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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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The democratic society Recently, Emperor Blair and I were having a discussion
on the effects of Oliver Cromwell, or someone from that period, managing to form
a reasonably stable democratic state. Where
we differed was the effects that such as state would have had on the other
nations of Europe and on world history. I’m not going to discuss PODs, details, what really
happened and so forth beyond a few general details.
Lets say that in his protectorate period (1654-58) Oliver Cromwell
manages to forge together a democratic state.
We could use as the POD an attempt by some of the aristocrats to kill him
and take over, but he survives and attacks them, using what was by then his
complete control over the New Model Army. He
divides the Aristocrats lands out among the peasants, which earns him a great
deal of good will, and divides up Britain into small states, each of which has a
repersentive in the Senate (I’ll use American terms for familiarity) and
therefore a vote in the affairs of the land.
The head of the system will probably be called the ‘lord-protector’,
like Cromwell, but that’s a non-issue. The remaining Aristocrats will almost certainly flee to
France, where they have relatives, and attempt to push the French into declaring
war. The French are nervous, but
the ending of the Anglo-Dutch war and the opening of trade cause them to become
nervous. The Spanish are also
worried by the spread of this new passion for beheading kings and nobles and
they start limited joint planning. The
commonwealth having been strongly anti-pope, they talk the pope into
excommunicating the whole of Britain and building up their own forces.
They also prepare for an attack on the Netherlands, as it seems likely
that the Dutch will unite with the British. Cromwell, now head of the senate and therefore
‘president’ of Great Britain and the empire, proceeds with his building of
the state. The vote is given to
everyone who pays taxes and there is a vast educational program begun.
The merchants would also like to attack Spanish territory, so Cromwell
begins planning the ‘western design’, an attack on Hispania and Jamaica. The attacks are disastrous (they almost were in OTL).
The British are beaten completely back from the islands by a joint
Spanish-French force, which heralds the effective unification of the two
empires. Britain is therefore
forced to build a new navy and prepare for a global war.
The two nations, France and Spain, have become far more repressive as
they attempt to stamp out the growth of an underground democratic movement in
their empires, while having to build new forces from scratch.
The French attempt to exile some of the less-obstinate democrats to
Canada, in the hope that they will be able to emulate the success of the British
American colonies. The unification
between Britain and the Netherlands means that the settlements are united,
without war, and the joint forces mean that the British/Dutch union is stronger
than the Bourbon Empire (official title for the Franco/Spanish union). This is a very bad time for Britain.
The Spanish empire was decaying, but the infusion of French gold and men
may be able to keep it going and allow it to gather its strength.
The British do have the more powerful navy and the support of the growing
American colonises (growing faster than in OTL), but they are committed to
defending the Netherlands, which are terrifyingly vulnerable to land attack.
The new Lord Protector of England concentrates on spreading the
democratic word across Europe, hoping to keep the empires busy at home.
However, there are constant skirmishes in the Pacific and elsewhere. The cold war finally becomes hot
in 1700. The beginnings of a
democratic revolution (now, there’s a contradiction in terms) in southern
France and Spain, inspired by memory of the long-vanished Cathars, is stamped on
in a short and bitter civil war across France.
The Bourbons blame this (correctly) on British influence and declare war.
They start by attacking the Netherlands and the American colonies.
The attack on the Netherlands
bogs down almost at once. The Dutch
terrain is not conductive to a large army and the Dutch are skilful fighters.
However, the Dutch and the British contingent are outnumbered and
eventually most of the Netherlands are overrun.
The miracle of the Dykes, as it would be called later, when the British
ships were able to evacuate a large proportion of the Dutch and British Army, as
well as many Dutch citizens. The
Bourbons take a fearful revenge on the reminder. The attacks on the American
colonies go badly at once for the bourbons and don’t recover.
The British are more numerous and have the support of many of the local
Indians, while the French have the problems of the Canadians being unwilling to
fight. The collapse of the French
army resulted in a rebellion against the French aristocrats and Canada is
formally absorbed into the British Republic.
They soon prove to be a haven for escaping French democrats as the
‘evil empire’ becomes far more evil. The war in the pacific and
Caribbean is the longest war and the most dangerous. The Spanish attack the Dutch bases in the pacific and attempt
to claim Australia. They do manage
to toss the Dutch off most of their island bases, but they fail to destroy the
Dutch fleet and to stake a parmarment claim to Australia. Their attack on the Dutch settlement at Nagasaki (Japan)
brings in a Japanese declaration of war against the Spanish, although this is of
little more than moral value. The
republic is horrified by the Japanese government and privately vows to correct
it through intervention after the war is finished. British reinforcements manage to allow the republic to go
back on the offensive and by 1708 every Spanish territory in the pacific is in
republican hands. They begin
attempting to pull the Spanish colonies into the republic’s trade web and into
its system of government. The final large-scale campaign
began in 1705 and was a massive attack on the Caribbean, now once again a
Spanish lake. The Spanish were
attacked on land in Florida and the Republic Navy attempted to force out the
Bourbon fleet or trap it in place. After
six years of campaigning, Jamaica, Hispania and Cuba finally fall, although the
Republic does not have the strength to continue to Mexico.
Despite the impressive republican
victories, the Bourbon’s still had one more card to play.
Gathering the remains of their navy, they attempted an invasion of
England. While they did manage to
make a landing, the British navy had destroyed most of their transports and they
faced attacks from the British population as well as the army.
Finally, they were forced to withdraw.
It was this event, more than anything else, which legalised the right of
all voters to bear arms. The war ended not with a bang,
but with a whimper. The demands for
the war on the peasants of France and Spain created a powerful frustration and
when the king ordered the army to fire on a crowd of peasants, he provoked a
rebellion. While there were British
agitors present, the rebellion was not a peaceful transition to democratic
status, but an enormous blood shedding of the nobles, shocking even the
republic. In the midst of all the
chaos, the republic was able to reinvade the Netherlands and bring them back to
the republic.
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