders of promissory notes panicked and traded them for bullion. However, as twice as many notes were printed as was bullion in reserves, many feared this would bankrupt the Bank of England, and indeed, the ratio between promissory notes and reserve monies got far more precipitous. This resulted in exchange being suspended for the duration of the war, even after the Great Irish Rebellion was suppressed and Hoche killed at Tara. In practice, this meant a suspension of the gold standard, as the Bank continued to print notes for financing the war effort. Postwar, the suspension continued, as the Bank needed to reconstruct its reserves; it was only in 1817, 13 years after peace with France, that the Bank allowed for conversion once more.

War began once more in 1821, when the British intercepted a French fleet in the Caribbean, and the Bank of England once more got to work in financing the war effort. Some promissory note holders converted to bullion out of fear of an imminent suspension, but not nearly as much as previously. And so, these years proved prosperous for the Bank of England as it financed the war effort. But this was less the case for the British people: the suppression of the movement for reform as treasonous was despised by many, and the war effort was unpopular. In 1825, various radical groups sought to make their message known by starting a run on gold; they in turn caused a panic which caused others unrelated to the radicals to convert their notes to bullion. This panic badly threatened the Bank of England, and so Parliament suspended conversion of notes once more and the government jailed dissenting radicals. This allowed the bank to continue to finance the war effort, despite criticism of this policy. But then in 1827, finally popular unrest broke out into revolution. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came to an end.

The provisional government sought to maintain the Bank of England as a bulwark, despite hard-money radicals calling for its dissolution, and despite much of its upper echelons fleeing the state. Thus, the Convention Parliament voted to continue the suspension of conversion over disdain by hard-money radicals. This helped to ensure it would not flee the state. But its dire reserve state continued, and the end of wartime streams of financing could only result in its situation getting more dire. Thus, though following the Convention Parliament it had the full support of the Althorp ministry, it needed to gain a better balance, to that end financing loans and colonial endeavours with impunity. This was particularly the case in Australia, where the bank hatred (as in the Canadas) was weak and the opportunities for profit were vast. But the weak Althorp administration was no confidence'd in 1831, and its replacement - the Whitbread administration - contained a good number of hard-money radicals and others who hated the Bank. Such feelings were mutual, as the bank was dominated by Traditionalists and non-radical Whigs. In this period, Parliament did not renew the suspension of note conversion, and the result proved to be a run on the bank damaging the reserves under reconstruction. This in turn inspired further financing of dubious colonial endeavours.

The end result of this was that in 1834, the bubble popped as venture after venture failed. The resulting panic proved to be vast, bankrupting most banks in the British Isles and diminishing the Bank of England's reserves to near-nonexistence. This in turn resulted in Bank of England stock to be sold in vast numbers, resulting in its value plummeting. Seeing all of this, the Whitbread administration made a decision to establish a United Bank of the British Isles in close tandem with the administration to serve as the national bank. Notably, it was required to keep promissory notes and reserves at a ratio of at most 1.5:1. It also decided to give it a monopoly over the printing of pound notes, and government deposits were forcibly moved there. Thus, the Bank of England was left as a private company. Attempting to survive in this state, it pushed for severe retrenchment and cut most of its loans and many of its branches. But this only allowed for other banks to take its place. And so, finally, the Bank of England wound down its operations in 1839.

Its building at Threadneedle Street would pass many hands; it is today a museum of modern art. Here, its history as the leading bank of the British Isles may still be seen.

 

[Indicus]

In his second term in office, Henry Clay continued his policies. He financed internal improvements to link together the nation, particularly over the new Louisiana territories. In the form of internal improvements, he financed links between the east and west, particularly in the form of roads, but also in the form of establishing canals. Famously, the government helped finance canals in the Susquehanna to link Philadelphia to Lake Erie. The Second Bank of the United States, which Clay so decisively got established, played a decisive role in cruising the United States through the economic instability caused by the collapse of the Bank of England. Naval buildup continued apace, although helped by the South unnerved at the possibility of Britain and France taking away their slaves. Only on occasion did Clay cause controversy, such as when he attempted to gain congressional support for the African Colonization Society - support that then failed, as Southerners alleged the ACS was part of a plot to gradually emancipate American slaves, much as had occurred in the British Isles (in a process ending in 1834). But nonetheless, Clay seemed to be a success. And as the territory of Missouri reached statehood numbers and came up for admission as a state, this continued to be the case. But then, as the bill was being discussed in Congress, one congressman proposed an amendment requiring it to suspend all slavery in its borders and gradual manumission. And all hell broke loose.

