Summarize "Look to the West Volume V To Dream Again Interlogue: Silence in the Library Crosstime Update Report by Dr David Wostyn: 05/11/2019 (OTL Calendar) The material contained herein is classified as THANDE MOST SECRET. I understand that some might consider me sending a message at this point as foolhardy or inappropriate. However, given the manner in which 'Operation The Thande Institute Invasion Of Croydon, 2019'--I do wish Captain MacCauley would let someone else come up with codenames--is being carried out, there is nothing I can do at present to aid the effort. To briefly recap on the plan in case anything was left out before--we have been undertaking this at fairly short notice after all--we believe that Team Alpha are being held at an English Security Directorate (ESD) facility on Coombe Lane in the town of Croydon, which in the Britain or rather the England of this timeline remains its own town and has not been subsumed by London. Although to say that a lot of water has passed under the bridge of this timeline since the POD would be quite an understatement, the local geography knowledge from our own timeline of Sergeant Ellis and in particular Lieutenant Black has nonetheless proved quite useful. Despite the short notice, Lieutenant McConnell was able to secure a suitable surveillance point for us to observe the facility in question, which bears the incongruously merry name of Snowdrop House. I believe this is because the facility is not open about its identity and appears at first glance merely to be one of the fine old houses in this part of Croydon. This may help us in that it presumably limits the number of ESD staff and guards who may be present. In any case Lieutenant McConnell discovered that the house opposite Snowdrop House, named Bluebell House, has recently been vacated due to its former tenant, an MP named David Batten-Hale, lost his seat at the English general election a few months ago. His replacement seems uninterested in the house and it has been put on the market. Lieutenant McConnell and Sergeant Ellis had a look around the house earlier today, ostensibly on behalf of a buyer, and Sergeant Ellis was able to palm a spare key: we have therefore been able to re-enter tonight after the estate agent has gone home. We considered trying to enter Snowdrop House via the basement, but any sort of ambitious tunnel-digging was too time prohibitive and instead we took the opportunity to scout it out from this vantage point and, via triangulation, deduce a safe location to open a Portal there. I say safe, for there will always be an element of risk to going in blind like this--and who is to say the ESD does not use the rooms for different purposes than they seem--but given that Captain MacCauley and the others left ten minutes ago and no apparent alarm has been sounded, we can hope that our Portal did manage to open in a broom cupboard rather than a conference room...in session. However we did, of course, desire a backup plan, and as a result I am here in Bluebell House with Lieutenant Tindale observing from the window, behind what is hopefully a foolproof adaptive camouflage barrier. In the event that Captain MacCauley and the team can't get Team Beta to the Portal in Snowdrop House--or open another one there, but without GPS coverage that is tricky--then they may have to come back here where the Portal I am currently speaking to you through is still open. As a consequence they may be subject to reprisals from the ESD captors, I hesitate to use the term 'enemy fire' in this context but nonetheless...Lieutenant Tindale has his sniper rifle and the new nonlethal rounds, but 'sniper rifle' and 'nonlethal' are not words I am ready to believe belong in the same sentence. I can only hope that things do not escalate to that level, as I believe conflict with the natives of this timeline would not only be an abstract tragedy but would turn our path to the risk of future peril, for the people of this timeline are quite advanced enough to create Portals of their own if they learn how the theory works. As they may have already done so from Team Alpha if their interrogation methods are particularly ruthless, I fear. But now Lieutenant Tindale and I must wait for a report, and while we wait, I have realised that there is an opportunity here. You must think me foolish, to have no sense of priorities, to be churlish about the lives of my friends and colleagues--but there is a reason why I am choosing to use the emergency Portal to communicate directly with you, avoiding the radio transmissions of the digitiser which we surmise might have led the National Gendarmery to Team Alpha in the first place. You see, when I first came to Bluebell House I noticed that this room is in fact a library, or book depository might be a better term. How appropriate for Lieutenant Tindale and his sniper rifle, some would say. But still, not only do we have the old oak-panelled walls and shelves and leather-bound books one would expect to come with a fine old house like this, but also incongruous modern bookshelves with colourful plastic-backed books and even something not unlike an e-reader, though cruder than what we are used to. And crucially, this is the library of an MP, a Burgess to be precise, and as such it includes many works on history and geography. Many works that I would have given my right arm to have while we were trying to piece together the earlier history of this timeline, just using what vaguely relevant works we could cull from public libraries. But here it is, all here, all in one place, and in depth. In a place we will probably soon have to flee from. You will forgive me if I seize this opportunity with both hands. A room full of relevant books, and a Portal to throw them through: I trust Mr Batten-Hale will not mind if we borrow them long enough to copy them. The floor is already covered in piles of them taken from the shelves, probably to be moved to a new house elsewhere. He likely will not notice if a few more are taken away and then swiftly returned. First of all I notice a children's encyclopaedia, from which I surmise that Mr Batten-Hale has children (a deduction hardly worthy of Sherlock Holmes!) Though they are obviously not in-depth, such works are