Amazing work! Wish Luis II and the portugal monarchy the best."...few would have expected that Portugal, of all places, would be where a socialist party would enter government for the first time, but this misunderstands a number of factors, first among them the moderate influences on Portuguese socialism, and Iberian socialism more generally, due to the Proudhonist tradition of Spanish (and, by proxy, Portuguese), radicalism.
With the exception of Russia, Spain and Portugal had spent much of the 19th century regarded (if not outright dismissed, as in Napoleon's huffy comment that "Africa begins at the Pyrenees") [1] as Europe's impoverished, autocratic backwaters, countries that had peaked at the height of the Age of Discovery and, particularly in the wake of the collapse of their colonial empires, broken polities running on fumes economically and fueled by nostalgia, kept gripped tight by the firm hand of the Church and landed aristocracy. Both had been gripped by violent wars between political liberals and conservatives, with Spain's dance with personalism and instability concluding with the Glorious Revolution of 1868 led by moderate and progressive nobles and military officers who imposed a constitutional democracy with clearly delineated powers and invited in a new royal family, the German Hohenzollerns, to sustain it. While this experiment in Spanish democracy had been highly imperfect and indeed faced many of the same institutional problems that the Bourbons before had, particularly in rural areas, it nonetheless had delivered an internal stability that Spain had not experienced in decades.
Portugal, conversely, had never suffered from quite the decadal debacles of Spain and reformed more gradually under the Braganzas, but by the end of the 19th century was regarded as one of Europe's financial basket cases, frequently suffering defaults on her British-held debt and unable to maintain her vast and expensive African empire, and with the country increasingly run by two tired, revolving parties of the liberal and traditionalist right, resembling a closed oligarchy which became associated with not just the Church and nobility but the entire concept of monarchy itself. As such, the 1912 revolutions had nearly struck in Portugal, and the 1916 debt default had led to the King's abdication and the seizure of her African territories by Britain and Germany, an act that served to destabilize European politics and helped lead to the Central European War.
What both countries shared was a relatively small industrial base (much more so an issue in Portugal than in Spain) and a radical tradition that had been fundamentally anarchist as early as the 1870s and had always associated republicanism as an end to itself, particularly the appeal of anticlerical opposition to the Church's foundational role in a monarchical system. As such, bourgeoise radicalism for educated, urban middle classes sustained itself much more so than working class agitation, which was far more limited, and often steered by these bourgeoise radical progressives, who themselves rejected socialism as gauche. The revolution would not come from the labor movement in a place like Portugal, in other words, but rather from the literati. This posed a problem for middle class figures who found all these ideas fine in theory but started to balk once the extent to which their fellow republicans sought to reorder an already-fragile state became apparent, and also for the Socialist Party of Portugal, a relatively small though quickly growing outfit which was already badly split between its moderate faction and its syndicalist faction, particularly after the 1907 death of its longtime leader and co-founder, Azedo Gneco. [2]
Luis II, the Portuguese King, was determined to make significant changes to Portugal, and not just in light of his narrow personal interests of the survival of the monarchy. [3] Luis had been educated in Portugal, but he was thoroughly Anglophile in a way others in his family were not, in part out of genuine personal affinity for the country and in part thanks to his British wife, herself a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Though the marriage had been initially negotiated, it had been sealed out of true affection, and Luis was an honest, loyal husband to his wife, whom he doted on especially with the knowledge that formal, conservative Lisbon was not always to her liking. Queen Patricia's influence was clear - she encouraged him to pursue his interests in painting, geography and writing - but she had become unpopular with the Portuguese street after the "British betrayal" in which Austral-Africa was lost.
Luis was thus on a mission to restore the prestige of the monarchy, and also undo the tremendous cultural, economic and political stagnation of Portugal that had begun under his grandfather and namesake and continued under his father. As Britain was a country of great stability and wealth, and a successful constitutional monarchy, Luis looked to London as an example, and even though he knew that he would fall well shy of the United Kingdom, if he merely arrived at something approximating Hohenzollern Spain, he would have a successful reign. As such, when he called elections for June of 1918, they were the first elections called of his reign and thought to potentially be the first genuinely open elections in Portugal's history, with the Renovator and Progressist parties having all but collapsed.
In many ways, this was a dangerous gamble on the part of Luis, for the largest party in the country, by far, was the Republican. The "Crime of 1916," as Portuguese referred to the Malcolm-Jagow Agreement to split up Austral-Africa, had reenergized what had before 1912 been a flagging group losing popular support (or at least not gaining any). [4] Republican paramilitaries operated largely undeterred across much of the Lisbon area, in particular the Carbonaria, led by the secretive Manuel Buica and which had nearly successfully assassinated the king two years earlier in the wake of Malcolm-Jagow. Figures of the radical anticlerical left such as Afonso Costa gave long, stemwinding speeches across the country where they advocated for the abdication of the King and the imposition of a Republic; even fairly conservative figures such as Antonio Jose de Almeida had joined the call, as had opportunist figures such as the retired general Sidonio Pais, whose ideological orientation was often hard to entirely deduce. The Republicans were, crucially, not an illegal party - in his efforts to pursue a genuine settlement on the questions facing Portugal and give the 1918 elections a legitimacy that the old duopolistic oligarchy had not and could never, Luis would leave no group banned from the polls, a decision that suggested, at least to Republican leaders, that Luis would abdicate in the event they were to triumph. The stakes, in other words, could not have been higher for Portugal, and only brewing crises in the Belgian Congo and Hungary distracted Europe from the potential of the first successful republican revolution - this one by way of democratic elections rather than popular armed revolt - since the French Second Republic in 1848.
The problem for the Portuguese Republicans, however, was that their support was a kilometer wide, but only a meter deep. Their leaders were intellectuals and academics, composed of disillusioned career politicians, journalists, lawyers and artists, people clearly more comfortable in Lisbon's tony cafes near the Praca do Comercio than in the small, close-knit villages of rural Portugal. It was a party of literati in the Western European country with the lowest literacy rate, a party that relied on lodges of freemasonry to organize rather than the town square or the Church parish. In its near-total rejection of traditional Portuguese culture in a highly conservative and traditionalist country, the Republican Party - especially figures such as Costa - essentially declared to much of the population that they intended to rule them as they saw fit, not govern with the consent of the masses.
