Part 18: Chapter XVIII: Epilogue!

Chapter XVIII: Epilogue

Though the wars had left all possible continental rivals for power broken, prostrate, and begging for mercy, the following few years would see the gradual decline of the triumphant SGF-British alliance in global importance. The critical first blow was the Habsburg king Otto's decision to pull his Kingdom of Hungary out of the carefully-tailored SGF network of states dominating central Europe. Hungary, though only a third as populous as the SGF, was in many ways the underpinning bulwark of SGF dominance, and many times Hungarian soldiers had won the day through their willingness to tackle with minor enemies like the Russians or Italians while the SGF took on the primary threat in a war. Furthermore, their population was large enough that it was an attractive export market for SGF goods, and the sudden closing of Budapest and Pressburg to South German commercial interests critically wounded South German economic dominance. Finally, the lack of a cushy buffer zone to the south forced SGF to devote military forces to protect the hitherto-ignorable southern frontier. South Germany's ability to control its own sphere similarly came under threat, as its junior partners Poland and Ukraine both eyed the SGF puppet state of Ruthenia with increasingly covetous eyes. Ambition to get ahold of Ruthenia, its oil supplies, and its "oppressed" Ukrainians and Poles would lead Poland and Ukraine to renounce their loyalty to Munich.

It comes as no surprise that the Munich government didn't lift a finger to aid the autocratic absolutist Hungarian state when revolutionaries incited a public upset at the sudden surge in prices for goods from the South German economic sphere. As Slovakia seceded and drifted back into the South German umbrella, the rest of Hungary proclaimed itself the Hungarian People's Republic and proved forged a critical alliance with the USSR while fending off attacks from fascist Romania to free the Romanians of Transylvania. Romania itself, fresh off of annexing the kingdom of Moldavia, would lose these clashes and end up a diplomatically isolated regime on the fringes of Europe.

The Ottoman Empire, granted a stay of execution by its removal from European power politics, nonetheless resembles a ghost town, its population down in the same territory over the last decade and continuing a steady decline. Unindustrialized, poor, and unable to properly exploit its oil reserves, the Ottomans remain weak, but no one wants to unleash pandora's box and risk chaos of divvying it up. Even Hungary, rising power to its north, sees little percentage in adding more Slavs to its already precarious demographic breakdown. Meanwhile, the minor states of the Balkans, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, dwindle in obscurity and fend off fascist movements crying about the days when they used to be relevant.

The Poles, off the SGF chain and eager to rectify their 75% German demographics, launched what they termed a "Holy Crusade against Bolshevism" against the USSR and successfully reclaimed Mazovia, but will the Polish state prove too tempting a target for North German revaunchism? The brief-lived Kingdom of Holstein was swiftly overthrown and the agrarian lands rejoined the NGF, but without the industrial lands of Silesia North Germany would always be far weaker than it once was. A revaunchist, wounded but not conquered, North Germany prepared to march on a Poland that had renounced SGF aid and alienated the Soviets, a Poland that might have to stand against German might all alone.

As Switzerland's conquest of Italy continued, openly encouraged by the government in Munich who wished Italian power crushed, the Italians found themselves more and more in the revaunchist camp of Mussolini. Someday, Switzerland will alienate the world and then Italy will reclaim Milan, Genoa, and Turin from these mountainous barbarians! Someday...for now, though, the Italian regime plotted a possible move to its Saharan territory where the Swiss could never follow them. Meanwhile, the once-mighty Kingdom of the Two Sicilies continued its geopolitical siesta, now deindustrialized and with only a pocket military for reasons no one was quite sure of.