excellent from our perspective (you will recall the report by Dr Cussans on Timeline H) because they introduce things to us that books penned for adults will assume 'everyone knows'. As a result, I think I will begin with volume F to H. I have left it turned to a particularly relevant page... . From - "The Children's Complete Cyclopaedia, by Alfred Yew, 14th Edition (2001)-- GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY: The Stories of All the Peoples of the World and the Lands in which they Live THE GLOBAL GAMES THE NATIONS OF the world must by their nature compete, or the human race would stagnate and eventually go extinct. But some of the ways that they have competed in the past have been destructive: war and colonialism are the two most blood-tinged examples. Some men thought that the losses of those wars and colonies were an acceptable price to keep the human race alive, but those men lacked vision. They were wrong. There are other ways in which nations can compete that are constructive, not destructive. Science, and in particular the Race for Space, is one (see volume Q-S pp. 132-49 and pp. 254-260). Sport is another. And of all the sports competitions between the nations, the greatest is the Global Games. THE MAN WHO SAW WHAT SPORT COULD DO FOR THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD Peter Rathbone was not a sportsman himself, except perhaps in the field of hunting. He was an English explorer who was born in Hereford in the year 1841. He travelled to countries such as Perousie and China to explore, and even to more dangerous places like Rajasthan and Portugal. But it is not his exploring that he is remembered for. In the year 1873, when he was thirty-two, he happened to be in France and saw a football match played between visiting English schoolchildren and their French friends. He realised that sport was a means by which the nations could compete in a way that would drive them to greater heights of success, without the killings of war. But not just football or diamondball or H-ball, but in many sports. Different sports were more popular in different countries. They should all experience them and respect each others' success. A man from Germany might never even have heard of the sport of pulu and think that the Burmese are inferior to him because they are less capable at football. But put him on horseback and let him see the Burmese run rings around him, and then he will respect them. As in all things, more knowledge is always to the benefit of all. THE COMPETITION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD Rathbone got together with other enthusiasts and created the World Sports Society, which became the modern Global Games Commission. But it would be years before they attracted enough wealthy patrons to fund their inaugural sports celebration. It would not be called the Global Games until years later, but we now remember that competition in 1882 as the First Games. The First Games were a success but they would not become a regular event until Rathbone secured funding once again in 1886, ever since which the Games have been held every three years except in cases of particular global emergencies. Wonder Question: What countries were represented at the First Games? At the First Games athletes did not compete under a flag or for a named nation because it seemed obvious to everyone at the time who was representing which country. But as political borders and definitions have changed since then it has become more difficult to say who was represented. For example Joseph Collins, the runner who came first in the 150-toise dash at the First Games, was born in Scotland but grew up in England, and at the time both countries were part of Great Britain. Collins tragically died before the Act of Separation and so we do not know which country he would have chosen as his own. THE INSTITUTION THAT HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIME The Pandoric War interrupted the Games not long after they were first instituted, and some people feared that the horrors of that war and what came after would doom such peaceful pursuits. But the Games had captured the imagination of people across the world and could not be stopped. Though the Games were interrupted again for the Sunrise War and the Last War of Supremacy, they continue to this day, and today more countries contribute than ever before. Wonder Question: What are 'the Olympics'? The Olympics, Olympic Games or Olympiad are a popular nickname for the Global Games, but this is not their official name and the name was not used until many years after the First Games. The original Olympic Games were a sports competition held in Ancient Greece which have some parallels to the modern Global Games and there has been debate over whether these should be emphasised today (see entry NEO-HELLENISM in volume N-P pp. 109) but the connection has never been officially acknowledged by the Global Games Commission. THE GREAT ENEMY OF SANCHEZISM The Global Games show how the people of the world's nations can acknowledge and celebrate the differences that divide them and allow different people of different nations to excel at different pursuits. They are anathema to Societism, but the popularity of the Games means that athletes from Societist countries have long competed in them. The first athletes from Societist countries competed at the 1916 games and then again in 1919, but then fear and the imposition of new rules requiring athletes to compete under a flag meant that no more athletes from Societist countries competed until the 1943 games. In 1943 they competed under an empty flagstaff, but from 1946 onwards they used the Combine Threefold Eye flag that was accepted by those Societists who realised that they must at least make some small compromise with reality (see entry FLAGS in this volume pp. 89). Wonder Question: Why are Global Games winners awarded silver laurels? The practice of awarding winners silver laurels was introduced in 1934 and is one of the practices derived from the Ancient Greek Olympic Games. Prior to that time cups or medals were awarded but exactly what type was up to the country hosting the games to decide. Copper laurels for runners-up were not introduced until 