In contrast, the small Portuguese Socialist Party did anything but. As outlined in previous chapters, one of the central questions of socialism in the 1910s was a simple one with a deceptively complex answer: "Who is socialism for?" For Portugal's socialist leader Manuel Luis Figueiredo, that answer was simple: it was for the material benefit of the working class. For many of Europe's particularly radical socialists and syndicalists, revolution was the end itself; for the more moderate brand of democratic socialism that emerged in the Iberian Peninsula, the revolution was one means, perhaps a necessary one, but the end result of tangible material impact for organized labor was always to retain her primacy. Costa, Pais, and others campaigned largely in boroughs where they were already likely to do well, preaching to the masses in promising the intoxicating rush of revolution and reorder; Figueiredo, by contrast, kept his focus on Lisbon's canneries, Porto's port distilling houses, and textile mills, organizing workers of small but dedicated labor unions into "electoral cadres" and doing the hard work of electoralism with an eye towards influencing the final result.
The 1918 elections were thus muddled, returning no decisive result other than a fundamental shift in Portugal's electoral landscape and heralding, at least for a moment, a Portugal that could actually function as a true democracy. The Republicans were the largest party, winning over a third of the seats in the Parliament, but the Costa faction was notably weaker than the Pais faction. The second-largest party was, in a surprise, the Catholic Center, a party of lay organizations and moderate-to-conservative voters in the north, especially Porto, as well as the rural interior, led by the reformist law professor Antonio Lino Neto, and after those two groups followed Figueiredo's Socialists and the rumps of the Progressists and Renovators. The old oligarchic parties pledged to support Lino Neto, and so it was he who looked likeliest to form a government, but even then he lacked the full support of the Parliament; it was then that Figueiredo was surprised to receive a summons to the Lisbon Palace, where he was called into an audience with the King.
Luis was alarmed by the relative success of the Republicans, though heartened they had shot themselves in the feet and that the syndicalists of Manuel Ribeiro had rejected electoral democracy entirely and thus made themselves for the time being irrelevant. The meeting was thus part of his efforts to extrapolate exactly how tolerant of monarchy Figueiredo was, and if he was somebody who could support a Lino Neto government. [5] The choice for Figueiredo here was monumental: if he collaborated with Lino Neto, he endorsed the perpetuation of the monarchy rather than supporting a Republican regime that would quickly seek to abolish it, but with Pais and his nationalist, positivist conservative ethos ascendant amongst Republicans alongside the anticlerical zeal of Costa, he was unsure that the material benefits he hoped to deliver his constituents who had just fought to give their small trade unions a seat at the table would be realized.
"Who is socialism for?" In that moment, Figueiredo came to the conclusion that it was as much for the subjects of a monarchy as it was for the citizens of a republic, and more confident that Lino Neto would pursue a course similar to paternalist Catholic statist regimes like France or Austria, he told Luis that for a price, such as Cabinet ministries, a veto on policy and political nominations, and the further legalization of trade unionism and their incorporation into the daily life of Portugal, he would not just support but "participate with enthusiasm" a Lino Neto government. Luis thought the demand high, but he was not willing to test Figueiredo's openness to joining a government led by Pais or, worse, Costa.
With that, in June of 1918, Europe's first "Blue-Red" government (or "purple regime") was formed, a transactional bond between conservatives and social democrats in opposition to liberals and radicals. Like most Blue-Red governments, it would not be harmonious, and it would not last long, but Portugal was the first innovator in such a Cabinet, and the success of a targeted, disciplined and cabined social democratic campaign that could co-exist with monarchy did not go unnoticed elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Germany and Spain..."
- Socialism and Europe
[1] Or Naples, if you ask certain people in Northern Italy
[2] You can see shades of this dynamic iOTL - it was not the largely irrelevant socialists who drove Portuguese Revolution or who ran the First Republic, and in Spain, the PSOE (as well as Ferrer's anarchists!) were usually more moderate than many of the bourgeois figures and factions in the Second Republic.
[3] Or himself, considering how things ended for him in OTL 1908!
[4] Joao Franco never getting into power and a successful Pink Map buys the Braganzas way more time and prestige, basically.
[5] Lino Neto was himself ambivalent about monarchy, iOTL arousing some controversy with conservatives when he declined to advocate or agitate explicitly for his return, though it was the anticlerical Republicans who really detested him.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Amazing work! Wish Luis II and the portugal monarchy the best.
I'm sensing a potential here. In OTL, My country has a mutual defense treaty with the US that states that America will respond with force if the country is attacked. I can imagine the Democrat Admin of the 1920s sending Garrison to meet with Gore to hash out a treaty that is like the Mutual Defense Treaty with strings attached of course (Like free trade, special oil rights, etc.)
Besides mutual defense, America can give things like military training for it's nacent army, modernization, etc.
The House of Osman
"...announcing to the rest of the royal family that the rumors were, indeed, true - Sultan Mehmed V had indeed drawn his last breaths in the Yildiz, dying after just over four years to the day on the Ottoman throne, at the age of seventy-three.
The changes Mehmed V had brought about had been, in any sense of the term, momentous. Unlike his brother Abdulhamid who had done everything in his power to subvert the constitution that he had nonetheless maintained, Mehmed had embraced it, allowing not just the political program of the Ahraris to continue unmolested as a matter of policy but allowed the spirit of the Ottoman cultural revolution to continue. He had become a public figure as much as a constitutional one, enormously popular as a grandfatherly symbol of national unity and personal piousness, an affable old Muslim who enjoyed reading and a strong cup of coffee. He had also, critically, reformed many of the more archaic dynastic practices of the House of Osman, ending the sequestration of princes both major and minor, ending the rules forbidding princes to have children before their ascent to positions of prominence, and making a number of appointments of family members to temporal offices that granted them genuine power rather than viewing the House of Osman as an institution to fear. The differences in Istanbul [1] between 1914 when Abdulhamid was slain and 1918 when Mehmed V were stark and plain.
