VII) Empires
(1815-1886)
Constitution of the United Provinces
At the beginning of 1816, great and drastic changes hit the government of the United Provinces. Upon hearing more details of the Brazilian Constitution, and the liberties it granted its citizens, the Dutch people began to demand change and reform within their own realm. After suffering under the Batavian Republic, then under its Regency, the Dutch people were in no mood to suffer injustice beneath its own king and parliament. If a bunch of colonists in Brazil were granted vast liberties, then why should the Provinces not receive the same. It did not matter that Brazil was its own nation, they were still colonists in the eyes of the Dutch, and the United Provinces were the mother country. Where the mother country leads, the colonies should follow, not the other way around.
Borrowing from his experiences in Recife, Maurice II, King of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Emperor of Brazil, called forth a constitutional convention for the Netherlands. Rulers of each of the Provinces, along with the most respected of intellectuals across the nation, met in the King’s Palace in Delft. They would not suffer the months of summer heat that hit Philadelphia in 1787, but would rather wrap up the convention within as many weeks. Again, the first written Constitution of the United Provinces borrowed heavily from the Americans.
In contrast, the Dutch over-emphasized Provincial rights. The Provinces had governed themselves for the past two hundred years, there was no way any of them planned to surrender sovereignty to a stronger central government. However, where as before Napoleon the Netherlands were confederated, Post-Napoleonic United Provinces grew into a tighter federated bond of provinces. The Staaten-General was given slightly more power to regulate commerce between the Provinces. At the time, it did not seem that big a change, but with the coming of the railroad, the Staaten-General would soon make its voice heard in a wide range of Standardization under the ‘Commerce Clause’.
The greatest changed to the Staaten-General came to the Second Chamber, now called the House of Electorates. For two centuries, the lower house of the Staaten-General consisted of many members who essentially bought or bribed their way into power. After the convention, the Electorates came into power by more legal and legitimate means, and were now chosen by a total male suffrage above the age of twenty. No longer could wealthy merchants and powerful companies decide the fate of the Dutch people.
The First Chamber, as in Brazil it too is called the Senaat, consisted of hereditary rulers of the Provinces along with other peers of the realm. It was not open to election, nor to new members without its own consent. As with the old Staaten-General, the Senaat handled matters concerning the Provinces, and the House handled matters concerning the people. Sometimes such matters were at odds, especially in the arena of taxation and tariffs.
As a Mercantile nation, the United Provinces earned between sixty and eighty percent of its revenue from a series of tariffs and customs, all of which were designed to protect homegrown business and domestic goods. Protectionism has always been a way of economic life in the Netherlands. Any foreigner attempting to import their own goods into the Provinces would be forced to pay a hefty fee. Various customs were imposed upon merchant ships trading through Dutch ports, or even if they happened to be just passing through. Throughout the entire history of the United Provinces, the average Netherlander never had to pay more than ten percent of his income to the government, though companies faced higher taxation.
The 1816 Constitution gave the King more power. Before, the Kings of the United Provinces served as an anchorage, a means to unite the Provinces. Now, the Kings and future Queens would be executive monarchs, another concept borrowed from the United States. Where the Americans would elect their chief executive on a four year basis, the Dutch would inherit their executives, each groomed from birth to serve as head of state. Unlike other constitutional monarchies of Europe, the Dutch King did not have the power to dissolve his parliament. The Staaten-General faced elections every five years, and then only the people could dissolve it.
A third branch of government, introduced to the Netherlands for the first time, balanced the power between Staaten-General and the new executive King, and would keep either from getting too powerful. The Supreme Court of the United Provinces would insure constitutional law was not violated. Independent courts were a new addition to Dutch judiciary system. The judges in the Supreme Court were nominated by the King, but confirmed by the House of Electorates. Provincial courts worked on a similar principle, though they were nominated by the lord of the Province, and confirmed by the Provincial Assemblies.
Industrialization
The United Provinces received a new government at the dawning of the Industrial Revolution. Starting in Britain decades before, the steam engine finally made its way to the Netherlands. For much of its history, mills were powered by winds blown off the North Sea or from the currents of tidal estuaries. These limited industry to specific areas of specific Provinces. The first steam engines were not introduced to Holland or any other coastal Provence, but to Luxembourg. The Duke of Luxembourg smuggled two engines out of Great Britain. The British monopoly on steam power ended and ushered in a new age in Luxembourg.
Industrialization greatly increased productivity within Luxembourg, but it came at a cost. Large quantities of coal were mined from the once pristine province, and the woods were replaced by forests of smokestacks. Endless streams of black smoke blotted out the sun, and filled the lungs of the citizens. Industrialization also improved efficiency at the cost of employment. Thousands of Luxembourgers found themselves in a situation that was seldom known in the Provinces; unemployed.
Shifts in supply and demand allowed for the owner, the company to lower its own wages. Though wages were never cut, they seldom rose, and when they did it was at below inflation levels. The price of living in Luxembourg was rising, but relatively speaking, income shrank. Textile mills, once few in Luxembourg, now dominated the landscape. Close proximity to iron mines and coal deposits allowed for Luxembourg, and later Liege and Limburg to become the steel production center of the United Provinces, and a territory coveted by both France and later the German Empire.
The steam engines were put to use in Holland and Zeeland not as engines of industry, but rather to power a system of pumps to both regulate water levels in the maritime Provinces and to pump large quantities of water out of new closed off areas. Steam increased the size of several Provincial economies (at a great cost to its people) but it literally increased the sizes of Holland and Zeeland. For centuries, the Dutch reclaimed land from the sea, but at small parcels at a time. With steam, large strips of land were risen from the shallow depths.
In some cases being at the bottom of a salt water sea, these new plots of land were not the best places to build new farms. Instead, they were used for urban expansion. As industry stripped jobs from other Provinces, Limburgers, Luxembourgers and various others from the southern Provinces made their way north. Though factories started to run on constant steam as opposed to sporadic winds, there was a shortage of menial laborers in Holland. Long since the commercial capital of Europe, Amsterdammers, and Hollanders in general, avoided the dangers of factory work.
And dangers were plentiful. Machines powered by steam could move twenty-four hours a day, and often did. Seldom did the early machines need to stop, and only when something broke. The Industrial Revolution created a sort of community rush. Owners of factories were only interested in producing more, and outproducing their rivals across the North Sea. Though the United Provinces were protected by tariffs, Dutch businessmen soon discovered other nations followed suit. In order to export their merchandise to Britain, which at the time was equally protective, factories had to cut cost.
Life was not pleasant in the United Provinces during industrialization. It was the lowest point in respect to quality of life since and after 1609. In Holland, such a demand for labor existed that anyone available over the age of eight were employed in the textile mills of Holland, almost all economic refugees from the southern Provinces. The work was long, twelve hours shifts, and exceptionally hazardous, especially for the youngest of workers. The children were made to crawl beneath the looms and mechanical weavers to retrieve scraps of wool, cotton and even silk. Working in the mills gave little and took much, including fingers and whole limbs.
The Industrial Revolution produced more than mechanical monsters, and replaced more than just human workers. In 1822, the first railroad was constructed from Amsterdam to the Hague, not only replacing horse-drawn carts, but threatening both canal and shipping interests across the nation. Unlike the mangling behemoths of the dimly lit factories, Netherlanders did lobby again the railroads. The shipping giants of the Netherlands, and owners of its various canals lobbied heavily against the railroad, claiming it would not only wreck the national and Provincial economies, but threatened the very tradition most sacred to the Dutch people; seafaring. With railroads, who would need ships? To some extent it was a success. Brabant’s Provincial Assembly passed legislation limiting both size and speed of the railroad engines.
One byproduct of steam power literally lit the roads to Amsterdam. IN the 1870s, the first electricity producing engines were operation in Holland. With the invention of the lightbulb, the demand for electricity soon increased. For decades, coal-fired power plants gave the Netherlands its power and choked its skies with soot. It was not until the beginning of the Twentieth Century that hydroelectric plants began to appear. For a nation that spent much of its existence building dams and dikes, hydroelectricity was a logical jump. Unlike many nations, including Brazil, the United Provinces did not need to dam rivers. More than enough water flowed between the North Sea and English Channel to permit tidal-generated power.
New Amsterdam Referendum
While industrialization began to strangle the lives of Netherlanders, New Amsterdammers were looking for revolutionary change of their own. In 1824, eight years after the official independence of Brazil, New Amsterdammers began to decide it was time for their own self-determination. For the past two hundred years, the colony was ruled by the Hague and by New Amsterdam’s own nobility. Town halls were the extent of self-rule in the colony, and those could easily be overruled by the Marquis.
In the eight years following Brazilian nationhood, New Amsterdammers organized and lobbied the Hague for the right to decide its own fate. By 1824, Maurice II agreed that if any Dutch colony wanted self-rule, then it should be subject to referendum. While addressing the Staaten-General, the United Provinces faced its first constitutional crisis; which chamber would decide if referendums would happen? The Senaat was in charge of Provincial affairs, and the possible independence of a colony fell into that category. However, it would be the people who voted in the referendum, so the House of Electorates claimed jurisdiction.
The five justices of the Supreme Court heard the cases of both chambers, and ruled that both did have jurisdiction in the case of referendum. In such a case, the King’s plan must pass both First and Second Chambers of the Staaten-General. It passed the House with a large margin, but stalled in the Senaat, whose concern was the loss of the colony could upset their own Provincial economies, since products from New Amsterdam would now be subject to tariffs. Also, with the loss of Denmark in the Congress of Vienna, the United Provinces consisted of eighteen Provinces, an even number. When the vote came up, it was divided nine to nine, and under the Constitution, it was up to the head of the Senaat, the King, to break the tie. Thus referendum passed, barely.
In May of 1824, New Amsterdam was presented with three choices; 1) they could stay a crown colony of the United Provinces, with all the privileges bestowed upon Dutch citizens, including the right to elect its own assembly; 2) it could become a realm within the empire, sharing the same status as Brazil, in personal union with the United Provinces; or 3) it would be granted complete independence, and would face the world alone, sink or swim.
The third option was least popular. In 1824, New Amsterdam’s economy and trading sectors were far closer tied to the markets of Boston and Philadelphia than Amsterdam and Recife. It shared common interests with the Americans and its economies so closely tied, that any tariffs levied by the Hague would cause much harm to New Amsterdam’s livelihood. The colonists lived a mixture of new urban and frontier lifestyle known throughout the United States. Though the entire Mauritius River valley was now farmland, along with lands along the Delaware and Connecticut rivers, much interior land remained forested, however it too was under the control of logging interests. For their own interests, they harvest only sectors of the forest at a time.
Because most of the New Amsterdammer’s livelihood came from surrounding states, a write-in option appeared on the referendum, one the Staaten-General did not authorize; 4) Full political union with the United States and statehood. According to the United States Constitution, any new state simply required a constitution of its own and a republican form of government. The fourth option took fifty-three percent of the vote in the 1824 Referendum, more than a simple majority, thus eliminating any run-off vote.
Before the results even reached the Hague, New Amsterdammers went about constructing their future state government. The government was indeed republican, but the Dutch in general had no long-term experience in anything resembling a presidential republic, and up until 1816, were ruled mostly by a parliament with the blessing of the King. Thus New Amsterdam’s constitution constructed the only parliamentary republic within the United States, with only the most minimal of separations of power required by law. Thus the ‘governor’ position was filled by a First Minister, who was both head of state and head of government, and by a unicameral parliament, which both made and enforced laws. The courts were kept separate.
Word reached Washington long before it reached the Hague. In a way, this accelerated the process; since shortly after the Staaten-General learned of the unauthorized results, negotiators from the United States, an important trading partner of all the Dutch, arrived. There was little to negotiate; New Amsterdam made its choice, and the King swore to honor the results of the election. To go back on the King’s word, the Staaten-General would bring shame to the House of Orange, not to mention damage Dutch credibility around the world. Some in the Staaten-General wondered if statehood was not the whole plan all along. History has shown that the United States would not hesitate to send its own citizens to colonize another nation, then shortly after annex that nation; such as was with the case of Texas– and New Amsterdam was a far more strategic gem than Texas could ever hope to be.
On October 18, 1824, the rule of New Amsterdam changed from King Maurice II to President John Adams II. On that date, the newly minted Parliament of New Amsterdam took over power , and was admitted as the 24th state. As a result from admission into the Union, one of New Amsterdam’s most famous offices was abolished. Federal law prohibited any title of nobility, and since the days of Michiel de Ruyter, New Amsterdam’s Provincial head was the Marquis of New Amsterdam. The de Ruyter family held that position until admission, where Marquis Edwin was given the choice of either renouncing his title or leaving the state. Titles were but a concept, but the business ventures the de Ruyter family ran in New Amsterdam were not. Edwin chose profit over title, and renounced his Marquisette, but was still the head of what is now known as Ruyter Enterprises. Their trading business evolved into the present day Ruyter’s department stores scattered across the eastern United States and Quebec.
For the Americans, New Amsterdam was a strategic location at the mouth of the Mauritius. The Erie Canal was already under construction, offering a passage from the Great Lakes to the Mauritius River, bypassing British controlled Canadian waters and the French controlled Saint Lawrence Seaway. However, the output terminal would be in Dutch controlled New Amsterdam. Once the canal was opened, New Amsterdam would become the center of Trade for eastern North America, making it extremely valuable to whomever controlled it.
New Amsterdam was admitted as the twenty-fourth state, and still is the only state to possess a Parliamentary Republic as a state government. Per the Constitution, any member of the United States was required to have a republican form of government. Whether it be presidential, semi-presidential or parliamentary was never specified. The state still lacks the defined separation-of-powers seen at the federal level and every other state.
Rebuilding the VOC
Due to its war of conquest in Bengal, by 1800, the VOC was in deep debt and forced to declare bankruptcy. As a result, in order to pay for the debt, the company was forced to cede all of its colonies to the United Provinces, thus making Kapenstaat, Ceylon, India, Java, Formosa, Hainan, Mozambique and the other Indonesian holdings, Crown Colonies of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. With bankruptcy, shareholders began to sell their shares, forcing the VOC to auction off its fleet and salvage whatever of value that could be used to payoff the investors. Trading posts were closed, shipping lanes dried up, and before the year was out, its royal monopoly revoked. The VOC looked on the verge of vanishing into the ashes of history.
The company did not fold. While most investors pulled out, a few of the employees, most notably the naval officers, bought many shares, now virtually worthless. The VOC was left with these officers and life-long employees and seven seaworthy ships to rebound from it collapse. Most in Amsterdam simply wrote off the VOC, declaring it would never rebound. With Napoleon ripping up the continent at the time, it was an easy assumption. With Napoleon doing just that, few even cared about the company that made Dutch domination of trade possible.
The new VOC, a strictly private venture between a group of captains, sailors, employees and investors of the former colossus opened its doors to business in 1801. In retrospect, it was a very poor time for any company to open its door, much less the second incarnation of a company that had earned itself many enemies. With the Wars of Napoleon raging across Europe and the United Provinces located in the middle of it all, neutrality was a position harder and harder to maintain. British and French ships alike preyed upon the merchantmen waving the hated VOC standard. Losses in the first year alone would have made any other business fold.
Dutch involvement in the Wars opened a new avenue of business for the VOC; privateering. All of the fourteen surviving ships were armed to the teeth as investors sought to remake their income by simply looting French vessels. The profits from captured French ships and their contents was far greater than sailing to Angola for a hull full of logs. Some of the captured ships were sold to offset costs, but the larger ones, and the few genuine frigates captured, were held by the company. The warships were used not only to raid more commerce but to escort VOC ships on their more legitimate business ventures.
The final fall of Napoleon saw a VOC that had expanded to forty-one heavily armed ships. The frigates had partitions and excess guns removed and were turned over to commercial freight once French shipping was legally no longer an option. Though the VOC had barely survived the first decade of the new century, the had in deed survived and were generating a modest, if small ,profit. With no spice monopoly, the VOC made few trips to the Far East. Instead, the bulk of their revenue was made in the timber trade in both Angola and Brazil.
The new Board of Holders met in VOC headquarters in Amsterdam, one of the few VOC assets still in company hands, to plan their future. Now with fourteen ships, the VOC was still a small fish in a large ocean. It was an uphill battle, and might have been a lost cause if not for one man; Maarten Minuit, the head of the new VOC.
Minuit decided the company should return to its origin mission; the spice trade. Though it could never hope to acquire a monopoly, there was plenty market to go around for cinnamon and nutmeg, commodities that made the VOC powerful to begin with. For the first few years of the Nineteenth Century, business was difficult. Former colonies were now flooded with a variety of ships, ranging from trading companies to private merchants. No longer could the VOC buy spices at their own prices. They were forced to bid the same as the rest of them, and compete over a limited supply of spices.
However oppressive VOC practices were, the company did not lose at of its ‘friends’. A number of old contacts in both Ceylon and India aided the rebounding VOC, managed to grant them access to goods before other merchants, and, with the assistance of kick-backs, were able to cut some corners for them. Bribery is a far cry from the practice of conquest the VOC once employed. The bribes could only advance them so far. No longer could they expend large amounts of capital in buying politicians and official, nor where they a pseudo-nation on to themselves.
When railroad made its first appearance in the United Provinces, the VOC was only up to eight ships, the latest a derelict they discovered floating off the coast of Angola. They stood to lose just as much as any shipping company. Bad enough to actually have to compete with other ocean-going cartels, but now this new fangled railroad threatened to reduce their share of the market even further. However, the VOC did not join those same shipping and canal interests in their lobbying crusade against the rail.
In the 1820s, the advent of steam engines lead to a new method of transportation: the railroad. The British had already made great use of the rail, but business interests in the United Provinces were divided by it. Canal owners and shipping magnate swore that the railroad would destroy the economy by putting out of business dozens of canals and hundreds of captains. A fight for the future of the railroad broke out in the Staaten-General as canal interests lobby against the laying of railroad tracks. Most shipping companies were against the rail and saw it as a threat, save one. The VOC saw the railroad as an opportunity.
The new VOC was not about to make the same mistakes as its predecessor, and Maarten Minuit decided the company should diversify. He had a great deal of clout with the Board of Holders, despite his attempts to convince them to re-enter the cinnamon trade. In 1835, Minuit convinced the Board of Holders to put everything on the line, in effect put the entire company up as collateral for a fifteen million guilder loan from the Bank of Amsterdam. With that many guilders, Minuit convinced the rest of the shareholders that instead of lobbying against the railroad, they should purchase the entire line. It was a gutsy move. During the 1830s, it was not even known if the railroad would be a reliable means of transport or just some passing fad. When word of the acquisition reached papers and markets across the United Provinces, the VOC’s final days were predicted.
Minuit proved them all wrong The Company bought into the railroad industry, acquiring the Amsterdam-Hague line, as well as other small tracks connecting to it. Much to everyone’s surprise, Minuit not only made the railroad work, but by 1840, had the lines extended as far as Bruges and Arnhem. Within ten years, the company managed to pay off the loan, and afterward climb its way back to the top of the financial world. By 1843, the VOC had grown to the point where it was forced to reorganize. The maritime functions of the VOC would still go by that name, however the railroad division was named VOC Rail.
Many fears were fulfilled. The railroad did weaken the canals, and put a few shipping companies out of business, some the VOC purchased on the cheap. The railroad proved to be a far more profitable way to ship things within the United Provinces than did ships themselves. By 1843, the VOC Rail operations were the largest railroad in the United Provinces, with hundreds of kilometers of track lain.
In that same year, the first tracks of the VOC Rail were lain in Brazil. Brazil was a massively larger state than the United Provinces, and railroads would be the future of Brazilian commerce and the key to developing parts far from the coast nor accessible by rivers. Brazilians, once crowded along the coastline, soon spread out to new lands in the interior. These newly available lands also drove immigration from Europe, bringing millions of people to Brazil over the next fifty years. By 1850, thousands of kilometers of VOC track were lain not only in the United Province sand Brazil, but colonies such as southern Africa, Ceylon and even India. The rail venture was a gamble, but not only did it succeed, but it also put the VOC back on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with the company being took public in 1849, causing new investors to sink millions of guilders of capital into the company.
VOC Rail expanded its operations to ever corner of the Dutch world. By 1850, thousands of kilometers of railroad were laid across the Provinces, Brazil, South Africa, Ceylon, India, Java and Formosa. The rail made it possible for the VOC to squeeze its small time and local competitors out of the trade. In areas with little water access, the railroad allowed the VOC to exploit areas impossible to reach by ship. Not only that, but as locomotive engines improved in efficiency and performance, it rendered mule trains and horse caravans obsolete. With one engine pulling a dozen cars, VOC Rail could ships the same amount of merchandise as a thousand horses.
The gamble to purchase a once unknown quantity paid off for the struggling VOC. By 1850, the company rose back on to the Amsterdam Stock Market, and investors began to pour money into the company. VOC’s success shifted the lobbying of other companies away from the railroads back to the VOC. For merchants and traders around the world, their ultimate nightmare was coming true; the VOC was returning from the dead.
With improvements of steam engines, it became possible by the 1850s to install the engines on ships, producing the first self-propelled ocean-going vessels. As it was in the Seventeenth Century, the VOC capitalized on any new invention or idea that could earn it profit. In 1854, the VOC established a new division; VOC Cruise. VOC Cruise was built around two shipyards purchased in the 1840s and the development of steamers. For decades afterward, VOC ships retained their sails. The wind was free after all, however it was not always convenient. When the winds failed, steam could take over.
In response to the advent of steam, the VOC established a string of coaling stations around the world. To increase its profit even further, the VOC sold its excess coal to any ship that ventured into its stations. VOC Cruise shipped not only freight with the power of steam, but passengers as well. The same year the division was established, a Rotterdam-to-Recife passenger service, with travel time of days as opposed to weeks with only sail.
During the 1840s, a series of revolutions across Europe sent hundreds of thousands of people streaming across international frontiers as homeless refugees. There was neither land or jobs to be spared in the United Provinces, thus Dutch, as well as Germans, French and other groups, set out for the New World. The first choice of almost all of these people was America. Brazil came in a close second place. The VOC saw this wave of immigration and knew it would not be the last. Famines, revolutions, even full scale wars would create refugees, and those people would wish to travel far and wide in search of opportunity.
To start with, the VOC converted a number of freighters into simple and rudimentary passenger ships. The first ship designed specifically for a trans-Atlantic trip was launched in 1843, and served to take passengers from Rotterdam to Recife. These passenger liners were marginally profitable, for though they left Rotterdam fully loaded, the left Recife with only a few on board. The flood of refugees in 1848, sparked off a rush across the ocean. In order to meet the demand, the VOC opened new shipyards in Amsterdam, not far from their 18th Century yards.
In order to speed the voyage, and return for another load faster, the first steamer was launched from the VOC’s shipyards in 1851. The Pride of Amsterdam was the largest ship of its day, capable of cramming several hundred refugees within its 120-room hull. The ship was not designed for luxury or even comfort, but people who road upon it reached the New World alive and ready to set forth on their new lives. The ship could cross to Recife in just under ten days, or reach New Amsterdam or Philadelphia in less than a week. Most of the VOC Cruise department’s ships made runs to Brazil, and between 1840 and 1890, VOC ships carried some two million immigrants to the Empire of Brazil.
Further inventions out of the United States added to the VOC’s wealth. By the 1870s, VOC Comm sowed telegraph cables from the Provinces to Brazil, to Kapenstaat, all the way to Ceylon. The telegraph network cut transit time for information from days (and weeks for Ceylon) to a matter of minutes. Word of rebellion in India could reach the Hague before the rebels themselves even knew what was happening. However, it would take days to weeks to traverse the distance. The opening of the Suez Canal cut transit time to India dramatically. Again, by the 1870s, the VOC owned a sixty percent share of the early information market.
The Nineteenth Century saw a dramatic turnaround for the almost vanquished company, but its expansion and acquisitions of the Twentieth Century would send it to the top of the market. By the start of the Twenty-first Century, the VOC would be an over six hundred billion guilder company.
Dutch Raj
After the first collapse of the VOC, the United Provinces inherited India along with other colonies around the Indian Ocean. By the 1820s, India consisted of a network of crown colonies and allied principalities spreading across southern and eastern India. Between 1820 and 1880, the Dutch extended their Indian Empire both north and westward, either bringing states into alliance and vassalage or outright conquering them. Those that submitted or allied themselves with the Hague enjoyed a degree of autonomy. Those that resisted, did not.
The Indian people did not enjoy the liberty long since established in Ceylon. Ceylonese natives owned their own plantations and manors along with descendants of VOC officials and of later Dutch colonists. For two centuries, the Dutch and Ceylonese existed as mostly equal. In 1837, a level of self-rule was established within the colony in the form of a Colonial Assembly, with both natives and those of Dutch ancestry allowed to vote for the Colonial Assembly, though the Governor-General of Ceylon was still appointed by the Staaten-General. It was not until 1911, that non-land owning Ceylonese were enfranchised.
Though close together, Ceylon and India experienced different colonial existence. Ceylon was the jewel in crown, a shining beacon of liberty. India was a land kept under the domination of the Dutch, with the only free natives being the allies. The Ceylonese owned their own land and ran their own businesses. The Indians were largely overseen by Dutch colonists and officials. The only common thread between the two lay in the fact that the mother country never interfered with native religions. The Hindus and Muslims of Bengal appreciated this one fact, as opposed to the British attempts at conversion.
Poverty was a rarity on the island of Ceylon, but it was the norm on the subcontinent. Large slums sprouted around Goa, Mumbai, Dacca and Calicut, much like mushrooms after a storm. Work in India involved mostly the extraction of various resources from the island; harvesting fields, working the mines and serving on Dutch estates. During the middle of the Nineteenth Century, English-style villas were all the rage in India. Any colonist with fashion sense would erect such a manor as soon as possible, including the rose hedges. However, the Dutch did add their own little touches to these villas, most notably in the form of tulips. Where Netherlanders colonized, that particular flower followed.
The Dutch Raj was an era of unification in India. Over the millennia, various empires spread across India, the most recent being the Mughals. Under these empires, the Indian peoples continued to speak their own languages and keep their cultural identity. The Dutch Raj offered India a common language for the first time in its history. Previous empires offered little incentive to speak the conquer’s language, but with the Dutch, if any of the native wished to communicate with the newest Raj, they would have to speak the foreigner’s language, for they refused to speak the natives’. Despite their distrust, at best, of foreigners, the natives were forced to concede that Dutch was a handy common language in a land with at least a dozen major languages of its own.
The Dutch unification of India was not all about conquest and exploitation. During the Nineteenth Century, India began to develop a sophisticated infrastructure, strengthening trade and facilitating economic growth, though mostly for Dutch benefit. VOC Rail laid tracks across India as fast as the indigenous populace could work. The VOC imported foremen and managers, but left the remedial work to the underpaid natives, though railroad workers received more pay than the average Indian.
During the Dutch Raj, tens of thousands of Netherlanders immigrated to the colony. With unemployment reaching unbearable levels back home, the Hague was more than happy to send the less fortunate to India. When a colonist arrive, they were granted a lot of land approximating one square kilometer. With India already heavily populated, the only way colonists could receive land was at the expense of the natives. Millions of Indians were displaced and dispossessed. In order to support themselves, some were forced to work for the same colonists who displaced them, and work their former lands at a sub par wage.
The same land once grew rice, wheat and other foods for the native population. Colonists were not interested in growing vast quantities of food stuff. Old fields of wheat and rice were ploughed under, replaced with tea. Innovations in the United States in the 1790s allowed for easy separation of seed from cotton, allowing cotton to become an economically viable option. Cotton was the new cash crop, and Nineteenth Century India was dominated by growing more and more of it. However, cotton depleted the soil, and soon colonists were forced to move to fresh lands, and displacing more natives.