1949. THE VICTORS OF THE GLOBAL GAMES It is wrong to judge a country by how many Global Games laurels its athletes has won, for all countries will excel in different pursuits, and not all nations have had independent countries that could compete for the same length of time. Nonetheless the country whose athletes have won the most laurels at present is the Russian Confederation, followed by the Empire of North America and the Chinese Empire. Formerly some sources counted all Societist countries as one, in which case they would be second instead, but today this practice is frowned upon..." . (Dr. David Wostyn) And so you can see the great advantages to snatching a few minutes here and there to pass along these books to you. And not just books. Mr Batten-Hale appears to be an enthusiast for cartography and he has a number of maps as wall posters. The label on the back states that this map, made by the company Richards of Erewash, is a modernised and recoloured reproduction of a contemporary map showing the state of affairs in the Empire of North America shortly after the Great American War. As that subject has consumed much of my attention (largely because of the nature of the books I had available to me at the time) in recent weeks, it would be a tragedy if I did not take advantage of this. I'm sure Mr Batten-Hale won't notice if I stick it back up again after you've finished scanning it in... Part #201: Spoilers (Dr. David Wostyn) I am glad you agree that this opportunity cannot be wasted, gentlemen...of course I will not be cutting down these books to digitisable extracts as in the past but passing the whole lot through. It is up to you on the other side to reduce them to a hopefully at least somewhat coherent narrative for those studying this timeline's history. In the past, Dr Lombardi and Dr Pylos of Team Alpha and then myself for Team Beta have tried to preface each segment with a quote: initially one of at least partial summative relevance to the topic of the segment, and then for the last fifty updates I have hunted out quotes from Pablo Sanchez to try to illuminate the ideological conflict that so underlines everything in this world. However because I am now just passing on complete books over the space of a few short minutes or hours, there is no time for this. If you wish to preserve continuity of style with the earlier segments when these reports are collated, I suggest one of the Thande Institute analysts on the Our TimeLine side search through the books to come up with suitable ones. Whatever you do, though, don't give that job to Dr Lister, if the abstracts on his papers are any guide he just picks a random paragraph from anywhere and pastes it in-- * "...considerable improvement over the Neptune-II, which was a purely French domestic project. The Neptune-III however saw input from Italy and England, as its primary role was to launch the Pelerin (AKA Pellegrino in Italian or Peregrine in English) suborbital threshold bomber, itself a joint project between the three nations. The precise armament of the upper stage remains classified but it is believed that the three countries' threshold programmes have remained separate, with a different domestically produced warhead loadout for each nation's bombers. The rocket and upper stage bomber were both authorised in 1976 and the prototype saw its first flight in 1984, with full operational capacity reached for France in 1987 and Italy and England in 1988. When the Last War of Supremacy broke out, all three countries held to the Ratisbon Convention and did not deploy threshold weapons on European soil, but seven attacks were made against Combine forces in the American theatre by a total of five Pelerins. The French were responsible for four of the bombings, the Italians for two and the English for the remaining one. As a consequence of the Venice disarmament talks of 2011, each country is now limited to three operational Pelerins, with the French additionally having two more in a disassembled state that may be reassembled within a timescale of weeks..." -- Taken from Finch's Complete Militaria of the World, 19th Edition (2013) * From : "Great Men and Women of World History" by L. H. Hodgkins and P. T. Rendell (2000)-- James FitzGeorge and Alistair Wesley were two very brave men who were the first to fly an aerodrome. The boys knew each other from childhood. James' grandfather was William FitzGeorge who saved the Republic of Bengal in a war. Alistair's father was Liam Wesley, who saved the President of England's life. But the boys became more famous than even these relatives. When James and Alistair were young, the only kinds of flying machines were steerables and balloons. These were slow and clumsy machines. James and Alistair were sure that they could do better. In a place in Cygnia called Jinjin[1] in the year 1888 they tested their first aerodrome. An aerodrome is a flying machine that is heavier than air, but works by the air passing faster over the curved wings than it does below them. (See Diagram). The first test ended in disaster. Alistair broke his leg and took months to recover. The young men studied their design and learned from their mistakes. They needed a rudder to steer the drome and to better stabilise their design. In 1889 they tried again and successfully flew for just 18 seconds. But now they knew it could be done. Many more inventors followed in their footsteps. Some people even think the French inventor Gregoire Perret flew his aerodrome before Alistair and James did. They are wrong, but it is right that they think differently, for it would be a poor world if we were all the same. And we can now look down on all the wonders of that world from Alistair and James' invention, and all the other ones that have sprung from it. * (Dr David Wostyn) Yes, apologies, the children's books were closer to hand, I will start on the adult ones in a minute. In any case you will of course want to get the proper historical context rather than leaping straight into a subject without first laying the groundwork. Hello? * From "A Young Person's Dictionary of Science" by O. R. Kavanagh (1999)-- CARYTIC PHYSICS is a special branch of physics to do with the interior core of the atom, sometimes called the caryus from the Greek word for nut. By definition carytic physics began in the year 1929 when the famous McElroy and Wang experiment at Cometa University found that most of the atom's mass was concentrated in this caryus and not evenly distributed as the former geometric atom theory had held. It was found by further experiments that the caryus was made up largely of particles with an electric charge deficit.