The heir as appointed under the rules of the House, which did not conform to the primogeniture common elsewhere in Europe, was Sehzade Yusuf Izzeddin, a very different character. His relationship with Mehmed V had been uneven, sometimes cordial and collaborative, sometimes sharply distant. They were neither rivals nor allies, Izzeddin aware from a very early age where he stood in the line of succession, and now Sultan at the age of sixty-one, he did not anticipate ruling for particularly long, in part due to his oft-fragile mental and physical health, and his conclusion that he was surrounded by people who aimed to assassinate him. The new Sultan Yusuf I, even before taking the throne, never ate or drank anything that had not been tasted first by one of his army of retainers, and he frequently trembled either out of some curious tic or paralyzing levels of anxious paranoia. As befit a man with such an untrusting nature, Yusuf was cold and withdrawn when meeting others, a far cry from the compassionate Mehmed, and found solace mostly in writing and reading poetry and his prayers, being probably one of the most genuinely devout Sultans of his time.
Indeed, of all his characteristics, it was his piousness that alarmed Sabahaddin - who in many ways was Muslim only in theory and seldom attended Friday prayers - the most. Nationality and faith were impossible to separate out from one another in the Ottoman Empire and Sabahaddin's push to shift the Sultan to a less temporal, more symbolic figure had in part rested on the prestige of the Sultan as Caliph; a benevolent and holy figure who nonetheless did little to irritate or antagonize the sensibilities and privileges of the vast Christian minorities of the Empire. In Mehmed he had had a figure in whom he could fully trust that this would be the case; in Yusuf, he worried, he did not.
And there was indeed reason to worry. Yusuf was skeptical of the Ittihadists for a variety of reasons but found their more muscular program that was less tolerant of Greek nationalism in particular appealing; the Patriarch of Constantinople felt snubbed and disrespected in his first opportunity to meet personally with the new Sultan, and the relationship never recovered thereafter. In early August, Yusuf criticized Sabahaddin by name, and not simply as "the Vizier," but his full royal title, in a meeting of himself and several princes who were known to be hostile to the Ahraris. Days later, he spoke against men who did not wear the fez or women who did not adorn themselves with headscarves, describing it as "an affront to God." When the Caliph said as much, especially after only a month on the throne, it mattered.
It mattered in particular because Yusuf I succeeded Mehmed V at a time when Sabahaddin needed the opposite of what he was; it had already not been enough that the popular, doting old grandfather was loathe to make political or negative comments. Much as the constitutional revolution of the 1870s had needed a fully engaged Sultan to fully promulgate rather than the half-baked, illiberal pseudo-democracy that had instead arrived, the cultural revolution of "national modernism," a pluralistic, democratic and above all secular project of progressive radicalism growing increasingly esoteric and disconnected from the day-to-day concerns of the Ottoman populace, needed a fully engaged Sultan. At an hour when the backlash outside of cosmopolitan, diverse urban areas was already starting to brew, as intensely amongst devout Orthodox Christians as among rural Muslims [2], the defense of national modernism needed to come as much from inside the Yildiz as from inside the Ottoman Parliament.
Alas, that was not the Sultan who had just taken the throne, and that was not the defense from a Caliph eager to exercise temporal authority, as much out of his paranoia and fear of assassination as any religious or political agenda, that Sabahaddin was going to get."
- The House of Osman
[1] Istanbul in the Ottoman context referred to a central part of the city of Constantinople, rather than the city as a whole. Here, I'm using it as a metonym, a bit like the Porte
[2] Not sure how realistic it is, but one thing I'm game to explore here in a more decentralized OE is more collaboration between conservatives of both faiths against secular elements in Constantinople and other cities similar to it across sectarian lines. Then again, knowing how the Balkans and the Levant are even within groups of the same faith, fat chance of that...
The changes Mehmed V had brought about had been, in any sense of the term, momentous. Unlike his brother Abdulhamid who had done everything in his power to subvert the constitution that he had nonetheless maintained, Mehmed had embraced it, allowing not just the political program of the Ahraris to continue unmolested as a matter of policy but allowed the spirit of the Ottoman cultural revolution to continue. He had become a public figure as much as a constitutional one, enormously popular as a grandfatherly symbol of national unity and personal piousness, an affable old Muslim who enjoyed reading and a strong cup of coffee. He had also, critically, reformed many of the more archaic dynastic practices of the House of Osman, ending the sequestration of princes both major and minor, ending the rules forbidding princes to have children before their ascent to positions of prominence, and making a number of appointments of family members to temporal offices that granted them genuine power rather than viewing the House of Osman as an institution to fear. The differences in Istanbul [1] between 1914 when Abdulhamid was slain and 1918 when Mehmed V were stark and plain.
The heir as appointed under the rules of the House, which did not conform to the primogeniture common elsewhere in Europe, was Sehzade Yusuf Izzeddin, a very different character. His relationship with Mehmed V had been uneven, sometimes cordial and collaborative, sometimes sharply distant. They were neither rivals nor allies, Izzeddin aware from a very early age where he stood in the line of succession, and now Sultan at the age of sixty-one, he did not anticipate ruling for particularly long, in part due to his oft-fragile mental and physical health, and his conclusion that he was surrounded by people who aimed to assassinate him. The new Sultan Yusuf I, even before taking the throne, never ate or drank anything that had not been tasted first by one of his army of retainers, and he frequently trembled either out of some curious tic or paralyzing levels of anxious paranoia. As befit a man with such an untrusting nature, Yusuf was cold and withdrawn when meeting others, a far cry from the compassionate Mehmed, and found solace mostly in writing and reading poetry and his prayers, being probably one of the most genuinely devout Sultans of his time.
Indeed, of all his characteristics, it was his piousness that alarmed Sabahaddin - who in many ways was Muslim only in theory and seldom attended Friday prayers - the most. Nationality and faith were impossible to separate out from one another in the Ottoman Empire and Sabahaddin's push to shift the Sultan to a less temporal, more symbolic figure had in part rested on the prestige of the Sultan as Caliph; a benevolent and holy figure who nonetheless did little to irritate or antagonize the sensibilities and privileges of the vast Christian minorities of the Empire. In Mehmed he had had a figure in whom he could fully trust that this would be the case; in Yusuf, he worried, he did not.
