April 17, 1797 – British Seize San Juan

Time and again the British had tried to seize the valuable Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, claimed by the Spanish since its discovery on Columbus’s second voyage in 1493. In 1595, Sir Francis Drake led a force that attacked the Spanish capital there, ultimately being able to do no more than sack San Juan. The English returned three years later under Sir George Clifford. This time they captured San Juan, but a plague of dysentery drove them off the island.

As the French Revolutionary Wars dragged on in Europe, Spain grew weary of fighting France and made a separate peace in 1796. Britain was outraged and war began anew with Spain, their old nemesis and sometimes ally. Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby was dispatched with an armada of over sixty ships packed with British troops and German mercenaries to at last break Spanish hegemony in the Greater Antilles.

Abercromby was determined to use the sheer size of his army to his advantage with a quick frontal assault, but his German allies learned intelligence from a treacherous citizen of the reef that guarded the inlet. Hidden underwater, it allowed only the passage of small frigates and transport ships. Abercromby reconsidered his plan and decided to send a contingent of soldiers in under the cover of darkness.

The strategy worked, throwing San Juan into chaos even though the British soldiers were quickly surrounded and pinned down. The rest of the fleet began a bombardment that prevented the Spanish from manning their defenses, and more British troops poured into the city from the inlet. Brigadier General Ramón de Castro ordered the evacuation of the city into the island proper to begin a guerilla campaign, but the day was seen as lost by most. In the following weeks, the British mopped up dissenters and formally claimed Puerto Rico as Port Richard.

Abercromby was hailed as a hero in London. Although some suggested his recall to Britain to be placed in command of the home armies, it was determined to continue Britain’s fortune in the Caribbean. When Puerto Rico was appropriately pacified, Abercromby assembled a new armada and sailed on Havana. The third-largest city in the Americas had briefly belonged to Britain after being captured in 1762 during the Seven Years’ War. Sugar merchants in London were suspicious of the island’s impact on their trade, so they leaned on diplomats at peace talks in Paris to trade Cuba for Florida. Many were disgusted by what was seen as an uneven trade, and even the short time of rule in Havana had begun a blossoming trade that linked the island increasingly with North America rather than Spanish holdings. When Abercromby’s forces arrived, islanders sympathetic to the British joined him in quickly overthrowing the city. The eastern end of the island stood with the Spanish, and war raged for months until Britain had claimed the whole island.

Next Abercromby was suggested to sail onto Hispaniola, which had been colonized in the west by France and ceded completely to them by Spain in recent treaties. Abercromby anticipated a strong resistance by the recently freed slaves and was relieved from what he believed would be an unwinnable campaign when he was called back to Europe to fight France in Egypt after the disastrous Campaign of 1799 in the Netherlands and struggles with Irish rebellion. Abercromby was given command of land forces while the younger Horatio Nelson led the navy. Their landing of troops under fire at Abukir became famous for boldness and genius in military history. While the French were driven out of Egypt successfully, Abercromby was killed in the fighting in Alexandria. A monument was raised in St. Paul’s in his honor, and his widow given the title of baroness with a £2,000 pension.

Britain eventually came to peace with Spain through guerilla warfare opposing Napoleon’s invasion, though the Caribbean would continue under British rule. Postmortem, Abercromby was proven right about the difficulties of conquering Hispaniola. Napoleon’s attempted reinstitution of slavery was rebuffed with more than 24,000 of the 40,000 French troops dispatched there killed by battle and Yellow Fever.

Over the nineteenth century, British holdings in the Caribbean grew wealthy through international trade, attracting the interest of expansionistic Americans. American ships raided Cuba in the War of 1812 using Spanish Florida as a haven, but they were unable to gain a foothold. While America purchased Florida and spread westward, the Monroe Doctrine threatened against further British colonization in the Western Hemisphere. Rich lands attracted British trade interests, however, especially with new markets opening in the liberated former Spanish colonies. Tensions remained high, not only in the south but on the northern border. The two nations nearly went to war in 1837 in the Caroline Affair when the Canadian Rebellion spilled over into New York.