While slavery was an issue in the United States from the very beginning, by and large it had not entered Congress before this point, and northern antislavery types were satisfied by the southern belief of slavery being a "necessary evil" which should be abolished eventually. Such beliefs were broken by Saint-Domingue, till that point a nominal French colony led by the abolitionist former slave Toussaint Louverture, breaking away from France in 1822 as Haiti, following a bungled French attempt to impose a successor following his death. Haiti succeeded in part because it fought hard against all attempts to bring it back under colonial domination, and in part because an invasion was forestalled by Britain and France going to war. That this war ultimately ended with the British Isles consumed in revolution, the new regime which ultimately abolished slavery, only panicked the South more. And the French intervention in the Bahian War of Independence led to mass slave revolts across Portuguese Brazil, which similarly stoked fears in the American south. It led to a strengthening of the southern view of slavery as a "positive good". Thus, the North's desire to restrict slavery as much as possible came headfirst into this.

The north's population growth led to it being dominant in the House of Representatives. And so, the resolution for slavery restriction in Missouri won a majority of the House over the negative vote of the South. The debate got more and more acrimonious, as southern congressmen alleged this would lead to a Haiti-style revolution, and on both sides people spoke of a dissolution of the union being preferable to the alternative. The debate continued, and it also got outside Congress and became a truly national issue. The discussion of southern secession that occurred during the Nullification Crisis made a return, and it got stronger. "Minutemen" groups trained, and medallions were struck declaring Southern firebrand John C. Calhoun the "First President of the Southern Confederacy". As for Calhoun himself, he made open speeches in Congress about the right to secede, which went even beyond his talk of nullification. The debate was spinning out of control.

On this, Clay made an intervention. Having previously been reluctant out of fear of causing a Jeffersonian backlash, he believed he needed to. He was a slaveholder, but one who stood on the belief in eventual emancipation while still being opposed to "rabid abolitionists". On this issue, he made some remarks. Seeking to calm down the north which he believed extreme and threatening to put Southerners into the hands of Calhounists, he sought to defend slavery. 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". But these remarks proved a mistake. To the North, it made him seem as if he was a stalwart defender of the South, and to the South, he was a nationalist who wanted to give the North the power to destroy slavery.

Amidst all of this, Clay immediately pushed a more conciliationist message, speaking of the union and a compromise. He proposed admitting Missouri as a slave state but restricting slavery to its north and west. But such efforts failed to pass Congress. He pushed for the holding of a National Republican convention. However, northern National Republican stalwarts like Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams refused to attend, and so did most Northern delegations. The southern-dominated convention nominated perhaps the foremost of the southern National Republican leaders at this point, Willie Mangum, even though he was hardly an impressive candidate. The northern National Republicans meanwhile held a more loose series of state conventions, which agreed on John Quincy Adams as candidate. He had served as a Federalist, if an atypical one, until both the Federalists and Republicans were torn apart by the events of the 1820s, and only afterwards he became a National Republican leader. His nomination, as such, was accused of being quasi-Federalist.

All the while, Martin Van Buren watched these events in panic. He had long despised Henry Clay and accused him of being a quasi-Federalist, and to that end he sought to create a coalition between the "republicans of the North" and southern planters to restore Jeffersonianism and shove them aside. For that, he supported the 1828 candidacy of Samuel Smith for president against Clay. In 1832, the field was too crowded and aside from Clay every candidate was purely regional; it was a catastrophe for Van Buren, who believed the whole point of party was to minimize regionalism. In the next four years, he attempted to make the groundwork for such a party. With the events over the admission of Missouri, his efforts went into overdrive as he feared a breakup of the union was imminent unless he could stop it. And so, to that end, he convened a party convention. His long attempts to find a candidate ultimately meted him Zebulon Pike.

Pike was long an American hero of epic proportions. In 1806, he was ordered by the government to make an expedition across Spanish Luisiana to map its terrain and maybe begin to encroach upon it. This expedition took him deep, and he famously made his way to a mountain now known as Pike's Peak. Finally, making his way south into New Mexico, he was arrested by the Spanish. Transported across the Sierra Madre, he was repatriated from New Orleans. The expedition made him an American hero of discovery in his twenties. Continuing in military service, he next entered the national scene during the Luisiana War. As general, he led the American effort in much of the Mississippi, and the grand American victory of the Third Battle of New Orleans was much his success. It made him even more of a national name, discussed as president. After having played roles in Ohioan politics, in 1836, upon his name's proposal, he was swiftly nominated by the convention.

