Guest Post: May 22, 1871 - Coalition Forces capture Paris

This article first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

"In the presence of the enemy, who will soon be outside Paris, we have just one thing to do; to retire from here with dignity" ~ Adolphe Thiers



In 1871, the surrender at Sedan was ordered by Emperor Napoleon III out of the need to save French lives. But unfortunately, the slaughter of his former subjects would continue long after the collapse of the Second Empire.

The main reason for this continuation tragedy was that the Prussian demand for the province of Alsace was politically unacceptable. This dispute undermined President-designate Adolphe Thiers' authority at a crucial time when he was seeking to form the Third Republic. Having defeated the Danes, Austrians and now the French, the rise of the German Empire was unstoppable but the acquisition of French territory was a step too far, it was intolerable. For the sake of France, Thiers was prepared to accept the loss of Alsace and even to make the Prussians the large payment demanded by Otto von Bismarck. This wasn't a deliberate choice, it was a dirty compromise, the indirect result of the unhelpful disengaged position of the British Government and also the fact that the victorious Prussian Army was camped outside of Paris while Bismarck awaited his Danegeld. However, in Paris the Communards considered themselves undefeated and swore to fight on. It was readily apparent to many that the Iron Chancellor's insistence had caused a national humiliation that fueled the flames of a terrible Civil War. This realization was made even though Parisians could not even agree on who was to blame - Napoleon III, Bismarck or Thiers. The truth was all three and British Prime Minister William Gladstone had his own share of responsibility in the tragedy that would follow.

The previous century had been an extended period of political tumult for France. Monarchist deputies wanted the return of Orléanist rule. Revolutionaries in Paris wanted to establish what Fredrich Engels would describe as a "dictatorship of the proletariat". The country was simply too divided to confront this new crisis. The ageing French statesman and historian Thiers was a veteran of the February Revolution of 1848 that had pitted Orléanists, Bonapartists, Republicans and radical Revolutionaries against each other in a microcosm of a century of struggle. Using the unique perspectives he had developed from this experience, Thiers had hoped to gain the support necessary to lift the Siege of Paris through negotiation. But he failed because Gladstone insisted upon British Neutrality. He fled and the government of National Defense was seated in Bordeaux. But meanwhile, Communards seized power in Paris and other big French cities such as Lyon and Marseilles. When the Paris Commune found common cause with the Versailles Troops, it was clear that the Third French Republic would fail.

The only military power that could subdue the Communards was the Prussian Army; however, the capture of Paris would be risky, dangerous and counter-productive. In the interests of French unity, Gladstone agreed to provide British regiments to serve in a Coalition Force that could re-establish the authority of the French government without directly intervening in the war itself. These Coalition Forces of the Third Republic, Prussia and Great Britain captured the members of the Committee of the Public Safety who was running the Paris Commune from the Hôtel de Ville.

The fall of Paris and the presence of British Foreign Minister Lord Glanville at the declaration of the German Empire were historic moments. Great Britain had been present at the formation of the Second German Reich and their alliance would be the cornerstone of European security over the course of the next century.

Author's Notes:

In reality, the Paris Commune was suppressed during "The Bloody Week" by the regular French Army.

c. 1040 - A Vision of Water Running Uphill from Lake Titicaca

The Tiwanaku state in the middle region of the Andes Mountains faced terrible strife. Social unrest had shaken the region a generation before, wrecking urban centers with such ferocity that even the enormous stone Gateway of the Sun had been toppled. Later scholars would believe this low point was due to the beginning of drying climatic change for the region as food prices rose due to poor harvests. If not for a miraculous discovery of hydro-engineering, the entire region could have collapsed.

Tiwanaku peoples had flourished centuries before thanks to the development of farming using flooded-raised fields. Compared with traditional farming that would yield some 2.4 metric tons of potatoes per hectare, the system of using raised mounds surrounded by shallow canals generated some 21 metric tons in the same space. The water in the canals prevented frosts from damaging much of the farmland. Further, the canals could be used as fish farms, adding available protein while fertilizing the raised mounds. Adopting high-yield agriculture allowed specialization, turning much of the population to manufacturers of ceramics, textiles, and metalwork. Everything depended upon good rains, however, and the increasingly bad droughts might soon promote a mass exodus to wetter regions south.