War finally did come, beginning in the south as the US annexed Texas and Mexico, a long British ally, declared war. When the US seized Vera Cruz and marched on Mexico City, Britain feared total annexation and left its neutral position. Naval battles and raids dragged on for years until the two finally came to peace talks. Many in Britain wanted to support the Confederacy when the American Civil War began, but the British maintained a Southern-favored neutrality with secret donations of supplies and loans.

Uneasy peace continued until the beginning of the twentieth century when Britain nearly halted American plans of a Panama Canal and even suggested America revoke its annexation of Hawaii. Although war did not break out, it devastated relations. Americans refused to grant the British any aid as the Great War began in Europe, and the US grew closer ties with Germany, who respected the Monroe Doctrine as it had eyes for Africa and the Pacific. Over the course of the twentieth century, Germany and Britain allied against the threat of the Soviets, while America remained steadfastly isolated in the Western Hemisphere, gradually outpacing British authority.

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In reality, Abercromby’s fleet was hung up by the underwater reef as it attempted to sail into the inlet. The Spanish had spotted them and took up strong defensive positions, holding firm despite naval bombardment. After more than a week of bloody clashes leading to a stalemate, Abercromby withdrew. Puerto Rico would continue under Spanish control until the Spanish-American War a century later.

April 16, 1520 – Rebellion in Toledo Begins the End of Charles I in Castile

Rather than ruling a coherent kingdom, the House of Habsburg had assembled a complex federation all over Europe through marriages, conquests, and inheritance, ultimately culminating in Charles to become heir of the Holy Roman Empire as a Habsburg, the Empire of Spain through his mother Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as ruler of the Burgundian Netherlands. Charles grew up in his holdings in the Netherlands until he became King of Spain to rule alongside his mother in 1516. He brought with him his Flemish entourage as advisors, sowing distrust between himself and local nobles and the bourgeoisie that had grown up following the Reconquista.

In 1519, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor after the death of his grandfather Maximilian. With great aplomb, he set off for a papal coronation, leaving behind a lengthy list of taxes to cover his debts for extravagant living and bribery for his new office. The Castillian parliament, the Cortes, stood up to refuse the new taxes, so Charles suspended the council and reconvened it later to achieve his goals.

In the meantime, Castile erupted. It began in Toledo when royal bureaucrats arrived to remove the anti-Imperial city council with the aim of replacing them with new councilors on the king’s bankroll. Riots broke out, driving away the royalists and installing a new council elected by its own citizens. The success in Toledo spread quickly through central Spain, with city after city falling to revolution. Southern Castile, which was stocked with large garrisons on royal salaries as guards against the Moriscos (converts from Islam to Christianity), maintained its loyalty to Charles.

The revolution continued with wild ideas of establishing themselves as free city-states modeled on those in Italy and ending the monarchy. Peasants began to overthrow their local lords, declaring their freedom and looting estates. Eventually more moderate opinions won out, seeking a Castile liberated from Charles and ruled by Joanna, loyal nobles, and the popular voice. The Comuneros formed up an army and marched on Tordesillas, creating a new Cortes to be presided over by Joanna.

Joanna was called “the Mad” and had always ruled with a co-regent, first her husband, Philip the Handsome, and then her father, Ferdinand II of Aragon. During the time of her father’s tenure, he confined Joanna, the proper heir to Castile, to a convent and surrounded her with servants and advisors loyal only to him. During this time, stories of her madness began to spread, which modern historians speculate as depression, perhaps due to her confinement. She was believed to have exhumed her husband’s body and kept it with her as company in Tordesillas.

The new Cortes asked Joanna to sign an edict legitimizing their political actions, but she paused. Charles had scoffed at the revolt and sent new orders to retrieve the taxes. His regent in Spain and former tutor, Adrian of Utrecht served as General of the Reunited Inquisitions of Castile and Aragon struggled to maintain peace with new policies to win over the favor of nobles, but assassins had struck before Adrian could convince Charles of the seriousness of the Comuneros. With Charles hundreds of miles away and seemingly ignorant, Joanna’s confessors advised that she take over the country before the noble-killers gained their way.

