Successful 19th century liberal revolutions

[eurofed]

This scenario’s main theme is a greater success of liberalism in the early-mid 19th century across the Western world, especially as it concerns the 1848 revolutions. It is combined with my signature AH theme of greater success of big states. The PoD is at the end of the ARW as it concerns the Western Hemisphere, although its effects for Europe do not get noticeable until the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

ITTL the Patriots reaped a little more military and diplomatic success during the last phase of the ARW so in addition to its OTL gains the USA also got Upper Canada at the peace table. The area joined the Union as two free states during the early 19th century. American Loyalists mostly went to Quebec, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland. The USA approved the Land Ordinance of 1784 that regulated the status of US territories with the antislavery provision proposed by Jefferson that forbid slavery in the territories. This created a precedent that caused Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas to join the Union as free states. However, the Southern states successfully lobbied the Congress for the admission of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana as slave states. The example of its western neighbors eventually persuaded Virginia to implement gradual emancipation of slaves. This in turn created a political domino that led Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina to adopt the same policy. When the Upper South states embraced gradual abolition, they mostly dealt with their Blacks by selling slaves into the remaining slave slaves. This caused the vast majority of the Black population in the United States to get concentrated in the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states.

US control of the Great Lakes and British inability to meddle with Native tribes in the region defused Anglo-American tensions during the Napoleonic Wars enough to avert the War of 1812. A couple decades later, however, rising tensions in Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia against reactionary British colonial rule and local oligarchic elites caused a republican and democratic uprising backed by American sympathizers. Greater development because of the influx of Loyalist settlers and repressive Tory policies drove the Maritime colonies to follow the pattern of OTL Upper Canada. Widespread resentment among liberal English-speaking and Franco-Canadian settlers against reactionary British policies, US support, and parallel revolutionary turmoil in Britain gave momentum to the uprising. Border incidents during the conflict gave the USA a pretext to intervene, sealing the success of the rebellion. Because of recent revolutionary upheaval at home, Britain was unwilling to engage in another long and costly conflict with the Americans on their turf to keep a few rebellious colonies under its thumb, and recognized the independence of Lower Canada and the Maritime colonies.

The Canadian revolutionaries negotiated a few safeguards and guarantees for the language and legal system of the Franco-Canadians with the US government. Lower Canada (renamed Quebec), New Brunswick (renamed Acadia), and Nova Scotia joined the USA as free states. American control of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence waterway gave the USA an overwhelming advantage over Britain about settler colonization, economic development, and military force projection in Western Canada, which became more and more evident with westward expansion of the Frontier. This and the loss of Quebec and Acadia persuaded the British to cede Rupert’s Land and the Pacific Northwest to the USA. British colonies in North America got limited to Newfoundland, Vancouver Island, and the British West Indies.

Inclusion of the Canadian and Upper South states in the free section gradually gave it a decisive advantage in the federal government. All efforts to ensure retention of a political balance between the free and slave sections proved wholly unfeasible even with the help of the three-fifths rule as the slaveholding area gradually got limited to the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states. Frantic efforts by the slaveholders to compensate by territorial expansion drove the USA into victorious wars with Spain and Mexico. The pretexts for the conflicts arose from Spain’s refusal to discuss a peaceful purchase of its Caribbean colonies and the political status of the breakaway republics of Texas, Rio Grande, and California, which seceded from Mexico under the control of pro-US settlers.

Backwardness and chronic political instability of Spain and Mexico combined with the growing might of the USA gave the Americans an easy victory in both conflicts. The result was the US annexation of Cuba, East Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Texas, Rio Grande, California, the Southwest, and northern Mexico down to the Tropic of Cancer. Cuba, East Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico joined the Union as slave states. The slaveholders lobbied to divide Florida, Texas, Rio Grande, and California into several states (two for Florida, California, and Rio Grande, four for Texas) in the expectation that all of them but North California would support slavery.

The Congress approved the division plan, but reality frustrated the slavers’ expectations since a wave of free-soil settlers caused the northern Texan state and South California to vote against slavery in the end. Moreover, the precedent of state division and long-standing grievances between the Appalachian and lowland sections of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina inspired the counties of western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and northwestern North Carolina to secede from their respective states and form two new states. By the mid-19th century, purchase of Alaska from Russia and the North-Western Territory from Britain rounded up US rule of the North American continent from the Artic Polar Circle to the Tropic of Cancer.