In the midst of the coming disaster, a priest of Viracocha, the creator of all things, called a public assembly to demonstrate a new method of drawing water out of Lake Titicaca. He had been granted a vision during his prayers of crying out to the hot sun to turn to rainstorms when he saw the waters of the lake flow upward onto the land to refill the deserted canals. Some scoffed, saying the amount of work needed to run jars of water could not be kept up, but the priest countered by rotating his staff in the water with attached potsherds that drew up the water at regular intervals. Later European visitors would recognize the device being similar to a water screw, also called the Archimedes’ screw.

Religious fervor seized the troubled region, and enormous versions of the water-raising tools were constructed with each contributor receiving a guaranteed share of the crops in proportion to their input. Harvests recovered, and social issues with wealthy landowners stockpiling food were widely alleviated. As the culture returned to specialization, a new branch of priests and priestesses arose to divine other new technology from the gods. It was a clear religious continuation: the ancient legend of Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo told how these descendants of Viracocha had been born out of Lake Titicaca in ancient days when humans lived as animals to teach them agriculture, weaving and sewing, construction, law, and to make fire.

In the coming years, the technology-driven priesthood would devise numerous inventions for making labor more efficient. Spinning devices and looms revolutionized the textile industry so that one person could do the work of a dozen. The quipu, a system of knotted strings to hold records, had long existed with distinct meaning to the placement and size of knots. By running the knots as a “program” through machines, looms could be automated to create particular designs with colored string.

The rains returned to the region, and the water screws were no longer necessary for irrigation, so many were reversed to create screw turbines that generated power. Rather than requiring human or animal labor to drive their machines, Tiwanaku peoples could tap into the flow of water to drive their work. Soon organized factories rose up along the waterways with a moneyless system of exchange through goods and labor.

Metallurgy improved, too, which drove other discoveries. Being high in the mountains, furnaces required specialized air-blowing systems to be hot enough to smelt ore. Artisans noted how the hot air rose and sought to capture it for work as the flowing waters had been. Weak turbine engines gradually came into development, along with specially stretched and tanned animal intestines that made balloons for religious services. Mining tapped new sources of iron and coal that enabled fire-driven engines to drive machines away from rivers.

In the 1400s, one of the neighboring states in Cusco, the Inca, rose up to conquer the others. Their creation legend included further siblings to Mama Ocllo and Manco Capac (whom they called Ayar Manco and considered their first king), including the warrior goddess Mama Huaca. Taking command in 1438, divine ruler Pachacuti began a tradition of aggressive expansion through spying out power centers and sending ambassadors to persuade them to join him with promises of expanded wealth. If the local leaders refused, military conquest followed with the leaders being executed. Either way, the conquered area soon prospered under Inca administration. Through only a few generations, the empire grew up and down the west coast of South America, uniting a wide language base.

During this conquest, the Inca weaponized technology, such as adapting balloons into siege weapons to drop diseased animals into strongholds for biological warfare. The balloons also became a method of communication by using mirrors to deliver messages in a complex code based on reflecting sunlight on silver mirrors for certain intervals and durations, much like the quipu. Chasqui runners on foot carried quipu and oral messages as much as 150 miles per day while llamas laden with goods acted as transport along mountain roads.

A new crisis struck the area with visitors from Europe. While the attempted coup by Spaniard Pizzaro ended in disaster with the emperor Athualpca’s escape via his royal balloon, the Inca were ravaged by diseases brought by trade. The scientific priesthood turned their attention fully to the plague, and methods of quarantine and controlled exposure to weaker strains through variolation minimized the effects as much as could be possible. Counter-expeditions by the Inca seized European technology such as the wagon, tacking to sail into the wind, iron weapons, and written records. Wheeled transport with Incan gas-turbine engines expanded trade, and turbine-driven balloons made conquest eastward over the mountains possible. While Incan chemistry could not unravel gunpowder, the Incan pneumatic rifle was smokeless and had a better rate of fire.