And there was indeed reason to worry. Yusuf was skeptical of the Ittihadists for a variety of reasons but found their more muscular program that was less tolerant of Greek nationalism in particular appealing; the Patriarch of Constantinople felt snubbed and disrespected in his first opportunity to meet personally with the new Sultan, and the relationship never recovered thereafter. In early August, Yusuf criticized Sabahaddin by name, and not simply as "the Vizier," but his full royal title, in a meeting of himself and several princes who were known to be hostile to the Ahraris. Days later, he spoke against men who did not wear the fez or women who did not adorn themselves with headscarves, describing it as "an affront to God." When the Caliph said as much, especially after only a month on the throne, it mattered.
It mattered in particular because Yusuf I succeeded Mehmed V at a time when Sabahaddin needed the opposite of what he was; it had already not been enough that the popular, doting old grandfather was loathe to make political or negative comments. Much as the constitutional revolution of the 1870s had needed a fully engaged Sultan to fully promulgate rather than the half-baked, illiberal pseudo-democracy that had instead arrived, the cultural revolution of "national modernism," a pluralistic, democratic and above all secular project of progressive radicalism growing increasingly esoteric and disconnected from the day-to-day concerns of the Ottoman populace, needed a fully engaged Sultan. At an hour when the backlash outside of cosmopolitan, diverse urban areas was already starting to brew, as intensely amongst devout Orthodox Christians as among rural Muslims [2], the defense of national modernism needed to come as much from inside the Yildiz as from inside the Ottoman Parliament.
Alas, that was not the Sultan who had just taken the throne, and that was not the defense from a Caliph eager to exercise temporal authority, as much out of his paranoia and fear of assassination as any religious or political agenda, that Sabahaddin was going to get."
- The House of Osman
[1] Istanbul in the Ottoman context referred to a central part of the city of Constantinople, rather than the city as a whole. Here, I'm using it as a metonym, a bit like the Porte
[2] Not sure how realistic it is, but one thing I'm game to explore here in a more decentralized OE is more collaboration between conservatives of both faiths against secular elements in Constantinople and other cities similar to it across sectarian lines. Then again, knowing how the Balkans and the Levant are even within groups of the same faith, fat chance of that...
That's definitely the idea. The kind of death tolls of OTL Europe, where millions were lost early, are not to be found here, where its more tens of thousands and really just in one wave. The USA, and the CSA especially (and probably places like Mexico, Brazil, etc - other GAW participants) are absolutely walloped instead, and it becomes much more of the cultural fabric of the late 1910s as a feature of the overall postwar malaise.
Gore will be termed out by 1919 but, yes, there's plenty of opportunity for very friendly relations between Austin and Philadelphia if both sides play their cards right (especially once the Ranger strike occurs)
It amazes me that somehow you have managed to save to Ottoman Empire here...
.....i don't know if i mean that as a positive or negative, but its just there. And I'm not sure how much I can expand on that.
Quite the contrast between these two geographic ends of southern Europe. I have a hard time imagining this Ottoman Empire continuing for very much longer without bursting into a revolutionary conflagration, but perhaps I shall be surprised. On the other hand, Portugal ending up as a warmer version of OTL Sweden or Denmark seems entirely reasonable (but possibly only because we do have the OTL examples of democratic socialist monarchies.)
So, Yusuf İzzeddin finally succeeded at getting the throne, even if it is very shaky one, as he already managed to anger at least two important personalities in less than one month, his allies largely consist of minor Ottoman princes who hate Sabahaddin, and an alliance between conservative Moslems and Orthodox Christians who will quickly get dissolved and get into a very bitter fight as soon as their only real goal (overthrowing Ahraris and Sabahaddin) get accomplished.
At least, the next in line is Mehmed VI (Vahdettin) of our timeline, who as I remember, was an old man with a notoriously bad health (I remember that in his enthronement ceremony he complained to Enver Pasha about his rheumatism while they were in the same carriage, asked Sheik-il Islam to pray for him, and said something “how terrible” once he learned his retainers forgot his walking stick as he took his first step to the Palace) who seems to be someone extremely easily convinced, with him largely using his powers to trying to protect his throne by doing things like appointing Damad Ferit Pasha as Sadrazam, which did not help him and his reputation. So, compared to Yusuf I, someone Sabahaddin would prefer.
There’s a time-honored tradition IOTL of the radical left backstabbing centrist/liberal parties and facilitating rightist/reactionary governance.
Excellent subversion of that trope; this is about the most benign variation imaginable!
Happened ITTL as well - look at the "Fusion Liberals" in the US right now.
American Royalty: The Roosevelt Dynasty's Enduring Legacy
"...described the wedding almost in terms reserved for European dynasts; a caricature in the Sun even had Quentin decked out in the ceremonial uniform of the German Kaiser.
This was, perhaps, not far off the mark, for the nuptials joined together two of the most powerful families in the United States in a way that was perhaps unexpected. The Whitneys were about as much of genuine New York aristocracy as one could find; Flora's mother was, herself, an heir to the Vanderbilt fortune, and though the Whitneys were thought to lean Democratic, Flora's uncle William had married Helen Hay, daughter of the former President John Hay and bete noire of the young Roosevelt, and her aunt Pauline had married a British Tory peer and industrialist. It was thus a family with many fingers in many pies, their political allegiances much more fluid and pragmatic than that of the rock-ribbed Democratic clan of Oyster Bay, and also a family that could credibly look at a marriage to a Roosevelt and think it perhaps beneath Flora's station.
Theodore was under no illusions that Harry Payne Whitney approved of his daughter's choice in a beau, because Whitney had told him as much, to his face, at the Knickerbocker Club when Quentin had come to him shortly after the end of the war to ask his daughter's hand. Whitney was not heartless, though; an avid sportsman like Theodore with a particular interest in thoroughbred racing, he had been relieved that his son, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, had not gone off to war and was currently spending a year as a desk clerk in the Army before attending Harvard, and he was moved by Theodore's loss of his two eldest sons and the wounds suffered by the two younger. Whitney clarified after this for Theodore, whom he respected personally even if he found his boundless energy and bullheaded nature quite tiring, that while he did not particularly approve of the match and wanted his daughter to take a yearslong grand tour of Europe before her engagement, he had told Quentin that he would not intervene to block a marriage, and that was good enough for the Roosevelts. The engagement had gone on, and so one of the grandest weddings in the history of New York was planned.