By the half of the 19th century, perspectives increasingly turned bleak for slavery in the USA. The free section was getting overwhelmingly dominant in demographic, economic, and political terms, veto-proof supermajority in the federal government was within its grasp, ever less willing to cater or appease the interests of the slaveholding section, and increasingly prone to deem slavery immoral, outdated, and unsustainable, a burden and disgrace for the nation. This translated into increasingly severe legal limits to slavery in the Western territories and free-soil settlers steadily out-crowded slaveholding ones. The federal government increasingly adjusted the economic policies and infrastructure projects of the Union to favor Northern interests. The Congress and the free states repealed or nullified provisions for the return of fugitive slaves and gave them shelter. This led to the slaveholding states hemorrhaging increasing numbers of fugitive slaves to the free section. The courts gave the stamp of approval to federal and state antislavery policies. The North began to look with growing sympathy to proposals for a national compensated emancipation scheme and the moment seemed on the horizon when the free section would get the numbers to approve it.

Territorial expansion of slavery got its last hurrah when a group of Southern filibustering mercenaries took over Nicaragua, established a pro-slavery regime, and won the ensuing military conflict with the other Central American states. Filibuster Nicaragua conquered and annexed Costa Rica. It successfully withstood and repelled the invasion of the Central American alliance on the northern front, although it failed to conquer the rest of Central America. It then petitioned for admission to the USA as a slave state. Despite its misgivings, the free section supported the annexation because of Nicaragua’s considerable strategic value for the building of an inter-oceanic canal. Other filibuster attempts to conquer land in Mexico, Central America, or northern South America failed.

Out of growing desperation about the future of slavery in the Union, the slaveholding elites organized the secession of a Confederation of the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states. They did so despite the blatant demographic, economic, and military inferiority of their section, in the overconfident expectation that they would get foreign help and the martial prowess of their population would compensate for all their disadvantages. However, their expectations soon turned out massively exaggerated, since the other great powers turned out indifferent or hostile to the cause of the Confederation, and the superiority of the Union proved overwhelming. In less than a year, the secessionists were decisively defeated and forced to surrender. The political backlash of the rebellion drove the ratification of a few constitutional amendments that banned slavery and guaranteed civil and voting rights of the freedmen.

The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery without compensation, extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States, and explicitly declared the Union indivisible and secession treason without consent of the Congress or the states. They also stripped the right to hold office from former Confederate government officials that had previously sworn loyalty to the US Constitution by holding federal or state offices, and most importantly created new federal civil rights that the courts could protect. The most far-ranging provision was the full extension of the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to the states and the empowerment of Congress to legislate and protect those rights. The Reconstruction amendments also decreed that the United States or any state could not deny or limit the right to vote or hold office because of race, color, ethnicity, language, creed, or previous condition of servitude or because of the failure to pay poll taxes. The Congress also added prohibition of establishment of a national language and a guarantee that the states could keep a legal system that did not conflict with the US Constitution as a conciliatory measure for the Franco-Canadians and the Hispanics.

To lessen the social burden of integrating the freedmen in Southern society, the federal government implemented a mix of approaches, including socio-economic relief, expropriation of planter elites and land reform, immigration in the Western territories or various nations of Latin America, or resettlement in West Africa. A sizable portion of less fortunate US Blacks were sold to Brazil before the slavers’ uprising. As many stubborn slaveowners embraced the foolhardy scheme of secession, many other more foresighted ones instead realized the inevitable demise of slavery in the USA and smuggled their slaves as contraband to Brazil, often with the neglect or connivance of federal and state authorities. Many freedmen that continued to live in the USA remained part of the underclass and often faced widespread social discrimination and socio-economic hardship, especially if they remained in the Southern states. As a rule, however, the attempts of White racists to impose a regime of legal segregation and second-class citizenship on the freedmen failed and a sizable Black and ‘poor White’ minority arose in Southern society to counterbalance the power of the old elites.

Events in Latin America during and after independence wars took place more or less the same way as OTL, with a couple important exceptions. A combination of a few timely deaths, military victories, and sensible political compromises allowed Gran Colombia and the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata (alter renamed Argentina) to stabilize as federal unions that kept control of most lands in the former Viceroyalties of New Grenada and Rio de la Plata respectively. Argentina in particular grew into a fairly functional, stable, and liberal federal republic on the US model. Successful integration of Buenos Aries, Montevideo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Caterina in Argentina consolidated its hegemony over the Platine region with considerable benefits in terms of political stability and economic development. It achieved this status first by defending its rule on Banda Oriental against the expansionist ambitions of the Brazilian Empire, then by supporting Republican rebels in Southern Brazil against the Imperial regime.