Eventually the Incan Empire normalized relations with the outside world, gaining allies to balance against Spanish incursion to the north and Portuguese to the east. English and Dutch ships were eager to buy up Incan manufactures, which soon outpaced China as the biggest exporter in the world economy. As calculations became too complex even for advanced yupana tables that used spatial meaning, Inca priest-engineers adapted their quipu-programmed automated looms into mechanical, and then electrical, computing. Inca technology became the groundwork of the icon-based worldwide digital communication network.

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In reality, the Tiwanaku state did collapse roughly 1,000 years ago, although the exact reasons remain unknown. The Incan empire grew up in the region several hundred years later, ruling a vast stretch of land over 2,500 miles long. It came under a new stress of disease and civil war shortly before being overtaken by Spanish Conquistadors.

1580 – Taqi al-Din Arrives in Marrakesh

After decades of a life dedicated to science, Taqi al-Din found his career derailed by politics. He had studied endlessly in Syria and Egypt, collecting friendships with others who were interested in natural philosophy. These relationships gave him access to some of the leading private libraries in the world as scholars shared with one another and brought Taqi al-Din into a rapport of the governor of Egypt Samiz al Pasha, whose clock collection was a marvel of advanced mechanics. In 1570, 44-year-old Taqi al-Din arrived in Istanbul with enough clout that, following death of the head Ottoman astronomer the next year, Taqi al-Din became the empire’s official timekeeper and recorder of astronomical observations.

Taqi al-Din dedicated his work to improving observations he had made in Egypt and drafting new records using the towers of Istanbul. The physical limitations prompted him to appeal to the court for a new observatory. It was completed in 1579 and became the greatest center for astronomical research in the world, but imperial edict ordered it demolished just a few months later in 1580. Historians disagree on the reason with some pointing to Taqi al-Din falling out of favor after stating that the Comet of 1577 was to be a sign of great success for the empire when the year proved one of bitter plague. Others suggested the tower was seen as a decadent waste while military spending needed to be kept high. Still others say that religious leaders pressured the sultan to put Taqi al-Din on trial for heresy and cutting back the astronomer’s efforts was a way to spare his life.

Whatever the reason, Taqi al-Din felt that his life in Istanbul had ended and sought a new life at another court: that of Ahmad al-Mansur in Morocco. Ahmad al-Mansur had traveled a good deal as a young man avoiding his older brother to ensure he could not be seen as a threat to be removed. While in the protective Ottoman Empire, Ahmad al-Mansur studied voraciously, consuming every subject scholars could teach him. In 1578, Ahmad al-Mansur’s brother died while defeating the Portuguese at the Battle of Alacer Quibir. Ahmad al-Mansur arrived as the new sultan and established himself by taking an aggressive stance against Portugal on ransoms for prisoners from their defeat. Flush with gold, Ahmad al-Mansur began construction projects such as the El Badi Palace and deepened a military alliance with England, exchanging valuable saltpeter for naval-grade timber.

Ahmad al-Mansur welcomed Taqi al-Din, although he was slow to set him to astronomical work that might be seen as thieving from the Ottomans. The Saadi dynasty in the west had maintained independence by careful diplomacy, and Morocco was hardly in a military position to face invaders from the east with Spain and Portugal just on the north side of Gibraltar. Instead, Ahmad al-Mansur turned Taqi al-Din to some of his earlier work with mechanics, specifically the movement of water for irrigation in the dry nation. Soon Moroccans began drilling wells and raising water from unheard of depths, expanding farmland and flocks to great wealth.

Taqi al-Din also furthered his research on self-moving machines. In Egypt in 1551, he had designed a spit that rotated itself using steam from the fire below. After further years of studying steam pressure, he created a specialized solar-driven furnace that could turn seawater into steam to push a ship in the notoriously windless doldrums and horse latitudes. Ahmad al-Mansur kept the device a military secret, and Moroccan ships became feared for their uncanny speed. They outpaced the Portuguese merchants so regularly that rumors began to spread of captured djinn being somehow driving the ships. Superstition and sheer velocity devastated the Portuguese trade with India, which ultimately became a monopoly for Morocco and its allies in England.