[2] The long-established physics of electricity held that deficit particles attracted surfeit particles and repelled those of the same balance. Therefore there must be some greater force holding the deficit particles together in the caryus. Men wondered at these great forces locked inside the atom and whether they could be unleashed. But it would not be for thirty more years that this would be seen, in the triple tragedy that ended the Sunrise War. It has taken time for the peoples of the world to accepted that carytic physics can be used for good as well as ill, to produce paradox engines to heat our homes and free us from dependence on combustible fuel sources. But the development of the threshold bomb in the 1950s will always be inextricably linked with the history of carytic physics... * (Dr. David Wostyn) What do you mean, 'more twentieth century stuff'? I told you, you need to see it in context! It's no use reading about the Last War of Supremacy unless you know where the conflict comes from-- * From "A Review of Global Defence Capabilities, 2018" by the National Register Institute of Global Politics (2018)-- Since the first deployment of threshold bombs in Russia in 1959, the technology behind the weapon has proliferated worldwide but has also been subject to severe international controls, helped by the sheer levels of global public revulsion for the weapon and its original users. As of 2018, in total 49 threshold bombs have been used in anger, the vast majority (38) in the Last War of Supremacy. A further 122 bombs have been used in test firings, but these have been heavily restricted by disarmament treaties over the years and the Assembly of Sovereign Nations is now hopeful that tests may be subject to a comprehensive international ban from a tentative date of 2023. Currently a total of 14 nations worldwide have access to threshold weapons, discounting those which lack their own native programme but have mutual defence treaties with threshold-armed countries. Excluding the forced disarmament programmes following the Last War of Supremacy, the only country to have voluntarily given up a threshold weapons programme is Panchala, following the democratic revolution which overthrew the despotic Ram Kumar regime there in 1982. Two particular taboos associated with threshold weapons are the use of them against civilian targets and the delivery method. The former has been explicitly banned by international treaty following their first use against cities in 1959, and this treaty has never been violated (barring some borderline cases during the Last War of Supremacy due to military forces digging in too near to urban centres). Delivery has been somewhat more controversial. Traditional deployment has been made either from ground-based forces or from the air (or indeed suborbital craft in more recent years). The controversy ultimately stems from the strength of feeling over the former factor, and that the maximum avoidance of civilian casualties necessitates a high level of precision that only a human targeter in close proximity to his target can deliver. Long-range suborbital military rockets (first tested in the 1960s) could in theory deliver threshold bombs just as they deliver conventional warheads, but the fact that their targeting is insufficiently precise to strike a moving army has led to a near-universal ban. Shorter-range rockets have been more up for debate, but the prospect of interference with their ypologic brains leading to a mistargeting incident has meant they have only been used in combat twice, both incidents during the more desperate moments of the Last War of Supremacy. Finally of course there is the delivery method used in their first deployment in 1959, which has naturally been subject to considerable stigma from official state forces but there is always the possibility of history repeating itself. This has been another factor supporting the severe limitations of the numbers of threshold weapons in existence at any given time: certainly there is enough pitchblende ore in the world to produce xanthium and hesperium sufficient to destroy the world many times over... * (Dr. David Wostyn) Look, if you skip all the years in between you'll be stuck when you find a word you don't recognise and you don't have any context! How do you think I did all those footnotes? * From "Freedom in Focus: Global Politics 2017" by the National Register Institute of Global Politics (2017)-- If we may be disappointed with the backsliding of one or two nations on our biennial Liberty Index compared to 2015, we should not lose sight of the bigger picture that compared to 25 years ago the world is a much freer place. Even countries like the Russian Confederation has made considerable progress in press freedom and freedom of speech, doubtless due to the removal of the existential threat of so many adjacent Societist powers providing an excuse for the ruling classes there. For the same reason it may be disappointing but it is perhaps not so surprising that Corea is one of the cases where there has been a noticeable decline, with the arrests of journalists and closure of some papers in April 2016 being justified as a 'patriotic action' against the threat to the east. The ENA is particularly to be praised for the relaxation of restrictions on free speech, to the point that some of its more rambunctious Traditionalist Patriot Vote politicians have complained it is 'turning into California'. To which our response would be we would only hope that would be the eventual case: as such men are decidedly a minority, it might not be a vain hope. Another example which we have naturally watched with great expectancy over the past twenty years, and which has thus far defied the expectations of pessimists by undergoing quite the recovery towards a state of freedom, is of course the Republic