With Joanna as queen, the Comuneros continued to grow. In the north, the royalists assembled an army at Medina de Rioseco, and a Comuneros army under Pedro Téllez-Girón marched to face them. Girón feinted a raid on nearby Villalpando, prompting the royalists to de-entrench and charge for Tordesillas. The Comuneros cut them off in a sweeping victory. Armies in the south began to question the sources of their pay, debts from the royalists stacked up, and soon defection became rampant.

Charles turned his attention to Spain too late. A similar revolt by the Germanies in Aragon occurred at the same time, but their lack of legitimacy and death of leading moderate Llorenç brought about a new alliance between the royalists and nobles there to protect their holdings from peasant uprising. Charles secured his claim in Aragon and soon after repelled an invasion by the French-backed King of Navarre to reclaim his lands seized by Charles’ grandfather Ferdinand II. While he still held eastern Spain, nothing short of war with his own mother could retake the west. Charles at last reasoned that his mother was decades older than he and simply waiting for her death would bring the lands back under his control, even if through his younger brother Ferdinand as a puppet.

Unfortunately for Charles’s plan, Joanna’s simple life loosely presiding over the Comuneros-led Cortes enabled her to live until 1555. Charles, meanwhile, became fervent about maintaining his holdings, never to let another slip away. Conquests in New Spain stayed loyal to his side, and he encouraged settlement of rich new lands in America loyal to his centralized government. He established an ongoing inquisition in the Netherlands in 1522 and personally led the violent suppression of anyone opposing him. He later installed a similar inquisition in Germany to halt the teachings of Luther and crush the Peasant’s Revolt of 1524, simultaneously weakening the power of the princes. When Henry VIII of England requested to divorce his aunt Catherine of Aragon, Charles marched on London. Throughout Charles’s rule, he would fight a two-front conflict with France and the Ottomans, establishing a centralized military bureaucracy loyal only to him.

Upon the death of Joanna, Charles was near death himself, suffering from epilepsy and gout. Rule of Castile passed to Ferdinand, who soon granted it to Charles’s son Philip, now the Holy Roman Emperor. Threats of revolt prevented Philip from uniting Castile with royalist Aragon, making it one of the most liberal pieces of the grand militaristic empire under the Hapsburgs, which ultimately unified the Catholic World in the Treaty of Joinville with France against the threat of Protestants in Northern Europe.

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In reality, Adrian of Utrecht had not been assassinated. After he announced what the revolt would do to her son’s name, Joanna refused to support the Comuneros, greatly weakening their position. Pedro Téllez-Girón’s military blunder, often perceived as treachery since the royalist general was his uncle, allowed the royalists to seize Tordesillas. Charles was restored to rule after the Battle of Villalar ended the revolt in 1521 and ensured his reign by again confining his mother to rooms in the convent. Toward the end of his life, Charles abdicated his lands piecemeal.

Review: ‘CSA: Southern Cross, Annuit Coeptis’ by Dorvall

Perhaps the most popular question of all Alternate History is “What if the South had won the Civil War?”, which has been addressed by authors such as Harry Turtledove and even Winston Churchill. Military historians have debated time and again with most agreeing that a Northern military victory was inevitable due to its larger resources.

The new graphic saga CSA: Confederate States of America from Sekwana Comics examines the idea of a southern victory from a new direction. In the first volume, Southern Cross: Annuit Coeptis, we see the point-of-departure in General Robert E. Lee reconsidering James Longstreet’s advice for a flanking maneuver as opposed to the planned Pickett’s Charge. Historically, the charge was to be supported by artillery in tactics seen successfully in the Wars of Italian Unification, but it ultimately proved the moment of defeat at Gettysburg. In CSA, we see Longstreet’s flanking action throw the Union forces into confusion, resulting in a resounding Confederate victory just eighty miles from Washington, D.C.

Typical alternate historians dismiss a defeat at Gettysburg as slowing the inevitable, but author Dorvall shows a different scope of history accounting for the social impact of such a victory. Dorvall, an immigrant to the United States from France, gives a unique perspective, accounting for issues rarely considered by Americans. In 1863, the North was hardly united on the efforts of the war, even to the point of draft riots in New York City that raged for days before being dispersed by naval gunfire. It is entirely possible that the Northerners may have turned to panic in such dire times, causing the war effort to collapse and erasing the possibility for the military victory that so often seems assured as we look back.

