Ethics of Cosmos TL - Socialism, Abolitionism and Science

[Imielin]

Benzene Ouroboros - a toxic chemical compound utilized by the Futurist Church's rituals.​

History repeats itself. The cycle of birth - a spark of the new idea, the conqueror setting up a new country, the prophet creating a new religion, philosopher king establishing the library that will contain knowledge of the world. The cycle of growth - armies carrying the power of the ruler, converts exerting their new beliefs with zeal, scholars and gatherers of knowledge passing their wisdom. The cycle of death - foreign invasion, heresy, destruction. And finally, the new life - a new idea, the conqueror setting up a new country, the prophet creating a new religion, philosopher king establishing the library that will contain knowledge of the world.

History never repeats itself correctly. History is not a zero-sum game. The universe has its quirks, deviations and randomness. The cycles repeat themselves and arrows push mankind forward or backwards. Inadvertently, the arrow of time adds something new to the metaphysical genotype of the Universe, changing the world forever. The most transformative arrow happens when the cycle of time is near death and the new life period when the change is the most powerful. When the cycle becomes dominant - growing, the change of the arrow of time is limited. When everything is falling, the Universe accepts innovation fully. When everything's fine, the Universe does not notice the innovation. From innovation to implementation centuries can pass.

The steam engine was invented in ancient Greece. Yet, it remained as a curiosity. In 1543 Blasco de Garay presented the first steamship to the Roman emperor. Neither Greeks nor de Garay brought significant change. For centuries ships were propelled by sails or by sailors through the power of human hands. In 1784, Johann Helfrich von Müller envisioned the first difference engine. Yet, his designs remained unnoticed for decades, before being brought by Napoleon's and laters Tsar's courts. Yet, the first truly mechanical device was created in the 1860s by Charles Babbage, who started the era of mechanical computers. Even if the Germans linked together two computers through the telegraph line by the 1880s, the first truly working connections were established more than fifty years later. Why?

There are three engines of history. The accumulation of knowledge. The struggle between ruling classes over the control of the surplus. The struggle between the classes over the size and distribution of surplus. When the Greeks invented the steam engine, the Hellenic history cycle was dominant as the ancient world was running on the steam of the Agricultural Revolution (no pun intended). An abundance of servitude labour, insufficient metallurgy and high costs of steam engines meant that they were not enough profitable to power something else than the toy. When de Garay presented the steamship, the Empire was in its zenith. Imperial forces spread from eastern Germany and Austria to the exotic lands of Aztec and Incas, all full of gold. The Hessian engineer did not have enough resources to build complicated counting machines. The level of precision tools and parts needed to properly build a working machine was overwhelming. By the 1860s, Great Britain was looking for better means in administering their overwhelming empire. Imperial censuses required better and faster counting. The recent war against the United States has brought military reforms. Artillery and naval guns needed better calculations for precision shooting. By the 1880s, the German Empire expanded dramatically. Under the guiding hand of Emperor Franz Joseph, industrial, agricultural and innovative production exploded. Bureaucratic reforms after the unification favoured better communication - both metropolitan and colonial. Imperial Institutes of Technology experimented with the idea of the newest type of communication - linking mechanical computers through the electrical lines to transfer information. In capitalist societies, the ruling classes wish to reinforce their hold over the surplus. In doing so, they use technological innovations to create limited, quantitative progress. In revolutionary societies, where the lower classes wish to reinforce their hold over the surplus, technological innovations are used to restructure the society in a quantitative manner. Steamships were utilized by Napoleon to break the dominance of the Ancien Regimes over Europe. Babbage-Boolean computers were used to reinforce already existing structures, allowing Germany (and later the United States) to overtake Britain as both were the rising power challenging the dominant power in the struggle between ruling classes.