of-- * From "Vanity Fayre, Issue 1,502" edited by Mary Mannington (2019)-- Who's little Miss Pauline Hartington stepping out with now? The cunning young fellow's kept his masque on but our intrepid reporter says she detected the distinct odour of whisky and haggis. Can it be that our own Foreign Secretary's daughter is consorting with the enemy? Is good honest roast beef no longer enough to satisfy her? And what will Mrs Hamilton think, left at home all alone in Govan north of the border? [cont. page 22] Is Your Man More Scared Of Congress Than Premier Tukhachevsky Is? Use These Ten Simple Tricks To Find Out!" * (Dr. David Wostyn) There, I thought that would make you pay attention. Now do it properly or there'll be more of that, Mrs Batten-Hale's got quite the stack here... * From: "The Nations of India, 1700-2000" by Jason Hume and Krishna Haidar (2004) Bengal undoubtedly came through the Great Jihad in as intact a state it did thanks principally to the efforts of two men. The first of these was President William FitzGeorge,the son of the former 'Richard IV' usurper of Great Britain--who himself lived through the bulk of the Jihad and died in Bengal aged 76 in 1855. Despite his father's disgrace (albeit rather reduced in scope by him getting along quite well with Frederick II) William worked his way up through the ranks of the East India Company and had achieved the presidency of British Bengal by 1846, when the Jihad began to grind towards the nation's borders. The second of the two was of course Nurul Huq, who matched the Mahdists with his own Islamic authority, rallied Bengalis to a reluctant support for the British as the lesser of two evils (achieved due to Huq's longstanding personal opposition to the British, meaning his support carried more weight) and would eventually be martyred by Mahdist mujahideen in 1850. Nonetheless we should not ascribe the entirety of the victory to these two. Commodore Edward Cavendish's reinforcements (actually intended for California) helped turn the tide and the Commodore himself fought on land, being instrumental in the victory at Burdwan in 1851. Many Bengali officers earned great feats of victory, some of whose names are recorded because of the influence they went on to have in post-Jihad Bengal, though sadly due to the prejudices of the time many are not known. One such man, Ranajit Chatterjee, is particularly well known in the British Isles due to his close friendship and alliance with Liam Wesley, the so-called Bad Duke, who fought against the mujahideen from 1852 onwards as one of his worldwide adventures. The two saved each others' lives numerous times, were responsible for slaying the key Jihad commanderSelim Arif after he had burned the village of Silda and killed Chatterjee's uncle, and after the threat to Bengal subsided they went on adventures deep into the hostile Jihad-held lands to the west. In the British Isles (especially Ireland) their adventures are remembered with Wesley as the leader and Chatterjee as the sidekick, while of course in Bengal their positions are reversed. The reality is that the two men considered each other equal partners. Their positive reputation in their homelands is rather lacking in countries such as Berar and Panchala, where they are painted as thieves for having 'retrieved' a number of valuable pieces of art and Hindu religious manuscripts before they could be destroyed by the rampaging mujahideen with their hardline iconoclastic interpretation of Islam. Many of these works are still exhibited in museums in Europe or Bengal despite the modern countries' attempts to get them back. Some were donations but Chaterjee and Wesley made a tidy profit off of others. All of this helped finance the spectacular wedding of Wesley to Chaterjee's sister Priya (also sometimes known by the English form of her name Freya) in 1859. This was primarily a Hindu ceremony, as Wesley's own religious beliefs only extended to a sort of vague acknowledgement of the Church of Ireland. Though this marriage represented a considerable settling down of Wesley from his youth which had left a trail of broken hearts across Europe during the Democratic Experiment era, it scandalised large parts of society (such as it was after years of Populism) when he returned to Europe in 1861 and bought a large townhouse in London. The whole affair illustrated the somewhat confused and Legion-syndromic nature of the British public's attitudes towards Indians: the Orientalist art and cuisine craze of a generation before contrasting with the simple xenophobia towards treating those of a different skin colour and faith as equal, then overlaid with the vague sense that this was treading too close to Linnaeanism and thus was itself a suspiciously foreign idea. Certainly the small number of Burdenists tied themselves in knots in debates over whether Bengalis qualified as 'black' or could be numbered among Eveleigh's Asians which he considered equal to white Europeans.[3] The continuation of some boorish and outrageous habits by Wesley generally tipped the scales towards society's ostracism in general and he would not recover his position until the Russian Embassy incident of 1868. However, though Wesley and Chaterjee were heavily involved in the 1855 mission to support the embattled French in the Carnatic by sea, it is worth remembering that this operation was ultimately the brainchild of William FitzGeorge, displaying his genius for logistics. Though the financial losses of repelling the Jihad ultimately led to the Privatisation of Bengal and the breakdown of lines between European and native in that country, in the short term the solidarity between Europeans first created by the India Board decades before would continue. At least between the British and the French. With Portugal badly weakened and then falling to revolution itself, the Portuguese possessions in India mostly fell to the Jihad in the short term, as did the weakened, Portuguese-influenced Maratha confederate states and British Bombay. Neither Britain nor France was in a position to take advantage of the chaos when the Jihad began to collapse in on itself from the mid-1850s onwards. Persia did gain greater influence in the northern Maratha states such as Gujarat and Rajputana (building on its extant position in Kalat) but Goa itself, the ancient fortress of the Portuguese, would eventually end up in the same hands as much of the old Portuguese empire: those of the UPSA... * (Dr. David Wostyn) There, isn't that much better? Now, shall we continue? [1] Spelled Gingin in OTL. [2] Reflecting a thematic revival of the monist theory of electric charge in the early 20th century, TTL terminology generally refers to surfeit and deficit of charge rather than negative and positive charge respectively. [3] A somewhat similar debate happened in 1888 in OTL after Lord Salisbury referred to Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian to be a British MP (winning his seat in 1892 after an earlier failed attempt) as 'a black man'. Part #202: Middle-earth in the Middle Kingdom "2 x turkey dhansaks with rice, one with coriander dip and one without = 12R.4f.