With his country’s wealth blossoming, Ahmad al-Mansur worked to expand his rule. In 1590, his forces marched into the divided Songhai Empire south of the Sahara, seizing powerful centers of trade like Timbuktu and Gao. The enormous distance across difficult terrain caused new problems for Saadi rule, and Ahmad al-Mansur set Taqi al-Din to task resolving it. His solution was to construct and maintain a smooth roadway that could support wheeled vehicles rather than the journey being limited to camel caravans. The work fascinated him with self-propelled vehicles, drawing him back to steam-driven engines powered by water pulled from deeply drilled wells. Many of his designs would be put into action after his death in 1601.

Ahmad al-Mansur sought new mechanically-minded individuals for his court, famously bribing Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont to leave Spain after being granted a patent by the crown for his steam-powered water pumps in 1606. The Spaniard applied his steam-powered water pumps to work in the burgeoning iron and coal mines in Morocco and the expanded gold mines along the Niger River. Shortly before Ahmad al-Mansur’s passing in 1616, Italian Giovanni Branca arrived with a notebook of potential mechanical devices automating numerous tasks and was awarded a role that would lead to Morocco’s position as the leader of manufacturing in the world.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, Morocco would be one of the leading powers of the world. Ahmad al-Mansur’s descendants made real his dream of Muslim colonies in the Americas by seizing Brazil and much of South America east of the Andes from Portugal and, later, Spain. Moroccan trade eastward blocked the efforts of Christian settlements in Africa and India, both of which adopted Islam in urban centers. The Moroccan-English Alliance supported the growth of Islam in England, leading to the chaos of the Religious Wars well into the eighteenth century. Although its empire has broken into more of an economic commonwealth today, Morocco continues to serve as the technological research center of the world, dispatching aid to less advanced northerly nations.

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In reality, Taqi al-Din continued life in Istanbul, where he passed away in 1585. Ahmad al-Mansur died in 1603 from plague, and the kingdom fell into two decades of civil war among his sons.

Guest Post: 8 February, 1943 - Madame Kollontai recalled to Moscow

This story originally appeared on Today in Alternate History.

"The fear that Moscow and Berlin might again come to terms preoccupied American and British statesman long after Hitler had forced the unwilling Stalin to join the Allied coalition." ~ Stalin and the Prospects of a Separate Peace in World War II by Vojtech Mastny (1972)



In 1930, the aristocratic daughter of a Tsarist general, Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai, had been an unusual choice to head the Soviet legation to Sweden. Nevertheless, over the following thirteen turbulent years, she had achieved much to ensure Swedish neutrality and was even considered for promotion to ambassador. However, at seventy years of age, her health was rapidly failing, and she was forced to check into a sanatorium. She then returned to Moscow during late February 1943. Her remarkable contribution to the Revolution was praised by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov.

Socialist Convention, 1910

Mikhailovna had been a long-term compatriot of Rosa Luxemberg, a leading Polish-born communist who was brutally murdered by German right-wing elements during the Spartacist uprising twenty-five years earlier. Given the circumstances of this atrocity, she nurtured a deep-seated hatred of the Nazis that made her totally the wrong person to open peace feelers.

But with her colourful presence suddenly removed from the scene, Hans Thomsen, the German diplomat in Stockholm, sensed a stronger appetite for compromise in the new Soviet legation. With the annihilation of German forces at Stalingrad, the power between the two belligerents had temporarily reached a moment of balance. None of these developments would have changed calculations in Berlin because of the planned offensive to launch Operation Citadel. However, the prospect of peace certainly did appear to change the assessment of officers in the Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front. Consequently from Thomsen's reported encouragement, Hitler (and also Himmler to avoid a civil war breaking out between the Wehrmacht and the SS) were assassinated on the orders of Major Georg von Boeselager during a visit to the headquarters in Smolensk on 13 March.