The Dutch felt comfortable that they had won the early 20th century: they had held onto Indonesia, had seized vast tracts of Arabian oil-filled desert, and owned the critical Suez Canal. However, the Netherlands' lifeblood had been sapped dry from participating in South Germany's wars for decades: their army exhausted and depleted, their population stagnant due to combat losses they could ill-afford, their factories increasingly empty. When Indonesia finally demanded independence, the Dutch were in no position to resist, outnumbered as they were 4 to 1 by angry nationalist rebels, and were forced to retreat to their Arab colonies. The Netherlands adapted to its new, cozy position as the greatest of the smaller countries in European politics, and their puppet-state of Luxembourg enjoyed a new dawn of relevance as Europe's favorite tax haven.

The Scandinavians continued on as they always had: Sweden-Norway increasingly found itself simply called "Sweden," while Denmark pointed to its colonies in Accra and St. Thomas as if to shout to the world "We're relevant too!"

The wreckage that was France continued to limp on, its southern territories lost to Catalonia and its African territories in open rebellion. In a historic compromise, the French finally agreed to jettison their African holdings, and, with them, any dreams of international relevance, in return for the peaceful return of Le Midi, which had proven utterly ungovernable to the Catalans. The French Seventh Republic, emerging after the overthrow of the traitorous anarcho-liberal tyrants who had lost Africa, found themselves at the head of a "nation" of smoking rubble, where the cities resembled the countryside and the countryside was empty. South Germany had left France a desert and called it peace. Catalonia, as mentioned before, ceded Le Midi in an effort to bolster Catalan dominance over the overwhelmingly-French country, and found itself an obscure Pyrenees backwater, seldom discussed except as a vacation spot.

In one of the first signs of British pullback, international pressure forced the United Kingdom to negotiate a pullout out of Granada, surrendering the territory to Spain in return for Spain ceding the Philippines as an independent state under British tutelage. The loss of the Philippines ended once and for all any delusions of Spanish empire, and Spain found itself forced to integrate Puerto Rico and Guam as full parts of the Spanish metropole. Spain tried, for the longest time, to maintain its grip on Morocco and Eritrea, but eventually Spanish Morocco would be ceded to Morocco and Eritrea initially to Ethiopia and then to full-blown independence.

Ever since Britain lost India, it had focused on becoming the workshop of the world and using its many formal and informal colonies as dumping grounds for its products, and its project worked marvelously. Britain housed several of the world's largest factories, one of which employed over half a million workers. However, this highly-industrialized state couldn't compete with the rising powers of the United States and China, both of which had the landmass and population to drown out several British mega-factories. British force of arms, too, paled in comparison to either, and its great ally the South German Federation was still primarily a land power. Seeing the changing tone of the world, states like Canada, Australia, and South Africa all decided that their interests lay in the new masters of the world and drifted out of British protection. The British Empire still consists of much of Africa and those territories too weak to go it alone like Belize, Guyana, the Caribbean, and the Yucatan, but without Canada and Australia, British projection has been greatly diminished. Britain still has the strongest per-capita industrial base on Earth, but the sheer scope of the American and Chinese enterprises leave it pitiful by comparison.

The Europeans have mostly left the deserts of the Maghreb, but little remains there for the states that remain to take advantage of. With the Italians to their south, the Spaniards in Morocco, and Turks in Libya all too weak to aspire to their conquest, the states of the Maghreb enjoyed a precarious independence while fascist Egypt fumed about the injustice of its fate, but could do little about it.

The other African states had mixed fates. Senegal launched a long and difficult campaign to get the cartographers of the world to change its map color so that it wouldn't be seen as part of Italy anymore, but otherwise rested in obscurity. The revived Sokoto Caliphate, now with Atlantic access and even more lands than it once had, prospered in the new order. As the Sokoto Caliphate had never lost all of its lands, just most of them, and was clearly continuous with the Sokoto Caliphate established in the early 19th century, it formed a kind of guiding light to the decolonial states of the 20th century. The same initially appeared to be true for Ethiopia, but its continuing conflicts with Spain over Eritrea, and then its own internal strife, made the Solomonid dynasty Ethiopian regime a less than palatable role model. Madagascar, a solidly industrialized, heavily-armed state, continued to stick to its policy of cuddling up to the SGF to ward off foreign invaders and proved a formidable, isolated regime. The Communist regime in Portugal, seeing the uselessness of its European holdings compared to the relatively rich Mozambique elements, made the bold decision to relocate its capital to East Africa, but even that move wasn't enough to ward off the eventual collapse of Portugal's unmanageable power structure. Tiny Zanzibar proved the first of many new African post-colonial states, and proved its power by driving Oman out of its few remaining African holdings. The tiny Boer Republics would swiftly fall prey to the Union of South Africa, once it finally shuffled off its British shackles.

