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Chapter Text

It is the first of January, 1836. This September will mark the fifth year of the reign of His August Majesty William IV of Hanover, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, King of Hanover, and Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg. This year will also mark the first full year of the second government of Viscount Melbourne's Whigs, Lord Melbourne having briefly been removed from his position as Prime Minister by His Majesty in 1835, when William unsuccessfully sought to force a Tory government. The strong showing of the Whigs in the subsequent general election has seen the moderate Melbourne sweep back into power with a stronger government than before, however, and for the time being His Majesty must resign himself to the Whigs’s reformist tendencies.

Yet His Majesty may content himself with the mighty position of Britain in the world abroad, even if he is not comforted with the position of his government at home. Britain truly is the empire upon which the sun never sets, boasting the greatest population of subjects in the whole of the world, bar the Qing Emperor in China. In recent years this dominance has only escalated from the physical to the economic, as the devastation wrought by the Napoleonic Wars has required the impoverished monarchies of the continent to turn ever-more toward Britain for necessary imports. Industrialization has proven to be a new strength for the island monarchy, and has resulted in a mighty middle-class which, although somewhat discomforting to the ruling class, nevertheless serves as a guarantor of Britain’s power.

Much will change in the coming hundred years. Revolutions will flare up and be crushed; nations will form and will crumble; alliances will be nurtured only to wilt. In it all, Britain hopes to have a hand--and in the end, Britain’s ambition is nothing less than to remain as it is now: the greatest nation on the planet, the Empire upon which the sun does not set.

Yet although Britain may wish to continue to exist in splendid isolation, the Napoleonic Wars has taught the British people a great lesson: complete disinterest in continental affairs could lead to catastrophe, both politically and economically. Though no Briton would like to admit it, the island was almost brought to its knees through the long years of Napoleon’s continental system, and such can never be allowed to happen again.

It is with this prudential view to diplomacy in mind that Lord Melbourne instructs his foreign secretary, the up-and-coming Viscount Palmerston, to enter into negotiations with Prussia’s foreign minister, Friedrich Ancillon, on the subject of a long-term alliance. Although Britain does little to hide that this alliance is primarily an affair of necessity--indeed, Palmerston does not go to great lengths to hide his relative disdain for Prussia’s militaristic and crushing absolute monarchy--the Prussian government is incredibly receptive to the possibility of such a mighty ally as Britain to secure its independence, even if Palmerston makes it clear that British forces will only intervene in the direst--and most politic--need. Nevertheless, Friedrich Wilhelm III is eager to proceed, and within a few short months Britain and Prussia sign a mutual defensive pact guaranteeing the sovereignty of one another’s borders.

Louis-Philippe of France rightly sees this as a slight against his state and a preventative measure against expansionism on the part of the July Monarchy--the crowned heads of Europe trust the former revolutionary little more six years into his reign than when he first accepted the crown. Even if the King has no military intentions in Europe as he claims, the Prussian alliance is welcome insurance.

Although it is far from the minds of Britons at home, in the Cape the Sixth Xhosa War is foremost on all minds. Following a reprisal against Xhosa cattle-robbers, Xhosa warriors of the three paramount nations--the Gcaleka, the Ciskei, and the mighty Rharhabe--unified under Paramount Chief Hintsa in order to drive the British out, and to retake the ancestral Xhosa territory around the river Keiskamma. Commanded by the brother of Hintsa, the great chief Maqoma, the Xhosa forces have been terrorizing the local British and Boer settlers in the region.

Until the arrival of the South Africa Garrison under General Whitworth-Aylmer, of course. Shortly after his arrival a panicked Maqoma retreated his forces into the sparsely-populated savanna lands to the north of Graaf Reinet, allowing Whitworth-Aylmer free reign to brutally suppress the remaining chiefs in the Xhosa homeland, extracting reprisals of cattle and people both. No less than Paramount Chief Hintsa is captured, beaten brutally, and killed extrajudicially by Whitworth-Aylmer’s forces, blowing his brains out along the Keiskamma he had hoped to see returned to Xhosa hands; his body was mutilated shortly thereafter.

Horrified and ashamed at their failure to resist, Maqoma, now paramount chief, is forced to sign away even more territory to the advancing British, as well as paying a large indemnity in cattle which will impoverish the Xhosa for decades to come. Even so far away from the capital, such is the price for resisting the British.

Even with an effective administration, the Empire, large as it is, is often a difficult beast to manage. One governor does not always know what another is doing, and the lag in time from a message leaving a far dependency and arriving in London only exacerbates the issue. This is all the more true in the case of India, where Company rule removes the crown one step further from all the colony’s affairs.

The Sepoy Reform Plan serves as an admirable example. The current Governor-General of India, Lord Auckland, has initiated major reforms to the army of the East India Company, almost trebling its size while drastically reducing the ratio of British and Irish soldiers to native conscripts. Auckland argues that this will decrease relative costs while giving the British crown the power that it needs to exert its influence over the Sikh Empire--a threatening presence to the north--as well as permitting Britain to project her forces against Russia in the event that the Great Game becomes a matter for hostilities.

Although the war-adverse Lord Melbourne chastises Auckland for the plan, especially going so far as to primarily use Sepoys as the basis of the army, he stops short of formally denying Auckland the power to proceed, and the Governor-General takes this as tacit approval. India is still far enough away from Britain that the central government need not know everything that goes on, and Auckland begins the long process of readying a justification to intervene in the Sindhi Sultanate to establish a British protectorate: a vindication of his armed forces policy and a conquest worthy of the history books rolled into one.

Though it is a surprise to few, on the 12th of March, 1837, William IV of Hanover, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, King of Hanover, and Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, breathed his last. Long ill, William IV’s final wish that he live long enough for his niece, Alexandrina Victoria, to take the crown in maturity was nevertheless fulfilled; she turned 18 just the month before his death. Although Hanover’s long personal union with Britain fails with William’s death, all in Britain have high hopes for the future which Alexandrina Victoria represents.

Although a formal coronation is still over a year in the future, the death of William IV necessitates another general election to ensure that the Whig government which was formed in early 1835 still holds a popular mandate for governance, and thus landed Britons turn to the polls once again to select the government under which Alexandrina Victoria will rule.

Although largely confident in the Whigs’s chances for success, Lord Melbourne is nevertheless concerned about the danger which a Tory government may pose to stability on the continent. Ever-eager to expand British influence--at the expense of sense, as Melbourne sees it--he does not doubt that the Tories might attempt to interfere with events in the Low Countries to exert British influence in a hegemonic and ultimately detrimental way as compared to the image of gentle stewardship which Melbourne hopes to invoke as part of Whig policy.

Consequently, Melbourne orders Viscount Palmerston to arrange a mediation of Belgian independence in London, to formalize the de facto situation on the ground with the weight of British arms backing it up. Although both William I of the Netherlands and Louis-Phillippe of France are furious at British interference, with Prussian support neither of them are in a position to refuse British mediation, and thus all sit at the table in deciding the fate of the Low Countries.

Eventually, after a compromise where the Netherlands regain some territory and the principality of Luxembourg is released as a semi-sovereign nation under Dutch protection, the matter is resolved: Belgium is constituted formally as a nation by the force of British arms, to serve as yet another buffer against France in the event of war.

“And all,” Melbourne quips, “without any need for the Tories whatsoever.”

To the extreme sorrow of all Britons, shortly after the death of William IV, the hero of the Napoleonic Wars, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Wellington, died in his bed. The hero of Waterloo, Wellesley fought over sixty battles for Britain, many in the Peninsular campaign, but also several against Tipoo Sultan in Mysore. His services cannot be forgotten, for his strong leadership has served as the bedrock of the British Army since 1815. Victoria immediately orders a state funeral for the hero.

Although his death signals a changing of the guard in the British military, it is not yet immediately apparent which of the many up-and-coming officers will rise to the forefront and lay claim to the nascent Victorian military tradition.

As it so happens, although the Home Office was quite displeased with Lord Auckland’s Sepoy Reform Plan, its implementation was quite a timely affair. Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Sikh Empire, died in mid-1837, leaving a power vacuum within the Sikh state. This predictably resulted in a bloodbath, the Oriental temperament being far from accustomed to civilized exchanges of power.

Unfortunately for the Sikh, this succession crisis provides Auckland with precisely the justification he needs to crush the nascent Sikh state, all without needing to wait for the approval of the government. In the name of restoring order, Auckland commands the Delhi Army under Henry Smith and the Bombay Army under John Seaton to invade the Sikh Empire, cease the massacres which are the result of the feuding noble princes, and firmly establish a loyal prince on the throne--as a British protectorate, of course.

The entire war is practically won within the first few months, as Henry Smith’s Delhi Army entirely outperforms the Sikh force which had attempted to invade British India at Bikaner. Smith’s success is a vindication of Auckland’s Sepoy Reform Plan, and, impressed, many in the Whig government pass Auckland’s name around for a ministerial position upon the completion of his gubernatorial term in India.

In late October the Whig party is confirmed in its mandate, and Lord Melbourne likewise confirms that he will remain Prime Minister for Queen Victoria’s new government.

While many of the depressed masses in Britain are pleased that reformists are in control of the government, Lord Auckland himself is not. Although flattered by rumors of a ministerial post upon his retirement, he is quite displeased with the general Whiggish tendency to avoid war at all costs, especially since the Sindh is quite ripe for the taking, engaged as they are presently in a foreign war in Afghanistan. It is all the more tempting since the Bombay Army is presently on its very doorstep, and the war with the Sikhs is already all but won.

Of course, what cannot be attained politically may be attained through subterfuge, and this is precisely how Auckland chooses to proceed. Citing a phony transmission of supplies and fighters from the Sindh to the Sikhs--an entirely unbelievable proposition for anyone who knows anything at all about the region’s politics--Auckland orders the Bombay Army to seize Karachi on his own authority, with a view to deposing the Sultan and propping up a puppet as a British protectorate. Although Melbourne does not receive the news for six full months following the declaration of war, when he does he indeed goes so far as to commend Auckland’s actions in “defending the honor and stability of the British state in India.”

The wars themselves were rapid affairs, not worthy of many notes in the history books besides Smith’s smashing success at Bikaner. Britain’s princely allies were those primarily involved in the conquest of the Sikhs, and there was not even a battle fought in the subjugation of the Sindh, merely the capture of Karachi and the installation of a pro-British Sultan. By early March 1838, before Victoria is even formally crowned, both of the conflicts reach their conclusion.

The acquisition of such wealthy territory for Britain will prove an economic boon, which is of particular interest to Viscount Melgund, First Lord of the Admiralty, who is interested in utilizing funds extracted from the Sikh lands in order to facilitate a massive program of naval base construction to ensure that British power can be properly projected worldwide. Although such a goal will be many years yet in the coming, Melgund is a popular First Lord, and it is likely even the risk-averse Lord Melbourne will approve the allocation of funds.

And indeed, the Sikh territory begins to pay dividends almost immediately. The famously wealthy prince Gulab Singh approaches the British shortly after the conquest of Lahore seeking to establish a princely state in the mountains to the north, and promising Kashmiri troops in the conquest of the Chitral state, a small Indian principality to the north of the Sikh Empire which British forces failed to conquer in their initial outing against the successors to the Maharajah.

Not only would such a move be looked upon favorably by the international community, it would also secure wealth for the state to move forward with its naval armament plans, and provide an excuse to remove the Chitral state before it could align with Afghanistan and prove a thorn in the side to Her Majesty’s government. Lord Melbourne eagerly agrees to the proposal, and Henry Smith’s Delhi Army marches out shortly thereafter, smashing the weak Chitral principality with the help of Gulab Singh’s new state.

Due to the myriad victories he has gained, Lord Auckland has become something of a famous figure within Britain, the representative of the crown and company both, a sort of noble figure merging economic need with benevolent administration in the minds of the British people. It is little surprise, then, that in return for Auckland’s public support for the Whig party Lord Melbourne allows him room for maneuver within his own policies.

“Auckland’s support of the party is akin to Wellington supporting us,” Melbourne told Palmerston one night at Downing Street. “Public figures of this variety, divested from the notions of high-brow politics as they seemingly are, are worth their weight in gold from a political standpoint. Though our policy is against war, then, it is prudential to permit Lord Auckland to do as he pleases; the money he spends is the Company’s, after all, and in the end it only expands British influence in the spending.”

Auckland’s forces announce a general campaign to “secure the trans-Indus” in mid-1839, looking to force British control over the Sultanates of Kalat and Makran. The Emir of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad Khan, whom is allied with Kalat, sees this as a bare prelude to a British war to secure control of Afghanistan. Although Auckland attempts to reassure Khan that this is not the case, he enters the war against Britain shortly thereafter.

“Very well,” Auckland is rumored to have said. “This war did not previously involve Afghanistan, but now that it does, it seems to me a prudential time to remove Dost Mohammad from his aggravating position of influence.”

Although matters in India are fierce, with Britain and her princely allies facing three Emirs simultaneously and hoping to beat them all down, it must, of course, be remembered that India is far away, and Britain is insulated from events there. In the homeland, life continues at its pleasant pace; the people are prosperous thanks to the great colonial expansions, factories and naval yards both spring up like spring flowers, a naval reform is presently underway which will see Britain gain a fast steamship transport fleet, and Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, has just been married to her cousin Albert. Clearly in love with one another, the royal couple’s marriage and subsequent honeymoon are an inspiration to Britons everywhere about the proper joy one should take in marriage and fidelity.

Although Lord Melbourne was furious at Auckland’s unapproved extension of the conflict into Afghanistan, he was primarily concerned with the dangers of Britain being tied up in a protracted conflict which might result in no end of shame for the Whig government if they could not bring it to a proper conclusion. Quite aside from Melbourne’s expectations, before his chastising note even reaches India Auckland’s crack Sepoy forces, now under the overall command of the up-and-coming Benjamin Hamilton, had already captured Kabul and forced the abdication of Dost Mohammad, replacing him with the more pliable Shah Shuja’. Similar transfers of power had also occurred in Kalat and Makran, effectively securing British India’s northern border.

Although Melbourne’s mood reverses with rapidity upon hearing the news, the unprecedented expansion of Company rule is also a matter of some concern within Parliament, and Melbourne cannot keep a lid on all of the haranguing his government is receiving, both from the liberal wing of the Whigs and the conservative wing of the Tories, the former for declaring war at all and the latter for not annexing the states outright. Tired of being embattled, Melbourne sends Alexander Baring, the 1st Baron Ashburton, to the United States to formalize the contested Maine border with Canada, in the hopes that the debate will shift attention away from events within India in Parliament. Although only a fool would have expected that Parliament’s attention would be entirely diverted, Melbourne’s ploy does work at least to an extent, and matters about India quiet down.

“I should very much like it if the Company would take a protracted rest from affairs in Central Asia,” Melbourne wrote Auckland shortly after the signing of the Webster-Ashburton treaty. “Matters here in Britain on the subject of the Company’s rule are becoming difficult to manage in the environment of constant conflict, even with successes following successes.

"Should debate on this matter continue," Melbourne went on to warn, "I am not certain that I can prevent a debate on the matter of the autonomy of the East India Company. It would be prudential for the Company to allow tempers to cool before seeking to use armed force to expand further. My advice to yourself and your esteemed colleagues is to pursue the diplomatic and economic avenues which have always been the expertise of the Company; there, I think, you will find more fertile ground for the acquisition of land and wealth than at the barrel of a gun, at this time."

Unfortunately for Lord Melbourne, he has come to rely upon the prestige-hungry Ashburton entirely too much. Over-confident of his position both within the company and within the government, Ashburton believes he can utilize his newfound fame to secure the extension of Company interests outside of India, expanding the purview of the role of Governor-General to a general agent of Britain in the Indian Ocean. Entirely ignoring Melbourne's advice (and implicit warning), Ashburton has utilized the Royal Marines stationed within the Bombay Army to effect a landing at Aden to secure it for the East India Company, as well as preparing for a general campaign against the northern Emirs to firmly and finally seize control of Central Asia for Britain--flying in the face of the very orders which Lord Melbourne provided for the Governor-General.

Already in a tenuous situation globally, with the nations of Europe--especially Russia---becoming increasingly concerned about apparent British intentions of hegemony in Asia, Melbourne issues a stern injunction against participating in anything more than the Aden expedition, but by the time his missive arrives, war with Khiva has already begun. It is a grave blow to the prestige of the Whig party, and Conservative hawks already circle what they see as the corpse of Melbourne's government.

In the face of mounting pressure, both internal and international, brought on by the Company’s management of affairs in India, yet another scandal rocks Britain when Lord Auckland announces the Doctrine of Lapse, a policy which is baldly intended to secure complete control of India for the British Crown.

Although Melbourne would typically have approved of such a policy, carefully worded as it is, the timing of Auckland’s implementation is disastrous. Millions of Indians are made direct subjects of the Crown within just a few months, and all clamor for the redressing of ills which they claim were made unto them, variously under their own princes or due to the East India Company’s management of their affairs. The tumult nearly overwhelms the home government just as matters are heating up in Khiva, and the Indians' own clamoring has agitated the Irish, who are campaigning once again for increased rights for Catholics, specifically in governance.

Although Lord Melbourne--himself familiar with the situation in Ireland due to his having served as Secretary for affairs there--is firmly against any increased representational rights to the Irish people, believing strongly that the presence of a Catholic nation so close to the Protestant isles is more a threat than a matter to be accepted, the events in India (and particularly the Khivan campaign) have forced his hand. 75% of the European soldiers in the East India Company’s armed forces are Irish, and, were they to rebel, it could spell the end of British rule in India.

Therefore, reluctantly, Melbourne sponsors the Second Irish Reform Act, which reduces penalties for Catholic belief, permits for meritorious promotion and the awarding of titles and honors to Catholics, and allows Catholics to serve in both the House of Commons and House of Lords. It is an unprecedented bill, one which, although quieting the situation in Ireland, is tantamount to an admission that Melbourne's government is an unsustainable one, already on its way out.

Matters between Melbourne and Auckland continued to be tense following the implementation of the Doctrine of Lapse, at which point Melbourne had sent Auckland a letter which included the fateful line “if you should so much as fidget in the future without the express permission of this government, I do not care if it shall bring my government down around my ears: I will remove you from your position without delay.”

Despite this, however, tension was all there was until late March of 1841, when an incident at Kowloon resulted in hostilities between the Qing and several British vessels. As a clear indicator of an impending war between the Qing and Great Britain, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, the 1st Earl Russell, requisitioned the East India Company’s Bombay Army for shore operations in China, and ordered the East India Company to call off its Khiva campaign--which at that time had yet to conclude--in order to defend its borders near Burma from Qing invasion.

Auckland was furious. The British government, having requisitioned one of his armies already without jurisdiction, had no right to order the remainder of them off; in a rage, he even went so far as to declare a further war against Bukhara, to bring the entirety of Central Asia under Company control.

An immensely impolitic decision from every angle, Auckland’s decision forced Melbourne’s hand. An infuriated Russia had to be pacified, which Palmerston was nigh-apoplectic from struggling to accomplish, while the government was forced to salvage what it may of its reputation by removing Auckland immediately, sparking intense protest from the East India Company (Auckland, for all of his faults, was, after all, an incredibly efficient governor and superlative conqueror) and a near-riot on the floor of Parliament on the subject of the autonomy of the Company.

Eventually, after Melbourne's government conceded that the Company could retain control of the gains made by Auckland in Central Asia (the conquest of the Emirate of Bukhara would be completed before Auckland's dismissal was even received in Bombay), the Company and government together agreed to appoint the conservative Field Marshal the 1st Viscount Hardinge as Governor-General, as an appeasement to the Tories. Such was a gesture that was too little, too late; Auckland’s aggressive behavior and the damage it had done to the Whig party at home, and Britain’s reputation internationally, was already fact. Melbourne's star was set on a steep, unrecoverable descent.

But while political affairs press upon both Melbourne’s embattled government and the independence of the East India Company’s leadership, a war with the Qing--and now Bukhara as well--must nevertheless be successfully executed. Lord Auckland’s unwitting conquest of Kokand has unfortunately provided a route for Qing troops to march through Xinjiang province into the northern reaches of the East India Company’s control, as well as the access that Qing forces have through Burma. With the Army of Delhi and Army of Calcutta both at less than half strength and presently operating under Lord Auckland's orders to engage only the Bukharans and to ignore the Qing, Earl Russell is all-too-aware that the war with the Qing must be brought to a rapid conclusion if British India is to be shielded from total invasion.

It is with this view in mind that the Army of Bombay under John Seaton first undertakes offensive operations in Guangxi, capturing the regional capital and pulling Qing forces away from the north, where the hopes of Britain now lie.

Although Qing forces were able to breach through the weak Princely defenses near Burma and reach so far as the delta of Bengal, their forces were almost completely wiped out in Xinjiang by the armies of Delhi and Calcutta, newly restored to proper command by order of the new Governor-General Hardinge. More critically, the Army of Bombay has successfully captured Beijing and placed the Daoguang Emperor under house arrest in the Forbidden City, effectively ending the war.

This is not to say, however, that it is all smiles within Her Majesty’s government. The Qing navy successfully sunk no less than seven British vessels in the course of the brief conflict, the warfare in Xinjiang annihilated the armies of the Princely states and the East India Company both, and the nigh-successful invasion of Bengal by the Qing revealed the uncomfortable weakness of the British position in India, exacerbated by Auckland’s well-meaning but eminently unpractical conquest of the steppe, which has resulted in an extended border which has already proven impossible to adequately defend. Although victory has been achieved for now, Russell and Hardinge both look forward to the necessity of serious military and naval reform in Asia to ensure that such a catastrophe can never again occur.

For the present, though, victory has still been achieved: China’s markets are opened, harsh indemnities have been forced from the Qing government, and the cession of Hong Kong as an east Asian port has been effected. A legation center in Peking also ensures that the Daoguang Emperor will not be quite so eager to engage in a war of aggression against British arms in the future.

Although foreign and domestic incidents have surrounded the government of Lord Melbourne, it is nevertheless the case that all of these have ended in real success: Central Asia is now British, the Qing Empire has been humbled, and the East India Company, however uncomfortably aggressive it had behaved, nevertheless has secured Aden and now has a stable leader in Viscount Hardinge, with Lord Auckland comfortably dishonored and removed from power. Combined with the Second Irish Reform Act, it is perhaps little surprise, then, that the Whigs are popular among the electoral bases which they have historically courted, and are narrowly elected--despite major controversy--once again in 1842.

This success will prove fleeting, however. Although Queen Victoria is fond of Lord Melbourne, she is also politically aware of the international scandal which Whig governance and the prior Whig support of Lord Auckland represents. Fearful of reprisal from Russia and embarrassed at Melbourne's failure to rule in Auckland, Victoria privately requests that George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, propose a vote of no confidence in Lord Melbourne’s leadership, and attempt to form a coalition Tory-Conservative government with himself at its head.

Although popular support for the Whig party is great, it is a popular support of the party itself, not of its leader, whom many Britons see as a bumbling pushover. Moreover, in the House of Lords and House of Commons, the support for conservative politics is much stronger than in the country at large, and, with the silent support of Victoria, even some Whigs agree that it would be beneficial--temporarily, at least--to lose the rostrum in order to reorganize their party and purge the now-unpolitic Melbourne, who has become more of a threat to the party than a boon. The vote of no confidence is narrowly successful.

Lord Melbourne steps down and retreats from politics (although not before being given the honor of having Queen Victoria dine with him personally at Downing Street), to be replaced by a coalition Tory government led by Hamilton-Gordon, promising a decade of “quiet prosperity.”

Chapter Text

The first step for the new Tory government is “worker relief,” a thinly-veiled development program which is meant not only to streamline British industry, but also to keep unemployment (and consequently worker unrest) to an absolute minimum. Spurred on by the example of the restless Irish the previous year, Earl Aberdeen’s government seeks to ensure that there will be sufficient work for all sectors of society as a way to safeguard against potential insurrection at home. If that work also guarantees that certain critical industries such as shipping and arms manufacture are also staffed--industries in which Abderdeen and many of his governmental associates coincidentally happen to have significant stake in--all the better.

Although rumors of rampant corruption related to the illegal sale of shares in these as-yet-unopened industries are circulated, no proof ever arises, and the Tories get away with a political coup in reorganizing the industry on such a national scale.

Unfortunately for the Tories, however, within the first year of their mandate they are already proving entirely incapable of fulfilling their other promises. An alliance with the Ottoman Empire forced the British to not only become involved in the Oriental Crisis, but to send significant military aid in the form of the South Asian fleet and the Bombay Army to capture Cairo, which resulted in thousands of lives lost and several ships sunk. To make matters worse, in the midst of this conflict the Rharhabe Xhosa under Maqoma rose up once again, necessitating the intervention of General Whitworth-Aylmer and the South Africa Garrison to once more subjugate Maqoma to the Crown.

A somewhat testy Earl Aberdeen clarifies to Parliament that these foreign engagements were “obligations of allegiance and defense of our settlers” and that the situation should “in no way be taken to represent the typical state of affairs which Britain will experience under Tory supervision; this government is entirely opposed to the excesses which has heretofore represented the norm.” In his fateful words, “peace and prosperity shall now return to Britain.”

It did not.

To the shock and appall of all MPs, a general Scottish uprising took place on April the 29th, 1844. Although blessedly not sympathetic to the long-dead Jacobite cause, this rising was nevertheless furious at the Second Irish Reform Act and frustrated that similar expansions of the franchise had not occurred within Albion proper. Moreover, they expressed fury at Queen Victoria’s all-but-public meddling in politics by influencing Aberdeen to come forward with the no confidence vote for Lord Melbourne, and were furious at Aberdeen in turn for being, as one Scotsman memorably put it, “a fahckin’ lickspittle” and refusing to press for Scottish reform despite his own heritage. They demanded expanded property rights and larger estates in the marginal farmlands of Scotland, as well as a full extension of suffrage to all adult males.

Predictably Parliament wastes no time decrying the rebellion and sending forces to put it down, but that it occurred at all is a massive blow to the prestige and stability of the present Tory government.

Although Horatio Havelock of the Home Force--who is, himself, one of the best of Britain’s next generation of soldiers--makes quick work of the rebellion, the Tories’ reputation is seriously marred by the entire affair. Whigs waste no time arguing that the rebellion is a signal that Tory leadership was the product of a “forced coalition” with “no popular mandate to rule,” and--conveniently, now that the problem of their leadership has been resolved--demand a proper election which will determine “without outside interference” the “proper government [of Great Britain].” Implicit in this demand is the imminent vote of no confidence which is likely to follow if Aberdeen does not call the election willingly. With many Conservatives now experiencing cold feet following the violent revelation of the public’s opinions on Tory rule, it is quite likely that such a vote would pass. If it did, it would certainly spell the end of the already-marginal Tory party in a way which the “gentle” vote of no confidence for Lord Melbourne did not for the Whigs.

Ashamed and disheartened about his own people’s response to his government, Aberdeen passively agrees to hold general elections as soon as he receives word that Havelock has quelled the last of the rebelling forces. They are eventually scheduled for late February of the following year, a delay which is significant enough to raise many brows, but as it is a willing election the Whigs do not protest.

The election of 1845 proves a watershed, representing by far the greatest Whig victory in history. The Whigs gain almost 60% of the votes on their own, achieving a simple majority without needing to form a coalition, and the Tories are so maligned that they do not win a single seat in the House of Commons.

Lord Palmerston is the new Whig candidate for Prime Minister, and forms a singular government on March 4th. In return for the massive outpouring of support for the Whig party, Palmerston promises an “immediate review of the electoral situation and a long-overdue extension of the vote franchise.” Although he privately disagreed with extending the vote, as the consummate politician that he was Palmerston was well-aware that the only way that he would be able to maintain his government (and perhaps the stability of Britain itself) would be to fulfill the electoral demands of the people.

Therefore, in early January 1846, a new voting franchise bill is passed which extends the vote to every adult male, although the votes of the upper classes are weighted more strongly “in the interest of fairness.” It meets with mass approval by the British public, who overwhelmingly come to support Whig governance. Although Victoria does not approve of the speed at which the Whigs move, nor of the total collapse of the Tories, she has learned her lesson from the debacle with Aberdeen; she wisely holds her tongue as the little power she has left begins to be stripped from her.

In an ironic turn, Britain under Palmerston and the Whigs is far more passive in its foreign policy than the Tories were; this, combined with the expansion of the franchise, leads to a tranquil situation in Britain from 1845-47, but all the pleasantness is not to last. In March of 1847, what Malthusians long warned against finally came to pass: a population bottleneck has occurred in Ireland, resulting in mass famine and destitution.

Malthusians now argue that the Irish should be permitted to die without interference from Britain, “for otherwise they will not learn that their uncontrolled breeding is the undeniable cause of all of their vast miseries.” Many Whigs count themselves as among these Malthusians, and the proposal has serious support within Parliament.

Thankfully for the Irish, the Second Irish Reform Act has ensured that there are native-born representatives of Ireland present in Parliament, and their agitating is ceaseless. What’s more, their firsthand knowledge of the situation convinces many of the lukewarm Malthusians that the situation cannot be lain solely at the feet of rampant population growth, but must also be attributed, to a certain extent, to policies set in place by the Crown.

“To this end there must be support provided by this government for Irish relief,” one James Keane argued vehemently within Parliament. “For though not all can be lain at the foot of Britain, enough certainly can that the common human decency which exists within all of us must be motivated to put aside politicking and pseudo-science long enough to abet those struggling to soothe the mortal suffering which occurs not three hundred miles away from where we sit today.”

Keane’s rousing speech hits its mark. Not only does Britain earmark tens of thousands of pounds of relief to Ireland, Palmerston also forces through a repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws in order to force wheat prices down, to further help the indebted Irish farmers survive.

In late August of 1847, Palmerston, ever politically aware of potential dangers to the Whig power-base, launches another attempt to politically strengthen his party, which is still somewhat disparaged by Queen Victoria and other nobles who are sensitive to the danger of provoking Russia.

Earl Russell, who has maintained his post as Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary through the administrations of Melbourne and Aberdeen, was instructed by Palmerston to secure treaties of friendship from the Central Asian states which the East India Company had subjugated signifying that they approved of British protection. Politically, Palmerston hoped that this would cool Victoria’s somewhat heated opinion of the Whigs, as well as providing something of a coup in showing the Russians that Britain’s strength in Central Asia was approved of by the subject nations themselves.

Although these states had little choice but to accept Russell’s demand that they sign the treaties, in the end it does work out as Palmerston had hoped: although the renewed talk of the aggressiveness of the Whigs is uncomfortable, the seemingly post-hoc approval of their subjugation does at least temper the hostile impression of Auckland’s actions, and Melbourne’s government for having allowed them.

A few months later American President Polk’s Secretary of State, James Buchanan, approaches Earl Russell with a demand to cede the entirety of the Oregon territory currently held by the British. Undoubtedly seeing his government’s present position as strong, as America is in the midst of positively thrashing the Mexicans, Polk likely wishes to secure a further victory by making gains in the north, which will pacify the anti-slave element of the country presently in an uproar over his plans for new southern states.

Although Russell advises against “giving these upstarts a bare inch,” Palmerston overrides him and gives instructions to come to a compromise position in the region.

“There is absolutely no reason,” Palmerston told Russell in a letter, “to fail to take advantage of this situation to show the silent superiority of the British over the Americans. The region is of no real consequence to us, and ceding it will only serve to show that the Whigs are not the jingoistic party of their present reputation.”

Although the Tories sound off loud in Parliament about the “willing cession” of “integral territory,” the strong Whig majority shouts them down by praising Palmerston’s “level-headed” actions. The approval goes so far as Victoria herself, who sends Palmerston a brief but heartfelt note of congratulations for “resuscitating the true nature of the Whig party in your government.”

No matter how much prestige Palmerston might be able to recover for the Whig party, however, it is impossible for him to hide that affairs in Britain itself have come to something of a head.

The people, still mistrustful of their monarch following her interference in Melbourne’s dismissal, demand more and more control over the political process. They argue that this is to ensure that representative government functions properly, and that popular influence is represented as intended in Parliament, free from the “corrupting” influence of the elites who may try to “interfere.” Even Palmerston is entirely against the “ludicrous” extent of these popular suggestions, but the problem is not going away. A trinket matter about ballots has recently passed Parliament largely due to the “notable unrest” which the population was expressing due to the lack of clear indications of “reformist interests” in the government; the people are now influencing policy by the mere threat of their actions!

This is unacceptable to every Member of Parliament, but especially so to Victoria and Palmerston. With this in mind, Palmerston utilizes his super-majority to pass a bill to significantly increase the funding and obligations of Scotland Yard, allowing them to keep tabs on subjects suspected of supporting violent revolution. Scotland Yard has now, effectively, become an anti-revolutionary force tasked with maintaining peace and stability in the Home Isles. If it also serves to remind the little man of his place, all the better.

After such a hugely successful stint in government, Palmerston and the Whigs were entirely anticipating another landslide victory. The fractured Tories and Conservatives, who were divided within themselves and boasted multiple conflicting candidates for Prime Minister, likewise had every reason to expect that their attempts would not only be frustrated, but disastrously so. Some Conservatives who followed the thinking of Robert Peel even broke from the party entirely and went over to the Whigs in order to retain their seats in Parliament.

Everything looked in favor of the Whigs until just two days before the election, when a massive scandal broke out. Earl Russell and several other prominent members of Palmerston’s ministry--although, blessedly, not Palmerston himself--were implicated in vote-buying, improper behavior, and multiple extramarital scandals. The information was so voluminous, the number of people involved so great, that there was no mistaking that this was a targeted release of information to wreck Whig election efforts.

And wreck them it did. When the general election ended, a conservative party, for the first time since the early 1830s, came out of a general election with a win, forming a coalition Conservative-Tory government behind Edward Smith-Stanley, the 14th Earl Derby.

“The potato famine, which has continued under corrupt Whig leadership,” he triumphantly cried, “ends now! The Conservatives will support the Irish to overcome these hardships, and moreover we shall do what the Whigs did not elsewhere: we shall lead a just administration, free of corruption, and we shall preserve the integrity and rights of Britain both at home and abroad.”

The Conservative policy platform of Earl Derby and his new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs--James Harris, 3rd Earl Malmesbury--might best be characterized as “unity through might.” Rocked by rebellion at home and paralyzed by the instability of conservative politics for over a decade, which has led to a shortage of qualified conservatives for high office, Derby’s government was frankly an under-prepared one. It begins by floundering about for policy stances, continuing as a rather divided entity even after Derby’s selection as Prime Minister, and the disunity is even egregious enough that left wing of the Whig party, still a powerful force in Parliament, is able to pass a full franchise bill over the heads of the Conservatives--a blow to the government’s prestige which is only ameliorated by the House of Lords’s veto of the bill, although huge unrest following the veto forces a retraction, and Conservatives are forced to grumble as full enfranchisement becomes reality under their own government.

Derby, then, needs a way to hold his fragile coalition together, and to form a coherent policy. To begin, he seeks for a cheap victory to galvanize support behind his government, and finds one in the weak Johore sultanates. Malaysia is a wealthy land with many precious resources, and Britain has long held overwhelming influence there; although the local Sultans protest, it is not much effort for Britain to force protectorate status upon them, and in so doing vastly increase its gold reserves and security in the region. The Conservative swell which this action precipitates encourages Derby to look elsewhere for further cheap victories, if there are any to be found.

As it so happens there are several more lands ripe for British influence, and Derby need look no further than the Yemeni Emirates for another cheap avenue of expansion. Strategically located but economically depressed and militarily weak, the Yemeni can be united to the profit of British influence in the region--or so Derby argues, at least.

Whether the acquisitions will be profitable or not, the campaign proves useful in distracting attention from the still-floundering Conservative coalition. It lasts from late March 1851, when the first ships of troops were launched from India, to early October, when the last of the Emirs is conquered and the administration of Yemen is centralized in Aden. Although many Whigs question the profit of territorial acquisitions which are “entirely out of the way of typical trade routes utilized by Britons and our Indian subjects,” Derby’s decision to conquer the territory will prove foresighted, even if it was not his intent.

With no further foreign lands to acquire without the potential for international opprobrium and very much wary of becoming “the second Lord Melbourne,” Derby’s last act of political cohesion rests upon securing the cooperation of one of the most long-standing bastions of Whig support, the East India Company.

The present Governor-General of India is the Earl of Dalhousie, a political climber with no particular loyalties, although he is more politically inclined in support of Peel, many of whose supporters crossed the aisle to the Whigs in the prior election. This does not endear him to the Conservative government, but Dalhousie is personally amenable to working with them, and did not ever make a statement in his own right as to whether he would have followed the Peelists who broke from the party.

In order to court Dalhousie’s support and to compensate the East India Company for the loss of Aden, which was brought under direct Crown control when Yemen was regulated, Derby therefore passes the Martial Races Act, which annexes the Rajput states, grants the Rajput peoples a specialty status within India, and gives the East India Company sole rights to the usage of Rajput soldiers. The move is highly popular both within the government and the Company, as it secures not only more land for direct Company rule, but also additional personnel for the Company to utilize in its defense. How it is viewed in India, very few in the government care to study.

Although Derby thought that the time had come to take a relaxed stance to international expansionism in the name of preserving the prestige of the Conservative party, a Commodore in Burma has managed to ruffle enough feathers to cause a more-or-less significant incident in the country, necessitating British intervention.

Although the Army of Calcutta is able to enter into Burma and secure the entire coast, thereby ensuring free British passage from India to the Malay peninsula, that the war happened at all is yet another sign of the relative weakness of Derby’s government. Although he successfully plays it off as defending national prestige--and indeed, privately, as an intended move--the impression that the Conservative government is an entirely jingoist one cannot long be avoided if Britain continues to be dragged into foreign conflicts of this variety. And Derby has no intention of going down with that ship, as did Melbourne.

What he needs, he knows, is a strong domestic showing which will bring about unity at home and a basis for policy in his government. The problem is that he simply has no ideas for such a unifying gesture.

The opportunity to form a coherent platform of Conservative governance finally arises when Lord Durham’s posthumous report on the status of Canada arrives on Derby’s desk. In it, Durham persuasively advocates for a benevolent hand in the colonies, keeping them under British control but acknowledging local needs and situating administrative structures to benefit both the metropole and colony.

When the Act of Union is eventually passed, Derby articulates this new Conservative policy goal in Parliament. “We believe in Britain, and we believe in the Empire,” Derby stated. “But we know also that Empire is not merely a tool for the benefit of Britain, but an obligation of moral, civilizational, and economic aid to the subjects of the Crown. Unlike the Whigs, we would not see the Empire expand in a series of backward puppets only nominally under jurisdiction; unlike the anarchists, we would not see all flounder. The Conservatives believe in progress, but a progress which is dominated by good old-fashioned British prudence. The subjects in our colonies need British guidance, and it is the Conservative platform that we must provide it to them in whatsoever way suits the needs of the people best, both in the colony and in London. One day--in the far future, no doubt--we may be able to walk together as brothers; but, until then, we must guide, and that is what I say the Conservative duty is: to guide! To guide the wayward, the unready, the under-developed, the uncivilized, yea even the barbaric; it is our duty to save them from themselves, if we may, and in so doing prove to the world the Christian spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race!”

This ideal of progress and good governance--which must necessarily entail the ability to govern, by force if need be--is further articulated in Derby’s March 1st proclamation of increased government funding to the armed forces, grants to scientific and industrial institutions, and the guarantee of contracts to firms which prove able to fulfill the needs of the government for “study and production of goods and technologies as necessitated by the growing needs of the Empire.” It is a clear signal that the Conservatives hope to usher in a future where state science, developing the military and industrial technologies necessary for conquest and control, forms the basis of the Imperial project.

“From this time forward, it will be science which Britain turns to to govern her colonies. From weapon design to industrial technologies and racial studies, the brilliant men of Britain can develop systems which this government can best articulate. We can and shall construct colonial institutions uniquely suited to each and every situation encountered in the Empire,” Derby proclaimed.

To the Prime Minister’s chagrin, the foreign situation appears to be conspiring against the Conservatives. Although domestically the party now has a stable policy, issues of national pride and open markets continue to force British involvement in Asia, constantly providing ammunition for the Whigs.

“The august Conservative leadership would have the people of Britain believe that they are the party of modest restraint,” Palmerston cried in Parliament, “yet the fact remains that my government remains the only one which has, since the 1820s, managed to maintain consistent years of peace! We are now in a war once again with the Qing Empire, and for what gain? To sell them the poison of India to fill the pocket-books of the exchequer? Reasoned and particular government indeed, Earl Derby!”

It was true; Britain was indeed at war with the Qing once again over an incident of national pride, a thinly-veiled excuse to ensure that the new Qing Emperor, the Xianfeng Emperor, would not attempt to close the Chinese market--for, if they did, it would certainly spell a disastrous collapse of Britain’s opium monopoly.

Already being mocked as the “Second Opium War” by the Whigs, Derby’s government can do little more than grimace and bear the chiding while it executes its goals, securing Peking and forcing the Xianfeng Emperor into another unequal treaty.

It is not the year of the Conservatives. Just following the conclusion of the Second Opium War following the capture of Peking, the Russian Empire initiates a conflict that will come to be known in the British press as the "Crimean War" (so-called because of Ottoman desires to force a landing in the region, though none ever materialized). The war is ostensibly over influence in the Ottoman Empire, but practically it appears that Russia considers control over the Romanian principalities paramount. As an ally of the Empire the United Kingdom is obligated to support the Sultan; nevertheless, the last thing Derby wishes to do is become involved, as it will signal not only a legacy of constant war in his government, but also represent the first war with a European power Britain has experienced since the Napoleonic period. Earl Malmesbury is immediately dispatched to Russia to negotiate a settlement, but talks with the Tsar’s ministry break down, and war is declared.

With the clear failure to prevent this major conflict--one that, as it so happens, was to prove disastrous for India’s under-prepared armed forces--Derby’s government collapses. General elections are called to determine the nature of the new government, and although the Conservatives win again, Derby is passed over for continuation as Prime Minister; instead, the party rallies behind the Benjamin Disraeli, who becomes the first Prime Minister of Jewish descent.

“Although my esteemed colleague the Earl Derby has recused himself from this government, the Conservative party does not forget his example, nor does this government shy from the general principles which were established by that honorable gentleman, namely: the benevolent guidance of foreign peoples in the interests both of this state and their own; the expansion of science and industry as watch-wardens of Imperial majesty; and a foreign policy which is designed to favor the interests of Britain and her Imperial subjects. Such is, was, and shall be the goal of this ministry.”

Noble words, but the war with Russia remained the prime concern of the people of Britain, in and out of the government.