Accumulation of knowledge correlates with the spread of knowledge. It can be either slowed down or fastened. There are only a few examples of reversals in the accumulation of knowledge. The burning of the Alexandrine Library was catastrophic and never recovered. House of Wisdom was ravaged by the Mongols and Timurids. By 1534, only parts of the long-gone knowledge were recovered by the Turks. The first true archaeological excavations were conducted by the Neo-Ottomanist regime in the 1920s and revealed more sophisticated (as for pre-1200 stuff) knowledge of the medieval Arabs. The same pattern repeated in China, which has lost the original sources for the treatment of malaria through artemisinin, only to be rediscovered in the 1850s, when it started to spread across the world. Masses control the flow of information and production. And as a certain German philosopher said, the history of the masses can be predicted. The conflict of the classes was formulated in America, where he had witnessed the battle of Cass County, and the horrendous atrocities against the slaves. In New York, he had seen the inequalities of the urban dwellers. Exiled back to Germany, he landed in London, where he had witnessed the oppressive relations between the new class of capitalists and urban workers. From the hearts of darkness, a German journalist prepared for his monumental works of non-fiction that would soon revolutionize the world. German exile, "the Jezebel" of ultra abolitionism and the Illinoisan Giant would serve to protect the rights of every working person.
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[Glory2Cabinda]

Ooh boy this looks like fun. If I was reading this correctly you we have the internet on the verge of creation by the 1860s.

 

[Imielin]

Ooh boy this looks like fun. If I was reading this correctly you have the internet on the verge of creation by the 1860s.

More like sending an electrical signal - like the telegraph signal but produced by the computer for being read by the other computer. It is impressive for the 1880s but still not the Internet. There's no routing or management of the local networks with mechanical computers, at least by the 19th century. And by the 20th century, there will be electronic computers developed. With mechanical devices, there will be a need to develop more precise techniques for metallurgy and more advanced math being done quicker than OTL.

Keep in mind that butterflies are flying since 1258, as parts of the knowledge from Baghdad survived. And Spanish produced the first steamship in the 16th century, resulting in the use of steamships by the times of Napoleonian Wars. Small changes to keep the timeline as much intact as possible will have great effects on the 18th and 19th centuries.

 

[Imielin]

The oldest records found on Terra indicate that the first manned flights took place over three thousand years ago. In China, in the first century of the Common Era, Emperor Wang Mang witnessed the flight of an ancient aviation specialist. By 559 CE, the first known successful landing took place from the tower jump in the same country. The period between the 6th and 10th centuries is known as the Dark Ages due to the loss of written records from that era. We don't truly know whether there were other significant attempts at the early powered flight. By the 10th and 11th centuries, the records indicate several innovations in avionics. Despite the loss of written records from the previous era, Middle Eastern religions preserved parts of the long lost knowledge, serving as the treasurers of innovation: monks of the Universal Church (314-1054) and Sunni scientists. Abbas ibn Firnas (810-887 CE) made the first recorded (by Europeans) successful flight in history as evidenced by the writings of Mu'min ibn Said (9th century) and works of New Jerseyite historian Lynn Towsend White Jr. By the 11th century, Benedictine monk Eilmer attached wings to his hands and feet and flew a short distance, breaking his legs during an ill-fated landing attempt. There was a short renewal of interest in the area in the 14th century as Eilmer's flight was popularized in England and beyond. Marco Polo provides us with the first written record of the man-carrying kites in China. Records of the Second Voyage of Benedictus Polonicus confirm the Chinese operating manned kites. In 1507 John Damian strapped on wings covered with eagle feathers and jumped from Stirling Castle, killing himself. By the end of the 16th century, Italian mechanical engineer Giambattista Benedetti constructed rudimentary aircraft - a glider based on the plans of Leonardo da Vinci. During his third flight, he killed himself at the age of 62.

The first functional aircraft was created in the 17th century. Ever since the discovery of ruins of the Baghdad Library in 1534, the Ottoman caliphate promoted the patronage of arts and science. Suleiman the Magnificent became one of the most known patrons of culture, overseeing the cultural renaissance of the Empire, named the Ottoman Golden Age. Taking into account only the developments of the crewed flight, the greatest accomplishment was made during Murat IV's reign. Lagâri Hasan Çelebi performed the first successful crewed rocket flight in 1633. His brother Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi performed several flights over the Bosphorus Straits. Çelebis brothers were rewarded by Sultan with gold and made the first Court Engineers of the Ottoman Empire, perfecting their invention until their deaths (1663 and 1669). While the first gliders were uncontrollable, the Court Engineers perfected their designs and envisioned rudimentary control surfaces. Their deaths temporarily interrupted the development of heavier-than-air machines. The first military application of an aircraft was recorded in 1683 during the siege of Vienna, where the flying men of Ottoman forces failed to perform reconnaissance missions. King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Jan Sobieski described the crash of the mechanical bird when writing letters to his wife from Vienna.