This election was defined above all by the Missouri crisis, and Adams' men attempted to consolidate the north around him. But Adams felt increasingly unhappy, and he was disturbed at seeming polarization; this toned down his campaign and made it more moderate, despite his firm restrictionist stance and strong perception as abolitionist. Mangum, on the other hand, tried to hold a national campaign despite being perceived as of the south. But even in the south, there were many suspicious of the nationalism represented by the National Republicans, and in general . In contrast, Pike's campaign was focused around his record as a hero of discovery and war, and he said as little as possible about the Missouri crisis except that he supported the Federal Union. Furthermore, Van Buren's national party building efforts paid off, and in truth he was the only truly national candidate. It was, ironically, an inversion of the previous election. And finally, the election saw a decisive Pike landslide. Only National Republican stronghold Kentucky stuck with Mangum though he won some districts in much of the South and even beyond, while Adams had little presence outside New England.



Pike's election also saw the victory of more moderate-minded aligned Congressmen who were vague about Missouri but won nonetheless. It decisively proved nationalist sentiment. This calmed the Missouri crisis somewhat, but it still continued. Henry Clay, horrified at this, swiftly ran for Representative and won; in Congress, he drew up new plans for a compromise. Citing the Treaty of Galveztown declaring that the laws and customs of the Spanish would be respected in the territories of Luisiana, he stated it would not be possible to ban slavery in Missouri as it was one of those customs. But he did concede that further slaves could be disallowed from importation. He also conceded that slavery would be banned both to the north and west of Missouri, but allowed in Arkansaw Territory. To conciliate the South, Clay also proposed massively strengthening fugitive slave laws, allaying the southern fear that mass flight of slaves would turn Illinois and the upper south into free states. Furthermore, Pike proposed Indian removal, a proposal which many recognized would assist particularly the south in settlement, which was occurring anyways by the states forcibly opening up native lands for it; with the aim of opening specifically southern lands for settlement, Pike proposed removing them across the Mississippi northwards. After attempting to pass this as an omnibus failed, as separate bills they proved successful. Finally, the Missouri crisis came to an end with a compromise. It didn't stop northern dissent, Calhoun continued to talk about the South in peril, and the harshness of Indian removal saw much condemnation, but by and large the crisis was over. It didn't last, as the brutality of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1837 deeply strengthened the northern abolitionist current, and Missouri unilaterally ending the ban on further importation of slaves in 1839 saw some outrage, but for the moment the issue of slavery was back in the bottle.

Ultimately, Pike moved his focus onto other issues. His party focused their ire on the Second Bank of the United States, which they viewed as a body of corruption, to massive amounts of controversy. While the issue of compensation for French depredation of American shipping became increasingly prominent; French ships impounding certain American merchant ships for their use in the illegal Portuguese slave trade only turned this into an issue of national honour. For the moment, the American mind looked there.

 

[Indicus]

Admission of States into the United States of America

Admission of States of the United States of America

1    Delaware        -    1787
2    Pennsylvania    -    1787
3    New Jersey        -    1787
4    Georgia        -    1788 
5    Connecticut        -    1788 
6    Massachusetts    -    1788 
7    Maryland        -    1788 
8    South Carolina    -    1788 
9    New Hampshire    -    1788 
10    Virginia        -    1788 
11    New York        -    1788 
12    North Carolina    -    1789 
13    Rhode Island    -    1790
14    Vermont        -    1791
15    Kentucky        -    1792
16    Tennessee        -    1796
17    Ohio            -    1803
18    Indiana        -    1813
19    Mississippi        -    1814
20    Illinois        -    1818
21    Yazoo            -    1821
22    Orleans        -    1830
23    Michigan        -    1832
24    Missouri        -    1837
25    Wisconsan        -    1844
26    Arkansaw        -    1859
27    West Florida    -    1861
28    Iowa            -    1861
29    Superior        -    1867
30    Minasota        -    1869
31     Platte         -     1869 
32    Kansas         -     1870
33    Tahosa         -     1871
34    New Virginia    -    1872 
35    Franklin        -    1872
36    Maine         -     1874
37    Cimarron*        -    1883
38    Pembina         -     1885
39    East Florida*    -    1889
40    Jefferson         -     1893
41    Kadoka         -     1908
42    Olympia         -     1917
43    Columbia         -     1926

* In 1868, an Act of Congress allowed for the admission of Cimarron and East Florida into the Union so long as they ratified constitutions matching constitutional requirements. Whether their 1868 constitutional drafts met their requirements was disputed, and whether or not their electoral delegations for the 1868 election would be certified as valid was the immediate trigger for the division of the United States into two governments in 1869 - the Richmondite government recognizing them as states and the Constitutional government not - and the subsequent Civil War. By the time the Civil War came to an end in 1876, their constitutions and statehood would be decisively regarded as invalid and, by the First State Readmission Act, they would only be admitted into the Union upon one-half of their respective populations swearing the Ironclad Oath. Cimarron met these terms and was admitted in 1883, while East Florida would only be admitted in 1889 under the terms of the looser Second State Readmission Act.