The political implications of the match were well understood, and not just because former President Hearst was on the invite list (former President Hughes, a close friend of the Whitney family despite political disagreements, was pointedly not). Theodore had, after all, not long ago been New York's hard-charging, disruptive Mayor, and one not particularly popular with many of the masters of the universe who nonetheless attended as a courtesy to the Whitneys; Helen Hay Whitney herself complimented the handsome groom and his gallantry in the war, but huffed "it is a shame he's the son of that horrible man!" Theodore, as was his wont, cared not a wit - his family had picked itself up from middle-class respectability [1] through his media empire to the upper echelons of American power, and now they were sealing their place within it as the Whitney and Vanderbilt fortunes were now as much part of the Roosevelt name as what he had made for himself with newspapers. The comparisons to a dynastic wedding in Europe was thus not unfounded, because newspapers reported it as much at the time - with the wedding, it suddenly became considered almost inevitable that Quentin would have a career in New York, and perhaps national, politics, an enormous amount of pressure to foist upon an affable young man of only twenty-one years of age.
The grand wedding at Oyster Bay had other effects, too; Roosevelt, a man for whom there was nothing quite like a good grudge, elected to further inflame his enemies within the New York Democratic Party by making Hearst an attendee whom he honored with a seat near the front, while declining to invite important figures like Al Smith, Bill Sulzer, or even Charlie Murphy, all three of whom Whitney did not care for but had felt pressured to invite to avoid a dust-up that would diminish his influence in Albany or at Gracie Mansion. The snub was understood as such and the factional rift amongst New York Democrats that had more to do with personality and generation than ideology deepened; Roosevelt did not know it yet, but he had earned powerful enemies for the remaining years of his life, and his influence was about to enter a very long period of decline as that of Smith in particular grew.
The reemergence of a glad-handing Hearst from two years of political semi-exile also served to open up a new wrinkle in the ex-President's personal life, one which quickly came to be a political liability just a month later as he attempted to launch his long-expected political comeback at the New York State Democratic Convention in Schenectady. For reasons that are still unclear, Hearst informed Roosevelt that well-liked former First Lady Millicent Hearst was unable to attend, creating a dubious excuse, and then privately made arrangements for his mistress Marion Davies - an actress in the employ of Roosevelt's Cosmopolitan Studios, a small outfit still at that time - to attend "as a guest of the Roosevelt family." Hearst's dalliances since leaving the Presidency with young Broadway starlets was something of an open secret in New York high society, but his intense personal privacy and a good deal of fear of the famously vindictive former President had kept such things quiet. Bringing Davies to the Roosevelt-Whitney wedding, on the other hand, put things almost entirely out in the open: Hearst and Millie were barely on speaking terms any more, and he was starting to live openly with his mistress. The Hearst-Davies relationship is a strange though oddly affectionate concluding chapter to the 27th President's life, especially once they absconded to California to live in a state of quiet opulence once he inherited the rest of his father's mining empire the following year, and it began in large part in late June 1918, when Davies had her "debut," if that was the term for it.
The wedding itself, of course, was just as much a spectacle as the press had hoped. Roosevelt arranged for a Navy boat to give a salute in view of Sagamore Hill (arranged by "cousin Franklin," startling the neighbors; doves and peacocks wandered galore, and there were bears and lions on site as well. Oriental performers brought from Chusan were the main entertainment of the evening, and Quentin and Flora left the grounds for their honeymoon in Europe under a sword salute of Quentin's fellow veterans, all of whom were men whom he had served with personally. Memories of that black Christmas two years earlier had entirely faded; the young couple, madly and deeply in love and with all the promise of the future ahead of them both romantically and professionally, stirred something in Theodore's heart he had almost forgotten was there. There were battles to come, in the tumultuous years after the war, a great many that he yearned to fight - but for one night, the Lion of Sagamore Hill could rest and look proudly upon the addition to his pride..." [2]
- American Royalty: The Roosevelt Dynasty's Enduring Legacy
[1] This may admittedly be underselling the earlier generations of Roosevelts a bit
[2] Lot going on in this chapter as we of course build towards the conclusion of the 1910s NY Dem contest between the Hearst-Roosevelt old guard and Smith's rising faction, as well as something of a generational transition as we finally get to one of the more wild features of Hearst's OTL life and Roosevelt nearing the end of the road (he won't die at the same time as OTL, but Teddy was a man who I think was destined to burn hot, bright, and fast). It's been interesting going back and re-reading content from the 1880s and 1890s and seeing how prominent the setup of the flipped-around Roosevelt and Hearst were even then, and it'll be weird when we eventually say goodbye to one and then both of them.
This was, perhaps, not far off the mark, for the nuptials joined together two of the most powerful families in the United States in a way that was perhaps unexpected. The Whitneys were about as much of genuine New York aristocracy as one could find; Flora's mother was, herself, an heir to the Vanderbilt fortune, and though the Whitneys were thought to lean Democratic, Flora's uncle William had married Helen Hay, daughter of the former President John Hay and bete noire of the young Roosevelt, and her aunt Pauline had married a British Tory peer and industrialist. It was thus a family with many fingers in many pies, their political allegiances much more fluid and pragmatic than that of the rock-ribbed Democratic clan of Oyster Bay, and also a family that could credibly look at a marriage to a Roosevelt and think it perhaps beneath Flora's station.
Theodore was under no illusions that Harry Payne Whitney approved of his daughter's choice in a beau, because Whitney had told him as much, to his face, at the Knickerbocker Club when Quentin had come to him shortly after the end of the war to ask his daughter's hand. Whitney was not heartless, though; an avid sportsman like Theodore with a particular interest in thoroughbred racing, he had been relieved that his son, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, had not gone off to war and was currently spending a year as a desk clerk in the Army before attending Harvard, and he was moved by Theodore's loss of his two eldest sons and the wounds suffered by the two younger. Whitney clarified after this for Theodore, whom he respected personally even if he found his boundless energy and bullheaded nature quite tiring, that while he did not particularly approve of the match and wanted his daughter to take a yearslong grand tour of Europe before her engagement, he had told Quentin that he would not intervene to block a marriage, and that was good enough for the Roosevelts. The engagement had gone on, and so one of the grandest weddings in the history of New York was planned.