The first successful military operation by the aircraft was conducted by the two powers: Revolutionary France and the Empire of Russia. Revolutionary France utilized balloons as means of aerial reconnaissance in their campaigns. Emperor Napoleon used balloons in the ill-fated attack on London, where the French Imperial Army attempted to conduct the strategic bombardment of the city. Finally, Russians used the first airship against Napoleon's forces during the battle of Borodino, where Marshall Józef Poniatowski has died due to the air-to-land rocket attack. The thing is, that Napoleonian Wars introduced so many innovations that it is unfair to concentrate only on the airships as the means that the Coalition achieved victory. By 1804, Robert Fulton's submarines were cooperating with military steamships against the British Royal Navy. Sophie Blanchard became the first female military engineer when she had envisioned the balloons carrying solid-fueled rockets to be used against London. Hoping to achieve ultimate victory against repeated attacks of the counterrevolutionary alliance, Napoleon even funded the first state effort to create the difference machine. The only invention he did miss was an airship. German-born engineer Franz Leppich proposed the construction of the first airship carrying rockets and bombs. Emperor of the French refused and prohibited further research into the area. Then, Leppich turned to Russia and Britain, which had funded the development of the first military airship produced in the Moscow shipyard - VVS Catherine the Great. By September 5, four airships - each carrying 40 men and hundreds of explosives stood over the Tsarist forces, awaiting the trial by combat against the elite Great Army of the French Empire. Initial attacks were disappointing - one of the airships took fire and fell on the ground. The second one became uncontrollable and had to be grounded. The third one was damaged by the French rocket. Crew, awaiting death crashed into the ground to shield the Russian withdrawal and slow down the attacking Imperial Ground. VVS Catherine the Great was more successful - by sheer luck, her three rockets landed near the Emperor and his staff. One failed to ignite and fell into the grass. Another rocket exploded over Marshal Murat's head, temporarily deafening him. The third one exploded seconds after hitting Józef Poniatowski's head, dispersing the body across the battlefield. Initial shock resulted in the temporary loss of communications with the Emperor in the crucial time - enough for Pyotr Bagration to conduct his last and greatest of cavalry charges that broke the spine of the Great Army. With a failure to attack Moscow, Napoleon ordered a withdrawal from Russia. Heralded as the Saviour of Russia, Franz Leppich became the first of Russian Court Engineers and achieved the rank of nobility.

Of course, the first airships were not capable of conducting successful, long-range campaigns. In fact, the first of them succeeded by sheer luck and still suffered heavy casualties. Franz Leppich utilized the conflict of the ruling classes between the Napoleonian System and the Russian Imperial state. With the military forces withdrawing, more and more territories lost, battle of Smoleńsk being a failure to stop the French storm, Tsar was desperate enough to employ everyone who promised to end the war quickly. According to the consensus of counterfactual historians, the creation of the first airship by 1812 was a historical anomaly, the miracle of their times that was more lucky than successful. Even if the airship worked, it was luckier to accidentally kill the Marshall of France and wound another. [Event comparable with Hellenic king dying after being bitten by a monkey or a mountain goat killing a certain German politician]. First, military-capable airships were used by the Czech-Austrian general Joseph Radetzky to bombard Venice during the 1848-49 war. Not even flying monsters arising from the first aircraft carrier in the world could prevent Italians from winning their independence and finally, the unification of Lombardy and Venice with the rest countries of the Italian Confederation under the Neo-Guelphist regime. At the behest of Charles Albert, king of Sardinia Piedmont, the new state adopted a liberal constitution based on 1821's Piedmontian Basic Law. The most iconic battle between airships is the battle of New York (1860), where the (British) Royal Navy's airships defeated American Air Forces' airships, burning the city in effect.