With the war dragging onward and both the Russian and British armies suffering horrific casualties in the marginal lands of Turkestan, made the unlikely front-line of the conflict thanks to Lord Auckland's Khivan Campaign, Disraeli’s Secretary of War, Jonathan Peel, recommended a strategy of last resort: to attempt a naval landing in St. Petersburg to force the government of the Tsar to come to the table. Nicholas I (rightly) felt that his forces were making gains in Central Asia, and without the dangerous action it appeared likely that the Tsar would continue his advance into India itself, threatening the crown jewel of Britain's empire. Defeat at St. Petersburg would threaten British hegemony in Asia and expose the government to accusations of mismanaging the war effort, but when the alternative was almost certain failure in the fields of Central Asia, the choice seemed obvious.

Although the maneuver was indeed highly dangerous and required the Home Fleet to pin the Russian fleet in the Baltic, it was ultimately successful: the Canadian Garrison, pulled all the way from Quebec City, managed to land in St. Petersburg, secure hostages from the royal family, and force the Tsar to sign an immediate peace.

Although the gamble wins the war and gives Disraeli the popularity he needs to keep the Conservative coalition under him grinding forward, the victory still does not erase Britain’s frankly aggressive policies under Derby’s non-government. It will be up to Disraeli to, like Palmerston before him, attempt to regain the international standing which Britain has lost in the expansionist fervor of the early 1850s.

If nothing else, Disraeli can at least discredit Palmerston thanks to affairs in America, where it was revealed following the Mexican-American war that President Polk’s position was not precisely so strong as Palmerston had believed.

“The Americans were hardly mighty enough to take two scraps of land from the Mexicans, and yet the leader of the opposition was quite pleased to give them the entirety of their Oregon Territory with no protest whatsoever—indeed, my esteemed colleague overrode the protests of his own ministers! And this is the leadership which Britain is meant to invest with power over its future? The one that cares nothing for the preservation of the interests of its own subjects, but would give them up to a third-rate power for not even a half-pence?”

To this, at least, the Whigs were quiet.

Disraeli’s government, still recovering from the negative reputation accrued during the ministry of Derby, receives a call on March 24th, 1855, from the offices of Otto von Manteuffel, the foreign secretary of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia. von Manteuffel communicates to Disraeli’s government that the newly-formed coalition of North German states has undertaken an offensive war to secure control of Alsace-Lorraine from France, which von Manteuffel characterizes as a “German territory, long held illegally by the French.” They desire British approval for the war--but what’s more, they want Britain to make use of the Home Guard to make a landing to assault Paris from the rear.

In a striking moment which will become an ideal held up by Conservative politicians for how a proper no-nonsense Briton should behave, James Harris, still serving as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, immediately replied, “Britain wishes the Prussian people well in their engagements, military and otherwise, but declines to support her current effort against the French monarchy.” Harris had not discussed the matter with Disraeli whatsoever.

Although the casual aloofness with which the British abandon their obligations causes a riotous situation within the Prussian government, in Britain Harris’s actions are met with applause, even from Disraeli himself. “It is a strong government,” he cried, “not a weak one, when one’s ministers know what their party requires to such an intimate extent that they need not even to consult within it to know the course of action which it would support--say rather, demand!”

Whether Disraeli was privately displeased or not is hardly a matter of importance, as the Federation was trounced so thoroughly by the Bourbon monarchy that Louis-Philippe II even annexes part of the Palatinate to France. Such a total victory well indicates the fate Britain would have faced in such a war, and Disraeli looks all the stronger for remaining away from the conflict.

For the second time in just five years, the Whig party is rocked by scandal. Although Palmerston is still completely untouched by the shock, fully fifteen of the party’s rank-and-file in Parliament are revealed to have been involved in speculation on foodstuffs during the Irish famine, a legal offense in the period following the repeal of the Corn Laws. Earl Derby’s earlier remark that Palmerston’s government had proven incapable of ending the Irish famine now seems all the more foresighted.

Already ailing as a party and with this new scandal forcing them into extreme minority in Parliament, the Whigs entirely collapse. Palmerston and a few other core liberals--including William Gladstone, despite his great personal animosity to Palmerston--form the Liberal party as a continuation of the Whigs, but also as a repudiation of certain Whiggish policies which they believe are untenable in the present day, including limited franchise and a staunch anti-war sentiment that, time and again, has proven nonviable given Britain’s international obligations.

Although the party begins suffering under the ill reputation of the Whigs, it nevertheless does represent a new beginning for the left, and Palmerston’s willing recusal of party primacy--a condition of Gladstone’s support--brings the far more liberal Gladstone to the head of leftist politics. Whether he can escape the ill reputation of Palmerston’s government is the most critical question, one which Disraeli finds so unlikely that he does not even bother to campaign against the new party.

In 1858 a minor issue within the East India Company regarding a few mutinying Sepoys is used as an excuse by Disraeli to permanently wrest control of all administrative functions from the Company in India, placing the subcontinent directly under Crown rule and leaving the Company as little more than a transport organization, with a monopoly on the transferal of certain goods from Crown production centers in India to centers of trade throughout the world. Although the East India Company obviously protests quite loudly at this, with a Conservative super-majority there is no contestation in Parliament against the move.

“The time for the expropriation of the East India Company is quite overdue,” Disraeli is quoted as saying. “The Crown has seen, unfortunately, the repercussions of permitting the Company to continue direct management of Indian territory in the previous government’s war with Russia. The few Company troops stationed within the colony were undermanned, ill-trained, and poorly equipped, to the detriment of the entire war effort. The feebleness of position in India cannot be permitted to continue, for, should it, it would threaten the security of the entire Empire in the process. The centralization of the Empire, then--the whole of the Empire--under the Crown is but a prudential step in the creation of an integral and well-defended state throughout the whole of the world.”

The first Governor-General appointed to India as the singular representative of the Crown is none other than Edward Henry Stanley, the 15th Earl Derby, the son of the recently-deceased Prime Minister. By his very name Edward Henry represented a threat to the Conservative coalition under Disraeli, and by removing the 15th Derby from public view Disraeli achieves a dual coup.

In December of that same year tensions in the United States over the matter of slavery flare into an open conflict on the issue, with representatives of the southern states declaring independence from the north. Palmerston’s willing cession of the Oregon territory becomes a matter of ridicule all over again, as the country “which could not defeat Mexico alone, much less Britain and Mexico together,” now faces an enemy in itself.

Disraeli has taken to calling poorly-conceived agreements “half-pence Palmerstons,” an effective, if forced, mockery of the ex-Whig leader. Palmerston, for his part, endures the ridicule with silence, although he retreats from politics shortly before the next general election.

In mid-1859, Harris once again receives a note from the Prussian foreign minister. Now, Alexander von Schleinitz (appointed following the disastrous failure of von Manteuffel to secure British support, and the consequent defeat in the Franco-Prussian war which it precipitated) asks British support to secure the independence of Congress Poland. Curiously, even eccentrically, von Schleinitz offers Britain the territory of Lithuania as compensation for their support.

Brows are raised throughout the whole of the government, but given Britain’s much stronger position Harris this time dutifully approaches Disraeli on the matter, and to his shock Disraeli agrees to support it.

“You have got to have a better eye for foreign affairs, my friend,” the Conservative leader smiled slightly. “We need to protect our ally from a second thrashing, and Russia will not wish a repeat of the Crimean War, whether they feel they can best us this time or not. The matter will not stand long enough for war to come of it, one way or the other; but it is Frederick’s government which will catch all the opprobrium for it, and Britain will seem as nothing but a loyal ally.”

von Schleinitz is ecstatic to report to Friedrich Wilhelm that the British support their efforts, but not five days later Tsar Alexander II and Friedrich’s government reach an agreement on the basis of maintaining the status-quo. A day after that, a letter from von Schleinitz thanking Disraeli for his support circulates in the Times.

Early the next year Disraeli’s government secures a further foreign policy coup when it sells the Ionian Islands to Greece. Although the Liberals rail against Disraeli’s decision, especially given his constant mockery of Palmerston’s cession of the Oregon Territory, Disraeli is quick to point out that the islands were traditionally Greek possessions and were rather being returned than given away--and, moreover, he had gotten a payment from it, however slight by British standards. Although the Illustrated News and Punch both take their fair number of stabs at Disraeli’s hypocrisy, his reputation is hardly harmed by the decision. Indeed, quite the opposite; Disraeli’s ability to quell Liberal backlash earns his government even more support, both at home and in matters abroad.

Although no Briton of Disraeli’s class had been aware of it, a few short months prior to the cession of the Isles a man named Karl Marx had quietly published what was known as the Communist Manifesto in Germany. Within it, Marx furiously criticizes the issues of class which divide society and systemically isolate the worker from both the avenues of power and the product of his own labor. Marx calls for violent revolution to shake the foundation of society and to destroy the state, raising up in its place a communal utopia of shared labor and labor-product which he calls Communism.

Although few take his violent view seriously, and more still cock brows at his inane ramblings regarding the symbolic power of labor and labor-knowledge, his call for worker rights and the power of the proletariat--that is, the industrial laborer--strike chords throughout society which will reverberate to the present. The first Socialist party, designed to promote social welfare and fair labor conditions for workers, was formed in Norway in February of 1860; the British Social Democratic Federation Party, which will shortly change its name to Labour, is founded the next year in May of 1861 by workers in Manchester following a talk given by Friedrich Engels, a friend of Marx’s and the other central theorist of Communist doctrine.

But these matters are far from the mind of Disraeli and his government, who care little for the industrial worker and less still for fringe political parties. In the first half of 1860 the eyes of the British government are primarily upon America, where, against expectations, the Union has managed to secure victory against the Confederacy after only a year of brief warfare.

Although America is entirely marginal to European politics (and moreover rather annoyed with Disraeli given his constant mockery of their power), Britain’s strong anti-slavery stance induces the Prime Minister to send a brief letter of congratulations to the American President Lincoln for his victory in the war. Unfortunately Lincoln would never read the letter, as it arrived the day after he was fatally shot in Ford Theater by the actor John Wilkes Booth.

Meanwhile, in Turkestan, a matter of diplomatic anxiety has broken out between the British and Russians over Kyzyl-Su, an arid, mountainous territory which nevertheless affords some access to the Caspian Sea. Russia desires the territory to solidify its influence in Turkestan, which has been gradually eroded since the Melbourne ministry and the successes of Lord Auckland while India was still under Company rule, as well as to outflank Persia on two sides.

Conversely, while Britain also desires the territory to shore up its own control of Turkestan, Disraeli’s ministry is primarily interested in preventing Russia from gaining eastern access to Persia, and the added benefit of a trade port on the Caspian, which, Disraeli knows, will absolutely collapse the Tsarist monarchy’s ill-enforced protectionist policies in the region, to Britain’s great profit.

Although the situation is one which is likely to take years to fully resolve itself, as both Britain and Russia have many resources--both diplomatic and physical--to invest in the region, both consider the territory as an ultimately necessary part of their Central Asian empires, and neither look to back down from it.

Just a few days after Disraeli gives permission to Earl Derby to invest all available Crown resources in the efforts at Kyzyl-Su, his government is once again approached by von Schleinitz, this time requesting assistance in retaking the Palatinate. Although Harris expects Disraeli to refuse, to his surprise he finds that the Prime Minister is now prepared to invest the Home Guard in the engagement.

“Unlike Alsace, the Palatinate is indeed proper German territory, and if we are to be allies to the Prussians, we cannot let them continue on so weak as to be ineffective. They certainly shall be too weak to be helpful if they are trounced a second time in a half-decade; we defended them from the Russians and gave them time to rearm themselves. We must hope that Frederick’s government has repaired the ill state of the army sufficiently to justify our trust in him.”

Thus Disraeli gives the order that the Home Fleet be sallied out to allow the Home Guard to cross the channel and land in Rouen in order to take Paris from the rear, the very same strategy which had been previously advocate by von Manteuffel. Unfortunately, the Home Fleet has seen better days, and takes significant losses to the French fleet while forcing the crossing. This embarrassment to Disraeli’s government is seized upon viciously by the Liberals, with Gladstone castigating the “prestige-blind Conservative government” for entering into a war which “this country is not prepared to fight; there is a reason, and a good one, why continental affairs have ever been restricted to economic matters by wise governments!”

Although the Conservative super-majority shouts down these complaints, even most Conservatives are truly concerned about the state of the navy, and privately urge Disraeli to undertake naval reform to allay the public’s concerns over the Liberal agitation. Disraeli agrees, and preliminary plans for a full naval modernization program are lain down.

As the war progresses, the Conservatives rapidly realize that the issue of a costly naval victory is the last thing they should be worried about.

Although Paris was initially captured by the Home Guard under Field Marshal Horatio Havelock, and although Havelock initially secured major victories against French armies attempting to relieve the capital, the buoyant news was not to last. The front in Germany was never stable enough for the German side to have any hope; Friedrich Wilhelm ordered fully half of his army to break through the line at Alsace and join up with Havelock around Paris, which, although it terrified the French, nevertheless resulted in the German forces taking mass casualties from attrition due to operating so far behind enemy lines, and even permitted the French to break the German offensive in the Palatinate to begin a counter-offensive. This forced Havelock to fight a losing retreat from Paris, as the navy was too damaged to pull his forces out. The Home Guard took grievous losses, only to be defeated a last time while engaging a superior French force at Siegburg.

The British are even engaged with their long-time allies the Ottomans, who were also allies of the French. Apparently annoyed at the annexation of Yemen, both the French and the Ottomans have detailed approximately 85,000 troops to Yemen to break the British garrison there, and have largely been successful. Only the rapid addition of the Royal Marines to the area have kept the British forces fighting there, but the casualty reports reaching home confirm that 50,000 Sepoys have already lost their lives.

The Liberals, it is fair to say, have been having a field day with the news. The Conservatives, on the other hand, can do little more than castigate the “weakness of the Prussian monarch’s military, and his skills in deploying it” for the failures in Germany, which are ever-mounting.

To make matters far worse for the Conservatives, in 1861 a general Sepoy rising--the “real” Sepoy rebellion, later historians would attest--attempts to overthrow British rule in the subcontinent. Many factors contributed to the rebellion, but increased extraction attempts in 1860-61 to attempt to offset the cost of the war; the mass loss of life in Yemen; disruptions in Indian life brought about by the continual movement of troops and goods to Kyzyl-Su (which is still being furiously battled over); and the haughty high-handedness of the 15th Earl Derby are all common attributions for the conflict.

Whatever the deeper cause, what is certain is that the rebellion could scarcely have come at a worse time. With the Bombay Army and the Royal Marines both occupied in Yemen, there are only two loyalist armies in the subcontinent to battle the rebels. The ill-planning of suppression measures only makes the Conservative government appear weaker, as Disraeli’s colonial ministry is shamefully required to ask aid from the remaining local Princely States to put the rebellion down.

Although the Liberals try and fail a vote of no confidence in Disraeli’s government, the Conservatives nevertheless begin to tread very cautiously; they know that this botched war, and the Sepoy revolt, makes their government look absolutely horrendous compared to every previous ministry, even Aberdeen’s.

The first bit of good news in a long while arrives in February of the following year, when the initial plans for naval reform are finalized (and immediately publicly announced), plans for army reform begin to be discussed, and Henry Morton Stanley’s interior Africa expedition finds the source of the Nile all in the same month. In a desperate attempt to rally popular support and curry favor with Queen Victoria, Disraeli names the discovered lake “Lake Victoria,” which pleases the Queen to no end. Nevertheless, the Queen has been marginalized in politics thanks to Palmerston’s franchise extensions, and although the people of Britain have loved her since she ceased interfering in politics, she cannot save Disraeli and the Conservatives alone.

In order to gather middle-class support, then, Disraeli grudgingly supports a bill which will extend basic education at low cost to all Britons, and greatly subsidize private institutions and boarding schools, so the middle-class can entertain the idea of a better future for their children. Although Disraeli scowls more often than applauding the move, it does win the Conservatives back a modicum of support, although “the Jew’s war” has virtually scrapped Disraeli’s popular appeal as an individual.

The war with France ends in March of 1862, with France in the midst of occupying the Rhineland and Hessen. Aside from a hefty indemnity forced upon the Germans, the Bourbon monarchy does not force any further territorial acquisitions upon the Germans; most states already denounce France’s occupation of the Palatinate.

Relations between Britain (which believes German forces bungled the war) and Prussia (which believes Britain did not sufficiently invest itself in the war) are tense until the Home Army is finally extracted from Schleswig later that year, at which time Harris tersely informs Friedrich Wilhelm’s foreign ministry that Britain will be ending its alliance with Prussia, effective immediately. The Prussians, for their part, expel the British embassy in Berlin in fury over “Anglo-Saxon duplicity.”

The same day the alliance with Prussia is canceled, the British people receive word that Francis II of the Two Sicilies, who had been raised up as King of Italy a few short months earlier, had been deposed by radical anarchists, and a laissez-faire dictatorship of the wealthy has been established in the deposed King’s place. The people of the north are furious that their new government has been brought down by a handful of the super-rich, but their protests are rapidly quelled by the local police, who are, unsurprisingly, being funded by the cheque-books of the new nation’s masters.

“Well, if the Italians are being ruled by money now, perhaps we can purchase them,” Disraeli quipped. And it was not an idle boast, either--Britain immediately begins to invest funds into Italy, paying off loans and building British-owned railways in order to exert influence on the bourgeois government.

“A new ally on the continent to replace the old,” Harris refers to them as in the Times. He leaves out that their usefulness is primarily that their great wealth can be entirely dominated by Britain.

Scarcely a month later, news also reaches London that Emperor Meiji, the young ruler of Japan, has been restored to singular control over that nation, breaking the ancient power of the Daimyo and overthrowing the Shogun. This is a matter of some concern for the British, as the Japanese islands are densely populated and highly literate, and a strong Japan could spell a rival in Asia for the British.

Disraeli, however, is eminently dismissive. “The yellow race cannot contend with the white, no matter how well-cultured their may appear to be. Their civilization ceased progressing some two-thousand years ago; the events in Japan now are merely the after-shocks of contact with the advanced West. Britain will trade with them, will deal with them, but we will not fear them. They are not worth fearing.”

For almost a year, it appears as if Conservative politics would survive. Although the second Franco-Prussian war had been disastrous, Disraeli’s ministry had held on and fought down all attempts at a vote of no confidence. There was little reason to think that the Conservatives as a whole would be defeated, although many within the party called for a replacement for Disraeli as Prime Minister.

What was not expected in the slightest was an even more extreme version of the landmark election of 20 years earlier. Running on a campaign of “the death of the Empire,” wherein the military, naval, and moral weakness of Britain is all attributed to the rule of the Conservatives “who in fourteen years of Parliamentary majority have done more than any other force in the history of Britain to destroy the prosperity and security of this nation, save Napoleon Bonaparte,” the Liberals secure almost 81% of the popular vote. It is the strongest electoral showing of a single party in a multi-party democracy with fair elections in history.

The Conservative party is so riven by the catastrophic defeat that it almost collapses. Disraeli, who had initially hoped to remain as head of the Conservatives in opposition, has found that he has actually lost his own Parliamentary seat to a Liberal. With only 14% of the vote, the Conservatives must somehow pick a leader from the few MPs they have remaining, yet there is no candidate truly suitable; eventually, in despair, they settle upon John Parkington, Disraeli’s Secretary of War and the last senior member of the previous government still in Parliament. The selection of the man “responsible for the entire Prussian debacle” is such a matter of ridicule that the Conservatives, at the true edge of collapse, are forced to expel Parkington from the party and replace him with Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, a well-respected but very moderate MP. It is a measure of the dominance of the left in the election that the left-leaning Gathorne-Hardy is even considered for party leadership, much less actually selected for it.

Glastone’s ministry sweeps into power on a wave of popularity the likes of which had never before been seen. The disgraced Disraeli has been forced to retire from public life (“The Jew, his attempt at destroying civilization thwarted, crawls back into the woodwork,” one particularly virulent paper writes), and with Palmerston not only having retired but also being upon death’s doorstep, Gladstone truly does have the run of the government.

Initially his job involves convincing the British people that the Liberal ministry will ensure the defense of the nation better than the Conservatives had, and to this end Gladstone begins a full army rearmament program, increasing the size of every garrison force and equipping them with additional guns and sapping technologies only recently tested by the somewhat backwards British Army. Although armed forces rearmament will be a continuous issue throughout the 1860s, for the time being Gladstone is able to convince the people, already enamored with Liberal governance, that he is taking his job quite seriously.

In terms of foreign policy, Gladstone’s troubles are somewhat greater. The issue of Kyzyl-Su, which was never resolved, has been heating up gradually since 1860, and it appears it will come to a point of crisis. Yet Britain has few allies internationally, with most powers like the Dutch lukewarm, and a few, like Russia and France, outright hostile. Gladstone’s foreign minister George Villiers, the 4th Earl Clarendon, has practically lived in Austria-Hungary since Gladstone has taken the ministry, furiously attempting to convince the Kaiser to support Britain in the upcoming conflict.

His efforts are not without profit; when the time finally comes for Russia and Britain to square off on the issue, the Tsar finds that he has no allies, and that the Kaiser has agreed to support Britain’s claim on the territory. Embittered and embarrassed, the Tsar cedes Kyzyl-Su to Britain with cold silence. British merchants, already partially established thanks to the long conflict over the territory, waste no time beginning a dedicated smuggling campaign on the Aral Sea to break Russia's monopoly in the region, leading to devastating economic depression in the Russian Caucasus and Kazakh lands, but huge profits for British investors.

With domestic army reform already underway and a massive foreign policy victory in Kyzyl-Su, Gladstone finds the time opportune to finally begin a mass reconstruction of the British Navy.

Most ships in the Navy, outdated by a matter of decades rather than years, were simply no longer fit to serve in an active role. Consequently these have been scrapped or sold (largely to the shell East India Company) and are being wholesale replaced by new iron-clad vessels powered by steam, the first all-steam navy in the history of the world.

Although the cost is great (exorbitant, even) the money left over from the last war with China is more than sufficient to cover it and the army reform both, and Gladstone is hailed as a miracle-worker for getting the contracts for production done in such record time. In all, 50 Ironclads and 50 of the smaller and quicker Monitor-type vessels will be produced and split into two navies, the Home Fleet and the Asian Station. If money and capacity permits following the completion of these projects, the creation of a third navy and the up-sizing of the Home Fleet are on the table as part of an ancillary expansion project.

The July Monarchy, which survived the Revolution of 1830, the Revolution of 1845 and two wars with the North German Federation, has finally collapsed from within. Militant socialists under the anarchic socialist Félix Pyat initially rose up in Paris and proclaimed the Paris Commune while the King and court were at Versailles. While the army was being sent into Paris to restore order, a major uprising in Franche-Comte and Bourgogne required the army to divide its forces to suppress both uprisings, and when a subsequent rebellion rose in Normandie, taking parts of the army with it, it proved too much. Louis-Philippe II has fled into exile in Spain (also the location of the exiled Francis II of the Two Sicilies), although anti-Carlist rebellions there appear as though they may force the entire Bourbon line to flee shortly enough.

The French nation, now wracked internally by civil war as monarchists and socialists fight in the streets, must also contend with the division of government within the nation, as Pyat’s Commune and the “proper” government, presently based in Versailles, negotiate for unity. It is a tumultuous time for France--and also, clearly, a weak one.

Some within Gladstone’s ministry advocate a renewed alliance with Germany “in order to restore the good name of Britain, to bring strength to the German principalities, and to throw down this Socialist monstrosity before it threatens the stability of Britain itself,” but Gladstone is entirely disinterested. Worried about alienating the left-wing of his party and falling into the same trap Disraeli did without his armed forces being fully prepared, Gladstone declines to approach Friedrich Wilhelm.

“If they can defeat France,” he is rumored to have said, “let them do it. We shall talk after.”

In 1867, just a week after the independence day of the United States, Canada asks for Dominion status.

The requests precipitates a minor panic within the Gladstone government, as nobody is quite sure how to proceed. Conservative doctrine as lain down by Derby and Disraeli advocated unity of governance for colonies, but retaining them directly under the crown. Liberals, however, have no such established policy for dealing with the various settler colonies and their requests for representation.

Without precedent and with no clear antagonism or support for the issue, Gladstone nevertheless makes the decision not to provide Canada with Dominion status after long debate within the party. This is primarily motivated by dual fears: the fear that the Conservatives will gain ground by politicizing the release of Canada, and the fear of a precedent established that the Liberals in power means a gradual reduction in the size and majesty of direct British control of territory.

Gladstone’s released statement reads, “For the time being this government holds that the Canadian colony is not yet prepared for Dominion status, and that autonomy would represent a threat to security both for the colony itself and for Britain as a whole. This government holds that the potential for Dominion status will be extended at some point in the future, when Canada is more highly populous and the Empire itself more broadly secured.” Despite the politically conciliatory tone of the note, it still results in agitation throughout Canada.

Although it has been on a low simmer, the Sepoy Rebellion in India continues. It has evolved from outright rebellion to general distaste for British rule and a desire for independence among the Indians which sometimes flares up into open conflict on a small scale, but it is a major concern for Gladstone’s government regardless, especially as elections are presently underway. The potential for an Indian revolt bringing down a government can be found by looking no further back than Disraeli’s tenure, and Gladstone has no desire to be a repeat of Disraeli.

Governor-General Derby was tasked with analyzing the situation and determining what is necessary to calm the Indians, and has come to the conclusion that the problems first arose when the Mughal Empire was annexed by the British. “The Indian, as an Oriental, requires a Despot; without a ruler to appease his sense of servility, there is no guidance in his life, and he thus thrashes about in the absence of a unifying and directing force.”

Thankfully for Gladstone, a Despot is ready at hand: the personage of Victoria, and her government. After a brief expedition to Kunduz, which is utilized by Gladstone and the Liberals as the excuse necessary to proclaim that all of India is finally conquered, the Prime Minister presents Victoria with an Imperial title, the “Empress of India,” continuing from the Mughal title which had been made defunct with the death of Bahadur Shah. It has both warmed Victoria’s view of Gladstone and the Liberal party as well as calming the tumultuous situation within India.

Unfortunately, despite Gladstone’s best efforts, in the end the Sepoys do rise up. Recent reforms to the Indian administration and army ensure that their movements are expertly tracked and the army crushes them with relative ease, but it is nevertheless a blow to the peace which the Liberals claimed that they had brought to the government.

“Like it or not, there’s naught that could’ve been done about it,” Scottish MP James Bryce argued in Parliament. “They were set to rebelling, and rebel they have. Now that we’ve shown them there’s nothing but death in the gambit, they won’t try for it again.”

Although Conservatives immediately begin to propagandize the Sepoy revolt, in the end Bryce’s prediction largely proves true, and India’s fury calms once the crack Indian troops put the rebellion down.

From late 1869 to 1870 the Third Franco-Prussian war rages, with the North German Federation and Spain on one side and France, Russia, and Sardinia-Piedmont on the other. Although Gladstone predicts the war will swiftly end against Germany and initial troop dispersion seems to bear this out, with French troops in the Rhineland and Catalonia within the first two months, the German states are able to effect a mass reversal of the front within just a few weeks. Counter-attacking deep into Alsace-Lorraine and western Russia within just a few months, it seems unlikely now that France will be able to turn the tide back in their favor.

"It seems Wilhelm I is an effective monarch," Gladstone was forced to admit, "unlike his predecessor. But can he bear it out to final victory and Alsace-Lorraine, as his father desired? That I doubt."

And indeed, they prove incapable of doing so. A panicked France cedes the Palatine territories with hardly any further resistance, granting the North German Confederation control of integral lands which had been lost to the German people for over a decade.

Although this is a grave blow for the socialist government of France and a major victory for Wilhelm I of Prussia, the failure to capture Alsace-Lorraine ensures that there will be a continuation war within the decade. Thus, while some voices urge Gladstone to re-open negotiations with the Confederation, for the moment he demurs. “I am still not confident that the German states will not continually draw Britain into continental engagements, and I am not comfortable jeopardizing this government by risking the chance of it until I have absolute confidence that Prussia will be the ally on the continent that we require it to be.”

Thus, while Gladstone does send a private congratulatory note to Prussia’s foreign minister von Bismarck, he does not officially comment upon the victorious war.

In August of 1871 the great successes of Gladstone’s ministry are completed, the dual canals at Panama and the Suez.

Imperfect power projection and the importance to the British economy of importing distant materials have, together, always formed the basis of the greatest threat to the stability of Great Britain. The former was troubling because many colonial rebellions could not easily be put down by the British unless there was already a Crown army present, due to the long duration necessary for travel between the metropole and Asia; the latter because rare-but-critical resources had to be imported through long supply chains with multiple intermediaries, driving up costs and making British purchasers reliant upon other states and vendors for their goods.

With the opening of the canals, both of these problems are alleviated. In a single fell swoop the British state has opened a rapid route to Asia, effectively ensuring perpetual control of India. Similarly, with the opening of the Panama canal, trade with the American west coast, and particularly with the rich guano and nitrate mines of Chile, are fully opened to British appropriation. No long will fertilizer be a matter of concern for the Crown.

“And bananas are a quarter pence!” cried one ecstatic Londoner, echoing the general populace’s pleasure with the canals. The price of foodstuffs has also dropped dramatically, leading to better diets and an even easier transition into the middle-class.

With the opening of the canal and an increased British presence in the Mediterranean, it only makes sense for Gladstone’s government to seize what land they can as waystations. The London Conference on the question of the Ottoman Empire proves a perfect opportunity to do just this.

Gladstone instructs Earl Clarendon to speak with Emil Pashah, the representative of Sultan Abdulmecid I at the conference, and promise to ensure the Empire’s integrity in return for the transfer of Cyprus to British control. While Emil is initially hesitant, Clarendon expertly coerces him, reminding him that Cyprus is claimed by the Greeks, has a large Greek population, and is more trouble than it is worth to the Ottoman state; conversely, in British hands, it represents a strong investment into the Empire’s security, providing a base for Royal Marines to leap into action whenever the Sultan requires it. With some final reluctance, Emil agrees to the proposal.

The conference that follows is a mere formality, British diplomatic pressure being what it is and with the French and Russians both still reeling from the Third Franco-Prussian War. At its conclusion Britain has gained another colony in the Mediterranean.

“And for no cost at all,” Gladstone smiled. “The Empire will live for a little while longer, but this is the beginning of its end. And they gave it up for nothing!”

Though the London Conference dominates events in the first half of 1871, following the cession of Cyprus the government turns again to the question of Ireland.

With the exception of the debate surrounding the Great Famine, the last time Ireland had factored in affairs of government was the Second Irish Reform Act, which had been passed in 1840. Since then Ireland has continued in a state of general economic and cultural malaise, despite its representation in Parliament. British capitalists still dominate land in Ireland, the Irish are still overwhelmingly marginal farmers living on lands which are extremely enclosed, and the punishing weight of efforts to keep Ireland agrarian by the nobility has ensured that, despite the Reform Act, Ireland’s Catholics are still poor and second-class citizens.

“This must stop now,” roared Henry Keane, a Labour MP. “An Irishman must be British or he must not be; there can no longer be a flirtation with a system of in-betweens which gives naught to the Irish and everything to English economic interests. Ireland must be made part of Britain or it must be made separate. I call for an end to discrimination against another white race; what’s more, I call for an end to economic exploitation so fierce that it should make the worst capitalist blush. Raise us up, or cast us down--but be wary of the latter choice!”

Keane need not have worried. Just as Palmerston before him, Gladstone is aware of the necessity of maintaining the Irish vote, and likewise wishes to see an industrialized Ireland to help bolster Britain’s economy. The Third Irish Reform Act severely curtails the power of the nobility in Ireland, restructures land ownership, establishes government schooling and relief programs, and makes it illegal to discriminate on any basis of religion between Christian sects. It is hailed by both Labour and the Liberals as landmark legislation, although it makes Gladstone the permanent enemy of Conservatives, Tories, and Anarchists.

Once again the Qing threaten to close their ports to the Opium trade, and to the surprise of the Liberals, Gladstone proves entirely ready to permit them to do so. Having made his early career campaigning against Palmerston’s Opium Wars, Gladstone is quite pleased to finally be placed in a position to end the trade entirely.

“The continued poisoning of the Chinese people with the drugs which we Britons, supposedly civilized folk, force our subjects in India to grow is entirely abhorrent. The Great Qing is entirely within his rights to close his borders to this, the very poison of un-civilization; we sell it so that we might continue to dominate the Chinese, to swallow their livelihoods without touching more than a few paltry scraps of their land. For so long as the Chinese have been unwilling to demand the trade be stopped, I have not forced the issue; but now that they are opposed to it openly, I fully support the permanent closing of not only the trade with China, but likewise the cultivation of the poppy within India and Afghanistan.”

This, needless to say, caused an eruption within Parliament. Conservatives knew that the continued weakness of China was reliant upon the trade in Opium remaining open, and Liberals who had stock in the East India Company or opium production in India likewise relied upon the income. Many, moreover, were merely opposed to the cession of the trade on the basis of their laissez-faire politics.

While Labour eagerly supported Gladstone, then, his own party reluctantly backed out from under him. In a split vote that just barely succeeded, his own party, backed by the Conservatives, issued a vote of no confidence over the large minority of Liberal loyalists and Labour supporters which Gladstone had accrued, forcing him out of office. His ministry is replaced with that of another Liberal leader, the left-leaning James Bryce, who is nevertheless willing to engage in a new Opium War.

Chapter Text

Although it is an eminently unpopular move, Bryce’s first action is to greatly increase taxes on the British people in order to pay for a planned naval base expansion, which Bryce claims will “see the entirety of the Empire able to construct the vessels necessary for national defense at local ports, diffusing the defense of the Empire to local authorities.”

Although many MPs are skeptical or even downright hostile to the concept of local elites having control over naval force production, even on a small scale, most (accurately) predict that almost no local governments would have the wealth necessary to build their own ships regardless, and therefore that the expansion of naval bases will effectively function as it always has: an increase in state power and state control of the navy.

People protest loudly in the streets, but even with a riven Parliament and Liberals, Labour, and Conservatives at one another’s throats, there is sufficient support for Bryce’s move to allow the passage of a one-time five-year tax increase to pay for the expansion.

Bryce’s ministry is not an incredibly stable one, given that it was essentially a fabrication of self-serving Liberals, and that the vast majority of the party is still more sympathetic to Gladstone than Bryce. This tension is only exacerbated by the virtually unanimous Labour support of Gladstone, whom they see as a better and less imperialist candidate for Prime Minister than the socially left but politically moderate Bryce (the opposite, as it so happens, of Gladstone).

Bryce had long wanted to include Gladstone in his cabinet in order to heal the divisions in the party, but for so long as Bryce had proven “a traitor to unity,” as Gladstone had put it, the latter had not only refused to participate in Bryce’s government, but had even temporarily joined the opposition and openly flirted with joining Labour.

To prevent this from happening, which the Liberals would do at all costs, they convince Bryce to offer serious concessions to Gladstone, essentially amounting to permitting him to govern foreign policy for the Near East, where his primary policy ambitions had long been directed (but away from the Far East, where he could cause trouble). Gladstone is therefore integrated into Bryce’s cabinet, at long last, as Minister for the Orient, a fabricated temporary position intended for his occupation only.

Among the first things which Gladstone undersigns is the Gladstone Declaration, which is essentially a diplomatic note forcibly creating the demilitarized zone of Palestine as a settlement area for Jews. Sultan Abdulmecid is infuriated by the move, but having given the British almost total control of his state’s future, he can do nothing but silently fume as Gladstone pronounces the Palestinian Zone as being under permanent British protection.

Gladstone quite publicly offers Disraeli the position of first official overseer of Jewish affairs in Palestine, but the embittered old Conservative does not even bother to respond.

Yet the Gladstone Declaration is but the first and the lightest step that the ex-Prime Minister takes against the Sultan’s state. After traveling to Konstantinyye to look the Sultan in his face when he told him of it, Gladstone informs him that the Ottoman Empire, as part of a deal in which Britain will construct a Constantinople-to-Baghdad rail network, will cede the Hedjaz, as well as the port of Qatif, to the new united Arab Emirate which Britain is backing for control of the whole of the peninsula. When Gladstone clarifies that this means the cession of Mecca and Medina, Abdulmecid’s Grand Vizier Ismael makes to rise, but, stone-faced, Abdulmecid pulls him back down.

Abdulmecid is entirely quiet throughout the entire audience, as is Ismael Pasha. When Gladstone finishes, a small smile upon his face, Abdulmecid and Ismael leave with no words having been spoken.

But when the British army marches into Hedjaz, with Emir Abdul Raman bin Faisal ibn Saud riding behind them, there are no Turkish armies which waylay them.

“The balkanization of the Empire is well under way,” a triumphant Gladstone noted in his journal. “The European portion will need to wait some time, I suspect, but a more stable and British-aligned region shall come forth from these ashes, of that I am sure.” The first step for this new unity was Abdul Raman, who, as part of the agreement which saw him raised as Emir of a (mostly) unified peninsula, was forced to cede foreign policy to Britain and accept the limiting influence of a powerful Parliament in his new Arab state.

Although Abdulmecid has thus far been forced to silently accept the British demands thanks to his reliance upon British support in the face of Russian and Austro-Hungarian pressure, there is nothing that prevents the Ottoman state from--theoretically speaking--breaking their allegiance with Britain, aligning with these powers in exchange for territory, and turning to retake the Arabian peninsula. It is well-known that the Mohammedan faith places undue emphasis upon the importance of the cities of Mecca and Medina, and the forcible takeover of these cities (for such it was, even if no shot was fired) quite likely represents a grievous insult the likes of which has not been seen in the Ottoman Empire since the Oriental Crisis. Small skirmishes on the border of the Empire and the Arab Emirate over the title of Caliph indicate to Bryce’s ministry that the cession of these territories might have weakened the Empire even more than previously anticipated.

Although Bryce completely supported the strengthening of the Empire at the London Conference and is consequently quite concerned, Gladstone is quite pleased with the state of affairs. “If the forced handing-over of Hedjaz has weakened the Ottoman state more than anticipated, all the better; it will only make later population transfers in the Balkans so much easier.”

There is, however, still the matter of the Empire potentially siding with Russia or Austria-Hungary against the British in return for ceded lands. The British Army in India would stand as a strong incentive not to do so, but the Army stationed there cannot access the Empire. Or could not, rather--as the final, overdue stage of the Great Game, Bryce’s ministry undertakes to forcibly place Persia under British influence by replacing their present Shah, in the process constructing a bloc of British-aligned states in Central Asia. The British have outflanked the Russians and Ottomans both.

The economic implications of Bryce’s massive increase in taxes has struck the poor particularly hard, and has consequently done much to destabilize the state. With less discretionary income to spend on goods, even the reduced prices brought on by the worldwide reduction in shipping times thanks to the Panama and Suez canals fails to provide enough relief for many families to get by. Although the minimal state support for wages and unemployment alleviates some of the worst of the burden, these supports are largely trinket measures; there is no denying that there is real impoverishment in Britain brought on by the tax increase, even if Liberals and Conservatives both support it.

As such, in a bipartisan effort between Labour and the Liberals, Bryce’s government is the first to establish a truly modern national bank of Britain. Providing cheap loans to all British subjects (including colonials, provided they have sufficient collateral, and with reduced rates for depressed Irishmen), the Bank of Britain also controls interest rates and releases specie at a calculated rate intended to stabilize the Pound. Although it is a measure which is largely intended to prevent matters from getting worse, it also serves to take the worst of the edge off of the situation. With only a year of emergency taxes remaining, the future once again looks bright for the average Briton.

In February of 1877 the Fourth Franco-Prussian war is declared, this time with Germany and Spain facing the French Second Republic, Russia, and Sardinia-Piedmont.

The Second Republic, plagued as it has been by infighting and the special privileges for Paris which the anarchic socialist Félix Pyat forced upon the government, is unable to retain strong diplomatic relations, much less internal unity, and its allies are not seriously inclined to support it, despite their formal declarations of war. France's army is in a shambles, and the government lacks effective control of most of central and southern France, as well as of Brittany. Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck, who has rapidly come to represent the unionist tendencies of the Prussian monarch, both believe that the war will be concluded in Prussian victory--and that, finally, the dream of a united Germany can be brought to fruition with this proof of Prussia’s strength in hand.

Many factors contributed to the rise of the extreme left. The Fourth Franco-Prussian war and the constant tendency of the elite to spend the lives of the poor infuriated the already slowly radicalizing socialists in Britain; the tax increases of Bryce’s government not only economically punished the poor, but also served as the basis of an argument that the elite were attempting to intentionally marginalize them once again following the political gains that had been made under the previous Liberal administrations; and, most of all, the Third Opium War showed that the British government was entirely willing to betray their own and directly kill hundreds of thousands in order to ensure that the power of capital continued to rule in the world.

Friedrich Engels, who had always had something of a rapport with the workers in Britain following his initial stint in Manchester in the mid-century, had been a ceaseless proponent of radicalizing workers within the United Kingdom since socialist politics had first sprung forth in the 1860s. He wrote to Marx regularly and spoke with him often about the “paramount necessity” of ensuring that the British embraced Communist ideology in full, not the “limp bastardization” which political parties like Labour employed for votes. There needed to be a real Communist Party; a party which would adhere to all of the tenets of communism which were established by Marx and Engels, which believed in the power of labor and the absolute necessity of the proletarian revolution.

In September of ’77, Engels finally gets his wish. After a fiery rally in Manchester, members of the local trade unions there moved themselves indoors and began to quietly discuss the formation of a new movement, one that was anti-imperialist, egalitarian, and proletarian. In October of 1877, the Communist Party of Great Britain is formed.

Yet as when Disraeli ignored the marginal Labour party (now, it should be noted, the next-largest behind Liberal), there is little reason for Bryce’s Liberal government to take notice of the rise of the “extremist socialists,” as they are initially referred to; their numbers are minuscule and their politics verge on the terroristic, not a concern of the government but of Scotland Yard. Matters of foreign policy continue to hold much greater weight for Bryce’s government.

By January, the Fourth Franco-Prussian war concludes in German victory, and something of an atmosphere of expectation pervades the Liberal cabinet. Gladstone advises Bryce to enter into an agreement of alliance with the Germans now, but Bryce vacillates and ultimately delays doing so.

“William, and especially Bismarck, are constantly speaking of uniting ALL German peoples,” Bryce scowled. “It would not surprise me in the slightest if they engaged in a war with Austria-Hungary, which is far from an engagement which I would like to force Britain into. Our relations with the Kaiser are strong, and as much as the creation of a true German nation may be inevitable, the loss of British life in the course of its construction is not. We will let the Germans fight for their state, and we will determine whether to support them or not following its final consecration.”

The invention of portable machine guns, first pioneered in the American Civil War but not truly mobile or effective until the late 1870s, has changed everything. It is now possible to eradicate enemy forces ten times larger than Britain’s own with no serious threat; that, alone, changes the face of warfare and negotiations.