In the Western Hemisphere, the USSR quickly decided to cede its remaining territories of Yukon and Alberta to Canada weeks after the latter had renounced its status as a British Dominion. The Soviets, fearing growing American power, decided to strengthen a counterbalance to the USA on the Western hemisphere, but even possessing Alberta and the Yukon, Canada would be no match for its southern neighbor. The 50 nifty United States (48 + British Colombia + Alaska) was clearly the rising power in the world, its industrial power unmatched and its sheer scale allowing it to tap into vast natural resources within its own borders. With no enemies that could challenge it domestically and the second-largest population in the world and a secure alliance with the Empire of China, the United States seemed untouchable. American annoyance at the tiny Hawaiian Republic, which had spurned membership in the Union, was the only irritant on Washington's horizon.

Of all the territories of the British Empire to remain loyal, the Yucatan seems a surprise at first, but heavy British colonization and a loyal puppet in neighboring Belize created a situation where the people of Yucatan actively opposed any efforts to cede them back to the Empire of Mexico, a sleepy despotism no one took particularly seriously. Thus Yucatan and Belize remained the main bulwarks of British power in the Americas, alongside Guyana and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, Mexico and the USCA languished in obscurity and the tiny People's Republic of El Salvador suffered severe sanctions and diplomatic isolation.

Colombia, clearly the rising power of South America, had outmatched the Brazilians before and would do so again. The small republic had proven quite the immigration magnet and its rising population had given it serious clout, though concerns remained over its participation in latter-day slavery. While similar concerns were present in Venezuela, its tiny population, a mere tenth of the similarly-sized Colombia's population, made it impotent and ignored on the diplomatic stage. While the fascist regimes in Ecuador and Chile raged, Bolivia's more traditional junta followed its long-standing policy of trying to push Argentina into the sea, with mixed results. Throughout the world, the main concern with South America were humanitarian activists pointing to the massive number of slaves still in chains on Brazilian plantations. Though many other Latin American countries maintained slavery, Brazil proved unique in its devotion to the slave economy, and over 5% of the population remained in bondage.

The roars of the dragon could no longer be ignored. The Celestial Empire of Great Qing, the Middle Kingdom, was home to nearly 400,000,000 people, and nearly 10% of them were capable of voicing an opinion on the future course of China, a limited democratic experiment intended to assuage their allies in Washington but also lending fresh perspectives to the government. In darker days Feng Yuxiang might have gone warlord and ripped the nation apart: instead he served, by will of the citizens, as the prime minister of the Empire. In recent years, Japan had fallen into a steep decline, and now China and the USA cemented the fall of their mutual foe as Chinese and American soldiers occupied most of Japan, a ruined, declining, dying power. In the end, the terms would be generous, at least on their face: Japan would yield Micronesia and its minor outlying Pacific holdings to America, yield Jeju island to China’s puppet Korea, and submit to its (rightful, in Beijing’s eyes) status as a minor Chinese ally. Japan’s strong industrial base kept it relevant, but more and more, Japan would prove to be merely part of China’s new East Asian order, while America could distract itself with minor Pacific rocks. Maybe the Yankees would one day retake Hawaii! In the mean time, with Korea docile, Tibet secured, and Japan subdued, China ruled East Asia and looked to its backyard.