By the 1880s, aeroplanes started to replace airships. Airships were too slow, too big and too robust. To fight against airships, the Great Powers started investments into more precise artillery systems. The late 19th century saw leaps in the more advanced metallurgy. Newer methods were invented. Mathematicians with mechanical computers calculated correct aiming systems for the rudimentary anti-aircraft guns. Commando commanders worked their way to create paratroop forces capable of capturing enemy airships on the battle-skies. While the United States struggled with interstate relations after Corwin Amendment, slaveholders started to invest in the long-range airships, capable of holding watchers seeking runaway slaves. After all, the incursion of the police forces into the free state could result in a clash between state militias. Abolitionists, motivated by the calls of the Honest Abe and Red Warrior, equipped their own airships, transforming the Underground Railway into Sky Railway. Finally, the natural riches of the Wild West, traversed by the sky boys, could be mapped and targeted for further exploitation.​

 

[Imielin]

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Clockwise from top: Bartolome de las Casas, Interracial Spaniard family, Hernan Cortez arriving in America.​

The newest creation of the Spaniard inventors has allowed the Empire to flourish. Despite forthcoming defeats, perturbations and territorial declines, the Golden Age of the Spanish culture continued. By 1600, João da Gama, captain of the steamship Rey Carlos observed and analyzed the eruption of Huaynaputina. For his role in depicting blasts, he's credited with the creation of modern volcanology. Earthquakes, tsunamis and massive loss of infrastructure of the Viceroyalty of Peru had caused massive societal changes and internal migrations that led to the discovery and first theories of Nazca lines being done by the Dominican monks. With the ensuring global cooling, the Spaniards were the first to correctly guess that single eruptions can change weather styles across the world, prompting the Royal Court to establish the first volcanic scientific observatories in Latin America. Local beliefs about gods and demons inhabiting the mountains of lavas were studied, with the Spanish Empire becoming the first scientific empire, a state whose royals became devoted to the improvement of human knowledge about the world.

Not only did scientific discoveries push Spain forwards. Social reformer, landowner and Dominican priest Bartolome de las Casas gained popularity in the Royal Court of Emperor Charles. He was instrumental at the end of the Indian (Native American) slavery. His group of peaceful colonizers settled in Venezuela with their leader soon becoming the Viceroy of New Granada, an autonomous unit where Peninsular, mestizos and Natives were to be treated equally. Within decades, Cumana became a major local powerhouse, extracting gold and pearls using the hired labour of Christianized Natives. The colony imported black slaves from Africa and created the first system of manumission in exchange for a set of years of labour in the gold mines. The concurrent rise of the School of Salamanca in Peninsular Spain coincided with the emancipation of local peoples indigenous to the Americas. Under the late Habsburg reforms, Indians were allowed to voluntarily refuse conversions while not being allowed to stop Spaniards from preaching their faith in the Christian God. Unjust punishment and human sacrifices became illegal all over the Spanish Empire, while the local courts headed by criollos and mestizoes were established to listen to the local appeals. Laws of nature made all people free, with legitimate property rights, contributing to the future end of serfdom in the early 1800s. Initial progress was often hampered by the corrupt Peninsular officials, viceroys and native rebellions but did not stop the progress. In some ways, reforms were revolutionary - Habsburgs abolished the human sacrifice, and Bourbons united most of the Americas allowing free trade to flourish in the colonies and enrich both the Crown and Viceroyalties. Linguistical barriers were slowly withdrawn as the Jesuits and other monastical orders taught natives to read and write Spanish. The belief that any person can own property and has a right to enjoy said property fuelled anti-slavery and anti-serfdom movements while stimulating local economies.

Slavery abolition across America was gradual. In 1738, the first free black community was established in Fort Mose, Spanish Florida. Soon, the Viceroyalty of New Granada abolished slavery and forbid the importation of new slaves to the colony. In the wave of 1790s revolutions, the Viceroyalty of New Spain experienced their own rebellions, led by the Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo, who spoke against the corrupted administration of the Viceroys. Intellectuals, liberal priests and the poor supported Hidalgian views of the unification of mestizos and Indians into a casteless society, finally fulfilling their postulates when the liberal Crown has made Hidalgo the Viceroy. Hidalgo abolished slavery and started to dismantle the Encomienda system of large estates. By 1820, no place in the Spanish Americas allowed any person to hold slaves or serfs. By the 1850s-1860s, former slaves, Roman Catholic priests, and American Protestant or Marxist abolitionists formed various border councils that smuggled fugitive slaves from the Southern states of the United States, creating tensions between Spain and the US. The Crown found itself in a precarious situation as the ruler of the Italian Federation, a liberal Pope Pius IX strongly condemned slavery, serfdom and abuses of the workers' rights. Papacy, holding the presidency in the Federation before excommunicated the Brazilian emperor for allowing slavery to flourish, resulting in the Brazilian abolition of slavery. Encouraged by the resounding success of the Papal diplomacy, Italy condemned the US, going as far as expelling all slave-owning Americans, with pro-slavery activists and newspapers being banned from ever appearing in the country. On the other hand, the incursion of Papal influences into domestic policies strengthened Nativism which aided state legislatures in imposing various sets of anti-Catholic laws.​