For untold centuries, Africa has been closed to the European hand. With the exception of more moderate regions in the north and far south, Malaria, enemy warbands, and the dreaded tsetse fly have kept Europeans out. But, one by one, these obstacles have been conquered; there is now a prophylaxis against malaria standard-issued to all British army units in the form of quinine, slash-and-burn tactics keep the tsetse fly populations low, and finally, now, the Maxim gun will lay low the natives who try to resist her. The interior of Africa, long uncivilized and long resistant to the guiding white hand which was extended to it, shall finally be pacified. In the words of one of the few Conservatives in Parliament, “we shall enter into Africa with Christ and with civilization, saving those few poor Negroes that we may, and ending the resistance of those unfortunate ones who would drag their whole race down in attempting to slow the benevolent hand of Britain’s advance.”

Of course, the Liberals do not sell planned colonization efforts into the African interior in such a light. For them, the objective is a benevolent one, to be accomplished with treaties and civilizing zeal.

“Yet treaties signed at the point of a machine gun are still subject to that weapon’s existence. You are still using the gun,” sighed Edmund Pembroke, the only Communist MP.

As soon as Britain had begun its program of colonizing limited sectors of Africa in February of 1880, the Great Powers of Europe scrambled to call a larger conference to deal with the division of the continent, wary as they were of Britain’s superior military and naval power. As French president Jules Ferry--a moderate conservative elected in 1879 following the disastrous reversals of France under the Socialist regime--said, “if some guidelines are not lain out about this African business, Britain will consume the entirety of the continent, and woe to the helpless natives forced to work under her cruel hand!”

Contrary to the popular opinion of the European powers regarding British intentions in Africa, however, Bryce’s government had no major plans for the continent. Having regained the loyalty of the aged but still mighty Gladstone only with difficulty, and with his government facing mounting pressure from the powerful Socialist party, which was almost entirely anti-colonial, Bryce had no intention of risking his government “for the supposed wealth of a bleak and uncivilized continent.” The only colonization efforts which had taken place to that point were the prerogative of  private citizens, which at most had an MP or two as investors. In fact, there was no stated government policy related to Africa at all.

Yet the Amsterdam Conference was nevertheless called, and prestige alone required Britain’s presence there. As soon as Bryce realized the potential implications of the conference he called snap elections to strengthen his government’s position, but in the interim he effected no changes on British policy: she would stay out of colonial affairs in regions where local tribes had established their own states, however primitive those states may be. This was met with outcry from Members of Parliament who believed that Bryce was throwing away British power and prestige by permitting other nations to “establish colonial empires to rival our own, with nary an attempt on our own parts to counter them,” but Bryce was adamant: on Africa, the Liberals would maintain an isolationist stance.

This lasted barely two weeks.

On August 2nd, 1880, Bryce’s government authorized the deployment of The Delhi Army under Benjamin Jellacoe and the 5th Army under Zachary Haig to secure the Suez Canal, capture Cairo, Alexandria, and Darfur, and force the abdication of the present Egyptian Khedive, Muhammad Tewfik Pasha, to be replaced with a British-backed--and British-controlled--puppet. Although Bryce’s government, in the midst of the election campaign and wary of being embarrassed, maintain that this is a deviation in policy brought on by the Egyptians themselves and that British troops would not have been deployed had British consuls not been forcibly removed from the nation, the fact remains that war was declared. 

Although Bryce attempts to downplay the campaign through all possible means, in this instance Gladstone is not a well-chosen ally, for he revels in the decision to “displace the ostensible puppet of the Sick Man of Europe,” even going so far as to publicly announce his demand that Sultan Abdulmecid join the conflict with his own forces, “as his rebellious vassal--soon to be pacified by British arms--unlawfully and unmanfully attacked our own peoples.” When Abdulmecid’s forces sorrowfully marched into Egypt against their own interests, Gladstone was so pleased he threw all caution to the wind and began to glorify the intervention in Egypt, entirely contrary to the isolationist position which Bryce had been attempting to achieve.

Gladstone’s impolitic and untimely reversal of position would later be blamed for what happened next.

Although the Liberals once again won a majority in Parliament, it was not so strong as Bryce had hoped; Labour, and, worryingly, the CPGB made major gains, but so too did the Conservatives, on the basis of concerns about Britain’s world position under Bryce’s new isolationism.

The head of the far-right conservatives in the House of Lords, the staunchly monarchist and anti-enfranchisement Lord Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess Salisbury, rightly sees this as the time to act. With the Liberal party maintaining their power and Labour making constant gains, he realizes that there will not be an electoral victory for conservatives within Britain within the foreseeable future, if one will ever come again. “The tyranny of the people has made it such that, in order to practice conservative politics in this country, one must behave in precisely so underhanded a manner as the mob expects of politicians of the respectable class,” he was quoted by the Times as saying in late 1879.

But Lord Cecil, as he prefers, is a master of just such underhanded measures. After securing the support of the Conservative leader of the Commons, Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, he expertly plays his opponents off of one another, riling the members of the Liberals who feel betrayed by the new isolationism espoused by Bryce, as well as fanning the flames of Socialist concerns about more “aggressive” imperialist powers taking stewardship over Africa. In so doing, he is not only able to re-open the old Liberal wounds between the Interventionists and Isolationists which Bryce believed he had healed, but to break some Labour MPs away from supporting the Gladstone-Bryce Liberals. When Bryce moves to form his government, then, he finds that there are not sufficient votes to support him: only 42% of Parliament backs him, and his government collapses.

The successor to Bryce, wrought through absolutely shocking concessions and legislative trading, is none other than Lord Cecil. Through what contemporary news (and later historians) refer to as the “Unforgivable Bargain,” Lord Cecil gains sufficient Interventionalist-Liberal and national-Labour supporters to form a government, over and above the abstaining Communists, Left-Socialists, and Isolationist-Liberals who back Bryce.

Although Cecil personally despises “mob rule,” as he terms it, he is willing to make “the most abhorrent deal” in order to “ensure that Britain is not ruined in her historic position as the dominant power on this globe by the foolhardy and intentionally harmful positions of the isolationist Left.” This includes not merely enfranchisement for women--a position so hated by Cecil that he almost reneges at the last moment, before being encouraged by Victoria herself to sign the bill to preserve his government--but also the creation of Britain’s first pension system.

Both were so far from Cecil’s typical ideological position that some newspapers ran stories suggesting that he was a secret liberal, but in reality it was more political acumen on Cecil’s part.

By allowing women the vote he not only secured mass Liberal and Labour support for his government, he also contributed to the rising electoral power of Labour, whom he hoped would come to seriously challenge Liberal power in Parliament and create a three-way deadlock between Conservatives, Liberals, and Labour MPs, thereby forcing the Liberals and Conservatives to form coalitions. Likewise, by passing pension reform Cecil hoped to both reduce poverty among the elderly--as so often happens, the largest backers of conservative politics in Britain--and to reduce the strain of the elderly upon their families, thereby contributing to additional economic spending and employment, as fewer Britons would need to stay home in order to care for the old. In this way he sold the policy not only to the left but also the right, and in response to concerns over the economic costs of the plan, he promised a “decade of industrial development” which would “restore Britain’s flagging economy” and “more than pay not only for the systems of social welfare which the Liberal governments have perhaps unwisely over-invested in, but also this limited pension plan which this government has instituted.” On both counts he would prove correct.

Despite these concessions, however, Cecil’s government marks a period of growing far-left radicalization, wherein many Isolationist-Liberals turn to the Labour party, and many Labour party members, disgusted by the “legislative trading” of parliament, turn to the CPGB and its promise of a utopic society.

Yet, for now, Lord Cecil is Prime Minister. One of his first acts is to appoint an Overseer of African Affairs, yet another well-known Earl Derby: Frederick Stanley, 16th Earl Derby, younger son of ex-Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley and younger brother to the late Edward Stanley, the 15th Earl Derby.

Frederick is an avid advocate for colonial expansion, and, working in tandem with Cecil’s Secretary of War, none other than Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy (“a corrupt bargain if I ever saw one,” in Bryce’s words), it is understood in Cecil’s cabinet that the Earl Derby’s mission is nothing less than to secure the largest share of Africa for Britain that he can. He takes to the task with gusto.

Barely over two weeks after the Conservative leadership sweeps into power, Earl Derby has already requisitioned all of the armies from India, as well as the Scotland Garrison from the home isles, for service in Africa. The “Derby Doctrine,” as it will later be referred to, appears ad-hoc at the time but will later be seen as largely pre-meditated: secure first the coastline, build naval infrastructure for further troop landings, then assault interior realms after they are (ideally) isolated from intervention from other European powers. Although it is not successful everywhere, Derby’s work is largely praised as intelligent and flexible in the face of rapidly-changing developments in Africa.

Derby’s first move is to secure the Nigerian coast, which is comprised of many small Sultanates, all ostensible vassals to the Caliph in Sokoto but in reality quite independent of him, and therefore very much threatened by other European powers. With the Sokoto Caliphate understood to be the greatest prize on the continent outside of Egypt, Derby orders the first army on the scene, Reginald Beatty’s Calcutta Army, to engage the natives “with whatever pretext may be fabricated—and if one cannot be, engage them under no pretext but that of ‘might makes right!’”

As it so happens Beatty could not come up with a suitable reason for his assault upon the Nigerian coastal states, but thanks to the Amsterdam Conference he was able to declare war legally on the basis of "effective control". The rationale was Britain's long-standing occupation of Lagos, and European nations generally accepted the claim, thereby insulating Britain from diplomatic fallout.

With the Warri and Oyo confederations defeated, he turned his attention to Benin before waiting for the arrival of Indian support which would permit a simultaneous assault upon Dahomey and Aro, thereby securing the interior around the Sokoto Caliphate for British rule. Although the Caliph has expressed indignation at Britain’s actions against his vassals, and has authorized raiding across the border into the new British territories, he has as yet proven unwilling to defy the British directly and to declare war over the matter. Earl Derby believes it is likely he never will. “Such is always the way with the Negro; they have no instinct for politics. Negro inferiority is, unfortunately, the truest basis of the white man’s burden.”

But matters with the Caliph must need wait, as there are more pressing concerns on the east coast of Africa to attend to. The Zanzibari Sultanate, seen within Britain as the gateway to central Africa and Lake Victoria--a region which, in the words of Lord Cecil, “must go to Britain in the name of her prestige and the glory of her illustrious monarch”--is dangerously close to the Portuguese zone of control. Thankfully the Zanzibari Sultan is extremely weak, and the slave trading which occurs out of Zanzibar provides an ample casus belli for British intervention.

After declaring war on the Geledi Sultan on the fabricated charge of abetting the Zanzibari slave trade, General Alfred Thesiger of the 2nd Army is finally ordered to bring the Sultan to task. He is given operational control of the fifty iron-clad vessels of Lord Geoffrey Buller’s 3rd fleet, more than enough to turn Zanzibar to slag if need be. Predictably, the Sultan surrenders long before that is necessary.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian campaign rages in spite of additional support from Arabia and the Trucial States. Although General Haig was able to secure the Suez before it was captured by Egyptian forces and to push into Cairo, a diversion caused by an Egyptian army in the north has slowed his progress to the critical city of Alexandria, which insufficient capital ship projection renders safe enough for the Khedive to run the government from. Meanwhile, extremely high civilian resistance and poor infrastructure in the south has slowed the advance of Jellicoe’s army, which must capture the critical southern cities of the Soudan if Britain is to have any hope of maintaining direct control of the Dar al-Fur. Although the war goes well (if slowly) and the Khedive is certain to surrender in the long term, the long delay for victory breeds dissent and disease within Haig and Jellicoe’s armies, and likewise raises the possibility of a protracted civil conflict in the Soudan. Indeed, a local messianic figure calling himself the Mahdi has lately taken to riling the Soudanese people up against the British, and all attempts to capture him have been foiled by Jellicoe’s other duties. It must be hoped that he will be captured once the war has concluded, or folded into Britain’s governmental structure in the region.

Meanwhile, in the Niger delta a war which had briefly paused has reignited. The Aro state and its only ally, the Dahomey nation, are pressed to fight for their independence by the advancing forces of Beatty, now supported by the Scottish Army under George Williams. The victory of British forces in the conflict is a foregone conclusion, but the question for the future is where to press into the interior. A Dutch war with the Bambara Empire threatens British control of the interior, and pressure from Derby and Gathorne-Hardy ensures that, once the war with the Sokotan vassals is finalized, British attention in the Niger region will turn west in an attempt to cut the Dutch off. Only after as much of the interior is secured as possible will Britain finally engage with and finish off the Caliph.

Although the majority of Britons are still supportive of the unabashed expansionism of Lord Cecil’s government--“finally taking the might of Britain and using it for its right purpose,” one columnist for the Illustrated Times wrote--many are becoming somewhat concerned about its pace. Since Cecil’s government took power in September, no less than 5 major and 3 minor African states or tribes have surrendered to Britain, or are on the verge of surrendering. Many worry about the international reaction to Britain’s actions, especially since the Amsterdam Conference was largely conceived as a means of limiting British influence in Africa.

Although Lord Cecil has delegated all affairs of African expansionism to Earl Derby and Gathorne-Hardy, he nevertheless sees the benefit of showing that Britain has the capacity to be politic in its foreign policy. Unwilling to usurp the authority he has given the former gentlemen, however, Cecil decides to make his political coup elsewhere, namely in Asia.

Already beset by French actions in Indochina, it is a well-known fact that the Thai Rattakanosin Kingdom is struggling to keep stable, and the Muslim territories which constitute its southern provinces do not assist the Thai King in maintaining order. Lord Cecil, then, suggests to Phra Bat Somdet Phra Poraminthra Maha Chulalongkorn Phra Chunla Chom Klao Chao Yu Hua (known more sanely as Rama V) that the Thai state might exchange portions of the Malay peninsula to Britain in return for a five-year guarantee on the stability of the Thai borders. Supremely wary of French incursions into the Vietnamese state and not at all over-grieved at the loss of Muslim subjects, Rama agrees to the bargain, netting Lord Cecil’s government a great deal more friendly support at home and abroad--except, of course, among the French.

On June 6, 1881, Britain is finally at peace for the first time in almost a year. Although the span of time is quite short, Britain’s conquests have been immense: Egypt, the Soudan, and the Dar al-Fur have all fallen, as well as the Suahili coast, Zanzibar, and the tribes of the Suazi and Basotho in South Africa. In the Niger delta five states have collapsed--Calabar, Warri, Oyo, Benin, and Dahomey--and countless other tribes throughout Africa have been peacefully subjugated through treaties. Loud CPGB critiques (mostly from Edmund Pembroke, who has become famous for his quote “treaties signed at the point of a machine gun are still subject to that weapon’s existence”) are of course ignored by Lord Cecil’s ministry.

In this time of peace, Cecil believes that another territorial coup can be achieved by destabilizing the Merina-led monarchy of Madagascar. Constituting a minor ethnic group on the island, the Merina rule largely through the acquiescence of missionaries and other European personnel on the island, who have come to represent part of the very administrative structure of the monarchy. By intentionally destabilizing the position of the Merina and then offering to reassert their dominance in return for “concessions,” (more bluntly, effective control of the island), Lord Cecil feels confident that the entire island can be brought under British control in a single fell swoop.

Although the French--who likewise had many missionaries on the island and a major interest in Madagascar as a colony--complain loudly, with President Ferry even going so far as to threaten war before being loudly shouted down by his own party and forced to resign, the plan works as Lord Cecil predicted, and Earl Derby executed; the Merina rule still, but only as agents of Britain.

Although Lord Derby had initially intended to focus all of his efforts on West Africa in the near future, the surprise Italian occupation of Eritrea, effected by a treaty with Emperor Menelik II in which the Italian board of directors promised ten years of technological and munitions transfers from the directors’ private factories in return for the cession of territory, leads to a panic within the British government over control of the territory, which has potential access to Lake Victoria. Although the Italian directors initially dissent to British aggression, a monetary payment to their state quiets them, and Haig, Jellicoe, and Thesiger are all rerouted to put down Menelik’s independent government.

Yet Ethiopia is a special case: a Christian nation with a more advanced state than other African nations, and with superior Hamitic racial origins, the conquest of Ethiopia cannot merely be justified on the basis of base expansionism. Rather, Earl Derby shrewdly couches the conquest as a matter of protection against the Italians, whom Derby claims have purchased the vassalage of Menelik (a further payment to the Italian government assures that they even publicly agree to the assertion). Derby’s promise in the invasion is not the subjugation of the Ethiopian state, but guaranteeing its freedom from Italian tyranny by the deposition of Menelik II and the installing of Zewditu, Menelik’s young daughter. It just so happens that this regime change would necessitate a regent, and of course none of Menelik’s corrupt officials will do, so it must, alas, be a British regent who is placed in power.

“Sometimes the affairs of state are so damnably easy to manipulate,” Earl Derby’s diary entry from December 1881 reads.

A few brief months after access to Lake Victoria had been secured in the east, a matter which threatens it from the west arises: control over the highly populous and resource-rich Congo.

Lord Cecil had been diplomatically sparring with France, Spain, and Portugal over rights to the Congo for quite some time when the Belgian King Leopold II came forward with a proposal of his own: as a neutral third party with no great interest in Africa, and representing himself rather than his state, the Belgian monarch could establish a protectorate over the Congo with the aid of the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley, and in so doing ensure that none of the Great Powers come to blows over the territory.

Although there is some grumbling about “interference” from all parties, the plan is sound: occupied with other matters in Africa, none of the colonizing powers can truly afford a war which something on the scale of the Congo would necessitate, and, in the case of Britain, it also serves as yet another example of the new Conservative government’s willingness to diplomatically compromise internationally. But most critically for Cecil, the Belgian state is firmly under the influence of Britain already, and allowing Leopold control over the Congo will do nothing more than allow Britain indirect access to the resources in the long-term, all without British soldiers being forced to fire a shot.

When Britain comes forward in support of the proposal, even though the other colonizing nations can read the writing on the wall, they agree to cede the Congo to Belgium. “What else might we do?” the Liberal Dutch PM Gijsbert van Tienhoven wrote to his embassy in France. “We must cede the Congo to Belgium, or else Britain will surely take it for herself. In a decision between a hateful choice and an unforgivable one, the hateful must win out.”

In the final days of August, 1882, the German Empire is proclaimed following the successful conclusion of the Brothers’ War. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and his monarch, Wilhelm I, have succeeded in the creation of a German Reich which they hope will truly stand the test of time.

Much time has passed and a great deal has occurred since the early reversals of the Prussian monarchs, when the Palatine territories themselves were occupied by Bourbon France. The Reich is now a strong, stable nation with a vast population and great material resources; finally, it is a worthy ally for Britain on the continent.

Thus, when von Bismarck sends a formal request for Britain to enter into an alliance, tying the German state to the British “in perpetuity,” Lord Cecil’s government is all too eager to enter into the agreement. “On this day we stand with our German friends now, finally, in an alliance which will last through the ages,” Cecil proclaimed to the House of Lords the day after. “And when the Crown Prince Frederick succeeds to the throne of the German nation, not only shall our states be aligned, but so too will the illustrious dynasties of our two nations be joined in common blood and common goals: the furthering of the noble Germanic peoples!”

To the surprise of most MPs, Lord Cecil’s promises of economic expansion prove to be more than mere political posturing. Following its tax reform, the government budget has not only rebounded from the disastrous deficit which it was running in late 1880, but has even reached levels previously unknown in the late 1870s, during Bryce’s government. Although the people as-of-yet bear most of the burden for this economic expansion, as Cecil’s reforms have thus far focused primarily upon properly extracting taxes from evaders, future promises of further development are intended by Cecil to ensure that production in all sectors increases, so that the taxation burden will not be felt quite so heavily.

Yet, for the present, the primary problem identified by Cecil’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Beach, lays in economic diversity. Britain’s colonies, both in Africa and Asia, overwhelmingly produce primary goods which compete on the market with cheap and mass-produced goods grown in Ireland and Scotland, sapping the value of British-grown and harvested agricultural goods and contributing to a dire lack of more necessary resources such as coal. Sir Beach advances the theory that the outer colonies, even marginal as they are, should be shifted toward a system of producing what he calls “secondary goods,” goods which are directly used in core industrial processes, such as coal, petroleum, and iron. He argues that New Zealand in particular is incredibly wealthy in such secondary resources, and that even with its marginal population the shift to secondary resource production would serve as a major boon to the larger British economy.

As part of Cecil’s larger industrialization plan, then, the “Beach theorem” is put into practice in New Zealand in 1882. Expansions into India and Africa would follow in the mid-1880s, as farm and mine expansion and diversification would be undertaken on a grand scale to help ensure profit margins are perpetually at their maximum.

While Britain’s armies are otherwise engaged in West Africa, a pivotal event marking a new age occurs: Communist revolutionaries rise up throughout India.

Although their numbers are rather small--undoubtedly because they rose up before they were fully ready, hoping that the preoccupation of British forces would allow them to achieve victory--the mere fact that an attempted Communist revolution has occurred in the colonies at all is startling. Although an army is immediately rerouted from Nigeria to put down the rebels and does so with ease, the perceived weakness of Cecil’s government leads to the divided opposition’s loud calls for him to step down. In response, Cecil rounds up the members of the CPGB (they are, unfortunately, later released without charges, as no proven links between themselves and the Indian revolutionaries exists) and continues to govern without any further acknowledgement of the rebellion.

In a meeting with the Queen at Buckingham palace, Lord Cecil flatly dismisses the idea of recusing himself. “This government was born of a bargain, a horrible one which goes far beyond my beliefs and interests; I will not squander what was given, all the more because I am well-aware that it will not be given again. I was never under any illusion, your Majesty, that my government would last beyond this election. What I have sought to accomplish is nothing less than the enforced presence of Britain on the world stage; if by the time I am forced from office I have also forced the left to realize that they cannot be isolated agents, then my goals shall have been accomplished. But I have not ensured that as yet, and I will not give up governance until an election, at the last, forces my hand. There is far too much to do in the interim.”

While Cecil deals with revolution and dissent at home, abroad the Earl Derby and Gathorne-Hardy are embroiled in matters in North Africa. Fearful of French control of Algeria and Tunis and concerned about the potential extension of French influence into Morocco and down through the Sahara, which would constitute the formation of a French colonial bloc that might prove dangerous to British interests, Derby and Gathorne-Hardy have once again delayed plans in Nigeria in order to focus elsewhere, where critical British interests lie: namely Morocco, and the perceived necessity of additional British bases not only in North Africa generally, but especially so close to the vulnerable Gibraltar.

In a brief two-and-a-half month campaign the Moroccan Sultan is forced to sign a treaty of protection with the British, ceding control of the vast majority of affairs within his territory to the British state in return for keeping his rule “intact.”

Initially Earl Derby sees affairs in Morocco as yet another simple matter of Britain arriving on the scene and intervening in affairs just in time to secure the outcome which she desires, but as it would so happen it is not quite so simple in the Moroccan case. Treaties between the Moroccan Sultan and Spain are now abrogated thanks to the British intervention, and both Spain and France, both of whom looked upon Morocco as rightfully their territory, are incensed by the bald British attempts to bypass their interests. International rumors suggest that Spain and France are in talks to jointly declare war on Britain over the territory, Britain’s actions “being a step entirely too far for a civilized and respectable nation,” an already preoccupied Lord Cecil orders Derby to “handle matters in Morocco absolutely immediately, with whatever solution is deemed necessary for the continued insurance of peace with the Great Powers.”

Although the Earl Derby at first worries that the tone of Lord Cecil’s missive suggests that he will be forced to cede the Moroccan territory to Spain and France in return for peace, in reality it appears that the situation between France and Spain was exaggerated, and neither power is particularly inclined to enter into a war with Britain. Instead, they both accept the Tangier Protocol, which restores an extremely limited amount of the Sultan’s power (in name only, Lord Derby ensures) while allowing Britain to retain direct control of the remainder of Morocco for themselves. Britain further promises to maintain the preferential trading agreements between the Moroccan territories and Spain, and to recognized the rights of the French in the Ivory Coast and Vietnam.

The French government would shortly come to regret not including a further clause in the treaty regarding her African possessions.

While the Moroccan conflict had been raging and as the Tangier conference followed, the last British armies in West Africa surrounded the Sokoto Caliphate. In late March they issued an ultimatum to the Sokoto Caliph, requiring that he permit full access for British missionaries, to sell goods preferentially to British merchants, to permit full military access through his territories, and to renounce the title of Caliph and subject himself to the Ottoman Sultan’s religious authority (a diplomatic move to smooth the ruffled feathers of Abdulmecid I, intentionally riled by Gladstone, but also to help ensure that the Sokotan monarch refuses the terms of the ultimatum). Predictably these do indeed prove impossible for the Caliph to agree to, and the final war for Nigeria begins shortly thereafter.

Despite the power of the Sokotan Caliph--his is easily the strongest nation in Africa (with the potential exception of the Ethiopian state), both being Hamitic realms--the war is a rapid one. The Caliph's 60,000 soldiers are wiped out in a series of rapid engagements from Jellicoe’s forces, recently arrived from patrolling in Egypt, and within two months the capital and most of the eastern frontier has fallen under British control. With no armies to support him and the multiethnic Caliphate preparing to rise against their Fulbe overlords in their moment of weakness, the Caliph surrenders; Britain now rules the Niger. And if the Dutch have taken part of Bambara, it is little enough lost for the greatness of the gains made.

While the Tangier Conference wore on, the Earl Derby could not help but notice how nervous the French Foreign Minister Armand Fallières was, nor could he fail to see how prepared Fallières was to accept virtually any agreement with Britain in return for a conclusion to the “Moroccan question.” Such was, indeed, how Britain was able to secure such a profitable deal.

It was only later discovered for certain that the French forces had no armies in Algeria to deal with the rebellion of the Bey there against French rule, but from the moment Derby saw Fallières nervousness he suspected the truth. The question was merely what to do about the French weakness.

Gathorne-Hardy advocated for taking the entirety of Algeria by force “and in so doing, rob[bing] France of her greatest colonial outpost,” yet both Derby and Cecil were firmly against this. In a period of already extreme British expansionism (and even, it must be admitted, some overextension), the last thing needed was the conquest of a territory full of French settlers who would undoubtedly begin a guerrilla war against the British conquerors. What’s more, the action could even cause outcry in Europe, as Algeria was considered a full Department of France.

It was decided instead, then, to humiliate the French state by putting down the Bey of Algiers, who they could not seem to handle themselves. Conquering his outposts in the Sahara Britain would not only completely block France from interior African expansion, it would also show the full extent of French weakness, and of the British ability to be anywhere at any time.

The fall of Bechar and submission of the Bey causes outrage within France, but as Lord Cecil points out, the British have done the French a favor: they have secured France’s colony from an aggressive tribe which they could not protect against themselves. Why are they not pleased?

In a fury, France’s present President, Jules Grévy, is forced to resign over the entire affair. It is the second resignation of a sitting French President due to British actions in less than four years.

Grévy’s successor, Jean Casimir-Perier, eager to stop what he terms “aggressive and unwarranted British expansionism at every turn,” enters office with the promise of finally succeeding in “halting the advance of the lumbering behemoth that is the British Empire, the most malicious and imperialist of powers, that which delights in folly and mockery of gentlemanly behavior and of honor more generally.” It cannot be said that the French state has much room to stand on in which to contest British dominance, however, and in what is already derided in both the French and British press, Casimir-Perier chooses the matter of the Solomon Islands to make his stand over.

“Such a paltry little slice of land is so small that I should almost wish to give it to the French on the grounds of pity alone,” a mocking Lord Cecil tells the Times, “but in the name of honor, which the French President has been so kind as to point out that the British are lacking in, I do think that I shall be forced to advance British interests in this matter.”

Although Lord Cecil begins the contest, however, he will not continue it; the elections of 1885 sweep the Liberals back into power.

Although Lord Cecil’s government leaves office almost universally hated by the people of Britain, it has nevertheless done precisely what it established it would when it entered office: extend the franchise, pay for Liberal social programs and the Conservatives’ own, and force Britain to be active in foreign affairs. Because the successes of Cecil’s government and the position it has established in the broader world, even if Britons still refer to it as the result of the “Unforgivable Bargain,” it has changed the face of British liberal politics.

The new Prime Minister, raised up on a coalition of domestically left Conservatives and pro-imperialist Labour members in addition to the broad support of the Liberal party, which has since re-coalesced as an eminently interventionist party, is Archibald Primrose, the 5th Earl Rosebery. The young Primrose (only 38) is politically liberal at home, but a staunchly interventionist and pro-military imperialist abroad, and lukewarm on social affairs, to put it somewhat mildly. He is the face of the new Liberal party, which, fearing renewed intervention from the further right, has moderated itself to match the exigencies of foreign policy.

“Under this government,” Earl Rosebery declared, “there will be no isolationism, no military weakness, no collapse of Britain. There will be expansion, wealth, and good stewardship of the native peoples. We will show that the Liberal party is not merely ALSO capable of providing for both the people of Britain and her colonies, but indeed MORE suited to the task than the corrupt Conservatives who precede us!”

What Rosebery does not state is that this "new" policy is largely to be accomplished by simply following through with the initiatives begun by Lord Cecil, who is even given a position in government as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an unprecedented show of respect for a rival’s administrative talent.

Shortly after Rosebery’s election, the somewhat uncertain coalition government is galvanized thanks to the matter of the Solomon Islands, which, following the redeployment of several Indian armies to Africa and the shifting of several German divisions to the Rhine, the French fold on. Rosebery’s allies cheer as Casimir-Perier’s new government collapses; the President, who was in power but two months, was forced to resign in shame, and the third crisis of leadership of the 1880s begins in France. The aftereffects of the constant governmental turnover will be felt in France for years, helping to ensure that they are in no position to challenge Rosebery’s other foreign policy initiatives.

While the French are preoccupied with domestic power struggles, then, the Liberal government under Earl Rosebery begins a plan of expansion in the Orient, meant to “secure India on all fronts, and to extend the direct control of Britain from Tehran to Singapore.”

Although Bhutan under the Dragon King is considered a civilized parliamentary democracy and is therefore not touched by the British, other states in the region are not so lucky; Nepal, Burma, and Luang Prabang are all quickly integrated into the outer extent of the Raj, and in January of 1887, just a few months after the British guarantee of Thai borders signed under Lord Cecil’s government ended, three British armies march into the Rattanakosin Kingdom in order to force Rama V to sign a treaty subsuming his government to that of the Raj. It remains a matter of mockery for many years that Rama’s forces put up far less of a fight than the landlocked Burmese did; when the British invaded Thailand, as it becomes called under their administration, the monarchy had only 15,000 troops in active service.

When all is said and done and British actions in Indochina formally cease in May of 1887, the initial hopes of Earl Rosebery pan out: from Tehran to Singapore, the British have become the mightiest state in Asia, dwarfing the power of the Tsar and the Great Qing both.

Yet while Rosebery’s government has been busy in East Asia, matters in Europe have not remained calm. In February of 1887 Danish Communists stormed Amalienborg, the residence of the Danish monarchy, and executed Christian IX and his immediate family, proclaiming the People’s Commune of Denmark. A similarly worrying development is currently taking place in Greece; Athens has been captured by Communists, and although George I and his family happily escaped from the rampaging rebels, all signs indicate that they will form a Proletarian government in Greece as well as Denmark.

All of this is, worse, amidst the growing power of Labour and the CPGB at home. Whereas Labour and the CPGB gained only a combined 35% of seats in the last election, recent polls suggest that the parties have gained 5% more electoral support between them in the interim, and are rapidly growing yet more powerful. Although some Labour members support the current government, the rapid growth of the CPGB, which has overwhelmingly constituted the majority of that 5% in gains, is a terrifying development for the ruling classes in Britain, and especially for the now more socially conservative Liberal party.

Although Rosebery begins a massive propaganda campaign designed to marginalize Labour in the elections, he is unwilling to allow the Liberals to provide the people what they really desire, social reform. In the absence of support from the ruling party for their grievances, many common people in Britain turn to Labour, and many disaffected with Labour, in turn, look to the Communists.

In the summer of ’87 affairs in Italy also unexpectedly flare, as the French Republic, humiliated abroad and determined to regain strength which it views as necessary to defend against the Germans on the continent, attacks Umberto I of Sardinia-Piedmont for control of Savoie, which France claims is ethnically French and rightfully belongs to the French state.

Umberto had previously been an ally of France and even relied upon them for protection, and was entirely blindsided by the sudden attack. Even so, the army of Sardinia-Piedmont inflicts horrific and humiliating losses upon France, pushing deep into Provence within the first several months of the war, although Sardinia is occupied by French forces.

As the war in Italy continues to rage, now with France having unfortunately forced the upper-hand, the next summer brings yet further ill news. On June 21, 1888, the Indian National Congress is formed with the goal of Dominion status for a united Indian state. The entire idea is so ludicrous as to be laughed off, but the Congress rapidly gains adherents throughout the intelligentsia of the colonies, and India, which is already rapidly radicalizing along Communist lines, has also begun to radicalize amongst its conservative elite; they call now no longer for Dominion status, but for full independence from British rule. Both violent and nonviolent protests sweep the colony as the INC argues that independence can be achieved within the next decade; in response, the Secretary of Indian Affairs, John Wodehouse, 1st Earl Kimberley, introduces plans to re-arm and expand the Sepoy garrisons within the subcontinent in preparation for the potential of a general rising.

“We shall outlast them,” he wrote to Rosebery, “and if we do not, we shall at least certainly outgun them.”

By late August of 1888, the war between France and Sardinia-Piedmont is over, with Umberto forced to cede Savoie to the French. It is a victory for the embattled Republic, but, as it turns out, a hollow one; the protracted war has entirely negated the interests of the French government and French firms in Sardinia-Piedmont, and has allowed Britain to step in as the proper guarantor of Piedmontese independence, in the process securing another ally in the Italic peninsula and a guaranteed supply of iron from Piedmont’s rich mines, as well as critically-needed silk.

The French, fuming as usual, decry British influence in Italy, but Rosebery, himself acting as Foreign Secretary, need merely point out that the British have had overriding influence with both Sicily and the directorate of Italy for a full generation to leave the French fuming, but with little to say to the contrary.

In spring of 1889, a diplomatic incident with the People’s Commune of Denmark flares up when British citizens indiscriminately kill a group of Danish communists who were agitating on the streets of London. These citizens--middle-class all--argue that the Danes were inciting nearby workers to violence, and that killing them was merely a defensive gesture.

When the Britons are eventually judged not guilty on the basis of self-defense, the verdict not only further infuriates the Danes, it also finally brings the CPGB to the streets to protest en masse. Sit-ins and general strikes organized throughout the country bring industry to a near-standstill, and the Earl Rosebery, alarmed by the crisis, orders the police to intervene to break the strikes. In what is known as the “Bloody Week,” police and protesters clash on the streets of London, Manchester and Leeds. Hundreds die, and thousands are wounded.

Although the Bloody Week ends with some minor concessions to the far left--including a token sentencing of the British citizens who murdered the Danish protesters--in return for an end to the general strike and the violence, it nevertheless becomes a watershed moment in the development of the extreme left within Britain. From it comes the representative of the CPGB who will dominate their politics throughout the 1890s: Arthur Henderson, a union leader and moderate communist from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Having been born in Glasgow and forced later to move to the Midlands, the chief military production center for the Army of Great Britain, from the age of 12 Henderson was required to work to produce the tools of war for Britain’s expansion elsewhere. Learning by night and working by day, the gradual production (in hellish conditions) of the tools required to dominate his fellow man radicalized him, and his foreground participation in the Leeds strike has catapulted him to the position of a minor celebrity within the local branch of the CPGB.

But, as so frequently happens, even while the Bloody Week is underway, the pressures of the poor and disenfranchised are far from the ears of the elite, who happily proceed with colonization. Indeed, despite the presence of the Earl Rosebery in office, the Liberal government continues with the prior Conservative government’s Derby Doctrine of systemically isolating competing powers from the interior of Africa, in the process capturing more and more land and poor workers for British use.

The decision to colonize the interior of Africa, viewed as eminently unnecessary by many moderate Socialists who felt the only need for colonialism was to secure the exterior of Africa and ensure continued security for Britain’s position worldwide, helps bring the left together in decrying the move. Labour, the CPGB, and many independent leftists and leftist parties (including a few Liberals disgusted with the interventionist and economically right position of their current government) sign the Manchester Declaration, which denounces the colonial project, calls for independence for all colonial nations as Dominions, and the processing of development aid to these nations “so that they might be raised up as equal nations in this, our common-wealth, and to defend peace rather than to project war.”

These words, penned by Arthur Henderson, are what set the eyes of the left upon him throughout Britain. His importance in drafting the Manchester Declaration sets him among the top of the CPGB more generally, and many Labour representatives look at his more moderate communist tendencies, including his limited willingness to work within the electoral system, with respect. He is quickly pressed to undertake speaking tours, and even as the Scramble for Africa continues Henderson is called upon again and again to denounce it.

In the 1892 election, he will win a Parliamentary seat for Leeds.

Yet the “Manchester Declaration” is less violent and less relevant, as politicians see it, than the Bloody Week itself. As the Earl Kimberley (the new Secretary of Foreign Affairs) put it when he heard of the document’s signing, it is “irrelevant, perhaps even less than irrelevant, as a document and as a political stratagem. The extreme left destroys itself in its opposition to empire; imperialism is the new government of the 20th century, not the commune of the ill-educated and work-shy.”

Earl Rosebery’s government certainly believes that global empire is the path to the future, and that not merely retaining dominance of the globe but also excluding others from possessing any meaningful empires themselves will prove critical to Britain's long-term economic and political superiority. To this end, Earl Kimberley happily signs the Heligoland Treaty with Wilhelm II of Germany, a young and ill-prepared monarch, in early 1882. In return for the cession of the entire Namaqualand, a critical defensive territory around South Africa, Britain will do naught more than cede the isle of Heligoland, populated with not more than 3,000 souls.

Although it houses a massive British naval fortress, the loss of Heligoland is a small price to pay for preventing the German Empire (ally though it may be) from any access to the African continent, and is hailed throughout Britain as a stunning victory on the part of the Earl Kimberley.

As the hot summer months turn to cooler fall, Earl Rosebery, presently vacationing at Bath, receives word that independence-minded rebels in Vietnam have thrown off the French yoke and reinstalled Nguyen Phúc Bhu Lân as Thành Thái, Emperor of All Vietnam. Another opportunity to outplay the French, as well as to secure an alternative shipping port in the event that the straits of Singapore are ever blocked, compels Rosebery to immediately order preparations for an invasion of Thành Thái’s government, in order to “bring the true ruler of Vietnam under the protection of the Crown,” a task which Frederick of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, eldest son of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connacht, and commander of the 7th Army in Thailand, takes to with gusto.

Although Britain’s action here technically violate the Tangier Protocol, at which France’s borders in Pondicherry and Vietnam were recognized by Britain, Rosebery prepares to argue that the treaty is moot since the Vietnamese successfully secured independence from the French, and the British conquest is consequently an “anti-guerilla measure, as this nation benevolently undertook in the Sahara against the Bey of Algiers for our French friends.” It goes without saying that the French do not agree, but, as usual, they can do little more than lodge a protest against the British after the invasion is already begun, in effect doing nothing more than protesting a fait accompli.

As Frederick’s army finalizes its preparations for war in Vietnam, news arrives at Downing Street that the Danish Commune has been overthrown, to be replaced by a Republic formed from surviving members of the old monarchist government who successfully avoided the communist purges. Members of the communist government have been arrested, beaten, hastily tried, and executed.

Although the CPGB denounces the violent actions of the Danish Communist Party, they likewise denounce the actions of the “counter-revolution,” as they term it, and their “willingness to stoop to the level of their misguided foes, to kill wantonly and without fair trial, in order to achieve the continuance of their corrupt system.”

Nevertheless, the “restoration of Denmark to the brotherhood of nations,” as Rosebery puts it, is a victory for more level-headed politics everywhere, and a blow which the CPGB and its Labour allies can only blunt, not entirely deflect. Communism has proven a bane to Denmark, sapping it of industrial development, personal wealth and diplomatic ties abroad; no matter how much it is argued that the Commune was merely misguided in its approach, not all mindlessly believe the propaganda.

Although war has already been declared in Vietnam, before news of it arrives in London it is first learned that the Ottoman Sultan has gone bankrupt, having invested vast amounts of state and personal wealth in the conquest of the Senussi as a matter of prestige (for the Sultan wished both to contest British control in Africa and make it appear as if his government, too, was involved in the Scramble). The state’s wealth, already taxed to the limit thanks to rebellion and the loss of the Hedjaz, has finally broken between its misguided protectionist efforts to shore up its minimal and profitless industry and the wealth it bled away in the stunningly botched, years-long conquest of less than 20,000 souls in Tripolitania.

Contrary to what Abdulmecid had attempted to portray in his acquisition of the Senussi, the bankruptcy of the Ottoman state is a horrid embarrassment, which only further turns away a post-Gladstone Britain from support of the Sultan. Gladstone himself, from his sick-bed in Wales, calls upon Earl Rosebery to finish his work of dismantling the “Sick Man,” while investors demand the forced repayment of their debt--or, better yet, forcible acquisition of Tripolitania to compensate their losses.

Although Rosebery declines to attack the Empire, he does send Gladstone a private note indicating that he shares his desire in seeing the breakup of the Ottoman state, and promises that he will do what he can to end “Islamic rule over millions of Christians, as soon as the time appears politic to do so.”

Just before July of 1893 arrives, Frederick of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s army arrives in Hanoi and takes over “protection” of the Thành Thái, placing northern Vietnam under the control of the British Empire and threatening French Vietnam from all sides, not only geographically but also politically; Britain now has in her position a pretender to the throne of their colony.

Felix Faure, the current President of France, attempts to invoke the Tangier Protocol to show that the British action in Vietnam was illegal, but only Russia and Japan side with them; the Dutch and Austro-Hungarians remain neutral, while the Germans, Belgians, and both major Italic states (the Directorate of Italy only after a payment) all side with Britain’s interpretation that the planned borders were voided when France failed to maintain control of the colony and permitted a pretender to rise and establish an independent state. With enemies on almost all sides, the French government is shamefully aware that contesting Britain’s interpretation of the treaty would result in military defeat.

Faure would be the fourth President of France forced to resign as a result of failure in office, and thus he doggedly attempts to hold his position despite the embarrassing failure, but in the end he is finally forced out. The Moderate party entirely collapses with his defeat; Faure is replaced in office by Marie Armand Patrice de MacMahon, Duc de Magenta, a moderate monarchist and the first conservative politician to take high office in France since the Socialist overthrow of the Bourbon government in 1865.

On October 6th, 1895, a major celebration is orchestrated in Britain. People throng the streets of London to cheer the parading forces of a grand colonial exhibition, with thousands of natives marching in their local dress and with their native weaponry and gear, all hooting and hollering in uncivilized praise for the guiding light of Victoria and her government, who have finally accomplished what, before, was thought to be impossible: the colonization of Africa is complete, and Britain has taken quite more than the lion’s share.

