September 4, 1869 – United States Mediates Cuban Independence

With the "10th of October Manifesto" in 1868, Cuban planters declared independence from Spain, beginning the Cuban Revolution. Economic crises and failure for government reforms had filled the island with distaste for their mother country. The Revolutionary Committee of Bayamo had begun in 1867, and Spain worked to suppress the insurgency. Oscar Céspedes was imprisoned in an effort to force submission onto his father, then executed when his father refused. Rather than stymie the rebellion, Spain only fanned the flames.

Many Cubans looked north to the United States for aid, seeing their war as similar to the American Revolution a century before, and the two had long held ties. When president, Thomas Jefferson noted of the strategic significance of the island and suggested annexation, even sending agents to confer with Cuban officials. Under the doctrine of James Monroe, the US looked to turn aside European interests in the Western Hemisphere. However, the US had just finished its Civil War and was going through the costly Reconstruction of the South. President Grant's cabinet was split over possible support: Secretary of State Fish was opposed to a costly intervention (especially because it would weaken moral authority of America demanding reparations for Confederate naval support in British shipyards), while Secretary of War John Rawlins was all for it, partly because he had been given $28,000 worth of bonds that would mature if Cuba became independent. Grant remained stalwart in neutrality, though he ordered ships from the Pacific fleet to reinforce the Caribbean.

On August 14, Fish received letters from the president, who was increasingly supportive of recognizing Cuba, as well as the minister to Spain, Sickles, who said that the Spanish were ready to negotiate. He worked to keep the US neutral, but Rawlins, ill from tuberculosis, stepped over the Secretary of State to speak with Grant personally. After an impassioned pleading and admitting his bonds while using them of evidence for economic support from a revitalized Cuba, Rawlins persuaded Grant to order Sickles to draw up a treaty.

On September 3, Congress approved the Treaty of Madrid with both Spain and the United States recognizing Cuba as independent. Spain would also abolish slavery, while Cuba would pay indemnities in bonds backed by the United States, in return for US control over Cuban tariff rates. Rawlins would die of his consumption three days later, but his family was well supported by sale of his own bonds. Cuba celebrated and began heavy trade with the United States, bolstering the manufacturing industry of the North.

Annexation talks began almost immediately, but it would not be until 1883 that Cuba would become a territory of the United States, a decade after a political coup had forced elections to remove Céspedes from his presidency. Cuba would gain statehood in 1919 as the 49th state, though its government would be soon be the subject of suspicion in the Harding administration. Cuba would serve as a bastion for American influence in the Caribbean, sponsoring the annexation of another former Spanish colony, Puerto Rico, after its own war of independence against Spain in 1928. Other than the short-lived uprising of radical Communists in the 1950s, Cuba remained stalwart as a whole in the American Dream.


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In reality, Rawlins was unable to convince Grant to become more than disapprovingly neutral in the Cuban war that would eventually be called the Ten Years' War or the First War of Independence, which would be crushed fully in 1878. Two more wars would be fought, the third of which would call in America with the explosion aboard the USS Maine beginning the Spanish-American War. In victory in 1898, America would seize many of Spain's colonies, which would gradually gain their independence such as the Philippines in 1946 and Cuba itself in 1902.

July 29, 1848 – Irish Rebellion Gains Momentum into Revolution

1848 was a year of revolt all around Europe. France's King Louis-Philippe had fallen to the Second Republic, Germans overthrew many of their local lords, and even the stalwart Austrians gained a constitution to balance the power of an absolute monarch. In Ireland, times were especially hard. The Potato Blight, beginning in 1845, had caused famine to last for years. The British government did very little to aid them, and now was the time for them to aid themselves.

Under the Union Act of 1800, Ireland had been joined with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Since its passing by Parliament, there had been men working against it in Ireland known as the Repeal Association. The political movement remained marginal before stepping up to fame as the Young Ireland movement in 1839. Along with new powers granted to the Catholics in the 1832, the movement gained force all over the country. A splinter group, the Irish Confederation, began the push for all-out independence and a wholly Irish parliament.

After the success of the French revolution in February, the Irish began to make their moves. While leader William Smith O'Brien hoped for a bloodless revolution, the government was more fearful and suspended habeas corpus on July 22. O'Brien and his followers decided to act to oppose this force of politics. Battles erupted around County Tipperary, culminating on July 29 in the village of Ballingarry.

O'Brien and other Young Irelanders had fortified The Commons and awaited the approach of police and military troops. A group of 46 under Sub-Inspector Trant had been spotted, and the rebels pursued them into a two-story farmhouse where the police set up defense and took the family hostage. O'Brien approached the house and explained to the police that if they were to surrender their arms, they would be allowed to return home as fellow Irishmen. After a long moment of thought, Trant surrendered.

A few hours later, a band of one hundred more police under Sub-Inspector Cox appeared, being met by the surrendering police as well as a crowd of hundreds of pike-wielding, jubilant rebels. In shock, these police surrendered, too. All through the night, word spread of the victory, and O'Brien worked to harangue his people to never give up the fight for independence.