[eurofed]

In Europe, events broadly followed OTL course until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. After its return to power, Napoleon was able to defeat the Coalition forces in a few notable battles against the British, Prussians, Austrians, and Russians before eventually succumbing to a Prussian-Russian army. This turn of events drove the victor powers to set up a peace settlement that was rather more punitive for France and favorable to Russian and Prussian interests than originally envisaged. However, Britain and Austria too were able to claim worthwhile compensations. The territorial and political settlement of Europe was broadly similar to OTL with a few important differences. In addition to its OTL gains, Russia also annexed the Grand Duchy of Posen and the Principality of Moldavia, and turned Wallachia into a client state. Prussia ceded its portion of the Polish partition (except Royal Prussia) to Russia, and got Rhineland-Westphalia, Saxony, Thuringia, Hesse, and Nassau. Alsace and Lorraine (all of it, not just the 1871 portion) were carved out of France and set up in a Kingdom of Burgundy with the Wettin on the throne that also got Saar and Palatinate. Austria annexed Lombardy, Venetia, Parma, Modena, Tuscany, the Legations, and most of eastern Switzerland. Western-central Switzerland became a Grand Duchy and annexed the Franche-Comte. Sardinia-Piedmont got Genoa and Corsica.

The victor powers established the United Kingdom of the Netherlands that included the French Flanders. Britain annexed most Dutch and French colonies in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and Asia. Subsequent course of events during the Restoration mostly followed the usual pattern, up to the Belgian Revolution. It did not ensue in the establishment of Belgium as an independent neutral state, but the partition of Southern Netherlands between Netherlands (West Flanders, East Flanders, Antwerp, and Limburg), France (Hainaut, Brabant, Namur, and western Liege), and Prussia (eastern Liege and Luxemburg). The November Uprising in Poland did not occur; it happened later as part of the Spring of Nations.

The 1848-49 revolutions were successful in most of Europe, most notably including a decisive victory of the liberal-national movement in Germany, Italy, and the Habsburg Empire. The revolutionary wave toppled all the reactionary monarchs and aristocratic elites from power and put bourgeois and middle-class liberals in their place variously allied with the reformist wing of the old elites and radical democrats. Depending on political circumstances, this turn of events might cause a transition to a republican regime. Alternatively, it might mean monarchs who shared liberal-national ideals or at least were foresighted opportunists took the throne. The latter were usually willing to accept liberal constitutionalism and cooperate with the national movement for practical reasons. Germany and Italy unified and Hungary got independence as liberal states; Germany and Italy became federal unions.

This alternative could be valid for different states or for the same state in alternative variants of the scenario. In one more likely case, revolution in Prussia and Sardinia-Piedmont caused young princes Frederick of Hohenzollern and Victor Emmanuel of Savoy to take the throne as their predecessors panicked and abdicated. They made their states align with liberal policies and take the lead of the national movement. Frederick was born a few years earlier and hence of age to take the throne during the revolution since his father was able to marry Eliza Radzwilli. In such a case, Germany and Italy became liberal constitutional monarchies with their member states being a mix of monarchies and republics ruled by a political compromise between reformist elites, moderate liberals, and radical republicans. Alternatively, if less likely, the incumbent monarchs panicked and attempted repression but botched it causing radical liberals and republican democrats to gain the upper hand and establish a republican regime across Germany and Italy at large.

As a rule, the same kind of outcome tended to prevail in both states. In either case, Hungary most likely evolved into a liberal republic or alternatively picked a member of its high nobility as its new King because of its independence struggle. The dominant Magyar nationality was able to suppress the hostility of the other minorities that made separatist bids of their own or opportunistically supported the Habsburg. However, as a pacification measure the Hungarian government agreed to concede autonomy to the most important nationalities: the Croats got a devolution settlement similar to the OTL 1868 one, and the Romanians got administrative autonomy and cultural rights.