What a backyard it was! The British had lost their ability to regulate the regular feuding between Burma and Siam, maybe both would accept reconciliation as Chinese client states! Dai Nam was ripe for returning to the Sinosphere. The hermit kingdom of Cambodia and the fascist regime in Luang Prabang were both matters too small for the Chinese to take much note of, but they were small and weak and could be brought to heel.

Further afield lay Brunei, the last of the native unmolested Malay states, which had secured its independence through close alignment to Britain, as well as Johore, ruled by the descendants of a British governor who had renounced loyalty to London, proclaimed himself king, and started his own English dynasty based in Singapore. Both states felt far enough from Beijing that they could look to London or Amsterdam for inspiration, but neither saw a long-term future in that direction, as the days of European dominance east-of-Suez were ending.

In the furthest reaches of Oceania, two very different “children” of the British Empire went their very separate directions. Australia followed the other Dominions on the path to full independence on amicable terms and even set up its own monarchy under a cadet branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and a younger brother of the King. New Zealand, which had broken with the empire some thirty years prior, was a radical Communist dictatorship which had little time for royalty or discussions of the home country. Few in the international community cared about the island pariah state, and even jokingly discussed exporting their own communists there, to that distant pair of islands where they would remain out of sight and out of mind.

India! India as a geographical region, that is, the area south of Tibet and east of Persia and west of Burma…that India. The British retained their grip on Assam and the Burmese coastline and used it to continue their alliance with the few princes who still pledged loyalty to them, but the motley collection of Awadh and several (but not all) of the Rajput princelings were the face of India’s past, not its future. Nor was its future in the tiny Himalayan kingdoms of Bhutan and Sikkim, which saw nothing desirable in this 20th century and sealed themselves off into happy obscurity. Nor was this future in the tiny Rajput minor of Jaipur or the Gondwanan minor of Bastar, which had both renounced allegiance to King George and declared themselves aligned with international Communism. No, all those forces added color, but the real story was the dying Republic in Delhi and the three hunters who fought over its juicy corpse. The Anarcho-Liberal experiment in India had failed dramatically and India lay weak, prostrate before the rising power of Hyderabad, whose Nizam appeared to be the coming dominant power of southern India and whose alliance with the Gujarati leader of Beroda promised strategic reach across the Indian subcontinent. Mysore, Hyderabad’s southwestern rival, had stumbled badly and miscalculated: its alliance with Japan was a liability, not an aid, in this post-Japan world, and even if Hyderabad’s supposed alliance with distant South Germany was more illusory than real, Hyderabad had the power to smash Mysore’s relatively minor army and there was nothing Japan could do to save its ally. Mysore chose, instead, to abandon its ambitions to the north, choosing instead to focus on seizing India’s southern tip and the island of Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, Afghanistan, the greatest power of Central Asia, marched inexorably on Delhi, ambitions of a new Mughal empire dancing in its Emir’s head. Afghanistan’s day had come: subject to no foreign ruler, it was a true rising power, with a vast army and near-unassailable terrain.

To Afghanistan’s west lay Persia, a rising power in its own right who had never quite managed to pull off industrialization. Persia, though, tired of its second-rate status in international politics, had turned to warfare and had recently conquered Makran. Persia, seeing little the anarchic USSR could do about it, plotted to seize first Kalat, then the Central Asian khanates, pushing back the Russian sphere and challenging the upstart Afghans to do anything about it. The Central Asian Khanates themselves were weak and disorganized. Khiva, the strongest of the lot, remained weak and powerless before the Shah’s designs, and as for Bukkhara and Kokkand, the only question was whether Afghanistan would beat the Shah to the punch. Persia had never lost sight of the true prize, though: reclaiming Azerbaijan, lost to the Russians in the early 19th century and more valuable than ever in light of its oil supply. The Persians would clamor again and again for South Germany to let them attack the Bolsheviks, and the day of reckoning seemed to approach closer and closer.