The exhibition is a great success for Britain and a matter of much prestige, but is met with fierce denouncements from the far left. A general strike organized the week of the exhibition seriously mars the event for industrialists, while isolated instances of violence, sabotage, and even a few cases of arson force Scotland Yard to work overtime in their attempts to keep the city peaceful. Henderson, now a CPGB MP, castigates the entire venture from the floor of Parliament as “an eminently racist and pro-capital gesture of superiority and dominance rather than benevolent guidance, as this government claims it would promote. It is a disgusting and vulgar display that any truly civilized nation would dismiss, had it the courage.”

Henderson, though, is in this instance quickly and loudly shouted down; what civilized nation would abhor the civilization of Africa? What African would rue the cost that must be paid for that civilization? The CPGB speaks nonsense and calls it obvious.

Yet if the African Exhibition was a show of Britain’s imperial grandeur, it is nothing compared to the glory of the Diamond Jubilee a year later. With a full year’s advance warning, the exhibition organized for the 60th anniversary of Victoria’s ascension to the crown is staggering. The Crystal Palace, built for the 1850s industrial exhibition, is renovated and decorated with murals and art from throughout the empire, from the crude drawings of the Hottentots of South Africa to the beautiful calligraphy of Persia and the gaudy gods of the Hind. It is filled with weapons, live performers, native dress, and even samples of local foods are presented to the awed visitors.

Victoria herself makes a surprising number of public appearances, the Queen having been sequestered since the death of Prince Albert in the 1850s. Her return to the public spotlight and the joyous proof of British superiority which the Jubilee exhibition and celebrations prove provides for an unexpected outpouring of support for the monarchy, which many had grown lukewarm on since the passage of universal enfranchisement decades before.

Predictably, the CPGB and its ever-growing number of Labour allies (radicalized as they so readily are by Rosebery’s complete refusal to pass any social welfare legislation while he holds office) boycotts the entire Jubilee, to the fury of both the Liberal government and much of the population. If anything, though, this only further galvanizes their position; “we do not act just so that the people will clap and cheer,” Henderson cried at a London Labour rally, “but so that we shall achieve our goal: peace among men, and freedom from the chains of international capital—chains the root of which can be found here, in London itself! We are not mummers for the people's amusement, bound to outdated politics, but warriors against capitalism and imperialism, the arch-champion of which we shall never stoop so low as to celebrate!”

Later that month, tensions in Poland flare into yet another attempt at independence. Although the Tsar’s armies move into position to put down the small rising, the affair becomes a flashpoint for foreign intervention, and Earl Kimberley formally requests that the Tsar allow Britain to arbitrate the issue.

Although the Tsar would have preferred to refuse, Germany immediately demands arbitration as well, placing the Tsar in an awkward and somewhat weak position. He agrees to arbitration, in which he proposes that the Polish will be given local autonomy, but that he will retain the Polish crown and Poland will not exist independent of the Russian state. Earl Kimberley counters with a demand that Poland be partially released along lines established by pre-partition precedent and the nationalities of inhabitants, allowing the Tsar to retain the most Russified parts of the country and the title King of Poland while releasing an independent Duchy of Poland--referred to as Congress Poland for its creation out of the St. Petersburg Congress, where the arbitration was held--with full foreign and domestic independence. The Tsar sees the proposal as unthinkable, both “insulting” and the “basis for further wars--when has one ever heard of a foreign state ruled by a Duke meant to be a vassal, yet completely independent to his liege?”

Although the Tsar’s concerns have some merit, Germany, as expected, backs Britain’s decision in the matter, and France, Austria-Hungary, and the Dutch are slow to support the Russian Empire. The embittered Tsar agrees to permit the Poles independence, although he swears that he will “return to Warsaw with arms.”

For the time being, though, the new Duke of Poland, Prince Arthur Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 2nd son to the present Duke of Connacht, is joyously welcomed to his new capital of Warsaw by the Sejm. The selection of Victoria's grandson for the throne predictably earns the warm gratitude of the elderly queen, and Kimberley is awarded a personal dinner with Her Highness in honor of his critical role in establishing Arthur as the Duke.

The hard-line stance which Rosebery’s government forced on the “Polish question” was partially a desire to please Victoria, but also had the goal of weakening the Russian state for what was to come.

None knows better than the Prime Minister the surprising weakness of Britain’s position in Central Asia. Even so-called “strong” states like Persia are in reality helplessly weak against even such a backwards state as the Ottoman Empire, whereas the minor Khanates are decentralized, poor, and not even half-civilized. The only future which guarantees British security in Central Asia is one in which all the various Turkish tribes are united, civilized, and prepared to defend themselves without the constant necessity of British intervention on their behalf. As so often happens, the only way to ensure defense is to go on the offensive; Russia must be lain low and force to release the Kazakh Khanate in order for this Turkish union to be made a reality, at least under British auspices.

After preparing for a full year, constructing new armies, navies, reorganizing colonial garrisons and redeploying forces to defend against both the Russians and the French, Rosebery is ready; over Labour and CPGB dissent in Parliament, he declares war upon Russia for the release of Kazakhstan, calling in the entire Empire and all her allies with him. To his surprise and pleasure, France declines to help her Russian ally, preferring not to fight the British in their hour of ascendancy.

Yet many officers within the army begin speaking about what would have happened if the French had supported the Russians; if they had not been cowardly and had invested their entire empire into the engagement, small as it was, what would that war have been like? Could Britain have weathered the incredible worldwide requirements on her men and industry to fight such a war? There are no answers to such questions, and worryingly many feel as if such a test is in the future, even if it has not come yet.

Four days after the declaration of war against the Tsar (upon hearing which he completely denounced the Polish arbitration of the year prior, reportedly), Rosebery’s government receives word from Count Agenor Maria Goluchowski, a Polish noble and foreign minister for His Majesty Franz Josef’s government, that the Kaiser would be willing to join the war on Britain’s side, in order to ensure that Poland’s borders are maintained at their present extent. Goluchowski privately thanks Rosebery for his efforts in seeing his nation restored, and likewise for allowing “a man so illustrious as Duke Albert” to take the throne of the fledgling new state, although the Polish noble professes continued loyalty to the Kaiser above that of the new nation-state of his people.

Naturally, Rosebery gladly accepts the proffered help of the Kaiser. The alliance--and the war itself--predictably comes under fire from the CPGB, however, who castigate the current government for their actions.

“This is the power of capital,” Henderson cries at rallies across Britain, “this is the power of the elite, the wealthy classes uniting to keep power from the hands of the poor. Kazakhstan--what interest does Britain have in her? Nothing but the extractive: to use her labor, her land, her lives to maintain the power of the capitalist in this empire. And we, the poor, will fight, bleed, and die for it, whether the Kaiser helps or not. Make no mistake, the people, the workers, are the ones who lose in this war! Land on a map is of no matter to the laborer, and yet he is the one tasked with laying down his life in the pursuit. Do you wish to die? Do you? You may, if Rosebery has his way!”

Of course, if Rosebery has his way the war will actually be quite short and to the point, with minimal loss of life. Rearmament and reconstruction programs underway throughout the 1890s have made Britain’s army the most advanced on the planet, and her navy, though great investment of capital, has likewise taken its place among the most advanced. The United Fleet of Great Britain, Britain’s new warship navy, is entirely state-of-the-art. Having dismantled all her iron-clads, Britain now utilizes only the newest battleship and cruiser designs, and she has access to more of these vessels by far than any comparable power.

Commanded by Grand Admiral Zachary Seaton, the United Fleet breaks the entire Russian navy in just a single day’s battle off the coast of Lithuania, crushing the Tsar’s resistance and opening a path to St. Petersburg. A panicked Duma recommends an immediate surrender to the Tsar, terrified as they are by unsubstantiated reports that Britain’s new battleships are sufficiently powerful to reduce St. Petersburg to rubble from the Gulf of Finland, but the Tsar refuses to surrender “with but a single loss, grievous as it is, to show for the fighting,” although he does move the government to Moscow as quickly as Russia’s antiquated rail network can take them there. St. Petersburg is no longer a safe city.

A week and a half later, General Zachary Wolseley, freshly pulled away from the home isles, is already beginning his landing in St. Petersburg--a repeat of the tried-and-true British tactic for forcing the Russian bear to surrender. Although the Tsar, his family, and much of the Duma have already been evacuated, much of the affairs of governance are still present in St. Petersburg, and even the symbol of its capture will undoubtedly represent a horrifying loss for the Russian people.

Yet no army stands in Wolseley’s way to resist him, and none appears even after days of heavy siege and naval bombardment. The Russians allow the capital to fall with almost no resistance.

Colonial forces no longer concerned with the potential of war with France in Africa and Asia have since returned to their stations, although a curious report from equatorial Africa has the colonial office salivating. Apparently the French have failed to retain control of a colony yet again, this time allowing the Imam of Futa Jallon to declare independence.

Per usual, the British are soon to be at hand to put down this rebellion against French rule. “What right good fuckin' blokes we are,” as one Australian soldier’s journal puts it.

The Tsar’s government, already badly losing the war against the British, is beset yet further when it receives news that the Great Qing has, without a formal declaration of war, marched against their forces in the far east, seeking to retake Fengtien. Although reports from British legation centers in Shanghai and Peking are contradictory, the general impression the government receives is that the Guangxu Emperor believes it will be possible to fight the Russians, even backwards as his state is, without facing total defeat thanks to Russia’s present preoccupation in Central Asia.

Although the colonial office is extremely skeptical, the Great Qing has at least picked a time which is not entirely unwise to strike; Russian armies which were marching from the East Siberia defensive region to Central Asia are now diverted back, at great cost of time and rail stock. Even the reforged alliance between the French and the Russians does not relieve the pressure on the Tsar in East Asia over-much, for the French lack positions with which to strike at the Great Qing.

“It does not much matter whether or not the Great Qing is successful,” George Robinson, head of the colonial office, told the Times, “so long as it ensures British success in this war, and I cannot see how it will fail to do so. The Russian bear is beset on all sides by enemies, and even its limitless manpower, long since defanged by modern technology, was never such that it could resist conflict on all fronts. The Tsar must now fold; there is simply no other outcome.”

A few days later Robinson’s argument proves prescient, as the Tsar begins to reluctantly put out peace feelers.

Wolseley was able to successfully capture St. Petersburg just before the arrival of November and the onset of Russia’s horrific winter, to the relief of Rosebery’s new Secretary of War, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. With a northern point of supply and retreat secured, plans in Russia now revolve around the introduction of gradually more forces into the north via the home isles, and, if necessary, the capture of Russia’s second capital in Moscow through the continued elongation of the front.

To execute this plan the British lines will need to link with the German, and consequently General Wolseley has begun to push east from the Russian capital. Although reports regarding Russia are always poor thanks to the atrocious infrastructure, rumors abound that there has been a general communard rising in the countryside which is further waylaying the Tsar’s efforts to resist the dual wars against him, although details about the scope of the rising are minimal. The only pockets Wolseley has been able to successfully identify are minuscule, no larger than a “paltry guerrilla force posing no serious threat to our armies presently in Russia. Linking armies with the Germans will not prove difficult.”

The capture of St. Petersburg alongside the continued warfare both in Central Asia and in China finally brings the Tsar to the table to formally negotiate, and he was prepared to renounce Russian claims on Kazakhstan in the bargain, but the duration of the war and the major successes Britain had achieved encouraged Rosebery and Kimberley to press for another concession: the cession of the crown of Finland, which Russia had taken from Sweden over a century before. The release of Finland would not only prove a persistent threat to St. Petersburg, it would also further weaken the Tsar’s hold in the west and serve as a potential area of expansion for Britain’s long-time ally Sweden, which could prove even more valuable in future wars against Russia with their Finnish subjects returned to them.

To this proposal the Tsar absolutely refuses, already smarting as he is about Britain’s “perfidious and self-serving intervention in Polish affairs, baldly designed to weaken the Russian people; I have ceded lands I should not have to diplomacy once before, and I shall not be so foolish as to now surrender a crown without a fight.” The temporary ceasefire which had reigned for the previous week is broken as British troops begin to press forward once again, now with the goal of freedom for the Kazakhs and Finnish both as their stated objectives.

Rumors in the Russian countryside indicated that the Tsar was willing to continue resistance against the British for several months, gambling on future French assistance and the mobilization of his forces. That is, until one of Britain’s best, Field Marshal Francis Beresford, landed in St. Petersburg. Although the British troops are yet far from the Russian provisional capital, the British make no attempt to hide from the Tsar that the goal of the northern push is the capture of Moscow, and Beresford's reputation for brutal sieges precedes him.

With two armies in the north joined by the entire armed forces of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the various Italic states, and with the defense of Central Asia collapsing under the pressure of newly-arrived armies freed from the necessity of defending against the French, what was already clear becomes a matter of some urgency: there is no hope of victory. Immediate peace is the only plan the Tsar can follow through on, for otherwise he will not only lose grievously, but his state and his people will suffer in the process.

On the 5th of January, 1898, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia surrenders. The Kazakhs are free, as are the Finns. As British troops triumphantly march back to their stations and exhausted Russian soldiers begin the long march to the Far East, the Tsar and the Duma refuse to return to St. Petersburg, citing its clear weakness to foreign attack, and consequently name Moscow the new permanent capital of the Russian Empire.

A view of the political situation now that Finland and Kazakhstan have achieved independence.

The Kazakhs, predictably, have absorbed none of the civilization which the Russians (themselves challenged by their Mongoloid admixture) attempted to bring to them, and as soon as they were informed that they were free of their Russian captors they elected an Ataman and proceeded to rove around the steppes, as if it were two centuries before and the world had not changed around them. Although this annoys the British to no end, the Ataman is sufficiently under the Colonial Office’s thumb that they inform Earl Rosebery that it will be no trouble to ensure Kazakh presence in the intended Turkmen federation, but that they do need more time to ensure that the Ataman will prove loyal to the new union.

In Finland, matters are somewhat more hectic. Not expecting independence and well-aware of the threat posed by Sweden, which has still not abrogated its historic claim to the Finish throne, the Finns petition Britain for a King of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, even suggesting Frederick, the Prince Connacht, for the role.

Although Victoria presses Rosebery to accept, in this the Earl denies the Queen. He wishes Finland to be absorbed into Sweden, and therefore declines to provide a royal for them, causing panic throughout Helsinki. Worried that raising their own king would merely make them appear weak, the Finnish government instead decides to abolish the monarchy (in so doing, they hope, weakening the Swedish claim to their country) and instead proclaiming a Republic under President Kaarlo Airo, a noble of Swedish blood and long-time army officer.

While matters of independence and governance preoccupy the Finns and Kazakhs, a quiet note from the Colonial Office confirms that the Imamate of Futa Jallon has been annexed to Britain, providing for a path from the British Upper Volta to the Sierra Leone.

Marie Armand Patrice de MacMahon, the current president, is in the heretofore unique position of having a legitimate excuse for the loss of the Imamate: a recurring rebellion elsewhere in French Africa which has sapped troops from engagement there. “I am not pleased, do not doubt this, but this is not an eventuality which my government could prevent; the previous governments, as we have seen time and again, have held to a policy of colonial overextension which has resulted in lost lands and embarrassments at the hands of the British. We have been embarrassed again, I am loathe to admit, yet I, unlike my predecessors, could have done naught other.”

Although pressure is still intense on MacMahon to resign, he is the first President of France not to, willingly or through force, retreat from office after failing to stand up to Britain on the international stage. His continued control over the French government provides for a degree of stability not typical in the post-Bourbon period, although France is still a second-rate among the Great Powers.

It doesn’t take long following the cessation of conflict between the British alliance and the Russian Empire for Nicholas II to turn his full fury on the Great Qing, and the arrival of his troops is like a thunder. Furious at the Guangxu Emperor’s assault without a formal declaration of war and smarting from the defeats inflicted by Britain, Nicholas’s government goes above and beyond their initial war aims--securing their borders--into expanding in East Asia by linking Port Arthur with Vladivostok. After capturing Peking and burning the Summer Palace (an act which is universally decried), the Guangxu Emperor rapidly agrees to the Tsar’s demands, in the process reducing the percentage of Manchurians in the Empire to a bare handful.

The Colonial Office is overjoyed when they hear yet further news of overextension in Africa: the Lunda people, subjugated to the Portuguese previously, have been able to unite and overthrow their Portuguese overlords thanks to the relative poverty and weakness of the Portuguese state.

George Robinson orders the Cape Army under David Grant to “put the rebellion down for our Portuguese allies,” which he swiftly accomplishes. Knowing their place in the Anglo-Portuguese alliance as they do, the government of Portugal does not even resist the move on the part of the British, and yet another piece of Africa falls into British hands.

With victory after victory under his belt and having defeated a Great Power in record time, Earl Rosebery decides that the time is right to call for an early election. He predicts that his Liberal-Interventionist majority will skyrocket, and that in the process he may even gain a mandate to attack the French directly.

Chapter Text

“Now is the time!” Henderson cried at an electoral rally in London, “If we do not achieve victory now, we will not do so in time for Parliamentary means to be sufficient. I would like to work within the system, if I am able; I would like to not resort to violence, if I am able. But violence will be the necessary future if we cannot now bring down the behemoth of capital which this state has become. War, death, and slavery await us if Rosebery’s thinly-disguised reactionaries are not routed from office; war, death, and slavery await all the working proletariat if we cannot, here and now, secure victory. We must win, to serve as a shining example of what Communism can achieve. And if we do not, I weep; I weep for us, and I weep for the system that will be forced to face the armed might of the worker!”

These words, and those like them, were shouted throughout Britain time and again as the elections approached. Certainly, because of them, thousands more poor workers turned out and voted CPGB than would otherwise have done so. Yet, in the end, as politics in Britain has been since early in the century, votes alone do not secure victory; it is political dealing which does.

Although Earl Rosebery believed that his government was strong, in reality Liberal-Interventionist policy was quite maligned within the population at large, and only MPs and elected officials truly espoused the fiscally conservative, socially moderate, and jingoistic policy of Rosebery and his nearest confidants. Although they had secured political victories in Russia, Africa, and Asia, Rosebery himself never quite understood that, in the modern day, social issues had come to take on more import than military victories and territorial acquisition. Alexander the Great could not rule in the 19th century.

Thus, the CPGB and Labour, already together possessing a shockingly high 40% of the vote, proposed to enter into an electoral agreement with many local Liberal representatives, who would cross the aisle and run as either Labour or CPGB representatives. The rationale presented by the Labour-CPGB bloc suggested that many of these Liberal leaders stood to lose if they retained their old party loyalties. And the polls did suggest this; fury over Rosebery’s refusal to reform working conditions in the country had led to mass and radical Labour support.

Many therefore agreed to the proposed deal, but only on the condition that the CPGB make a firm statement that it would behave as a “proper” political party, respecting the laws of the United Kingdom and not attempting to achieve labor revolution, instead operating through policy initiatives and legislation. Arthur Henderson, now leader of the CPGB in Great Britain and highly respected both in Labour and CPG circles, agrees to the proposal, but only on the condition that he lead the coalition, which Labour, in turn, agrees to, provided Henderson’s cabinet contains no greater than two CPGB members. Such back-and-forth dealings were by this time common in British politics, although never before had they involved such a radical party.

Thus, on the 1st of January 1899, the coup of all coups takes place. With no Liberal representatives standing for office in fully half of the municipalities, with the Conservatives long-since placed at the fringes of politics, and with Labour and the CPGB reaping the benefits, to the shock of Britain’s elite the unthinkable occurs: a Socialist-Communist coalition takes power, with Arthur Henderson, chairman of the Communist Party, as the new Prime Minister.

Everyone is dumbfounded, the average Briton included; they voted Labour, after all, not CPGB. Earl Rosebery retires from politics and quietly moves to Canada, fleeing expected seizure by CPGB partisans; Victoria refuses to meet with Henderson. But, for the first time in a long time within Britain, the majority of people, free of electoral manipulation, support (most) of their ruling coalition.

Henderson, however, is not particularly dismayed by the refusal of Victoria to meet with him or support his government. “I dislike Alexandrina on principle and would remove her from her position if I could,” he stated from the floor of Parliament, his usage of Victoria’s birth name and his confirmation that he would abolish the monarchy if he were able causing a moderate tumult.

Victoria, for her part, despises the very notion of the man. “He reminds me of Viscount Palmerston, speaking to me like a man and an equal, and not as a woman and a Queen. Yet this one is worse by far.” Quiet plans are made, kept entirely secret within Buckingham, for the evacuation of the Queen to a fast river schooner on the Thames, from which she and the royal family would be taken to a loyalist vessel at sea and transported from there to Poland, where her grandson ruled as Duke. Although the plan is not yet initiated--Victoria proves unwilling to abandon her people--it is prepared in the event that all goes ill.

Henderson is unaware of this, but if he were he would quite likely not have been interested in the slightest. His immediate concerns are on matters of policy within Britain, and specifically Britain’s outdated, decentralized industry. “We were once the strongest industrial nation on the planet, but we have fallen--fallen because we placed too much faith in the capitalist. They are a lazy folk, ever-eager for profit but without the wisdom to see how best to order their affairs in order to maximize it. Let them own the factories, I say; but let them purchase them from the government, which will construct the factory, maintain the factory, and shelter the worker from the capitalist’s cruel abuses!”

This is the announcement of one of Henderson’s campaign promises, the Three Year Plan of industrial reorganization, which will synergize British factories, remove the unprofitable, and initiate a broad modernization program of extant facilities, especially, armament centers. It is eagerly looked forward to by the proletariat.

Unfortunately, the Three Year Plan’s necessary consequences--the temporary unemployment of hundreds of thousands of Britons--proves much despised by the proletariat who before called for it. “I voted for ‘im, Henderson. Thought ‘e’d do us right,” one furious Leeds worker despondently told a reporter for the Times when asked about the situation. “The fuck am I mentta eat? I got kids, mate—how’m I mentta feed ‘em? Can’t, can’t at all. Henderson, mate, I thought ‘e was one of us, but nah, ‘e ain’t. He’s just another fahckin' lickspittle.”

The extent of the urban unrest caused by the reorganization is severely alarming to the elites in Parliament, who already see the CPGB-Labour alliance as the prelude to an imminent labor rising in Britain. A vote of no confidence is attempted, but the time was not ripe for the forces of reaction, and it was easily defeated by the left coalition.

With his mandate reinforced, Henderson thus sets to soothing the concerns of the urban workers. His first act creates a new cabinet position, Secretary of Labour Affairs, which is one of the two he staffs with Communists; in this case he chooses the national-socialist Henry Hyndman, who is uniquely suited to handle labor relations within Britain. Following Hyndman’s report on labor conditions, Henderson pushes unemployment reforms through the leftist Parliament to ensure that the state will pay workers livable wages while their workplaces are closed, and initiates uniform factory expansions throughout Britain at huge cost to the state to help ensure that all the unemployed will return to work as quickly as possible.

“What I have done now,” Henderson cries at a CPGB rally in his seat of Leeds, “is nothing less than ensure that Britain’s industry, so long declining, shall experience a vibrant rebirth. But it is a rebirth which will not enrich the already-fat capitalist, nor shall it impoverish the worker. The state and the worker together will march to the future!”

The first serious foreign policy issue to arise in Henderson’s ministry is the issue of Irish Home Rule. Instigated years before by Charles Stewart Parnell, the issue did not die under the auspices of the left coalition, but indeed accelerated. Parnell was convinced that the benevolent anti-war and pro-laborer inclinations of the far left would support Irish independence, and pressed forward with the vote without seriously studying the opinions of the coalition leadership.

When it comes to a vote, to Parnell’s horror he finds the left coalition divided. Not just moderate socialists but also some communists--including Augustus Keane, son of one of Ireland’s first Catholic MPs, Henry Keane--do not see Ireland as a potentially separate entity. “Britain has done ill to Ireland, it is true,” Keane acknowledged, “yet Britain has also repaid her ills; she spent every pound of the treasury to help Ireland during the famine, she passed the Irish Reform Acts to marginalize the nobility and raise up the Catholics; and she invested heavily, under the government of Gladstone, in the future of the Irish. My father said that day, ‘an Irishman must be British or he must not be,’ and Britain answered that we were. Since then she has treated us as equals in all respects, and invested much in us to amend for past follies. And now this floor is graced by a proposal which is niggardly in the extreme, a repudiation of the aid she has given us and the acceptance she has afforded us. We are Britons, my friends. Let us behave like it, and reward the faith which has been placed in us.”

Many pro-independence MPs, including Cabinet member James Connolly, walk out in response, but the vote, following Keane’s impassioned speech, is clear: the Irish are Britons above all else, an integral part of the United Kingdom.

In a rage Connolly resigns his position as Minister for Foreign and Colonial Affairs, and in recognition of his unitary view of Britian’s possessions, Henderson names Keane as Connolly’s successor to the office.

The next month, while Keane is still becoming accustomed to his duties, the Nicaragua Crisis begins when the King of Nicaragua, Miguel I, occupies Bluefields on the Miskito Coast. The government must now decide how to respond.

Although Miguel implies that he would be amenable to a monetary compensation for the territory and many left-communists advocate abandoning the territory to its “rightful owner,” both Keane and Henderson are in something of a difficult position. Constrained by Parliamentary politics and the opinions of the people, themselves still strongly pro-imperial, abandoning the territory even with compensation paid would be cause for another vote of no confidence. Although Keane advises against the retention of the territory, Henderson reluctantly overrules him, citing his view that Bluefields is an important defensive base near Panama, and will be critical for defense. It cannot simply be given up, and therefore the marines must be sent in.

Although Keane disapproves he accedes to the wishes of his party’s chief, who is, after all, highly respected. Zachary Wolseley, the Conqueror of St. Petersburg, arrives in Bluefields in late June, crushing King Miguel’s armies and capturing Managua not long after. The peace forces Nicaragua to disband their army, pay reparations, and to cede all claims on the Miskito coast.

Although the move is denounced by many international communist parties, it is approved of within Britain. “If this is how the CPGB is to do business,” one anonymous Conservative laughed, “I will tolerate them, at least until we can be rid of them properly.”

Another crisis--for the far-left, at least--occurs before the end of the year, when the Italian Directors call for British support in their war to capture Roma from the Papacy.

None know precisely what to do. The head of Labour, James Keir Hardie, advises that no true pro-labor government can support the actions of a bourgeois dictatorship where the rich control the state. Keane, for his part, agrees with him, but does mention that supporting the Papacy can be taken very much the wrong way, and therefore that opposition to the Directors must be carefully contextualized. But moderates within government suggest to Henderson that Italy’s victory in the war is inevitable, that supporting the Italians would cost nothing, and that forcing concessions out of their government may be possible in return for support. What’s more, it would appease the other political parties within Britain which are still far from confident in the peaceful intentions of the left coalition.

To the fury of the far left, Henderson again sides with the politic and moderate course of supporting the Italian Directors, although he sends no troops or monetary aid. The move verges on the heretical for a communist, and Keane almost resigns his post; indeed, several CPGB MPs almost switch Labour, before Henderson confirms that he was able to secure an agreement from the Directors that children will no longer be used in labor, and enslavement and serfdom for the poor are no longer legal. Many shake their heads that such policies were ever possible in a civilized nation, but their successful negation is seen as a worthwhile price by most. Nevertheless, Henderson’s communist credentials begin to be questioned.

With a hunger for petroleum only recently realized in the industrial sphere, the capitalist William D’Arcy travels to the Shah of Persia in order to conclude a deal for the extraction of oil in the Abadan region of the Gulf of Persia. The move is intended to increase the total available world supply, certainly, but it is primarily a preemptive move on D’Arcy’s part to ensure the Shah’s government does not capitalize upon oil without a British man reaping the benefits.

Fortunately, the Oversight of Foreign Corporations Act--a very popular bill sponsored by Henderson and intended to reduce tax evasion and ensure fair deals are being negotiated with foreigners--catches D’Arcy’s unfairly profiteering scheme and forces him to significantly change the conditions of the agreement. Instead of the Shah receiving 50% shares of the corporation, D’Arcy will receive 33.4%, the Shah 33.3%, and the people of Abadan 33.3%, to ensure that the local workers are also represented. In addition, while D’Arcy’s company will receive rights to drill at the site for 60 years uninterrupted, locals will be entitled to 10% of the profits of each oil barrel sold, and the Shah 1% of each barrel.

The move infuriates investors throughout Britain, who see it as the over-righteous hand of government interfering with the market, but following the political reverses of his foreign policy the success of mediating D’Arcy’s agreement provides a much-needed boost to Henderson’s flagging support among the proletariat.

Encouraged by the new left coalition government, an Anti-Colonial league springs up in Britain. Primarily consisting of socialists and communists but also including some ethnic nationalists and isolationist liberals, the league advocates the granting of Dominion status to Britain’s various colonies “as rapidly as is practical” in order to “ensure that the cruel hand of capitalism, and the various other maladies which might be caused by the domineering relationship between Britain and her colonial subjects, be negated.”

Although Henderson is wary about putting his full support behind the league, he does feel that Dominion status for the colonies is mandated as an anti-imperialist gesture, and, although he does not give a timetable for these events, acknowledges in a public statement from Downing Street that “the present government believes that the colonies Great Britain currently holds are indeed held unlawfully, and that this government unjustly and unreasonably profits from the labor of others. We hold that it is of paramount importance to return control to the locals of these various nations as soon as they are prepared for independent rule, and to that end the current government has begun a program of subsidies on schools within our colonies, and heavy subsidization for the elite to gain an education within Britain. As soon as it is deemed that a given nation is prepared for independence, with readied leadership and state infrastructure, Dominion status will be conferred.”

This announcement, even so vague as it is, causes panic within the colonies, and many areas, particularly South Africa, threaten revolution against the “anti-white” home government. Although they are pacified by reassurances that the time for Dominion status is yet far off, any colonial whites' support for the home government entirely vanishes overnight, and talk of "proper independence" guaranteed to be fully under white rule circulates in many of the colonies.

For now, though, the colonies remain with Britain, and even if conditions there have been ameliorated by the appointment of benevolent administrators, the work of the native still passes, ultimately, to the hand of the Briton. It makes the state incredibly, almost unimaginably wealthy.

Although taxes are relatively high under the left coalition, sitting at a flat 50% of income for all classes, the wealth intake is so massive that the extent of the taxes is hardly warranted. Instead of reducing them, however, the government instead decides to fund a major importation program: all foreign goods purchased by Britons, including colonial subjects, are subsidized at a rate of 25%.

The move, entirely unexpected from a far-left protectionist government, pleases business interests and average purchasers both, as goods are now available at incredibly cheap prices and many more services are now affordable throughout Britain. This move is quite probably the most popular that Henderson makes in the entirety of his mandate.

For a year, tensions in the metropole remain low; further legislation is passed regarding worker rights, safety conditions in factories are improved, zoning reforms break up existing boroughs and further weaken Liberal power (to the fury of the rejuvenated Liberal party, which believed that it had a serious chance in the next election cycle), and a slow and cautious, yet steady, pace of anti-capitalist legislation is passed which gradually places more power in the hands of the workers and their representatives.

Yet in the colonies fury at the “traitors’ system” is untold. Cautious rebelliousness over the perception of betrayal by the home government has grown to overt resistance In the vile race-states of Oranje and the Trans-Vaal. There especially, the communistic ideology coming from London is not merely seen as detestable, but the singular greatest threat to white rule. When Henderson signs legislation which would curb the independence of these Boer states in preparation for federating South Africa under a single government, the Boer Republics have seen enough; they declare complete independence from Britain and declare that any British citizen who passes their borders will be “shot on sight as an expected terrorist.”

This, of course, cannot be allowed to stand. In the name of relieving the horrific labor conditions of the Africans in the Boer states, and of continuing the march of Britain toward civilizing the native and ameliorating their conditions, Henderson, with the full support of Keane, declares that the Boers will be triumphed over.

What follows is a tense and drawn-out conflict, made all the harder by the Trans-Vaal’s strong defensive position and large population. Although two full armies are committed to the task, even after a full summer battles are still taking place and much British territory has been occupied. The Boers, in short, are putting up far more of a fight than expected from a segregated state.

By February of 1902 the world knows of the Boer Wars, and even in the face of British victories people across the world begin to question what they represent. Rather than a colonial conflict as Augustus Keane’s foreign office attempts to contextualize the fighting, the Boer War is rather seen by many as a communist government’s attempt to subvert and subjugate a nationalist, scientifically race-organized state. In other words, to them it is degeneracy reaching out to infect other states with that same degeneracy.

At a conference of ethnology and anthropology in Oslo, the first basic tenets of fascist ideology are articulated as a counter-ideology to communism. Rooted in racial-nationalist principles, these first fascists agree with communists that unchecked capitalism is detrimental, yet seek primarily the construction of a state which is mighty enough to enforce racial difference and to construct a national character (not to mention a police system) which is strong enough to exclude the “poor, atheist, negro-loving, Jew-backed communists that seek to break the historic and racial dominance of the Western world.”

Although their numbers begin small, British representatives at the Oslo conference do travel back to Britain and found the British Union of Fascists that year, specifically calling upon traditional conservatives to back their efforts to topple the communist state. Scotland Yard, long-since having accepted many of the far left into its ranks, is tasked with observing the new party.

By the end of April 1902, just a year after the war began, the Boer War concludes, and discussion of it abroad dies down (although the Fascist movement has already been started, and the potential damage to leftist ideology caused by the Boer War has thus already occurred). In an unexpectedly harsh move the leaders of the rebellion, including Presidents Martinus Theunis Steyn and Paul Kreuger, are executed for their roles in the protracted war.

Nevertheless, treatment for the remainder of the Boers is unexpectedly light. In what will come to form a model for other bi-racial colonies, the Dutch are not dispossessed of power in the colony, but are forced to share it in an equal amount with the Africans, and are likewise forced to pay an “enslavement indemnity” to marginalized African peoples to ensure that they have a basis of wealth from which to operate. Although this is at first heavily resisted within Boer society, the presence of almost 100,000 British guns rapidly convinces them to undertake the measures as proscribed.

Later historians frequently remark upon how curious it is that the British armies in the region chose to cooperate with the overtly communistic policy taken in the newly-reorganized Boer states, but they are then reminded that the armies themselves were colonial, and largely made up of footsoldiers that were communists; their officers were squeezed on both sides. Thus, the wealth distribution took place as Henderson and the Labour colonial office intended.

In an act of conciliation to economic interests in Africa, however, the Rhodesian charter originally granted in 1888 is extended in breadth to cover most of the land between Tanzania and South Africa, expanding the mining interests there as compensation to the wealth extraction opportunities that capitalists will not have in the centrally-controlled and nativized Boer states.

Shortly following the conclusion of the Boer conflict, Britain becomes involved in a crisis in the Balkans regarding Serbian territory. Serbia, which is itself a dictatorship of the proletariat working towards true communism, is demanding Novi Pazar from the Emirate of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Novi Pazar has rich iron mines and would be extremely helpful in assisting Serbia’s burgeoning industry, and the Germans--likely merely to spite the Austro-Hungarians--have decided to support Serbia’s claim.

For entirely different reasons, Augustus Keane convinces Henderson to lead Britain in supporting the Serbs as well. “It is our duty to be international brothers of the proletariat, to aid and succor the worker wherever he lives. Our Serb cousins must be strengthened, their commune protected; it is our duty to fight and die for our brothers, if we must.”

Although it is a very unpopular move among the Labour War Ministry and the army itself, Henderson does lead Britain into supporting the Serbs. Several army officers resign on the grounds of refusing to assist the “spread of cancerous proletarianism outside of this government, where it is, at least, constrained by the good sense of eighty per-cent of the members of its coalition.”

Fortunately, the matter does not come to war; the Austro-Hungarians, terrified of combined German and British support, back down and cede Novi Pazar to the Serb Commune.

A few months later and Arthur Henderson’s health has begun to deteriorate. Always something of a heavy drinker--“it comes with the job,” he used to tell fellow industrial workers--it has now caught up with him. He has advanced liver failure, and is not expected to survive the year.

More and more of his duties have begun to be delegated to the only other two CPGB members in his cabinet, the national-socialist Henry Hyndman and the internationalist Augustus Keane. Hyndman, however, only has control over domestic affairs, while Keane has the ability to reach out to the international from his position as Foreign Secretary.

In order to increase his political capital, Keane negotiates the Trucial Treaty that summer, which unites the Trucial States, forces the Emirs to accept a limiting council of Sheikhs, and abolishes slavery within the territory, all without fully negating the local systems of power or wealth. The move is a surprisingly politic one for a communist, and even some members of the Conservatives in Parliament grudgingly acknowledge the quality of the treaty and its help in ensuring British dominance in the east.

Arthur Henderson died in agony on Saturday night, September 20th, 1902. As the head of the CPGB, Henderson represented the unifying link between the Labour and CPGB in the coalition. His death threw the entire coalition into jeopardy, as both sides then needed to select an agreed-upon successor for the coalition to go forward.

Within the CPGB, the battle was between Keane and Hyndman; for Labour, the selection was indisputably James Keir Hardie. With the CPGB split and Hardie unifying Labour behind him, it appeared at first as if the new Prime Minister of Great Britain would be Hardie. But that was before Keane met with him on the night of the 21st.

In an impassioned dialogue which lasted hours, Keane pressed Hardie to support him as the new Prime Minister, or to himself switch his allegiance to the CPGB. “My friend, socialists rose first because they believed that communism was unattainable--but we are here, now! Tomorrow we can unite Labour and the Communist Party under a revolutionary flag, a truly proletarian one. I loved Henderson, and I mourn his death, but he was no true communist; the Boer War, and that business with the Directors of Italy, proved that well enough. We need a truly international position in Parliament, a truly worker-led coalition. And, forgive me for saying it, we need an end to the monarchy, and to the ever-strengthening reaction. You cannot deny that this Fascism is precisely that; we must have strength, as we have not before, to truly create a government of the workers in Britain.”

After hours of arguing, haranguing, and convincing, Hardie finally comes around to the idea that the time is historic, and that his failure to support a fully communist government would negate the possibility of true communism ever coming into existence. With the realization that communism can be practically attained on the very morrow, he agrees to switch his loyalty to the CPGB. Most of his party members are shocked and not more than perhaps 10% follow in his footsteps as he urges them to, but Hardie's popularity is such that the remaining Labour members are willing to accept his insistence that Keane should be the coalition's candidate for Prime Minister, so long as Hardie himself receives a ministerial post. It is Hardie they trust, not Keane.

The following day, with Hardie’s support, Keane is easily selected as the new leader both of the CPGB and of Great Britain.

At that day’s session in parliament, with a pure majority easily attained, Keane proposes a somewhat innocuous bill which merely states that “capitalism and its manifestations are inherently abhorrent” and that “it is the duty of the government to combat these evils to the utmost of its ability.” Although the bill alarms most conservatives and they oppose it to the utmost, Keane’s CPGB-Labour coalition has the clear majority, and it is passed the same day. It is what later historians would refer to as the “enabling act.”

Three years of communist leadership without any serious unrest or attempts to dismantle the parliamentary system leave the elites unprepared for the sudden rapidity of their move. Indeed, more than half of the coalition itself is stunned, many Labour members having failed to realize what Hardie's sudden conversion to the CPGB implied--or what the Enabling Act permitted.

Radicals in Scotland Yard, the local police, and the local army garrison--which was itself primarily a Labour force--soon receive orders from 10 Downing and spring into action. Arresting those who would resist them, they march on Buckingham and capture the Queen and the majority of the royal family after killing her royal guard, and do the same for most Parliamentary politicians then in London. Although fighting breaks out throughout Britain, People’s Militias and the Army, which had quietly lost most of its reactionaries already due to resignations (both actual and forced), put down the unrest. In the colonies, uncooperative officers are skewered by their underlings, almost all colonial soldiers having become at least sympathetic to the CPGB long before.

The following morn, with gunshots still ringing in the background, Augustus Keane proclaims the Worker’s Commonwealth. The monarchy is abolished, and “Britons are finally, truly free.”

Chapter Text

Yet Keane is not a fool. Although he is now Principal Secretary of the CPGB--and thus President of the Worker’s Commonwealth--he is well aware that his proclamation is met with barely-concealed horror from the propertied classes, and that many fear the violence which precipitated the rise of communist governance, and which is still ongoing, will become a staple of the new government. Although his support is strong among the proletariat, for the moment, that could change rapidly.

Thus, Keane makes conciliatory gestures almost immediately. The Queen and the royal family, captured but not killed, are given the choice of remaining in Britain as average citizens or being transported, with a small portion of their belongings, to their relatives in the Duchy of Poland. Almost the entire royal family takes the latter option, only Victoria’s grandson Frederick Saxe (as he will come to be called) choosing to stay as a regular citizen in the armed forces. The Queen is wise enough to remain silent as she and her family are exiled from the lands which they once called home.

Following the wide publication of Victoria’s peaceful departure, Keane reassures the middle-class that the focus of the government is upon the elite, that their wealth will not be forcibly seized, and that any property redistribution which occurs will only be permitted through “natural market occurrences.”

Finally, Keane’s Parliament, now staffed entirely by socialists and communists, passes an act which requires newspapers throughout the country to print government-sanctioned explanations of communist ideology, and all schools and extra-curricular groups are likewise required to include communist educational material within their curriculum or common practices. In many cases, CPGB members begin to be placed in charge of primary and secondary schools to ensure the curriculum is pro-Party.

This pro-party, pro-government propaganda, heavy-handed as it is, has rapid results. Although nobles and wealthy capitalists still fight like cornered dogs, and although much of the population still shakes its head and wonders whether or not this government truly makes sense, most are resigned to the fact that, like it or not, the government now exists: it was raised up legally (however dubiously) and it cannot be toppled by anything less than violent revolutionary action. Few have the stomach to face the 150,000 man strong Commonwealth Army stationed in Britain, much less the 250,000-strong reinforcements pouring into the home isles from the rest of the colonies.

So many do the next-best thing to resistance: support. Many moderate socialists come around and begin speaking in more radical terms, reading Marx and Engels directly, agitating against the capitalist and labor alienation, all in an effort to receive a coveted membership in the CPGB--understood, as it is, to be the next ruling class of Britain. Those who do not become outright communists often adopt socialistic positions, acknowledged and supported as valid in the Commonwealth and able to attain seats in its Parliament (although it is first and foremost a communist union). Labour's support actually swells faster than the CPGB's does at first, though Labour has already begun the long process of grafting itself to the new communist government (it was, after all, unwittingly complicit with the regime anyway due to its support for the Enabling Act, and thus would likely not escape hostility from the forces of reaction; the best way to preserve their skins was moving in lock-step with the new government). 

Those liberals and conservatives who refuse to radicalize nevertheless learn enough about Marxist precepts from the propaganda to pay lip service to what they need to in order to keep out of the eyes of the state, which day by day begins to insert itself more heavily in the lives of the people--to ensure they are not being corrupted by capitalist influences, of course.

James Hardie, in reward for his support of Keane and to fulfill the bargain with Labour that preserved the CPGB/Labour coalition immediately before the passage of the Enabling Act, is granted the title of Foreign Secretary by the Principal Secretary. Keane has a critical task for him: a policy of colonial reorganization intended to strengthen several colonies by federating them under centralized communist leaderships.