The Habsburg Empire proved unable either to make a compromise with revolution or to suppress it, and it collapsed under the combined assault of the German, Italian, and Hungarian revolutionaries supported by Prussia and Sardinia-Piedmont. It was partitioned between Germany (Austria, Bohemia-Moravia, Carniola, South Tyrol, Burgenland, and Fiume), Italy (Trent, Austrian Littoral, and most of coastal Dalmatia), Hungary (most of its traditional territories), and Russia (Galicia and Bukovina).

Out of a combination of ideological solidarity, practical opportunism, and a wish to get allies, the new leaders of Germany, Italy, and Hungary found this territorial settlement an acceptable compromise and an adequate satisfaction of their national ambitions and strategic interests. Thanks to their superior numbers, organization, and resources the Germans, Italians, and Hungarians were able to force the other nationalities in the lands they claimed to accept a political merger. However the liberal and federal character of the new states often provided minorities with worthwhile opportunities for autonomy, or at least made them regard the new status quo as a lesser evil alternative than Russian or Ottoman domination.

France experienced a republican revolution much the usual way, and its ultimate outcome might vary between evolution into a conservative republic or stabilization as a liberal regime. Pro-French national uprisings occurred in the French-speaking lands of Burgundy and Switzerland, giving France motive to intervene in the German and Italian revolutions to affirm its irredentist claims. However, the German-speaking and Italian-speaking communities of the border territories aligned with the German and Italian national movements and resisted French ambitions and encroachment. The resulting conflict between France, Germany, and Italy ended in a military draw and a diplomatic compromise based on the principle of ethnic-linguistic borders.

All three states were in need of political stabilization after their revolutionary upheavals. The Germans and the Italians also needed to do some state-building to cement their unification processes, although in their case patriotic mobilization did make up for it to a good degree, especially as it concerned fighting foreign enemies. After military confrontation turned into a draw, a compromise settlement based on ethnic-linguistic facts on the ground proved relatively easy to achieve. France got eastern Liege and French-speaking Luxemburg, French-speaking Lorraine, Franche-Comte, Savoy, and Romandy. Germany kept the German-speaking portions of Alsace-Lorraine and Luxemburg, and annexed most of Switzerland; Italy kept Nice and Corsica, and got Ticino and Grisons.

Russia experienced extensive uprisings in Poland, Finland, and Wallachia that spread to the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Baltic, and the Danubian Principalities. With some serious effort, it was eventually able to suppress them, but unrest in its own empire left it unable to intervene in the rest of Europe during the revolutionary period. Once the Russians had restored order at home, the new status quo had stabilized enough to make large-scale intervention in Europe unfeasible short of starting a general war. They had to make themselves content with annexing the rest of Poland and Old Romania both as a consolation prize for their imperialist ambitions and to prevent the rise of hostile nationalist havens. Alternatively, Wallachia might form a confederation with Hungary as a means of protecting itself from Russia and the Ottoman Empire. This however would require Hungary to be willing to risk defy Russia and the Russians to be too busy elsewhere to meet the challenge.

Conflicting national claims of the Danes and the Germans on Schleswig-Holstein led to a war between Germany and Denmark, with Sweden backing the Danes. The Germans won the conflict, and annexed Holstein and central-southern Schleswig. As a conciliatory measure, however, they allowed Denmark to keep northern Schleswig. Liberal revolution and brotherly cooperation between the Nordic nations during the Schleswig-Holstein conflict, albeit ending in defeat, led to unification of Scandinavia as a federal union of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland.

Britain experienced its own version of the liberal revolutionary wave about a decade earlier than the other great powers. It happened because the reactionary faction of the Tories got a stranglehold on power with the backing of King Ernest I when George IV died. The ultra-Tory government, the King, and the House of Lords blocked all attempts to abolish the ‘rotten boroughs’ and change electoral law, reform the Corn Laws, or grant Catholic Emancipation. This led to ever-increasing popular unrest in Britain and Ireland that the reactionary Tories tried to suppress by force. A revolution ultimately occurred; depending on political variables, it could most likely ensue into abdication of Ernest with the Duke of Sussex or the Duke of Cambridge taking the throne.

In such a case, the main political effect would be marginalization of the Tories, political dominance of the liberals and radicals, and enactment of a liberal reform agenda (electoral reform with accelerated transition to universal male suffrage, repeal of the Corn Laws, Catholic emancipation, abolition of slavery, and drastic limitation of the powers of the House of Lords). Alternatively, if less likely, it could mean establishment of a British Republic. In either case, emancipation of Catholics failed to quell all unrest in Ireland, since many Irish had radicalized to claim restoration of domestic self-rule, which the British were reluctant to concede. Recent revolution and ongoing tensions in Ireland were among the reasons Britain was unwilling to fight to the death when the uprising in Canada and American intervention occurred and the military situation turned against the British.