Obsession with cotton lead to a series of famines across India. Colonists grew enough produce to feed themselves, but belatedly disregarded the native situation, transforming their previous farmed land into cash crops destined only for European consumers. The Famine of 1858 was the greatest tragedy in Dutch history. The biggest tragedy of the famine was how a people who prided themselves on their freedom could oppress and starve the native population. Some historians have proposed the famines were orchestrated, as a means to control the population. A hungry people were a weak people, and a weak people could not rise up against its oppressors.
By comparison, Ceylon was paradise. Rebellion was rare and the middle-class was on the rise. For the most part, plantations and estates were divide by various trading families from previous centuries. However, quite a few of those employees were the natives of Ceylon. Unlike the Indians, native Ceylonese did quite well for themselves. Their plantations were not stocked with the leaching cotton, but rather with fields of cinnamon. Though many other crops were produced on Ceylon, cinnamon was its most important cash crop. European demand for the spice had never wavered in two centuries.
The colonial capital of Colombo began a transformation into Amsterdam East. Colombo was the trading center of the entire Indian Ocean. Merchants from Dutch colonies in Indonesia to the east, and Ottomans and free Arabs in the west, all made the voyage to trade their goods in the Ceylonese capital. Netherlanders were more than happy to take these same goods back to the United Provinces, for a substantial profit.
Where profit is earned, banks as sure to follow. The Bank of Colombo was established in 1839, shortly after limited self-determination was instituted. With a steady bank, money was loaned and new businesses began to sprout across the city. The most prosperous of Colombo’s citizens could afford to abandon the crowded apartment flats of the city proper, and build luxurious mansions on the outskirts of town. These estates were reminiscent of estates in Britain or America more so than the Provinces. Though the Dutch were a well-to-do people, not many were wealthy, and in a land with high concentration of populations, large estates were a very expensive investment.
Labor was imported from India at cheaper prices to maintain the estates. It was not just the colonists that brought in foreign workers, but the natives did as well. When native wages rose too high, Ceylonese simply went abroad, searching for the desperate, those who would work for half-wages. To an extent, the natives were assimilating to the ways of the colonists. Assimilation was not a one-way avenue. The colonists took to eating native cuisines, adopting some native dress and even adopting native architecture, producing a unique Oriental-Dutch hybrid design.
The adaptation on Ceylon caused little unrest on the island, where as India was always a hotbed for turmoil. Indians who were subjects of the Princely States fared even worse than their direct-ruled counterparts. In the crown colonies, Indians were subject to Dutch law and, though treated like second-class citizens, were citizens of the Dutch empire nonetheless. However, India was a vast land, and administrating the entire colony was difficult under the best of circumstances. Decades would pass before quality of life would rise to acceptable levels.
King William VI
Born Willem Frederick George van Oranje on December 6, 1792, young William’s life was spent in the turmoil of the French Revolution and exiled to Brazil. In 1815, William lead a division of Dutch soldiers in the campaign of liberation, including the final victory at Waterloo. In 1816, he was married to Princess Paulina of Sweden. Unlike times in the past, the Staaten-General did not view this as grounds for alliance. Sweden had an uneasy peace with its Ottoman neighbors in the south, and had little in the means of competition on its Far Eastern border.
On October 7, 1840, Maurice II died after a long struggle with what is believed to be lung cancer. Maurice II was know for his fondness of Brazilian tobacco. William returned to the tradition of being crowned in Liege. It should be noted that Maurice II was the only Dutch monarch not to be crowned in Liege, though a ceremony was preformed their after Maurice’s return from exile. William kept his name, a long standing tradition in the Netherlands, and was crowned King William VI.
William VI’s reign was short, lasting only nine years, though it was no uneventful. Industrialization in the southern Provinces caused an increase in poverty, an ailment once considered foreign. With nothing to do, no work to be had, and little food to be eaten, the unemployed were desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. Several textile mills in Upper Gelders and Namur. Venlo in Upper Gelders was held by exploited workers. The workers made no demands and seemed content to destroy the mills and execute the owners. The Worker’s Uprising of 1843 is widely noted by Karl Marx when he developed his own theories of socialism.
The Count of Upper Gelders called forth his own militia, and demanded assistance from the Hague. William VI traveled to Venlo at the head of a small army, only eight thousand. He had hoped to end what could only be called an uprising peacefully. He met with ‘leaders’ of the uprising in an attempt to negotiate. Negotiation was impossible, because the workers had no demands. No demands aside from destroying the mechanical monstrosities and returning the Province to the way it was in the days of their fathers.
As it is widely known, progress can not be reversed. Seldom can it be stopped. Even if laws were passed banning technology, history has taught us that there will always be those who will simply ignore laws, and nations have their own leaders that will disregard the law whenever it suited their purpose. With no grounds for negotiation, William was forced to unleash his army to crush the uprising. Over two thousand workers were killed.
The ‘Venlo Massacre’ weighed heavily upon William, and the people never forgave him for his action, nor did they let him forget. The newly freed media condemned the action, and independent presses published pamphlets calling for everything from his removal from the throne, to his removal from life on earth. In 1849, William VI became the only Dutch monarch to abdicate his throne in disgrace. He stepped down in favor of his brother, Alexander, and left the Provinces in a self-imposed exile. He spent the rest of his life with his wife and her family in Stockholm.
His reign was not a total disaster. In early 1848, months before his abdication, revolution raced across Central Europe. All the major powers threw their weight upon the uprising. Hardest hit were the German states to the United Provinces’ east. German refugees began to flow across the border, a majority destined for areas beyond the Atlantic. The flow of people was not a one-way street. The East Frisians, a minority in the northwest corner of Germany, were distant cousins to the Frisians of the Provinces. The Count of Frisia pressed his colleagues within the Staaten-General for action. After a month of debates, the Dutch government decided to extend its boundaries to include all Frisians. A small Dutch Army, no more than twenty thousand, marched into East Friesland, and the Count made it part of his County. Others in the Senaat struggled to make East Frisia a separate state, but this ended without success.
King Frederick II
Born Alexander Frederick van Oranje, Frederick II took the throne on September 5, 1848, as soon as the Staaten-General ratified the Act of Abdication. His rule was one of the only stretches in Dutch history that peace dominated the political landscape. The United Provinces had not fought against a European opponent since 1815. His reign saw a slowdown in expansion in India, leaving the interior states of India and tribal lands on the upper Indus River to be dealt with by his successor.
After the violence in Venlo, Frederick II went out of his way to promote peace and prosperity. Moved by the atrocious conditions under which the Venlo workers suffered, he pushed for the Staaten-General to create and pass laws protecting the worker, protecting his people. In his mind, the British were impoverished; the French were impoverished; the United Provinces were suppose to be free of poverty. For two centuries it was a rarity, but the facts of industrial life changed the whole plan. It was now a land ruled by the law of supply and demand. Mechanization increased productivity while decreasing labor, and that created a surplus of workers, and that the owners and capitalist fully exploited to their advantage.
Factory owners around the United Provinces petitioned against any such laws. They claimed that to pass these laws, the government would be interfering in another of the Netherlands’ sacred institutions; commerce. The Staaten-General went out of its own way to avoid interfering with the economy, aside from placing import tariffs, standardizing currency and the gauges of rail. The capitalists convinced many that by passing the laws, they would force prices upwards, and that it was the capitalists that had the people’s best interest in mind; that being lower costs, and passing those savings onto the consumer.
In reality, costs were cut, but factory owners simply pocketed the profits and continued to sell at prices comparable to pre-industrial prices. There were two things Frederick II loved; peace and liberty. He viewed poverty as another means to subjugate the people. Even in a nation as liberty-minded as the United Provinces, Frederick was seen as a liberal. His critics expanded beyond just factory owners. Various bankers, one of the cornerstones of the Dutch economy, went as far as charging him with attempting to nationalize the banks.
These charges caused a rush on many banks throughout the United Provinces, one of the leading factors of the recession during the 1850s. Times were rough during the 1850s, but not nearly as bad as two hundred years prior, when the English blockaded the low countries coast during the First Anglo-Dutch War. It was bad enough, however, to see ninety-three percent of the House of Electorate loose their job in the election of 1856. The 1850s were a time of great change Europe; two monarchies were toppled, and revolution was rampant across Germany and the Balkans. For a time, it was doubted that the House of Orange could survive the crisis.
Revolution did not come to the United Provinces, at least not violent revolution. The Staaten-General did pass some of the King’s recommendations, including limiting work to eight hours a day per worker. If a factor ran twenty-four hours a day, then it must hire three shifts worth of workers, thus lowering unemployment. The Worker’s Safety Act was one of the most progressive measures passed in the 1850s, if not the entire century. It was the first act that dictated what a company could and could not do to its employees. Injuries in the textile mills decreased, as did poverty in the surrounding area. Though the quality of living stayed below its pre-industrial levels, it did steadily increase over the next three decades.
Formosa and Hainan
On the other side of the world, industrialization was in full swing in the Dutch colonies of Formosa and Hainan. Over the past two hundred years, Formosa grew from a wild island inhabited by aboriginals into the most advanced territory in all of East Asia. Though it would not be until the 1840s that the steam engine made its way to Formosa, the descendants of the Chinese workers quickly adapted it to increase productivity in their own textile mills.
Throughout it history, Formosa struggled to keep up with European and later American demands for silk. The fabric was both luxurious and highly prized from royalty to aristocracy right down to the lowliest of shopkeepers. Formosa was a land that produced many desirable commodities. Porcelain coffee cups were in demand in Amsterdam’s cafes. The original natives of Formosa, once they learned how to make porcelain, produced some of the most elegantly designed pottery in the world. It was not long after Dutch colonization that Formosan vases were as prized as their Ming counterparts.
Formosa shares many similarities to Ceylon. Chinese immigrants and natives both thrived along side their Dutch colonial rulers. Until 1800, the island was sole domain of the VOC, and the company was far more interested in productivity than any ridiculous racial ‘theories’ that came out of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Europe. The only significant enclaves of ethnic Dutch on the island were around Taipei and New Antwerp. When a wave of Dutch nationalistic colonialism spread out after Napoleon, Formosa simply assimilated any of those such colonists into its unique culture.
By 1850, all the different peoples of Formosa considered themselves Formosan, and not Han or Dutch. When recent immigrants asked about the native Formosans, those of Dutch ancestry simply told them they were looking at a Formosan. Some tension existed between the long-time Formosans and the recent arrivals from the Provinces. The newcomers attempted to press their new ideals upon the locals, and were appalled by some of the local customs. The biggest shock came in the form of sushi and sashimi. Both dishes were not native to the island, but after decades of trade with the isolated Japanese, some of their cuisines were exported along with their silver and copper.
Newcomers were often disappointed by their own crop failures. Like many Europeans, they brought along their familiar produce. Their attempts to spread wheat across the island failed, as did their attempt to introduce sheep. Wool? This is Formosa, we grew silk here. The newcomers were accustomed to seeing silk as a luxury, one they could afford back home, but not in sufficient quantities to cloth themselves. Imagine their surprise when they finally discovered that most Formosan dress was made from silk.
Between 1850 and 1880, waves of newcomers gradually assimilated into the established Formosan society. They ate their rice, wore their silk and worked in citrus groves and mulberry orchards. Of the various ideas imported by the newcomers, one caught on quickly. Instead of waiting for shipments of steel to arrive from the United Provinces or Brazil, several enterprising newcomers established their own series of steel mills around the island. By 1880, Formosa was the fourth highest producer of steel; behind Brazil, the United States and the recently established German Empire.
To the south of Formosa and China itself lay the small island of Hainan. In 1664, the VOC captured the island from the Manchu Dynasty ruling China. The Manchu had little interest in the island, and offered little resistance against the annexation. In truth, internal turmoil more than disinterest kept the Manchu from responding, that and the fact that the VOC’s private navy was more than capable of cutting China off from external trade.
The VOC did little with the island. It was made a trading center for southern China, and numerous Chinese worker were brought in to work the tea plantations. By 1667, the Dutch ruled the seas, and the only way the English would get their tea was through Dutch traders. Throughout the Nineteenth Century, Hainan remained a predominately agrarian economy, more a colony of Formosa than the United Provinces.
Attempts to establish sugar plantations on Hainan met with marginal success. Sugar was always in demand in Europe, but with Brazil, Formosa and the Indonesian colonies supplying sugar for the Dutch, it was an unwise move to enter an already crowded market. Very few colonists from the United Provinces made the move to Hainan until the Twentieth Century, though by then the natives spoke as much Dutch as they did Cantonese.
The Indonesian Colonies
Of all the colonies in the Indonesian Reaches, Java has always been the most critical to the Dutch economy. Java and the rest of Indonesia share an analogous relationship with Ceylon and India. Java was always the island of liberty, and by 1850, was not only the heaviest populated island, but also the densest. Where many of the larger islands remained primeval jungles, Java was transformed to a cornucopia of the spice trade.
Spices were the original reason for venturing to the East Indies. If not for the lure of cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg and ginger, then most likely Europe would have left them alone. Java had its own thriving culture when the Dutch arrived, and VOC conquest of the island did little to change that. The native Javanese simply took what they saw was great about the foreigners and made it their own. VOC employees were forced to make do with what was on the island. Though Javanese restaurants became all the rage in Twentieth Century Europe and America, the food was not enjoyed by the first colonists, who viewed it as very foreign.
When the VOC centered its trade around the cities of Batavia and Jakarta, secondary businesses moved in. Where ever trade is centered, it takes little time for the bankers to appear. By 1850, the Bank of Jakarta was the largest such bank in the East Indies, handling accounts across Indonesia, and as far as the British colonies in the Philippines and the French in Indochina. With large flows of capital moving through its ports, Jakarta grew like no other colonial city.
At a time when Manilla, Saigon and Sydney were nothing but simple houses and dirt roads, Jakarta boosted the largest paved roads in the region. More than fifty percent of the city’s roads were paved with cobblestone and flagstone. The roads were reminiscent of ancient Rome’s highways, and just as sturdy (amazing considering the level of rainfall Jakarta receives in comparison with Italy). Though wood was plentiful throughout the region, houses in Jakarta was built from mason and stone, materials impervious to termites.
When steam arrived in Java, it was not used immediately for factories. The island dealt mostly with exports of produce, not production. Instead, the city boasted one of the most advanced water and sewer systems of the Nineteenth Century. On an island where tropical disease was an annual occurrence, the Javanese (both native and colonists) invested in pumps that would force waste water to flow away from the city, and often directly into the sea. Nearby swamps, endemic with malaria, were systematically drained by the new pumps, and its land quickly settled with an influx of Dutch, German and even Swedish colonists flocking to the eastern Land of Opportunity.
The other islands in the regions did not fare as well as Jakarta. Up until the 1800s, the VOC and the Dutch left them largely alone. The only contact with natives was in the form of business, with Javanese trading goods imported from Europe and elsewhere to acquire rare commodities of Sumatra and Borneo. Most notably was the wildlife itself. There was always trade in hide, tusks and horn from the wildlife of Sumatra, but with the advent of menageries and later zoos, Sumatra became an attraction for zoological collections. Rare animals of Sumatra, such as tigers, tapirs, orangutans and the sun bear were captured from the wild an hauled off to mid-Nineteenth Century zoos across Europe and the Americas.
Around the same time that zoos grew in popularity, Formosa was in the midst of industrialization. In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, coal and iron were dominate, but in Indonesia, the Formosans found an abundance of minerals. First and foremost was gold, not a very useful building material before the digital age, but sought after nonetheless. Much of the gold mined on Borneo found its way into the vaults of banks on Java and Ceylon.
For the interest of Formosa, copper, tin and nickle were extracted from Sumatra, and tin, then later bauxite came from Borneo. With both islands, the United Provinces established colonies dedicated to rubber plantations. Rubber was rapidly becoming a vital resource in industrialization. Everything from hoses to tires to seals were made from the extract of the rubber tree. Coconut plantations also sprung up along the coast of Borneo. Coconuts proved popular in Dutch markets during the 1890s, but were far less useful than rubber or tin.
Not all of Borneo was conquered during the 1880s and 90s. The Sultanate of Brunei maintained a degree of independence, though like many princely states of India, it was a vassal to the Hague. The Sultan turned to allying himself with the Dutch in Java because he feared invasion by the British or French more than Dutch overlordship. The Sultanate was largely independent in its own internal affairs. In return, they offered anchorage to the Royal (Dutch) Navy, and after the discovery of oil under the Sultan’s domain, exclusive rights were given to Royal Dutch Shell, and its later incarnation VOC Shell.
Farthest of the Indonesia holdings was New Holland. New Holland was not an island of itself, but rather part of a continent. In 1751, colonists trying to escape the wars in Europe and the tyranny of the VOC established the town of Apeldoorn, on the continent’s western shore. For decades, VOC employees have heard stories of extraordinary creatures and unimaginable treasures existing in the desert lands of the south. Most alluring of all, were those tales involving gold. The VOC refused to colonize the southern lands because of stories with no factual basis. What one could prove counted much more in the boardroom than what one knew. At the time, Australia was known as the southern continent, as it was believed to be connected to Antarctica. Further exploration, including the discover of Tasmania and what would become New Zeeland disproved that theory.
Apeldoorn was not intended to be a haven for traders or a land of cash crops. It was a simple experiment in transporting a piece of old Holland to New Holland. On this most arid of continents, the need for dikes and levies did not exist. The Apeldoorn river was a very seasonal river, but offered sufficient irrigation to support the colony. The wheat and corn farms augmented the nutritional intake of the colonists, which derived much of its food from the sea. The colony would not be agrarian but rather pastoral. Sheep by the hundreds were imported to what seemed an empty continent, and Apeldoorn developed a small wool and textile trade.
Constant vigilance was required to guard the sheep against the wild dogs of Australia, believed to have arrived from early southeast Asian traders, at least two thousand year ago. To range with the herds, the colonists naturally brought horses, but these animals did not far so well in the arid landscape. One colonist, whose name has been lost to history, stumbled upon the idea of importing camels. The beasts served Arabs well, and were the backbone of the ancient Silk Road, surely they could handle Australia’s sandy landscape. Camels did all too well on the continent; a handful escaped into the night in the early years, and their offspring soon spread across the continent, browsing where the indigenous wildlife did not.
The VOC made no attempt to take control of New Holland. They saw little profit in the small time wool outfit, especially when they were making millions of guilders in trading of silk. During the Age of Napoleon, the British seized the colony. Their pretext was to defend their own Australian colony against the potential of the French gaining a foothold in New Holland. With the Congress of Vienna, the British returned New Holland to the Dutch, who for the first time, took direct control over the colony.
Unlike so many other colonies, New Holland’s was not a story of conquest. A few natives did live in Australia. The aborigines were as wild as the marsupials that occupied the continent. They had little of value, and more over, had little concept of land ownership. Owning nothing of interest and having no territorial conflicts, the New Hollanders were content to leave the aborigines alone. Until 1860, the colonists clung to the Australian coast.
In 1861, sheep herders in the interior stumbled across a dry river bed. At the bottom of this bed, one of the ranchers notices something shimmering in the light. What he found sparked the New Hollander gold rush. Once word spread, much faster thanks to steam-powered transportation, prospecting veterans of the American West flocked to Australia, along with adventures from Brazil, Europe and China. Impact on the Aborigines was nearly disastrous.
The Americans were the most ruthless of the bunch. They treated the Australian natives even worse than they did their own Indian population. Americans, along with Europeans, often shot down who bands of Aborigines, who happen to be currently residing on land rich in gold. Native populations plummeted as the plundering of the land, along with introduction of new diseases, took their toll. Many British Australians simply brought their own practice of extermination to the Dutch sector of the continent. Along with the miners, came the scoundrels, the thieves, and most damaging to the native culture, the missionaries.
New Holland had not government of its own, and the governor was appointed by the Governor-General of Indonesia. Jakarta had its own interests, mainly seeing that as much of that gold as possible ended up in the Bank of Jakarta’s vaults. The original colonists of Apeldoorn were soon overruled by outside interests. Their own exodus from New Holland was a long time coming. Before Napoleon established the Batavian Republic, the Staaten-General decided that the coasts of New Holland made for an ideal place to ship prisoners, an idea copied from the British. Though the United Provinces had far fewer criminal elements than the United Kingdom, exporting some of the vagrants and debtors was seen as desirable.
The New Hollanders, in 1862, began to pack up and leave for New Zeeland, a land itself that was pacified during the 1840s. They continued their pastoral lifestyles, this time uninterrupted by the discoveries of precious metals or gems. However, some New Hollanders found a way to fight back to influx of miners. When a gold rush occurred, it was not the prospectors who grew rich, but the merchants that traded with them. Many traders packed carts in Apeldoorn for the barest of minium prices, rode inland to the mining camps, and charged ten to twenty times the price they paid. The miners, rich with gold, did not feel the least bit sorry about paying ten guilders for an apple, thirty for a sack of flour. That combined with the inevitable rift-raft of mining camps, gambling and prostitution, ensured that few miners left New Holland rich. Indeed, few left period, opting to settle the land, instead of shelling out fare for the voyage home.
The Dutch Horn
At the start of the 19th Century, the Dutch Empire’s presence in the Horn of Africa was restricted to a few ports taken from the Portugese centuries before, along with the more recently established Willemsbourgh, right across the waters from Arabia. For centuries, these ports were backwaters in the VOC’s trading empire, used primarily for resupplying in the long trip from the United Provinces and the Indies. Djibouti and Mogadishu further operated as a link between East Africa and Arabia. Coffee and ivory from Africa filtered through these ports, and that which was not syphoned off was traded to the Arabs.
The ports were inherited by the United Provinces following the bankruptcy of the VOC. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch began to expand inland from Mogadishu in search of gold, silver and other reported wealth. Conflict between the Dutch and Somali herders arose when Dutch officials laid claim over to tribal grazing lands. Conflicts were short and violent, with the Dutch victorious. During the first half of the 19th Century, the Dutch fortified Mogadishu, expanding its port and establishing a permanent military presence at what was deemed a strategically important link in the Dutch Empire.
With the rise of steam-powered ships, Mogadishu also became a coaling station. With piracy rising in the Arabian Sea, the Royal (Dutch) Navy established a second base in Willemsbourgh. The Horn’s remoteness prohibited extensive colonization by the Dutch. Netherlanders preferred to immigrate to Brazil or South Africa, whose populations swelled during the 19th Century. It was not until the opening of the Suez Canal did the Horn become a desirable destination, for cattle ranching, mining and coffee growing in the available highlands.
The construction of a canal linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas actually dates back to antiquity. The current incarnation of the link, the Suez Canal was started after the Anglo-Turkish War concluded in 1854. In that war, the United Kingdom rested control of Egypt from the Ottoman Empire. The British sought a shortcut to East Africa and its Far East colonies that could bypass Dutch controlled southern Africa. With Egypt under their control, the British had the labor available to construct the canal, along with the managerial skills from British officials. What they lacked for the venture was funding. Attempt to gain capital by a joint venture with France fell through, since France was embroiled in its own turmoil with the rise of Louis Napoleon to the Imperial Throne. The Swedes declined outright, since they lacked any interest in the Indian Ocean. The only other nation with capital to spare was one of Britain’s long standing rivals.
In 1855, negotiations between the British and Dutch governments led to the establishment of the Suez Canal Company, a joint Anglo-Dutch enterprise in opening the way to India. The Dutch stood to gain far more than the British in shorting the route to the Dutch Raj. The British would supply labor and management, while the Dutch would provide capital and engineering skill. With centuries of experience in pushing back the North Sea, who in the world knew more about building canals than the people of the United Provinces? Many Dutch interests bought into the Canal, including the revitalized VOC. The Suez Canal would be a relatively simple, albeit long, project. It was designed as a sea level canal. In short, a long ditch dug from Port Said to Suez City.
After two years of surveying by the British, the first shovel of sand was removed from the canal on November 14, 1856. In the ceremony, the Chairman of the Suez Canal Company, Sir Winston Edwards, along with other executives, dug their shovel full of sand and stood for pictures taken by recently developed photographic machinery. It made for fine reading in the papers of the two respective countries. The reality of the work; tens of thousand of Egyptians laboring twelve hours a day in the desert heat, never made the pages of the Amsterdam Herald. Of all the Egyptian laborers, it has been estimated that more than five thousand died digging the canal.
As for usage of the canal, the British and Dutch agreed to share access of it. Though the Canal was nominally in British controlled territory, the British government agreed not to bar access to the Suez Canal of the Dutch, unless war was declared. Even under such an eventuality, economic necessity would render the Canal a neutral zone. Both nations agreed to join defense of the Canal and the Red Sea shipping lanes. The British would secure the northern parts, while the Dutch would secure access from the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. From their ports and holdings in the Horn of Africa would the Dutch operate. Ports such as Mogadishu and Willemsbourgh, the Royal (Dutch) Navy would operate.
Construction of the Suez Canal was wrought with more than difficulty for the men on the ground. The project was nearly derailed in 1862, when the British government recognized the Confederate States of America, and was preparing to openly aid them. The United Provinces, with long standing commercial ties with the United States, threatened that if the British entered the war on the side of the South, then the Dutch would do the same, on the side of the North. If not for the mediation of Napoleon III in 1863, the Suez Canal Company might have folded, and the victory of the sudden world war would pick up the pieces.
The Suez Canal was a long, hard projects, taking thirteen years to complete. Finally, in 1869, the Canal was opened as the first ship, the HMS King Edward was the first ship to make the passage between seas. In the following years, and economic explosion rocked the shores of the Red Sea as thousands of colonists and millions of guilder poured through the new gateway.
Following the opening of the Suez Canal, and the flood of commerce though the Red Sea, the economies of the Arab cities boomed. On the Arabian Peninsula, ports bustled with business with ships passing from Europe to East Asia across their shores. Across the sea in Africa, the Ethiopian Empire’s great port of Massawa saw an influx of trade to the ancient kingdom. Dutch settlers swarmed through the new passage, a majority headed towards opportunity in the Dutch Raj. Thousands of additional settlers swelled the populations of Djibouti, Willemsbourgh and Mogadishu. The cities of the Dutch Horn were assimilated in the space of a generation, with natives living in the cities adopting the western ways of the Netherlanders.
As with any time and place in history where trade grew, so did piracy. Pirates operating in the Red Sea quickly learned which portions to avoid. No pirates that wished to live long went anywhere near the Suez Canal, and the British Naval squadron. Nor did they sail down within a hundred kilometers of the Gulf of Aden. With the British controlling the north, the Dutch controlling the south, pirates must operate from Arabia and Ethiopia. Pirates along the Arabian coast preyed upon the infidel. Arab pirates were driven by religion, or at the very least used it as an excuse. Despite their desire to wage war upon the non-believer, they did not attack a single ship of the recently rebounded VOC.
Because of favored trade with the Dutch, and the fact that the British occupied Arab lands in Egypt, the Arab chiefs and kings curtailed pirating Dutch ships. However, the same could not be said of those operating out of Ethiopia. With commerce blossoming, nests of pirates bloomed around Massawa. Unlike the Arab pirates, the Ethiopian pirates preyed upon everybody. In truth, the Ethiopians could be called privateers, since a portion of what they looted was paid as taxes to the Emperor of Ethiopia.
For the first few years of the Canal’s operation, British and Dutch embassies were sent to the Ethiopian’s mobile capital. Emperor Theodore assured both embassies that the Ethiopian Army would deal with the pirates. In fairness, pirates surrounding Massawa, and often preying upon the ships of their own countrymen were eliminated. The Ethiopians even went as far as to destroy pirate nests in Arabia, much to the anger of the Muslims. The possibility of an Orthodox Army landing in the holiest land of Islam might set the Red Sea aflame.
War in the Red Sea would threaten the Dutch Empire and its commerce. King Frederick II ordered that the Royal (Dutch) Navy to begin patrolling the waters between Asia and Africa. The increased presence of the Dutch Navy in the Red Sea prompted adding a third naval base, this one in Djibouti. The increased presence along the Ethiopian Coast caused Theodore to renege on his promise to curtail piracy. Additionally, the Eritrean Coast was a rebellious province during the 1860s, where Theodore’s nephew, Menelik, was pretender to the throne. If he could use the Dutch to bring down his uncle and claim the throne he would. The United Provinces were about to be drug into a dynastic squabble.