On July 30, the British army approached the fortified Young Irelanders. The commanders were slow to assault such a massive, poorly armed but publicly acclaimed band, but at last the battle ensued. Tactically, the battle became a draw, and the army retreated for the night. O'Brien, however, called the battle a great victory and spread word of the success of the revolution in more-than-literal terms. All over Ireland through August, revolts would begin, and the British landowners and Loyalists would be chased from the island. On August 23, O'Brien and his followers of men, women, and children would take Dublin and call for elections to an Irish Parliament. O'Brien was named Prime Minister, a position he would hold for fifteen years until his death in 1864.

In September, while the Royal Family retired to Balmoral in Scotland, Prince Albert would come to Ireland with a massive force of British troops. He suggested an armistice, to which O'Brien agreed, and the two would begin to mastermind a fair treaty that would grant Ireland its own parliament, but still keep the emerald isle as part of the British Empire. Seeing the forces willing to fight to maintain conquest, O'Brien agreed. The Act of Irish Parliament passed narrowly in 1849, with many Loyalists crying out against it. With renewed Irish loyalty, however, the empire would blossom.

Loyalists and English would gradually leave Ireland while the Catholic Irish stayed and worked to improve their country with O'Brien's reforms over the rest of the nineteenth century. Industry, especially manufacturing, grew with economic incentives from the Irish Parliament and a workforce of millions (many scholars predict these men may have emigrated to America). The Irish would be instrumental troops in World War I as well as the counter-invasion of the Continent against Hitler's soldiers in 1941, leading to the downfall of Germany in early 1944.

Moreover, the Irish Parliament would give Britain a model for treatment of its colonies and creating productive home-rule. Fending off the Communist incursions of the 1950s and '60s, the British Empire would continue to dominate the world along with its ally and former colony, the United States of America. With the fall of their competitor the Soviet Union in 1992, Britain would lead the world into its next millennium as an empire upon which the sun would never set.

Ireland, meanwhile, would be a land of marginal success. Its industrial heyday was long over, with crime and unemployment rampant, though the 1990s would cause a renewed surge of economics in technology as the Silicon Isle of Europe.


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In reality, someone (thought to be a policeman, though it is not known who) shot at O'Brien at the Ballingarry farmhouse. A gun battle would begin lasting hours, which the vindictive rebels would win. When Cox and his men appeared, the bloodthirsty rebels would spring upon them and slaughter dozens despite their begs of mercy.

As the army arrived the next day, there seemed no more want of battle, and the Irish would give up their weapons. O'Brien and other leaders would be arrested and sentenced to hanging, drawing, and quartering as traitors. Petitions with upwards of 80,000 signatures would appear against them, and HM's government would commute the sentences to exile in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).

Ireland would not gain independence until 1927, still under the crown, and its republic would not appear until 1949.

July 2, 1776 – Declaration of Representation

With war raging in the American colonies for over a year and many whispering of independence, the Continental Congress voted to act on the idea of separating themselves from England. Narrowly, the proposition failed, and the Congress would turn its attention to reforming its governmental relationship with the mother country.

Many argued that Parliament's Prohibitory Act's blockade against American shipping effectively cut off the colonies from home earlier that spring. With a blockade, an act of war, the Crown was removing the colonists from his protection, rather than a quarantine of nationals. Lord North had intended the act to destroy the American economy, but wording was interpreted differently by the Navy. Any ship bearing loyal British colors was free to pass and, in fact, under the protection of British ships.

While Thomas Paine's Common Sense stirred great eagerness for independence in the minds of the colonists, simple economics gradually wore away the enthusiasm. By June, as those still holding or at least feigning loyalty prospered, thoughts had turned back to the idea of representation. The public was indeed represented by their Continental Congress, who, after abandoning the idea of independence, created a formal declaration through a committee headed by philosopher Thomas Jefferson and lawyer John Adams, later an MP. They outlined Enlightenment ideals of what a government must to do for its people and what a people must do for its government.

The American Rebellion continued until 1778 when the capture of a British army at Saratoga, New York, prompted William Pitt to speak out in Parliament for peace. Though many were adamant against the notion of letting the rebels go unpunished, Parliament voted to end the war before it left its bounds of domestic affairs and injured their position as world leaders (such as if the French became involved). An armistice was proposed, accepted by the Americans, and envoys met to discuss terms, eventually deciding to give the Americans the representation they demanded.

The war was over, and the first American members of parliament arrived in 1780. Taxes were indeed levied, but the populace was happy to pay for the civilization they had fought hard to improve. Following the American success, representation flooded around the rest of the British Empire with towns like Manchester, outposts like the Falklands, and even parts of Canada soon holding their own positions in Parliament. These populist ideas even spread outside the borders of the empire, causing uproar throughout Europe, most notably in France's Revolutions of 1789 and 1792, establishing their peaceful and lasting constitutional monarchy.

In 1857, India emulated the American rebellion in success, and non-white colonials were given citizenship and representation unparalleled before. With prosperous colonies, Britain maintained world leadership throughout the Victorian and Modern Eras. Although the World War dragged in trenches for years through the 1910s, the Second World War (or “Hitler's Little War”) was won handily by 1943. As Communism and the Post-Colonial movements began in the late '40s, England's might began to wane, and new talks of independence are spreading throughout the world where the sun cannot set on a British Empire.

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In reality, the Prohibitory Act was made against all American ships, and it was clear that the colonies had already been legally separated from Britain. The Declaration of Independence was approved unanimously and later signed with perfected wording on July 4.