Spanish engineers changed the world forever when Pedro Paulet launched his first liquid-fuelled rocket on September 27, 1899.

Spanish Empire - established on September 22, 1809, three years after dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Composed (by 1900) from semi-autonomous units of Castille, Aragon, Navarre, New Granada, New Spain, Peru, Philippines, West Africa and Rio de La Plata.

 

[ComradeHuxley]

Quite the Tour der Force trough the ages. Any idea how far you want to take the timeline?

 

[souvikkundu25140017]

It seem noblebright timeline and sorta wish fulfilling experiment.

 

[Imielin]

Quite the Tour der Force trough the ages. Any idea how far you want to take the timeline?

I'm bad at long-term planning so I compress my ideas. I'd like to continue TL until the space colonization (but with empires, mad priests of the Futurist Church and atompunk) hits but that's probably unrealistic.

It seem noblebright timeline and sorta wish fulfilling experiment.

Wishfulfilling? Yes. And highly improbable, just like OTL. Fun to write, fun to read.
Noblebright? Nope nope nope

Spanish OTL was the first one to recognize the rights of indigenous Indians. I've just made the School of Salamanca and Valladolid debate to win instead of being a draw. OTL the Crown attempted to protect the Native people of the Americas in the 1500s, ATL they were more successful in that. With no Peninsular War, no bloody wars of independence and post-war chaos, the Spanish bloc is by definition a superpower as they possess vast amounts of natural resources, a giant population base, and more or less a single language is spoken across the Empire. With no monopolies, the trade flourishes across the largest empire on Earth.

Great Britain is still a liberal empire (in the economic sense) with laws so liberal that a company can conquer a subcontinent.

Imperialist nations of the 19th century possess superior technologies to everyone else. With no Qing, the Chinese dynasty will be less fearful of newer technologies empowering the Han Chinese. Decades of humiliation instead of a century of humiliation, industrialization shredding old customs, railways destroying the significance of canals, coal-burning factories polluting air and water in the most populous country on Earth. By the ATL 21st century, all of humanity will have serious problems.

Republicanism is de facto discredited - the US devolves into a mess, with internal states attempting to enforce internal borders to stop slaves from escaping. Slavery continues as there are fears of liberating African Americans - and even if some southern states will do that, African Americans will not even be citizens as there won't be the 14th amendment due to worries of secession. Native Americans in the US are probably still doomed as the OTL state-sponsored genocide continues.

Africa is doomed as colonizers are even faster and more powerful than OTL, dividing the continent between themselves.

Parliamentarism is smaller than OTL, with Overton's window more on the side of constitutionalism and a stronger monarch. The monarch is seen as a guarantor of stability and peace, and the Pope is seen as the defender of the common people. All while proponents of republicanism and representative democracy are seen as the slaveholders, robber barons or radical freaks from Revolutionary France and genociders of Vendée.​

 

[PrinceofApathy]

I'm bad at long-term planning so I compress my ideas. I'd like to continue TL until the space colonization (but with empires, mad priests of the Futurist Church and atompunk) hits but that's probably unrealistic.

Wishfulfilling? Yes. And highly improbable, just like OTL. Fun to write, fun to read.
Noblebright? Nope nope nope

Spanish OTL was the first one to recognize the rights of indigenous Indians. I've just made the School of Salamanca and Valladolid debate to win instead of being a draw. OTL the Crown attempted to protect the Native people of the Americas in the 1500s, ATL they were more successful in that. With no Peninsular War, no bloody wars of independence and post-war chaos, the Spanish bloc is by definition a superpower as they possess vast amounts of natural resources, a giant population base, and more or less a single language is spoken across the Empire. With no monopolies, the trade flourishes across the largest empire on Earth.