During the year of 1869, dozens of documented cases of piracy out of Ethiopian territory occurred. For the most part, these pirates preyed upon easy catches, chipping into the profits of Prussia, Austro-Hungary, the Italian Federation and even France. The Royal (Dutch) Navy did little to protect its rivals in maritime trade. This sent the wrong message to the Ethiopian pirates and Emperor Theodore. The Ethiopians mistakenly believed the Dutch had become a paper tiger. That they were much on display and seldom took action. Much proof contradicts this, as in the case of a pirate attack on a Dutch convoy on January 4, 1870. Two Dutch ships were captured along with most of the crews. In retaliation, the Royal (Dutch) Navy tracked down the specific pirate nest which spawned the attack, landed, freed crews and ships, killed all the pirates and raised their settlement to the ground.
This raid by the Dutch only prompted revenge from the pirates. Through the month of February, pirates hit several Dutch ships, including a convoy carrying settlers for Dutch Somaliland. The pirates used these captives as hostages. Each attack only brought the wrath of the Dutch upon the pirates. By April of 1870, Emperor Theodore knew he had a problem. If the pirates continued to attack the Dutch, then the Dutch would strike directly at Ethiopia. He failed to bring the pirates under his control. If he could not constrain them, perhaps he could use them. While the Dutch held Mogadishu, they would be a threat to Ethiopia. With the Suez Canal complete, trade flowed along the Horn of Africa. Theodore reasoned that if he could remove the Dutch, then wealth would flow into his ancient kingdom.
After months of battling the Dutch in the Red Sea, the number of pirates were dwindling. Theodore sent a message to his rebellious nephew, Menelik. If he could drive the Dutch from the Horn, then Theodore would grant him control of Eritrea, as a vassal to himself. Menelik had eyes on the throne and saw this mission as a means to further his own power. The generosity of his uncle would only add to his base, and eventually allow him to succeed to the throne. On June 9, Menelik sent his own emissaries to the bands of pirates. Most of the pirate nests greedily accepted his proposal, eager for booty and to eject the Dutch from their waters. Tribes in Eritrea already loyal to Menelik agreed to send warriors to aid him in conquering Mogadishu.
It was not until August 2, that the pirate fleet had massed in Massawa and set sail with some forty-two hundred pirates and warriors onboard nearly a hundred ships of various size. Almost immediately, the fleet lost cohesion. Several ships broke off to raid Djibouti, capturing five ships in port and setting fire to the docks. At Willemsbourgh, pirates landed and sacked the port, killing hundreds of white men and burning the city. By the time they were off the coast of Mogadishu, not only had the pirates lost twenty percent of their fleet to attrition and desertion, but the Royal (Dutch) Navy was well aware of the fleet’s advance. On August 17, pirates landed north of Mogadishu and began to march on the city.
The pirates were surprisingly well armed for an African opponent. All were armed with firearms, and more than ten percent had in their possession repeating rifles. With days of notice, the Dutch and their Somali allies managed to fortify the city against attack. Included in their fortifications were a number of field artillery pieces and three Gatling guns the Dutch Army purchased from the United States. After easy raids along the coast, the pirates lacked any discipline in their assault. They assumed another victory. After all, they were fighting heathens and heretics.
Many of the pirates attacking by land were cut down by rapid fire Gatling guns and fifty millimeter cannon. So unexpected was the sudden and stiff resistance, that the pirate attack faltered . A second attack attempted to strike directly at the port facility, but was blocked by the Royal (Dutch) Navy. Fifteen Dutch warships, though greatly outnumbered by the ragtag pirate fleet, repelled the pirate fleet twice. By the middle of the day, some thirty pirate ships were either sunk or shot to pieces. Being a mostly wooden fleet, the pirates were more difficult to sink that the Dutch fleet, which contained three ironclads. The pirates also relied solely on the wind, where the Dutch ships had both sails and boilers. The steam-driven ships easily outflanked the pirates, and crossed the T on more than one occasion.
By 14:00 local time, the pirate fleet survivors were limping away with the Dutch in pursuit. Over a thousand pirates were abandoned by their comrades on the shores of Somaliland. Of the pirates that landed, none survived. The Dutch garrison killed them to the last, taking no prisoners. Among the dead was Menelik himself. His body was found along the shores of Mogadishu. It has never been determined if Menelik was killed in the ground fighting, or at sea, where his body washed ashore. The damage to his body matched that caused by canister shot, which was used by both land and sea defenders. The Dutch fleet pursued the pirates for two more days, destroying a further twenty-three ships.
With the pirate fleet smashed, thousands of pirates dead, and the body of an Ethiopian royal in Dutch possession, King Frederick II made no attempt to send embassies to Theodore. Once news of the raid reached Delft, the King sent a simply message to the Ethiopian Emperor; “Since you have proven incapable of controlling the actions of your subjects, we will.” On September 12, the Staaten-General of the United Provinces declared war on Ethiopia. The following week, Brazil joined in the declaration.
First Abyssinian War
With both of the Dutch nations now at war, the minor detail of assembling an army and transporting it to a far away land must be address. Though the Dutch had sufficient men in their standing armies to battle the Ethiopians, the King of the United Provinces, and consequently the Emperor of Brazil, Frederick II (just plain Frederick for Brazil) called for the citizens of his two kingdoms to volunteer and fight for King and Nation. The call was answered by some fifty thousand volunteers, ten thousand of these from South Africa alone. With four divisions of the regular army, the expedition to Ethiopia exceeded seventy thousand soldiers.
Over a month was spent assembling a fleet large enough to ferry the soldiers to Mogadishu and Djibouti. When the fleet finally arrived in the Dutch Horn, it was the largest armada put to sea by the Dutch ever. Hundreds of steamers, comprising a bulk of Dutch shipping, was used in transporting soldiers. The VOC contributed its own cargo ships, steam liners, and even its still limited private navy. The passage of a great deal of the Royal (Dutch) Navy through the Suez canal caused a little alarm in London. Once it became clear that the canal itself was not the ultimate goal of the Dutch, the British relaxed. Though Queen Victoria disapproved of the war, her Government was of different mind. They would be more than happy to see piracy ended, especially if they did not have to lose a single ship in the process.
Ships from Brazil, along with the South African colonies, took the long way to the Horn, arriving in Mogadishu three days before Christmas. There was only a slight pause for the holiday in Dutch preparations to invade the Eritrean coast. Leading the Brazilian armada was Admiral Manfred van Natal, the Count of Natal. The Dutch contingent waw lead by Johann van Oranje, cousin of the King. Only the realities of trying to run two kingdoms prevented the King from taking personal command of his fleet. Upon arrival in Africa, the senior officer, van Natal, was given command of the overall theater.
During the time between declaration of war and the invasion in early January of 1871, attempts to mediate between Frederick and Theodore were made by Napoleon III. After mediating peace in North America in 1863, France’s so-called Emperor attempted to gain more prestige by playing the peacekeeper. Sweden attempted to mediate between the Dutch Nations and the largely Orthodox Ethiopia. King Charles XVI sent envoys to the Hague and directly to Frederick in Delft, but the Dutch King made it clear, that since the Ethiopians could not control their coasts, he would do it for them. Further attempts by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and even the Ottoman Empire to implement immediate cession of hostilities failed. After investing capital in assembling, training and transporting an army to East Africa, the Dutch were not about to cease hostilities until they saw returns from their investment.
After massing their forces at Djibouti, the joint United Provinces-Brazilian fleet departed to take control of Ethiopia’s poorly controlled coast. At the lead of the armada was one Manfred, Count of Natal. Van Natal’s experience in the Royal (Brazilian) Navy consists mostly of leading actions against pirates in the Caribbean Sea and the western coast of Africa. He spent the previous twenty years landing marines, killing pirates and burning out their nests. It made him the prefect choice to lead the Dutch fleet against the pirates of the Red Sea. However, in a personal meeting with Frederick II, the King made it clear that this was not going to be a punitive action. He wanted to take control of this land and lock the Ethiopians in the interior.
On January 8, 1871, sentries in Ethiopia’s primary seaport of Massawa, spotted the first of many Dutch ships appear over the horizon. Alarms were not sent out immediately, for it appeared at first to be but a handful of ships. By mid-morning, when the whole armada was visible and only ten kilometers off the shore, did the alarm finally sound. According to Ethiopian sources, the initial alarm was not taken seriously, because the Dutch, at that point, had not committed anything more than a handful of ships to counter-raids against the pirates. Ethiopian officials in the city, at least those loyal to Theodore, dismissed the alarms. Months after war had been declared, and the Dutch had done very little.
At 1304 local time, the van Natal’s ship lead the bombardment of Massawa. In the space of a half hour, thousands of shells fell on the city, razing much of it. Dutch Marines went ashore under the cover of the fleet’s fire. So destructive was the initial bombardment, that the Ethiopians and pirates had not even organized a resistance. Van Natal was cautious at first, fearing a trap that might await his marines. The fact that the Ethiopians appeared in disarray and that any pirates in the port had yet to set sail was very suspicious. Such a large fleet could not be hidden. He was, of course, unaware that the Ethiopian officials dismissed the warnings up until the first shells landed in the port.
Massawa barely qualifies as a battle, since the port itself fell with little opposition. Only Ethiopian officers with any initiative defended against the approximately seven thousand Dutch Marines that landed to secure the port. Of these, few fought to the end. Years of oppressive reforms and policies by Theodore, left many on the fringes of Ethiopia less than loyal to their emperor. After the city was in Dutch hands, van Natal sent a puzzling message back to the Hague, in where he described that the locals actually welcomed his invasion force as liberators. Aside from corruption in the capital, Eritreans also had to contend with harassment by pirates and exploitation by government officials. The fact that the Dutch destroyed much of Massawa during the invasion did not seem to factor into the local’s response.
Once the port was in van Natal’s hands, he began to land the bulk of the fifty thousand man army that the United Provinces and Brazil have contributed to pacify this vital region of world commerce. The Dutch armada began to disperse, pick up its marines, and scowl the coast in search of pirate nests. The Dutch army organized itself and marched inland to face the inevitable counterattack by the Ethiopian Army.
Following the fall of Massawa, Dutch land forces began to fan out across the Eritrean coast. In the pirate dens along the Red Sea, the Dutch were met with fierce resistance. In the countryside, paradoxically, the Dutch were welcomed partly as liberators. The government of Theodore II was long known to be corrupt, and exploited this wayward province. The Muslims suffered the most under Ethiopian Orthodox rule. Unlike Theodore, the soldiers of Frederick II could not possibly care less how the natives worshiped. With the long standing tradition of religion being apart from public life, the soldiers were only interested in the natives if they offered resistance.
The Ethiopian Army, despite being well armed for an African nation, made a poor opponent to the veterans of the Dutch Raj from India and Dutch Marines from the Far East. The largest clash of the conquest occurred near Asmera, where ten thousand Dutch soldiers encountered an Ethiopian force of twice the size. On April 3, Johann van Oranje lead his Netherlander army into battle against the Ethiopians. Despite superb Ethiopian cavalry, the battle was won by the might of Dutch artillery. Canister shot broke two successive charges on Dutch lines, at appalling losses to the Ethiopians. By sunset, the Ethiopian Army’s lines were on the verge of collapse. Before van Oranje could launch another attack of his own, the Ethiopians packed up and called it a day. They left three thousand dead on the battlefield compared to less than two hundred Dutch deaths.
Overall, the Dutch forces, no matter where they originated, lost far more lives to disease than to combat. The conquest of Eritrea saw over a thousand killed in combat, but several times more succumbing to disease. An outbreak of small pox in Asseb spread to parts of the armada stationed in the port. The Dutch also suffered from break downs in logistics, causing shortages in clean water, food and ammunition. Tapping local sources of water spread dysentery through Dutch ranks. Such illness demoralized the Dutch forces, and had the Ethiopians made a half-way decent drive, they might have pushed the Dutch back to the coast.
Civilian casualties were higher than either side’s army. When the Muslim Eritreans rejoiced at the ejection of the Ethiopians, the Orthodox natives were themselves divided. Those loyal to Theodore launched their own campaign against their disloyal coreligionist and neighboring unbelievers. More than half the Dutch army was tied up in policing the occupied cities and acting as an early form of peace keeping force. A few guerilla attacks upon Dutch supply lines resulted in excessive force in retaliation. One such case, when a Dutch convoy was attacked outside of Massawa, the Dutch soldiers tracked the bandits back to their village and killed everybody there. Such actions were the exception, and not the rule. After a few months of conflict, the Ethiopians sued for peace. In this first brief was, they had lost access to the sea. However, peace was not to last.
Second Abyssinian War
Within a few months of the peace treaty’s signature, Emperor Theodore unilaterally withdrew from it and began to raise his army anew. The terms of the treaty were relatively lenient in a time when European powers were looking to expand the empires. News of the massing of Ethiopian soldiers reach Delft via a newly lain telegraph wire. It was Frederick II who insisted on easy terms, wanting only to control the coast line and stamp out piracy. Theodore’s actions struck the King like a personal betrayal. Nearly one hundred thousand Ethiopian soldiers were assembled by the start of 1872, equipped with arms purchased in the previous year from the British. Despite Anglo-Dutch business interests cooperation on operation of the Suez Canal, London did not want to see their age old rivals growing too powerful along the Red Sea.
On paper, Theodore’s army looked impressive. Ninety thousand infantry and at least ten thousand cavalry. British repeating rifles were on par in quality with those produced by the Dutch, though at the time the Winchester company of the United States produced the highest quality repeater. A few of these saw action in Abyssinia, on both sides of the war. In reality, only a fraction of the number were modernly armed. While the Imperial Army was well equipped, militia were not. Frequently they still used muskets, and some were the old flint-lock variety. Several thousand of the militia did not even have firearms, and relied upon spears to face down the efficient Dutch artillery.
While the Staaten-General in the Hague debated the issue, trying to decide if they should simply crush the Ethiopians for good, or negotiate, the King in Delft ordered his army in Abyssinia into action. A cavalry patrol under the command of Ernst Hauten came across an Ethiopian patrol considerably larger than his own. During the brief skirmish some fifty kilometers inland from Djibouti, most of the Dutch patrol was wiped out. Only a lone horseman, a Somali known in history only as Ali, returned to Djibouti to report that the Ethiopians were already on the move.
Theodore’s plan was simply; three armies would march towards the centers of Dutch activity and destroy them. One army marched to retake Massawa, another across the Somalilands to Mogadishu, and as mentioned, a third to Djibouti. The army marching south ran into the stiffest resistance. Before the Dutch soldiers stationed around Mogadishu could fully mobile, Dutchified Somali clans and tribes moved against the invaders. These clans have had such extensive contact with the Dutch, that they have been partially assimilated into the culture, speaking Dutch in their homes, wearing Dutch clothing, and even eating Dutch food. What made the United Provinces such a successful colonizer is that the Dutch were vastly more interested in what goods the locals had to sell than which faith, or in some cases, which gods they followed.
The Somali tribes fought fiercely, and did manage to buy the Dutch defenders of the Somali coast plenty of time. However, many of the tribes suffered grievous losses. Though Somalis were killed in great numbers, they were still masters of their terrain, taking to hit-and-run tactics against the invaders. The attacks triggered rage in the Ethiopian army, which proceeded to sack many of the Somali village along the way to the coast. The pillaging broke down discipline in the Ethiopian army. Many militia in the army were conscripts with little loyalty to the Emperor. Along the march, they deserted in droves.
The army invading Eritrea found itself in a larger mess. Orthodox and Muslim locals were still sporadically fighting each other, with the Dutch attempting to police their new conquests. Those loyal to the Emperor welcomed the invading army. They welcomed them up to the point when the Ethiopians ceased to distinguish against friend or foe in the lost territories. With a reputation for rebellion through the rest of the Empire, Ethiopian soldiers took vengeance on both Orthodox and Muslim Eritrean. The Orthodox looked on in shock and protested their innocence. The Muslims and their militias flocked to the Dutch, pledging their loyalty to the Europeans. At least with these powerful outsiders, the Muslims could worship without interference.
The attack launched towards Djibouti was least successful. The Ethiopians had further to march, Theodore did not view it as important as the other two targets, and the army was discovered well in advance. The Ethiopians never approached within sight of the city, and this second army was routed by the Dutch under the command of Maurice van Recife, commander of the Brazilians based around the city. Militia units both deserted and defected and the regular army collapsed after its own discipline broke down. Van Recife was uncertain how to treat the militia that now swore allegiance to the Dutch crown. Clearly all Dutch commanders knew of the divisions within Ethiopia. He accepted some help and placed them in front of his army as scouts and skirmishers. In short, he decided to use them as cannon fodder, and he did with great efficiency. Many of these defectors did not live to see 1873, much less the end of the war.
By 1873, Ethiopian forces were well within Somaliland and Eritrea and fought with so much vigor that the Dutch could do little but hold their lines. Trenches began to appear along the fronts and both sides dug in to hold their positions. The Dutch were able to fend off Ethiopian cavalry charges with both canister shot from their guns and an increasing number of Gatling Guns being imported from America. The Limbourg Arsenal acquired a license to begin producing their own multi-barrel quasi-machine guns, which began to see action by 1874.
For the Dutch soldiers on the ground, trench warfare became a miserable existence. Though actual death by combat was rare, plenty of soldiers were falling from disease, including an outbreak of smallpox in 1873. The wildlife appeared to plot against both sides as well, as parasites began to inflict thousands of Dutch soldiers. Snakes and scorpions took their own toll. The highest ranking fatality of the war was Colonel Piet Guilder, who stepped upon a cobra that took a liking to the rodent infestations within the trenches.
A soldier on campaign during the Second Abyssinian War volunteered for a number of reasons. Many volunteered out of national pride, and to defend the honor of the King, or Emperor in the case of the Brazilians. Some joined in search of adventure, and some sought glory. When they arrived in the Horn of Africa, they found neither adventure nor glory. Instead, the soldiers of the Dutch Expeditionary Force found an alien environment and plenty of boredom. Much of their day was spent on the march, while carrying their gear; which consisted of part of a tent, a sleeping roll, canteens, ammunition, a rifle, a shovel, rations, and an assortment of other items the Army deemed necessary for its soldiery to carry. Soldiers marched across arid lands, under the hot African sun, for eight to ten hours each day. It is now known that Abyssinia receives some of the highest dosage of ultraviolet radiation in the world, which is seen in the extreme blackness of the African’s skin. This lead to severe sunburns in all the white men from the United Provinces, along with daily cases of heat stroke. The Brazilians, at least the ones whose family have lived in Brazil for several generations, did better in the tropical sun.
Newly minted soldiers sought action and to avenge the slight against their nation. Yet, in the three years of warfare, fighting the enemy was the least of their concerns. The average soldier might see one skirmish with the Ethiopians every other month. There was little combat; little combat but lots of snakes. The wildlife of Abyssinia proved to be far more dangerous than the Armies of Theodore. Snake bites, arachnid tags and endemic disease claimed far more lives than the Ethiopians could ever have managed. Along with the wildlife, logistics proved to be a problem; the most serious being that of fresh water. Watering holes in parts of Abyssinia are few and far between. As the Dutch advanced, it was not that uncommon of a tactic for the Ethiopians to either poison the watering hole, or simply toss in the rotting carcasses of cattle. Even when untainted water sources were found, soldiers drinking it contracted local diseases and intestinal parasites. At the time, microbiology was in its infancy, and the idea of boiling the water, which may seem natural in the 21st Century simply did not exist.
Supply trains had to move across undeveloped land lacking basic infrastructure. Instead of using the steam engines and railroads that the Dutch would have employed in their own countries, they were reduced to carrying supply to various units in wagons or even on the backs of donkeys. Ammunition was a minor problem; only not made worse by the lack of fighting in a soldier’s life. Food supplies were hard to come by, with many units reduced to half rations for weeks on end. This, at least, could be alleviated by hunting the local wildlife. The constant struggle to find water always weighed on the soldiers mind, and thirst weakened the fighting man. When the Ethiopians were found, the Dutch soldiery engaged them with zeal, delighted to have something to break the monotony of marching.
On March 15, 1874, the Dutch Army of Abyssinia and the Ethiopian Army converged on the town of Adwa. This town lay on the border between Ethiopia and its lost Eritrean province. Emperor Theodore personally lead an army that numbered over fifty thousand in an attempt to break through the extensive defenses the Dutch had constructed during the previous two years of the war. Eritrean nomads loyal to the Dutch government spotted Ethiopians massing west of the town. They reported this sighting to the Prince of Oranje, Johann, whose headquarters was located in Massawa. The Prince, several slots down the ladder of heir to the throne, assembled as many soldiers as were available in Massawa, some eight thousand. Messengers were sent to other Dutch units located along the Eritrean line to send as many reinforcements to Adwa. The Prince had his own plan, and that was to ambush Theodore when he started his march.
Because of poor road conditions and no rail, the Ethiopian Army took three weeks to fully assemble, which was ample time for Johann and his soldiers to force march to Adwa. Fortifications were thrown up across the broken landscape around the market town. Johann had brought in two dozen gatlings and over a hundred pieces of field artillery. Since it was reported that Theodore had a large number of cavalry in his army, the Prince predicted the battle would start with a charge. With that in mind, large numbers of canister shot were prepared.
Reinforcements to the Prince arrived the day before the battle, and were stations four kilometers from the Prince. Johann’s plan called for the Ethiopians to attempt to retreat, where the reinforcements would circle around and trap the Ethiopians between two smaller Dutch armies. More batteries of cannon and machine guns were planted atop the many hills around Adwa. When the Ethiopians came into view, the guns held their fire. Basic camouflage made many unnoticed by the Ethiopians, but the few that were spotted quickly came under fire of the Emperor’s own few pieces.
The battle started early in the morning as an artillery duel, with many Ethiopian guns destroyed. However, the Emperor apparently believed these few spotted Dutch guns were the only one on the battlefield. When the last of his own field pieces were knocked out of action, Theodore ordered a cavalry charge on the nearest hill, overrunning it and killing all its defenders. Theodore’s own intelligence was faulty, indicating only about three thousand Dutch soldiers were in the area, as opposed to the fourteen thousand mustered by Prince Johann.
Johann made his own command tent clearly visible, wishing to channel the Ethiopian charge in a place of his own choosing. Again, Theodore lacked good judgement. He ordered the predicted cavalry charge on Johann’s position. However, the Prince placed his own tent between two small ridges, each holding dozens of artillery and machine guns, all trained on the lands below. What followed was the slaughter of nearly ten thousand Ethiopian soldiers in the space of less than an hour.
When the trap was sprung and Theodore realized he was facing an army several times larger than his own scouts reported, he recalled the survivors of the Charge of the Oromo and began to back his army up to a more defensible position. His next plan called for two wings of his army to go around the ridges, keeping out of range of the guns, and converging on Johann’s own flanks. However, by withdrawing gave the impression of a general retreat, causing Johann’s reinforcements to ride into the Ethiopian’s sides. With most of his own cavalry destroyed, Theodore’s army fought fiercely to keep the Dutch cavalry from cutting them to pieces. It is estimated nearly another ten thousand Ethiopians, along with one thousand Dutch soldiers and allies, fell in that counter charge. With his army scattered, Theodore retreated further inland, ending his final attempt to expel the Dutch, and was an utter disaster for Ethiopia.
Fall of another Emperor
By June of 1874, the Ethiopian Army was all but crushed. Surviving militia units simply disbanded and returned home. The only reason the Second Abyssinian War did not end in 1874 was because that Theodore operated on a mobile basis. The Ethiopian capital was a nomadic entity, and in 19th Century European warfare, he who takes the capital wins the war. Prince Johann continued pursuing Theodore and his loyal followers across the lands between Lake Tana and the Sudanese border. Johann remarked in his journal that he lost count of how many times his army has crossed the Blue Nile. Guerilla warfare raged across the Ethiopian Highlands, killing more Dutch soldiers than during the regular fighting. Despite the continued bloodshed, the Dutch were effectively in control of Ethiopia.
Despite the lack of a capital, the latter half of 1874 was spent trying to organize a new government. On a provincial scale, the King decided to leave the local governments in place. The Ethiopian provinces would govern themselves and keep most of their laws, but would answer to the Hague, and not to Theodore’s traveling show. Colonial advisors were sent to the provinces, were Netherlanders “advised” local governors on how they should run their provinces. Overall, the provinces not under Dutch control before 1872 operated more like the semi- and fully-autonomous princely states of India. Abyssinia was gradually brought fully under Dutch control over a period of decades, with assimilation moving inland from white settlements along the coast.
It was not until March of 1875, that Theodore and his followers were finally trapped along the shorts of the Jamma River, a tributary of the Blue Nile. Johann split his army, having one force on each side of the river, denying the Emperor an avenue of retreat. The so-called Battle of the Jamma River was little more than a skirmish between the lead elements of both forces. It was on the 13th that Theodore knew his number was up, and surrendered to Prince Johann. With the Emperor now in Dutch control, the question was what to do with him. Some called for him to be left of the throne as a puppet. A few wanted to take him out of his tent and shoot him.
Level heads prevailed in March, when the Generals in the Dutch Expedition conferred and recommended to the King and the Staaten-General that Theodore be deposed and sent into exile. Theodore was given the option to choose his own exile. Being Orthodox, he chose the only other largely Orthodox state in the world, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Prince Johann was appointed overall Governor-General of Ethiopia. The conquered provinces were united with the coastal provinces, creating a single colonial unit of administration. Conquering Ethiopia was the easy part, transforming Abyssinia into a modern state with a thriving economy would be a challenge.
With Ethiopia firmly in the control of the Dutch, and Prince Johann its governor-general, the former empire under went major reforms. Despite the fact that the local provincial rules of Abyssinia were largely left in power, and left to their own devices, the Dutch “advisor” assigned to them initiated democratization of their states. The concept of elections took some getting across the local mentality. For all their existence as an independent state, the former Ethiopians had no experience with popular government. The rulers of the provinces, the so-called “princes of Abyssinia” resisted attempts to reform their own states. The ruler of the Afar region even organized a revolt against Dutch rule in 1888, which was put down mercilessly. For his actions, the ruler was tried, convicted and executed for treason, and his lands, and those of his supporters were confiscated, the same as Theodore’s.
Upon gaining control over all of Abyssinia, Johann ordered that the lands belonging to the former Emperor and all his supporters be confiscated. This was partly policy, declaring that any who resist Dutch rule would loose their lands as well, and partly payment to the soldiers of the expeditionary force. Lands were redistributed to Netherlander and Brazilian soldiers, size of parcel depending upon rank. Senior officers had the largest rewards, with a few of the colonels even developing thriving and monestrous plantations. Medium size lots were handed out to junior officers, and smaller parcels to the non-commissioned officers and even the private soldiers. Not all accepted the land, for on condition of accepting it, they were also required to economically develop it. After years of war, some soldiers simply wished to return home.
Abyssinia already had its own native cash crop in plenty. Coffee, which had evolved in Ethiopia, had also been cultivated there for more than a thousand years. Many of the soldiers who received lands in the Oromia and Gambela regions of Abyssinia built their own coffee plantations along side the smaller farms of the natives. Landless peasants were taking into the employ of the Dutch, who aside from treating them far better than the natives, also paid more. Another advantage to Dutch plantation owners was the abolition of the ancient Ethiopian feudal economy. This forced native to cut their own profits and begin to pay their former serfs. When they did not pay well enough, or treated their labors more like slaves, those same peasants would up and leave. A few of the native plantation owners were forced to sell their lands to the newcomers between 1889-1900.