The colonies as a whole are in a tumult over the communist takeover at home, and many threaten to break away from British control, which the internationalist-minded Keane is willing to permit. Yet he demands the peoples of these colonies accept communist governments of their own, continue to labor for communism worldwide, and likewise demands military support for internationalist interventions. Consequently, Keane sees federation--and the larger territory and greater influence it inherently implies--as a way to ensure the colonies' willing participation in the Commonwealth (which, in its broader sense encompassing both the British Isles and her colonies, is referred to as the Communist International, although this infuriates the minor proletarian states like Serbia, Bolivia, and Greece which have no affiliation to Britain).

The first of these states which Hardie tackles is Turkestan, the plans for which originated as far back as the late 1830s, when Lord Auckland initiated the East India Company’s conquest of the northern Khans. Long under British rule, the Khans have nevertheless proven very resistant to change, and the newly-released Ataman of the Kazakhs has proven even less capable of civilization, roaming the steppe as his great-grandfathers did, unwilling to modernize his people at all.

Thus, with the assistance of government officials already in place in Turkestan and the intervention of two armies from India, Hardie arranges for the Khans and the Ataman to be deposed and for a communist from Kzyzl-Su, Mir Ali, to be raised up as a “temporary dictator serving the interests of the proletariat,” with the goal of urbanizing and civilizing the Turkic peoples.

Hardie similarly proceeds with plans to create Pakistan, a religio-lingual offshoot of India, and for the federation of the Malay peoples under British control in the Malay peninsula and Sarawak. Although both decisions come under fire by hard-left communists (including Keane) for their preference for religio-nationalist borders, considering the Malay people could easily ethnically federate almost all Dutch lands in Indonesia and the only real support for a Pakistan originates in their religious differences from the Hindu, Hardie stands his ground on his decision.

He rightly points out to Keane that it will be difficult enough for these people, uncivilized and unindustrialized as they are, to adopt communism, and that attempting to create mass federations will only result in greater instability--and, more importantly, nations which are even harder for Britain to control. Keeping them relatively large but ethnically-aligned will assist their local communist parties in keeping control, and will likewise help to ensure that the Commonwealth is always strong enough to enforce its dominance over her proletarian allies if they “slip” and elect a non-communist government. These federations are thus meant to be temporary, introducing their people to communism during the tumultuous years of early internationalism, and to be re-federated into even larger unions, such as a proposed pan-Indian and pan-Indonesian union, at a later date, when communism has fully overthrown the capitalist world order.

With these matters settled, decolonization begins.

Keane is unwilling to wait to decolonize, as Henderson had been, until native governments and state systems were truly ready for it. “Colonialism is imperialism, and imperialism is a capitalist pox upon society; it is our duty to be rid of the colonies as rapidly as we can be, leaving behind organized proletarian allies--not subjects!--whom we may call upon in need, and whom we will aid in their need. Only in this way will we raise up the laborers of the colonies rather than casting them down into darkness, despair, and slavery.”

The consequences of Keane’s decision will prove far-reaching. Although many nations released during the scramble to decolonize had leadership which was well-educated and quite pleased to adopt proletarian ideology, several did not. These governments were forced to organize around structures wherein local chiefs answered to British communists who temporarily formed the leadership structure of these ostensibly free countries, which would prove troubling to the CPGB for years to come. This is not even to mention the previous British administrators and settlers in many of the new nations who violently resisted the loss of their power, and the consequent guerilla wars that were waged in these new states, sometimes for years.

Nevertheless, decolonization is now a fact. New nations and old ones reborn have sprung up across Africa and Asia, each in their own way espousing a proletarian ideology, and loyalty to the International and what it represents.

Decolonization only fails to touch two types of territories: islands, which Keane and Hardie both agree are best suited remaining under central British control (albeit with “sympathetic” local governments) due to the lack of support they would likely provide otherwise, and areas wherein a significant number of whites and natives have mixed.

“We hold that these territories where significant racial mixtures have taken place cannot merely be turned over to the natives who previously occupied these lands, because the rights of whites in these regions must be represented. Likewise, we cannot turn the governments of these regions over to whites without considerations for the natives. Therefore, racially mixed zones such as Canada, South Africa, and Australasia will remain under the direct control of London, and London will administrate local affairs to best suit the needs of both white and colored colonial citizens.

“It should, however, be recalled by everyone in the Commonwealth that the policy of this government holds that all races are invariably equal in potential; there is to be no racial bias in our decisions, and any who suspect a fellow comrade of holding racial biases should report him to their local branch of the Party. It is our job to help these people, not to criminalize the color of their skins.”

In Asia, Hardie’s plan of weakened allies is carried out in India, which is sub-federated from the greatest extent that the Indian nationalists had been calling for by quite a degree. Assam, the Bengal republic, Hyderabad, the Rajputs, and Pakistan are all split off from the Indian main, which is only permitted to keep the “core of the subcontinent, unhindered by troubling ethnic and religious minorities such as the Sunni in Bengal and Pakistan, or the Tamil in Hyderabad.”

Decolonization in India in particular is chaos, for even hundreds of years of British rule did not provide the education, infrastructure, and government necessary for independence. The governments which result from the Indian decolonization (with the curious exceptions of the Muslim Pakistan, which organizes itself supremely well, and the Rajputana) are absolutely primitive, with the civilized leaders in the capitals of these new states often incapable of extending their authority even so far as the suburbs of their sprawling centers of government. Communism is not well-understood in the populace, and those who do understand it often spit upon it for its antipathy to caste and privilege; the Brahmin, in particular, rage against the lower-caste government of all of these colonies, and rely on subjugated locals in virtually autonomous villages around the countryside to protect them from government attempts to round up and disenfranchise the elite.

The horrid administrative and technological situation within India--which the last Minister for Indian Affairs, Sydney Olivier, attributes to “ill education and superstition”--encourages Keane to call for an extraordinary session of the cabinet to respond to the poor development of many of Britain’s new “allies.”

The solution, as the Worker’s Cabinet sees it, is to massively invest in the people of those colonies which are struggling to industrialize. Through mass literacy programs in the natives’ own languages, translations of Marxist literature and distribution throughout the country, and European-led attempts to root out hiding elites and proletarianize the economy, it’s hoped that the Commonwealth can generate major support for the new governments of these post-colonial nations, and quite possibly result in an extension of central authority throughout the entire nation at a greatly accelerated rate.

The cost will be great, and all in the Cabinet are well aware of that fact. “Yet our nation is the very reason these people struggle,” Keane sighed. “We must help them, at any cost to ourselves. To be internationalists, we must have an international. These measures will construct one: a union of mutual respect and understanding, and the repayment of the debt we owe these people for their domination.”

The final cost happens to be approximately 5 million pounds (an absolutely enormous amount, given that the pound still operates on the gold standard) invested into colonial programs and 330,000 intellectuals either purged for anti-Marxist beliefs or forcibly shipped to the colonies for education of the natives. The purge was originally to be handled by the propaganda ministry and to be largely peaceful, but was forced to move forward ahead-of-schedule to ensure the intellectuals sent overseas were loyal to the state. The purge, despite Party efforts to clamp down on newspapers reporting the sudden disappearance of many of Britain’s foremost professors, becomes well-known throughout the Commonwealth and sparks a great deal of fear for the future.

Yet, for the time being, intellectuals are the only ones purged. In a statement issued a few months later acknowledging that “some intellectuals in our society deemed to be the most dangerous to Marxist ideals were… forcibly shipped to penal colonies,” Keane’s minister of the interior, Philip Snowden, acknowledges the purge, although he does not admit that many of these intellectuals were killed and that only their families were “safely” deported.

Shortly after the purge, short-staffed universities begin accepting professors directly from the Party. Although many are at least partially qualified, having themselves attended university, they are undoubtedly a step down from the intellectuals which the Party purged, and it will take decades for Britain’s university system to truly recover.

“If that is the price to pay to ensure that the proletarians of the world are educated and armed against capital,” Keane confided in Snowden, “then I shall pay it, sorrowfully but eagerly.”

The first weeks of the Commonwealth’s existence are tumultuous, as continued fighting wracks the Isles. The Navy is forced to fire on and sink several vessels which refuse to profess loyalty to the new state, over 10,000 soldiers and officers will eventually be court-martialed (and many executed) for reactionary deeds which took place during the first month of the revolution. Ongoing battles within many of Britain’s cities, particularly London and Manchester, result in martial law being temporarily imposed while the “forces of reaction” are systematically identified, hunted down, and eliminated.

Although the fighting will not truly die down until the middle of 1903, by early October it is clear that the Worker’s Commonwealth will stand, and that the forces of reaction have failed in their attempt to prevent the communist government from seizing power. It is at this point, in the midst of the first breakout of news regarding the intellectual purge, that Keane first articulates what is to be done with the privileged classes. Contrary to what was expected throughout much of Britain, they are not to be eliminated; the vast majority of their wealth is to be seized and redistributed to the poor natives living within the few colonies which Britain still possesses, but the privileged themselves will be permitted to continue living “as common laborers rather than agents of capital.”

Many, predictably, commit suicide. But others are more than willing to temporarily (as they see it) accept a life as an artisan or craftsman while they await an opportunity to topple the government, and most are simply happy that their lives and the lives of their families are secure. Following on the heels of knowledge about the intellectual purge as it does, the decision not to exterminate the nobles and capitalists helps to encourage a state of passive acceptance of the revolution among the middle classes, who were previously growing rebellions due to its perceived spiral into violence.

As the world’s first major proletarian government takes its first shaky steps forward, the world moves along at its typical pace. The international horror caused by the proletarian revolution in Britain and the forced evacuation of Victoria and the royal family causes widespread fury and calls for a coalition to invade Britain and lay it low, but Britain’s navy is so much larger than any other great power’s, even after the loss of several ships to friendly fire during the first stages of the revolution, that all agree that the effort would be futile. At best Russia might be able to occupy Britain’s Asian possessions, but with the losses Britain has inflicted upon them even that is questionable, and although the Tsar is terrified of the proletarian government of Turkestan now to his nation’s south, he proves unwilling to launch an offensive strike without the full support of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and France, which he does not receive.

This is because France sees the situation as beneficial to her, at least in the short-term. President de MacMahon, his administration stung over the fiasco of the Futa Jallon some years before, sees the ultimate coup in striking against the now-weakened Germany for the reclamation of Alsace-Lorraine, previously impossible because of British support. But now that Wilhelm II and his Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow have broken all ties with the British, they are left entirely unprepared for a French attack on their territory, which de MacMahon orders begun in late October, as soon as France’s armed forces could be prepared for offensive operations.

Even with the Spanish presence in the war dividing French attention the Germans are caught off-guard by an attack during a time which should have encouraged unity, and quickly begin falling behind in the war. It appears likely that de MacMahon’s government will truly manage it.

Aware of the landing of a Commonwealth army on the isle of Cyprus, capitalists and wealthy Pashas within the Ottoman Empire use their wealth to orchestrate the strongest general rising they can. Although decentralized and frankly minuscule in its threat, the anarcho-capitalist revolt in the Empire, although rapidly put down, tells Keane one clear thing: the capitalists of the world are terrified of the Commonwealth, and of communism and what it represents. They fear what it will do to them, and rightly so.

But, for the time being, the Commonwealth is not interested in the Ottoman Empire, although its time would come. No; for now, the Commonwealth’s interest is with Greece, a proletarian nation which would prove a valuable ally against the Empire, if they chose to join the international. Unfortunately their national-socialist President resists, and it appears it will come to a war to install a new Greek leader, one loyal to the tenets of international communism.

The war, once declared, is rapid. A single Commonwealth colonial army puts down the entire Greek state, even when mobilized; the outcome is humiliating for the Greek Communist Party, which, following the ascension of their new Commonwealth-backed President, is purged several times to shift its focus from national to international communism.

On June 21st, in a show of solidarity, the Worker’s Commonwealth cedes the island of Cyprus to Greece in return for Greece’s formal inclusion in the international, the first non-anglosphere nation to join. It is a moment of celebration in Britain (and if you did not like it, you celebrated anyway), as it signals that the Commonwealth is well and truly the crux of global communism.

The Ottoman Sultan, for his part, is infuriated and terrified by the move on the part of the Commonwealth, and seeks support from the house of Sa’ud, Emirs of Arabia, to help fight the British off. The Emir of Arabia is better aware than any of the weakness of his position in relation to the Commonwealth, however, and refuses the Sultan’s offer; he, like the Shah of Persia and the Trucial Emirs, hopes that it will be possible to keep his head down and avoid the fury of his communist overlords, maintaining life as it has always been in the sands of the east. It is a futile hope, but it is his.

After almost a year of fierce fighting, the Fifth Franco-Prussian War concludes in a surprise French victory. The defeat humiliates Wilhelm II, whereas it sweeps the previously unpopular de MacMahon and his pro-Bourbon party to a massive legislative majority. Although the monarchy is not restored--opinion on that count is still quite lukewarm--his popularity at least ensures governmental stability in France.

On the subject of war, however, stability is far less certain. Following the loss of Elsass, Wilhelm II turned to his cousin the Tsar, traditional ally of France, and signed a surprise alliance which has many within France worried. Although France also maintains an alliance with Nicholas II and de MacMahon hopes that the two states sharing an ally will help prevent war, it could also signal a move from Nicholas II’s government away from the French state and toward a pro-German policy, now that Germany is no longer “tainted” by alliance to the British.

For Keane, the matter is frustrating primarily because of its interference with his plans for Germany. He had intended Britain’s long-time ally would be the first nation on the continent which would be freed from the chains of capital by the Commonwealth Army, to be used as a base of operations to strike the other major powers throughout Europe. This now appears out of reach, at least for the moment; the International, still taking its first stumbling steps forward, is not mighty enough to take on Germany and Russia simultaneously.

Keane’s eyes thus shift from Germany to Italy, and the Directors. An abhorrent government ruled by capital, they have been supported by Britain for far too long, and an end to their government through a proletarian dictatorship would be justice made manifest. Plans are laid--tentatively still, for the army will not be ready for months--but lain nevertheless.

As 1903 rolls into 1904, Keane’s Secretary of War, none other than Frederick Saxe, grandson of Victoria and long-time colonial commander, works in conjunction with the Secretary of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (which now manages colonial affairs as well) to reform the local garrisons of Britain’s remaining colonies to increase the total number of soldiers which can effectively be managed from London. This has the added effect of reducing the burden on many natives who previously had no opportunities outside of agricultural work by providing an alternate career path through service in the armed forces.

Although the effects will take some time to become evident, Saxe is hopeful that the measures undertaken--which include the laying of undersea telegraph lines, the construction of telegraph infrastructure in the colonies, and the closure of the Suez and Panama canals to all vessels which are not part of the International—will eventually result in a larger colonial army which can garrison Canada and South Africa independently, and which can provide supporting troops for the International from other locations. The move is hailed as foresighted and well-timed by Keane, who is quite pleased that this power of observation and command was not available to the monarchist governments which proceeded the Commonwealth. Since Keane is pleased, naturally the people are as well.

On May 3rd, 1904, the Communist International, represented by its chief nation, the Worker’s Commonwealth, initiates its first offensive move against a non-communard country when it declares war upon the Directorate of Italy for the “destruction of an anarchist government ruled by capital and abhorrent to the worker.” Their stated goal is the forcible investiture of a communist government with power in Italy, and they provide no further casus belli.

This has France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary in an uproar, but the divisions between them, again, prevent a response; France, socialist as its government was for so long, also despises the Directorate, even if its hatred for Britain is worse. Germany refuses to cooperate with France thanks to its capture of Alsace-Lorraine, and Austria-Hungary, ever hateful of Italy’s pretentions to so much of their land, is far more concerned with the presence of Commonwealth troops on their border, and refuses Wilhelm II’s call to declare war on the Commonwealth on behalf of the Italians. Thus, once again, the British are allowed to bring their plans to fruition at a time when a trivial show of unity on the part of the continental powers could have stopped her in her tracks.

To the surprise of Keane, there is even limited continental cooperation: both Sardinia-Piedmont and the Kingdom of Sicily are willing to fight with them against the Italian Directors, despite the ideological gulf which divides them. In return for an assurance that the Commonwealth will never attempt to proletarianize their countries--an empty agreement, easily given--they are willing to fight to horribly weaken and destabilize the “Italian” nation, which has proven a continual threat to their independence and whose leadership have, time and again, proven barbaric in the extreme in their treatment not only of their people, but of other Italians.

“Now’s the time!” cries Field Marshall Arthur Lyons, commander of Commonwealth forces in Italy. “Up and over the trench, lads; for the workers of the world!”

With the vast majority of Commonwealth forces concentrated to the north, the Directors deploy the fullness of their fury directly toward the International’s positions, sending in armies of paid professionals as well as citizens paid ludicrous wages in order to fight in the northern trenches. Yet the Commonwealth forces prove that a well-trained standing army wins out against highly-paid conscripts every time; although the few professionals the Directorate send in prove difficult to defeat, once they are exhausted and the peasants take over, the war is all but won. The peasants, wielding guns they can hardly point straight, are constantly run through by the crack Commonwealth forces.

What Comintern soldiers find as they trudge through Italy is horrifying; conditions that surpass slavery, with anything and everything available for the right price. Physical maltreatment is not punished by the law, and labor and sexual slavery are common. Many villages, especially in the north, are deserted as Comintern forces pass through them; a silent reminder of the horrors of the Directorate, which Britain had so long supported. Many soldiers, unwilling to wait for just retribution, begun a policy of forcible wealth redistribution as they pass through towns, and the army gives sanction for the wealthy to be summarily executed in major cities like Firenze.

By mid-July much of the north has been secured, and a provisional Socialist government under Filippo Turati (founded because no credible communists can actually be identified in the labor-repressed conditions of the Directorate) has been established in Ravenna, ready to take the reins of government as soon as the Directors negotiate their surrender.

That agreement comes in early September, as Commonwealth forces in the north wipe out the last of the Directors’ paid peasants, and the single operational southern army closes in on Naples. Although Italy’s official government capital is Rome, the “government” of Italy is such only in name, and in reality it is merely the Directors who matter. They are overwhelmingly based in Naples, the heart of the old Kingdom of Two Sicilies, and therefore the approach of the 7th Army accompanies a horrifying realization that the time of their reckoning is now.

After permitting hundreds of thousands to die and allowing untold suffering, then, the Directors finally surrender on the basis of a deal to save their own skins: they will take their wealth, and their families, and leave Italy for America. The government and all remaining institutions will then be handed over to Filippo’s pro-International provisional government.

To the surprise of Parliament, Keane agrees to the proposal. Many viciously castigate his “betrayal of communist principles,” in letting the Directors live, much less keep their wealth, but he advises them to simply wait to see the ultimate result. Graphic photographs which arrive in London a few days later tell the true tale: they display the swinging bodies of thousands of Directors and their families, hanging from the mansions and villas of the countryside, with the cheering masses of their once-enslaved people laughing below their corpses.

“I do not make deals with arch-capital,” Keane told Parliament that afternoon. “I will never make deals with arch-capital. This is capital’s ultimate fate in the world we are building; never doubt that this is what I work towards.” His words were met with standing applause.

As Turati’s caretaker government is ushered into office in Rome and British armies patrol the Italian countryside, putting down any signs of reaction and redistributing wealth in accordance with Turati’s policy initiatives, the new Premier of Italy is informed that there is another concession which is requested of his government: the cession of Eritrea, Italy’s lone colony, to Ethiopia.

WILL NOT BE NEEDED STOP INTERNATIONAL MANDATE IN AFRICA REQUIRES ADDITIONAL TERRITORY STOP CESSION TO ETHIOPIA CRITICAL TO ETHIOPIAN INDUSTRIALIZATION STOP

Such was the message Turati receives from Keane, whose demand for the territory was both terse and somewhat without justification. With that said, however, Turati is well-aware that his present government is one of stewardship, and that a communist will replace him in time--and that that time can come much, much sooner if he does not cooperate. The territory is therefore ceded to Ethiopia without any resistance.

As troops begin to be ferried back to Britain from their temporary stations in Italy, the Commonwealth government is wracked by a scandalous report. A French socialist newspaper has published conditions of what it calls the “Heart of Darkness,” the British South Atlantic Islands, where apparently orders from the communist government in London had been almost entirely ignored. With Africans shipped from the continent to wait on the whites of the islands, the South Atlantic had become a haven for British industrialists, capitalists, and the otherwise wealthy to hide from the government, and the atrocities they committed in their disenfranchised rage were mortifying. Africans who attempted to escape used for target practice; institutional rape as a policy for producing a mulatto workforce; the reinstitution of plantation slavery; and, worst of all, systemic bribery which kept the system entirely out of view from the central government.

In a statement made the next day, Keane acknowledges the the total fault of the administration, in the event that the atrocities reported are accurate. He sends the entire United Fleet to the South Atlantic to investigate the situation and--if the report is founded--to mete out summary justice to any whites living in the territory, and to return any natives, if possible, to their original homes. All officials related to the South Atlantic in the Foreign Office are immediately rounded up, interrogated, and tried, and an examination of all other Commonwealth territories overseas by the United Fleet is ordered, to take place over the following year. There will be no more atrocities; there will be no more reaction; there will be no more havens for the elite in this, the Worker’s Commonwealth.

At the end of November, an entirely spontaneous communist party rally within the Persian capital of Tabriz excites great interest in London. The local officials of the Persia’s Tudeh Party call for Shah Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar to step down and for a revolutionary council of Marxist leaders to seize control of the government on the way to proletarianizing the economy. When the Shah refuses and detains several of the members of the rally, the rally turns into a protest bent upon shutting the Persian capital down.

Keane, who in no way orchestrated the rally or the protest, nevertheless gives the order to the local party chief to go forward with an attempted coup attempt in the capital. Sadly, the Tudeh party is weak within Persia--Iran, as the CPGB now takes to calling it--and they are defeated with little fanfare by the Shah’s guards. An orgy of anti-Marxist violence, encompassing both socialists and communists, follows the failed coup attempt. And all pretense of Mozaffar obeying London falls to the wayside.

This, of course, is unacceptable to Keane, whose internationalism relies not only upon the inviolability of the International, but also strategically relies upon Iran as a link between east and west. Although the hostility of Sultan Abdulhamid to the Commonwealth guarantees Ottoman disfavor and prevents a true bridge from Africa to Asia being formed, were the Ottoman Empire to be dismantled, Iran’s willing cooperation in the Comintern would be required for the bridge to be completed.

It is, therefore, unacceptable for the Shah to withdraw Iran from the international, just as it is unacceptable that a privileged man continue to rule in the new proletarian world. War is declared, and the International called in, to crush the Shah and proletarianize Iran by force.

Iran’s mountainous terrain, the availability of only a single Commonwealth army to participate in the conflict, the inability of any of the African Comintern states to get access to the fighting through the Ottoman Empire, and the weakness of most of the recently-organized Asian Comintern states all contribute to a protracted war. Iran was civilized, on its way to industrialization, and had a strong and well-organized army; for every other state in the east, reliance upon mobilization was necessary to overcome the weakness of military forces which were essentially nascent.

Nevertheless, it is eventually accomplished. After the 2nd Army captured Tabriz Mozaffar temporarily moved his government to the ancient center of Iran at Tehran, but as his forces in the east were routed and the Comintern was closing in on both sides, he surrendered before the suffering could accelerate. “May Allah forgive me my failures,” he was quoted as saying by one of his personal guards, “but I cannot allow the pain of this war to continue. The British are too mighty; they will inflict upon us the grossest agonies, but at least my people will not die in surrender.”

The Shah is captured by the advancing 2nd Army and handed over to the new revolutionary government under Haydar Khan Amo-oghli and his Council of Fifty-Three, the fifty-three founding members of the Tudeh Party. Per International stipulations, “those effected by the ills of the propertied and privileged classes have the right to dispense with them per the individual wills of their states, as representatives of the proletariat.” Haydar Khan therefore decides to allow the Shah to live, then, in a surprising show of leniency, although he and his family will be forced to work as common laborers. It is a move which nevertheless earns Haydar Khan’s party considerable attention from the Iranian people at large, who are impressed that he did not resort to even further violence.

Just over a month after Haydar Khan begins to reorganize Iran, a very reluctant message arrives from Arthur, the Duke of Poland. The Russian Tsar, furious over his defeats at the hands of the British and despising the “artificial Polish duchy,” has declared war upon the Polish state to destroy it. Arthur politely--even plaintively--reminds “the Parliament of the Worker’s Commonwealth” of the “treaty of guaranteed borders signed between the government of Great Britain and this, the Polish state” which “I sincerely hope the Commonwealth will see fit to uphold, as a treaty which continues to bear weight in the present day.”

The response of Keane to Arthur is dismissive. “The power of old treaties, old words bandied by capital, mean nothing to the government of the proletariat. The guarantees, treaties, alliances, and agreements provided by prior governments do not hold sway here. This government will not become involved in a war over borders which hold no meaning to the international worker.”

Although the reply is harsh, it is nothing less than Arthur expects, and he readies himself to fight a losing war. Which he does, and quite quickly: by the end of the summer, Warsaw is captured and the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas are once again exiles. Nicholas II, despite being sympathetic to their plight, is unwilling to retain the nationalist symbol of Arthur I, Duke of the Poles, within his borders; they are sent instead to Hanover, where George, now the head of the family following the death of Victoria a year before, has a younger brother who rules as Duke.

It had been happening for some time beforehand. Even though Britain had elections where socialists and communists of all varieties were able to stand, even though Parliament was still a force in politics and had some limited ability to curb Principal Secretary Keane’s decisions, even though ministry positions still surrounded Keane and influenced his actions, the understanding within Britain that Keane’s will was absolute, that he guided the nation, shone through all. He was the beloved Principal Secretary, the victor of the so-called “second glorious revolution,” the face of international communism and the guide who had lain low the Directors and begun the process of proletarianizing the world. He was, in short, Britain’s communist.

It is perhaps little wonder, then, with the amount of CPGB party members who staffed schools and universities and the amount of propaganda which casually inserted itself in newspapers, that these forces would seize upon Keane, the leader of their nation and the preeminent face of communism, as a symbol. They could not have any others, after all; superiority of birth or blood was both illegal, as was religion of any sort, and racism too. There was simply no way to differentiate one as greater, as operating on some sort of higher plane, unless they had some sort of clear power. Keane did; he ruled what was still the greatest nation on the planet, even after all the sacrifices it had made in the name of internationalism.

And so the party, moving like a headless hydra, crawled forward of its own accord and made Keane up as a God. He was the Principal Secretary; oaths were sworn to him, men died on the battlefield crying that they hoped their deaths were worthy of him; middle-class families gave their savings away to the state while joyously weeping that it was done in his name. Augustus Henry Keane had ceased being a man and become the Principal Secretary, the icon of international communism.

In the Principal Secretary’s view--and thus, in the view of all true Britons and communists--the Chinese people were not proletarians. They had no industry, they had no laboring classes toiling in the cities aside from petty artisans, and their entire society was based on a hierarchic structure which verged upon the archaic. In short, they were an antiquated society, one operating on the “Asiatic mode of production,” and thus not subject to being freed from the chains of capital.

“Rather, capitalism does not have a hold on them, save what capitalism is brought to their shores; they are in a mode of production which precedes capitalism, and are consequently free from its foul influences. But this means that this government has no duty to these people, who are not themselves proletarians. What it does have a duty toward is the defense of this, the Worker’s Commonwealth, and its International. This cannot be achieved without some sorrowful but necessary sacrifices, which includes this country’s continued participation in international trade not least, but also the construction of machines and armies for war, which are supremely costly. With our colonies happily divested from us, part of this burden has been allayed, yet the majority must still necessarily lie with us, and the cost is high. It is thus that I am unfortunately required to state that the Chinese government’s recent decisions to increase trade barriers are… indefensible.”

An excuse for war on the basis of insufficient trading privileges in Canton is drummed up--an entirely imperialist reasoning, which was suppressed within the broader press--and the Fourth Opium War begins.

Although it is called the Fourth Opium War, in reality it is not about opium at all, the drug having been made illegal as one of the first acts of the Parliament of the Worker’s Commonwealth. The name is rather taken up simply because of the precedent, and, although the CPGB attempts to suppress it, becomes so widely used that eventually it resigns itself to the usage of the moniker in an official capacity.

Officially, of course, the war is about a Qing attack which was supposed to have occurred on the garrison at Canton; unofficially, in Party circles, the “real” reasoning of trade rights is known. Truthfully, neither of these are the real and final reason; the reality is simply that the Commonwealth divested itself of too many colonies, and with too few people and too little money remaining, Principal Secretary Keane believes strongly that forcing the Qing Emperor to pay five years’ heavy indemnity, and to cede the isle of Taiwan, will result in an influx of capital which will help keep the British state competitive on the world market while its industry is in the process of reorganization, and its army is being refitted and retrained.

The war itself lasts less than two months, involving the crushing of 100,000 Qing troops around Shanghai and the symbolic capture of Peking, which forces the Guangxu Emperor to the table for the second time. In the peace, Keane acquires precisely what he desires: five years’ payment from the Qing treasury and the isle of Taiwan, more than sufficient to delay the collapse of the British treasury.

The Commonwealth’s expeditionary army, loaded down with the first of the Qing Emperor’s gold, is on its way back to Britain when London receives startling word from Europe: Tsar Nicholas II, having recovered his Polish territories, has grown bold. Judging that his alliance of convenience with Germany is no longer necessary, Nicholas has claimed as part of the Polish crown the majority-Polish territories of Posen and Ducal Prussia, announcing the imminent annexation of the territories "belonging to his kingdom" and setting out on a war to dismantle the German state in order to get them.

The move is a bald attempt to compensate for the long weakness of the Tsar’s state, and his crushing defeats to Britain and Germany prior to the Second Glorious Revolution. Just as France took advantage of Germany’s weakness when it lacked a strong ally in Britain, so too does Nicholas feel that the time is right to exact revenge, and to make a real name for Russia in the process.

Unfortunately for Nicholas, he strongly underestimates the strength of Wilhelm’s state, and of Wilhelm’s resolve for victory. The Kaiser, grudgingly, requests the Reichstag to send a request for aid to the last party which Nicholas would expect: the British.

Yet the movie is wise. Britain has supreme naval power on the high seas, a vast army of International soldiers merely awaiting the call of war in Asia, and crack soldiers which can drop into Russia from all sides, thanks to their naval superiority. Their aid, in the very unlikely event they deigned to join a capitalist conflict, would virtually ensure the war’s victory in Wilhelm’s favor.

And, to the surprise of many in Parliament, Keane does agree to join with the Kaiser. “It is not in our interests for the German state, such a ripe field for communism—for sorrowful as it is for me to admit it, they are the most industrialized state per capita in the world—to fall at the hands of an imperialist power. They must be preserved, whole and mighty, for the future. Thus, we fight the Tsar.”

By the time that Wilhelm actually calls for Commonwealth aid, the war appears to already be won. Nicholas II greatly overestimated the strength of his state, and German armies have consequently swept aside what few armies he had prepared for the war as if they were nothing. Reinforcements come, but slowly, with the massive Russian countryside and antiquated rail systems preventing them either from arriving in time or from being effective when they eventually do so.

Wilhelm, in the typical petulant design of an imperialist, declares that he will do to the Tsar’s state what the Tsar threatened to do to his, pulling it down around the edges and smashing Russia’s strength. Although this appeals to London more than the destruction of the German state, it is not what they are ultimately desirous of; Russia may be backwards and weak, but it is nevertheless large and capable of industrialization. It would be a fertile field indeed for communism, but its fracturing would prevent an easy and universal application of that ideology.

Thus, although Keane does accept the call to war demanded by the Kaiser and does order the Asian International states to participate, a plan forms in the back of his mind on how to respond to the situation. There are many Russian communists in London who write works against the Tsar in their exile, and it appears as if one of them would be quite suitable for his purposes: a young, internationalist-minded communist influenced by the proletarian system in the Commonwealth. Although his comrade Vladimir Lenin is much more famous, for Keane’s purposes the young man by the name of Leon Trotsky seems far better suited for what he has in mind.

Trotsky and a band of close fellows return to Russia in a Commonwealth military transport, landing in British-occupied Petrograd (the name having been changed when the war with Germany began), which is rapidly renamed once again to Trotskygrad. A provisional internationalist government is established there, which the Commonwealth immediately issues recognition to. They further state that the goal of this war is to “smash the corrupt system of Tsar Nicholas and to replace the antiquated feudal property system of Russia with a transitional communist government meant to industrialize, urbanize, and proletarianize in preparation for the coming of true communism.”

Wilhelm is furious. The war was between himself and Nicholas, and its outcome was meant merely to humiliate one or the other, not to depose Nicholas and bring communism to Russia. He immediately sets out on an attempt to engage in a separate peace with Nicholas, leaving the British forces supporting Trotsky’s marginal government flapping in the wind.

Unfortunately for Wilhelm, Nicholas has much greater respect for the ability of the British to end his state. Out of fear of a loss of face, Wilhelm had not informed Nicholas or the international community that his government and that of the Commonwealth had suddenly begun to pull in different directions in the war, and Nicholas consequently feared that Wilhelm had gone so mad with rage that he was willing to not only seek the dismantlement of Russia, but also the destruction of its government.

Thus, when German troops approach Moscow, it is to London that Nicholas turns for negotiations, not Berlin. And, to his surprise, they are willing to be “lenient”; he need only be willing to abdicate his position and his family would be permitted to leave Russia with all of their property.

Although he is embarrassed, then, Nicholas naturally takes the agreement which will preserve his family and its wealth from the ravening horde of Germans, whom he ironically sees as a far more vile threat in their extremity than the British. Tsar Nicholas abdicates on June 14, 1907, and the Union of Soviets is proclaimed in its place. True to the peace agreement with Nicholas, he and his family are permitted to peacefully leave Russia, and they set out for France the same day.

Wilhelm, meanwhile, is beyond fury. He cries that the Commonwealth tricked and betrayed him and threatens to continue the war despite of the “slip of nothing” signed with Nicholas. But with the United Fleet parked outside Bremen and armies of unknown size ready within Britain, Hardie advises the Kaiser that that would mean a full war with Britain. With his armies far from home deep in Russia and the Commonwealth posturing menacingly, Wilhelm grudgingly withdraws his men, to the fury of his people and the mockery of other states. Yet he swears that “one day I will destroy this bastard of communism and the British state both. They will feel the German boot.”

Installed under the auspices of the Worker’s Commonwealth and having been personally selected by Augustus Keane over his much more famous friend Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky is quite obviously indebted to the Commonwealth and willing to support it insofar as his state, weak from years of Tsarist mismanagement, is able. Aside from joining the International (which Trotsky promises to do at a later date, once the Soviet Union is mightier and more capable of taking on foreign foes), Keane has only one further request from the new representative of the proletariat within Russia: the cession of the Baltic states to the direct control of the International, which will provide a “port of call in the event of a reactionary rising within the Soviet Union, so as to ensure that the Commonwealth can assist in maintaining the security of the government.”

The request is reasonable, and not much of a burden on the new Soviet state; the Baltic provinces are underpopulated and only have a minority of Russian settlers within them, and indeed getting rid of them might even help to stabilize the state. Yet Trotsky is not pleased with the timing of the request, which he worries will make him appear like a dictator rather than a leader, trading land in return for being installed by a foreign power. Russia already has barely any proletariat to speak of and a strong nobility and reactionary officer corps which have begun a civil war against Trotsky’s new state, and the loss of even more favor with the people will do nothing but lose Trotsky direly-needed support.

Unfortunately, Keane sees this as nationalism over internationalism rather than a request born of politics, and demands the cession of the territory or “a more suitable replacement to yourself will be found immediately.” Trotsky furiously cedes the territory before cutting off all relations with the Commonwealth, beginning a long period of poor relations between the two states.

A year of quiet passes wherein Hardie and his Soviet comrade Georgy Chicherin attempt to smooth the relations between their respective leaders, but Trotsky proves unwilling to come to terms with Keane without an apology for Keane’s “single-minded blundering and refusal to acknowledge political necessity,” whereas Keane refuses to apologize and demands an “immediate agreement to enter the International as required by the conditions of your establishment in Russia,” which Trotsky denies in turn, arguing that he was NOT installed--the British government merely wiped away the Tsarist one which allowed for communism to take its rightful place.

While the two continue to butt heads, however, the world, as ever, moves on its own without them, and the time draws closer when the International as a whole may become involved in a real war. With that in mind, and lacking the support of Trotsky necessary to use the Soviet Union as its true “path to the West” for its colonies, an alternate method of entering Europe must be procured for the International. As the Ottoman Empire already divides Africa from Asia, its forcible entry into the International is seen as the next logical step toward uniting all communist peoples of the globe--and if it puts fear in Trotsky seeing the International growing to his south, all the better.

War is formally declared on the 7th of July to overthrow Sultan Abdulhamid and establish a Proletarian government in the Ottoman Empire, which has, to make matters even worse for the embattled Sultan, recently gone bankrupt. It would take a miracle to defend the Sultan’s state from the righteous onslaught of the proletariat.

Although Germany and Austria-Hungary both furiously denounce the war, they again prove unwilling to unite in response, as both are worried that this is a ploy to move their forces away from the border with Soviet Russia. Once again, then, communism is allowed to make its move due to capitalist inaction.

Just as war is declared upon the Ottoman Empire, Egyptian reactionaries, infuriated by the communist regime of their government and the declaration of war against the Caliph, rise up to establish an Islamist government in Egypt “loyal to the Caliph and hostile to the forces of atheistic communism which have infected our society through our weakness and irreligion.” They number in the hundreds of thousands, and the local communist leader, Anwar Salem, despairs of being able to “maintain the government of the people in the face of such reaction; their numbers and arms are such that they must have been supported by outside groups.”

Although Major General Archibald Campbell had initially been tasked with seizing Jerusalem and destroying important religious monuments such as the Wailing Wall and Dome of the Rock, he is instead diverted to the much more important task of putting down reaction within Egypt. A marvelous commander, truly one of Britain’s best, Campbell arrives in Cairo to face over 200,000 violent protesters and is able to make quick--and bloody--work of them.

Section 14 of the Officer’s Handbook of the Worker’s Commonwealth deals with regulations for actions during a period of reaction. It states that “violent reaction should always be met with the maximum reasonable amount of responsive violence achievable. The bodily destruction of violent reactionaries is necessary to the maintenance of the International.” It is, in effect, a blanket permission to wantonly slaughter in the name of the preservation of communism.

As Campbell marches through Egypt, Section 14 will be used as justification frequently. Tens of thousands of bodies will line the street by the time he is finished--the price of utopia.

The Spanish Republic under Niceto Alcalá-Zamora is the only state to become involved in the conflict in favor of the Ottoman Empire, seeing the communist influence in Africa as dangerous to their colonies and desiring the capture of Gibraltar to block British traffic through the Mediterranean, which they hope will bring the collapse of the International.

The Spanish joining of the war is fortuitous, however, because it ensures that the International will grow, not shrink. The Spanish hold territories which rightly belong to Morocco, which is a weak proletarian government due to its lack of population and rural nature. The recapture of these territories will help to ensure that the Commune of Morocco has the population to begin industrialization, so critical to any proletarian government.

Although the Spanish certainly have pretensions to victory, they did not anticipate further Commonwealth armies held in reserve, and the Home Army soon disembarks at Santander, beginning its beeline for Madrid. Soon enough Alcalá-Zamora will be forced to cede the territories in Morocco which he holds, to the betterment of the disenfranchised there.

The war in the Empire goes well, and Abdulhamid was forced to flee Konstantinyye ahead of the coming of communist forces at the onset of winter. With the Aegean sea blocked by the United Fleet from the start of the war, the Ottoman navy was hemmed in at Bursa from the start; after the capture of Canakkale by the British, the Sultan and his family boarded their ships in the hopes of breaking the blockade and fleeing. Carrying important relics of their house and a great deal of wealth, they had planned to follow the Romanovs into exile in France.

It was a foolish plan. Much of the Ottoman navy was so outdated that even the iron-clad ships were only sailing barges with attached iron plates and makeshift engines, no match for Britain’s modern fleet of battleships. The moment the Sultan’s fleet entered into the range of the Lion of the Seas, Zachary Seaton, it was all but over. Far outside the antiquated Ottoman navy’s firing distance, the entire Ottoman fleet is sunk by the United Fleet in a hail of shells. The entire House of Osman--or at least what parts of it were legitimate, male, and potential pretenders to the throne--perishes in less than an hour.

With the death of the entire Ottoman royal family shocking the world, it becomes clear to the Spanish that there is no potential for resistance; with no alternative power in the Empire, communists will be enforced upon the now-defunct Sultanate. The only hope of Alcalá-Zamora now is to extricate his state from the war as rapidly as possible and with as little losses as are feasible. The urgency of this goal is hammered in by the Home Army’s artillery, which have already begun to shell Madrid.

Negotiations begin with Alcalá-Zamora entirely willing to part with the al-Rif, but Hardie suspects that he can push for more, and also demands the small Spanish enclave at Ifni, which includes less than 20,000 souls. Although Alcalá-Zamora is loath to give up a territory which is primarily Spanish, the agreement is still far better than the communist government which he knows the British could decide to attempt to install in his state at any moment; he agrees, reluctantly, to the cession of all North African possessions of Spain to the Commune of Morocco.

The day after Spain’s surrender, with no member of the House of Osman left, the Turkish government (or, more accurately, what is left of it) also surrenders. With the Sultanate’s armies annihilated, the people starving, much of the nation occupied by communists, and the apparatus of the state (which had been an absolute monarchy under Abdulhamid) effectively listless, the job of the new Turkish leader, Mustafa Suphi, is unenvious. Suphi himself is potentially not cut out for the position, as he is incredibly young--only in his mid-20s--and does not inspire much confidence in his people. They tend to call for Ali Reza oglu Mustafa, a moderate constitutionalist and secularist, rather than the hard-line atheist, collectivist policies of Suphi. Ali Reza is consequently imprisoned and executed, and the people begin to understand what the communist regime in the Turkish Socialist Republic will be like: one of repression and authoritarianism, born of incredible poverty and nonexistent industrialization. There is simply no other way for Suphi to retain power.

All the Commonwealth’s many wars of “benevolent proletarianization” have given plenty of opportunity for celebrations, which have, in turn, given plenty of opportunities for Scotland Yard to search for those who do not attend those celebrations. Files are beginning to stack up in the Yard full of potential wreckers of the Second Glorious Revolution, enemies of the state, and therefore of the people. Malcontents, reactionaries, labor shirkers, plotters, and generally antisocial or religious folk have had dossiers compiled on them in excruciating detail, and Scotland Yard now only awaits the Principal Secretary’s order on how to proceed.

Keane is torn. He confides in his Minister of the Interior, Philip Snowden, that he does not desire “a second purge, akin to that botched monstrosity that was the affair with our professors, which we still have not recovered from.” But he is also aware that the forces of reaction have been operating silently within Britain, twisting the Party’s words against itself and gradually increasing the power of reactionary fascism within the state. And, perhaps worst of all, he is intimately aware that he is the sole figure who must make the decision; the Principal Secretary has gradually accrued such power within the Commonwealth that he is, de facto, the singular leader of the state. Although Parliament still exists and debates, all await for Keane’s word on how to proceed.