Great Britain is still a liberal empire (in the economic sense) with laws so liberal that a company can conquer a subcontinent.

Imperialist nations of the 19th century possess superior technologies to everyone else. With no Qing, the Chinese dynasty will be less fearful of newer technologies empowering the Han Chinese. Decades of humiliation instead of a century of humiliation, industrialization shredding old customs, railways destroying the significance of canals, coal-burning factories polluting air and water in the most populous country on Earth. By the ATL 21st century, all of humanity will have serious problems.

Republicanism is de facto discredited - the US devolves into a mess, with internal states attempting to enforce internal borders to stop slaves from escaping. Slavery continues as there are fears of liberating African Americans - and even if some southern states will do that, African Americans will not even be citizens as there won't be the 14th amendment due to worries of secession. Native Americans in the US are probably still doomed as the OTL state-sponsored genocide continues.

Africa is doomed as colonizers are even faster and more powerful than OTL, dividing the continent between themselves.

Parliamentarism is smaller than OTL, with Overton's window more on the side of constitutionalism and a stronger monarch. The monarch is seen as a guarantor of stability and peace, and the Pope is seen as the defender of the common people. All while proponents of republicanism and representative democracy are seen as the slaveholders, robber barons or radical freaks from Revolutionary France and genociders of Vendée.​

So kind of like an enlightened-absolutionism-wank?

I'm in. Watching.

 

[Imielin]

Clockwise from the top: War of Christian Religions, The Most Respected Empress Qiu Ersao, European Followers of Tao Economy​

By the 19th century, the Empire was in a sorry state. Ten Great Campaigns drained the budget - costing more than 151 million silver taels. Importation of potatoes and peanuts from the Americas nearly quadrupled the Chinese population. This, in turn, forced farmers to work on smaller plots, leading to poverty in the South. Sparsely populated Manchuria was walled off as a Manchu homeland, preventing Han Chinese to immigrate. Bureaucratic factionalism plagued the provinces, increasing local corruption. Officials neglected famine relief and maintenance of roads and waterworks. From 1791 to 1803, the Qing fought against the White Lotus Society. In a war against the syncretic religion awaiting the King of Light, the Qing troops applied brutality. War crimes and extrajudicial killings of civilians become common during the war. The systematic program of pacification resettled thousands of civilians by force. The rebellion was suppressed but the military invisibility of Manchus has been broken forever. Eight Trigrams managed to break into the Forbidden City and capture Jiaqing Emperor. When the Manchu guards started to fight back, rebels killed the Emperor, sending the Dynasty into chaos.

Daoguang Emperor faced one of the greatest dangers for the Empire. The Han majority was restless. The dangerous ideas came from the European countries - Calvinist missionaries from Dutch Formosa, and Catholics from Phillippines. Illegal drug smuggling was countered by the ban on opium imports. By 1839, the British took part in the drug wars - on the side of drugs. The First Opium War ended with the major humiliation of China and the forced cession of Hong Kong.

Anti-Manchu sentiments culminated through the 1840s and 1850s. The God-Worshipping Society combined ideas of Calvinism, Catholicism and Chinese folk religions into the syncretic Christian religion. Their leader Hong Xiuquang declared himself an incarnation of the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Preaching among the peasants and miners, he identified Manchus and their supporters as demons to be destroyed. By July 1850, the social upheaval triggered the Jintian uprising - Taiping War has began. March of the Christian army was accompanied by numerous reforms - separation and equality of sexes, socialisation of land, suppression of private trade, a ban on foot binding and opium usage, gambling, tobacco, alcohol, polygamy, concubinage, slavery, and prostitution. Confucian books were burnt, idolatrous figures destroyed, while Manchus genocided - both soldiers and civilians, men and women, children and elderly. By January 1854, one of the first Taiping female generals Su Sanniang captured Beijing. Her battalion of women soldiers burnt the Forbidden Palace and started a systematic ethnic cleansing of Manchus. For months, thousands of people were burning at the stakes, bringing the worst images of Christian witch-hunting. Unusual cruelty and mass disruption of Chinese traditional life have led to the breakup between rebels. Red Turban Society broke from the Taipings, wishing to bring their Neo-Taoism to rule over China. Panthay rebellion fought for the protection of the Muslim population. After the death of the Heavenly King during the Tianjin Incident, Taiping ranks collapsed and the rebels started to score major successes. By 1857, infighting resulted in Shi Dakai's overthrow of Hong Tianguifu and the further breakdown of the Taiping authority. With the renewal of the Opium War, the Franco-British-Russian-German-Dutch coalition invaded China, causing a break up of the country. Foreign concessions were drawn by the opposing forces, with large swaths of Manchuria annexed by Russians. Mongolia became independent, with Tibet falling into the hands of a British puppet state.