The political implications of the match were well understood, and not just because former President Hearst was on the invite list (former President Hughes, a close friend of the Whitney family despite political disagreements, was pointedly not). Theodore had, after all, not long ago been New York's hard-charging, disruptive Mayor, and one not particularly popular with many of the masters of the universe who nonetheless attended as a courtesy to the Whitneys; Helen Hay Whitney herself complimented the handsome groom and his gallantry in the war, but huffed "it is a shame he's the son of that horrible man!" Theodore, as was his wont, cared not a wit - his family had picked itself up from middle-class respectability [1] through his media empire to the upper echelons of American power, and now they were sealing their place within it as the Whitney and Vanderbilt fortunes were now as much part of the Roosevelt name as what he had made for himself with newspapers. The comparisons to a dynastic wedding in Europe was thus not unfounded, because newspapers reported it as much at the time - with the wedding, it suddenly became considered almost inevitable that Quentin would have a career in New York, and perhaps national, politics, an enormous amount of pressure to foist upon an affable young man of only twenty-one years of age.
The grand wedding at Oyster Bay had other effects, too; Roosevelt, a man for whom there was nothing quite like a good grudge, elected to further inflame his enemies within the New York Democratic Party by making Hearst an attendee whom he honored with a seat near the front, while declining to invite important figures like Al Smith, Bill Sulzer, or even Charlie Murphy, all three of whom Whitney did not care for but had felt pressured to invite to avoid a dust-up that would diminish his influence in Albany or at Gracie Mansion. The snub was understood as such and the factional rift amongst New York Democrats that had more to do with personality and generation than ideology deepened; Roosevelt did not know it yet, but he had earned powerful enemies for the remaining years of his life, and his influence was about to enter a very long period of decline as that of Smith in particular grew.
The reemergence of a glad-handing Hearst from two years of political semi-exile also served to open up a new wrinkle in the ex-President's personal life, one which quickly came to be a political liability just a month later as he attempted to launch his long-expected political comeback at the New York State Democratic Convention in Schenectady. For reasons that are still unclear, Hearst informed Roosevelt that well-liked former First Lady Millicent Hearst was unable to attend, creating a dubious excuse, and then privately made arrangements for his mistress Marion Davies - an actress in the employ of Roosevelt's Cosmopolitan Studios, a small outfit still at that time - to attend "as a guest of the Roosevelt family." Hearst's dalliances since leaving the Presidency with young Broadway starlets was something of an open secret in New York high society, but his intense personal privacy and a good deal of fear of the famously vindictive former President had kept such things quiet. Bringing Davies to the Roosevelt-Whitney wedding, on the other hand, put things almost entirely out in the open: Hearst and Millie were barely on speaking terms any more, and he was starting to live openly with his mistress. The Hearst-Davies relationship is a strange though oddly affectionate concluding chapter to the 27th President's life, especially once they absconded to California to live in a state of quiet opulence once he inherited the rest of his father's mining empire the following year, and it began in large part in late June 1918, when Davies had her "debut," if that was the term for it.
The wedding itself, of course, was just as much a spectacle as the press had hoped. Roosevelt arranged for a Navy boat to give a salute in view of Sagamore Hill (arranged by "cousin Franklin," startling the neighbors; doves and peacocks wandered galore, and there were bears and lions on site as well. Oriental performers brought from Chusan were the main entertainment of the evening, and Quentin and Flora left the grounds for their honeymoon in Europe under a sword salute of Quentin's fellow veterans, all of whom were men whom he had served with personally. Memories of that black Christmas two years earlier had entirely faded; the young couple, madly and deeply in love and with all the promise of the future ahead of them both romantically and professionally, stirred something in Theodore's heart he had almost forgotten was there. There were battles to come, in the tumultuous years after the war, a great many that he yearned to fight - but for one night, the Lion of Sagamore Hill could rest and look proudly upon the addition to his pride..." [2]
- American Royalty: The Roosevelt Dynasty's Enduring Legacy
[1] This may admittedly be underselling the earlier generations of Roosevelts a bit
[2] Lot going on in this chapter as we of course build towards the conclusion of the 1910s NY Dem contest between the Hearst-Roosevelt old guard and Smith's rising faction, as well as something of a generational transition as we finally get to one of the more wild features of Hearst's OTL life and Roosevelt nearing the end of the road (he won't die at the same time as OTL, but Teddy was a man who I think was destined to burn hot, bright, and fast). It's been interesting going back and re-reading content from the 1880s and 1890s and seeing how prominent the setup of the flipped-around Roosevelt and Hearst were even then, and it'll be weird when we eventually say goodbye to one and then both of them.
I wouldn't go so far as say "saved," but definitely better off in 1918, absolutely.
Portugal still has some considerable problems between the Estado Novo-adjacent Sidonio Pais and then conservatives who probably find Lino Neto a bit too accommodating, so watch that space
I guess it depends on how long Yusuf lives, because if Mehmed Vahdettin predeceases him that throws a wrench in Sabahaddin's plans.
Lol thank you!
A solid example!
Vindictive, resentful of old-money "elites," holds grudges forever, owns newspapers as well as a film studio...are you talking about Teddy Roosevelt or Rupert Murdoch? 
Second Wave: The Postwar Progressive Revolution of 1917-31
"...commitment to new outlets of organization and representation unrestricted by establishmentarian organizations; part and parcel of this, for instance, was the founding of the American Jewish Committee on July 1, 1918, in New York City. While inauspicious to most outside of the Jewish faith, it was in fact a major occasion, for it represented a sharp break with the group that shared its identical acronym, the American Jewish Congress.
What separated this new "AJC" from the old? Well, politics and identity, rather than even theology. For most of the 19th century, American Jewry had been heavily dominated by German-Jewish figures, often with backgrounds in European mercantilism and other professional trades; these German Jews were difficult to distinguish as Jewish had they not disclosed their faith, well-assimilated in their home countries and assimilating even faster in the United States. Though often theologically moderate, they were politically conservative and well-represented within the legal and banking profession, not exactly strongholds of progressive radicalism.