-m 1 x jiaozi vegetable sharing platter with side order of kimchi borsht = 4R.3f.2m 1 x garlic naan with cocoa dip = 2R.1f.-m Delivery charge = 1R.-f.-m Total 19R.8f.2m" --From the Correspondence of Bes. David Batten-Hale (New Doradist Party--Croydon Urban) * (Dr. David Wostyn) --no, I said you SHOULDN'T let Dr Lister do the starting quotes...anyway, I must apologise for the biographical entries, I no longer have access to the proper biographical dictionary we borrowed from a library before, it will have to be the children's book for now, at least unless there's a better one here I can find... * From : "Great Men and Women of World History" by L. H. Hodgkins and P. T. Rendell (2000)-- Tamahimana was a man born into what our own people at the time would have called savagery, but he rose to the very top of civilisation, a great hero and the counsellor of kings. Tamahimana was the son of Apehimana, a great man in his own right. Apehimana had been one of the rangatira chiefs at the very first Hira Hui High Assembly of Autiaraux in the year 1825, rising to power at a young age because of his role in the destruction of the slave ship El Dorado. Because Apehimana was a great warrior--and because the old men of the Hira Hui feared him--he was soon declared Warlord and sent far away from Autiaraux to protect the islands from other slavers. But Apehimana was not only a defender, but a conqueror. He led a campaign across the Pacific islands that included the conquest of Tonga in 1827, where he chose to settle down. Apehimana had killed the Tongan king and now became a king by his own hand in all but name. Apehimana was such a great man that his sons thought they would never surpass him, and Tamahimana least of all, for he was the youngest of Apehimana's many sons by his many wives. While the elder sons vied for position by fighting and conquering, building big palaces and monuments to their own glory, Tamahimana was an imaginative dreamer. He dreamed of sailing the seas not only for war but also just to explore, to travel to other lands not to conquer them but just to prove it was possible. Most of all he dreamed that the Maure could build a great canoe, bigger than any since the time when they had first come to Autiaraux, a canoe that could sail all the way across the vast oceans to reach the lands of the keroi, the Europeans. Then the Maure would have finally proved that they were equal to the peoples that had been visiting them for a lifetime now, sometimes as friends and sometimes as foes. Though that dream would one day be realised, it would not be Tamahimana who sailed that great canoe: history had other plans for him. Back home in Autiaraux, the Hira Hui gradually became less of a talking shop and more of a real government. Powerful rangatira chieftains no longer only fought for more power for themselves and their own iwi-tribe, but to rule all the Maure as one nation. To stop domination by one ruler or civil war, the Maure created a system where one rangatira chief would be chosen to serve as kawana, first among equals, for one year before handing on to another. For a time in the 1840s this system meant that leaders of two powerful factions derived from the two old Maure alliances took it in turn, but in 1854 a man named Tetumate became kawana. He was of a younger generation, able to see past the old rivalries, and believed the Maure needed to become one centralised people. He had seen how European visitors could divide them with their schemes and feared what might happen. Tetumate was strong and a visionary but he was also ruthless in the pursuit of his goal. He would not tolerate any Maure to exist independently outside the authority of the Hira Hui and the Kawana. His opponents in this included the Maure colony at Maureville in Antipodea--and Apehimana's little personal empire on Tonga. In 1858, thirty-one years after Apehimana had conquered Tonga, when he was seventy years old, a surprise attack by a huge United Maure fleet fell upon the islands. Apehimana and his men fought bravely but were overwhelmed. Apehimana was slain along with most of his family, but Tamahimana escaped with one hundred warriors who vowed to one day seek revenge on Tetumate. Tamahimana knew that they would have to recover their strength before they could try. So he took his fleet of canoes north. For a time he thought to rebuild his father's empire on islands that did not yet know the Maure flag, but there were many more Europeans in these waters who might attack. Tamahimana decided that the only way to be sure of what the Europeans would do would be to rebuild his strength under their very noses. Over the next few years he and his men gradually crossed from one island to another, eventually reaching the Meridian Philippines. The Philippines were overwhelming to the Maure, who had never seen so many people packed into a land before. Tamahimana decided that Tetumate, with his push for more agriculture and industry, wanted Autiaraux to become like that, and swore anew to oppose him. But Tamahimana also heard of even greater lands to the north, with even more people and opportunities. He was intrigued... * From: The National Register Atlas of World History, 8th Edition (2002)-- THE SECOND RIVERINE WAR (1863-1868) was the third significant clash between the Beiqing and Feng dynasties of North and South