In CSA, the world unravels. Senators in Washington blame one another for the losses, and the riots are even worse in New York. Washington begins an evacuation, which serves as a guise for former Union commander George McClellan to place Abraham Lincoln under military arrest, creating a coup to ensure the end of the war. General Ulysses Grant, whose victory in Vicksburg happened simultaneously in our history, loses his momentum and eventually becomes a renegade in the West with an army collapsing through desertion.

Dorvall’s writing carries dense dialogue, giving the graphic novel something of the feel of a play. Readers see the epic unfold through the eyes of four protagonists in their own various social circles. In the North, Female reporter Emma Loads combats chauvinism while standing for the cause of Emancipation while Frenchman Aymond Vouleuvre struggles to evade capture after joining the losing Union side. The issues of racism and slavery are raised through the treatment of captured Black Union soldier Joe Jefferson and his peers in a Confederate POW camp, while Captain Erwin Whitaker struggles to maintain a gentlemanly Southern posture in a nation going mad with looting. Southern Cross ends with a poignant image of the drafted Emancipation Proclamation being thrown out as scrap paper, showing the disastrous effect on the social progress of a nation.

CSA is a fascinating study on one of Alternate History’s most asked questions as well as an artistic graphic novel. The art by Philip Renne brings together elements of CGI, photography, painting, and traditional drawing. The unique style incorporates borders such as chains or molding to accent some of the scenes. Combined with Dorvall’s rich dialogue, CSA gives a thought-provoking experience of seeing a different outcome to the Civil War not as a military question but a social one.

Guest Post by David Atwell: Royal House of Cromwell

Earlier I had a post on the historical event of Oliver Cromwell being offered the English Crown. David Atwell has another take on the POD from Today in Alternate History.

13th April, 1657 - Oliver Cromwell accepts the Crown

On this day Oliver Cromwell was proclaimed the King of England despite his earlier doctrinal objection to the office "I would not seek to set up that which Providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again".

Oliver I (1657-1658) was the founder of the current Royal House of Britain & that of the Royal House of America, until that nation became a Republic in 1964 due to a constitutional crisis. 

Although Oliver had a short reign as King, he had been all that but in name since the end of the First English Civil War in 1649, when the then current King Charles I (Stuart) was executed. From there, with the full support of the Parliamentary New Model Army, he defeated Stuart Loyalist uprisings in both Ireland & Scotland. 

From there, Oliver lead the English to victory over the Dutch in 1654 which ensured that the Royal Navy would dominate the seas until the Twentieth Century. In the process of victory, Oliver rejected an offer of the Crown but accepted the position of Protector in 1653. Later in 1657, he was once again offered the Crown, & after much debate from colleagues & friends, decided that a "Puritan gentleman, of humble origins, may indeed make a very good & Godly English King for the good graces of all Englishmen".

Throughout the period of Protectorship & Kingship, other than the various conflicts which Britain found herself in, Oliver established probably the more important legacy Britain, & later America, would come to cherish: a nationwide education system. The Puritans placed great importance on education in both religious & secular matters. Thus by the time of Oliver's death, every village, town & city in Britain had some kind of school of one type or another ensuring that, by the turn of the century, about 80% of the population were literate.

Oliver's claim to the throne, unlike the Stuart's, was in reality based upon the power of the military. Although this was never stated anywhere, the Cromwell Dynasty would have never survived its first year, let alone a long history on the Throne of Britain, without Oliver's control of the New Model Army. In order to gather a legitimate claim to the Throne, however, several writers at the time, & needless to say many ever since, argued that the Cromwells were actually descended from the ancient Welsh Powys Royal Household, which thus fulfilled an old prophesy whereby a descendant of this ancient Royal House would one day become king of Britain & establish a long line of successors. The Cromwells have ever since accepted this claim & used it to justify their Dynasty. Needless to say, the Cromwell Royal Household has always enjoyed overwhelming Welsh support.

Atwell's timeline continues up to the 1820s.

Guest Post: January 28, 1770 - Troubled Times Begin

From Today in Alternate History with addenda by Jeff Provine

Upon the resignation of the Duke of Grafton, His Britannic Majesty King George III invited Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford to form a Government. Having emerged triumphant from the Seven Years War with the traditional enemy France soundly beaten, the British Empire looked set for global supremacy. Appearances proved deceptive as a decade of crisis began under Lord North's watch.