It is thus with tremendous trepidation that Keane gives the order to Scotland Yard to coordinate with Snowden in a purge of all reactionary elements within the Worker’s Commonwealth. “And may history absolve me,” reads a note in Keane’s diary for that day, “but it is what I feel I must do.”

The Purge itself is undertaken with typical British rigor, and in an atypical move Keane permits newspapers to comment upon the process of the Purge--in a limited and censored fashion--directly. It is thus that the Purge is legitimated and made public, becoming a tool of state-building and defense of the revolution rather than an extrajudicial extermination of dissidents. In reality, of course, it is both, although Keane does order Scotland Yard to provide fair trials to those for whom there is “reasonable doubt as to the extent of their reactionary tendencies,” and fully 200,000 are let off.

The number exterminated is, however, still extreme; just shy of 2,000,000 men, women, and children are killed as wreckers and counter-revolutionaries. It is a far lower number than Keane had feared, but nevertheless, that 2,000,000 died in order to retain communism’s power in Britain is, frankly, a worrying development. The Principal Secretary, disgusted with his role in the affair but afraid about the course of the Commonwealth if he steps down, instead begins taking steps to restore some limited form of autonomy to Parliament--although he certainly still intends the office of Principal Secretary to retain the majority of the power within Britain.

Following the Purge, although public professions of loyalty are high, tensions are boiling beneath the surface. The middle class once again fear for their survival, and the lower classes are themselves worried about stability, safety, and peace within Britain and abroad. The problems raised by the Purge are not easily solved, but the knowledge that the state is willing to kill to maintain its control keeps people smiling in the streets and professing their loyalty. And, for the time being, why not? Goods are still cheap, work is still plentiful, and the Commonwealth is still mighty; the bad times, if there are to be any, have not yet come. And only wreckers need fear death.

A month after the Purge, with tensions in the Commonwealth still running incredibly high, news arrives which eases the opinions of many Commonwealth citizens: rather than merely purging dissidents, the Premier of Turkey has taken to systematically exterminating the opposition. Tens of thousands flee as religious dissidents and colonial citizens--particularly the Greeks--are slaughtered in Mustafa Suphi’s new ethno-religious state.

By mid-August the Commonwealth special forces will have infiltrated Istanbul, killed Suphi, and replaced him with Ethem Nejat, a more moderate and pliant leader. The killing of non-Sunni peoples stops, but the damage has already been done, leaving the Turkish Socialist Republic underpopulated, although with a populace which professes fierce, terrified loyalty to the state. In some ways, Suphi did his job--but at incredible cost to the people of the TSR, all of whom were necessary to actually industrialize the primarily agrarian economy. Nejat despairs of being able to right the wrongs which his predecessor’s demagogic and religiously-motivated extermination has caused, and rightly so. Hardie anticipates that the TSR will not industrialize for decades more thanks to the needless killings, entirely unsupported by the internationalist doctrine of the Commonwealth and her allies.

Thus, sorrowfully, the people of Britain pay their respects to the millions dead in the TSR. Their Purge seems but a small price to pay in comparison.

In spring of 1909 Turati’s socialist government peacefully transitioned to a fully communist government under Benito Mussolini and his cadre of young revolutionaries. Mussolini is a national-socialist, but his position is in line with the International on critical issues, and as he promises to aid the International when called upon and to send representatives to the Worker’s Parliament in London, Keane gives the necessary support for him to take power.

In many ways it is critical that Mussolini is a national-socialist, for the vast majority of Italy actively supports fascism. Seeing communism as a foreign import forced upon them, with conditions scarcely improved from the situation under the Directors, most of the population yearns for a return to religiosity and the coming of true Italian unity, with a single nation for all Italians rather than the bastard tripartite division of the peninsula which currently reigns. To achieve that, most turn to the Italian Fascist Party; Mussolini, as a national-socialist who advocates for Italian ethnic unity, is more palatable to the people of Italy than a true internationalist would be.

Part of the conditions for Mussolini’s guaranteed support for the International includes Commonwealth support for his unifying policies within Italy, which requires the willing withdrawal of their defensive agreements from Sicily and Sardinia-Piedmont. The first nation to be subject to this secret pact is Sicily, which has Commonwealth support withdrawn in the early winter of 1909-1910. Although they remind the Commonwealth of the agreement between them that the Commonwealth would not force communism upon them, the reply they receive is simply that the Commonwealth isn’t--Italy is.

By April of the next year Sicily is finally re-integrated into Italy for the first time in 50 years, and Sardinia-Piedmont begins fortifying their border with Italy in preparation for the inevitable conflict between the two last Italic states.

Shortly after Mussolini’s victory in Italy, a plan for naval expansion co-authored by Field Marshal Arthur Lyons and the “Lion of the Seas,” Admiral Zachary Seaton, comes before the Worker’s Parliament. In it, the two men advocate for two relatively small but incredibly powerful navies, each consisting of twenty-five super-battleships and twenty-five cruisers intended for fleet screening. Both men acknowledge that the cost of maintaining such fleets would verge on the prohibitive, but also argue that the successful construction of such a force would create two fleets which could independently take on the entire navy of almost any other power on the planet and come out victorious. In effect, it would allow Britain to utilize two fleets to take on two great powers at once without any fear of defeat, an enticing proposal for an internationalist power bent upon ideological conquest.

The cost of the fleet is indeed high, almost prohibitive, but the plans pass Parliament (with Keane’s support, naturally), and the Commonwealth’s battleship navy is sold off to her International allies to gather some of the funds necessary for the massive naval construction program. The amount of material and time needed to construct a Dreadnaught is so high that most of the planners predict that the fleet will not be fully ready for another some three or four years.

Unfortunately, without waiting for Keane’s orders, the very small Communist Party of Arabia took this opportunity to begin protesting the continued rule of the Saudi Emir in Riyadh. They call, as their predecessors in Persia did, for the abdication of the Emir and the institution of a proletarian government in Arabia, which has “for too long been permitted to exist as a profit-hungry economy of privilege and religiosity.”

The very idea that an atheistic policy could exist in Arabia, the heart of Islam, without being forced upon it is insanity. Had Keane had his way, he would have waited to have armies in position to engage the Arabians before beginning the conflict, which of course inevitably arises once the Emir--now Sultan--Abdulaziz ibn Saud violently massacres the protestors. But it is too late to wish, and war between Arabia and the Commonwealth is now a fact. And neither will the Commonwealth have aide from the International, for Nejat, President of Turkey, wary of a general Islamist rising in his country, refuses to aide Keane in any way, although he profusely apologizes for doing so. In short, Keane and the Commonwealth are alone.

Three armies are sent from Britain to the Red Sea, with Zachary Seaton grumbling about the timing of it all; he only has fifty cruisers to shield the transports from attack. It is more than enough to ensure their safety in Arabia, granted, but the timing of a war could not be much worse.

Or at least that was what Seaton had thought.

An urgent message arrives in London on the night of September the 12th. It is from Georgy Chicherin--Berlin has declared war on the Soviet Union. Trotsky calls for aid.

The timing is perhaps the worst it possibly could have been. Three full armies, including three of Britain’s top commanders, are presently in Arabia. Britain’s combat fleet is currently comprised of just fifty cruisers, a mighty number by any account but, unfortunately, presently roughly equivalent to the size and strength of the German force. And Britain has not undergone an army reform since long before decolonization, and still possesses only the seven armies she has maintained since--in effect, then, only four proper armies can be sent to Germany before the Arabian armies return, with all other reinforcements being simple conscripts.

“Sir, your response? Comrade Trotsky apologizes for the debacle over the Baltic Provinces, but he begs that now is the time for unity…”

Chicherin’s words rouse Keane from his reverie, and in his soft Irish accent he responds immediately, “The Commonwealth--nay, the whole of the International--will answer Comrade Trotsky’s call. We shall never abandon the International, no matter our disputes. But I cannot deny to you, Georgy, that the timing of the Kaiser’s strike is perfectly calculated. We may well lose this war, although I swear to you that the workers of the Commonwealth will fight to the bitter end for you, to the last of our men. But I simply do not see how we will prove victorious.”

The Soviet Foreign Minister bows slightly, pressing his hand to his breast as he does so. “Comrade Keane, if you do as you say, there is no chance of our defeat. I promise you this: the Russian reputation for fortitude is not ill-earned. We will hold the eye of the Germans until their lives bleed dry in our soil. The road to Berlin will be clear for you.”

Comrade Chicherin’s plan was to draw the German Heer’s regular forces deep into Soviet territory and to pin them with Russia’s forces, alongside those arriving from the International in Asia, so British troops could make a landing in Hanover and establish beachheads without fearing Wilhelm’s troops descending upon them immediately.

The plan would have been sound, save that the Soviet Red Army is almost a skeleton force; between the grievous occupation of Russia effected in 1907 and its consequent war exhaustion, the loss of the Baltic provinces, and the lack of the Turkestani territories, necessitating a much more circuitous navigation to the east (which does not even have railroad infrastructure yet, the previous Trans-Siberian railway of Tsarist Russia having passed directly through Turkestan), Trotsky has been spending almost all of the Soviet Union’s minimal funds attempting to redirect and industrialize the economy. Without development aid from the International due to the conflict over the Baltic provinces, his job has only been more difficult.

The Red Army faces disaster from the moment the Heer strikes it. Wilhelm, in his rage against the British over their double-dealing and Russia’s forced communist revolution, ordered the creation of new weapons of terror for use on the battlefield. The most deadly of these is mustard gas, a toxin deadly to life, but survivable with gas masks; the German Heer is equipped with them, but the Red Army is not, nor can it be with the chaotic situation in the Soviet Union; the central government simply does not have sufficient control. From the very first battle, the horrific casualty tables tell the tale; the Red Army melts away.

“Well then,” quips General Archibald Campbell, “we shall have to make a show of saving them. We are on to Berlin, comrades!”

Until the 200,000-man strong Commonwealth Expeditionary Force landed in Germany (under incredibly tense conditions without any naval support, it must be noted; the German fleet almost intercepted them) Wilhelm had no indication that the Commonwealth was prepared to support the Soviet Union, which the Kaiser had been led to believe had an irreparable breach of relations with the Commonwealth. The arrival of the CEF and the promise of International troops rushing to the Eastern Front is an unwelcome surprise for the Kaiser, whose generals advise him now against recalling the main body of the Heer from Russia thanks to the potential of mass International support from Asia.

Wilhelm’s Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, advises the Kaiser that Germany’s possession of mustard gas, and the Commonwealth’s lack of gas masks, will virtually ensure the success of even mobilized soldiers against the Commonwealth forces now occupying Hanover. He recommends the immediate dispatch of a “few dozen regiments, no more” to “break the British lines and force them back into the sea; they will not even grab a slip of territory, not with the gas in our possession. It is the weapon of the future.”

“We’ve heard from our Russian comrades,” cried Campbell at the Oldenburg beachhead, “about the gas which the Jerries will try to use on us! It is greyish-brown in color, and smells of horseradish, or the mustard plant. If you see it, or smell it, close your eyes and flee in the opposite direction as quickly as you can! If you are in the trenches, enter into a secured bunker area, close the door, and barricade it shut; these zones will have air filtration units inside. The War Office in London is preparing gas masks for general usage, but until then, we must hold out on our own. So I say boys, let’s get to digging in; they’ll be here for us soon enough!”

As soon as war with Germany broke out Zachary Seaton was recalled from Arabia, and as he made his way past the Channel the Commonwealth’s only three Dreadnaught-class super-battleships linked up with his primarily cruiser navy and set sail for the coast of Bremen, where the German fleet has been harassing the CEF’s coastal positions for several weeks, and staging night raids on the coast to keep supply lines from Britain minimal. The starving CEF forces have been reduced to scrounging in the countryside, and Seaton’s navy cannot arrive quickly enough to get supplies through; battle is joined on the 18th of December with the Kaiser’s fleet, which is apparently only commanded by a Captain. The Lion of the Sea, it is hoped, will make short shrift of this “motley collection of scrounged-up fishermen.”

Meanwhile, on land, it is not Campbell’s Oldenburg force which is attacked first, but Charles Seymour’s force at Stettin. Yet von Moltke has delayed the attack too long; although Stettin itself has not yet fallen, Seymour’s men have been able to dig a truly elaborate trench system there, so strong and so intricate that even von Boyen’s application of mustard gas to the conflict has proven somewhat ineffective. German losses mount, and a furious Kaiser orders reinforcements to the conflict; he knows well that allowing the British to attain a beachhead will not only cause panic within Germany, but potentially allow for an impermissible extension of the conflict throughout the Reich, perhaps even threatening Berlin itself while the Heer is too far away to resist the assault.

Meanwhile, the war in Arabia is accelerated, and the commanders there given full liberty to “do whatever is necessary to ensure the rapid and complete victory of the Commonwealth in the peninsula; the war in Arabia cannot be allowed to consume any more time than it already has. Pacify, do not eliminate, the populace. Force the deposition of the Sultan and install a temporary communist dictator, but do not interfere with the religiosity of the population for the time being. Return to Britain with all speed.”

The commanders there, chief among them Field Marshal Saxe, thus proceed with a strategy of wiping out the Sultan’s armed forces while capturing Riyadh and forcing his family to flee. While they suspect that he will merely take up in the desert, without control of Riyadh, Mecca, Medina, or Sana’a--all occupied--he will have no population from which to stage a counter-revolution, and the new communist leadership will be stable enough for Commonwealth forces to pull out and return to Britain, and from there to join the intensifying fighting in Germany. “As Principal Secretary Keane commands,” Saxe tells his junior officers, “the new government need only hold. It doesn’t have to be a pretty arrangement.”

Thus, after a quick job of occupation, the dispersal of the Sultan’s armies, and the capture of Riyadh, the Commonwealth installs a third-rate dictator from the dregs of al Shiu’i with orders to keep the people calm and “not to try anything stupid” before British forces pull out, heading for home… and a seemingly hopeless war.

After three months of constant battle, the creation of a hellish no man’s land on the outskirts of the now almost deserted city of Stade, and the influx of over 200,000 Commonwealth conscripts allowed through thanks to the Lion of the Sea’s crushing of the German fleet, the Battle of Stade is finally over. The losses on both sides have been hellish, but the Germans have well and truly had the worse of it; out of a fifth of a million men sent in to Stade, only just under 50,000 German troops limp out of the territory, whereas the British only lost that amount. It is a massive victory for the CEF. When news of the victory is received in London, the Worker’s Parliament stands to cheer the victorious soldiers, with representatives from every communist nation on the planet hailing the valor and sacrifice of the workers of the Commonwealth fighting in Germany.

To the contrary, in Germany, the defeat is met with terror. British armies have already advanced into Hanover, with more armies pressing toward the Rhineland and its critical industrial facilities. With the defeat at Stade, which was the last serious German hope for holding the Kiel canal, concerns over the navy’s survival, and over critical war imports, grip the government. Wilhelm dismisses von Moltke in a fit of rage, replacing him with the reserved but dedicated Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg, who promises “to bring success in the matter of repelling the British, at all costs.”

In the highest circles in London, Hindenburg’s boast is received with much trepidation. The Party elite knows well that even the immense victory at Stade is nothing compared to German victories in the east, where millions of Russians have already died to mustard gas. Wilhelm and von Hindenburg both believe the war to be all but won, and the defeat at Stade to be nothing more than a horrible but manageable loss on the home front.

“We will need to disabuse them of that notion somehow,” Marshal Saxe urges Keane.

The solution arrived at is to send in General Archibald Campbell to capture Berlin. The loss of the German capital will not only disrupt German military efforts, it will also force Wilhelm to evacuate the capital, and allow for the establishment of a provisional communist government under Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, prominent leftists within Germany. Although anti-war, both have agreed to join the International in return for Keane’s support of their governance in Germany, and they, in turn, have drummed up a home-grown anti-war movement intended to disrupt the home front’s support of the Kaiser’s efforts. If Berlin can be captured and their government installed in truth, even in an unofficial capacity, the damage they can do to the Kaiser’s efforts is extreme.

Nevertheless, the information reaching the Party from the front in Russia is not good. Just as Commonwealth forces under Campbell have reached Berlin, German forces are already on the outskirts of Moscow. Although the Germans are reacting to the losses with far more panic than the Russians--Trotsky and his comrades, true to Chicherin’s claims about Russian stalwartness, simply stoically pack up and move east to a new command center at Perm--the loss of Moscow will nevertheless serve to prolong the conflict as the Germans become all the more confident in eventual victory. Although Trotsky swears to Keane in the fewer and fewer telegrams that he is able to get through that his government will not surrender until the Commonwealth can deliver them, Keane is becoming increasingly concerned that the Germans will simply never give up, or will occupy so much of Russia that there is nothing left to return to Trotsky’s control.

NOT A CONCERN STOP DEFEAT OF GERMANS INEVITABLE STOP REPEAT OF NAPOLEON GERMAN ATTRITION HIGH DESTINED TO COLLAPSE STOP ALL IN COMMONWEALTH HANDS STOP FATE OF THE INTERNATIONAL RESTS IN THE WORKERS FIGHTING IN GERMANY STOP

It can be put no plainer; victory or death.

By July, the results of the Commonwealth’s efforts at total war are staggering. Since early March the occupation zone within Germany has vastly expanded, the Kiel canal has been captured, and several hundred thousand German conscripts have been killed (at heavy costs thanks to their mustard gas, it must be admitted) as they tried to rush Commonwealth positions. The constant, almost endless influx of conscripted workers ready to fight and die for the Commonwealth proves overwhelming for Germany, which not only loses the Kiel canal, but Berlin also; the Kaiser is forced to pull back to Konigsberg with his staff, and gives the order for several German armies to retreat from the Russian front in an effort to relieve the capital. Liebknecht and Luxembourg’s government has already been established in Berlin, and although a British detail is required to protect it the symbolic victory of the move is extreme. 

In the eyes of Field Marshal Saxe, any actions which Wilhelm will now take are too little, too late. The International may not win this war, but it will at least force it to a white peace; Britain has now deployed gas masks to all of her forces, and the one German advantage keeping her petty conscripts in the fight against the superior British armies on the ground has now vanished. Casualty ratios, which had heretofore largely been punishingly even, swing hard against the Germans. Hundreds of thousands of “bastard Krauts” now die for every ten thousand British souls to go down, and the British occupation zone not only expands to include the northern Rhine, but also the territory surrounding Berlin, which had previously been isolated. Liebknecht’s provisional government, in the hopes of forcing the Kaiser’s hand, begins programs of wealth distribution and capitalist disenfranchisement to place further pressure on the Kaiser to recall his forces and end the war before any more terrors can become reality.

Yet despite the fully mobilized status of the Commonwealth and the over 1,000,000 British men and women presently fighting in the very heart of the Reich, Wilhelm still believes it is possible to achieve a German victory. The Soviets have lost the vast majority of their population centers and have even gone entirely bankrupt; the Kaiser, advised by his new Chief of the General Staff Erich Ludendorff, believes that a treaty of surrender must necessarily follow soon. Millions within Russia are starving and most of their western territory’s products now go to the Reich; how can they possibly hold out?

In the Commonwealth, tense meetings of the Worker’s Cabinet consider the same question. The Commonwealth has given everything for this war, for Trotsky and the Soviet state; it has given wealth, blood, tears, and industry in the hopes that it, against all odds, can force peace with the Wilhelmine state. But all that will be for nothing if Chicherin’s prophesy does not prove true, and the Russian peoples’ famed fortitude does not hold long enough for the Commonwealth to batter down German resistance on the home front.

Reports from the eastern front are, frankly, abhorrent. The Baltic Provinces (also bankrupt) are in the final stages of being defeated and integrated into the Reich under local North German nobles, now restored to their old estates after a brief exile within Germany; the Caucasus and its critical oil fields are on the verge of German occupation; International troops have been beaten back on all Central Asian fronts; and rumors for the autumn campaign suggest that the Germans might try to push to the Urals, capture Perm, and simply annex western Russia on the basis that no Soviet forces exist to resist them.

“At all costs, this eventuality cannot be permitted,” Keane tells Saxe via telephone. “Ensure that the German state collapses before the Soviet. Any extremity is now permissible.”

On November 20th, 1911, the German Heer takes its first steps into the frozen Ural mountains. It is one year, two months since the war began. The process of their advance is heroic, even legendary, despite the weakness of the Soviet state. No other army, modern or otherwise, has ever been able to conquer so much land at such a rapid pace before. Perm itself is threatened, and Trotsky’s last allies gather in the temporary capital for a final stand.

Unfortunately for the German Heer, however, everything will be for naught; the Commonwealth has done it.

Germany’s troop numbers peaked at 2,589,000 personnel in early July; now, in November, the German state has almost collapsed, and the number of their active personnel drops by the day, with no more reinforcements to be found. German conscripts in the homeland are hunted down like dogs and slaughtered by the Commonwealth, the entire German coastline is either under British control or British blockade, the Marxist government in Berlin has lasted so long and accrued so much power that some municipalities like have actually switched allegiance, and most of the supply routes from the Rhineland (where most of Germany’s critical industry resides) to the east are all cut. There is no more food, no more men, and no more hope for victory. The Heer in Russia begins to starve as it runs out of food to fight, much less ammunition. They are now in little better state than the Red Army, which has become what is effectively a ghost force. They have stepped foot in the Urals, but they will die before they take Perm.

The Kaiser, aware that his men have failed and his state has been beaten by the Commonwealth, begins to send out peace feelers. But now the Commonwealth is not feeling quite so generous as it had.

Whether the Kaiser accepted a white peace or not, there would still be irreparable damage to Germany. Millions of its men have died, much of its territory has been occupied by communists for over a year, and a provisional Marxist government with broad support in Commonwealth-occupied zones currently holds Berlin. Even if the Commonwealth were to leave Germany intact, there would be no easy peace for Wilhelm; he would face a civil war, or at least a coup, regardless.

But neither Keane nor Trotsky desire to give Wilhelm such an easy time of it. Millions of Germans have bled to death either in Germany or in the frozen depths of Russia, the Heer is starving and far from home, and most of Wilhelm’s political allies have either distanced themselves from him or overtly gone over to the provisional government in Berlin, which at least has food thanks to shipments from the International. Wilhelm is despised and no longer holds any power outside of Konigsberg; Germany’s days as a Reich are done.

On the 1st of February, 1912, Trotsky exits the shelled-out rubble of Perm to give a missive to the German commander investing him: the war is over, and they are comrades now. Wilhelm has abdicated and fled to Austria-Hungary following the defection of most of the German conscripts to the provisional government, and with the German army deep in the Soviet Union there is nothing they can do. They have fought and won, but on the wrong front; their state has withered and died behind them. International communism has prevailed.

The Heer, weeping and wailing, begins their long, hungry trek home. They will arrive to Stasi forces stripping them of their weapons, with many of their commanders interred as war criminals. Men like Hans Berg will return to homes in towns like Bremen, Stade, or Hanover which have been reduced to rubble by crushing artillery bombardment. “The land we come back to,” one writes, “is hell. We never should have left it on the Kaiser’s fool errand.”

But that errand was embarked on, and the German nation is now a member of the International. All the various nobles have been disenfranchised (the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, finally without anywhere else to flee to, are forced to return to Britain as commoners), all but a few “supervisory” capitalists have been forced to work as laborers, and a new network of anti-reaction police forces have sprung up in Berlin, born of a long need to defend against Wilhelmine agents accessing the capital and attempting to disrupt the provisional government, which through the International’s sacrifice has become formal.

A tripartite treaty of permanent friendship and alliance is signed between the Commonwealth, Germany, and the Soviet Union some few weeks later, after Trotsky is able to return to the shell that is Moscow from Perm. The Soviet government barely holds together following the immense onslaught of the now-defunct Heer, but Keane is so impressed by their amazing fortitude—“never once did they waver, never once did they lose faith. Our allies in the Soviet Union bled five times as much as we did for this victory, and complained not once!” he cried before Parliament—that he simply gives Trotsky’s government £5,000,000 of gold bullion.

The two men embrace in Berlin some months later, and Keane apologizes for his heavy-handed handling of the Baltic affair. “When we needed you to desperately hold on, you never once wavered. The payment is an apology, but also a hope that the Soviet state can recover and flourish as never before. We are all members of the International, and my nation’s wealth is the same as yours.”

“Were it not for the Commonwealth,” Trotsky replies in French, “the Soviet dream would be dead now, and Wilhelm would stand over my corpse rather than weeping in Austria-Hungary. That you would beggar yourself to help rebuild us is only all the more humbling. The Soviet people are yours, now and always, Principal Secretary.”

The “Great Eight” responsible for the victory in Germany, pictured here on the day of the victory parade in London. All of those who had not previously been promoted to Field Marshal are personally granted the rank by the Principal Secretary, and Frederick Saxe, “though no longer a Duke of nobility, a Duke of the people he shall be in our hearts,” is given supreme control over the Commonwealth’s military. Although the move makes some uncomfortable, given Frederick’s proximity to the now-defunct title of King, it cannot be denied that his actions in Germany merit the confidence which Keane places in him. He has served selflessly for over a decade, and has truly adopted the position of the workers.

Other key names include Archibald Campbell, a master of battle who is easily the Commonwealth’s best commander; Arthur Lyons and Lester Haig, who share between them the reputation of the Commonwealth’s top assault specialists; and Joseph Roberts, who weathered the first German assault at Stade and gained a reputation for himself for achieving the Commonwealth’s first victory in Germany.

Although rousing cheers reign in the major cities, sweethearts long separated by war kiss tenderly, and the Party heaps rewards upon the commanders and common soldiers both, this war has taught Keane and his new Secretary of War, Clement Attlee, that the Commonwealth army is simply not prepared for real war.

In an empty room, sitting beside a small fire meant to keep out the early spring chill, Attlee first voices the concerns which he knows both he and the Principal Secretary share: “we won the war only because the Heer was preoccupied in the Union. Had they not been, they would have crushed us, with or without mustard gas. Like it or no, money or no, we must have a full military reorganization and expansion. We came far closer to defeat than any Briton must ever be aware of.”

“Yes, we must rearm” Keane responds softly, “but not yet.”

Even if not an inch of Commonwealth soil was ever occupied, the exhaustion of the war still eats deep into the hearts of every Briton. Everyone has a family member who died fighting; everyone has a best mate who’s lost his only brother to the cruelty of capitalism. Although it bands the workers together even more strongly behind the Principal Secretary and the government, it also causes rage, sorrow, and anger. Factories, homes, pubs; they are all more empty than they used to be. And so, too, are pocket-books, for the long disruption to Russian and German supplies of vital materials has disrupted the entire world economy and thrown the Commonwealth into a period of protracted depression. Put simply, the Commonwealth is not in a position to fight anyone, at least not for quite some time. The International--including its newest member, Germany--must first recover from the tremendous losses which it has suffered.

It is in this environment that Benito Mussolini suggests that the Commonwealth void its standing defensive pact with Sardinia-Piedmont. None would expect the British to uphold the agreement in such a condition, and, while it will naturally be seen as the expansion of communism which it is, it will nevertheless deflect from Keane taking all the burden of blame.

Keane is all-too-happy to agree, long weary as he has been of Italy’s protracted weakness and fascistic tendencies. His hope is that Mussolini’s capture of the Piedmont will result in a more stable and united Italy which is a more fertile field for internationalist sentiment, rather than the moralistic and hyper-reactionary state which it presently is. Every day is a struggle for Mussolini’s government to stay in power, but united the Italian dictator might be able to convince his people that communism is the best way forward.

If the German War is to be thanked for anything, it is showing the power of the government, and of Keane, within the Commonwealth. Although the whole of the Worker’s Parliament and Worker’s Cabinet contributed to the war effort, coordinated with the Principal Secretary, and debated the best course of action, even with the earlier reforms Keane had instituted to give Parliament more power, they always awaited his decision on how to proceed. Likewise, as the government desperately struggled to convince the men and women of the Commonwealth of the necessity of defeating “Wilhelmine capital,” it turned to images, quotes, and sayings of Keane to encourage a sense of patriotic loyalty and dire need for selfless service in the name of “fellow workers, trapped under the steel boot of the goose-stepping Prussian.” Studies from Scotland Yard suggest that propaganda which included the Principal Secretary was up to 250% more effective than propaganda which included even such well-known public figures as the Lion of the Sea or the People’s Duke.

Like it or not, the many successes of the Worker’s Commonwealth can be attributed to its strong, all-encompassing state. Whether it is a good or ill thing in the long-run does not enter into the considerations of its servants or even its members; as they see it, Keane is the only one who has the foresight and power to change the course of events. And those who disagree fear being purged if they are discovered to disagree with the Principal Secretary, the Guardian of the Revolution.

Like it or not, wish it or not, the Worker’s Commonwealth is now a totalitarian state. In name it might include more freedoms than some other communist nations, but in reality the power still all ends with a singular individual, and the benevolence of the state will only last for so long as he does.

July 8th, a day which will be celebrated forever in Italian history, is the day when all the various Italian principalities are finally united under a single, strong leader in Benito Mussolini’s People’s Republic of Italy.

The war with the Piedmontese was long and arduous thanks to the poor terrain and the weakness of the People’s Republic’s artillery supplies, but eventually Turin was captured and final unity brought to the peninsula.

Although there are still millions of Italians living outside the present borders of Italy yearning for unification with their mother country, and although Mussolini must still struggle with a population which views his government as “Jew-backed, atheistic, and abhorrent,” it is at least the case that Italian nationalists must grudgingly look upon it as the only possible legitimate Italian state. Perhaps now it will be able to achieve some measure of peaceful unity, although Mussolini’s fiery demands for war with France and Austria-Hungary suggest that he shares much of the Fascists’ own ideological views.

Only a few short years after the victory parade for the Soviet-German Conflict, the International’s greatest triumph, the hero of heroes is taken away from Britain: Frederick Saxe, formerly Frederick Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, heir to the Duke of Connacht, passes away. He was only 54, and has predeceased his father, who now mourns as a sorrowful laborer in the Irish municipality which was once nominally part of his Duchy.

For all of his just fame, Frederick was never an ostentatious man. Something of the black sheep of Victoria’s grand family, Frederick had preferred a military life—and a legitimate one, too, free of the short-listing and light duties which were so common for royalty in those days—to the life of luxury and courts. It cannot be denied he held himself apart from his men, but nevertheless, more than any other royal, he understood them. And although he did not first agree with the Second Glorious Revolution, he stayed loyal.

“He stayed loyal!” Keane cries, and the mourning wails of tens of thousands fill the Worker’s Palace, the glimmering beauty that was the old Crystal Palace. “He stayed loyal despite the calls of his officers to defect, to establish a counter-revolution in the colonies, which he might well have! Despite the wealth and privilege which he should have by virtue of his name alone, and which he, willingly and against all self-interest, abrogated. For the people, and for the state he did this. And he was the only one to do this, he, our People’s Duke, though he was robbed of name and family. Thus it is that we bury him now under his right title, last of that house to be given the honor in these isles: Frederick Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duke of Connacht.”

A week of mourning is mandated within the Commonwealth, after which it is announced that the Commonwealth’s greatest commander, Archibald Campbell, will take Saxe’s place as Commissioner of the Defense Staff, the chief of all the International’s various militaries.

Keane’s government had been preparing arms manufactories to support the Commonwealth’s new mechanization program prior to moving forward with the plan, for fear that the costs would be exorbitant (or that global capital could block supplies) if the Commonwealth did not produce its own materiel. This delay was the reason army reform had not yet taken place, despite Attlee’s long haranguing of the Principal Secretary. The death of Frederick only exacerbated the issue, although by 1917 the last tank facilities and oil refineries were almost complete and mechanization close to reality.

That is, until that grim morn. Cold, dull, and wet, with temperatures barely cresting 9° C in the midst of summer, the day was already promising to be a poor one; it soon grew much, much worse. Exiting his “Model Keane” public vehicle, the Principal Secretary was crossing to courtyard to enter Parliament when he was intercepted by what seemed a sympathetic figure. Never one to bother with security, Keane waved his guards off to hear the man’s petition… when he was shot six full times, close-range, with a French Modèle 1892 revolver. Although the gunman took cyanide before he could be apprehended, he was identified as Georges Ladoux, a French officer who had crossed to Britain over a year before under pretense of defection.

Keane is pronounced dead on the scene, and the Commonwealth descends into pandemonium. Within minutes of the successful assassination, carefully-timed counterrevolutionary risings take place in the conservative strongholds of Dublin and Edinburgh, while reformist youths rise in Oxford and Cambridge, aligning themselves to the reaction. A few divisions defect, and the reactionary militia attempt to rush Westminster to capture the Worker’s Parliament.

It is in this environment of rebellion and confusion that Marshal Archibald Campbell, leader of the International’s armies, takes temporary control of the state.

Chapter Text

Citing the need for “security at home and punishment abroad for the murder of our beloved Principal Secretary,” Campbell institutes martial law throughout the entirety of the British Isles; the rebellion at home is rapidly and ruthlessly eliminated, with summary extrajudicial justice the norm rather than the exception. After just a few short days of resistance the fighting is over, and the eyes of Campbell, and of all loyal Britons, necessarily turn to France, the instigator of their misery.

Standing over the body of Keane in the Crystal Palace, as Keane had done for Frederick Saxe just over a year before, Campbell issues a passionate plea for just and united fury. “They have taken from us not only the head of our government, but the head of all communist governments, the head of the International, the rudder of the internationalist movement itself! Augustus Henry Keane, the Principal Secretary of the Worker’s Commonwealth, the instigator of the Second Glorious Revolution and the captain who guided us through the storm of the German-Soviet War, lies before me here, now, shot dead by treachery. Treachery of a government whose people struggled to extract themselves from the clutches of global capital and have, sadly, failed. Treachery of a government whose people, whose elite, have always sought our destruction, and seek it all the more now that we threaten not merely their lives but their pocket-books!

"But they do not know our strength. They do not know what they have done. As the commander the International, I will not rest until the men responsible for the Great Captain’s death have been brought to vicious, violent justice, and the agony of capital which wracks France is permanently swept away from its shores. We will fight—the International will fight!—and will die if necessary, to preserve the honor of the British people and the memory of Captain Keane!”

From the start, the war was about security as much as punishment. Although in the earliest days Campbell shouted the necessity of destroying the French state, as time passed he gradually slid back to a more traditionally internationalist position of merely installing a loyal government in power.

This vacillation is but the first of many problems which the people would soon discover about Campbell.

The fact of the matter is simply that Campbell was never intended to succeed Keane. None in the International desired to broach succession with Keane while he still lived, who for his part had seemed to think it would have been as simple a matter as Parliament electing a new member. But with the state increasingly centralized around a single figure, with propaganda potential and political power embodied in a single figure, it was never going to be as simple a process as that. The Worker’s Cabinet, far closer to the circles of power than the Parliament, was the more likely body to select a successor, but even that was not guaranteed.

And this uncertainty is what allowed Campbell—unversed in political matters and a gruff speaker at best, although ambitious—to seize power, for what Campbell did have was undeniable skill… and the formal command of all International armies. When Keane died, it was a simple affair for him to swiftly step forward as the guiding force for the International in putting down the counter-revolution, and when martial law was lifted he simply never left, appointing himself Principal Secretary on the basis of the “necessary expansion of the International which only our armies can undertake.” Campbell, in other words, was to lead simply by virtue of his being a warrior.

Although politicians who had been more enamored with the choice of Hardie as successor quietly whisper about “Praetorians installing emperors,” there is nothing they can do. Campbell is, after all, the head of the entire International’s military forces. Politicians cannot withstand tanks.

Some of these anti-Campbell plotters in the Worker’s Parliament hope that poor performance by the Commonwealth’s armies—which Campbell, in his lust for revenge against the French, had refused to wait to reform—will force the unpolitic leader from power, but their dreams are soon quashed. Leaving Major General Francis Grenfell in command of several divisions stationed in London (ostensibly to guard against the “still brewing counter-revolution,” but in actuality quite clearly intended to intimidate Parliament), Campbell leads the Commonwealth’s armies across the narrow channel to support German and Italian armies already furiously fighting in France.

Within a month the north of France has largely been overrun by the Commonwealth forces, which one of the German Red Army’s generals notes “fight with a ferocity I have never before seen, even in the depths of the Soviet war. I have seen ten men rush a machine-gun nest, nine of them dying in the process, just to slaughter the French inside, and saw the tenth afterwards fall to his knees and beg that his deeds were worthy of the sacrifices of his friends, and sufficiently honored the memory of the deceased ‘Great Captain,’ Principal Secretary Keane.”

This self-sacrifice and righteous fury is epitomized in the siege of Paris, where Campbell’s forces perform exceptionally. Using point-support artillery fire permitted by airplanes equipped with wireless transceivers, long-range artillery deployment of smokescreens, and intentional building destruction to provide street cover, Campbell practically writes the book on modern urban warfare during the month-long Battle of Paris, and completely routs Baulanger, the Second Republic’s top defensive mind, in the process. And all this with an army that is, by modern standards, outdated!

The victory at Paris seals the matter in the eyes of most Britons; why should they do anything but cheer that such a great commander is now also the leader of their nation?

Although Parliamentarians fear the collapse of the Commonwealth into a dictatorship of the military following the Battle of Paris, the propaganda ministry runs with the Principal Secretary’s great victory and utilizes it to strengthen the regime and international communism both, in the process legitimating Campbell as Keane’s legal successor. In him the International’s military and its political arm are both united, making Campbell something of a leader and commander of armies both, a figure with only one real modern comparison: Napoleon. To many British, the comparison could not be any more disquieting.

But, without the ability to resist Campbell and the mighty trans-national military complex which supports his new claim to governance, there is little that Parliament can do but continue to run the nation as best it can and to hope that Campbell will not abuse the power which he has won for himself. Already his willful seizure of the German military for this operation has alienated Liebknecht and Luxembourg, although the war against the French is met with hearty support from Mussolini in Italy. Only the universal respect for Keane and shared fury over his needless death keeps the International united and on the offensive.

With the destruction of the French fleet off the coast of Bordeaux by the Lion of the Seas, the government of Marie Armand Patrice de MacMahon, Duc de Magenta, finally has no chance of fleeing overseas. After leading France for almost twenty years and approaching the status of a dictator himself, MacMahon is now forced to run for his life in his own nation. Fearful of his inevitable execution at the hands of the British over his order to assassinate Keane and doubtful about the prospects of reaching the safety of the Pyrenees, MacMahon instead rushes toward German lines, hopeful that the more passive Liebknecht, already frustrated with the Commonwealth, will not turn him over.

By late January, with MacMahon having fled, it is clear that the present French government is over. The curious circumstances of “a conservative, monarchist government ruling a socialist republic” (for the Second Republic was established following the socialist uprising which overturned the last Bourbon monarch of France, Louis Philippe II, and had a heavily socialistic constitution) has now passed into the annals of history, and it is for Campbell’s government to pick up the pieces.

First comes the matter of MacMahon, who was foolish in the extreme to assume that the Germans would not turn him over. Loyal to Keane as they had always been, and detesting the noble Duc de Magenta, Liebknecht and Luxembourg give MacMahon to Campbell immediately, who encourages a media circus in Paris when he publicly tries the Duc in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands. Eventually he is (naturally) found guilty, stripped of his titles, and finally, in a gruesome recreation of French Revolutionary violence, the head of MacMahon is paraded about on a pike through the streets, while his disenfranchised family is forced to march behind it. The barbarity is stunning to the International, but how might they resist? No measures to do so were ever established.

Following MacMahon’s death, the French communist Pierre Semard is established as President of the Third French Republic (this time with a communistic “constitution”) and soon begins executing mass purges of reactionaries which had accrued in France following the long presidency of MacMahon. In an unexpected and unprecedented move, however, the war with France does not simply conclude with the establishment of a new communist government; Campbell has changed his mind yet again, and has decided that France must pay further reparations. The move is decried by communists all over the International, but Campbell orders dissenters silenced and publications carrying their words censored as a “matter of security.”

Campbell declares a council of himself, Field Marshal Lester Haig, Liebknecht, Mussolini, and Semard to decide the nature of the French surrender. With only Semard and Liebknecht arguing for a position of “internationalist peace with honor, without territorial aggrandizement” (Liebknecht from ideology, Semard from self-interest), the place of two British men on the council, as well as the pro-war national-socialist Mussolini, helps to ensure that the British get they want out of the deal.

In Europe France is left mostly intact, although Savoie is ceded to Italy on the grounds that the “cession of territory will help to engender respect and loyalty to the state on the part of the people of Italy, who thus far have resisted proletarianization efforts.” While this is at least partly true, the refusal to grant Germany Alsace-Lorraine is a clear slap in the face over Liebknecht and Luxembourg’s quite vocal anti-war stances; although they would have undoubtedly refused the territory, Campbell’s decision to avoid even offering it is a snub which causes a break between the German and Commonwealth communist parties, although the German Nationale Volksarmee at least formally remains under the control of Campbell himself, in his capacity as Commissioner of the Defense Staff.

Yet Liebknecht’s decision to walk out of the talks only strengthens Campbell’s hand, as he is now able to enforce what he truly wants on France without any meaningful resistance: radical decolonization, to the Commonwealth’s benefit.

“In what can only be called an unbecoming fit of nationalist fervor, Campbell made the decision to punish the French state rather than simply punishing the prior government. Seeing the French as the ‘perennial enemy of the British’ and viewing their dominance in ‘zones which are properly British in interest and control’ a threat, Campbell decided to force major decolonization upon them within Africa and Southeast Asia.

“Although France was permitted to keep Algiers and even to hold it as a full Department, the Senegal and Ivory Coast were to be federated under her, and vast tracts of land in Southeast Asia were ceded to the Commonwealth-aligned governments of the Thai and Vietnamese People’s Republics, although France was permitted to retain a federated Cambodian republic under her control.

“The problems with Campbell’s thinking can easily be identified simply from his typical verbiage: ‘British’ interests rather than ‘Commonwealth’ interests. Although a skilled field commander, Campbell was never a politician, nor a natural communist. Relatively poorly educated as he was, having joined the army before Arthur Henderson’s election and never having worked as a laborer or having read Marx closely, Campbell was predisposed to antiquated, pre-Revolutionary conceptions of nationality and rivalry which internationalist doctrine was meant to have stamped out; put another way, Campbell could mimic communistic justifications for his actions, but undertook them from within a behavioral matrix which was essentially pre-Revolutionary. The tendency for Campbell to fall back on these antiquated concepts informed his entire Secretariat, and would result in the disaster that was Red Dawn.”

-Kershaw, “Campbell (vol. 2): Superiority,” International Academic Press, 1998.

Upon returning to Britain, Campbell is met by cheering crowds, all organized by the propaganda ministry. After the raucous crowds are passed and the Principal Secretary returns to Downing Street, however, he is informed in no uncertain terms that the Commonwealth is in crisis, and that those crowds were nothing but show.