Starting in the 1880s and accelerating in the first two decades of the 20th century, however, American Jewishness shifted sharply and profoundly to be overwhelmingly Ashkenazi Jewish, from the Pale of Settlement in Russia or Austrian Galicia, both regarded as two of the poorest places in Europe and with the former in particular ravaged by frequent pogroms and other forms of aggressive state-encouraged violence and discrimination against Jews. These Yiddish-speaking immigrants arrived in massive numbers from Europe, settling primarily in New York and northern New Jersey, and both ethnically and economically they had virtually nothing in common with the extant organs of American Jewry, whether it be synagogues in quiet middle-class neighborhoods or the American Jewish Congress. Politically, they became the backbone of labor radicalism and showed more propensity for the Socialist Party than any other ethnicity in America, and so naturally, the Old AJC had no particular value to them.
While this example is specific to American Jews, and perhaps extreme in the sharp divergence between the old guard and restive newcomers, this was a process repeated in some form across much of the country. Freedmen refugees from the Confederacy found little appeal in many of abolitionist organizations once dominated by Booker T. Washington and flocked instead to the more radical NAACP; the AFL's stodgy craft unionism and coziness with business repelled many who instead sought out larger trade unions. As exemplified in the parlance of the time of the postwar America representing a "New Republic" and the prewar establishment being an "Old Republic," the institutions that had defined late 19th century America were fraying or being forced to realign and reform, as the energy of a generation that had just emerged from hell on earth grew in ways that nobody, anywhere, could entirely foresee..."
- Second Wave: The Postwar Progressive Revolution of 1917-31
What separated this new "AJC" from the old? Well, politics and identity, rather than even theology. For most of the 19th century, American Jewry had been heavily dominated by German-Jewish figures, often with backgrounds in European mercantilism and other professional trades; these German Jews were difficult to distinguish as Jewish had they not disclosed their faith, well-assimilated in their home countries and assimilating even faster in the United States. Though often theologically moderate, they were politically conservative and well-represented within the legal and banking profession, not exactly strongholds of progressive radicalism.
Starting in the 1880s and accelerating in the first two decades of the 20th century, however, American Jewishness shifted sharply and profoundly to be overwhelmingly Ashkenazi Jewish, from the Pale of Settlement in Russia or Austrian Galicia, both regarded as two of the poorest places in Europe and with the former in particular ravaged by frequent pogroms and other forms of aggressive state-encouraged violence and discrimination against Jews. These Yiddish-speaking immigrants arrived in massive numbers from Europe, settling primarily in New York and northern New Jersey, and both ethnically and economically they had virtually nothing in common with the extant organs of American Jewry, whether it be synagogues in quiet middle-class neighborhoods or the American Jewish Congress. Politically, they became the backbone of labor radicalism and showed more propensity for the Socialist Party than any other ethnicity in America, and so naturally, the Old AJC had no particular value to them.
While this example is specific to American Jews, and perhaps extreme in the sharp divergence between the old guard and restive newcomers, this was a process repeated in some form across much of the country. Freedmen refugees from the Confederacy found little appeal in many of abolitionist organizations once dominated by Booker T. Washington and flocked instead to the more radical NAACP; the AFL's stodgy craft unionism and coziness with business repelled many who instead sought out larger trade unions. As exemplified in the parlance of the time of the postwar America representing a "New Republic" and the prewar establishment being an "Old Republic," the institutions that had defined late 19th century America were fraying or being forced to realign and reform, as the energy of a generation that had just emerged from hell on earth grew in ways that nobody, anywhere, could entirely foresee..."
- Second Wave: The Postwar Progressive Revolution of 1917-31
I mean... Teddy as Logan Roy made a certain type of morbid sense heheVindictive, resentful of old-money "elites," holds grudges forever, owns newspapers as well as a film studio...are you talking about Teddy Roosevelt or Rupert Murdoch?
Very true, and amazing new chapter! thanksI mean... Teddy as Logan Roy made a certain type of morbid sense hehe
Independence Day Massacre
TRIGGER WARNING
"...the news that his good friend Charles Menoher had been assassinated in Memphis struck Pershing like a sack of bricks slamming into his chest; the two had been extremely close through campaign after campaign, with Pershing in time coming to call Menoher, "My mind in the field as much as my hand at campaign." There was no loss, personally, that affected him as much through the whole of the war, and that it came a whole year after the war "ended" just added to the cruelty of it.
The date of death - July 2, 1918 - left Pershing nonetheless with a queasy sense of foreboding. Menoher was regarded both by the Army occupation command as well as Confederate intermediaries as one of the more capable officials left behind by Pershing in Dixie; unlike the more instinctively retaliatory Harbord, Menoher was cool-headed and got on well with Confederate officialdom, and had even begun coordinating aid to towns hit hard by the unusually potent flu outbreak that had torn through the Confederacy for much of the spring. He was a good man, amongst the worst that could have been cut down, and Pershing couldn't help feel an uneasy sense that Menoher had specifically been targeted for a reason.
Two days later, his suspicions were proven correct."
- Pershing
"...exaggerated the extent to which the "July Offensive" was a coordinated plan; holed up at his stronghold in the east-central Tennessee hill country near the tripoint with Alabama and Georgia, it was in Forrest's personal interest that everybody in the Confederacy see the National Resistance Organization's fingerprints over the spectacular attacks. Nonetheless, there was a fair deal of collaboration between the NRO and the various Hillboy groups. It was well-known that the Yankees were worried about a repeat of the arbitrary savagery of the Red Summer, and that they had spent all spring preparing. It was also well-known that the Army Military District commanders were feeding reports of how well these preparations were going back to Philadelphia as well as friendly journalists across the Union. By late June, the War Department was putting out a steady stream of overly-optimistic assurances that the ferocious insurgency of 1917 had been largely quelled, assisted in part by the lull in fighting caused by the spring wave of the "Dixie flu" and also intentional restraint in operations by the guerillas, who through word-of-mouth and backchannel communications elected to lull the Yankee occupiers into a false sense of security before they would strike.