His Tory Ministry was soon challenged by the Spanish seizure of the Falkland Islands on June 10. Many felt that a diplomatic solution would have been possible, but North determined to wield his might, and war with Spain soon began. While an overseas colonial war went toward British favor, upkeep of the Navy proved very costly to an empire who had become nearly bankrupt over the Seven Years War only a short time before.

As the cost was colonial, North determined to raise more funds from the wealthy American colonies as the military might was protecting them as well. Still enraged by the Boston Massacre that in March of 1770, the Americans soon determined to declare independence. The colony of Georgia, close to Spanish Florida, was apprehensive about losing British defense, but the other colonies "strong-armed" it into the Continental Congress.

North's unpopularity caused disastrous showing of the Tory Party in the 1773 election, and he was forced into an unlikely alliance with the Whigs. Their minority government, detested by the King, was vulnerable to a vote of no confidence. Now overly cautious and fighting two wars, North's Redcoats were unable to exercise maximum force in America, and, to the embarrassment of the British military, the patriots held on to New York City. 

Within a year, Great Britain was forced to acquiesce to American independence. The patriots soon developed huge unity problems of their own as the unlikely coalition of forces had come together so briefly.  For a short while the former colonies operated under a weakened Articles of Confederation but this broke apart within a handful of years as Georgia continually called for aid against supposed Spanish attack. South Carolina was the first to abandon the United States over perceived threats of its institution of slavery, and the once-Union soon broke into several pieces. Resulting wars over westward territory (Virginia and New York had charters with overlapping land grants) in the 1780s crippled the young countries, and military assistance from European nations proved a thin guise for a new wave of colonialism.

Review of 'Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!'

This summer marks the one hundred years since the beginning of World War I, a military action proclaimed to be the “War to End All Wars.” While it did not accomplish that, the war did change the world as anyone knew it: devastating a generation in Europe, promoting technology while questioning colonial ideals, and bringing the United States fully into the international arena. In Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: A World Without World War I, author Richard Ned Lebow takes a step into the genre of alternate history and examines what the world might be like without a World War I.

Lebow comes from a solid background in political and historical analysis with an impressive resume. Having written dozens of books and over two hundred peer-reviewed articles, he is routinely called upon for interviews by news media in the US, Britain, France, Germany, and beyond. He serves as professor of International Political Theory in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London as well as James O. Freedman Presidential Professor Emeritus of Government at Dartmoth. In addition to his professional background, Lebow includes his own experiences as a person of Jewish heritage and an immigrant to the US and how different his life may have been without a World War I.

Lebow actually paints images of two worlds as he reviews counterfactuals following the Point of Departure from history at the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne. While some argue that World War I would have soon happened anyway with a different spark, Lebow shows that it may not be as simple as that. In Germany, the majority of the politicians and royals did not want war, German Chief of Staff Moltke alone pressed for action. It was not until the Kaiser felt honor-bound by the cowardly assassination that he committed himself and his country to fight.

In the first world, the “Best Plausible World,” Lebow looks at a world where one of a half-dozen things could have happened differently in an assassination that was practically a fluke. Europe remains calm, and the Archduke stabilizes the empire by extending voting franchises to minorities (much to the chagrin of the Hungarians). Russia comes into political relations with the crowns rather than Republican France, and a new balance of power takes shape in Europe. In that world, we see the center of business, arts, and science remaining in Europe. Lebow goes as far as to suppose what might happen to famous figures such as Adolph Hitler (a mail-order salesman), Richard Nixon (a televangelist), John F. Kennedy (the scandalous younger brother to the president, Joseph Kennedy, Jr.), Jazz musicians who seek out better lives in Europe, and Albert Einstein, who stays in Germany amid a circle of geniuses. Yet there are also downsides to this world. Technological development such as radar, penicillin, nuclear physics, and computers are stunted without the enormous support of total war, and race relations languish through extended Jim Crow.