China following the Anqing Incident (1826-1831) and the First Riverine War (1844-1850). The Second War was ultimately foreshadowed by the outcome of the First, which among other things saw Sichuan shift from neutrality to pro-Feng alignment under Viceroy Xie Bokang. Sichuan's ambiguous and precarious position could only last for so long, and though the Beiqing dynasty was consumed for years by internal difficulties (the death of the Chongqian Emperor and his succession by the Jianing Emperor; war scares with Corea; factionalism and resentment by the Manchu and Mongol minorities for Beiqing policies) it would not stand idly by when Sichuan went from pro-Feng autonomy to outright being a Feng province after the death of Xie Bokang in 1862. The Beiqing, who had finally (if somewhat erratically) turned to modernisation in the years immediately before the Second Riverine War, once again reiterated their view that the Feng were an illegitimate rebellion and open war began again. If the two Chinas (especially the Beiqing) had not quite modernised their armed forces to the levels that had wrought havoc across North America a decade before, they were nonetheless on the road to industrial warfare and this meant that the titular 'riverine' theatre of conflict--the land between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers--was bitterly fought over. Many mercenaries and weapons from the Great American War and European conflicts flowed into the area and turned the war into, as it is poetically known in China, the Battle of Four Thousand Bloodstains. The ultimate outcome of the war was far more decisive than the grinding pace in the riverine theatre would suggest, thanks to newly <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON> providing a western theatre. Regions of China which had owed rather theoretical loyalty to the Beiqing following the Reclamation War (1814-1819) were conquered by the Feng, including the prestigious 'New Great Wall' forts facing Dzungaria (itself ruled by the Kazakhs and influenced in turn by the Russians). In the second half of the war, it was the conquest of western cities such as Xining, Lanzhou and ultimately Xi'an which decided the fate of the war. The conflict ended in victory for the Feng dynasty, with the full annexation of Qinghai, Gansu, Huijiang and Shaanxi provinces and effective control of all the east south of the Yellow River, including cities such as Luoyang and Kaifeng. The Beiqing were reduced to a husk of their former self, with many commentators predicting they would soon be doomed and China would reunite. Because history is never that simple, the Beiqing would last for decades more... (Infobox in original atlas with portrait of dark-skinned, tattooed man in Chinese robes) Tamahimana was a Maure chieftain who fled his father's independent island domain after the campaigns of Tetumate (q.v.) He came to the Republic of Formosa in 1861 and then went on to fight in the Second Riverine War, where he and his fellow Maure fighters acquired a fearsome reputation among their Beiqing opponents. His greatest victory was at the Battle of Suqian (1865) where the Beiqing commander was slain far behind the fighting lines by Tamahimana's infiltrators, leading to the collapse of the Beiqing position in Jiangsu province. After the war, his fame meant he became a court curiosity to the Xiaohong Emperor and then a trusted counsellor to the Xuanming Emperor when he succeeded his father in 1867. Xuanming attributed to Tamahimana's support and advice--as someone outside the old power structures of China--his ability to survive political attacks following the embarrassing loss of northern Daiviet to the Siamese in the Second Sino-Siamese War (1869-1871). In the year 1873 Tamahimana left China with the Emperor's blessing to return to Autiaraux: in 1874 Kawana Tetumate would be found dead under mysterious circumstances that clearly indicated he had lost his mana. It would be many years before anyone else would introduce the traditional southern Chinese silkworm venom based poison known as gu to the Pacific Islands. * From: "Naval Warfare Through the Ages" by Christine Singer-- The first time that two non-European or -Novamundine[1] modern military forces met at sea would be a dramatic event. However it is hard to define exactly what 'modern' means in this context and this means it is hard to pin down when the first instance was. For example, the clashes between Corean and Yapontsi naval forces in the Imjin War of the sixteenth century were arguably as modern as anything in Europe at the time (contrary to popular belief, the Yapontsi were using gunpowder and had access to shipbuilding techniques at this time). However, if we are to use the most common 'know it when I see it' definition of modern, the most likely suspects are the Second Riverine War (1863-1868) between the two Chinese dynasties at the time, and the immediately following Second Sino-Siamese War (1869-1871) between the southern Feng dynasty and the Siamese empire. The Second Riverine War was theoretically a conflict between two modernised Chinas, but the northern Beiqing dynasty continued to lag behind, its partnership programmes with Europeans decidedly lacklustre and halfhearted compared to those of the southern Feng. What did not help was Beiqing reliance on Scandinavian military advisors in the 1840s and then, following Scandinavia's defeat in the Unification War, Jianing fired them without first securing replacements. As the Scandinavians had been particularly heavily involved in the naval modernisation programme, it was in this field that the Beiqing had the most difficulty in the conflict (whereas on land the difference between the two powers' weaponry and tactics was less noticeable). Although the Beiqing had access to quite modern wooden ships (the first Chinese armourclad would not be built until 1874, and by the Feng), they were ultimately held back by insufficient loyalty and morale on the part of their poorly paid sailors. The Beiqing did not drill their sailors on gunnery or conduct live ammunition training: indeed, when the Beiqing and Feng fleets first met in force at the Battle of Jiaozhou Bay (1864), it was noticed by European observers that many of the Beiqing ships' guns failed to work altogether. The ultimate cause was apparently corruption, with poorly loyal Beiqing sailors (many of whom had doubtless never expected to have to go to war) having sold the gunpowder from their shells, replaced it with cement and pocketed the difference.