The debacle that was later called the "Independence Day Massacres" or "Fourt of July Offensive" had, like many failures, many fathers. With four of the quietest months of the occupation having concluded, the Army command had relaxed, as had junior officers and field sergeants. Discipline was less rigorous; corners were cut. Despite one of the commanding generals in Dixie, Charlie Menoher, being shot and killed by a sniper in Memphis on July 2, other Military Districts did not go on alert, assuming it was a lucky one-off or planned assassination. The Fourth of July holidays loomed, after all.
So suffice to say that attacks in all eleven occupied states, all throughout the day, on the quintessential American national holiday caught the Army entirely off guard. Hillboys materialized out of woods, hollers and farmhouses like a biblical swarm of locusts, opening fire on soldiers as they raised flags in town squares, as they prepared barbecues, and as they went out on patrol. Sheriffs, mayors, judges, those who had collaborated with or given aid to local occupiers were attacked and gunned down, stabbed or lynched from trees. Courthouses and schoolhouses were burned, rail depots seized, and telegram and telephone wires cut or poles chopped down. As the violence spread, and it became clear that every corner of the Confederacy was affected, it began to dawn on the Military District commanders that this was all entirely coordinated..."
- The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
"...Joplin, Missouri's dangerous proximity to the Arkansas state line. A reporter for the local newspaper later described the scene to an Army lieutenant in particularly graphic terms, describing how the Fourth of July picnic, which featured a number of veterans of the war there in honor, was suddenly beset upon in the town square by masked men with rifles, pistols, and grenades, and that two trucks with two Maxim guns apiece came careening into town, opening fire with abandon at the picnicgoers. He described children as young as five who were barely recognizable as human after being struck so many times, of women who lay dead on top of their screaming babes they had given their lives to save, of bodies mutilated by posthumous abuse by pistol or knife, and of several freedmen who lived in the city hung from what remained of a grand oak in the center of town. A similar attack against nearby Carthage was avoided thanks to alerts of what had occurred in Joplin; smaller-scale raids into West Virginia and Maryland were carried out, too, albeit with much smaller impacts.
The bloodshed in Joplin which left nearly a hundred dead, was on its own enough to trigger a massive groundswell of rage and, afterwards, confusion in the United States. The wanton slaughter of civilians including young children after the war was over was to the public utterly unacceptable, but also put paid to the idea that the insurgency was increasingly under control and that all things were moving smoothly towards the anticipated passage of the Confederate Third Amendment; it seemed, rather, that maybe things were actually worse than ever, if the Hillboys and NRO could raid American towns at will and mar a national holiday..."
- A Time of Atrocity: An Accounting of Crimes Committed in the Great American War
"...particular contempt was reserved for women; several brothels were firebombed in the "July Days," with any "collaborator" branded not just a traitor to their country but to the Confederate way of life. Their hair cut and with the word "whore" painted in red on their bare chests, women accused of prostitution were paraded naked down streets by hillboy gangs after Yankee soldiers and male collaborators had been massacred, to terrify the townspeople of what might happen if they cooperated even an iota with the occupation. Businesses that allowed so much as a single Yankee dime to be spent on their premises were burned; those who "associated" with freedmen were forced to cover themselves with tar and sing minstrel songs while hollering hillboys fired pistol rounds at their feet. The depravity on display in the first week of July 1918 was unmatched even by what went on during the extended Red Summer; it seemed to be part military operation, part vengeance campaign to crush dissent, and part gleeful barbarism for its own sake. What was clear, by the end, was that most Confederate civilians had gotten the message..."
- A Republic of Widows and Orphans
"...public relations disaster. What had unfolded between July 4-10 was a debacle of massive proportions, making the Root administration look not just inept but deceitful; the idea that the war was increasingly under control, and all that remained was for the Confederate state legislatures to swallow their pride and wave through the Third Amendment, now looked to be an outright lie. The Hillboys had not only risen up to attack the Army and civilians en masse across the Confederacy when they were thought to be in gradual, terminal decline, they had done so initially nearly with impunity, attacking wherever and whoever they wanted.
Two things about July 4th, 1918 were true and favorable to the American occupation, but nonetheless entirely irrelevant. The first was that tactically and in many ways strategically, the attacks were a military failure. Once soldiers came off their surprised back heels, the more hardened American occupation forces counterattacked with gusto. More Hillboys died in the first week of July than had died in the previous six months, and the violence exacted upon them and suspected supporters by individual soldiers was nearly as horrifying as the events of July 4th. The attacks had, ironically, exposed to the increasingly sophisticated Army intelligence network and aligned freedmen paramilitaries across the Military Districts the logistical networks including, critically, arms caches, that the Hillboys relied upon; in being able to secure these, and slaughtering hundreds of insurgents during the July Days and immediately after, the threat was genuinely culled at an operational level. The second was that despite the attacks, the American occupation did not relent - and in fact intensified - their pressure on legislators to wrap up the passage of the Third Amendment. If the NRO and the Hillboy militias had hoped to somehow salvage de jure slavery through their barbarism, such hopes were quickly dashed as occupation procedures in state capitals were quickly intensified.
These two things were true but also irrelevant because the American public ceased to care. It did not matter that the Hillboys had, military, essentially been defeated in many of the rural areas in which they operated, or that the Third Amendment would finally pass in September; what mattered is that the Root administration looked even more adrift than they had a year earlier, in the midst of the Red Summer, and now the economic conditions were worse, with the virulent flu pandemic on top of it. A brigade of Army soldiers massacring most of the town of Springdale, Arkansas as they attempted to pursue the instigators of the Joplin Massacre did not help; the situation was clearly out of control, and nothing was likely to bring it back under control.
Insofar as engendering this opinion amongst the American populace was an explicit goal of the Independence Day Massacres - and for guerilla commander Nathan Forrest II, it most certainly was - then the loosely-coordinated operation was a smashing success..." [1]
- The Root of the Problem: The Tumultuous Term of America's 29th President
[1] So, yes, this is basically just "Deep Fried Tet," which was also a tactical disaster for the Viet Cong that essentially ended them as a military force, but which would up being a massive moral and long-term strategic victory for them as it essentially killed public support for the war stateside.
@KingSweden24 , wow that was rough to read yet very well written, the very real consequenses of such resentment.
So as you can all see that was a lot of stuff crammed into June/July 1918; with that done I can start spreading out a bit more to catch up on some other parts of the world ahead of the 1918 US elections and then the pre-CEW endgame.