Lebow also explores the “Worst Plausible World” where Germany falls to military authoritarianism nonetheless as democracy crumbles. Atomic weapons become part of an ever-escalating arms race. Propaganda and information-control are understood day-to-day affairs. The United States and Japan routine butt heads in the Pacific. When the war finally does come, without the lessons of our own World Wars I and II, the all-out nuclear blasts obliterate Europe.

The thought-experiments in Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! serve purposes on multiple levels. At its core, Alternate History has always been an intriguing chance to ponder “what it?” Through Lebow’s work, we may see further through analysis that we can apply to our own world and judge our own trends in culture, and science, and political leadership.

Guest Post: One-Term PotUS

From Today in Alternate History with addenda.

 

7th January, 1789 - The Single Term Presidency takes Shape

On this day America's first presidential election was held under the newly formed United States Constitution (it was actually the ninth "presidential" election of the newly declared independent people of the Americas). Voters cast ballots to choose state electors; only white men who owned property were allowed to vote. As expected, George Washington won the election and was sworn into office on April 30, 1789.

The old Articles of Confederation had proven inadequate for the peacetime American states, which needed to be bound together by a stronger federal force. The old legislative body, built on ideals of independence wary of too much central power, had eight presidents primarily as signatories and no power to tax. One of the presidents, John Hancock, never even entered New York City (the nation's capital at the time) during his term of office. each president served a one-year term.

 

The Philadelphia Convention ushered in changes with Washington as Presiding Officer, much loved for his success in the Revolutionary War. "The Man who unites all hearts" had been called the "Father of his Country" long before the United States even existed.There were some who wished Washington to be crowned King; when Benjamin Franklin bequeathed his crab-tree walking stick he noted, "If it were a sceptre, he has merited it and would become it." Washington, however, had been doing his own thinking at Philadelphia and, not for the first time, came up with a unique solution that reflected his "lead from the front" style of unified strong-willed command. By agreeing to take an elected executive office, he knowingly created a precedent that would define the distant future of the Republic, and he wanted to ensure a balance of power by promoting a one-term limit of office into Article II of the Constitution.

Washington's term was largely transitory with only quiet problems until the end as the Whiskey Rebellion began fighting against tax on brews often used for extra cash for farmers. Washington wrote that he considered staying on as Vice-President, but feared that doing so would weaken the position of the next president, John Adams. Instead, Adams took advice from the increasing political strength of Alexander Hamilton, who encouraged a strong military response. The Rebellion was crushed, but the Federalist Party was soon seen as villains, prompting the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1796. Jefferson would turn away from Washington's warnings of giving wide berth to issues in Europe, granting loans to Republican France in what became known as the Francophile Affair, undoing many of the ideals from the Jay Treaty with Great Britain in 1792. The Democratic-Republicans maintained power with the election of Aaron Burr in 1800 at the expense of the Jeffersonian faction. The more moderate George Clinton was next in 1804. Jeffersonians came back in 1808 with James Madison, riding the wishes of warhawks and expansionists with eyes on Canada.

 

If Washington had prevented the rise of an Imperial Presidency, he had of course been mindful of the role of Commander-in-Chief. This matter became a pressing issue during the War of 1812 when there was some disagreement about whether President Madison should be permitted to seek a second term to maintain order in the military for a war that had turned against the US. In the event, he did not and the precedent remained firmly in place. The unifying DeWitt Clinton answered the challenge in 1816, bringing into the fold remains of the Federalist Party.

 

Wars in the nineteenth century remained thankfully short, but America's participation in the First World War nearly caused a collapse. During the 1940s, the country was effectively ruled by George Marshall as a Ludendorff-style Quartermaster General. His transition to General Eisenhower was seamless, but real problems began to emerge after the Fall of Havana in 1959. As the Cold War dragged on, the military-industrial complex came to run the country in all but name, with General Curtis Le May ruling as figurehead to a shadowy dictatorship for the United States with seemingly infinite money and influence to fix elections.

 

Washington was of course not to blame, he had after all, repeatedly spoken out against entanglement in overseas conflicts. Nor could he be reasonably expected to anticipate doomsday weapons being sighted just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. Conspiracy theorists and political analysts suggest the weapons were allowed to stay as an eternal threat from a foreign power the US really had no need to fear, but these are whispers rarely published in the US without the author disappearing.