For the officers, and more recent immigrants to the coffee regions, a new center of trade appeared. Aside from serving as a center of trade, and eventual exportation port via the railroad, Dawa (from the Somali word ‘spear’) was also home to numerous and luxurious estates of the big time plantation owners. As the name would suggest, many Dutchified Somalis moved inland to begin working the coffee fields, which proved much more lucrative than old pastimes of fishing and herding. By 1900, the city was the richest non-coastal city in all of Abyssinia, with 70% of the country’s coffee exports flowing through it. Coffee became the colony’s number one export, with a majority of the exports flowing to the Ottoman Empire. Much of the coffee in Netherlander coffee houses still came from Brazil.
In the towns and villages of their newest colony, the Dutch introduced a system of universal education, aimed to uplift the Ethiopians and other peoples of Abyssinia. The schools would, naturally, be operated in Dutch, with the teaching of their language being their first priority. Like many other multi-ethnic lands, the Dutch used their own language as a unifier. It would be hard to imagine a unified India without a common language. Along with education, modern medicine was introduced, replacing folk remedies and “witch doctors”. Both plans were aimed to improve the native’s lot in life, but many Ethiopians avoided and resisted both measures.
King Frederick III
When Frederick Willem Julius van Oranje took the throne on October 7, 1880, he inherited a recently growing problem in southern Africa from his father. In 1824, the Staaten-General of the United Provinces passed the Homestead Act, which granted Netherlanders the right to a square kilometer of land in Kapenstaaten and territory beyond, provided they worked to improve the land. The influx of colonists were generally welcome in the city of Kapenstaat, but met with hostility when they traversed into the interior.
Since the 1730s, Boers had steadily been leaving Kapenstaat for new lands free of VOC interference. By 1830, the Boers established a series of quasi-states in southern Africa; Transvaal, New Orange, Natalia and Johannestaaten. The republics as they called them were barely a government in the modern sense. They possessed little power, and served mainly as a means to mediate disputes and collect revenue for the general improvement of the land for all its inhabitants.
When th newcomers arrived on the Veld, they quickly razed fences, ploughed under grasses, dug irrigation and general disrupted the Boer’s primarily pastoral lifestyles. True, the Boers did grow produce, but they lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle similar to the natives of the region. Their tendency to move about was another reason while the Boer governments were marginally effective. Homesteaders simply ignored the Boer governments and banded together for protection. When Boer herders entered a new township, the homesteaders greeted them not with open arms, but loaded ones.
Along with new technology and different agriculture, the homesteaders brought with them an alien concept of race, that was largely absent in Eighteenth Century Kapenstaat. To the newcomers, the European Race was superior, and because of the ways of natural selection, were the fittest to rule. The Boers had their own tensions with the natives, such as disputes over grazing land, and even a war of conquest in Natalia against the Zulu, but never did they view the natives as inferior, different perhaps, but just as human as themselves. During VOC rule, more than sixty percent of the Boers were male, and with limited Dutch woman about, the men took native wives.
Along with wives, the Boers adopted several other aspects of native life, such as clothing and lodging. The conservative full wool dressings of the United Provinces were ill suited to the Veld (except perhaps during the nights when temperatures plummeted in the arid land). Out of necessity, they abandoned wool and took to wearing thinner cloth similar to the natives, though European modesty still existed and most of the Boer’s bodies were covered.
With New Amsterdam now an American state, Kapenstaaten became the choice location for emigrants departing the Provinces. India promised riches, but southern Africa offered a new start. Most of the newcomers came from the southern Provinces, escaping from the industrial monster consuming the workforce. However, if not for the efficiency of industrialization, far fewer Netherlanders would have made the journey to new lands.
By 1880, conflict between the Boers and homesteaders was inevitable. The wave of newcomers gradually reduced to a trickle, but the homesteaders multiplied at the same rate as the Boers. When homesteaders matured and left home, they consumed more land and drove Boer livestock to the further corners of the Veld. Homesteaders fired the first shots as new arable land became scarce and competition increased.
Driving off the livestock was not enough, the homesteaders began to round up the livestock or just destroy the Boer’s herds. In response, the Boers defended their herds with a ‘shoot first and forget the questions’ attitude. Though they may have shared mostly peaceful relations with their fellow humans, most Boers owned a firearm of one sort or another, for hunting game or driving off predators. One encounter the homesteaders had not experience was that with a lion. Boers were quite familiar with the largest of Africa’s cats.
Further to the desire for land, came the discovery of resources. Near Kimberley, miners from Kapenstaat came across diamonds in a layer of coal there were extracting. At first it was just a few gems, little did the miners know they stumbled upon the largest source of diamonds ever found. The miners and more over the mine owners, attempted to keep the discovery secret, but to little avail. Though diamonds do not spark the imagination they way gold would, it still captured the attention of enough adventurers to flood the Veld with more strangers. If the invasion of prospectors was not bad enough, the mine owners added insult to injury by taking the diamonds and running. To the Boers, any mineral found under common lands belonged to all the peoples of Transvaal and the profits should be shared clans and family, both white and black. It would be only after the Boer Wars that Transvaal would gain control over the diamonds, and establish the Kimberley Mining Company to further exploit the resource.
Isolated shooting and retaliation bloomed into full-blown civil warfare, starting in Transvaal in 1881. An army of hundreds of homesteaders cross the Vaal River, attacking Boer and native villages for a depth of seven kilometers, driving both human and cattle away, and clearing the land for horticultural usage. For the most part, such attacks were isolated to a single village and had not yet been cleared to this extent. Word of the raid spread to Pretoria, the then center of government for the nation of transients, and word went out calling for the Boers of Transvaal to go commando.
In the days before the Boer Wars, commando was simply what the Boers called patrols. Along with taxes, the Boer men over the age of fourteen donated one week out of the year to patrol the countryside around their settlements. For the most part, these were anti-predator patrols, intended to drive off lions and leopards. Occasionally, though defeated years before, the Zulu would mount raids against the Boers and their allies.
In 1881, thousands of Boers were called forth for commando, but not just to patrol. The Boers planned on driving these newcomers south of the Vaal and back into New Orange. However, word spread from the New Oranje side of the river to the town of New Orange. The Orange Boers called forth their own commando, to patrol the southern side of the river. In the following weeks, thousands of homesteaders were driven between the two rag-tag armies. Many escaped, but upwards of thirty percent of the homesteaders were killed. Their corpses were left to the hyena as a warning against further homesteader incursions.
Instead of heeding the warning, homesteaders sent word for assistance to Kapenstaat, asking for protection against the marauding bands of Boers. The moment the colonial government intervened, six years of brutal warfare followed. At first, the Boers just wanted to keep the homesteaders from seizing their grazing lands, but when it was clear Kapenstaat favored the homesteaders, calls for full independence rang out across the Veld. Dutch forces in southern Africa were, though far more than the Boers could muster, not nearly enough to quash the rebellion.
The Boers were severely outnumbered, but knew the terrain and environment so well, they could almost blend in with the background. The lacked uniforms, and often tied brush and grass to their clothing, further camouflaging into the Veld. In contrast, the Royal Armies of the United Provinces and Brazil, along with colonial brigades wore the same bright orange uniforms issued to them during the French Wars. Though they dirtied quickly and blended in better with the savanna than forests of India, they were still obvious. The fact that Dutch still used the tactic of marching hundreds of soldiers abreast only made them easy targets for Boer sharpshooters.
The Dutch easily captured what passed for capitals in all the Boer Republics, but against conventional wisdom, the Boers did not capitulate or sue for peace. They continued a guerilla war in the wilderness. Though fewer in numbers, they scored casualties in higher proportions to their adversaries. It is estimated that nearly twenty thousand Dutch were killed during the Boer Wars, without forcing a single Boer army to surrender. What Dutch commanders failed to realize at the time was that the Boers had no ‘armies’ in the European sense. Their bands were one thousand at the most.
At first, the war was popular back home. The press in the United Provinces sold the war as an attempt to reincorporated lost cousins back into Dutch society. The fact the Boers did not want incorporation was beyond comprehension. Surely they would welcome the luxuries from across the empire and the advances absent to them during the past one hundred fifty years. As the years drug on, as townships fell and the Dutch death toll rose, the lack of foreseeable end wore on the public opinion. Though the Senaat, who was primarily in charge of declaring war, was never up for reelection, the House of Electorates were, and as the war drug on, they would receive the blame. They pressed for a negotiated end.
Competition
In the 1820s, the first (literally the first) of the United Provinces’ rivals experienced a complete collapse of its colonial empire. The Latin American nations of Mexico, Grand Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay were under the heel of the Spanish Empire for three centuries. The atrocities committed in the Provinces during Spain’s rule there paled in comparison to Latin America. In the New World, conquistadores committed wholesale genocide against the indigenous population, destroying their cultures and pillaging two continents.
Napoleonic rule of Iberia weakened Spain to the point it could no longer hold on to its colonies. In 1810, Grand Colombia declared independence, with Mexico following the next year. Though Mexico’s first rebellion was crushed, Grand Colombia had the privilege of superior revolutionary commander. Simon Bolivar lead Grand Colombia to freedom, then pursued Spanish colonial rule into Peru, Chile and Bolivia, the latter named in his own honor.
The Dutch welcome independence of Spanish colonies. If not for destroying their long-time enemy, then for opening new markets stocked with millions of consumers, all willing to purchase Dutch goods. During Spanish rule, Spain forbade any foreigners from trading in its colonies, though it could never fully keep out determined Dutch smugglers. When Spain was driven from their former colonies, Dutch traders of all types rushed in to fill the vacuum. Them, along with their British and American counterparts effectively destroyed the Spanish export trade.
Revolution was not simply relegated to the colonial world. In 1848, a wave of revolutions broke out across Europe. The United Provinces had its share of unrest in the 1840s, but that paled in comparison to what happened across Germany, in France and Spain. Again the French monarchy was abolished and replaced with the Second Republic, which was in turn replaced by the Second Empire, and replaced again after the Franco-Prussian War with the Third Republic. Spain received its First Republic when the reigning King, Carlos IV, was deposed in autumn of 1848. Ironically, the Spanish King spent the rest of his life exiled in Flanders.
During the 1820s, the United States faced a power struggle of its own on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Not between men or branched of government, but of ideas. Nationalism clashed with regionalism. In the south, the people considered themselves citizens of the states as opposed to the Union. So strong was regionalism, that in 1828, the Nullification Crisis threaten to start civil war. South Carolina, in response to trade regulations, attempted to succeed from the Union. Only an overwhelming response from the Jackson Administration kept South Carolina as a State.
After decades of debate, the United States finally adopted a central banking system. Leading up to the Federal Reserve, banking was the responsibility of state-chartered banks. Each of these banks printed a hodge-podge of paper currency. The currency could be exchanged at the banks for its worth in gold, however, the length of travel required to trade in the currency lead to devaluing of currency in proportion to distance. After so many miles, the paper currency was effectively worthless. Carrying enough gold to pay one’s bills was not always the most practical of methods.
In Congress there was great concern that these private banks could not provide the country with a uniform and standard currency. Two attempts to establish a national bank had failed, and a successful bank would not be chartered until after the War of Succession. Other reforms were taking place during the 1830s. One involved the penal system, and instead of executing criminals, the idea of reforming them arose. By the use of strict discipline and religious indoctrination, it was hoped to cure the person of his criminal habits. Even to this day, a similar system it used in American for most offenders, however instead of spiritual awakening, prisoners are often taught marketable skills in hope that work might keep them out of trouble. It met with mixed success, and the Federal and States’ prison system is still clogged with long-term and life-term offenders, and those who simply will not reform.
For the beginning of the nation, education was left as a local affair. Massachusetts was the first state to adopt a state-wide education system, with standardized curriculums. With the rapid industrialization of New England, a great deal of skills learned for generations of farming were of little use. New specialized fields erupted across the country requiring extensive education. By the end of the 19th Century, each state in the Union required at least eight years within public education, and literacy rates were many times higher than a hundred years previously.
In the 1820s, the newly independent nation of Mexico opened the borders to its state of Texas to American settlement. However, in order to immigrate, the settlers were required to convert to Catholicism and learn Spanish. The settlers promised to do so, but quickly forgot their promise. Texas is considered to be one of the first filibusters. There is little doubt that those who settled in Texas had no intention in staying part of Mexico. The Texas Revolution is just as much settler plotting as it was Mexico’s inability to assimilate the influx of settlers. Tension between the government and settlers came to a head in 1835 when the Texans declared independence.
The Texan Revolution was a short and bloody affair. The first came on March 5, 1836, with the storming of the Alamo. Almost all the defenders were killed during the assault, but a handful were taken wounded, but still alive. According to Mexican accounts, Davie Crocket was among those captured and later executed. It is entirely possible, but no evidence exists to support the claim.
The second incident came with the surrender of the garrison at Goliad. After handing in their arms, Mexican General Santa Anna ordered all the defenders executed. Both massacres were fresh on the mind of the Texans at the Battle of San Jacinco on April 21, where a Mexican Army three times the size of the Texans was defeated, and Santa Anna captured. In exchange for his life and freedom, Texas would be recognized as independent. When Santa Anna took this before Mexico’s Congress, the treaty was promptly rejected, leaving Texas unofficially independent.
Nine years later, when Texas’s petition to join the union was accepted, Mexico accused the United States of invading its territory. Further complicating the issue, the Texans recognized the Grande River as Texas’s southern border, whereas Mexico’s maps showed the Black River as its border. Near the Gulf of Mexico, the distance was minute, but on the western edges, the Grande River border doubled the size of Texas.
After Texas was admitted into the Union, American cavalry began to patrol the Texan claimed area. It was inevitable, but they encountered a patrol from the Mexican Army. Shots were fired and the American public reacted venomously. American blood spilled on American soil. By 1846, Congress declared a state of war with Mexico.
The war was rather one-sided. Despite the fact that Mexico had a far larger army, the United States army was packed with veterans of numerous Indian wars. Nationalistic fever swelled the American ranks. Two armies invaded Mexico from the north. One advance force under the command of John Fremont captured northern California, establishing the twenty-six day long Californian Republic. Within months, the Mexican Army was ejected from New Mexico, a land Congress repeatedly offered to buy.
By 1847, American soldiers landed at Veracruz, defeating Santa Anna outside of the city of Mexico. The last resistance to American conquest came from the Mexican Military Academy, the ‘Halls of Montezuma’. United States Marines easily defeated the cadets, who fought to the last. Within a year of the war’s start, American generals and diplomats were in the city of Mexico dictating peace terms.
Debate in Congress raged over whether or not to annex the entire country. Those who wanted all of Mexico argued that American blood was spilt in conquest, thus the land was now American. Opponents to the All-Mexico claimed that it was an attempt of the southerners to extend slavery and expand their own power base. In the end, it was a racial question that preserved Mexico. Congress could not agree on bringing so many people of Indian-decent and non-English into the Union.
The Treaty of Hildago-Guadeloupe forced Mexico to recognize the annexation of Texas, along with the Grande River boundary. Further, it would sell all of California, New Mexico, Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango to the United States for twenty million dollars. This conquest expanded the United States to the Pacific Ocean.
While tension and war loomed with Mexico, the United States collided with its old nemesis, the United Kingdom. The debate between the two came over the boundary of the Oregon Country. Britain and America both claimed all of it, and some in Congress were ready to go to war over the 54-40 boundary. However, memories of the disaster of the Second Anglo-American War, coupled with the fact the nation was already in a war with Mexico, lead to a compromise. The land would be divided along the 49th parallel, though the British still claimed the Columbia River as a boundary as well, which would resurface during the Third Anglo-American War.
Though national pride had been restored after the resounding victory over Mexico and conquest of a vast amount of new land, the victory also brought disunity. In 1850, the biggest debate in Congress was whether or not these new acquisitions would be free or slave. Slave holding settlers in Texas were already poised to move into Sonora and Durango, to open up the rest of the southwest to exploitation.
The south was not the only place feeling pressure to be on the move. Revolutions in Europe during the year of 1848, followed by famine, forced many refugees from Ireland, Germany and even Spain to move to America. These immigrant, for the most part, settled in the industrializing north, offering the factory owners their own source of exploitable labor. Unlike slaves, there seemed to be a never-ending stream of immigrants, and best of all, the owners did not have to invest much into their care.
The immigrants were not equal in their own rights. The Germans, many from middle class families, sold their German possessions and arrived in country with their own source of money. The Irish were looked upon with suspicion, largely because of their poverty and their faith. Catholics arriving in predominantly protestant New England were not always as welcomed as they were in New Amsterdam. On the other hand, capitalists tended to favor the Irish, for they would labor hard for less pay. The waves of immigration pushed many established American families to take up their roots and move west, to leave the problems of the East Coast behind.
However, the problems followed, whether the settlers willed it or not. In 1850, California was admitted into the Union as a free state. Congress passed what has become known as the Compromise of 1850, which stated the territory conquered from Mexico would leave the issue of slavery up to popular sovereignty. With many southerners already in Durango, Chihuahua and Sonora, that they were admitted as slave states (in 1862, 1855 and 1854 respectively). The rest of the Mexican Cession waited longer for statehood. This likely rose from the fact that the four states already admitted already had a resembling of government, which required little modification to forge a working constitution.
While many Americans moved westward, some moved south. One such American was a mercenary by the name of William Walker. He and a band of outlaws invaded the Mexican state of Nicaragua in hopes of taken over the government. Why Nicaragua? It has been suggested that Walker had hopes of using the geography of the state to build a trans-oceanic canal. His forces seized control of the state in 1851.
For two decades, the southern states of Mexico; Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala have tried to break away from Mexico. Their rebellion in the 1830s, around the same time as Texas, was crushed. Though the locals did not like the politicking in Mexico City, that did not mean they would support foreign invaders. By 1853, Walker was driven from Nicaragua into Costa Rica. In this border state, he found more support and less enthusiasm from Mexico’s army to defend.
Walker succeeded in taking over Costa Rica, declaring independence in 1854. Like Texas, Costa Rica’s Congress immediately voted for annexation by the United States. With turmoil in the United States between north and south, Costa Rica’s admission into the Union was delayed for years. The State of Costa Rica was not admitted until after the War of Succession, after slavery was banned by Constitutional Amendment.
Upon hearing the results of the Election of 1860, the State Assembly of South Carolina voted to dissolve its union and seceded on December 20, 1860. By February of 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas all voted to succeed from the Union. At first South Carolina set itself up as an independent state, but when more states withdrew, they met in Birmingham, Alabama to form the Confederate States of America.
On April 12, 1861, after Lincoln refused to withdraw federal soldiers from Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the South Carolina militia opened fire on the island garrison. Two days later, the garrison surrendered the fort and withdrew to the north. When Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers and ordered the army to crush the rebellion, several more states seceded; Arkansas on May 6, Tennessee on May 7, North Carolina on May 20, Sonora on June 21, and Chihuahua on July 5. Virginia’s assembly narrowly defeated the vote, as did Durango. Cuba did not even contemplate secession.
The initial campaign against the Carolinas met with failure as Union General McClellan failed to crush the Army of the Carolinas. McClellan’s failing was that he was too cautious a general, the opposite of a fighting general. His failures only served to enrage Lincoln. In Tennessee, the Union Army under the Command of Ulysses Grant managed to defeat the Confederate invasion of Kentucky and pursue them to Nashville.
Both sides had generals with their own virtues and failings. However, absent of this civil war was on Robert Lee, who resigned as superintendent of the military academy at Fort Arnold. Though he considered himself Virginian first, and though Virginia was still in the Union, Lee could not bring himself to enter a war that pitted brother against brother. He was condemned by both sides. The Confederates accused him of being a Yankee sympathizer, Americans accused him of being a Confederate sympathizer. Either way, it is now widely believed that had Lee took sides, it could have decided the war.
As it was, the war was effectively decided in April of 1862, when the Army of the Carolinas, under the command of Earl Vincent Jackson III, invaded Virginia. He met, and resounded defeated McClellan and the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Manassas. Manassas was a disaster for the Union, and its army was nearly destroyed in the process. This one victory was all that the British required to go forth to recognize the Confederacy. Britain’s chief interest came in the form of cotton, which it had in Egypt but the Confederates had in even great supply until the 1880s.
On July 3, 1862, the British Parliament recognized the Confederate States of America and signed an alliance against the Union. This move was parallel to the Franco-American alliance of 1778. What was not parallel was the fact that the Dutch did not react so well to Britain’s interference in an internal American affair. The Dutch government simply declared that if the British would intervene on behalf of the Confederates, than the United Provinces and Brazil would intervene on behalf of the Americans.
Seeing the War between the States threatening to spill over onto a world stage, it was France’s self-proclaim Emperor, Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III) who moved to mediate peace between the governments in Washington and Montgomery. By January of 1863, the Union saw itself split in half, and the Confederate States of America gained their independence, along with the Indian territory and New Mexico territory, which they renamed Arizona Territory.
Following the disastrous War of American Succession, a thirteenth amendment was passed, banning slavery in the United States. To keep Virginia, Durango and Kentucky, along with other border states in the Union, a clause allowed for the federal government to reimburse the slave owners, much to the disgust of the rest of the nation. Though it was seen as basic tax relief for wealthy Southerners, the Amendment did achieve the goals of the abolitionists.
The story of the expulsion of the “Five Civilized Tribes” from the Confederate States east of the Mississippi actually dates back before Georgia seceded from the Union. During the 1830s, several southern states passed racial laws that divided society into two classes: those of direct European descent were whites, and everybody else was colored. This included the Cherokee of the Cherokee Counties of northwestern Georgia. Up until the Civil War, the Cherokee were staunch allies of the Federal Government. However, they also owned slaves are were not so eager to give them up. When Georgia seceded from the Union, the Cherokee were caught in a civil war of their own, over which side they would support. By the time the Cherokee were ready to decide, a peace was mediated between North and South.
In 1873, with much of the choice lands of Georgia taken up, lawmakers moved to open the Indians’ lands to white settlement. As per the decades old law that classified the Cherokee as colored and thus legally inferior to whites, the Georgia State Assembly passed a law to remove all free colored from Georgia. Georgia’s militia fought with the Cherokee when the state came to eject them. Forces from Birmingham also came to the aid, as the Confederate Congress was called on to find a place to put these non-whites. Across the Mississippi in a place now known as Oklahoma, the Confederacy established an Indian homeland.
The Cherokee lost the battle, and tens of thousands of their kinsmen were escorted out of Georgia by the Confederate Army. Seeing what their neighbors had done, other states began to enact their own Indian Removal laws. As more states began the expulsion, more Indians began to follow the trail blazed to Oklahoma by the Cherokee. Between 1873 and 1879, a hundred thousand Indians and free blacks were marched west into this strange land, forced to start over as best as they could. As per Confederate Law, the land was closed to white settlement. This came back to bite the Confederates when oil was discovered on the new Indian lands. Some Indians did welcome the chance to start over without the whites lording it over them, but none would have chosen this way to do so. To the Indians, the migration has many names, but the one that sticks in American History is the Trail of Tears.
Tensions rose and fell less than a generation later along the two Nations of America’s borders. Tension grew between Federal and State governments over rising power of Washington. Freeing the slaves, despite manumission, sparked seditious movements in Virginia. The Confederates saw this resentment against Washington and sought to exploit it. Many nationalists in Birmingham considered the Confederacy incomplete without Virginia.
Confederates sponsored movements in Virginia with the goal of overthrowing the pro-Union government in Richmond. Other movements pushed for referendums in Kentucky, Cuba and Durango, all supported by Birmingham, the new capital of the Confederacy. One such referendum was introduced to Kentucky in 1876, and was defeated by a safe margin. Legal measures were not the only ones taken by pro-Confederate Virginians. In April of 1882, the Union government of Virginia was overthrown, and the conspirators declared Virginia’s union with the Union was dissolved. Within a month, Senators and representatives from Virginia were meeting in Birmingham.
The overthrowing of the Virginian government was seen as a direct-action by the Confederacy, causing the United States to declare war on the Confederate States. Three days after word rushed across the Atlantic, the British declared war upon the United States. This time, the Dutch were unable to come to America’s assistance, they attention focused clearly on rebellions in southern Africa. The United States would stand alone in this fight.
The United States Army was still twice the size of the Confederate Army, same as during the war between the states. Furthermore, years of battling Plains Indians made them a battle-hardened army. However, fighting tribal wars was far different than fighting an enemy training in European style of warfare. Unlike the United States, the Confederates were not hesitant in aligning themselves with a foreign power. The Confederate Army and Navy were both trained by the British, including planing out future wars in advance. The Americans simply fought the war as it unfolded.
Cuba was the first to fall to the British-Confederate alliance. The Royal (British) Navy blockaded the island, and ferried both Confederate and British soldiers to the island, to defeat the few American garrisons on the island. The last to fall was Guantanamo Bay, on August 7, 1883. The American Army was further driven from Virginia after the Battle of the James River on October 1, 1883. Suffering great casualties, the Army of the Potomac withdrew to Alexandria, where it withstood a joint Confederate-British siege of that city and Washington until early 1885.
Fighting in Durango was short, for neither side spared much in the way of resources to battle in this southwestern state. Its government peacefully changed hands as pro-Union politicians were fired and pro-Confederate ones elected in 1884. There was brief concern that the French may intervene on the Confederate’s behalf, causing the Americans to divert soldiers and ships to Costa Rica, to defend against any possible invasion from French Mexico. In truth, the French had far more problems in their continuing campaign to pacify the Mexican populace, one that would continue until they finally departed Mexico in the 1950s. Between assimilating the Mexicans into French ways, and putting them to work on the Nicaragua Canal, the French had nothing to spare to aid their own partial allies, the British.
The only action Britain took alone against the United States was in a long disputed area of the Pacific Northwest. Though the 49th parallel was the nominal border, there were still many British, and newfound Canadian, leaders who believed that the rightful border of the far west should be that of the Columbia River. On March 7, 1883, Royal (British) Navy sailed into Puget Sound and did battle with the American ships in port. By April, Royal Marines had seized control of Seattle. By February 21, 1884, the British Army crossed south of the Columbia and captured Fort Astoria. Aside from the lands west of the Columbia River, the British made no further intrusion into American territory. Within the states of Cuba, Durango, Kentucky and Virginia, a series of state-wide civil wars were fought. The pro-Confederate forces, though largely outnumbered by pro-Union and neutral factions, were better equipped and trained. Furthermore, the state militias were home to a majority of secessionists. Even after these states were ‘allowed’ to secede, violence continued onwards until the dawn of the Twentieth Century, resulting in states that were less free than America.
By early 1885, Britain and the Confederate States forced the United States to the peace table. After three years of war, American forces were completely on the defensive in Kentucky and Virginia. As per the Treaty of Boston, the above mentioned states were allowed to join the Confederacy. Confederate government instituted laws that created a system of internal passports in the newly admitted states. In some cases, what could only be called secret polices were established to keep the dissident members of society into check. However, in the case of Cuba, which never had slavery under American watch, many of the black citizens were allowed, in fact encouraged by the C.S.A. to depart for the Union. Because Virginia was now a Confederate State, the American capital retreated permanently to Philadelphia.
The British, for their assistance, took the lands west of the Columbia River. With Seattle in their possession, coupled with their protectorate over Hawaii, the British were able to check American advances into the Pacific. Despite officials statements, the British were wary of a United America. They saw the United States as a rival, with a potentially unlimited industrial capacity.
For the second time in over twenty years, the United States took a critical hit to their national pride. The only outstanding victories in the Third Anglo-American War came in the Wild West. American cowboys, lawmen and outlaws fought of constant Confederate (and their Indian allies) raid into Nevada and Kansas. In return, a band of two thousand frontier’s men managed to capture Santa Fe in Arizona Territory. However, the fall of Santa Fe was more of a sacking than a conquest. The city was looted by apparently drunken cowboys.
In Europe, the toppling of the last Bourbon monarch sent ripples across France’s colonial possessions. Quebec in particular was hit hard. At first, the Québécois welcomed the deposing of the king. At last, they hoped they would be treated as one amongst equals as the revolutionaries were fighting for. When Quebec was not elevated to a Department of France, it was a let down. When the new republic treated it even more like a colony that the former king, that was the final straw. If Quebec would not be equal, then it shall be separate. In 1851, Quebec declared its independence. To the world’s surprise, France did little to stop it. At the time, France had its own internal conflicts to deal with. When Louis Napoleon declared himself Napoleon III, he granted Quebec’s independence in return for a free trade treaty with them. France would reap the economic benefits of a colony without having to control it, and should the new Republic of Quebec fail, then France would be their to ‘assist’.