The war ended in the creation of the Neotaoist Qiu dynasty by Empress Qiu Ersao, former Red Turbans' general in 1863. Inspired by Physiocrats and Adam Smith's theories, Ersao retained some of the Taiping reforms while maintaining Wu Wei's economic policy. To prepare China for Wu Wei, the new establishment launched the Great Correction of the Empire. Serfdom was abolished, and so was the nobility outside of the Imperial family. Civil service was opened to women, as were the military positions. Former leaders of the Red Turban Society used their positions of power to build shipping, telegraph lines, and railways across the country, establishing the first Chinese Western-stylized corporations. Despite these efforts, western investors encroached on the Chinese domestic market, trading in industrial machinery, locomotives and weapons, in exchange for porcelain, silk, tea and furniture. The most notorious of the Western trades was Warren Delano, a former drug smuggler who established the Delano Company (since 1880 Delano-Roosevelt Trade Company), to trade with China. Buying a large estate, he had established Delano - the first Chinese city populated by American immigrants - mostly traders, highly paid engineers, former military men and their families. Empress Ersao lived until 1895, overseeing the development of the Chinese industry and the start of the slow withering of state influences. Her grandson continued the Great Correction of the Empire, which had allowed China to grow into one of the largest economies in the world by the 1930s and 1940s, after the immense destruction of more powerful Western states.​

[1]War of Christian Denominations is a term given to the Taiping Rebellion. The term describes the Christian denomination of Hong Xiuquang fighting against the other Christians - mercenaries bought with the Qing gold.

 

[Imielin]

Clockwise from the top: Colonial troops utilized in the conquest of Africa, propaganda poster of the British colonialism, an artistic depiction of airships over London​

Colonialism is a term for using practices for controlling less developed countries directly on indirectly by the more powerful states. While colonialism is mainly associated with the European takeover of the world in the 19th century, other countries employed similar practices too, albeit on a much smaller scale.

First recorded colonialism did happen in Antiquity when maritime city-states of Greeks and Phoenicians expanded their influences over the whole Mediterranean area. According to the Church of England, the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish people are descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, which had settled over Europe thousands of years ago. Colonialism was continued by the Romans - to the point that every European empire until the British Empire claimed to be a successor to them. Until the 1400s and 1500s, Arabs and Chinese were leading ethnic groups that employed colonization of other states. However, the largest colonisation campaign was started by the Europeans in the 12th century, when the Crusaders attempted to colonize Palestine and its surroundings.

After the first crusade, the Pope crowned the first King of Jerusalem. The series of religious wars continued in the region, with changing luck - but ended with the expulsion of Christian-dominated kingdoms from the area. While a brief rule, the Western colonization of Palestine allowed the partial transfer of long-forgotten scientific knowledge - for example, crossbows became more popular among Christians, leading to the ban on their use by the Pope. Baghdadian knowledge spread by the Mongols arrived in Italy, aiding the start of the Renaissance in the 14th century. Quarrels between the Roman Empire and Western Crusaders helped the Turkish colonization of Anatolia and effectively destroyed the last vestiges of Roman power in the Mediterranean region. By 1494, Spain and Portugal divided the world between themselves - an agreement ignored by the ascendant Protestant powerhouse in the British Isles. The 16th century saw the remarkable military conquests of the Mesoamerican and South American empires, which greatly expanded the power of the Spanish Crown. Ins search of mythical gold, the French colonized Canada, while the British colonized the Eastern part of the North American continent (which later became the United States). The Dutch colonized Formosa maintained contact with isolationist Japan and made incursions into South Africa (later lost to the British). The Russian Empire has colonized territories from the Ural to Kamchatka, from the Artic circle to Afghanistan, Alaska up to the Spanish borders in northern California. The Roman Emperors (Germans) conquested the Balkans before abandoning it to the local administrations when they turned to German nationalism. The United States purged their Native populations from existence, using state-sponsored genocides, causing the Great Replacement - the introduction of whites and their black slaves to the formerly Indian lands. Neo-Ottomanist regime brutally suppressed the Arab resistance to their rule, introducing settlers from the remote parts of the Empire to Hejaz, Nejd, securing the oil production in the hands of the Caliph and his corporations.