The last war’s cost was astronomical, and thanks to Campbell’s demands that naval base expansion “be undertaken with all speed” simultaneous with the war, the entire treasury surplus has vanished. What’s worse, the government has actually fallen into debt. Forced to quietly cease paying all unemployment and pension benefits in order to utilize that money to pay the deficit (to avoid giving the impression that it is possible for a communist state to even become indebted), the Principal Secretary’s ministers urge that an immediate restructuring of state finances is necessary to ensure that the government will recoup the resources necessary to continue carrying through with present plans for industrial expansion, which require up to £1 million per year to maintain.

Campbell’s solution to this issue is “preemptive army reform,” which is nothing less than the dismissal of fully one-half of the Commonwealth’s active duty personnel. Although this does recoup funds, it also makes the Commonwealth appear weak to the remainder of the International.

It is in this environment that the DDR begins to stir once again. Having removed Liebknecht in the 1918 elections for his weakness in negotiations, the new General Secretary, Ernst Thälmann, is a national-socialist in a similar vein to Mussolini. He reignites the German state’s hostile relationship with the Soviets over the trivial matter of the autonomy of the Astrakhan Oblast, and although Campbell is able to defuse the situation with threats of war, the election of a national-socialist, and the continued hostility of Thälmann and Trotsky, bodes ill for communist unity.

Not only does the “army reform” do little more than make the Commonwealth look weak, it does not even meaningfully resolve her economic difficulties, for Campbell still demands full naval base expansions. While he does issue a state-sponsored plan for highways throughout the Commonwealth in early 1920 which puts millions of unemployed men and women to work, what laboring peoples will later refer to as the “bleak times” of the Campbell Secretariat have begun. With all funds being devoted to military or potentially military purposes, and with social welfare still “suspended in the interests of national security,” by 1920 the situation is clear: the Commonwealth has well and truly slipped into a dictatorship of the military. Although the Worker’s Parliament still meets, even the nominal authority which it held under Keane is gone, replaced by total loyalty, through fear, to Campbell.

Yet if the Parliament is silent, the people are not. Enraged by the removal of their benefits, thousands take to the streets despite the risks. “The government expects that we should work, and from the money acquired gain all the necessary elements of life, yet this only after we have paid exorbitant taxes and received nothing in return,” one charismatic protester named Oswald shouts to a growing crowd at Trafalgar Square. “That is not communism, my friends; it is not even socialism. It is capitalism! We have returned to where we stood before, to a time when the power of money, and money alone, rules the actions of the elite, who now once again take from us everything, and give to us nothing!”

Reports of unrest all over the nation prompts Campbell to devote a small amount of resources to a state-owned corporation called the BBC, a radio network intended to broadcast pro-Party and pro-military messages intended to calm the people about the current situation. For the time being it is successful, but when it inevitably fails, the army will be present to take over the task.

Although Campbell is not an internationalist in the same sense that Keane was—ideologically driven with a clear view of what the future should be—the Principal Secretary nevertheless idolized Keane, and for all of his faults Campbell desires to emulate his predecessor’s internationalism. The problem is merely that Campbell does not have the strong, loyal state apparatus under him which Keane did, and his repressive rule, backed by the military, discourages the more free exchange of ideas which existed during Keane’s time. Campbell simply does not know how to perform internationalism, as was exemplified during the French debacle, and is too proud to allow anyone else to assist him in his decision-making. The Worker’s Cabinet has been abolished, and Parliament has become such a limp body that even the few dissidents within it, like Attlee, Hardie, and Mosley, can be safely ignored.

Eventually, however, there had to be a performance of internationalism. After two years without any benefits paid out by the government, with intense military and police repression (Scotland Yard now represents terror in the minds of Britons; tens of thousands have gone “missing” on their account) and with taxation still overwhelming many workers due to Campbell’s requirement that “a store of money be acquired to offset the major costs of armed forces reform,” the people have been bled dry of both wealth and hope in the bleak years. There must, his closest military advisers tell him, be something to show for this, some glimmer of Keanesian internationalism which might help bolster what they dance around telling him is, in reality, the rapidly collapsing image of his Secretariat.

With these warnings in mind, Campbell thus decides that the time is indeed ripe for another conflict to extend communism abroad, and begins moving the International to strike against the Dutch and their Austro-Hungarian allies, the last real capitalist powers in Europe.

The problem with Secretary Campbell’s timing is, of course, that the Worker’s Army of the Commonwealth is not yet prepared for war. With industrial development suspended under the Campbell ministry, production for industrial and military purposes has slumped; the Nigerian model K-12 tank is still the most highly produced on the market, with the Commonwealth-manufactured Haig 313 lagging behind, and similar tales can be told about oil and fuel production. Even if the Commonwealth manufactures the majority of the world’s military gear for all other purposes, the lack of goods necessary for true mechanization slows the entire process; in short, the WAC is not yet ready to fight.

And neither does it seem that the militaries of the International are particularly ready themselves. Thälmann’s Nationale Volksarmee is required to put down a mass rising for political rights not long after Campbell issues the orders to prepare for war with the Dutch and Austro-Hungarians, and the Soviet Red Army, disgusted as Trotsky is with Campbell’s leadership, actually refuses to participate in the engagement. The refusal is entirely illegal, but everyone knows that the Commonwealth simply does not have the men to enforce unity in the International any longer, and Campbell permits Trotsky’s government to refuse aid, a de facto agreement that participation in the International is selective and not mandatory.

Addresses by Attlee and Hardie the following day attempting to issue a vote of no confidence in Campbell on the basis of the “collapse of the International’s unity” is met with fury, and both men, long-time and loyal communists both, are publicly purged in show trials. Dissent quiets, and Campbell’s rule is stabilized, at least at home. Abroad, it has become entirely obvious that the International is collapsing, and the fault can be lain at Comrade Campbell's feet.

When the so-called “Great War to Demolish Capital” is finally declared, although most of the International agrees to participate, Trotsky’s refusal to assist isolates the majority of participants and prevents them from sending troops. The war, then, is effectively between France, Italy, Germany, Denmark and Sweden on the International’s side, and the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Austria-Hungary on the “side of empire and capital.”

Even with an ill-prepared Volksarmee in Germany, the chances of the Dutch and Austro-Hungarians successfully resisting are minimal, and with their almost certain defeat the last two major empires in Europe will collapse under the crushing weight of the hammer and sickle. Even people who despise Campbell’s “crypto-capitalism” reluctantly nod their heads about his decision to target the two greatest enemies to international communism simultaneously, although worries about how these two new states will be proletarianized abound.

The early months of the war see the greatest action in Bohemia and Bavaria, with major battles between Austria-Hungary and the DDR locking down the Austrian army there, allowing Benito Mussolini’s Italian Free Army to invade the Kaiser’s territory through Venice with minimal resistance. With French forces under a somewhat reluctant Semard dividing themselves between Bavaria and the Netherlands, the prospects for a quick victory look strong.

Nevertheless, Campbell is concerned about the potential for Austro-Hungarian forces to initiate a major push through Bohemia toward Berlin, which the General Secretary views to be possible on the basis of their undefended eastern border with the Soviets; the lack of armies there alone suggests that as many as 100,000 regulars might be streaming north, and if Berlin falls Kaiser Wilhelm, who is still living in Vienna, might be rushed in to set up a provisional government. With German nationalism on the rise as evinced by Thälmann’s election, the return of Wilhelm would likely plunge the DDR into a civil war that might threaten not merely the war itself, but the crumbling International. Even if Campbell is not a wise politician, he does at least have an eye for strategic planning, and for weakness.

As such, he phones Trotsky in Moscow, whose participation in the war Campbell now perceives to be critical, not merely to shore up the International’s unity and silence criticisms of his Secretariat at home, but to allow International forces from Africa and Asia to march against the Austro-Hungarians. After several hours of pleading, haranguing, and debating, Trotsky agrees to once again subsume the Red Army under Campbell’s command, but only if Campbell refuses to “ever attempt territorial aggrandizement at the cost of international unity again in the future.” The Marshal meekly agrees; a cheap price for the restored control of the entire Red Army, especially when the French were the only ones Campbell sought to weaken.

Although Campbell promised that he would land forces in the Netherlands to assist the International troops fighting there, with the Red Army operating in Austria-Hungary by early July, he suddenly declines to lend Commonwealth aid, excusing that the situation is already under control there. The move is bitterly criticized by Thälmann and Semard, not to mention the Commonwealth’s Portuguese allies who had committed their entire outdated fleet and over 75,000 troops to the conflict, but Campbell pointedly reminds his German and French allies that Commonwealth troops were the primary agents not only of their nations’ freedom from capitalism, but have also taken the brunt of every military engagement since the first German-Soviet War; “it is time,” he argued, “that the men of Britain have some rest once again. This is, for the grandeur of its name, a minor war that we are engaged in. Don’t embarrass yourselves by being affronted when we take only what is owed to us.”

Campbell’s argument is accurate, at least insofar as it details the incredible service and self-sacrifice that the Worker’s Army has seen since the Second Glorious Revolution, but of course his motives are self-serving, and a front to help cover how far behind his government is in rearming and mechanizing the army. As Semard would later put it, “for a Field Marshal in control of a military government, I have never seen a man who was more incapable of providing for the military.”

Nevertheless, although Campbell’s refusal to provide promised aid serves to embitter the entire International against their erstwhile commander, the war is, for all the grumbling, proceeding well. Soviet forces entering into Galacia have forced the Austro-Hungarians to retreat from Bohemia to form a defensive line around Vienna and Budapest, and the last Austro-Hungarian forces that had been investing Bavaria are now isolated in Tirol and subject to heavy artillery fire. The Dual Monarchy is not long for this world.

Even so early as July the war was on the verge of successful conclusion, but Kaiser Franz II had refused to surrender to the “forces of international atheism. I would die first!” He got his wish in October: Franz II died, slumped over a bust of one of his illustrious relatives, defending the Hofberg from International forces; along with him went Wilhelm II, who likewise refused to “abandon this, the last true stronghold of the German people, without fighting to the last. It is time for my soul to flee this hell at any rate.” Unfortunately for the two Emperors, to add further insult to injury, both they and their city fell to General Greta Inge, the International’s first high-ranking female officer. Had either of them known, it is probable they would simply have taken their own lives rather than deigning to die to a woman.

Nevertheless, Franz II’s death throws Austria into turmoil. With the Netherlands already completely occupied and a provisional government established under the internationalist Willem van Ravesteyn (a choice made, Campbell was careful to ensure, only with the strong approval of the remainder of the International) only awaiting Wilhelmina’s signature to give it legitimacy, it does not appear that the Habsburgs can resist a similar surrender soon. Yet the Reichsrat has dissolved following the capture of Vienna, and, in a final move of ironic self-destruction, the Hungarians, in the midst of cataclysm, have declared independence and refuse to “further participate in Austrian affairs.” As if such a thing would save them—news arrives not a day later that the International will pursue war with them as well, and the Romanians declare war shortly thereafter for control of Transylvania.

The new Habsburg Emperor, Maximilian IV, is left with a choice of how to proceed: fight to the bitter end, or surrender and hope for leniency. The young man chooses surrender, “for we cannot hope to win now. My father has died for nothing.”

The peace agreement is finally signed on January 2nd, albeit under circumstances which only heightens tensions in the International. For Campbell not only allows Wilhelmina to leave for the United States—a land perceived safe from communism thanks to its extreme vetting process; it has become a bastion for those fleeing from the International—but also extends the same privilege to the Habsburgs, and to the remainder of the Hohenzollern family, overriding the Keane precedent which had allowed local communist leaders to decide such matters. This unnecessary leniency is not the only mistake which Campbell makes, for contrary to the precedent set in the treaty signed with Semard, the new Dutch Worker’s State is permitted to keep direct control of all of its colonies.

When confronted by a furious Semard, Campbell argues that it is on the basis of the Keane doctrine, and that the Dutch colonies are too racially mixed. Such an argument is insulting to the French, who had a population of pure French exceeding 25% in many of the colonies seized and redistributed. An enraged Semard becomes the first leader to actively break with the International, calling Campbell a “dog unfit for leadership” and expelling the Commonwealth’s ambassador from Paris. Although Semard retains diplomatic relations with the remainder of the International, the Third French Republic is, for all intents and purposes, diplomatically independent.

The move is so humiliating to the Commonwealth that Campbell orders it entirely erased from the public record, and for years only the elite are even aware of the move. Yet Comrade Mosley, ever eager to challenge the regime, stages a protest and reveals the information on the streets of London; as punishment, he is beaten badly by Scotland Yard, although they do not dare to murder such a high-profile figure without a trial, and the already despised Campbell does not now wish to risk such a move. Mosley is released with nothing more than bruises.

After a brief attempt to convince Semard of the “pointless futility” and “childishness” of his decision, which served only to further alienate the French leader and isolate him from the International, Campbell provided orders to Mussolini and Thälmann to prepare for a second invasion of France, this time to depose Semard and install a “properly loyal gentleman.” To Campbell’s absolute fury, although Mussolini agrees to the operation in return for a guarantee that Corsica will be returned to Italy, Thälmann absolutely refuses to participate, even when promised Alsace-Lorraine in the exchange. He, like Semard before him, refers to Campbell as a “beast,” and a “liar, traitor, and apolitic monstrosity” besides, “free of all loyalty and good sense.” The Commonwealth ambassador in Berlin is also expelled, and Thälmann becomes the second leader to withdraw from the International.

It is in this environment of collapse that Campbell, finally, begins turning his eye inward. The sections of the International which were under British auspices, including industry and social systems at home, have largely collapsed under his militant and aggressive rule; hundreds of thousands of unemployed Britons line the streets, none with unemployment benefits, and many leave for America each day. The International (what parts of it are not too weak or too subordinate to resist, at any rate) has begun to crumble, and the Worker’s Army is still too weak to do anything but feebly posture.

Yet even with the collapse evident all around him, Campbell still does not understand how to orchestrate anything that is not military. The money he should spend on the people he instead sends to India to establish a “readiness commission,” which does finally have the effect of centralizing power under the government, but does nothing to restore confidence in Campbell’s government at home, nor to restore the broken International around him.

No—for that, Campbell needs something different, and he is aware of that.

For the seven years of his ministry, the Worker’s Army has been “preparing” for conflict: “readying,” “mechanizing,” “rearming,” “training.” Never have they been ready. As of January of 1924, with funds finally allocated to critical fuel and tank industries, the Worker’s Army is now well and truly ready.

Ten full corps—seven prepared for foreign conflict, after disregarding the two Guards corps stationed in Britain and one colonial garrison—provides Archibald Campbell the strongest army on the face of the planet. Fast-response recon airplanes, ten times the number of tanks utilized by any other military on the globe, and highly-trained Guard regiments formed from soldiers who have served for up to five years already in a non-combat capacity, thanks to the unpopular but highly effective mandate for service by requirement; the Worker’s Army is an expert force with ace commanders and state-of-the-art equipment and training which has been a long time in the coming. Campbell has a plan for its maiden voyage.

As the Principal Secretary sees matters, the continued intransigence of Semard and Thälmann cannot last once they see the power of the Worker’s Army. What better way to prove this power but by sending them against the unwashed Chinese, whom not only have the endless numbers to prove the killing capacity of the Worker’s Army, but whom even Keane argued were not truly proletarian at all? Killing them will do no harm to the International, but will prove a point: after the doubters see millions of Chinese dead at the feet of the British, they will not hesitate to cast themselves down and beg for forgiveness.

With General Grenfell once again left behind in Britain to ensure continued military control of the government, Campbell sets out with his men on campaign in the east.

Within the first month and a half of the conflict, almost 200,000 Chinese soldiers, not to mention innumerable civilians, are dead at the hands of the Worker’s Army, with less than 10,000 British casualties to show for the Qing collapse. The losses are inexcusable for the Xuantong Emperor, whose nation has long been considered modernized by western standards, and who had mobilized his state for war against the Japanese over a year before; millions of Chinese were ready to march against the Commonwealth forces from the moment they exited the confines of the treaty ports, but none could stand against the punishing power of the fully mechanized Worker’s Army. Defense of the Empire become a bloodbath for the Qing, as fabricated crowds in London laughed and cheered at the thousands dead, and composed little poems about the “fall in the east of the last oriental despot.”

Yet Campbell’s fumbling understanding of true internationalism turns his victories against him again, as now Trotsky once again withdraws the Red Army (although not his state) from the International in protest for the “intentional deaths of millions of peasants” and the “contradictory explanations for war; one cannot enter a state which is in the Asiatic mode of production and expect to install communism within it, but this is precisely the plan which the Commissioner of the Defense Staff purports to undertake.” Campbell dismisses his claims as counterrevolutionary and threatens to turn the Worker’s Army against him unless he restores the Red Army to the International, but Trotsky simply refuses, even after witnessing all the might of the Worker’s Army.

Following Trotsky’s maneuver, Campbell becomes almost petulant in his decision-making, dragging the war out far longer than is necessary to kill as many of the Chinese as possible, simply to punish Trotsky’s refusal to cooperate. Millions more die as the Commonwealth’s International “allies” in the east (more than ever akin to subject nations under Campbell’s centralizing rule) are enlisted to march against the Qing, occupying them from all sides and forcibly requisitioning both goods and wealth from locals.

The Xuantong Emperor begs the ability to abdicate and save the lives of his people, but Campbell refuses him. “I have not yet even begun to force upon the Chinese the innumerable miseries which I can give to their people. I have not even begun my march inland.”

When Campbell’s genocidal rage becomes known in Moscow, Trotsky immediately and formally withdraws himself from the International, and even goes to the further and unprecedented step of allowing the Xuantong Emperor amnesty in the Soviet state, if he decides to abdicate. Trotsky suggests this strongly, as it will not only save his life but quite probably the lives of many of his people, as Campbell will not know how to proceed following the breakdown of dynastic power within China.

Accordingly, on November 17th, 1924, the Xuantong Emperor abdicates without even informing Campbell of his intent, taking his entire family across the border into Soviet Jinzhou, and exile. Pu Yi’s exile leaves the Qing state with no successor and no government, and the collapse of central authority threatens to shear the entire state apart within the first hours of its announcement.

An enraged Campbell, so furious that it is reported that he personally whips several men for minor infractions, is forced to make a deal with the eunuchs in Beijing in order to retain the semblance of a successful campaign. They do not understand what communism is, and a flustered Campbell orders them to simply take stewardship of the state until “the next leader” comes. They take this to mean that there will be a Qing restoration, and form a “Heavenly Council” for the new Emperor, not understanding that a new Great Qing will never come. Campbell tells them to focus on industrial production and give many rights to laborers, which they all nod and promise they shall, only, of course, never to do any such thing.

After establishing a few halfhearted centers for communist education in the countryside and making a few meager efforts to reorganize wealth in the capital, Campbell prepares to leave China. “A victorious war that is a lost peace,” Mosley was heard to criticize, “lost by a man who does not even understand what an internationalist peace should look like.”

After experiencing a victorious defeat, something which Campbell could not even contemplate as truly possible prior to Trotsky’s “betrayal,” he comes to understand (or, in reality, is carefully told) that communism cannot be installed in such a backwards and dynastic state as the Qing was. Communism is only possible in nations which are industrialized, because those nations are the only states which have the basis for the communist mode of production, and who have laborers capable of acting as communist leaders. It is not merely so simple as winning a war and installing a puppet, like could be done in the old days; there truly needs to be a basis for communism, or the entire regime will collapse rapidly, because the people will not support it. The entire war with the Qing was, then, just an elaborate test run of the new Worker’s Army, and never truly would have resulted in victory no matter the outcome. The nation Campbell targeted was unripe for internationalism from the start.

When Campbell learns this, he orders all mention of the Qing’s backwardness, and the so-called Heavenly Council, erased from the record.

He instead sets his eyes on a new target: Japan. Highly industrialized and more powerful than the Qing by far, their defeat will not only establish a truly new order in the east, it will also ensure an Asiatic access point to the Soviet Union, which Campbell sees as a prerequisite for invading and dismantling Trotsky’s state. For such is his intent: Trotsky, Semard, and finally Thälmann will all be defeated by the Worker’s Army and forced back into union with the International, under Campbell’s command.

A further (and quite untimely) embarrassment arrives that September, as the Heavenly Council, bereft of a monarch for almost a full year and wracked by corruption and factional politics unchecked by any efforts on Campbell’s part, finally collapses. Local proletarians are able to successfully capture and kill the eunuchs running the government, but after their victory they find that none are willing to support the new government in Beijing. Various warlords all over the country declare themselves either independent or the new Emperor of China, and a massive civil war begins for control of the Chinese people.

Campbell predictably orders the news of his great failure entirely censored, but it is not quite so simple to avoid matters of this variety any longer. Radios, handed out throughout Britain to pick up the state-run BBC, can just as easily pick up signals across the channel, and the French have constructed a massive relay at Dunkirk to broadcast uncensored information to the Isles. Upon receiving word about events in the east from Trotsky, Semard gleefully radios the truth of affairs over to Britain, sparking protests throughout the Isles that are only with some reluctance finally put down by the military. All seem to be concerned about Principal Secretary Campbell and his decisions, and even the military governor of the isles, General Grenfell, begins to quietly question his commanding officer.

Mosley begins to meet with Grenfell at Westminster in secret.

“Red Dawn presupposed many things which, retrospectively, were foolish. It presupposed international solidarity which would allow the Secretary to personally lead his armies halfway around the world from the remainder of the International; it presupposed that the Japanese were a racially and nationally weak people, despite their great technological and military advancements; that the Japanese would be willing to surrender following the loss of Tokyo and a bloody nose or two; and that the government back in Britain entirely supported Campbell. None of these suppositions proved founded.

“Before the Worker’s Army even assaulted the three landing sites of Yokohama, Tokyo, and Chiba, the Emperor and his family had already been evacuated to Kyoto, ensuring that there would be no repeat of what occurred in the First German-Soviet War. Although the sickly Emperor Taisho would die several days after the move, his death would be attributed by the Japanese government and his successor, Hirohito, to the stress caused by the invasion of the Commonwealth. This would only serve to radicalize the Imperial Japanese Army against the invaders, and to make the possibility for peace under the new government of Hirohito even less likely.

“By the time the armies landed Japanese commanders had taken up defensive positions, and, even outnumbered and outgunned, managed to inflict mass casualties upon the Commonwealth armies upon their landings. Although Tokyo was captured by early January, only John Williams’s 3rd Army was able to successfully entrench itself at Yokohama, whereas the various other Commonwealth forces in the region, broken and battered, were forced to engage themselves either in the siege of Mito (meant to secure the Tokyo beachhead from the north) or the horrendously bloody battle of Urawa, the victory of which would prove critical to establish final defensive positions in Japan, and to have any chance of victory against the Emperor.”

-Kershaw, “Arrogance”

“But, as it would happen, Urawa was not the real threat. Although Campbell believed that his enemy was the Japanese, and then the Soviets, and then the French, on and on until all had bowed the knee to Britain, in truth Campbell’s greatest enemies (with the exception of his own hubris) were the men that he had snubbed, and the crypto-nationalism which he had encouraged to flourish in the wilting International. For so long as there is national disunity, so long as Campbell’s will was not respected as Keane’s had been, the signs had been growing: disagreements, ambition on the part of Thälmann, and, finally, an open hunger for power which flowed into the Second German-Soviet War.

“As Thälmann’s personal diaries indicate, from the beginning of 1921, when Campbell refused to provide aid in the Great War, he had begun to see the International as a failed experiment. ‘Internationalism is impossible when national differences such as race, language, and culture prevail,' Thälmann wrote, 'and these differences are ineradicable. We are living a farce, and something new is needed to replace it. Something which only Germany, taking its rightful place on the continent again, can provide.’

“The Second German-Soviet war can only be seen in this context: an attempt by Thälmann to destroy the Soviet state and, from its rubble, to enshrine national-communism as the only viable ideology in a repolarized world. Although the International banded together once again to resist Thälmann despite the fractures that Campbell had caused within it, that Thälmann was even able to entertain such a notion suggests how atrophied the International had truly become under Campbell, and how close it was to collapse. Support for Trotsky was now, alone, too little and too late; radical change would be necessary to preserve the dream of internationalism.

-Kershaw, “Arrogance”

Conditions in Japan following the declaration of the Second German-Soviet War had become hellish. Although the Commonwealth was able to secure a major victory against the Japanese at Urawa that stabilized the front near Tokyo, the battered forces which had participated in Urawa were forced to retreat to Tokyo for reinforcements following the victory, and the Urawa heights could not be secured. With Japanese forces attacking at Yokohama and Mito, and with Mito under serious threat of collapsing, the situation appeared grim to Campbell. Nevertheless, he was unwilling to surrender while the Japanese capital had been secured.

“We need only,” he continued to say, “fight through to one more victory against the Japanese and their government will fall, and the Worker’s Army can return to Britain in glory, to crush the traitor Thälmann and set all to rights.” It was an idealized, impossibly rosy picture from the outset.

Nevertheless, it was decided that, after a few days of rest in Tokyo, efforts would be made to recapture the Urawa Heights, and to bring the war in Japan to a successful conclusion. The International forces fighting Germany would have to wait.

Or, at least, that was what Campbell ordered.

By March 1st, Campbell is no longer Principal Secretary--that honor falls to Oswald Mosley. A labor agitator who became the only man to survive Campbell's purge of the serious CPGB dissidents, Mosley had gained a quiet but large following among Britons who sought a return to Keanesian internationalism and social support.

When news of the Second German-Soviet war finally broke through the censors and it became clear that Campbell had no intention of retreating from Japan until the bitter end, Mosley took control of the situation. A long-planned coup, initiated by Mosley and his loyalists but under the auspices of General Grenfell, who has had more than enough of Campbell’s dystopia, seizes control of the government after a few short hours of street-to-street fighting. “Overzealous officials, repressive elements, and Campbell loyalists” within the Worker’s Parliament, Scotland Yard, and military forces still in Britain are rounded up and tried; the Worker’s Cabinet is restored, and the Commonwealth pledges itself and its allies to the war against Germany.

“We lit the fire of international communism here in Britain, and although those embers have burned low, they cannot be extinguished,” Mosley cries to a crowd gathered around Westminster. “We are still the first communists, the most selfless warriors, the truest captains of industry. We are still first among the equals, or we should be. The chaos now engulfing Europe has been wrought from our failure to take our proper and necessary place at the head of the International, the body which with our labor we created, nurtured, and grew. It is being threatened, now, by nationalism in the guise of socialism, by power and ambition, but it is still there. The embers still burn! It is ours, and we need do naught more than extend our hands to retake it for the people of this globe: internationalism, benevolence, and freedom from chains. We will take it, because we must take it!”

Chapter Text

By early April, the war effort in Japan is collapsing. Without any additional supplies from Britain now that Campbell has been deposed, the hope for further reinforcements has vanished. The protracted engagements at Urawa and Mito have consumed all the infantry available to the Worker’s Army in Japan, and now it is only the last shells of the tanks, along with shore bombardment from the Lion of the Seas, that keeps Japanese forces back from Commonwealth lines. The Worker’s Army has lost.

“Although later apologists mistakenly blame Mosley’s coup for the collapse of Campbell’s war,” Kershaw writes, “the simple truth is that the war was all but lost even after the first success at Urawa. Campbell did not bring sufficient men to defeat the entire Japanese army, and the consequent necessity of a surrender on the basis of the status quo was not a failing of Mosley’s new government; rather, it was a failure of planning on the part of Marshal Campbell, a symptom of a pathological arrogance that nearly drove the Commonwealth and the International both into isolation, destitution, and destruction.”

As Campbell and the last remainder of his bedraggled and broken forces boarded their transports, the first Commonwealth army to lose a war in over a hundred years, he gazes back to see Hirohito standing far off on the horizon, mounted on a horse with his military advisors standing near him. The Emperor turns and rides off: the leader who escaped the wrath of the Commonwealth, the one that got away. The greatest shame of Archibald Campbell, outlaw and failure.

The broken man and his fellows begin to steam back to Britain, to await their fates in a land where they are now called traitors and wreckers of the Revolution.

While Campbell is still en route to Britain—watched over carefully by Admiral Seaton, who has professed loyalty to Mosley’s regime—matters in Europe are growing concerning. The German war machine, ever capable of raising innumerable souls to bleed and die for it, is not only successfully defending on four fronts, but is even managing to go on the offensive against Franz Koritschoner’s Austria. The Austrians will soon withdraw from the war effort, allowing German forces to defend on only three fronts.

Much as Mosley would like to assist efforts on the continent, the Commonwealth has absolutely no transport fleets available, nor regular armies, all of them having been shipped off with Marshal Campbell. Socially, too, the Commonwealth is in something of a shambles, with the government now facing the unenviable task of wiping away eight years of reactionary dictatorship and re-establishing internationalism in a nation which has had no clear policy since Secretary Keane’s death in 1916. Although restored industrial construction and social benefits has made Mosley incredibly popular and he has easily won the elections which followed the coup (the first to take place since 1916), the government must still prosecute the thousands of Campbellite loyalists which made his dictatorship possible. And all this while still struggling to restore faith in internationalism, guard against a military counter-coup, and lead the way—at least morally—in the war against Thälmann.

“What is needed is something to unify the people under the new program of the party,” Philip Snowden, now restored as Minister of the Interior, advises Mosley. “If a truly internationalist program can be both espoused and actuated, the people will gather behind the present government. Any active involvement in foreign affairs will be seen as better than the isolated non-action and economic downturn that Campbell caused.”

“The poor of this world labor for the elite. Whether they live within one of the great states of the globe or within the most isolated and impoverished of nations, whether they have truly attained the capitalist mode of production or are still beholden to antiquated feudalistic systems of exchange, labor for the wealthy is the standard by which all methods of production might be judged, save that of the communist international. Internationalism is, alone, free of slavish devotion to the needs of the wealthy, for in true internationalism, we labor for one another. A barrel of gin and a Haig 313 tank made here in Britain serves our people and our allies equally, but never does it serve the forces of capital and profiteering which, vampire-like, drained the wealth of the people in the days before the Second Glorious Revolution.

“The Communist Party of Great Britain has made errors. I stand here now as Principal Secretary and I acknowledge them. The spirit of brotherhood and unity which Secretary Keane envisioned, rest him, did not survive him as it should have. If we had been morally stronger, better-organized, and more devoted, Archibald Campbell never would have been able to seize power, and would not have led the Commonwealth and the International both into a decade of decay and reaction. But his time is over now, and there is one last gasp to give for internationalism. We must choose whether or not it is our desire to give that gasp, or to let the opportunity pass by; to fight, and perhaps fail, in the name of a dream, or to surrender to despair and allow what we have spent thirty long years struggling to build wither and die without a single bullet spent in an effort to save it.

“I say that the gasp should be given—must be given, even, because we communists of this international have something fundamental to provide to nations all over the globe, something which they cannot receive elsewhere: freedom, that is, true freedom. In the days of Keane, it was the policy of this government to focus only upon the mightiest of nations, to elicit change from the top to the bottom, as it were. I say now that this policy was mistaken, or at least incomplete, and that it must now be our policy to spread our ideology, our international, wherever it might be possible for it to take root. It does not matter if a people are impoverished, it does not matter if they cannot provide aid to our government, I say that it does not even matter if they are unindustrialized! And why should it? It is our duty to help them! And, in the future, when we struggle, they shall repay the debt with interest, as the Soviet people now do once again, fighting the Germans tooth-and-nail, buying our people here in Britain time to prepare for a counter-attack of our own. This is what internationalism is, what we have forgotten in the long bleakness of a decade of isolation: it is, fundamentally, altruism. It is freedom from chains, a gift that we should grant at every opportunity, and not be niggardly with in the slightest.”

“And so I say that this is now the policy of this Commonwealth of the workers, the bastion of the international. We will bring freedom from chains to all the nations that we might, and, in so doing, we shall free the world itself from capital. No longer is membership in the International a matter of mighty nations or ex-colonial states fortunate enough to be given autonomy; no, we are now, truly, a union of all free and equal peoples. And this union will teach Campbell, and Thälmann as well, that no crypto-capitalist mockery of communism can destroy the pure altruism of a people, a world, bent upon freedom from chains!”

-Speech of Oswald Mosley, Third Principal Secretary of the Worker's Commonwealth, to the Commonwealth Parliament, 25 June 1926.

Although by late November the Commonwealth has pulled itself together once again, the situation on the continent is beset with difficulties. The Germans have baited several French armies into the Palatinate and crushed them, and now threaten to spill into France; a few isolated divisions even threaten Paris. Continued fighting in Poland also prevents the Soviets from reaching the German home territories and relieving pressure from the French, or from stopping German mobilization, which is still underway.

In this environment of tense uncertainty, Archibald Campbell and his compatriots finally land once again on Britain. The men of the various corps are happy to be home in a Commonwealth that looks a great deal more pleasant than the one they left, but Campbell and many of his officers are less than pleased: they are imprisoned by Scotland Yard, as Mosley had been before, as political prisoners.

“I could have you beaten,” Mosley quietly tells Campbell upon visiting him, “as you had me beaten. Killed, as you wanted to kill me. None would bat an eye. But what separates myself from yourself is precisely that: my comprehension of the self. I, unlike you, am aware that there is a greater entity than my lone soul which I serve, and that is the International. The body you almost killed.

“I thus give you a choice, which is more than I should. You are our best commander, like it or not, and we still need you. Accept your defeat, accept my government, and you will be permitted to retain your rank. You will serve as you always should have, subject to a civilian government. But there is an offer of redemption in this, Archibald, which you should not dismiss. What say you?”

From beneath lank hair and drooping eyelids, Campbell’s eyes met those of his replacement. For a brief moment the two Principal Secretaries held one another’s gaze, but Campbell was the first to look away. “I will fight for the International.”

Freshly-shaven and groomed, the “six men responsible for hell,” Archibald Campbell and his five closest confidants, are given a chance to redeem themselves in the Second Hanover Campaign.

The move is risky. Even though Thälmann despises Campbell, there is still the potential that Campbell could attempt to defect. Even if he does not, the proximity of five of the top men in Campbell’s military government could convince the ex-Secretary to attempt to recapture the government upon his return to Britain, although Mosley must necessarily hope that most of the men will remain loyal.

“Sending them was madness,” Mosley’s Minister of War, the somewhat unimpressive Thomas Shaw, told the young Principal Secretary upon their sailing forth. “They cannot be trusted. In the name of all that’s good, Oswald, Campbell is a narcissist, a militant, and a traitor to the bloody revolution! Why have you let him live, much less given him leave to go gallivanting abroad to threaten us again?”

“Because, my dear Shaw,” Mosley replied, gazing at the vanishing ships on the horizon, “there comes a point at which certain things must simply be trusted in. If I had ordered Campbell murdered, I truly would have been no different than him: a dictator established following the failure of the previous government, who exterminates all the opposition until he and his party alone remain, spiraling the state down into despair and tyranny until he, finally, is also removed and killed by his successor. What sort of example would that set?

“Even if Campbell does betray us, even if he cares nothing for his image—which I do not believe for a moment; I think he is chomping at the bit to wipe away the shame of his defeat in Japan—this move was still a necessary one. He had to be offered redemption. If I had not done so, we would have fallen into the despotic cycle, and would have torn ourselves apart. Archibald must always be the exception, and never the rule.”

The second nation to experience the Mosley Doctrine is Romania, the previous government of which consisted of a coalition of reactionary monarchists and members of the Iron Guard under Corneliu Codreanu. The close relationship between the almost fascist Romania and Thälmann’s Germany serves as a wonderful point of propaganda for the International, and the vast majority of the credit for the victory there passing to Trotsky’s Red Army helps to finally patch the last of the tensions which had still smarted between the Soviets and the Commonwealth.

Romania’s new leader is Christian Rakovsky, an internationalist and long-time friend of Trotsky’s who happened to be in the Soviet Union and ready to return to Romania as soon as it was liberated from its previous fascistic government. Although Ferdinand I and the royal family is permitted to leave by Rakovsky, Codreanu and every member of the Iron Guard, including every legionary sympathizer which can be identified, are rounded up and executed en masse. Millions are dead before Rakovsky’s purges are complete (for such was the popularity of the Iron Guard) and the Romanian nation is considered “safe from reaction.”

Mosley judged Campbell rightly.

The weight of defeat to the Japanese, a people whom Campbell firmly believed were inferior, somewhat unhinged the Field Marshal. Stripped of his power and with his last campaign a disaster, death in front of the People’s Court would have sealed his reputation as a failure. The only avenue for escape which he had was the thin branch which Mosley, once his greatest critic, held out to him: to fight in Germany, to help put down the monster he had created, and in so doing to regain some scrap of his reputation, and right some of his many wrongs.

Although he did not doubt that at least a few of his compatriots would have agreed to attempt a restoration had he asked them to, Campbell simply never asked. He had been deposed and dishonored; there was, he knew, no chance of holding on to power again in Britain save by the terror of another purge, and such a decision would permanently ruin any shred of reputation he had left. His options were death or service, and he chose what he was familiar with: service.

Although Thälmann’s Germany was holding on other fronts, as soon as Commonwealth forces dropped into Hanover, the dictator knew that there was no chance of victory; there simply were not enough German men to hold off on three fronts and push back a naval landing as well. Thälmann tried regardless and was brutally rebuffed for his efforts, losing control of most of the northwest and many of his desperately-needed armies simultaneously.

Thälmann makes plans to flee, but there are no safe paths to Switzerland, the Lion of the Seas blocks flight through the Kiel canal, and Koritschoner in Austria will not take him. He is forced to sit in Berlin and hope for a miracle.

Although German forces in the east still perform well, it appears that the miracle is yet far off. With hundreds of thousands of International troops finally arriving to support Soviet forces, the Germans are forced to retreat and establish defensive positions; they never got deeper into the Soviet Union than the Minsk marshes, a paltry shadow of what Wilhelm II had achieved in the First German-Soviet war, and a testament to the impressive managerial skills of Trostky, who has made the backwards economy and armed forces of the old Russian Empire virtually unrecognizable in just a few short years.

Although a few of Thälmann’s Marshals foolishly believe that they will be able to hold on to Poland and Ostpreussen, in truth both are already all but lost. It is only a matter of time until the Germans will be defending at the gates of Berlin, pressed from all sides by dozens of foes which Thälmann, in his great arrogance, believed that his state could defeat with just two allies, of whom only Spain is left.

And the Spanish Republic, like the Romanian before it, is not long for this world; with Madrid captured months before and the legitimate government forced to flee to the Balearic Islands, where they are constantly subjected to naval and aerial bombardment, the end of the war in Spain is at hand. An internationalist government under José Díaz has already been established in Madrid, and will soon be made legitimate.

The Germans are all but alone.

“The purpose of this war was territorial aggrandizement on the part of Thälmann’s crypto-nationalist Germany. Yet it must be remembered that Thälmann was a legitimately elected official, replacing Karl Liebknecht as Secretary of Germany by popular vote. The circumstances of that replacement were initiated by this Commonwealth in the peace with the Second French Republic, but it was nevertheless the failing of the German proletariat that they turned to Thälmann for relief.

“What is to be done on our parts? How does the International respond to violence which was begun from within its ranks, and directed upon one of its members? As our armies approach Berlin, it behooves us to consider this. What is to be the fate of Germany when this pointless, bloody war finally reaches its conclusion?

“I believe the conclusion we must reach in this Parliament is that there was a pressing cultural reason behind Thälmann’s decision. Although he certainly wished territorial aggrandizement and continental mastery, it is no coincidence that the Soviets were his target. The antipathy between the Germans and the Soviet peoples, especially the Poles, will, I feel, serve to create constant tension within this International unless properly addressed. And, sorrowful as it is, I believe the proper way to address these ills involves the territorial marginalization of the German Federation.

“The Germans struck because they felt they were mighty enough to. If their land is taken and divided between our loyal allies, there will be no further basis for German aggression; they will no longer be capable of fighting their neighbors, and their cultural predilection towards war will, with time, be forced out of them. We will ensure peace, at the cost of German territorial integrity. And, most importantly, we will ensure peace on the basis of the Worker’s Commonwealth being the sole nation in the International capable of mobilizing a serious military presence.”

-Speech of Philip Snowden to the Worker’s Parliament

On April 8th, 1927, with Archibald Campbell beginning to invest Berlin, the people of the DDR depose Ernst Thälmann, dragging him from his secure bunker and handing him over to Campbell along with a declaration of surrender. The war is over.

After days of interrogating Stasi members and hunting through their many archives and secret prisons—“It feels almost akin to Scotland Yard in here,” one army intelligence officer was heard to mutter while examining the central Stasi archive in Berlin—it is discovered that, although Karl Liebknecht was murdered, Rosa Luxembourg is still alive. She is found, emaciated and on the verge of death, in a secure prison outside the Bavarian town of Dachau, which was apparently considered a safe zone following the withdrawal of Austria from the war. Although she is weak and sickly, with a few days of medical care she agrees to take control of the government of the DDR, at least long enough to see through the transitional period.

While Germany begins to rebuild yet again, the public trial of Thälmann begins on April 15th. He is accused of provoking nationalism in the populace, engaging in aggressive war, participating in a crypto-capitalist mode of production, and murdering political dissidents. By early May the evidence is overwhelming, and he, along with many of his top commanders and Stasi operatives, are executed by firing squad.

As the dismantlement of the federation begins on the 3rd of May, Mosley publicly announces that the Commonwealth has no interest in German land. “We undertook this measure to ensure the stability of the International, not to grow more mighty. We seek no land from the Germans because we need none; we wish only that they rejoin the International with peaceful intent set in their hearts.”

The final borders as decided upon in the 1927 International Peace Conference in Vienna. Members present include Mosley, Field Marshal Lester Haig (a representative of Campbell; it was decided that it would be better if Campbell were not present around the other International leaders), Semard, Mussolini, Trotsky, Koritschoner, and an agent of Luxembourg’s to sign for the Germans.

The peace council concludes that Germany’s continual militarism is primarily based upon five issues: antipathy to the Poles; a desire for the return of Alsace-Lorraine; the strong industrial sector of Silesia allowing the Germans to self-arm without requiring the International for goods; the old Prussian tradition of military service and primacy; and the defensive bottleneck at Schleswig, which prevents the Germans from facing any serious threat to the north and allows the Kiel canal to be defended with minimal invested garrisons.

All of these perceived problems are righted, at least so far as is possible, in the conference. All German territories with a significant Polish presence are ceded to the Soviet Union, where the Poles are already a long-time and accepted ethnic minority; Alsace-Lorraine is formally signed away to the French in perpetuity; the Silesian territories are ceded to Austria, which has the greatest (although still a quite shaky) claim; Prussia itself is also mostly ceded to Russia; and the Schleswigian territories are ceded to Denmark, which, although it is a capitalist nation, has undertaken many voluntary socialist reforms and is a close ally of the International. Additionally, the Bavarian Social Republic is proclaimed as a federated portion of Austria to last as a demilitarized zone for five years, and the few German colonies in the Pacific are handed variously to Belgium or the Soviet Union.