In 1861, France had its eyes further south. In April, tens of thousands of French soldiers landed on the shores of Mexico, keen to collect on the debt Mexico had been either unwilling or, more likely, unable to pay. When the Mexicans surrendered, Napoleon III decided to replace its republic with a constitutional monarchy. As the Emperor, he chose an Austrian cousin, Maximilian. The Mexican Emperor was an inept leader, and faced the firing squad in 1867. In response, France invaded again, and this time it did not change the government, but abolished it completely. Mexico joined Algeria and Indochina as French colonies.
Even the British managed to climb back from the pit they entered after losing not only India, but the American colonies. During the 1820s, British nationals launched a land rush on the unclaimed lands south of Rio de la Plata, to which the Prussians did not protest. The land was cold and barren, and the British were welcome to Patagonia. It was a regret of later German Emperors when Patagonia wool began to take up much of Europe’s market.
To replace India, the British managed to wedge themselves in between the Dutch Raj and Siam. Their conquest of Burma was a relatively short affair, unlike their conquest of East Africa. Again the British managed to wedge themselves between two states, Dutch South Africa and Abyssinia. East Africa gave them not only a strategic presence both north and south of the Suez Canal, but helped stretch their influence across central Africa. Though Britain’s star was once again on the rise, it would always be second-rate compared to the United Provinces and its companion stars.
Constitution of the United Provinces
At the beginning of 1816, great and drastic changes hit the government of the United Provinces. Upon hearing more details of the Brazilian Constitution, and the liberties it granted its citizens, the Dutch people began to demand change and reform within their own realm. After suffering under the Batavian Republic, then under its Regency, the Dutch people were in no mood to suffer injustice beneath its own king and parliament. If a bunch of colonists in Brazil were granted vast liberties, then why should the Provinces not receive the same. It did not matter that Brazil was its own nation, they were still colonists in the eyes of the Dutch, and the United Provinces were the mother country. Where the mother country leads, the colonies should follow, not the other way around.
Borrowing from his experiences in Recife, Maurice II, King of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Emperor of Brazil, called forth a constitutional convention for the Netherlands. Rulers of each of the Provinces, along with the most respected of intellectuals across the nation, met in the King’s Palace in Delft. They would not suffer the months of summer heat that hit Philadelphia in 1787, but would rather wrap up the convention within as many weeks. Again, the first written Constitution of the United Provinces borrowed heavily from the Americans.
In contrast, the Dutch over-emphasized Provincial rights. The Provinces had governed themselves for the past two hundred years, there was no way any of them planned to surrender sovereignty to a stronger central government. However, where as before Napoleon the Netherlands were confederated, Post-Napoleonic United Provinces grew into a tighter federated bond of provinces. The Staaten-General was given slightly more power to regulate commerce between the Provinces. At the time, it did not seem that big a change, but with the coming of the railroad, the Staaten-General would soon make its voice heard in a wide range of Standardization under the ‘Commerce Clause’.
The greatest changed to the Staaten-General came to the Second Chamber, now called the House of Electorates. For two centuries, the lower house of the Staaten-General consisted of many members who essentially bought or bribed their way into power. After the convention, the Electorates came into power by more legal and legitimate means, and were now chosen by a total male suffrage above the age of twenty. No longer could wealthy merchants and powerful companies decide the fate of the Dutch people.
The First Chamber, as in Brazil it too is called the Senaat, consisted of hereditary rulers of the Provinces along with other peers of the realm. It was not open to election, nor to new members without its own consent. As with the old Staaten-General, the Senaat handled matters concerning the Provinces, and the House handled matters concerning the people. Sometimes such matters were at odds, especially in the arena of taxation and tariffs.
As a Mercantile nation, the United Provinces earned between sixty and eighty percent of its revenue from a series of tariffs and customs, all of which were designed to protect homegrown business and domestic goods. Protectionism has always been a way of economic life in the Netherlands. Any foreigner attempting to import their own goods into the Provinces would be forced to pay a hefty fee. Various customs were imposed upon merchant ships trading through Dutch ports, or even if they happened to be just passing through. Throughout the entire history of the United Provinces, the average Netherlander never had to pay more than ten percent of his income to the government, though companies faced higher taxation.
The 1816 Constitution gave the King more power. Before, the Kings of the United Provinces served as an anchorage, a means to unite the Provinces. Now, the Kings and future Queens would be executive monarchs, another concept borrowed from the United States. Where the Americans would elect their chief executive on a four year basis, the Dutch would inherit their executives, each groomed from birth to serve as head of state. Unlike other constitutional monarchies of Europe, the Dutch King did not have the power to dissolve his parliament. The Staaten-General faced elections every five years, and then only the people could dissolve it.
A third branch of government, introduced to the Netherlands for the first time, balanced the power between Staaten-General and the new executive King, and would keep either from getting too powerful. The Supreme Court of the United Provinces would insure constitutional law was not violated. Independent courts were a new addition to Dutch judiciary system. The judges in the Supreme Court were nominated by the King, but confirmed by the House of Electorates. Provincial courts worked on a similar principle, though they were nominated by the lord of the Province, and confirmed by the Provincial Assemblies.
Industrialization
The United Provinces received a new government at the dawning of the Industrial Revolution. Starting in Britain decades before, the steam engine finally made its way to the Netherlands. For much of its history, mills were powered by winds blown off the North Sea or from the currents of tidal estuaries. These limited industry to specific areas of specific Provinces. The first steam engines were not introduced to Holland or any other coastal Provence, but to Luxembourg. The Duke of Luxembourg smuggled two engines out of Great Britain. The British monopoly on steam power ended and ushered in a new age in Luxembourg.
Industrialization greatly increased productivity within Luxembourg, but it came at a cost. Large quantities of coal were mined from the once pristine province, and the woods were replaced by forests of smokestacks. Endless streams of black smoke blotted out the sun, and filled the lungs of the citizens. Industrialization also improved efficiency at the cost of employment. Thousands of Luxembourgers found themselves in a situation that was seldom known in the Provinces; unemployed.
Shifts in supply and demand allowed for the owner, the company to lower its own wages. Though wages were never cut, they seldom rose, and when they did it was at below inflation levels. The price of living in Luxembourg was rising, but relatively speaking, income shrank. Textile mills, once few in Luxembourg, now dominated the landscape. Close proximity to iron mines and coal deposits allowed for Luxembourg, and later Liege and Limburg to become the steel production center of the United Provinces, and a territory coveted by both France and later the German Empire.
The steam engines were put to use in Holland and Zeeland not as engines of industry, but rather to power a system of pumps to both regulate water levels in the maritime Provinces and to pump large quantities of water out of new closed off areas. Steam increased the size of several Provincial economies (at a great cost to its people) but it literally increased the sizes of Holland and Zeeland. For centuries, the Dutch reclaimed land from the sea, but at small parcels at a time. With steam, large strips of land were risen from the shallow depths.
In some cases being at the bottom of a salt water sea, these new plots of land were not the best places to build new farms. Instead, they were used for urban expansion. As industry stripped jobs from other Provinces, Limburgers, Luxembourgers and various others from the southern Provinces made their way north. Though factories started to run on constant steam as opposed to sporadic winds, there was a shortage of menial laborers in Holland. Long since the commercial capital of Europe, Amsterdammers, and Hollanders in general, avoided the dangers of factory work.
And dangers were plentiful. Machines powered by steam could move twenty-four hours a day, and often did. Seldom did the early machines need to stop, and only when something broke. The Industrial Revolution created a sort of community rush. Owners of factories were only interested in producing more, and outproducing their rivals across the North Sea. Though the United Provinces were protected by tariffs, Dutch businessmen soon discovered other nations followed suit. In order to export their merchandise to Britain, which at the time was equally protective, factories had to cut cost.
Life was not pleasant in the United Provinces during industrialization. It was the lowest point in respect to quality of life since and after 1609. In Holland, such a demand for labor existed that anyone available over the age of eight were employed in the textile mills of Holland, almost all economic refugees from the southern Provinces. The work was long, twelve hours shifts, and exceptionally hazardous, especially for the youngest of workers. The children were made to crawl beneath the looms and mechanical weavers to retrieve scraps of wool, cotton and even silk. Working in the mills gave little and took much, including fingers and whole limbs.
The Industrial Revolution produced more than mechanical monsters, and replaced more than just human workers. In 1822, the first railroad was constructed from Amsterdam to the Hague, not only replacing horse-drawn carts, but threatening both canal and shipping interests across the nation. Unlike the mangling behemoths of the dimly lit factories, Netherlanders did lobby again the railroads. The shipping giants of the Netherlands, and owners of its various canals lobbied heavily against the railroad, claiming it would not only wreck the national and Provincial economies, but threatened the very tradition most sacred to the Dutch people; seafaring. With railroads, who would need ships? To some extent it was a success. Brabant’s Provincial Assembly passed legislation limiting both size and speed of the railroad engines.
One byproduct of steam power literally lit the roads to Amsterdam. IN the 1870s, the first electricity producing engines were operation in Holland. With the invention of the lightbulb, the demand for electricity soon increased. For decades, coal-fired power plants gave the Netherlands its power and choked its skies with soot. It was not until the beginning of the Twentieth Century that hydroelectric plants began to appear. For a nation that spent much of its existence building dams and dikes, hydroelectricity was a logical jump. Unlike many nations, including Brazil, the United Provinces did not need to dam rivers. More than enough water flowed between the North Sea and English Channel to permit tidal-generated power.
New Amsterdam Referendum
While industrialization began to strangle the lives of Netherlanders, New Amsterdammers were looking for revolutionary change of their own. In 1824, eight years after the official independence of Brazil, New Amsterdammers began to decide it was time for their own self-determination. For the past two hundred years, the colony was ruled by the Hague and by New Amsterdam’s own nobility. Town halls were the extent of self-rule in the colony, and those could easily be overruled by the Marquis.
In the eight years following Brazilian nationhood, New Amsterdammers organized and lobbied the Hague for the right to decide its own fate. By 1824, Maurice II agreed that if any Dutch colony wanted self-rule, then it should be subject to referendum. While addressing the Staaten-General, the United Provinces faced its first constitutional crisis; which chamber would decide if referendums would happen? The Senaat was in charge of Provincial affairs, and the possible independence of a colony fell into that category. However, it would be the people who voted in the referendum, so the House of Electorates claimed jurisdiction.
The five justices of the Supreme Court heard the cases of both chambers, and ruled that both did have jurisdiction in the case of referendum. In such a case, the King’s plan must pass both First and Second Chambers of the Staaten-General. It passed the House with a large margin, but stalled in the Senaat, whose concern was the loss of the colony could upset their own Provincial economies, since products from New Amsterdam would now be subject to tariffs. Also, with the loss of Denmark in the Congress of Vienna, the United Provinces consisted of eighteen Provinces, an even number. When the vote came up, it was divided nine to nine, and under the Constitution, it was up to the head of the Senaat, the King, to break the tie. Thus referendum passed, barely.
In May of 1824, New Amsterdam was presented with three choices; 1) they could stay a crown colony of the United Provinces, with all the privileges bestowed upon Dutch citizens, including the right to elect its own assembly; 2) it could become a realm within the empire, sharing the same status as Brazil, in personal union with the United Provinces; or 3) it would be granted complete independence, and would face the world alone, sink or swim.
The third option was least popular. In 1824, New Amsterdam’s economy and trading sectors were far closer tied to the markets of Boston and Philadelphia than Amsterdam and Recife. It shared common interests with the Americans and its economies so closely tied, that any tariffs levied by the Hague would cause much harm to New Amsterdam’s livelihood. The colonists lived a mixture of new urban and frontier lifestyle known throughout the United States. Though the entire Mauritius River valley was now farmland, along with lands along the Delaware and Connecticut rivers, much interior land remained forested, however it too was under the control of logging interests. For their own interests, they harvest only sectors of the forest at a time.
Because most of the New Amsterdammer’s livelihood came from surrounding states, a write-in option appeared on the referendum, one the Staaten-General did not authorize; 4) Full political union with the United States and statehood. According to the United States Constitution, any new state simply required a constitution of its own and a republican form of government. The fourth option took fifty-three percent of the vote in the 1824 Referendum, more than a simple majority, thus eliminating any run-off vote.
Before the results even reached the Hague, New Amsterdammers went about constructing their future state government. The government was indeed republican, but the Dutch in general had no long-term experience in anything resembling a presidential republic, and up until 1816, were ruled mostly by a parliament with the blessing of the King. Thus New Amsterdam’s constitution constructed the only parliamentary republic within the United States, with only the most minimal of separations of power required by law. Thus the ‘governor’ position was filled by a First Minister, who was both head of state and head of government, and by a unicameral parliament, which both made and enforced laws. The courts were kept separate.
Word reached Washington long before it reached the Hague. In a way, this accelerated the process; since shortly after the Staaten-General learned of the unauthorized results, negotiators from the United States, an important trading partner of all the Dutch, arrived. There was little to negotiate; New Amsterdam made its choice, and the King swore to honor the results of the election. To go back on the King’s word, the Staaten-General would bring shame to the House of Orange, not to mention damage Dutch credibility around the world. Some in the Staaten-General wondered if statehood was not the whole plan all along. History has shown that the United States would not hesitate to send its own citizens to colonize another nation, then shortly after annex that nation; such as was with the case of Texas– and New Amsterdam was a far more strategic gem than Texas could ever hope to be.
On October 18, 1824, the rule of New Amsterdam changed from King Maurice II to President John Adams II. On that date, the newly minted Parliament of New Amsterdam took over power , and was admitted as the 24th state. As a result from admission into the Union, one of New Amsterdam’s most famous offices was abolished. Federal law prohibited any title of nobility, and since the days of Michiel de Ruyter, New Amsterdam’s Provincial head was the Marquis of New Amsterdam. The de Ruyter family held that position until admission, where Marquis Edwin was given the choice of either renouncing his title or leaving the state. Titles were but a concept, but the business ventures the de Ruyter family ran in New Amsterdam were not. Edwin chose profit over title, and renounced his Marquisette, but was still the head of what is now known as Ruyter Enterprises. Their trading business evolved into the present day Ruyter’s department stores scattered across the eastern United States and Quebec.
For the Americans, New Amsterdam was a strategic location at the mouth of the Mauritius. The Erie Canal was already under construction, offering a passage from the Great Lakes to the Mauritius River, bypassing British controlled Canadian waters and the French controlled Saint Lawrence Seaway. However, the output terminal would be in Dutch controlled New Amsterdam. Once the canal was opened, New Amsterdam would become the center of Trade for eastern North America, making it extremely valuable to whomever controlled it.
New Amsterdam was admitted as the twenty-fourth state, and still is the only state to possess a Parliamentary Republic as a state government. Per the Constitution, any member of the United States was required to have a republican form of government. Whether it be presidential, semi-presidential or parliamentary was never specified. The state still lacks the defined separation-of-powers seen at the federal level and every other state.
Rebuilding the VOC
Due to its war of conquest in Bengal, by 1800, the VOC was in deep debt and forced to declare bankruptcy. As a result, in order to pay for the debt, the company was forced to cede all of its colonies to the United Provinces, thus making Kapenstaat, Ceylon, India, Java, Formosa, Hainan, Mozambique and the other Indonesian holdings, Crown Colonies of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. With bankruptcy, shareholders began to sell their shares, forcing the VOC to auction off its fleet and salvage whatever of value that could be used to payoff the investors. Trading posts were closed, shipping lanes dried up, and before the year was out, its royal monopoly revoked. The VOC looked on the verge of vanishing into the ashes of history.
The company did not fold. While most investors pulled out, a few of the employees, most notably the naval officers, bought many shares, now virtually worthless. The VOC was left with these officers and life-long employees and seven seaworthy ships to rebound from it collapse. Most in Amsterdam simply wrote off the VOC, declaring it would never rebound. With Napoleon ripping up the continent at the time, it was an easy assumption. With Napoleon doing just that, few even cared about the company that made Dutch domination of trade possible.
The new VOC, a strictly private venture between a group of captains, sailors, employees and investors of the former colossus opened its doors to business in 1801. In retrospect, it was a very poor time for any company to open its door, much less the second incarnation of a company that had earned itself many enemies. With the Wars of Napoleon raging across Europe and the United Provinces located in the middle of it all, neutrality was a position harder and harder to maintain. British and French ships alike preyed upon the merchantmen waving the hated VOC standard. Losses in the first year alone would have made any other business fold.
Dutch involvement in the Wars opened a new avenue of business for the VOC; privateering. All of the fourteen surviving ships were armed to the teeth as investors sought to remake their income by simply looting French vessels. The profits from captured French ships and their contents was far greater than sailing to Angola for a hull full of logs. Some of the captured ships were sold to offset costs, but the larger ones, and the few genuine frigates captured, were held by the company. The warships were used not only to raid more commerce but to escort VOC ships on their more legitimate business ventures.
The final fall of Napoleon saw a VOC that had expanded to forty-one heavily armed ships. The frigates had partitions and excess guns removed and were turned over to commercial freight once French shipping was legally no longer an option. Though the VOC had barely survived the first decade of the new century, the had in deed survived and were generating a modest, if small ,profit. With no spice monopoly, the VOC made few trips to the Far East. Instead, the bulk of their revenue was made in the timber trade in both Angola and Brazil.
The new Board of Holders met in VOC headquarters in Amsterdam, one of the few VOC assets still in company hands, to plan their future. Now with fourteen ships, the VOC was still a small fish in a large ocean. It was an uphill battle, and might have been a lost cause if not for one man; Maarten Minuit, the head of the new VOC.
Minuit decided the company should return to its origin mission; the spice trade. Though it could never hope to acquire a monopoly, there was plenty market to go around for cinnamon and nutmeg, commodities that made the VOC powerful to begin with. For the first few years of the Nineteenth Century, business was difficult. Former colonies were now flooded with a variety of ships, ranging from trading companies to private merchants. No longer could the VOC buy spices at their own prices. They were forced to bid the same as the rest of them, and compete over a limited supply of spices.
However oppressive VOC practices were, the company did not lose at of its ‘friends’. A number of old contacts in both Ceylon and India aided the rebounding VOC, managed to grant them access to goods before other merchants, and, with the assistance of kick-backs, were able to cut some corners for them. Bribery is a far cry from the practice of conquest the VOC once employed. The bribes could only advance them so far. No longer could they expend large amounts of capital in buying politicians and official, nor where they a pseudo-nation on to themselves.
When railroad made its first appearance in the United Provinces, the VOC was only up to eight ships, the latest a derelict they discovered floating off the coast of Angola. They stood to lose just as much as any shipping company. Bad enough to actually have to compete with other ocean-going cartels, but now this new fangled railroad threatened to reduce their share of the market even further. However, the VOC did not join those same shipping and canal interests in their lobbying crusade against the rail.
In the 1820s, the advent of steam engines lead to a new method of transportation: the railroad. The British had already made great use of the rail, but business interests in the United Provinces were divided by it. Canal owners and shipping magnate swore that the railroad would destroy the economy by putting out of business dozens of canals and hundreds of captains. A fight for the future of the railroad broke out in the Staaten-General as canal interests lobby against the laying of railroad tracks. Most shipping companies were against the rail and saw it as a threat, save one. The VOC saw the railroad as an opportunity.
The new VOC was not about to make the same mistakes as its predecessor, and Maarten Minuit decided the company should diversify. He had a great deal of clout with the Board of Holders, despite his attempts to convince them to re-enter the cinnamon trade. In 1835, Minuit convinced the Board of Holders to put everything on the line, in effect put the entire company up as collateral for a fifteen million guilder loan from the Bank of Amsterdam. With that many guilders, Minuit convinced the rest of the shareholders that instead of lobbying against the railroad, they should purchase the entire line. It was a gutsy move. During the 1830s, it was not even known if the railroad would be a reliable means of transport or just some passing fad. When word of the acquisition reached papers and markets across the United Provinces, the VOC’s final days were predicted.
Minuit proved them all wrong The Company bought into the railroad industry, acquiring the Amsterdam-Hague line, as well as other small tracks connecting to it. Much to everyone’s surprise, Minuit not only made the railroad work, but by 1840, had the lines extended as far as Bruges and Arnhem. Within ten years, the company managed to pay off the loan, and afterward climb its way back to the top of the financial world. By 1843, the VOC had grown to the point where it was forced to reorganize. The maritime functions of the VOC would still go by that name, however the railroad division was named VOC Rail.
Many fears were fulfilled. The railroad did weaken the canals, and put a few shipping companies out of business, some the VOC purchased on the cheap. The railroad proved to be a far more profitable way to ship things within the United Provinces than did ships themselves. By 1843, the VOC Rail operations were the largest railroad in the United Provinces, with hundreds of kilometers of track lain.
In that same year, the first tracks of the VOC Rail were lain in Brazil. Brazil was a massively larger state than the United Provinces, and railroads would be the future of Brazilian commerce and the key to developing parts far from the coast nor accessible by rivers. Brazilians, once crowded along the coastline, soon spread out to new lands in the interior. These newly available lands also drove immigration from Europe, bringing millions of people to Brazil over the next fifty years. By 1850, thousands of kilometers of VOC track were lain not only in the United Province sand Brazil, but colonies such as southern Africa, Ceylon and even India. The rail venture was a gamble, but not only did it succeed, but it also put the VOC back on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with the company being took public in 1849, causing new investors to sink millions of guilders of capital into the company.
VOC Rail expanded its operations to ever corner of the Dutch world. By 1850, thousands of kilometers of railroad were laid across the Provinces, Brazil, South Africa, Ceylon, India, Java and Formosa. The rail made it possible for the VOC to squeeze its small time and local competitors out of the trade. In areas with little water access, the railroad allowed the VOC to exploit areas impossible to reach by ship. Not only that, but as locomotive engines improved in efficiency and performance, it rendered mule trains and horse caravans obsolete. With one engine pulling a dozen cars, VOC Rail could ships the same amount of merchandise as a thousand horses.
The gamble to purchase a once unknown quantity paid off for the struggling VOC. By 1850, the company rose back on to the Amsterdam Stock Market, and investors began to pour money into the company. VOC’s success shifted the lobbying of other companies away from the railroads back to the VOC. For merchants and traders around the world, their ultimate nightmare was coming true; the VOC was returning from the dead.
With improvements of steam engines, it became possible by the 1850s to install the engines on ships, producing the first self-propelled ocean-going vessels. As it was in the Seventeenth Century, the VOC capitalized on any new invention or idea that could earn it profit. In 1854, the VOC established a new division; VOC Cruise. VOC Cruise was built around two shipyards purchased in the 1840s and the development of steamers. For decades afterward, VOC ships retained their sails. The wind was free after all, however it was not always convenient. When the winds failed, steam could take over.
In response to the advent of steam, the VOC established a string of coaling stations around the world. To increase its profit even further, the VOC sold its excess coal to any ship that ventured into its stations. VOC Cruise shipped not only freight with the power of steam, but passengers as well. The same year the division was established, a Rotterdam-to-Recife passenger service, with travel time of days as opposed to weeks with only sail.
During the 1840s, a series of revolutions across Europe sent hundreds of thousands of people streaming across international frontiers as homeless refugees. There was neither land or jobs to be spared in the United Provinces, thus Dutch, as well as Germans, French and other groups, set out for the New World. The first choice of almost all of these people was America. Brazil came in a close second place. The VOC saw this wave of immigration and knew it would not be the last. Famines, revolutions, even full scale wars would create refugees, and those people would wish to travel far and wide in search of opportunity.
To start with, the VOC converted a number of freighters into simple and rudimentary passenger ships. The first ship designed specifically for a trans-Atlantic trip was launched in 1843, and served to take passengers from Rotterdam to Recife. These passenger liners were marginally profitable, for though they left Rotterdam fully loaded, the left Recife with only a few on board. The flood of refugees in 1848, sparked off a rush across the ocean. In order to meet the demand, the VOC opened new shipyards in Amsterdam, not far from their 18th Century yards.
In order to speed the voyage, and return for another load faster, the first steamer was launched from the VOC’s shipyards in 1851. The Pride of Amsterdam was the largest ship of its day, capable of cramming several hundred refugees within its 120-room hull. The ship was not designed for luxury or even comfort, but people who road upon it reached the New World alive and ready to set forth on their new lives. The ship could cross to Recife in just under ten days, or reach New Amsterdam or Philadelphia in less than a week. Most of the VOC Cruise department’s ships made runs to Brazil, and between 1840 and 1890, VOC ships carried some two million immigrants to the Empire of Brazil.
Further inventions out of the United States added to the VOC’s wealth. By the 1870s, VOC Comm sowed telegraph cables from the Provinces to Brazil, to Kapenstaat, all the way to Ceylon. The telegraph network cut transit time for information from days (and weeks for Ceylon) to a matter of minutes. Word of rebellion in India could reach the Hague before the rebels themselves even knew what was happening. However, it would take days to weeks to traverse the distance. The opening of the Suez Canal cut transit time to India dramatically. Again, by the 1870s, the VOC owned a sixty percent share of the early information market.
The Nineteenth Century saw a dramatic turnaround for the almost vanquished company, but its expansion and acquisitions of the Twentieth Century would send it to the top of the market. By the start of the Twenty-first Century, the VOC would be an over six hundred billion guilder company.
Dutch Raj
After the first collapse of the VOC, the United Provinces inherited India along with other colonies around the Indian Ocean. By the 1820s, India consisted of a network of crown colonies and allied principalities spreading across southern and eastern India. Between 1820 and 1880, the Dutch extended their Indian Empire both north and westward, either bringing states into alliance and vassalage or outright conquering them. Those that submitted or allied themselves with the Hague enjoyed a degree of autonomy. Those that resisted, did not.
The Indian people did not enjoy the liberty long since established in Ceylon. Ceylonese natives owned their own plantations and manors along with descendants of VOC officials and of later Dutch colonists. For two centuries, the Dutch and Ceylonese existed as mostly equal. In 1837, a level of self-rule was established within the colony in the form of a Colonial Assembly, with both natives and those of Dutch ancestry allowed to vote for the Colonial Assembly, though the Governor-General of Ceylon was still appointed by the Staaten-General. It was not until 1911, that non-land owning Ceylonese were enfranchised.
Though close together, Ceylon and India experienced different colonial existence. Ceylon was the jewel in crown, a shining beacon of liberty. India was a land kept under the domination of the Dutch, with the only free natives being the allies. The Ceylonese owned their own land and ran their own businesses. The Indians were largely overseen by Dutch colonists and officials. The only common thread between the two lay in the fact that the mother country never interfered with native religions. The Hindus and Muslims of Bengal appreciated this one fact, as opposed to the British attempts at conversion.
Poverty was a rarity on the island of Ceylon, but it was the norm on the subcontinent. Large slums sprouted around Goa, Mumbai, Dacca and Calicut, much like mushrooms after a storm. Work in India involved mostly the extraction of various resources from the island; harvesting fields, working the mines and serving on Dutch estates. During the middle of the Nineteenth Century, English-style villas were all the rage in India. Any colonist with fashion sense would erect such a manor as soon as possible, including the rose hedges. However, the Dutch did add their own little touches to these villas, most notably in the form of tulips. Where Netherlanders colonized, that particular flower followed.
The Dutch Raj was an era of unification in India. Over the millennia, various empires spread across India, the most recent being the Mughals. Under these empires, the Indian peoples continued to speak their own languages and keep their cultural identity. The Dutch Raj offered India a common language for the first time in its history. Previous empires offered little incentive to speak the conquer’s language, but with the Dutch, if any of the native wished to communicate with the newest Raj, they would have to speak the foreigner’s language, for they refused to speak the natives’. Despite their distrust, at best, of foreigners, the natives were forced to concede that Dutch was a handy common language in a land with at least a dozen major languages of its own.