Neo-Guelphist Italy colonized Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, in the 1870s-1890s, attempting to unify the Christian faith under the rule of the Pope. Italians introduced public education to the poor, established Catholic trade unions and enticed corporations to establish a modern infrastructure in the state to unify the remote corners of their colonies under a single authority. Italian colonization culminated in the ascension of the Roman-Catholic Queen of Kings, Zewditu, who accepted Roman Catholicism as a state religion and de facto accepted a protectorate status for the Empire of Ethiopia that would last for decades. Similar developments were conducted by Portugal, which integrated colonies into the metropolitan area of their country, equalizing subjects of the Crown by 1900. Emperor of Germany, Franz Joseph oversaw the development of the German colonial empire for more than 5 decades. Namibia evolved into the autonomous province of the Empire, with the first African duke being accepted into the German nobility by 1914. The mineral riches of Congo were used by the German corporations to fuel the rapid economic growth that Empire experienced in the late 19th century, becoming the second largest economy in the world, behind only Spain. Italian, Portuguese and German colonies in Africa became a rallying point for the supporters of colonization for their most humane treatment of natives. Propaganda covered the most horrific crimes - Herero genocide in Namibia, suppression of the Maji-Maji rebellion, and the establishment of the concentration camps in Congo. The anti-Italian rebellion of Ethiopia saw the first use of aerial bombardment using chemical weapons, while the Angolan colony was a place several man-made epidemics ravaged the countryside. Nonetheless, the urban population in respective colonies increased rapidly, with the metropolitan languages spreading among the most educated people of the country.

By 1848 the British forces overthrew the last of the Qajar Empire and invaded the country, effectively ending the Iranian sovereignty in 1849. The British divided the country on the basis of ethnicity - into Persia, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Khuzestan, Balochistan and Luristan. By the 1890s, the British forces took control over the Sultanate of Oman and Zanzibar, encroaching into the Arab territories. In 1868, after the defeat of the Sepoy rebels, British queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India, breaking a long tradition of seeking legitimacy as the descendants of Rome by the European empires. By 1900, the British colonial possessions were organized into the Imperial Federation, with all states being equal. By 1910, shortly before Edward VII's death, the British Raj became a colony independent of Great Britain and gained equality within the Imperial Federation. Only white men had suffrage, excluding women and majorities. By 1914, the British Empire held sway over 456 million people, 25 per cent of the world population at the time. 53 million were considered white, of whom 22 million had a right to vote in the elections. According to the rising fringe group inside the Church of England, the British people are inheritors of Jacob's birthright, with the Royal Family being inheritors of the Davidic throne through one of the surviving Judahite princesses, Tea Tephi marrying a High King of Ireland. Influenced by the more and more powerful cultists, the British forces cooperated with the anti-Ottoman rebels across the world - intervening in the Greek-Turkish War of 1897 and the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. During the Greek-Turkish Straits War of 1914, a local military commander and believer of the British Israelis principle led his troops to Palestine. The military incident triggered a reaction from the Russian Empire on the side of Constantinopole. The German mobilization on the Greek-British side triggered opposed action in Bonapartist France. By the September of 1914, Europe was once again in a state of war. By October 1914, the Imperial Federation officially declared war against Russia, France and the Ottomans.

No one realized that in the Kongo colony a local prostitute caught up a weird disease. Unaware infected German sailors returned to their motherland for the incoming war.​