[2] Beiqing naval performance improved slightly over the course of the war but the Feng dominated the high seas, especially when Corea joined the war in 1865 and added their own fleet. Ultimately the parlous state of the Beiqing Navy may therefore give us reasonable grounds for excluding it from the 'modern' qualifier, regardless of what it looked like on paper. The Feng and the Coreans both had less ambiguously modern naval forces but they were on the same side, albeit more as barely acknowledged cobelligerents than allies. Under other circumstances the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company might have got involved on one side or another, but the war came at a time when much of the company's efforts were sunk into either consolidating their grip on Yapon or deepening their influence in California, and so uncharacteristically the RPLC played little part in the war. Other European and Novamundine trading companies aided the Feng as before, but--fitting the general trends in the region--compared to the last war they found themselves in a much more subordinate position, with the Feng picking and choosing what weapons and mercenaries they wished to purchase. Events elsewhere also influenced which companies were involved, with more input from the Americans and Meridians (who had absorbed the former Spanish and Portuguese contribution) and less from the French, Belgians and Scandinavians. However, the war did see France gain further influence over the Liaodong Republic (as a consequence of the Republic facing down an increasingly hostile Corea and now lacking any hope of help from the Beiqing) and in 1875 France would sign a lease on the port of Lusan[3] to develop it into a naval base. In the titular Riverine theatre of the war, things were more evenly matched, with the Beiqing investing in timberclad riverboats armed with guns that usually worked: the riverine navy had been seen as more of a priority in the interwar period. The Feng learned more from riverine tactics that had been used in the Great American War, but overall the two sides failed to make much headway against each other: it was through battles on land, at great cost of human life, that the tide finally turned in favour of the Feng and left all the land between the rivers in their hands. The Yellow River, effectively forming much of the border between the two Chinas after the war, would in turn see rapid militarisation even as the forts and timberclad gunboats on the Yangtze fell into disuse, no longer needed as the Yangtze was now fully within Feng territory. Many of the old gunboats were redeveloped into small freighters or, as more Chinese ports were opened to (cautious and controlled) European trade in the 1880s, even tour boats. Given all the caveats associated with considering the Beiqing's naval military forces as 'modern', then, a less ambiguous option for the title of first naval conflict between two modern military forces not of European or Novamundine origin would be the following Second Sino-Siamese War. The Siamese Empire had been modernising its military for years and was ready for a rematch following the loss of the First Sino-Siamese War (1832-1838). The sometimes ruthless Feng policies in Feng-occupied northern Daiviet following that war had helped the Siamese cement their grip on what might otherwise be rebellious vassals: the Daiviet people were outraged by the stories told to them by refugees fleeing Feng rule. The Siamese had been preparing for a long time and fought a war in Cambodia in 1853-1856 that resulted in the expulsion of the Belgian Ostend Company and the assertion of control over Cochinchina (southern Daiviet) as well as Annam (northern Daiviet). The victory not only lent general morale to the Siamese but also helped create a narrative that the Siamese were the benevolent protectors of the people of Indochina against all foreign intervention, whether it be European or Chinese. On land the two sides were fairly even, with the Siamese prevailing more due to the exhaustion of the Feng following the Second Riverine War and the need for troops to hold down some of the newly acquired western provinces. By sea, however, the Siamese Navy triumphed over its Feng counterpart, perhaps because the Feng had grown complacent in their tactics from facing the weaker Beiqing. The most significant naval battle of the war was the Battle of Qiongzhou Strait, where Admiral Devakul defeated Admiral Rui, despite being numerically outmatched, by the application of brilliant new line-breaking tactics that were soon the object of study even in European military acacemies. Devakul proceeded to land troops on Hainan Island and took the capital Qiongshan. Ultimately this did not go any further as Devakul lacked the soldiers to do any more and the Chinese reacquired the island at the peace treaty, but this was still a huge embarrassment for the Feng, particularly in the wake of the great victory of the Second Riverine War. The late nineteenth century in Asia was therefore a period of buildup and brinksmanship by several of the rising great powers, and certainly puts a lie to the Eurocentric term 'Long Peace' for this era... [1] A term used by some authors in TTL as a more neutral descriptor for 'the Americas' without saying 'American' as that is the specific demonym of the ENA. It is derived from the Latin name for 'New World'. [2] Similar problems hampered the Qing Dynasty's Beiyang Navy in the First Sino-Japanese War in OTL. [3] AKA Port Arthur in OTL. Part #203: The Minnows Amid the Whales "Sorry, the Ministry has called me back again about those documents, blast them--can you pick up Angie from savat coreen practice this once? Remember you take the second exit on the circus at Sutton and then it's on the right just past the second set of stop-and-goes. Last week she told me she was ready to take the test for the Vert certificate, ask her if she got it, AW? Thanks love. DBH." --From the Correspond