The Dutch unification of India was not all about conquest and exploitation. During the Nineteenth Century, India began to develop a sophisticated infrastructure, strengthening trade and facilitating economic growth, though mostly for Dutch benefit. VOC Rail laid tracks across India as fast as the indigenous populace could work. The VOC imported foremen and managers, but left the remedial work to the underpaid natives, though railroad workers received more pay than the average Indian.
During the Dutch Raj, tens of thousands of Netherlanders immigrated to the colony. With unemployment reaching unbearable levels back home, the Hague was more than happy to send the less fortunate to India. When a colonist arrive, they were granted a lot of land approximating one square kilometer. With India already heavily populated, the only way colonists could receive land was at the expense of the natives. Millions of Indians were displaced and dispossessed. In order to support themselves, some were forced to work for the same colonists who displaced them, and work their former lands at a sub par wage.
The same land once grew rice, wheat and other foods for the native population. Colonists were not interested in growing vast quantities of food stuff. Old fields of wheat and rice were ploughed under, replaced with tea. Innovations in the United States in the 1790s allowed for easy separation of seed from cotton, allowing cotton to become an economically viable option. Cotton was the new cash crop, and Nineteenth Century India was dominated by growing more and more of it. However, cotton depleted the soil, and soon colonists were forced to move to fresh lands, and displacing more natives.
Obsession with cotton lead to a series of famines across India. Colonists grew enough produce to feed themselves, but belatedly disregarded the native situation, transforming their previous farmed land into cash crops destined only for European consumers. The Famine of 1858 was the greatest tragedy in Dutch history. The biggest tragedy of the famine was how a people who prided themselves on their freedom could oppress and starve the native population. Some historians have proposed the famines were orchestrated, as a means to control the population. A hungry people were a weak people, and a weak people could not rise up against its oppressors.
By comparison, Ceylon was paradise. Rebellion was rare and the middle-class was on the rise. For the most part, plantations and estates were divide by various trading families from previous centuries. However, quite a few of those employees were the natives of Ceylon. Unlike the Indians, native Ceylonese did quite well for themselves. Their plantations were not stocked with the leaching cotton, but rather with fields of cinnamon. Though many other crops were produced on Ceylon, cinnamon was its most important cash crop. European demand for the spice had never wavered in two centuries.
The colonial capital of Colombo began a transformation into Amsterdam East. Colombo was the trading center of the entire Indian Ocean. Merchants from Dutch colonies in Indonesia to the east, and Ottomans and free Arabs in the west, all made the voyage to trade their goods in the Ceylonese capital. Netherlanders were more than happy to take these same goods back to the United Provinces, for a substantial profit.
Where profit is earned, banks as sure to follow. The Bank of Colombo was established in 1839, shortly after limited self-determination was instituted. With a steady bank, money was loaned and new businesses began to sprout across the city. The most prosperous of Colombo’s citizens could afford to abandon the crowded apartment flats of the city proper, and build luxurious mansions on the outskirts of town. These estates were reminiscent of estates in Britain or America more so than the Provinces. Though the Dutch were a well-to-do people, not many were wealthy, and in a land with high concentration of populations, large estates were a very expensive investment.
Labor was imported from India at cheaper prices to maintain the estates. It was not just the colonists that brought in foreign workers, but the natives did as well. When native wages rose too high, Ceylonese simply went abroad, searching for the desperate, those who would work for half-wages. To an extent, the natives were assimilating to the ways of the colonists. Assimilation was not a one-way avenue. The colonists took to eating native cuisines, adopting some native dress and even adopting native architecture, producing a unique Oriental-Dutch hybrid design.
The adaptation on Ceylon caused little unrest on the island, where as India was always a hotbed for turmoil. Indians who were subjects of the Princely States fared even worse than their direct-ruled counterparts. In the crown colonies, Indians were subject to Dutch law and, though treated like second-class citizens, were citizens of the Dutch empire nonetheless. However, India was a vast land, and administrating the entire colony was difficult under the best of circumstances. Decades would pass before quality of life would rise to acceptable levels.
King William VI
Born Willem Frederick George van Oranje on December 6, 1792, young William’s life was spent in the turmoil of the French Revolution and exiled to Brazil. In 1815, William lead a division of Dutch soldiers in the campaign of liberation, including the final victory at Waterloo. In 1816, he was married to Princess Paulina of Sweden. Unlike times in the past, the Staaten-General did not view this as grounds for alliance. Sweden had an uneasy peace with its Ottoman neighbors in the south, and had little in the means of competition on its Far Eastern border.
On October 7, 1840, Maurice II died after a long struggle with what is believed to be lung cancer. Maurice II was know for his fondness of Brazilian tobacco. William returned to the tradition of being crowned in Liege. It should be noted that Maurice II was the only Dutch monarch not to be crowned in Liege, though a ceremony was preformed their after Maurice’s return from exile. William kept his name, a long standing tradition in the Netherlands, and was crowned King William VI.
William VI’s reign was short, lasting only nine years, though it was no uneventful. Industrialization in the southern Provinces caused an increase in poverty, an ailment once considered foreign. With nothing to do, no work to be had, and little food to be eaten, the unemployed were desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. Several textile mills in Upper Gelders and Namur. Venlo in Upper Gelders was held by exploited workers. The workers made no demands and seemed content to destroy the mills and execute the owners. The Worker’s Uprising of 1843 is widely noted by Karl Marx when he developed his own theories of socialism.
The Count of Upper Gelders called forth his own militia, and demanded assistance from the Hague. William VI traveled to Venlo at the head of a small army, only eight thousand. He had hoped to end what could only be called an uprising peacefully. He met with ‘leaders’ of the uprising in an attempt to negotiate. Negotiation was impossible, because the workers had no demands. No demands aside from destroying the mechanical monstrosities and returning the Province to the way it was in the days of their fathers.
As it is widely known, progress can not be reversed. Seldom can it be stopped. Even if laws were passed banning technology, history has taught us that there will always be those who will simply ignore laws, and nations have their own leaders that will disregard the law whenever it suited their purpose. With no grounds for negotiation, William was forced to unleash his army to crush the uprising. Over two thousand workers were killed.
The ‘Venlo Massacre’ weighed heavily upon William, and the people never forgave him for his action, nor did they let him forget. The newly freed media condemned the action, and independent presses published pamphlets calling for everything from his removal from the throne, to his removal from life on earth. In 1849, William VI became the only Dutch monarch to abdicate his throne in disgrace. He stepped down in favor of his brother, Alexander, and left the Provinces in a self-imposed exile. He spent the rest of his life with his wife and her family in Stockholm.
His reign was not a total disaster. In early 1848, months before his abdication, revolution raced across Central Europe. All the major powers threw their weight upon the uprising. Hardest hit were the German states to the United Provinces’ east. German refugees began to flow across the border, a majority destined for areas beyond the Atlantic. The flow of people was not a one-way street. The East Frisians, a minority in the northwest corner of Germany, were distant cousins to the Frisians of the Provinces. The Count of Frisia pressed his colleagues within the Staaten-General for action. After a month of debates, the Dutch government decided to extend its boundaries to include all Frisians. A small Dutch Army, no more than twenty thousand, marched into East Friesland, and the Count made it part of his County. Others in the Senaat struggled to make East Frisia a separate state, but this ended without success.
King Frederick II
Born Alexander Frederick van Oranje, Frederick II took the throne on September 5, 1848, as soon as the Staaten-General ratified the Act of Abdication. His rule was one of the only stretches in Dutch history that peace dominated the political landscape. The United Provinces had not fought against a European opponent since 1815. His reign saw a slowdown in expansion in India, leaving the interior states of India and tribal lands on the upper Indus River to be dealt with by his successor.
After the violence in Venlo, Frederick II went out of his way to promote peace and prosperity. Moved by the atrocious conditions under which the Venlo workers suffered, he pushed for the Staaten-General to create and pass laws protecting the worker, protecting his people. In his mind, the British were impoverished; the French were impoverished; the United Provinces were suppose to be free of poverty. For two centuries it was a rarity, but the facts of industrial life changed the whole plan. It was now a land ruled by the law of supply and demand. Mechanization increased productivity while decreasing labor, and that created a surplus of workers, and that the owners and capitalist fully exploited to their advantage.
Factory owners around the United Provinces petitioned against any such laws. They claimed that to pass these laws, the government would be interfering in another of the Netherlands’ sacred institutions; commerce. The Staaten-General went out of its own way to avoid interfering with the economy, aside from placing import tariffs, standardizing currency and the gauges of rail. The capitalists convinced many that by passing the laws, they would force prices upwards, and that it was the capitalists that had the people’s best interest in mind; that being lower costs, and passing those savings onto the consumer.
In reality, costs were cut, but factory owners simply pocketed the profits and continued to sell at prices comparable to pre-industrial prices. There were two things Frederick II loved; peace and liberty. He viewed poverty as another means to subjugate the people. Even in a nation as liberty-minded as the United Provinces, Frederick was seen as a liberal. His critics expanded beyond just factory owners. Various bankers, one of the cornerstones of the Dutch economy, went as far as charging him with attempting to nationalize the banks.
These charges caused a rush on many banks throughout the United Provinces, one of the leading factors of the recession during the 1850s. Times were rough during the 1850s, but not nearly as bad as two hundred years prior, when the English blockaded the low countries coast during the First Anglo-Dutch War. It was bad enough, however, to see ninety-three percent of the House of Electorate loose their job in the election of 1856. The 1850s were a time of great change Europe; two monarchies were toppled, and revolution was rampant across Germany and the Balkans. For a time, it was doubted that the House of Orange could survive the crisis.
Revolution did not come to the United Provinces, at least not violent revolution. The Staaten-General did pass some of the King’s recommendations, including limiting work to eight hours a day per worker. If a factor ran twenty-four hours a day, then it must hire three shifts worth of workers, thus lowering unemployment. The Worker’s Safety Act was one of the most progressive measures passed in the 1850s, if not the entire century. It was the first act that dictated what a company could and could not do to its employees. Injuries in the textile mills decreased, as did poverty in the surrounding area. Though the quality of living stayed below its pre-industrial levels, it did steadily increase over the next three decades.
Formosa and Hainan
On the other side of the world, industrialization was in full swing in the Dutch colonies of Formosa and Hainan. Over the past two hundred years, Formosa grew from a wild island inhabited by aboriginals into the most advanced territory in all of East Asia. Though it would not be until the 1840s that the steam engine made its way to Formosa, the descendants of the Chinese workers quickly adapted it to increase productivity in their own textile mills.
Throughout it history, Formosa struggled to keep up with European and later American demands for silk. The fabric was both luxurious and highly prized from royalty to aristocracy right down to the lowliest of shopkeepers. Formosa was a land that produced many desirable commodities. Porcelain coffee cups were in demand in Amsterdam’s cafes. The original natives of Formosa, once they learned how to make porcelain, produced some of the most elegantly designed pottery in the world. It was not long after Dutch colonization that Formosan vases were as prized as their Ming counterparts.
Formosa shares many similarities to Ceylon. Chinese immigrants and natives both thrived along side their Dutch colonial rulers. Until 1800, the island was sole domain of the VOC, and the company was far more interested in productivity than any ridiculous racial ‘theories’ that came out of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Europe. The only significant enclaves of ethnic Dutch on the island were around Taipei and New Antwerp. When a wave of Dutch nationalistic colonialism spread out after Napoleon, Formosa simply assimilated any of those such colonists into its unique culture.
By 1850, all the different peoples of Formosa considered themselves Formosan, and not Han or Dutch. When recent immigrants asked about the native Formosans, those of Dutch ancestry simply told them they were looking at a Formosan. Some tension existed between the long-time Formosans and the recent arrivals from the Provinces. The newcomers attempted to press their new ideals upon the locals, and were appalled by some of the local customs. The biggest shock came in the form of sushi and sashimi. Both dishes were not native to the island, but after decades of trade with the isolated Japanese, some of their cuisines were exported along with their silver and copper.
Newcomers were often disappointed by their own crop failures. Like many Europeans, they brought along their familiar produce. Their attempts to spread wheat across the island failed, as did their attempt to introduce sheep. Wool? This is Formosa, we grew silk here. The newcomers were accustomed to seeing silk as a luxury, one they could afford back home, but not in sufficient quantities to cloth themselves. Imagine their surprise when they finally discovered that most Formosan dress was made from silk.
Between 1850 and 1880, waves of newcomers gradually assimilated into the established Formosan society. They ate their rice, wore their silk and worked in citrus groves and mulberry orchards. Of the various ideas imported by the newcomers, one caught on quickly. Instead of waiting for shipments of steel to arrive from the United Provinces or Brazil, several enterprising newcomers established their own series of steel mills around the island. By 1880, Formosa was the fourth highest producer of steel; behind Brazil, the United States and the recently established German Empire.
To the south of Formosa and China itself lay the small island of Hainan. In 1664, the VOC captured the island from the Manchu Dynasty ruling China. The Manchu had little interest in the island, and offered little resistance against the annexation. In truth, internal turmoil more than disinterest kept the Manchu from responding, that and the fact that the VOC’s private navy was more than capable of cutting China off from external trade.
The VOC did little with the island. It was made a trading center for southern China, and numerous Chinese worker were brought in to work the tea plantations. By 1667, the Dutch ruled the seas, and the only way the English would get their tea was through Dutch traders. Throughout the Nineteenth Century, Hainan remained a predominately agrarian economy, more a colony of Formosa than the United Provinces.
Attempts to establish sugar plantations on Hainan met with marginal success. Sugar was always in demand in Europe, but with Brazil, Formosa and the Indonesian colonies supplying sugar for the Dutch, it was an unwise move to enter an already crowded market. Very few colonists from the United Provinces made the move to Hainan until the Twentieth Century, though by then the natives spoke as much Dutch as they did Cantonese.
The Indonesian Colonies
Of all the colonies in the Indonesian Reaches, Java has always been the most critical to the Dutch economy. Java and the rest of Indonesia share an analogous relationship with Ceylon and India. Java was always the island of liberty, and by 1850, was not only the heaviest populated island, but also the densest. Where many of the larger islands remained primeval jungles, Java was transformed to a cornucopia of the spice trade.
Spices were the original reason for venturing to the East Indies. If not for the lure of cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg and ginger, then most likely Europe would have left them alone. Java had its own thriving culture when the Dutch arrived, and VOC conquest of the island did little to change that. The native Javanese simply took what they saw was great about the foreigners and made it their own. VOC employees were forced to make do with what was on the island. Though Javanese restaurants became all the rage in Twentieth Century Europe and America, the food was not enjoyed by the first colonists, who viewed it as very foreign.
When the VOC centered its trade around the cities of Batavia and Jakarta, secondary businesses moved in. Where ever trade is centered, it takes little time for the bankers to appear. By 1850, the Bank of Jakarta was the largest such bank in the East Indies, handling accounts across Indonesia, and as far as the British colonies in the Philippines and the French in Indochina. With large flows of capital moving through its ports, Jakarta grew like no other colonial city.
At a time when Manilla, Saigon and Sydney were nothing but simple houses and dirt roads, Jakarta boosted the largest paved roads in the region. More than fifty percent of the city’s roads were paved with cobblestone and flagstone. The roads were reminiscent of ancient Rome’s highways, and just as sturdy (amazing considering the level of rainfall Jakarta receives in comparison with Italy). Though wood was plentiful throughout the region, houses in Jakarta was built from mason and stone, materials impervious to termites.
When steam arrived in Java, it was not used immediately for factories. The island dealt mostly with exports of produce, not production. Instead, the city boasted one of the most advanced water and sewer systems of the Nineteenth Century. On an island where tropical disease was an annual occurrence, the Javanese (both native and colonists) invested in pumps that would force waste water to flow away from the city, and often directly into the sea. Nearby swamps, endemic with malaria, were systematically drained by the new pumps, and its land quickly settled with an influx of Dutch, German and even Swedish colonists flocking to the eastern Land of Opportunity.
The other islands in the regions did not fare as well as Jakarta. Up until the 1800s, the VOC and the Dutch left them largely alone. The only contact with natives was in the form of business, with Javanese trading goods imported from Europe and elsewhere to acquire rare commodities of Sumatra and Borneo. Most notably was the wildlife itself. There was always trade in hide, tusks and horn from the wildlife of Sumatra, but with the advent of menageries and later zoos, Sumatra became an attraction for zoological collections. Rare animals of Sumatra, such as tigers, tapirs, orangutans and the sun bear were captured from the wild an hauled off to mid-Nineteenth Century zoos across Europe and the Americas.
Around the same time that zoos grew in popularity, Formosa was in the midst of industrialization. In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, coal and iron were dominate, but in Indonesia, the Formosans found an abundance of minerals. First and foremost was gold, not a very useful building material before the digital age, but sought after nonetheless. Much of the gold mined on Borneo found its way into the vaults of banks on Java and Ceylon.
For the interest of Formosa, copper, tin and nickle were extracted from Sumatra, and tin, then later bauxite came from Borneo. With both islands, the United Provinces established colonies dedicated to rubber plantations. Rubber was rapidly becoming a vital resource in industrialization. Everything from hoses to tires to seals were made from the extract of the rubber tree. Coconut plantations also sprung up along the coast of Borneo. Coconuts proved popular in Dutch markets during the 1890s, but were far less useful than rubber or tin.
Not all of Borneo was conquered during the 1880s and 90s. The Sultanate of Brunei maintained a degree of independence, though like many princely states of India, it was a vassal to the Hague. The Sultan turned to allying himself with the Dutch in Java because he feared invasion by the British or French more than Dutch overlordship. The Sultanate was largely independent in its own internal affairs. In return, they offered anchorage to the Royal (Dutch) Navy, and after the discovery of oil under the Sultan’s domain, exclusive rights were given to Royal Dutch Shell, and its later incarnation VOC Shell.
Farthest of the Indonesia holdings was New Holland. New Holland was not an island of itself, but rather part of a continent. In 1751, colonists trying to escape the wars in Europe and the tyranny of the VOC established the town of Apeldoorn, on the continent’s western shore. For decades, VOC employees have heard stories of extraordinary creatures and unimaginable treasures existing in the desert lands of the south. Most alluring of all, were those tales involving gold. The VOC refused to colonize the southern lands because of stories with no factual basis. What one could prove counted much more in the boardroom than what one knew. At the time, Australia was known as the southern continent, as it was believed to be connected to Antarctica. Further exploration, including the discover of Tasmania and what would become New Zeeland disproved that theory.
Apeldoorn was not intended to be a haven for traders or a land of cash crops. It was a simple experiment in transporting a piece of old Holland to New Holland. On this most arid of continents, the need for dikes and levies did not exist. The Apeldoorn river was a very seasonal river, but offered sufficient irrigation to support the colony. The wheat and corn farms augmented the nutritional intake of the colonists, which derived much of its food from the sea. The colony would not be agrarian but rather pastoral. Sheep by the hundreds were imported to what seemed an empty continent, and Apeldoorn developed a small wool and textile trade.
Constant vigilance was required to guard the sheep against the wild dogs of Australia, believed to have arrived from early southeast Asian traders, at least two thousand year ago. To range with the herds, the colonists naturally brought horses, but these animals did not far so well in the arid landscape. One colonist, whose name has been lost to history, stumbled upon the idea of importing camels. The beasts served Arabs well, and were the backbone of the ancient Silk Road, surely they could handle Australia’s sandy landscape. Camels did all too well on the continent; a handful escaped into the night in the early years, and their offspring soon spread across the continent, browsing where the indigenous wildlife did not.
The VOC made no attempt to take control of New Holland. They saw little profit in the small time wool outfit, especially when they were making millions of guilders in trading of silk. During the Age of Napoleon, the British seized the colony. Their pretext was to defend their own Australian colony against the potential of the French gaining a foothold in New Holland. With the Congress of Vienna, the British returned New Holland to the Dutch, who for the first time, took direct control over the colony.
Unlike so many other colonies, New Holland’s was not a story of conquest. A few natives did live in Australia. The aborigines were as wild as the marsupials that occupied the continent. They had little of value, and more over, had little concept of land ownership. Owning nothing of interest and having no territorial conflicts, the New Hollanders were content to leave the aborigines alone. Until 1860, the colonists clung to the Australian coast.
In 1861, sheep herders in the interior stumbled across a dry river bed. At the bottom of this bed, one of the ranchers notices something shimmering in the light. What he found sparked the New Hollander gold rush. Once word spread, much faster thanks to steam-powered transportation, prospecting veterans of the American West flocked to Australia, along with adventures from Brazil, Europe and China. Impact on the Aborigines was nearly disastrous.
The Americans were the most ruthless of the bunch. They treated the Australian natives even worse than they did their own Indian population. Americans, along with Europeans, often shot down who bands of Aborigines, who happen to be currently residing on land rich in gold. Native populations plummeted as the plundering of the land, along with introduction of new diseases, took their toll. Many British Australians simply brought their own practice of extermination to the Dutch sector of the continent. Along with the miners, came the scoundrels, the thieves, and most damaging to the native culture, the missionaries.
New Holland had not government of its own, and the governor was appointed by the Governor-General of Indonesia. Jakarta had its own interests, mainly seeing that as much of that gold as possible ended up in the Bank of Jakarta’s vaults. The original colonists of Apeldoorn were soon overruled by outside interests. Their own exodus from New Holland was a long time coming. Before Napoleon established the Batavian Republic, the Staaten-General decided that the coasts of New Holland made for an ideal place to ship prisoners, an idea copied from the British. Though the United Provinces had far fewer criminal elements than the United Kingdom, exporting some of the vagrants and debtors was seen as desirable.
The New Hollanders, in 1862, began to pack up and leave for New Zeeland, a land itself that was pacified during the 1840s. They continued their pastoral lifestyles, this time uninterrupted by the discoveries of precious metals or gems. However, some New Hollanders found a way to fight back to influx of miners. When a gold rush occurred, it was not the prospectors who grew rich, but the merchants that traded with them. Many traders packed carts in Apeldoorn for the barest of minium prices, rode inland to the mining camps, and charged ten to twenty times the price they paid. The miners, rich with gold, did not feel the least bit sorry about paying ten guilders for an apple, thirty for a sack of flour. That combined with the inevitable rift-raft of mining camps, gambling and prostitution, ensured that few miners left New Holland rich. Indeed, few left period, opting to settle the land, instead of shelling out fare for the voyage home.
The Dutch Horn
At the start of the 19th Century, the Dutch Empire’s presence in the Horn of Africa was restricted to a few ports taken from the Portugese centuries before, along with the more recently established Willemsbourgh, right across the waters from Arabia. For centuries, these ports were backwaters in the VOC’s trading empire, used primarily for resupplying in the long trip from the United Provinces and the Indies. Djibouti and Mogadishu further operated as a link between East Africa and Arabia. Coffee and ivory from Africa filtered through these ports, and that which was not syphoned off was traded to the Arabs.
The ports were inherited by the United Provinces following the bankruptcy of the VOC. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch began to expand inland from Mogadishu in search of gold, silver and other reported wealth. Conflict between the Dutch and Somali herders arose when Dutch officials laid claim over to tribal grazing lands. Conflicts were short and violent, with the Dutch victorious. During the first half of the 19th Century, the Dutch fortified Mogadishu, expanding its port and establishing a permanent military presence at what was deemed a strategically important link in the Dutch Empire.
With the rise of steam-powered ships, Mogadishu also became a coaling station. With piracy rising in the Arabian Sea, the Royal (Dutch) Navy established a second base in Willemsbourgh. The Horn’s remoteness prohibited extensive colonization by the Dutch. Netherlanders preferred to immigrate to Brazil or South Africa, whose populations swelled during the 19th Century. It was not until the opening of the Suez Canal did the Horn become a desirable destination, for cattle ranching, mining and coffee growing in the available highlands.
The construction of a canal linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas actually dates back to antiquity. The current incarnation of the link, the Suez Canal was started after the Anglo-Turkish War concluded in 1854. In that war, the United Kingdom rested control of Egypt from the Ottoman Empire. The British sought a shortcut to East Africa and its Far East colonies that could bypass Dutch controlled southern Africa. With Egypt under their control, the British had the labor available to construct the canal, along with the managerial skills from British officials. What they lacked for the venture was funding. Attempt to gain capital by a joint venture with France fell through, since France was embroiled in its own turmoil with the rise of Louis Napoleon to the Imperial Throne. The Swedes declined outright, since they lacked any interest in the Indian Ocean. The only other nation with capital to spare was one of Britain’s long standing rivals.
In 1855, negotiations between the British and Dutch governments led to the establishment of the Suez Canal Company, a joint Anglo-Dutch enterprise in opening the way to India. The Dutch stood to gain far more than the British in shorting the route to the Dutch Raj. The British would supply labor and management, while the Dutch would provide capital and engineering skill. With centuries of experience in pushing back the North Sea, who in the world knew more about building canals than the people of the United Provinces? Many Dutch interests bought into the Canal, including the revitalized VOC. The Suez Canal would be a relatively simple, albeit long, project. It was designed as a sea level canal. In short, a long ditch dug from Port Said to Suez City.
After two years of surveying by the British, the first shovel of sand was removed from the canal on November 14, 1856. In the ceremony, the Chairman of the Suez Canal Company, Sir Winston Edwards, along with other executives, dug their shovel full of sand and stood for pictures taken by recently developed photographic machinery. It made for fine reading in the papers of the two respective countries. The reality of the work; tens of thousand of Egyptians laboring twelve hours a day in the desert heat, never made the pages of the Amsterdam Herald. Of all the Egyptian laborers, it has been estimated that more than five thousand died digging the canal.
As for usage of the canal, the British and Dutch agreed to share access of it. Though the Canal was nominally in British controlled territory, the British government agreed not to bar access to the Suez Canal of the Dutch, unless war was declared. Even under such an eventuality, economic necessity would render the Canal a neutral zone. Both nations agreed to join defense of the Canal and the Red Sea shipping lanes. The British would secure the northern parts, while the Dutch would secure access from the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. From their ports and holdings in the Horn of Africa would the Dutch operate. Ports such as Mogadishu and Willemsbourgh, the Royal (Dutch) Navy would operate.
Construction of the Suez Canal was wrought with more than difficulty for the men on the ground. The project was nearly derailed in 1862, when the British government recognized the Confederate States of America, and was preparing to openly aid them. The United Provinces, with long standing commercial ties with the United States, threatened that if the British entered the war on the side of the South, then the Dutch would do the same, on the side of the North. If not for the mediation of Napoleon III in 1863, the Suez Canal Company might have folded, and the victory of the sudden world war would pick up the pieces.
The Suez Canal was a long, hard projects, taking thirteen years to complete. Finally, in 1869, the Canal was opened as the first ship, the HMS King Edward was the first ship to make the passage between seas. In the following years, and economic explosion rocked the shores of the Red Sea as thousands of colonists and millions of guilder poured through the new gateway.
Following the opening of the Suez Canal, and the flood of commerce though the Red Sea, the economies of the Arab cities boomed. On the Arabian Peninsula, ports bustled with business with ships passing from Europe to East Asia across their shores. Across the sea in Africa, the Ethiopian Empire’s great port of Massawa saw an influx of trade to the ancient kingdom. Dutch settlers swarmed through the new passage, a majority headed towards opportunity in the Dutch Raj. Thousands of additional settlers swelled the populations of Djibouti, Willemsbourgh and Mogadishu. The cities of the Dutch Horn were assimilated in the space of a generation, with natives living in the cities adopting the western ways of the Netherlanders.
As with any time and place in history where trade grew, so did piracy. Pirates operating in the Red Sea quickly learned which portions to avoid. No pirates that wished to live long went anywhere near the Suez Canal, and the British Naval squadron. Nor did they sail down within a hundred kilometers of the Gulf of Aden. With the British controlling the north, the Dutch controlling the south, pirates must operate from Arabia and Ethiopia. Pirates along the Arabian coast preyed upon the infidel. Arab pirates were driven by religion, or at the very least used it as an excuse. Despite their desire to wage war upon the non-believer, they did not attack a single ship of the recently rebounded VOC.