The new Fuhrer Hermann Göring, having been a member of the Nazi Party since 1922, was no more likely to be accepted by the Allies than Hitler's former deputy Rudolf Hess. However, there were valid reasons for Stalin to show a great deal more trust in Göring than Hitler. A veteran World War I fighter pilot ace, Göring was a recipient of the "The Blue Max" and also the last commander of Jagdgeschwader 1, the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen. In short, his military judgement was far more sound, and Stalin did not so much as trust Göring on a personal level rather to be convinced that he and the Germany military leadership were committed to peace given their action in assassinating Hitler. Ultimately, Stalin believed that Göring, had he been in charge of the Third Reich two years earlier, would not have launched Operation Barbarossa and was, after all, willing to cancel Operation Citadel. Göring and Stalin were able to negotiate a separate peace. Göring, privately, realised that the German army was lacking experienced soldiers and, even equipped with the new models of tanks, were unlikely to triumph, which contributed to his friendliness with a strong enemy.
 
Operation Citadel was cancelled, but so too was the flow of Allied supplies to the Soviet Union as the separate peace deal caused an anti-red backlash in the West. With a presidential election looming in the United States, and Franklin D. Roosevelt himself in declining health, time was of the essence as far as the Western Allies were concerned. As a demagogue playing the long-game, Stalin might have been prepared to cede territory, at least for the time being, but the elected democracies in the West were never going to agree to anything short of unconditional surrender. Instead, the Western Allies remained stubborn even though the end of hostilities on the Eastern Front enabled Göring to reinforce the Atlantic defences

The Wehrmacht gained a full year equipping troops with brand new equipment that had time to fully work out the bugs from the Panzer and Tiger tanks and the new semi-automatic carbines. They also gained the resources necessary to improve their surface-to-air missile program that used homing missiles against bomber formations. Nevertheless, within twelve months, Allied forces had landed in Normandy and the Third Reich was doomed by the overwhelming military power of the West. It was now Stalin's turn to abrogate a peace deal, but his Red Army was equipped with American vehicles and no spare parts.

It was re-election year in the United States, and with the strong possibility of a Republican isolationist being voted into office, there was hesitation to restart the Lend-Lease programme. Stalin watched in powerless horror as a tank carrying General Patton entered Berlin in triumph.

Author's Note:

In reality, Madame Kollontai remained in Stockholm and her diplomatic initiatives with Thomsen are disputed. Mastny later blamed Kollontai for the failure of the talks. Provine's Addendum:FDR narrowly won his fourth term in office through vigorous campaigning that seemed designed to show he was in full health. Most of his energy was devoted to distancing himself from Stalin, while the Republicans lambasted his previous outreach to the Soviet Union. Despite the show, or perhaps because of it, Roosevelt was exhausted and passed away in April of 1945, never seeing the end of the wars he worked to win. Truman received the mantle and continued the fight with Allied soldiers slogging away both in Europe and the Pacific. Germany was the foremost opponent, whom Allies attacked through Churchill's preferred "soft underbelly of Europe," encouraging local resistance to frustrate German defenses as much as possible on the long road to liberation. Berlin finally fell in winter of 1945 with another coup fueled by starving civilians breaking the Nazi grip. In 1946, Japan fell after the fourth use of atomic weapons when a counter-coup wrested control from the Kyujo militarists who had seized what was left of the government after the destruction of Tokyo to drive the islands to fight to the last man.The war ended, but occupation and rebuilding was a long process. War-weary citizens voted out Churchill and Truman, but the driving anti-red sentiments continued conflicts to stamp out their influence, such as American aid in Kai-shek's elimination of Mao in China. The Soviet Union became isolated, and efforts to push for an expansion of influence in Eastern Europe ended with severe crackdowns by allies of the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As communist ideals crept up in revolutionaries in South America and Africa, NATO extended its reach to become the World Treaty Organization. Driven by trade agreements and international military action to keep friendly governments in power, many see the WTO as a biblical new world order holding egregious power with little concern for means of maintaining that power. Not that anyone would dare say such a thing too loudly.