Although many Germans are up in arms about the severity of the treaty, Luxembourg nevertheless signs it, and the might of the German Federation effectively ends at Vienna.

At a meeting between Mosley and Thomas Shaw later that evening, the new Principal Secretary discusses the necessity of armed forces expansion for the Commonwealth.

“Expansion?” Shaw stammers. “Oswald, do you know the daily deficit of the armed forces in Germany when only five corps were operating? It was over £3,000 per day! This government doesn’t even have the luxury of revoking welfare payments to pay for what you're proposing, like Campbell did. Even if we could, we’re investing in industrial expansion as well, which you know Campbell never bothered with. How are we meant to afford even a few more corps, much less a total mobilization of our reserves?”

“In whatever way is necessary!” Mosley snapped, frustrated at his dithering Secretary of War. “We shall place men into the reserves when the army is not actively engaged, we shall cut naval exercises while at peace, we shall build a dozen dozen tank factories to make the cost of a Haig less than ten pounds! I do not care what needs to be done, Thomas, we will DO it. I have plans, ones that cannot wait any longer. We have allowed an arch-enemy of the International to sit free for too long, and Campbell has bumbled another which will need to be set to rights. His failure proved that the armies we have now are insufficient. So we shall raise more, even if the number of tanks, of shells, of planes, of rifles, of cars will make us cry with the cost. I will not have us enslaved to fear over a balance in the chequebook when men labor and die in chains because we are too afraid to fight.”

A sigh later, Shaw resigns himself. “How many corps?”

“So many as you can raise.”

In late May, in a symbolic move of friendship, Luxembourg’s Germany sends a formal request for reinstitution to the International on the basis of its present borders. It is another (and more firm) acknowledgement that the DDR will respect the border changes which were forced upon it by the Second German-Soviet War, and a sign that the DDR will likewise respect Britain’s place as the morally and militarily foremost nation of that International.

In a speech broadcast to the entirety of Britain (and indeed the International) by the BBC later that night, Mosley warmly accepts the reintroduction of Germany to the International, calling upon all communist nations to “forget the foul excesses of Thälmann” and “never fear the German people; instead realize that they have suffered at the hands of their leadership, and that it is now our duty to assist them, insofar as we are able. We have done what I had hoped we should: we have, with our self-sacrifice, initiated a new age of altruism in the restored International. Now we must act upon that altruism, with every fiber of our beings we must. That begins, now, by helping one another; in the future, we shall continue this spirit by helping those who do not yet know that they need to be helped.”

Late next month, the Lion of the Seas passes away. Zachary Seaton had served first Britain and then the Commonwealth loyally, serving in a command capacity since the government of Rosebery through to that of Mosley, a full thirty years of outstanding success on the high seas. He had never lost a battle, even when critically outgunned, such as during the first German-Soviet War; “his victories at sea,” Campbell will claim at his funeral, “were as critical for the success of the Commonwealth as the victories which the Worker’s Army were able to secure on land.”

Seaton is awarded full state honors at his funeral, with such prestigious figures as Mosley and Albert Alexander, the Secretary of the Navy, attending.

After a week of lying in state, Seaton’s successor to the position of Grand Admiral is announced to be his protégé, Martin Mundy. Although nowhere near as skilled as his predecessor Mundy is still quite exceptional, and has a much mightier and technologically advanced navy than Seaton ever did. It is expected that he will make the Commonwealth as proud as his predecessor.

It has taken two and a half years to fully arm the ten new corps which Comrade Shaw has been able to train. It has taken tens of thousands of tanks, thousands of airplanes, thirty-thousand artillery pieces, and well over 500,000 uniformed men. It has taken careful balancing of the Commonwealth economy, drastic but temporary cuts in armed forces budgeting, and a massive increase in taxation levels in order to pay for the new armies. The people, even with benefits assured and unemployment down from Campbell’s time, still howl at their taxes, which the government time and again argues are necessary.

But, finally, all is ready.

“The truest enemy of international communism must necessarily be international capital,” a calm Mosley tells the meeting of the Worker’s Cabinet on a frigid day in early December, 1930. “Heretofore we have focused upon Europe, Asia, and Africa, respectively the birthplace of capitalism, its most immediate antecedent, and the field on which capital wrote its greatest excesses. We have never once turned our eyes to the new world, where proto-capital wreaked havoc, and this, I think, is to our peril.

“The United States of America has become mightier than any of us anticipated. When reactionary elements free from Europe, they flee to America. There is hardly any support for communism in America, and yet there are one-hundred and forty-four millions living within its borders, scarcely less than our own state boasts. It is the most industrialized nation on the planet, overflowing with proletarians engaging in worldwide commerce, and yet they work slavishly with no comprehension that there is a better way.

“What we do might be futile—it may be impossible to break the American beast that we have constructed. But we must try, for if we do not it will only grow all the stronger, and there will never again be a chance to construct truly international, trans-continental communism. We are going to war with the United States.”

The corps, commanders, and troop dispersions for the operation which Mosley quite unabashedly refers to as “Eighteen-Twelve.”

Overall, troops are most highly concentrated in the east, with particular concentrations around Sherbrooke, Kingston, and Windsor intended to break American defensive positions at Watertown, Burlington, and Detroit. Once these defensive positions are breached, the orders for the eastern corps are to dig in and begin a gradual occupation of New England, which, despite America’s massive population boom, nevertheless remains the industrial heartland of the nation; taking it will cripple President Al Smith’s ability to respond to the overwhelming influx of Commonwealth troops.

Each of the major troop concentrations has one of the Commonwealth’s best commanders leading; Campbell is located at Windsor, poised to break through at Detroit. Of the eastern corps, Detroit is the only operational region which is not tasked with the primary goal of capturing New England or Washington, D.C., but with distracting American forces and pulling them away from the true zone of conflict.

In the west the corps are much more spread out, frequently allowing for massive gaps in the line. Commonwealth presences around Montana and the Dakotas are primarily intended to draw American forces away from the more critical combat zones in the east, whereas the three highly-concentrated corps at Washington state will, it is hoped, be able to capture the highly-populated west coast and leave America with no mass industrial centers to resist the invasion.

On April 1st, 1931, the International is called to assist the Commonwealth in its war against the United States of America, the “arch-bastion of capital.” Although it is likely that many of the International states will be unable to provide serious aid, Mosley still insists on calling them on the basis of showing solidarity against the Americans.

In a short BBC broadcast describing the rationale for the conflict, Mosley largely repeats the justifications which he had shared with the Worker’s Cabinet: the United States is a refuge for reactionaries, an industrialized nation with no support for communism where the laborer is enslaved, and a powerful and international force for capital exchange. But he also goes further, playing on historical sentiment by announcing that “America is our problem. We birthed her, we populated her, we taught her how to behave. We infected her with the disease that is capital, when before she was free of it. It is now our job, however unenviable the task, to withdraw that poison from the blood of the nation, at whatsoever cost it may take.”

Massing American troops at Buffalo encourage the War Office to shift additional forces there just before the war is declared, and this strategy proves well-founded, as the major breaches which were relied upon to secure the invasion of New England are all accomplished within a fortnight. Orders are provided to begin digging in and advancing down the east coast, but, for now, all that can be done back in Britain is to await further news with a stiff upper lip. No American forces which are not retreating have been spotted in the east; it appears that the distraction forces in Montana and the Dakotas may have done their jobs in drawing American forces off west.

Even so, these early victories encourage some degree of trepidation within Britain. Even entirely lacking tanks as the Americans do, their armies have managed to inflict a surprising amount of casualties against even the best Commonwealth officers operating a fully modern and mechanized force. Even though the casualty ratios are presently in the Commonwealth’s favor, almost none are the resounding 3:1 which the War Office predicted would be necessary to ensure victory in the conflict. Per the Office’s report, “anything but an inflicted casualty ratio of 3:1 will likely prove unsustainable. This office estimates that the United States possesses 800,000 active duty personnel with the ability to mobilize another 4,000,000 or more. Reinforcements and equipment replacement thus cannot be maintained for the Commonwealth armies operating in America unless the Worker’s Army significantly outperforms the American armed forces, limiting casualties and discouraging American forces from attacking long enough for critical supplies to reach the front line.”

Early reports suggest that this may not be possible in America, and as yet the War Office has no alternative suggestions. Shaw grows tired of advising Mosley that the best course of action is to “see how the situation develops.”

When the news arrives in London, the clerks of the war ministry run singing to the streets. Girls dance in the fields with their lovers, and Mosley leaves Downing Street to a hail of cheers and cries of “forward, forward, forward!” as he makes his way to Westminster to give his speech.

“Capital, my friends,” the smiling Mosley cries from the central rostrum, “destroys itself once again! In its supreme selfishness, in its singular narrow-minded pursuit of what it desires with no care to aught else, the capitalist mind has surely never been surpassed. For though we fight a war of conversion, of destroying the capitalist body to allow the socialist soul to shine forth, capitalists cannot see their mortal peril. They see only what they have ever seen: another dog in their kennel, another fierce beast clawing for control over the paltry little land, or resources, or people which they dare to call their own, their property, as if life, land, and home could be owned!

“The Empire of Mexico has declared war upon the United States of America! A nation of fifty-eight million peoples, with 600,000 active personnel and 2,000,000 more in reserve, they have launched an invasion of the Chihuahua state, and even now cut into California, Nevada, and all the other undefended states to the south. Against such numbers, with a million British men and women marching upon them from the north already, the United States cannot possibly resist!

“In their lust for control, the capitalists in Mexico, ever greedy for more profit and wealth, have doomed themselves for all time. The future is a red one, should the great bastion of America fall, and I say it now must! The Mexicans have handed us the greatest victory we have ever achieved in our time, and may their God bless them, because all know that we shall not spare the rod when their time comes!”

Following the Mexican declaration of war, the conflict in America loses its nervous quality and continues at a much more formal and professional—if not quite relaxed—pace. The Worker’s Army has installed a communist government enough times before that the process is routine, and with the American army divided and much of New England already under Commonwealth occupation, America is now no more dangerous a foe than Japan was: still capable of overwhelming the Worker’s Army with its numbers and still to be respected, but not quite such a force of nature as it had seemingly been before.

As soon as the Mexican declaration of war reached the War Office in May they provided orders for Benjamin French, a defensive expert attached to the Buffalo breach, to travel across Pennsylvania and down into Maryland, capturing D.C. and the surrounding area and forcing the President to flee. This is accomplished by early June, when the White House is once again symbolically burned by an invading British force, this time for its ties to “slavery and arch-capital”; Al Smith and his government are reluctantly forced to retreat to the defensive capital at Denver, leaving the Eastern Theater free to install one of America’s few communists, reporter John “Jack” Reed, as an interim leader for America before the formal election of a new communist government can take place. With New York about to fall, that day appears to be closer than ever.

The two major battles currently taking place in America are at Boston in the east and Grand Rapids in the central United States. If Boston’s defending garrison falls then the last major northern port in America will fall with it, whereas Grand Rapids’s collapse would ensure the occupation of Michigan, forcing more American troops to be rerouted away from the eastern theater.

Late June and early July sees massive victories for the Commonwealth, making the Independence Day celebrations throughout the United States somewhat muted. First, Benjamin French successfully captures Norfolk and forces the U.S. Navy out of the harbor, directly into the waiting United Fleet under Mundy. Mundy, eager to prove himself after long standing in the shadow of his predecessor Seaton, absolutely eviscerates the American fleet, proving simultaneously that the brand-new Mosley-Class Dreadnaughts are the true titans of the seas. Only a few screens are lost in exchange for almost the entire combat-effective American navy.

Shortly after Independence Day passes, the last defenders of Boston are finally routed from the city. The casualty reports which filter to the War Department have the entire office abuzz, as Leopold Hannover was able to successfully inflict a 6:1 casualty ratio upon the American defenders before capturing the city, a much-needed reduction in American forces which will certainly go a long way toward ensuring the northeast can be secured and armies established in defensive positions before the Americans are truly able to launch a counterattack—if, of course, they are ever able to.

Although the Americans are able to regroup sufficiently well to launch a coordinated strike in Cleveland, it is too little, too late. Most of America’s core industrial territory has already been lost by the time the American commanders finally put up earnest effort to breach the Commonwealth lines, and such important cities as Philadelphia and New York have long since fallen. Al Smith’s government in Denver is struggling to maintain the façade of central control in a nation which is divided by war, and Mexican and British troops stare at each other warily across the wooded hills of northern California, having already bisected the nation’s west.

It is in this environment of uncertainty, with Mexican armies rapidly approaching Denver from the south and millions of Americans already dead to Commonwealth bullets, that Al Smith surrenders to Mosley’s government in mid-August.

The reasoning behind Smith’s surrender to the Commonwealth of all parties will puzzle historians for centuries. Many rightly point out that America’s victory in the war could have been virtually guaranteed had Smith simply surrendered Chihuahua to Mexico, and even so late as mid-August surrendering to Mexico and redeploying America’s forces might have brought success. So why sign over the entire American government to Britain before seeking a peace with Mexico?

Most contemporary arguments suggest a combination of lost hope following the massive Commonwealth victories and mounting concerns about the Commonwealth blockade and the number of lives which would be lost if critical supplies were cut off from America from all sides (for recall that all America’s ports were by this time occupied or blockaded, and supplies were not reaching the States from Mexico or Canada, which were both enemy territories). Nevertheless this explanation is unsatisfactory in many respects, and the question of why Smith surrendered will be a contentious issue for all time.

The first President of the People’s Republic of America—installed, of course—is Jack Reed, the leader of the caretaker government established by Commonwealth troops in Washington several months before. He isn’t democratically elected, it’s true, but that’s entirely because America isn’t yet prepared for socialism; once the Communist Party of the United States properly lays the groundwork for communism in the land that was once the bastion of reaction, there will certainly be legitimate elections to replace him.

How the groundwork for communism will be lain in America given its almost uniform antipathy to the doctrine is a much more curious proposition. American citizens sit and stare in shock at the red hammer-and-sickle flag is raised above courthouses throughout the nation. Many, particularly immigrants, weep openly at the lost dream of America, the dream of a land free from communism. Against all odds and all hopes, communism has come to America in the most stark of ways.

Many attempt to resist, of course. A few towns simply kill any government official that attempts to come close, while a few isolated regions declare total independence, or continued loyalty to the government of Al Smith, even though Smith is presently jailed in Washington. In response, Reed declares martial law and begins the most extreme series of purges ever seen in a communist nation. Three-fourths of the army is executed, and 15 million people die at the hands of Reed’s jackbooted death-squads. He claims that “such extreme measures are necessary in the bastion of capital,” and they are certainly effective. But the memories of fathers ripped away from daughters and shot on street-corners, of wealthy women raped by platoons before having their throats slit, of the intentional programs in the south which gave blacks power over whites in exchange for loyalty to the Party… such memories are not easily forgotten. They will shape the horrible future of America in the decades to come.

While the Worker’s Army prepares to sail out in America after remaining behind long enough to stabilize Reed’s weak regime, a sudden and entirely unanticipated Irish rebellion rocks the isles.

Fighting for Irish independence as well as the liberalization of the Commonwealth, this rebellion has been a long time in the coming, and is extremely well-organized. Since as early as the 1910s there had been serious calls for Irish independence even despite the major work that Principal Secretary Keane’s father had done for the Irish in Britain, and despite the fact that the Principal Secretary himself was, of course, an Irishman. After decades of repression and careful monitoring of these independence cliques, they have finally stockpiled enough materiel to pose a serious threat to the state.

That is, they would pose a threat if the state were not entirely willing to utilize its greatest weapons of war against these “counter-revolutionaries and ungrateful enemies of their countryman Keane,” as Mosley puts it. Tanks and planes roll into Ireland in vast numbers, commanded by Frederick Saxe’s son Charles, who has taken the surname Windsor.

Although the rebels will gain control of most of Ireland and eventually even pass to Glasgow via a few stolen shipping barges before all is said and done, they cannot resist the modern firepower of a fully mechanized army; they are put down viciously, and Ireland returned to peaceful quiet. They do not ever attempt to rise again.

Which is fortunate, for the Worker’s Army needs no distractions for what comes next.

Although Mosley has been popular, even wildly so, a shadow of doubt lays upon his Secretariat which cannot easily be ignored, and that is nothing less than the Worker’s Army’s defeat in Japan. Although Archibald Campbell has remained silent about the defeat as ordered, even silence and censorship cannot completely prevent whispers that it was Mosley’s coup that doomed Red Dawn, and that, even so bad as things were under Campbell, at least the Worker’s Army would not have been led to shame and disgrace were it not for Mosley’s refusal to support the invasion. Britain, and then the Commonwealth, only ever lost to a single foe—to lonely Japan.

These whispers are, of course, counterrevolutionary and must be silenced at all costs. But, as the newly-gutted Scotland Yard have hesitantly told Mosley time and again, it is difficult to silence words without the degree of power and terror which the institution held under Campbell, power which Mosley is simply not willing to return to it.

The alternative solution, as the General Secretary sees it, is a Second Red Dawn. And why not? The army which can now operate in Japan is almost four times as large as the force Campbell brought, and with the ability to stage landing sites in Korea, there is little chance of getting bogged down by the Japanese. What cannot be conquered with words can be conquered by deed, and the stain of defeat wiped away.

“My friends, I come to you today to inform you of this government’s declaration of war against Japan, a decision which, I know, fills many of you with trepidation. The defeat in Red Dawn still haunts us all, and it would, I know, seem that the recent decisions of this government to target only those nations which are among the strongest for the benevolent hand of internationalism would seem to contradict the very doctrine which I previously espoused.

“I stand here now to reassure you about the confidence of this government in success, and about my personal belief that this war will be critical to expanding our influence in China, influence which was lost following the collapse of the Qing dynasty.

“Japan is a mighty nation which is highly defensible, and with this I will not argue. They are capitalists, but they are also fanatics who guard the body of their emperor as sacrosanct, and will fight to the last in order to protect him. This fierce devotion was what led to our forces being overwhelmed in Red Dawn.

“Now, however, we are better-prepared for this war. We have almost four times the quantity of transports and men ready to fight as we had during Red Dawn, and the ability to make landings in Korea, recently annexed to Japan, before attempting to take the main island. We will be able to establish defensive perimeters and land en masse, bypassing Japanese defenses and overwhelming them now as they once did us.

“But, moreover, Japan has many allies among the Chinese warlords, allies which we might occupy and educate in the precepts of communism now rather than later, when they are mightier. This war serves the dual purpose of crushing the last imperial power in Asia while also providing this government inroads into China, which we might one day use to secure a fully red China. I will not pretend the war will be easy, but this is no America—there is no question that we will win.”

-Speech of Mosley to the Worker’s Parliament, May 8th, 1932.

The initial “hot landing” in Korea proves a resounding success, a far easier and more practical plan than Mosley had expected it to be. Field Marshals Campbell and Haig had advised it, warning that there was the potential of overwhelming force beating back Commonwealth forces if they were not strongly concentrated at each point of engagement: Korea, Satsuma, and finally Honshu. The doctrine would come to be adopted far and wide under the principle of “overwhelming concentrated force,” what the Germans would call the “Schwerpunktprinzip.” Although some commanders would advise that this principle be downsized to a tactical level and utilized in combat rather than as a strategic principle, this is frequently dismissed--the Comintern has men to spare, and why not use them to overwhelm?

By mid-June the entirety of Korea has fallen and the lone Japanese garrison there has been defeated, paving the way for the invasion of Satsuma, providing a landing zone which can be used to transfer soldiers directly to Honshu.

“The action at Nagasaki and Fukuoka is as close to a real representation of Campbell’s redemption as can ever be found. Here was the ex-Secretary, the man who ordered tens of thousands of Commonwealth citizens executed and had been overthrown after a decade of tyranny, fighting next to the very man who had carried out the coup against him, General Francis Grenfell.

“Archibald Campbell is a multifaceted figure, and the record does not serve us well in attempting to discern what he thought at all the various moments when he was tested by Secretary Mosley and his government. Did Campbell anticipate that the second Red Dawn was an attempt to pin further failure on himself? Did he believe that the operation was pointless—did he even perhaps feel fear facing the Japanese again? On this the sources are silent, and we can speak only to actions.

“The story which Campbell’s deeds tell is one of service, valor, and loyalty. Campbell and Grenfell entered Nagasaki and Fukuoka with no discernable animosity between them, took up positions outside the respective ports and shelled them until captured, established impressive fortifications, and then between them inflicted over 300,000 Japanese casualties against the mobilized forces which Emperor Hirohito’s Minister of War, Hisaichi Terauchi, continued to send against the landings. Their successes provided for Commonwealth troops to land significant forces at Satsuma, and to strike at Honshu as Campbell’s plan had predicted all along.

“The man had come full circle. From underling clawing his way up to arrogant secretary and back again to servant, Campbell had been humbled. And he had accepted it.”

-Kershaw, “Campbell: Humbled”

Following the landings at Satsuma, when the remainder of the Worker’s Army was still being prepared to be ferried onto the island for the assault on Honshu, word is received from Trotsky in the Soviet Union that a sudden pouring forth of Japanese troops from Sakhalin island had breached his defenses and begun to capture much of Siberia.

The commander in Korea, Marshal Lester Haig, dutifully sends six armies north in order to engage the Japanese, but both Haig and Keane see this Japanese distraction as an opportunity more than a threat. If the main Japanese forces in the war are distracted to the north and pouring through Sakhalin, where are the forces which would defend central Japan, the forces that rebuffed the Worker’s Army the last time a Red Dawn was attempted?

Although some forces make their way to Satsuma and cross over to Honshu, three corps are left in reserve, and a second naval invasion of Tokyo is once again planned.

Meanwhile, Pakistani and Turkmeni forces have successfully occupied one of Japan’s allies, Xinjiang, and have enforced a communal government.

Long exposed to oppression at the hands of the Chinese state and with few real resources and no industry available to them, the Xinjiang Commune is a prototypical example of a nation which, conventionally, would not be prepared for communism. The insistence upon the part of the new “Emir” of Xinjiang that the nation be referred to as the Xinjiang “Islamic” Commune is only a further example, for the Uighur do not understand that religion itself is antithetical to communism.

Mosley, however, is quite pleased at the development. “It does not matter,” says he, “whether or not the Uighur people are prepared for communism or not. That it has been enforced gives us a path into their government, and, gradually, we will shape and prepare them for the coming of true communism, when they will be reintegrated into the larger Chinese nation. The maneuvers we make now are preparation only, preparation for a greater China which is lasting, and red as the laborer’s blood.”

On October 22nd, with Japanese forces divided between the Commonwealth incursions into southern Honshu and the attempted invasion of Siberia, the three corps tasked with the capture of Tokyo finally make their landings.

To the shock and surprise of the Worker’s Army, it is discovered that Hirohito is, against all odds, still in the capital. Apparently, although the War Ministry had urged the Emperor to vacate the capital and travel into the countryside, Hirohito was over-confident about the security of his nation following the last attempt to strike against them and refused to leave his traditional haunts. Given the choice between the Imperial centers at Kyoto and Tokyo, the Japanese government chose to retain Hirohito in Tokyo, which was seen as a more secure location than the under-threat Kyoto.

This decision will cost them greatly.

Lester Haig, Benjamin French, and William Grenwell have begun to capture Tokyo and its outlying suburbs with all speed, utilizing tanks and sappers to blast through fortifications and inching ever-closer to the heart of the city. Much of Tokyo already burns from fire-bombing, but what of the paper town still stands after the flames die down will be subject to the treads of tanks. The Emperor will not leave his burning city.

Simultaneous with the fire-bombing of Tokyo, the governments of Mongolia and the Yunnan Clique surrender to the invading forces of the International, leaving only the Qinghai Clique to be defeated. Led by the self-proclaimed new Emperors of China, the Muslim Ma family under Ma Hongbin, the Hongxian Emperor, defeating the Qinghai will be critical to ensuring a lasting future for China without a monarchy. But breaking the Hongxian Emperor is for another day.

In Mongolia a People’s Republic is established without issue, but in Yunnan the matter is more difficult. Based solely upon the power of the local warlord Long Yun, the Yunnan Clique does not have an alternative vector for leadership; there is no local government outside Yun’s personally selected officials and close family to take power from him, nor a strong tradition of independence in the region. The Shanxi has not been even a semi-autonomous state since the 18th century.

Eventually it is decided that local peasant governments will come together to select leaders who will then be sent to the Commonwealth for education in internationalist doctrine, eventually to return and take control of their own government. In the interim the Shanxi is left under the control of a government of local Han bureaucrats, who will be replaced by a proper communist government when the peasant leaders are prepared. The Vietnamese and Thai People’s Republics station armies in Shanxi to ensure that, unlike the Qing regency, the Shanxi will not collapse in the interim.

On November 8th, with Tokyo in ashes and the suburbs already completely occupied by Commonwealth forces, the tanks of Benjamin French press forward to the Imperial Palace within Tokyo. Before French can begin firing upon what remains of the structure in an effort to clear a safe path to the Imperial bunker which is known to be inside, an agent of Emperor Hirohito, waving the white flag, issues forth with an offer of surrender.

The proposition is intriguing, and Mosley seizes upon it immediately. Emperor Hirohito, seeing the willingness of the Commonwealth to destroy his people and his nation in order to achieve victory, agrees to an abdication without any further fighting, but only on the condition that he is permitted to remain the spiritual Emperor of Japan. He will no longer retain any political power, but will be permitted to remain within his old residence in Kyoto, subject to the wishes of the new government, which will be secularized rather than made fully atheist, although it will no longer be taught that the Emperor or his line are divine.

Although against the wishes of many in the Worker’s Parliament for its unusual allowance for privilege, Mosley permits it on the basis of the “Japanese condition.”

“No Japanese man,” says Mosley, “would permit a government the installer of which had murdered their monarch, who is as a God to these people. In truth I had hoped to keep him alive regardless, and though this agreement gives the Emperor more wealth and authority than I would wish, it still makes him nothing more than a useful puppet. It is simply another Shogunate, but this Shogun is a communist.”

That Shogun is Kyuichi Tokuda, a national-socialist with hard-left tendencies in matters separate from that of Japanese prestige and national integrity, a just fit for the new government which, Mosley hopes, will transition Japan from extreme nationalism to internationalism in the coming decades.

Hirohito is stripped of his godly lineage, forced to renounce control of the government publicly and through radio broadcasts, and allowed only to respond to "Hirohito-san," not "Hirohito-sama" or "Tenno". Nevertheless it is acknowledged that he has a special place within Japanese society, and is returned to Kyoto with honor and permitted to continue carrying out his spiritual role as a guiding light for the people… for the moment. In the future, of course, the secularizing tendencies of the government will turn atheistic, and the Emperor and his family will eventually be done away with as unnecessary.

But that is not the case for the moment. For now, Tokuda rules with Hirohito as his subject. And while the Ma family was unfortunately permitted to continue proclaiming themselves Emperors of China in the peace, Mosley knows that the future for them is a bleak one, and their freedom is temporary.

What matters is the achievement: the second Red Dawn. Japan is a communist nation, the shadow hanging over Mosley’s government has dissipated, and there is only one foe left to tame.

That foe is something of an unexpected one: the Empire of Mexico under Empress Maria Josepha I.

At first glance, Mexico is not a particularly auspicious nation. Although it has a strong industry and army it is something of a laughingstock outside of the Americas, a nation virtually subject to the United States and wracked by labor protests and fascistic attempts to seize control of the monarchy, which has long since adopted constitutional limits to stem the dissent roiling within. It appears anything but stable, even if it is wealthy.

In the past Mexico would not have even registered as an important target to Comrade Mosley, but recent developments have changed his opinion. Presently fascism is a doctrine which is quite literally the subject of jokes, having only ever existed in such third-rates as Honduras, Serbia and the Dominican Republic. Yet fascism is a specifically anti-communistic doctrine, and Mexico is the strongest nation on the planet that seriously threatens to fall under fascist control. What’s more, Mexico lays claim to much of the American southwest, and with the continuing guerrilla war in America underway thanks to President Reed’s weakened government, the intervention of Mexico in America could spell Reed’s toppling, and the rise of a second nation in the new world to threaten the International. The annexation of so much land, especially California, would immediately raise Mexico to a level of rough parity with the United States for power.

With Chihuahua already returned to Mexico and the state growing more powerful by the day (it’s now the top immigrant destination for people fleeing the Comintern since the United States has fallen), Mosley decides that the time to bring Mexico down is now, before it is a major threat, rather than after it has already become a problem which cannot be contained.

Yet speaking the plan and actuating it are two very different things.

Although Mexico does not nearly reach the immense population of the United States, Mexico’s population is much more densely centralized in the central plateau around Mexico City, and the government’s highly advanced rail network makes the potential speed of Mexican mobilization quite a daunting prospect.

What’s more, the city of Acapulco is one of the largest in the new world, and even rivals London in size. If it is permitted to mobilize the fullness of its working masses it could unleash dozens of divisions against the Worker’s Army entirely on its own.

The invasion of Mexico, then, is prepared with the population density of the country and its highly defensible capital in mind. The decision is made to strike from the west, which is the last thing Maria Josepha’s government will expect. Five landings—at Cololo, Acapulco, Collataro, Tuxtla, and Tapachula, with the vast majority of forces landing at the first three zones—will be accompanied by two corps marching from Belize into the Yucatan, to further divert Mexican resources. Acapulco will be captured before it has the chance to mobilize any forces, following which Lester Haig, Benjamin French, and Archibald Campbell will lead their respective corps into active operations: Haig to secure the northwest, French the northeast, and Campbell the capital. While the former two commanders secure and dig into the mountains and hills of the north to ensure no Mexican armies guarding the border with America can break into the Commonwealth-occupied southern regions, Campbell will capture the capital and then swing south to defeat the last of the Mexican forces trapped between the Yucatan and southern landings, winning the war in one fell swoop.

Or, at least, that is the plan as Mosley sells it to the Worker’s Parliament.

When war is declared it, as planned, catches the Mexican government almost entirely off-guard. With the majority of their armies in the north garrisoning the American border and awaiting the possible order to invade the United States, the armed forces find themselves entirely unready for a strike in the center of their nation, and the critical landing sites are all largely secured. Although there is fierce resistance at Tuxtla which will prevent the southern spearhead from pushing toward the Yucatan as had been intended, the most critical landing sites are all occupied within the first few days of the operation.

The Worker’s Army also proves itself quite proficient in its initial battles, with Charles Windsor beating back Francisco Ruiz in Bacalar, even though Ruiz had the advantage of the jungle terrain slowing down the Commonwealth’s new Saxe-2 model tanks.

Victory will depend upon garrisoning the north against the rapidly returning Mexican forces there, however, and capturing Mexico City and beginning the installation of a provisional government before serious resistance can rise. Many mobilized regiments already prepare defenses in Mexico City, and any delay could brook the possibility of being overwhelmed, as in the first iteration of Red Dawn; the war is far from over yet.

Thankfully, the second stage of the occupation goes off without a hitch. Haig and French successfully occupy the northern front, blocking off Mexican reinforcements in the process, while Campbell and his allies lock down the central plateau around Mexico City and begin the harsh process of bombing and street-by-street fighting which has, by now, become one of the staples of the Worker’s Army.

Although there is heavy resistance to the south in Oaxaca and Minatitlan which require the diversion of several corps away from the plateau, after a long delay and heavy street-by-street fighting Marshal Campbell proves capable of capturing the city with only a single supporting corps, and that after inflicting horrifying casualties upon the enemy.

As usual, when the capital falls a new provisional government is installed, this time under M.N. Roy, an Indian intellectual who had been operating as a communist agitator within Mexico for some time. Although the proclamation of Roy as President is something of an admission of defeat given that it implies that there is no Mexican citizen with communist credentials qualified to become President, this view is harshly punished and censored from the official record. It is unfortunately also the truth, however; a bastion of reaction like America was before it, Mexico has almost no native communists, and preciously few which are whatsoever educated.

When Roy was installed in mid-November and Campbell began his march to the south to relieve the armies engaged there, the war in Mexico appeared all but won. This is, to put it bluntly, no longer the case.

Two disastrous reverses, one at Oaxaca and the other at Villahermosa, threaten the entire invasion. Fighting in unfamiliar jungle terrain and learning far too late of the unreliability of the Saxe-2 tank, rather than inflicting 3:1 losses as is typical, the Worker’s Army instead suffers 1:8 losses, and even 1:10! The defeats are horrendous, as they trap many corps entirely behind enemy lines; several corps will be lost in the process, and those which remain will find it almost impossible to reinforce sufficiently well to resist the Mexican armies now spreading out to restore control of the countryside to Maria Josepha’s government.

But what’s more, these victories have reinvigorated the Mexican people and encouraged them to believe that success is within their grasp. With entire corps of the Worker’s Army collapsing and many others not combat effective, the War Office nervously wonders whether they are correct—at the very least, something will need to be done immediately to stabilize the situation.

But even by the end of January nothing can be thought of which would give the Commonwealth the foothold it needs to go back on the offensive, or even just to rest and re-arm. The Commonwealth’s battered corps have regrouped around Tulancingo, but they are disorganized, demoralized, and undermanned to a fault, and Archibald Campbell is prevented from reinforcing them due to a protracted battle in Queretaro. Mexico City is already under siege by a small band of monarchist loyalists, and much of the south is properly falling back into the government’s hands. The Mexican Army has even grown so bold that they have begun to assail the fortifications in the north which have been thrown up by Haig and French’s groups, the last combat-effective divisions within Mexico.

Mosley is despondent. “This is my Red Dawn,” he writes in his diary on the morning of the 17th. “There can be no recovery from a defeat of this sort. Losing a war after investing an army of twenty full corps… I am set to one-up Archibald in this. And I wonder what shall happen to me if I do? Will the Commonwealth come to the vicious totalitarian cycle I saw in Archibald’s rule? I hope not, but I fear it. And the worst truth of all is that I have done nothing but make this future for myself, by being so damnably over-confident. Well, if it is my bed, I shall lie in it—and quite probably die in it.”

The rest of the government is not quite so fatalistic as Comrade Mosley, however. Thomas Shaw, for one, sees the possibility of a neutral peace at least being agreed upon if the United Fleet can destroy the Mexican Navy, and orders French forward to occupy the navy’s base at Saltillo. If it can be forced out and destroyed then an immediate demand for peace might be met with tolerance on the part of Maria Josepha, who has been ruling from the hardly idyllic Chihuahua state since the Worker’s Army captured Mexico City.

The successes are far greater than any could possibly have imagined, as Lester Haig, an offensive rather than defensive expert, nevertheless manages to produce the “Miracle at Tepic”: an inflicted casualty ratio higher than 63:1, the highest kill ratio in a battle of over 100,000 souls that the world has ever been able to confirm. With a quarter of a million Mexican men bleeding and dying on the fields of Tepic, a further shock rocks the monarchy less than a week later when French succeeds in forcing the Mexican navy out into Tampico Bay, only to have every vessel be destroyed to the last by the awaiting Admiral Hope.

The victories are more than simply demoralizing for the Mexican state, they are catastrophic. Without the navy there is no ability for Maria Josepha to flee the nation, and with Haig’s incredible victory at Tepic it has been made clear that no Mexican army will ever reach further south to reinforce the armies already there. Although the Commonwealth is yet outnumbered and outgunned, a careful campaign could certainly turn the entire conflict around and secure victory regardless—and even if it failed, it would bleed Mexico so bone-white that it would never recover.

With the lives of her people (and herself) in mind, Maria Josepha and her government thus sue for peace. They will permit a communist government to take control of Mexico, but in exchange they demand safe passage to Argentina, which has recently been captured in a coup by the army officer Juan Domingo Peron, who styles himself as fascistic (and certainly anti-communist) in outlook.

Although Mosley is hesitant to make a concession of this variety, to allow a monarch to flee to a country which is explicitly anti-communist, he recalls the despair he felt just a few weeks before, and how prepared he was to resign his position over the catastrophe in Mexico. Deciding that any win at all is already astonishingly good luck, Mosley thus agrees to Maria Josepha’s terms, using President M.N. Roy’s foreign nationality as an excuse for interfering in the typical policy which allowed local leaders to decide their elites’ fate. If all goes according to his plans, her temporary freedom will mean nothing at any rate.

With the Proletarian State of Mexico joined to the International Jack Reed’s United States stabilizes slightly, as guards are no longer needed for its southern borders and can be redeployed to put down anti-communist uprisings elsewhere in the nation; Mexican troops, after undergoing their own purge, even participate in keeping the American rebels down, although many consider it a temporary measure given the extent of the guerrilla conflict in America.

But, for now, it is a time to rest. The Worker’s Army has been on campaign almost constantly since 1931, and it has earned time to survey its accomplishments.

Before it was the Worker’s Army, the Royal Army of Great Britain and Ireland had fought for the pride of the monarchy for centuries. In engagements spanning from the Europe to furthest Asia the Royal Army fought and conquered in the long 19th century, and did her nation proud. She never lost a war, although there were many ill-fated battles in that long age.

When the 20th century finally dawned cool and bright, the Royal Army and her counterpart, the Royal Navy, no doubt believed that this would be the future, to continue on be for all time. Alas for those who held such hopes, for it was not to be; the Second Glorious Revolution ousted the monarchy and established internationalism as the creed of the new Worker’s Commonwealth, placing pride on what was before shameful: the factory-worker, the irreligious, the inferior race, the sexually deviant. They were raised up and made the rulers, and the rulers cast down and made slave.

The almost cataclysmic effects of decolonization threatened to shake the new Worker’s Army to its core, but it persevered. Its men and women trained harder, used more advanced technology, and mechanized their forces. And although it has faced defeat and humiliation, it still finished victorious, the noblest and proudest military force the British Isles have ever seen. The Royal Army has been eclipsed by its offspring: larger, mightier, and more advanced. Led by Archibald Campbell, the foremost tactician of the 20th century (and perhaps its worst politician), the Worker’s Army has almost single-handedly made internationalism a reality.

And it is a reality; quite a stark one.

The decision to strike Mexico was a strategic one, but not merely because it was a threat to Reed’s America, or because it was beginning to assert itself as a new bastion of the counter-revolution as America had before it.

No, the matter of Mexico was chiefly a matter of markets.

With Mexico having fallen to the International, nine of the largest direct markets in the world (save China, of course) are now proletarian. Moreover, Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa are all almost entirely proletarian centers, leaving only South America and isolated states, surrounded on all sides by Comintern members, behind.

The new internationalism is at hand. For thirty years, communism was a doctrine to be enforced at the point of a sword, because the capitalist classes were simply too mighty to have their power wrested from them in any other way. In that time, out of necessity, it was required that the communist nations of the planet trade with the capitalist nations, because the world itself continued to be dominated by capital, continued to require a transfer of goods.

Comrade Mosley now asks the question: what would happen if all trade from the Comintern to members outside of the International suddenly stopped? What would happen if two-thirds of the world’s markets suddenly closed?

On August 2nd, 1934, that is precisely what happens. On orders from Oswald Mosley, Principal Secretary of the Worker’s Commonwealth and the Communist International, the Comintern ceases all business with capitalist nations until such a time as their leadership peacefully surrenders power, transferring their governments over to the proletariat.

Some nations, like China, naturally resist well: they have long been independent of foreign goods, and their peasants are so numerous that the loss of a few million to famine are no great threat. But most nations do not fare so luckily.

The first to fall are the smallest, nations like Luxembourg and Iceland, lands which starve or lose everything but a hellish, hand-to-mouth existence without international trade; they are proletarian in less than a year. The next are those which are small and unable to form federations, like the Balkan nations Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria, which can survive without international trade, but which are thrown into horrible economic depression and terrorism without an influx from money abroad; they collapse within two years. Next come the last colonial nations, Belgium and Portugal, which struggle to extract more and more resources from their colonies, but cannot weather the storm of depression and revolution at home; they fall within three.

China is brought into the International in the early 1940s in the Yellow River Campaign, which unites all of China under a centralized communist government and accepts them into the International, finally making every state in Asia truly proletarian.

Last to resist, and perhaps most surprisingly, are the South American states. Although Central America falls after only four years of a loose trading federation established in 1935, the South American nations, capitalist all with the lone exception of Venezuela, recognize the threat posed by world communism. Overcoming national rivalries and racial tensions, these states band together to create the Federation of South American States, a strong federal system with shared intelligence, militaries, markets, and repressive measures. They keep communism brutally repressed for thirty full years, until finally racial tensions in Brazil and Argentina cause the collapse of the shared market into a revolution.

By 1970, the world is a red one.

But, as time passes, all things shift, change, and decay.

Communism was a benevolent ideology (at least ostensibly) which was nevertheless of questionable benefit. Although it did much in upsetting previous power relations, destroying superstition, and promoting equality of class, in most other ways it was devastating; as a world system it certainly was. Hundreds of millions died in the wars, repressive efforts, and purges which were necessary to enforce the ideology, tens of millions more were destined to die in decades-long guerilla conflicts in China, South Asia, and South America, and billions more lived for centuries under a repressive world regime which had abandoned difference of class, race, and sex for a different world of privilege: membership in the Party.

Human nature is one of competition. Under capitalist systems this competition was often violent and always exploitative, and Marx rightly pointed out that this need not--indeed, should not--be so. But human beings desire a means of betterment; they desire more money, more property, more space. They wish, in some way, to stand above others. That can be achieved peacefully, even productively, through regulated systems which encourage competition and reward success without placing onerous burdens upon the rest of society in the rewarding, and which do not make those rewarded so wealthy as to be akin to their own class, rather than merely exemplary proletarians. But Marx did not coherently advocate such a system of competition, and indeed did not even seem to believe in it. Marx missed human nature. And, even if he had not, the growing dominance of the Parties rebelled against the idea of any such regulation, any such limits.

Capitalism proved fatally flawed. But without capitalism to spur competition and contest, and with the new communist world order only awarding true benefits to members in its Party elite, the world’s economies stifle and stagnate. After the fall of the Federation of South American States in 1970 and the end of any visible threat against the communist world order--and, implicitly, the need to compete against an opponent--the world economy backslides into producing only what is necessary in order to subsist at the minimal levels set as being necessary by the world government, the International Coalition of Communist Parties. Under the ICCP's trivially basic production targets famines are common, and technological and industrial innovation are miniscule. Cellular phones, first invented in 2035, spur one of the few commodity bubbles the world would experience after the collapse of capital in 1970.

Such a system of privilege, repression, and wasted potential could not last forever. It does not, of course, beginning its years-long collapse in 2183 under the weight of its own top-heavy doctrine; the dream of equality which was espoused in the early days never quite meeting articulation.

In 1934, the future looks bright. The International is strong, because there are still capitalist nations to struggle against. Victory is near, and times under Mosley are bright, compared to the dark future of the police state which will come. People cheer and throw roses in front of Archibald Campbell’s car, not knowing that his fall from grace was not the end of the 'bad times', and they, and their descendants, will know misery from his successes.