Because of favored trade with the Dutch, and the fact that the British occupied Arab lands in Egypt, the Arab chiefs and kings curtailed pirating Dutch ships. However, the same could not be said of those operating out of Ethiopia. With commerce blossoming, nests of pirates bloomed around Massawa. Unlike the Arab pirates, the Ethiopian pirates preyed upon everybody. In truth, the Ethiopians could be called privateers, since a portion of what they looted was paid as taxes to the Emperor of Ethiopia.
For the first few years of the Canal’s operation, British and Dutch embassies were sent to the Ethiopian’s mobile capital. Emperor Theodore assured both embassies that the Ethiopian Army would deal with the pirates. In fairness, pirates surrounding Massawa, and often preying upon the ships of their own countrymen were eliminated. The Ethiopians even went as far as to destroy pirate nests in Arabia, much to the anger of the Muslims. The possibility of an Orthodox Army landing in the holiest land of Islam might set the Red Sea aflame.
War in the Red Sea would threaten the Dutch Empire and its commerce. King Frederick II ordered that the Royal (Dutch) Navy to begin patrolling the waters between Asia and Africa. The increased presence of the Dutch Navy in the Red Sea prompted adding a third naval base, this one in Djibouti. The increased presence along the Ethiopian Coast caused Theodore to renege on his promise to curtail piracy. Additionally, the Eritrean Coast was a rebellious province during the 1860s, where Theodore’s nephew, Menelik, was pretender to the throne. If he could use the Dutch to bring down his uncle and claim the throne he would. The United Provinces were about to be drug into a dynastic squabble.
During the year of 1869, dozens of documented cases of piracy out of Ethiopian territory occurred. For the most part, these pirates preyed upon easy catches, chipping into the profits of Prussia, Austro-Hungary, the Italian Federation and even France. The Royal (Dutch) Navy did little to protect its rivals in maritime trade. This sent the wrong message to the Ethiopian pirates and Emperor Theodore. The Ethiopians mistakenly believed the Dutch had become a paper tiger. That they were much on display and seldom took action. Much proof contradicts this, as in the case of a pirate attack on a Dutch convoy on January 4, 1870. Two Dutch ships were captured along with most of the crews. In retaliation, the Royal (Dutch) Navy tracked down the specific pirate nest which spawned the attack, landed, freed crews and ships, killed all the pirates and raised their settlement to the ground.
This raid by the Dutch only prompted revenge from the pirates. Through the month of February, pirates hit several Dutch ships, including a convoy carrying settlers for Dutch Somaliland. The pirates used these captives as hostages. Each attack only brought the wrath of the Dutch upon the pirates. By April of 1870, Emperor Theodore knew he had a problem. If the pirates continued to attack the Dutch, then the Dutch would strike directly at Ethiopia. He failed to bring the pirates under his control. If he could not constrain them, perhaps he could use them. While the Dutch held Mogadishu, they would be a threat to Ethiopia. With the Suez Canal complete, trade flowed along the Horn of Africa. Theodore reasoned that if he could remove the Dutch, then wealth would flow into his ancient kingdom.
After months of battling the Dutch in the Red Sea, the number of pirates were dwindling. Theodore sent a message to his rebellious nephew, Menelik. If he could drive the Dutch from the Horn, then Theodore would grant him control of Eritrea, as a vassal to himself. Menelik had eyes on the throne and saw this mission as a means to further his own power. The generosity of his uncle would only add to his base, and eventually allow him to succeed to the throne. On June 9, Menelik sent his own emissaries to the bands of pirates. Most of the pirate nests greedily accepted his proposal, eager for booty and to eject the Dutch from their waters. Tribes in Eritrea already loyal to Menelik agreed to send warriors to aid him in conquering Mogadishu.
It was not until August 2, that the pirate fleet had massed in Massawa and set sail with some forty-two hundred pirates and warriors onboard nearly a hundred ships of various size. Almost immediately, the fleet lost cohesion. Several ships broke off to raid Djibouti, capturing five ships in port and setting fire to the docks. At Willemsbourgh, pirates landed and sacked the port, killing hundreds of white men and burning the city. By the time they were off the coast of Mogadishu, not only had the pirates lost twenty percent of their fleet to attrition and desertion, but the Royal (Dutch) Navy was well aware of the fleet’s advance. On August 17, pirates landed north of Mogadishu and began to march on the city.
The pirates were surprisingly well armed for an African opponent. All were armed with firearms, and more than ten percent had in their possession repeating rifles. With days of notice, the Dutch and their Somali allies managed to fortify the city against attack. Included in their fortifications were a number of field artillery pieces and three Gatling guns the Dutch Army purchased from the United States. After easy raids along the coast, the pirates lacked any discipline in their assault. They assumed another victory. After all, they were fighting heathens and heretics.
Many of the pirates attacking by land were cut down by rapid fire Gatling guns and fifty millimeter cannon. So unexpected was the sudden and stiff resistance, that the pirate attack faltered . A second attack attempted to strike directly at the port facility, but was blocked by the Royal (Dutch) Navy. Fifteen Dutch warships, though greatly outnumbered by the ragtag pirate fleet, repelled the pirate fleet twice. By the middle of the day, some thirty pirate ships were either sunk or shot to pieces. Being a mostly wooden fleet, the pirates were more difficult to sink that the Dutch fleet, which contained three ironclads. The pirates also relied solely on the wind, where the Dutch ships had both sails and boilers. The steam-driven ships easily outflanked the pirates, and crossed the T on more than one occasion.
By 14:00 local time, the pirate fleet survivors were limping away with the Dutch in pursuit. Over a thousand pirates were abandoned by their comrades on the shores of Somaliland. Of the pirates that landed, none survived. The Dutch garrison killed them to the last, taking no prisoners. Among the dead was Menelik himself. His body was found along the shores of Mogadishu. It has never been determined if Menelik was killed in the ground fighting, or at sea, where his body washed ashore. The damage to his body matched that caused by canister shot, which was used by both land and sea defenders. The Dutch fleet pursued the pirates for two more days, destroying a further twenty-three ships.
With the pirate fleet smashed, thousands of pirates dead, and the body of an Ethiopian royal in Dutch possession, King Frederick II made no attempt to send embassies to Theodore. Once news of the raid reached Delft, the King sent a simply message to the Ethiopian Emperor; “Since you have proven incapable of controlling the actions of your subjects, we will.” On September 12, the Staaten-General of the United Provinces declared war on Ethiopia. The following week, Brazil joined in the declaration.
First Abyssinian War
With both of the Dutch nations now at war, the minor detail of assembling an army and transporting it to a far away land must be address. Though the Dutch had sufficient men in their standing armies to battle the Ethiopians, the King of the United Provinces, and consequently the Emperor of Brazil, Frederick II (just plain Frederick for Brazil) called for the citizens of his two kingdoms to volunteer and fight for King and Nation. The call was answered by some fifty thousand volunteers, ten thousand of these from South Africa alone. With four divisions of the regular army, the expedition to Ethiopia exceeded seventy thousand soldiers.
Over a month was spent assembling a fleet large enough to ferry the soldiers to Mogadishu and Djibouti. When the fleet finally arrived in the Dutch Horn, it was the largest armada put to sea by the Dutch ever. Hundreds of steamers, comprising a bulk of Dutch shipping, was used in transporting soldiers. The VOC contributed its own cargo ships, steam liners, and even its still limited private navy. The passage of a great deal of the Royal (Dutch) Navy through the Suez canal caused a little alarm in London. Once it became clear that the canal itself was not the ultimate goal of the Dutch, the British relaxed. Though Queen Victoria disapproved of the war, her Government was of different mind. They would be more than happy to see piracy ended, especially if they did not have to lose a single ship in the process.
Ships from Brazil, along with the South African colonies, took the long way to the Horn, arriving in Mogadishu three days before Christmas. There was only a slight pause for the holiday in Dutch preparations to invade the Eritrean coast. Leading the Brazilian armada was Admiral Manfred van Natal, the Count of Natal. The Dutch contingent waw lead by Johann van Oranje, cousin of the King. Only the realities of trying to run two kingdoms prevented the King from taking personal command of his fleet. Upon arrival in Africa, the senior officer, van Natal, was given command of the overall theater.
During the time between declaration of war and the invasion in early January of 1871, attempts to mediate between Frederick and Theodore were made by Napoleon III. After mediating peace in North America in 1863, France’s so-called Emperor attempted to gain more prestige by playing the peacekeeper. Sweden attempted to mediate between the Dutch Nations and the largely Orthodox Ethiopia. King Charles XVI sent envoys to the Hague and directly to Frederick in Delft, but the Dutch King made it clear, that since the Ethiopians could not control their coasts, he would do it for them. Further attempts by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and even the Ottoman Empire to implement immediate cession of hostilities failed. After investing capital in assembling, training and transporting an army to East Africa, the Dutch were not about to cease hostilities until they saw returns from their investment.
After massing their forces at Djibouti, the joint United Provinces-Brazilian fleet departed to take control of Ethiopia’s poorly controlled coast. At the lead of the armada was one Manfred, Count of Natal. Van Natal’s experience in the Royal (Brazilian) Navy consists mostly of leading actions against pirates in the Caribbean Sea and the western coast of Africa. He spent the previous twenty years landing marines, killing pirates and burning out their nests. It made him the prefect choice to lead the Dutch fleet against the pirates of the Red Sea. However, in a personal meeting with Frederick II, the King made it clear that this was not going to be a punitive action. He wanted to take control of this land and lock the Ethiopians in the interior.
On January 8, 1871, sentries in Ethiopia’s primary seaport of Massawa, spotted the first of many Dutch ships appear over the horizon. Alarms were not sent out immediately, for it appeared at first to be but a handful of ships. By mid-morning, when the whole armada was visible and only ten kilometers off the shore, did the alarm finally sound. According to Ethiopian sources, the initial alarm was not taken seriously, because the Dutch, at that point, had not committed anything more than a handful of ships to counter-raids against the pirates. Ethiopian officials in the city, at least those loyal to Theodore, dismissed the alarms. Months after war had been declared, and the Dutch had done very little.
At 1304 local time, the van Natal’s ship lead the bombardment of Massawa. In the space of a half hour, thousands of shells fell on the city, razing much of it. Dutch Marines went ashore under the cover of the fleet’s fire. So destructive was the initial bombardment, that the Ethiopians and pirates had not even organized a resistance. Van Natal was cautious at first, fearing a trap that might await his marines. The fact that the Ethiopians appeared in disarray and that any pirates in the port had yet to set sail was very suspicious. Such a large fleet could not be hidden. He was, of course, unaware that the Ethiopian officials dismissed the warnings up until the first shells landed in the port.
Massawa barely qualifies as a battle, since the port itself fell with little opposition. Only Ethiopian officers with any initiative defended against the approximately seven thousand Dutch Marines that landed to secure the port. Of these, few fought to the end. Years of oppressive reforms and policies by Theodore, left many on the fringes of Ethiopia less than loyal to their emperor. After the city was in Dutch hands, van Natal sent a puzzling message back to the Hague, in where he described that the locals actually welcomed his invasion force as liberators. Aside from corruption in the capital, Eritreans also had to contend with harassment by pirates and exploitation by government officials. The fact that the Dutch destroyed much of Massawa during the invasion did not seem to factor into the local’s response.
Once the port was in van Natal’s hands, he began to land the bulk of the fifty thousand man army that the United Provinces and Brazil have contributed to pacify this vital region of world commerce. The Dutch armada began to disperse, pick up its marines, and scowl the coast in search of pirate nests. The Dutch army organized itself and marched inland to face the inevitable counterattack by the Ethiopian Army.
Following the fall of Massawa, Dutch land forces began to fan out across the Eritrean coast. In the pirate dens along the Red Sea, the Dutch were met with fierce resistance. In the countryside, paradoxically, the Dutch were welcomed partly as liberators. The government of Theodore II was long known to be corrupt, and exploited this wayward province. The Muslims suffered the most under Ethiopian Orthodox rule. Unlike Theodore, the soldiers of Frederick II could not possibly care less how the natives worshiped. With the long standing tradition of religion being apart from public life, the soldiers were only interested in the natives if they offered resistance.
The Ethiopian Army, despite being well armed for an African nation, made a poor opponent to the veterans of the Dutch Raj from India and Dutch Marines from the Far East. The largest clash of the conquest occurred near Asmera, where ten thousand Dutch soldiers encountered an Ethiopian force of twice the size. On April 3, Johann van Oranje lead his Netherlander army into battle against the Ethiopians. Despite superb Ethiopian cavalry, the battle was won by the might of Dutch artillery. Canister shot broke two successive charges on Dutch lines, at appalling losses to the Ethiopians. By sunset, the Ethiopian Army’s lines were on the verge of collapse. Before van Oranje could launch another attack of his own, the Ethiopians packed up and called it a day. They left three thousand dead on the battlefield compared to less than two hundred Dutch deaths.
Overall, the Dutch forces, no matter where they originated, lost far more lives to disease than to combat. The conquest of Eritrea saw over a thousand killed in combat, but several times more succumbing to disease. An outbreak of small pox in Asseb spread to parts of the armada stationed in the port. The Dutch also suffered from break downs in logistics, causing shortages in clean water, food and ammunition. Tapping local sources of water spread dysentery through Dutch ranks. Such illness demoralized the Dutch forces, and had the Ethiopians made a half-way decent drive, they might have pushed the Dutch back to the coast.
Civilian casualties were higher than either side’s army. When the Muslim Eritreans rejoiced at the ejection of the Ethiopians, the Orthodox natives were themselves divided. Those loyal to Theodore launched their own campaign against their disloyal coreligionist and neighboring unbelievers. More than half the Dutch army was tied up in policing the occupied cities and acting as an early form of peace keeping force. A few guerilla attacks upon Dutch supply lines resulted in excessive force in retaliation. One such case, when a Dutch convoy was attacked outside of Massawa, the Dutch soldiers tracked the bandits back to their village and killed everybody there. Such actions were the exception, and not the rule. After a few months of conflict, the Ethiopians sued for peace. In this first brief was, they had lost access to the sea. However, peace was not to last.
Second Abyssinian War
Within a few months of the peace treaty’s signature, Emperor Theodore unilaterally withdrew from it and began to raise his army anew. The terms of the treaty were relatively lenient in a time when European powers were looking to expand the empires. News of the massing of Ethiopian soldiers reach Delft via a newly lain telegraph wire. It was Frederick II who insisted on easy terms, wanting only to control the coast line and stamp out piracy. Theodore’s actions struck the King like a personal betrayal. Nearly one hundred thousand Ethiopian soldiers were assembled by the start of 1872, equipped with arms purchased in the previous year from the British. Despite Anglo-Dutch business interests cooperation on operation of the Suez Canal, London did not want to see their age old rivals growing too powerful along the Red Sea.
On paper, Theodore’s army looked impressive. Ninety thousand infantry and at least ten thousand cavalry. British repeating rifles were on par in quality with those produced by the Dutch, though at the time the Winchester company of the United States produced the highest quality repeater. A few of these saw action in Abyssinia, on both sides of the war. In reality, only a fraction of the number were modernly armed. While the Imperial Army was well equipped, militia were not. Frequently they still used muskets, and some were the old flint-lock variety. Several thousand of the militia did not even have firearms, and relied upon spears to face down the efficient Dutch artillery.
While the Staaten-General in the Hague debated the issue, trying to decide if they should simply crush the Ethiopians for good, or negotiate, the King in Delft ordered his army in Abyssinia into action. A cavalry patrol under the command of Ernst Hauten came across an Ethiopian patrol considerably larger than his own. During the brief skirmish some fifty kilometers inland from Djibouti, most of the Dutch patrol was wiped out. Only a lone horseman, a Somali known in history only as Ali, returned to Djibouti to report that the Ethiopians were already on the move.
Theodore’s plan was simply; three armies would march towards the centers of Dutch activity and destroy them. One army marched to retake Massawa, another across the Somalilands to Mogadishu, and as mentioned, a third to Djibouti. The army marching south ran into the stiffest resistance. Before the Dutch soldiers stationed around Mogadishu could fully mobile, Dutchified Somali clans and tribes moved against the invaders. These clans have had such extensive contact with the Dutch, that they have been partially assimilated into the culture, speaking Dutch in their homes, wearing Dutch clothing, and even eating Dutch food. What made the United Provinces such a successful colonizer is that the Dutch were vastly more interested in what goods the locals had to sell than which faith, or in some cases, which gods they followed.
The Somali tribes fought fiercely, and did manage to buy the Dutch defenders of the Somali coast plenty of time. However, many of the tribes suffered grievous losses. Though Somalis were killed in great numbers, they were still masters of their terrain, taking to hit-and-run tactics against the invaders. The attacks triggered rage in the Ethiopian army, which proceeded to sack many of the Somali village along the way to the coast. The pillaging broke down discipline in the Ethiopian army. Many militia in the army were conscripts with little loyalty to the Emperor. Along the march, they deserted in droves.
The army invading Eritrea found itself in a larger mess. Orthodox and Muslim locals were still sporadically fighting each other, with the Dutch attempting to police their new conquests. Those loyal to the Emperor welcomed the invading army. They welcomed them up to the point when the Ethiopians ceased to distinguish against friend or foe in the lost territories. With a reputation for rebellion through the rest of the Empire, Ethiopian soldiers took vengeance on both Orthodox and Muslim Eritrean. The Orthodox looked on in shock and protested their innocence. The Muslims and their militias flocked to the Dutch, pledging their loyalty to the Europeans. At least with these powerful outsiders, the Muslims could worship without interference.
The attack launched towards Djibouti was least successful. The Ethiopians had further to march, Theodore did not view it as important as the other two targets, and the army was discovered well in advance. The Ethiopians never approached within sight of the city, and this second army was routed by the Dutch under the command of Maurice van Recife, commander of the Brazilians based around the city. Militia units both deserted and defected and the regular army collapsed after its own discipline broke down. Van Recife was uncertain how to treat the militia that now swore allegiance to the Dutch crown. Clearly all Dutch commanders knew of the divisions within Ethiopia. He accepted some help and placed them in front of his army as scouts and skirmishers. In short, he decided to use them as cannon fodder, and he did with great efficiency. Many of these defectors did not live to see 1873, much less the end of the war.
By 1873, Ethiopian forces were well within Somaliland and Eritrea and fought with so much vigor that the Dutch could do little but hold their lines. Trenches began to appear along the fronts and both sides dug in to hold their positions. The Dutch were able to fend off Ethiopian cavalry charges with both canister shot from their guns and an increasing number of Gatling Guns being imported from America. The Limbourg Arsenal acquired a license to begin producing their own multi-barrel quasi-machine guns, which began to see action by 1874.
For the Dutch soldiers on the ground, trench warfare became a miserable existence. Though actual death by combat was rare, plenty of soldiers were falling from disease, including an outbreak of smallpox in 1873. The wildlife appeared to plot against both sides as well, as parasites began to inflict thousands of Dutch soldiers. Snakes and scorpions took their own toll. The highest ranking fatality of the war was Colonel Piet Guilder, who stepped upon a cobra that took a liking to the rodent infestations within the trenches.
A soldier on campaign during the Second Abyssinian War volunteered for a number of reasons. Many volunteered out of national pride, and to defend the honor of the King, or Emperor in the case of the Brazilians. Some joined in search of adventure, and some sought glory. When they arrived in the Horn of Africa, they found neither adventure nor glory. Instead, the soldiers of the Dutch Expeditionary Force found an alien environment and plenty of boredom. Much of their day was spent on the march, while carrying their gear; which consisted of part of a tent, a sleeping roll, canteens, ammunition, a rifle, a shovel, rations, and an assortment of other items the Army deemed necessary for its soldiery to carry. Soldiers marched across arid lands, under the hot African sun, for eight to ten hours each day. It is now known that Abyssinia receives some of the highest dosage of ultraviolet radiation in the world, which is seen in the extreme blackness of the African’s skin. This lead to severe sunburns in all the white men from the United Provinces, along with daily cases of heat stroke. The Brazilians, at least the ones whose family have lived in Brazil for several generations, did better in the tropical sun.
Newly minted soldiers sought action and to avenge the slight against their nation. Yet, in the three years of warfare, fighting the enemy was the least of their concerns. The average soldier might see one skirmish with the Ethiopians every other month. There was little combat; little combat but lots of snakes. The wildlife of Abyssinia proved to be far more dangerous than the Armies of Theodore. Snake bites, arachnid tags and endemic disease claimed far more lives than the Ethiopians could ever have managed. Along with the wildlife, logistics proved to be a problem; the most serious being that of fresh water. Watering holes in parts of Abyssinia are few and far between. As the Dutch advanced, it was not that uncommon of a tactic for the Ethiopians to either poison the watering hole, or simply toss in the rotting carcasses of cattle. Even when untainted water sources were found, soldiers drinking it contracted local diseases and intestinal parasites. At the time, microbiology was in its infancy, and the idea of boiling the water, which may seem natural in the 21st Century simply did not exist.
Supply trains had to move across undeveloped land lacking basic infrastructure. Instead of using the steam engines and railroads that the Dutch would have employed in their own countries, they were reduced to carrying supply to various units in wagons or even on the backs of donkeys. Ammunition was a minor problem; only not made worse by the lack of fighting in a soldier’s life. Food supplies were hard to come by, with many units reduced to half rations for weeks on end. This, at least, could be alleviated by hunting the local wildlife. The constant struggle to find water always weighed on the soldiers mind, and thirst weakened the fighting man. When the Ethiopians were found, the Dutch soldiery engaged them with zeal, delighted to have something to break the monotony of marching.
On March 15, 1874, the Dutch Army of Abyssinia and the Ethiopian Army converged on the town of Adwa. This town lay on the border between Ethiopia and its lost Eritrean province. Emperor Theodore personally lead an army that numbered over fifty thousand in an attempt to break through the extensive defenses the Dutch had constructed during the previous two years of the war. Eritrean nomads loyal to the Dutch government spotted Ethiopians massing west of the town. They reported this sighting to the Prince of Oranje, Johann, whose headquarters was located in Massawa. The Prince, several slots down the ladder of heir to the throne, assembled as many soldiers as were available in Massawa, some eight thousand. Messengers were sent to other Dutch units located along the Eritrean line to send as many reinforcements to Adwa. The Prince had his own plan, and that was to ambush Theodore when he started his march.
Because of poor road conditions and no rail, the Ethiopian Army took three weeks to fully assemble, which was ample time for Johann and his soldiers to force march to Adwa. Fortifications were thrown up across the broken landscape around the market town. Johann had brought in two dozen gatlings and over a hundred pieces of field artillery. Since it was reported that Theodore had a large number of cavalry in his army, the Prince predicted the battle would start with a charge. With that in mind, large numbers of canister shot were prepared.
Reinforcements to the Prince arrived the day before the battle, and were stations four kilometers from the Prince. Johann’s plan called for the Ethiopians to attempt to retreat, where the reinforcements would circle around and trap the Ethiopians between two smaller Dutch armies. More batteries of cannon and machine guns were planted atop the many hills around Adwa. When the Ethiopians came into view, the guns held their fire. Basic camouflage made many unnoticed by the Ethiopians, but the few that were spotted quickly came under fire of the Emperor’s own few pieces.
The battle started early in the morning as an artillery duel, with many Ethiopian guns destroyed. However, the Emperor apparently believed these few spotted Dutch guns were the only one on the battlefield. When the last of his own field pieces were knocked out of action, Theodore ordered a cavalry charge on the nearest hill, overrunning it and killing all its defenders. Theodore’s own intelligence was faulty, indicating only about three thousand Dutch soldiers were in the area, as opposed to the fourteen thousand mustered by Prince Johann.
Johann made his own command tent clearly visible, wishing to channel the Ethiopian charge in a place of his own choosing. Again, Theodore lacked good judgement. He ordered the predicted cavalry charge on Johann’s position. However, the Prince placed his own tent between two small ridges, each holding dozens of artillery and machine guns, all trained on the lands below. What followed was the slaughter of nearly ten thousand Ethiopian soldiers in the space of less than an hour.
When the trap was sprung and Theodore realized he was facing an army several times larger than his own scouts reported, he recalled the survivors of the Charge of the Oromo and began to back his army up to a more defensible position. His next plan called for two wings of his army to go around the ridges, keeping out of range of the guns, and converging on Johann’s own flanks. However, by withdrawing gave the impression of a general retreat, causing Johann’s reinforcements to ride into the Ethiopian’s sides. With most of his own cavalry destroyed, Theodore’s army fought fiercely to keep the Dutch cavalry from cutting them to pieces. It is estimated nearly another ten thousand Ethiopians, along with one thousand Dutch soldiers and allies, fell in that counter charge. With his army scattered, Theodore retreated further inland, ending his final attempt to expel the Dutch, and was an utter disaster for Ethiopia.
Fall of another Emperor
By June of 1874, the Ethiopian Army was all but crushed. Surviving militia units simply disbanded and returned home. The only reason the Second Abyssinian War did not end in 1874 was because that Theodore operated on a mobile basis. The Ethiopian capital was a nomadic entity, and in 19th Century European warfare, he who takes the capital wins the war. Prince Johann continued pursuing Theodore and his loyal followers across the lands between Lake Tana and the Sudanese border. Johann remarked in his journal that he lost count of how many times his army has crossed the Blue Nile. Guerilla warfare raged across the Ethiopian Highlands, killing more Dutch soldiers than during the regular fighting. Despite the continued bloodshed, the Dutch were effectively in control of Ethiopia.
Despite the lack of a capital, the latter half of 1874 was spent trying to organize a new government. On a provincial scale, the King decided to leave the local governments in place. The Ethiopian provinces would govern themselves and keep most of their laws, but would answer to the Hague, and not to Theodore’s traveling show. Colonial advisors were sent to the provinces, were Netherlanders “advised” local governors on how they should run their provinces. Overall, the provinces not under Dutch control before 1872 operated more like the semi- and fully-autonomous princely states of India. Abyssinia was gradually brought fully under Dutch control over a period of decades, with assimilation moving inland from white settlements along the coast.
It was not until March of 1875, that Theodore and his followers were finally trapped along the shorts of the Jamma River, a tributary of the Blue Nile. Johann split his army, having one force on each side of the river, denying the Emperor an avenue of retreat. The so-called Battle of the Jamma River was little more than a skirmish between the lead elements of both forces. It was on the 13th that Theodore knew his number was up, and surrendered to Prince Johann. With the Emperor now in Dutch control, the question was what to do with him. Some called for him to be left of the throne as a puppet. A few wanted to take him out of his tent and shoot him.
Level heads prevailed in March, when the Generals in the Dutch Expedition conferred and recommended to the King and the Staaten-General that Theodore be deposed and sent into exile. Theodore was given the option to choose his own exile. Being Orthodox, he chose the only other largely Orthodox state in the world, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Prince Johann was appointed overall Governor-General of Ethiopia. The conquered provinces were united with the coastal provinces, creating a single colonial unit of administration. Conquering Ethiopia was the easy part, transforming Abyssinia into a modern state with a thriving economy would be a challenge.
With Ethiopia firmly in the control of the Dutch, and Prince Johann its governor-general, the former empire under went major reforms. Despite the fact that the local provincial rules of Abyssinia were largely left in power, and left to their own devices, the Dutch “advisor” assigned to them initiated democratization of their states. The concept of elections took some getting across the local mentality. For all their existence as an independent state, the former Ethiopians had no experience with popular government. The rulers of the provinces, the so-called “princes of Abyssinia” resisted attempts to reform their own states. The ruler of the Afar region even organized a revolt against Dutch rule in 1888, which was put down mercilessly. For his actions, the ruler was tried, convicted and executed for treason, and his lands, and those of his supporters were confiscated, the same as Theodore’s.