1009 – Nor’easter Drives Karlsefni Expedition South

With more than 100 in its crew, the settlement fleet led by Thorfinn Karlsefni came under a powerful storm from the northeast. It bore the Norse ships far south of the winter settlement Thorfinn’s brother-in-law Leif Eriksson had set up ten years before. Leif himself had followed directions from Bjarni Herjolfsson, who had been blown off course and discovered a land west of Greenland while rescuing others lost in that storm. These same seemingly ill winds proved lucky as they took Thorfinn miles beyond lands where scuffles with locals before had ended in numerous deaths on both sides.

The wayward Norse finally found land, though it would take months more of exploration to determine where they were. First they established a base and made contact with locals who were happy to trade furs for Norse cloth and fresh milk from the cows they had brought. Eventually expeditions found that they were on the southern side of a great bay and, three hundred miles west, a large freshwater river that promised even more possibilities inland. The colony prospered, though Thorfinn had little choice: many settlers agreed they had gone too far south to effectively evacuate the colony in case of trouble.

Instead, trouble struck at home as Norse growing seasons turned shorter. Thorfinnsland proved to be a welcome new home, bringing thousands of settlers who established trading posts along the great river and the coast. Settlers marked their names with runes as they went and even built a great tower for defense on the islands of another bay southward that they called Newport. Traders explored even farther south, coming upon warm waters from a muddy river far bigger than the one in the north. There they met wealthy new trade partners who themselves had canoes rivaling Norse longboats. Peoples along this Misi zipi River built pyramid mounds in grand cities with tens of thousands of people fed by expansive maize fields. Their pottery and copperwork made valuable good that the Norse merchants traded for iron tools to enormous profit.

Disease among the traders plagued them, and ultimately both the Norse settlers and the Mississippians declined. North Atlantic trade did continue, although it paled in comparison to European expeditions to the gold-rich south and around Africa to the Far East. Hungry for more iron than what merchants could bring, deposits discovered north of the Great Lakes became valuable mining territory. Wars broke out over the iron pits until the coming of Deganawida, the Great Peacemaker. He built a confederacy that ended ritual cannibalism and organized a balance of local rule by chiefs to a national council that governed the whole. Five nations joined together to form what was known as the Haudenosaunee, though European traders called it the “Iroquois Confederacy” since all of the member tribes spoke related languages.

The Iroquois expanded rapidly across the Ohio Valley thanks to their power in numbers, the iron supply, and firearms supplied by European traders in exchange for valuable beaver pelts. Leaders agreed that, just as they controlled ironworks, they must come to control guns as well. Expeditions of young men were sent to Europe to determine its secrets. In addition to industrial espionage on gunpowder, the spies came to study with early chemists at universities in Spain, France, and England, bringing back cutting edge theory on gas law and metallurgy. After seeing the patents of Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont for steam-powered water pumps that could drain flooded mines, the Iroquois began creating and implementing their own engines.

It was not long before these engines were put to work doing other tasks like weaving cloth and milling timber. Mobile engines could not only move themselves but also haul goods across long distances to drastically cut travel time and cost. Soon the Iroquois found themselves attracting attention from Europeans eager to copy their successes. They invested their wealth in maintaining their borders, such as river fleets protecting their rights to what the French traders called the St. Lawrence and Mississippi. The confederationo welcomed more tribes into the fold to promote a wide frontier that would keep their homelands safe.

Balancing British, French, and Spanish empires against one another, the Iroquois laid claim to all lands west of French Thorfinnsland and the Appalachians above the 37 degrees north latitude. Louisiana would fall into British hands as European wars weakened French colonialism, causing strife with the Iroquois over river rights. Ultimately, the British would capitulate when the Shawnee General Tecumseh led Iroquois forces to seize New Orleans, granting Louisiana independence. Another war in the West over gold deposits in California with Mexico would affirm Iroquois rule to the Pacific.

Today the Iroquois Confederacy serves as the foremost economy in the world, rivaled by the German-led European Union and Japanese Empire. Each depends on one another for trade, although they readily, and often correctly, accuse one another of ongoing industrial espionage.

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In reality, according to the sagas, Thorfinn’s colony ended after his bull frightened the locals and sparked a battle that prompted the Norse to flee back to Greenland.