The Netherlands experienced peaceful transition into liberal constitutionalism. Across Europe, the revolutionary wave meant transition into a relatively uniform political landscape dominated by liberalism, with enactment of the political reforms it sponsored. As a rule, revolution marginalized the conservatives, and they were only able to regain a place in the mainstream political spectrum by dropping reactionary trappings, accept the new order, and embrace nationalism and a version of socio-economic conservatism adequate to the Industrial Age as their new banners. For a good while, political dominance went in the hands of moderate liberal and radical democratic parties and movements that in their competition for power mostly covered the landscape.

In the long term, the European political spectrum tended to become more multipolar, with the rise of the Christian democrats as a mainstream force, and the eventual split of the liberals into right-wing ‘classical’ and left-wing ‘social’ factions. The conservatives also gradually recovered some relevance, although in many cases the classical liberals and Christian democrats limited their expansion chances. Much the same way, the social ills fostered by industrialization fueled the rise of far-left movements, but the success of the revolution created a sizable political capital on the left wing of the political spectrum for social liberals and radical democrats. Although anarchist and socialist movements rose into relevance, they were not able to dominate representation of the lower classes as thoroughly as they would have been if liberal-democratic revolution had failed.

The main exception to this pattern was the multi-national Russian and Ottoman empires, which clung to autocracy, reactionary status quo, and heavy-handed dominance of their subject nationalities. This seemed to work much better for Russia than for the Ottomans, which appeared to be trapped into decay. The seemingly ruinous decline of the Ottoman Empire, the fall of the Habsburg, and the success of the revolution in most of Europe greatly stoked the eagerness of the Balkan nationalities to imitate their neighbors. As it concerned the Russians, they seemed to waver between exploiting the new strategic situation in Europe to pursue their traditional ambitions in the Balkans and the Middle East, isolationist focus on expansion in Asia, and paranoid suspicion and resentment of the liberal powers, with armed defense against them and ruthless suppression of revolutionary 'contagion' in their home turf.

Spain too seemed to cling to a conservative stance, although in its case its perennaial political instability complicated the picture. Conservatives, liberals, regionalists, and different factions of the ruling elites were involved in recurrent power struggles and the occasional coup or civil war without much chance of achieving a stable long-term outcome. Such instability was a reason Spain got defeated in its war with America and the resulting national humiliation worsened it. For all their problems, Russia and Spain became havens for defeated European conservatives that were unwilling or unable to reconcile with victory of liberalism in their countries and fled it. This notably included the Pope who got into exile after revolution in Italy and became a pampered guest of the Spanish government. In a similar way, many former Confederates that were unwilling to accept defeat of their cause immigrated to Brazil.

British foreign policy settled down into its usual pattern of 'splendid isolation' and focus on imperial build-up and competition with Russia in the 'Great Game'. They found the post-revolutionary status quo created a balance between the great powers that was different from the 1815 one but effective enough in its own way, with the German-Italian-Hungarian bloc creating a counterbalance to France and Russia and vice versa. After initial bad blood created by the Canadian conflict faded away, amicable relations resumed between Britain and the USA, as most British came to see loss of Canada as the tail end of the ARW. On their part, the Americans stayed apart from European events, even if they showed definite sympathy for liberal revolutions, and focused on domestic issues and their own interests in the Western Hemisphere.

France developed an ambivalent attitude that seemed to oscillate between a wish, supported by ideological solidarity, to achieve reconciliation and keep friendly relations with its neighbours, and resentful suspicion of Germany and Italy since their rise threatened France's dominant position in Europe. Germany, Italy, and Hungary fairly soon formed a remarkably solid partnership (the so-called Central Powers or Triple Alliance) that was bound by compatible and often complementary strategic interests, a common allegiance to liberal democracy and the legacy of revolution, parallel political courses, and growing political and economic ties. Ideological polarization and strategic ambitions often drove the CP into an antagonistic stance towards Russia and the Ottoman Empire, although usually not at the point of seeking a military confrontation on their initiative. Their stance towards France mostly mirrored the one of the French, friendly when France seemed to bring an olive branch, antagonistic when the French appeared hostile.