Upon gaining control over all of Abyssinia, Johann ordered that the lands belonging to the former Emperor and all his supporters be confiscated. This was partly policy, declaring that any who resist Dutch rule would loose their lands as well, and partly payment to the soldiers of the expeditionary force. Lands were redistributed to Netherlander and Brazilian soldiers, size of parcel depending upon rank. Senior officers had the largest rewards, with a few of the colonels even developing thriving and monestrous plantations. Medium size lots were handed out to junior officers, and smaller parcels to the non-commissioned officers and even the private soldiers. Not all accepted the land, for on condition of accepting it, they were also required to economically develop it. After years of war, some soldiers simply wished to return home.
Abyssinia already had its own native cash crop in plenty. Coffee, which had evolved in Ethiopia, had also been cultivated there for more than a thousand years. Many of the soldiers who received lands in the Oromia and Gambela regions of Abyssinia built their own coffee plantations along side the smaller farms of the natives. Landless peasants were taking into the employ of the Dutch, who aside from treating them far better than the natives, also paid more. Another advantage to Dutch plantation owners was the abolition of the ancient Ethiopian feudal economy. This forced native to cut their own profits and begin to pay their former serfs. When they did not pay well enough, or treated their labors more like slaves, those same peasants would up and leave. A few of the native plantation owners were forced to sell their lands to the newcomers between 1889-1900.
For the officers, and more recent immigrants to the coffee regions, a new center of trade appeared. Aside from serving as a center of trade, and eventual exportation port via the railroad, Dawa (from the Somali word ‘spear’) was also home to numerous and luxurious estates of the big time plantation owners. As the name would suggest, many Dutchified Somalis moved inland to begin working the coffee fields, which proved much more lucrative than old pastimes of fishing and herding. By 1900, the city was the richest non-coastal city in all of Abyssinia, with 70% of the country’s coffee exports flowing through it. Coffee became the colony’s number one export, with a majority of the exports flowing to the Ottoman Empire. Much of the coffee in Netherlander coffee houses still came from Brazil.
In the towns and villages of their newest colony, the Dutch introduced a system of universal education, aimed to uplift the Ethiopians and other peoples of Abyssinia. The schools would, naturally, be operated in Dutch, with the teaching of their language being their first priority. Like many other multi-ethnic lands, the Dutch used their own language as a unifier. It would be hard to imagine a unified India without a common language. Along with education, modern medicine was introduced, replacing folk remedies and “witch doctors”. Both plans were aimed to improve the native’s lot in life, but many Ethiopians avoided and resisted both measures.
King Frederick III
When Frederick Willem Julius van Oranje took the throne on October 7, 1880, he inherited a recently growing problem in southern Africa from his father. In 1824, the Staaten-General of the United Provinces passed the Homestead Act, which granted Netherlanders the right to a square kilometer of land in Kapenstaaten and territory beyond, provided they worked to improve the land. The influx of colonists were generally welcome in the city of Kapenstaat, but met with hostility when they traversed into the interior.
Since the 1730s, Boers had steadily been leaving Kapenstaat for new lands free of VOC interference. By 1830, the Boers established a series of quasi-states in southern Africa; Transvaal, New Orange, Natalia and Johannestaaten. The republics as they called them were barely a government in the modern sense. They possessed little power, and served mainly as a means to mediate disputes and collect revenue for the general improvement of the land for all its inhabitants.
When th newcomers arrived on the Veld, they quickly razed fences, ploughed under grasses, dug irrigation and general disrupted the Boer’s primarily pastoral lifestyles. True, the Boers did grow produce, but they lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle similar to the natives of the region. Their tendency to move about was another reason while the Boer governments were marginally effective. Homesteaders simply ignored the Boer governments and banded together for protection. When Boer herders entered a new township, the homesteaders greeted them not with open arms, but loaded ones.
Along with new technology and different agriculture, the homesteaders brought with them an alien concept of race, that was largely absent in Eighteenth Century Kapenstaat. To the newcomers, the European Race was superior, and because of the ways of natural selection, were the fittest to rule. The Boers had their own tensions with the natives, such as disputes over grazing land, and even a war of conquest in Natalia against the Zulu, but never did they view the natives as inferior, different perhaps, but just as human as themselves. During VOC rule, more than sixty percent of the Boers were male, and with limited Dutch woman about, the men took native wives.
Along with wives, the Boers adopted several other aspects of native life, such as clothing and lodging. The conservative full wool dressings of the United Provinces were ill suited to the Veld (except perhaps during the nights when temperatures plummeted in the arid land). Out of necessity, they abandoned wool and took to wearing thinner cloth similar to the natives, though European modesty still existed and most of the Boer’s bodies were covered.
With New Amsterdam now an American state, Kapenstaaten became the choice location for emigrants departing the Provinces. India promised riches, but southern Africa offered a new start. Most of the newcomers came from the southern Provinces, escaping from the industrial monster consuming the workforce. However, if not for the efficiency of industrialization, far fewer Netherlanders would have made the journey to new lands.
By 1880, conflict between the Boers and homesteaders was inevitable. The wave of newcomers gradually reduced to a trickle, but the homesteaders multiplied at the same rate as the Boers. When homesteaders matured and left home, they consumed more land and drove Boer livestock to the further corners of the Veld. Homesteaders fired the first shots as new arable land became scarce and competition increased.
Driving off the livestock was not enough, the homesteaders began to round up the livestock or just destroy the Boer’s herds. In response, the Boers defended their herds with a ‘shoot first and forget the questions’ attitude. Though they may have shared mostly peaceful relations with their fellow humans, most Boers owned a firearm of one sort or another, for hunting game or driving off predators. One encounter the homesteaders had not experience was that with a lion. Boers were quite familiar with the largest of Africa’s cats.
Further to the desire for land, came the discovery of resources. Near Kimberley, miners from Kapenstaat came across diamonds in a layer of coal there were extracting. At first it was just a few gems, little did the miners know they stumbled upon the largest source of diamonds ever found. The miners and more over the mine owners, attempted to keep the discovery secret, but to little avail. Though diamonds do not spark the imagination they way gold would, it still captured the attention of enough adventurers to flood the Veld with more strangers. If the invasion of prospectors was not bad enough, the mine owners added insult to injury by taking the diamonds and running. To the Boers, any mineral found under common lands belonged to all the peoples of Transvaal and the profits should be shared clans and family, both white and black. It would be only after the Boer Wars that Transvaal would gain control over the diamonds, and establish the Kimberley Mining Company to further exploit the resource.
Isolated shooting and retaliation bloomed into full-blown civil warfare, starting in Transvaal in 1881. An army of hundreds of homesteaders cross the Vaal River, attacking Boer and native villages for a depth of seven kilometers, driving both human and cattle away, and clearing the land for horticultural usage. For the most part, such attacks were isolated to a single village and had not yet been cleared to this extent. Word of the raid spread to Pretoria, the then center of government for the nation of transients, and word went out calling for the Boers of Transvaal to go commando.
In the days before the Boer Wars, commando was simply what the Boers called patrols. Along with taxes, the Boer men over the age of fourteen donated one week out of the year to patrol the countryside around their settlements. For the most part, these were anti-predator patrols, intended to drive off lions and leopards. Occasionally, though defeated years before, the Zulu would mount raids against the Boers and their allies.
In 1881, thousands of Boers were called forth for commando, but not just to patrol. The Boers planned on driving these newcomers south of the Vaal and back into New Orange. However, word spread from the New Oranje side of the river to the town of New Orange. The Orange Boers called forth their own commando, to patrol the southern side of the river. In the following weeks, thousands of homesteaders were driven between the two rag-tag armies. Many escaped, but upwards of thirty percent of the homesteaders were killed. Their corpses were left to the hyena as a warning against further homesteader incursions.
Instead of heeding the warning, homesteaders sent word for assistance to Kapenstaat, asking for protection against the marauding bands of Boers. The moment the colonial government intervened, six years of brutal warfare followed. At first, the Boers just wanted to keep the homesteaders from seizing their grazing lands, but when it was clear Kapenstaat favored the homesteaders, calls for full independence rang out across the Veld. Dutch forces in southern Africa were, though far more than the Boers could muster, not nearly enough to quash the rebellion.
The Boers were severely outnumbered, but knew the terrain and environment so well, they could almost blend in with the background. The lacked uniforms, and often tied brush and grass to their clothing, further camouflaging into the Veld. In contrast, the Royal Armies of the United Provinces and Brazil, along with colonial brigades wore the same bright orange uniforms issued to them during the French Wars. Though they dirtied quickly and blended in better with the savanna than forests of India, they were still obvious. The fact that Dutch still used the tactic of marching hundreds of soldiers abreast only made them easy targets for Boer sharpshooters.
The Dutch easily captured what passed for capitals in all the Boer Republics, but against conventional wisdom, the Boers did not capitulate or sue for peace. They continued a guerilla war in the wilderness. Though fewer in numbers, they scored casualties in higher proportions to their adversaries. It is estimated that nearly twenty thousand Dutch were killed during the Boer Wars, without forcing a single Boer army to surrender. What Dutch commanders failed to realize at the time was that the Boers had no ‘armies’ in the European sense. Their bands were one thousand at the most.
At first, the war was popular back home. The press in the United Provinces sold the war as an attempt to reincorporated lost cousins back into Dutch society. The fact the Boers did not want incorporation was beyond comprehension. Surely they would welcome the luxuries from across the empire and the advances absent to them during the past one hundred fifty years. As the years drug on, as townships fell and the Dutch death toll rose, the lack of foreseeable end wore on the public opinion. Though the Senaat, who was primarily in charge of declaring war, was never up for reelection, the House of Electorates were, and as the war drug on, they would receive the blame. They pressed for a negotiated end.
Competition
In the 1820s, the first (literally the first) of the United Provinces’ rivals experienced a complete collapse of its colonial empire. The Latin American nations of Mexico, Grand Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay were under the heel of the Spanish Empire for three centuries. The atrocities committed in the Provinces during Spain’s rule there paled in comparison to Latin America. In the New World, conquistadores committed wholesale genocide against the indigenous population, destroying their cultures and pillaging two continents.
Napoleonic rule of Iberia weakened Spain to the point it could no longer hold on to its colonies. In 1810, Grand Colombia declared independence, with Mexico following the next year. Though Mexico’s first rebellion was crushed, Grand Colombia had the privilege of superior revolutionary commander. Simon Bolivar lead Grand Colombia to freedom, then pursued Spanish colonial rule into Peru, Chile and Bolivia, the latter named in his own honor.
The Dutch welcome independence of Spanish colonies. If not for destroying their long-time enemy, then for opening new markets stocked with millions of consumers, all willing to purchase Dutch goods. During Spanish rule, Spain forbade any foreigners from trading in its colonies, though it could never fully keep out determined Dutch smugglers. When Spain was driven from their former colonies, Dutch traders of all types rushed in to fill the vacuum. Them, along with their British and American counterparts effectively destroyed the Spanish export trade.
Revolution was not simply relegated to the colonial world. In 1848, a wave of revolutions broke out across Europe. The United Provinces had its share of unrest in the 1840s, but that paled in comparison to what happened across Germany, in France and Spain. Again the French monarchy was abolished and replaced with the Second Republic, which was in turn replaced by the Second Empire, and replaced again after the Franco-Prussian War with the Third Republic. Spain received its First Republic when the reigning King, Carlos IV, was deposed in autumn of 1848. Ironically, the Spanish King spent the rest of his life exiled in Flanders.
During the 1820s, the United States faced a power struggle of its own on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Not between men or branched of government, but of ideas. Nationalism clashed with regionalism. In the south, the people considered themselves citizens of the states as opposed to the Union. So strong was regionalism, that in 1828, the Nullification Crisis threaten to start civil war. South Carolina, in response to trade regulations, attempted to succeed from the Union. Only an overwhelming response from the Jackson Administration kept South Carolina as a State.
After decades of debate, the United States finally adopted a central banking system. Leading up to the Federal Reserve, banking was the responsibility of state-chartered banks. Each of these banks printed a hodge-podge of paper currency. The currency could be exchanged at the banks for its worth in gold, however, the length of travel required to trade in the currency lead to devaluing of currency in proportion to distance. After so many miles, the paper currency was effectively worthless. Carrying enough gold to pay one’s bills was not always the most practical of methods.
In Congress there was great concern that these private banks could not provide the country with a uniform and standard currency. Two attempts to establish a national bank had failed, and a successful bank would not be chartered until after the War of Succession. Other reforms were taking place during the 1830s. One involved the penal system, and instead of executing criminals, the idea of reforming them arose. By the use of strict discipline and religious indoctrination, it was hoped to cure the person of his criminal habits. Even to this day, a similar system it used in American for most offenders, however instead of spiritual awakening, prisoners are often taught marketable skills in hope that work might keep them out of trouble. It met with mixed success, and the Federal and States’ prison system is still clogged with long-term and life-term offenders, and those who simply will not reform.
For the beginning of the nation, education was left as a local affair. Massachusetts was the first state to adopt a state-wide education system, with standardized curriculums. With the rapid industrialization of New England, a great deal of skills learned for generations of farming were of little use. New specialized fields erupted across the country requiring extensive education. By the end of the 19th Century, each state in the Union required at least eight years within public education, and literacy rates were many times higher than a hundred years previously.
In the 1820s, the newly independent nation of Mexico opened the borders to its state of Texas to American settlement. However, in order to immigrate, the settlers were required to convert to Catholicism and learn Spanish. The settlers promised to do so, but quickly forgot their promise. Texas is considered to be one of the first filibusters. There is little doubt that those who settled in Texas had no intention in staying part of Mexico. The Texas Revolution is just as much settler plotting as it was Mexico’s inability to assimilate the influx of settlers. Tension between the government and settlers came to a head in 1835 when the Texans declared independence.
The Texan Revolution was a short and bloody affair. The first came on March 5, 1836, with the storming of the Alamo. Almost all the defenders were killed during the assault, but a handful were taken wounded, but still alive. According to Mexican accounts, Davie Crocket was among those captured and later executed. It is entirely possible, but no evidence exists to support the claim.
The second incident came with the surrender of the garrison at Goliad. After handing in their arms, Mexican General Santa Anna ordered all the defenders executed. Both massacres were fresh on the mind of the Texans at the Battle of San Jacinco on April 21, where a Mexican Army three times the size of the Texans was defeated, and Santa Anna captured. In exchange for his life and freedom, Texas would be recognized as independent. When Santa Anna took this before Mexico’s Congress, the treaty was promptly rejected, leaving Texas unofficially independent.
Nine years later, when Texas’s petition to join the union was accepted, Mexico accused the United States of invading its territory. Further complicating the issue, the Texans recognized the Grande River as Texas’s southern border, whereas Mexico’s maps showed the Black River as its border. Near the Gulf of Mexico, the distance was minute, but on the western edges, the Grande River border doubled the size of Texas.
After Texas was admitted into the Union, American cavalry began to patrol the Texan claimed area. It was inevitable, but they encountered a patrol from the Mexican Army. Shots were fired and the American public reacted venomously. American blood spilled on American soil. By 1846, Congress declared a state of war with Mexico.
The war was rather one-sided. Despite the fact that Mexico had a far larger army, the United States army was packed with veterans of numerous Indian wars. Nationalistic fever swelled the American ranks. Two armies invaded Mexico from the north. One advance force under the command of John Fremont captured northern California, establishing the twenty-six day long Californian Republic. Within months, the Mexican Army was ejected from New Mexico, a land Congress repeatedly offered to buy.
By 1847, American soldiers landed at Veracruz, defeating Santa Anna outside of the city of Mexico. The last resistance to American conquest came from the Mexican Military Academy, the ‘Halls of Montezuma’. United States Marines easily defeated the cadets, who fought to the last. Within a year of the war’s start, American generals and diplomats were in the city of Mexico dictating peace terms.
Debate in Congress raged over whether or not to annex the entire country. Those who wanted all of Mexico argued that American blood was spilt in conquest, thus the land was now American. Opponents to the All-Mexico claimed that it was an attempt of the southerners to extend slavery and expand their own power base. In the end, it was a racial question that preserved Mexico. Congress could not agree on bringing so many people of Indian-decent and non-English into the Union.
The Treaty of Hildago-Guadeloupe forced Mexico to recognize the annexation of Texas, along with the Grande River boundary. Further, it would sell all of California, New Mexico, Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango to the United States for twenty million dollars. This conquest expanded the United States to the Pacific Ocean.
While tension and war loomed with Mexico, the United States collided with its old nemesis, the United Kingdom. The debate between the two came over the boundary of the Oregon Country. Britain and America both claimed all of it, and some in Congress were ready to go to war over the 54-40 boundary. However, memories of the disaster of the Second Anglo-American War, coupled with the fact the nation was already in a war with Mexico, lead to a compromise. The land would be divided along the 49th parallel, though the British still claimed the Columbia River as a boundary as well, which would resurface during the Third Anglo-American War.
Though national pride had been restored after the resounding victory over Mexico and conquest of a vast amount of new land, the victory also brought disunity. In 1850, the biggest debate in Congress was whether or not these new acquisitions would be free or slave. Slave holding settlers in Texas were already poised to move into Sonora and Durango, to open up the rest of the southwest to exploitation.
The south was not the only place feeling pressure to be on the move. Revolutions in Europe during the year of 1848, followed by famine, forced many refugees from Ireland, Germany and even Spain to move to America. These immigrant, for the most part, settled in the industrializing north, offering the factory owners their own source of exploitable labor. Unlike slaves, there seemed to be a never-ending stream of immigrants, and best of all, the owners did not have to invest much into their care.
The immigrants were not equal in their own rights. The Germans, many from middle class families, sold their German possessions and arrived in country with their own source of money. The Irish were looked upon with suspicion, largely because of their poverty and their faith. Catholics arriving in predominantly protestant New England were not always as welcomed as they were in New Amsterdam. On the other hand, capitalists tended to favor the Irish, for they would labor hard for less pay. The waves of immigration pushed many established American families to take up their roots and move west, to leave the problems of the East Coast behind.
However, the problems followed, whether the settlers willed it or not. In 1850, California was admitted into the Union as a free state. Congress passed what has become known as the Compromise of 1850, which stated the territory conquered from Mexico would leave the issue of slavery up to popular sovereignty. With many southerners already in Durango, Chihuahua and Sonora, that they were admitted as slave states (in 1862, 1855 and 1854 respectively). The rest of the Mexican Cession waited longer for statehood. This likely rose from the fact that the four states already admitted already had a resembling of government, which required little modification to forge a working constitution.
While many Americans moved westward, some moved south. One such American was a mercenary by the name of William Walker. He and a band of outlaws invaded the Mexican state of Nicaragua in hopes of taken over the government. Why Nicaragua? It has been suggested that Walker had hopes of using the geography of the state to build a trans-oceanic canal. His forces seized control of the state in 1851.
For two decades, the southern states of Mexico; Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala have tried to break away from Mexico. Their rebellion in the 1830s, around the same time as Texas, was crushed. Though the locals did not like the politicking in Mexico City, that did not mean they would support foreign invaders. By 1853, Walker was driven from Nicaragua into Costa Rica. In this border state, he found more support and less enthusiasm from Mexico’s army to defend.
Walker succeeded in taking over Costa Rica, declaring independence in 1854. Like Texas, Costa Rica’s Congress immediately voted for annexation by the United States. With turmoil in the United States between north and south, Costa Rica’s admission into the Union was delayed for years. The State of Costa Rica was not admitted until after the War of Succession, after slavery was banned by Constitutional Amendment.
Upon hearing the results of the Election of 1860, the State Assembly of South Carolina voted to dissolve its union and seceded on December 20, 1860. By February of 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas all voted to succeed from the Union. At first South Carolina set itself up as an independent state, but when more states withdrew, they met in Birmingham, Alabama to form the Confederate States of America.
On April 12, 1861, after Lincoln refused to withdraw federal soldiers from Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the South Carolina militia opened fire on the island garrison. Two days later, the garrison surrendered the fort and withdrew to the north. When Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers and ordered the army to crush the rebellion, several more states seceded; Arkansas on May 6, Tennessee on May 7, North Carolina on May 20, Sonora on June 21, and Chihuahua on July 5. Virginia’s assembly narrowly defeated the vote, as did Durango. Cuba did not even contemplate secession.
The initial campaign against the Carolinas met with failure as Union General McClellan failed to crush the Army of the Carolinas. McClellan’s failing was that he was too cautious a general, the opposite of a fighting general. His failures only served to enrage Lincoln. In Tennessee, the Union Army under the Command of Ulysses Grant managed to defeat the Confederate invasion of Kentucky and pursue them to Nashville.
Both sides had generals with their own virtues and failings. However, absent of this civil war was on Robert Lee, who resigned as superintendent of the military academy at Fort Arnold. Though he considered himself Virginian first, and though Virginia was still in the Union, Lee could not bring himself to enter a war that pitted brother against brother. He was condemned by both sides. The Confederates accused him of being a Yankee sympathizer, Americans accused him of being a Confederate sympathizer. Either way, it is now widely believed that had Lee took sides, it could have decided the war.
As it was, the war was effectively decided in April of 1862, when the Army of the Carolinas, under the command of Earl Vincent Jackson III, invaded Virginia. He met, and resounded defeated McClellan and the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Manassas. Manassas was a disaster for the Union, and its army was nearly destroyed in the process. This one victory was all that the British required to go forth to recognize the Confederacy. Britain’s chief interest came in the form of cotton, which it had in Egypt but the Confederates had in even great supply until the 1880s.
On July 3, 1862, the British Parliament recognized the Confederate States of America and signed an alliance against the Union. This move was parallel to the Franco-American alliance of 1778. What was not parallel was the fact that the Dutch did not react so well to Britain’s interference in an internal American affair. The Dutch government simply declared that if the British would intervene on behalf of the Confederates, than the United Provinces and Brazil would intervene on behalf of the Americans.
Seeing the War between the States threatening to spill over onto a world stage, it was France’s self-proclaim Emperor, Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III) who moved to mediate peace between the governments in Washington and Montgomery. By January of 1863, the Union saw itself split in half, and the Confederate States of America gained their independence, along with the Indian territory and New Mexico territory, which they renamed Arizona Territory.
Following the disastrous War of American Succession, a thirteenth amendment was passed, banning slavery in the United States. To keep Virginia, Durango and Kentucky, along with other border states in the Union, a clause allowed for the federal government to reimburse the slave owners, much to the disgust of the rest of the nation. Though it was seen as basic tax relief for wealthy Southerners, the Amendment did achieve the goals of the abolitionists.
The story of the expulsion of the “Five Civilized Tribes” from the Confederate States east of the Mississippi actually dates back before Georgia seceded from the Union. During the 1830s, several southern states passed racial laws that divided society into two classes: those of direct European descent were whites, and everybody else was colored. This included the Cherokee of the Cherokee Counties of northwestern Georgia. Up until the Civil War, the Cherokee were staunch allies of the Federal Government. However, they also owned slaves are were not so eager to give them up. When Georgia seceded from the Union, the Cherokee were caught in a civil war of their own, over which side they would support. By the time the Cherokee were ready to decide, a peace was mediated between North and South.
In 1873, with much of the choice lands of Georgia taken up, lawmakers moved to open the Indians’ lands to white settlement. As per the decades old law that classified the Cherokee as colored and thus legally inferior to whites, the Georgia State Assembly passed a law to remove all free colored from Georgia. Georgia’s militia fought with the Cherokee when the state came to eject them. Forces from Birmingham also came to the aid, as the Confederate Congress was called on to find a place to put these non-whites. Across the Mississippi in a place now known as Oklahoma, the Confederacy established an Indian homeland.
The Cherokee lost the battle, and tens of thousands of their kinsmen were escorted out of Georgia by the Confederate Army. Seeing what their neighbors had done, other states began to enact their own Indian Removal laws. As more states began the expulsion, more Indians began to follow the trail blazed to Oklahoma by the Cherokee. Between 1873 and 1879, a hundred thousand Indians and free blacks were marched west into this strange land, forced to start over as best as they could. As per Confederate Law, the land was closed to white settlement. This came back to bite the Confederates when oil was discovered on the new Indian lands. Some Indians did welcome the chance to start over without the whites lording it over them, but none would have chosen this way to do so. To the Indians, the migration has many names, but the one that sticks in American History is the Trail of Tears.
Tensions rose and fell less than a generation later along the two Nations of America’s borders. Tension grew between Federal and State governments over rising power of Washington. Freeing the slaves, despite manumission, sparked seditious movements in Virginia. The Confederates saw this resentment against Washington and sought to exploit it. Many nationalists in Birmingham considered the Confederacy incomplete without Virginia.
Confederates sponsored movements in Virginia with the goal of overthrowing the pro-Union government in Richmond. Other movements pushed for referendums in Kentucky, Cuba and Durango, all supported by Birmingham, the new capital of the Confederacy. One such referendum was introduced to Kentucky in 1876, and was defeated by a safe margin. Legal measures were not the only ones taken by pro-Confederate Virginians. In April of 1882, the Union government of Virginia was overthrown, and the conspirators declared Virginia’s union with the Union was dissolved. Within a month, Senators and representatives from Virginia were meeting in Birmingham.
The overthrowing of the Virginian government was seen as a direct-action by the Confederacy, causing the United States to declare war on the Confederate States. Three days after word rushed across the Atlantic, the British declared war upon the United States. This time, the Dutch were unable to come to America’s assistance, they attention focused clearly on rebellions in southern Africa. The United States would stand alone in this fight.
The United States Army was still twice the size of the Confederate Army, same as during the war between the states. Furthermore, years of battling Plains Indians made them a battle-hardened army. However, fighting tribal wars was far different than fighting an enemy training in European style of warfare. Unlike the United States, the Confederates were not hesitant in aligning themselves with a foreign power. The Confederate Army and Navy were both trained by the British, including planing out future wars in advance. The Americans simply fought the war as it unfolded.
Cuba was the first to fall to the British-Confederate alliance. The Royal (British) Navy blockaded the island, and ferried both Confederate and British soldiers to the island, to defeat the few American garrisons on the island. The last to fall was Guantanamo Bay, on August 7, 1883. The American Army was further driven from Virginia after the Battle of the James River on October 1, 1883. Suffering great casualties, the Army of the Potomac withdrew to Alexandria, where it withstood a joint Confederate-British siege of that city and Washington until early 1885.
Fighting in Durango was short, for neither side spared much in the way of resources to battle in this southwestern state. Its government peacefully changed hands as pro-Union politicians were fired and pro-Confederate ones elected in 1884. There was brief concern that the French may intervene on the Confederate’s behalf, causing the Americans to divert soldiers and ships to Costa Rica, to defend against any possible invasion from French Mexico. In truth, the French had far more problems in their continuing campaign to pacify the Mexican populace, one that would continue until they finally departed Mexico in the 1950s. Between assimilating the Mexicans into French ways, and putting them to work on the Nicaragua Canal, the French had nothing to spare to aid their own partial allies, the British.
The only action Britain took alone against the United States was in a long disputed area of the Pacific Northwest. Though the 49th parallel was the nominal border, there were still many British, and newfound Canadian, leaders who believed that the rightful border of the far west should be that of the Columbia River. On March 7, 1883, Royal (British) Navy sailed into Puget Sound and did battle with the American ships in port. By April, Royal Marines had seized control of Seattle. By February 21, 1884, the British Army crossed south of the Columbia and captured Fort Astoria. Aside from the lands west of the Columbia River, the British made no further intrusion into American territory. Within the states of Cuba, Durango, Kentucky and Virginia, a series of state-wide civil wars were fought. The pro-Confederate forces, though largely outnumbered by pro-Union and neutral factions, were better equipped and trained. Furthermore, the state militias were home to a majority of secessionists. Even after these states were ‘allowed’ to secede, violence continued onwards until the dawn of the Twentieth Century, resulting in states that were less free than America.
By early 1885, Britain and the Confederate States forced the United States to the peace table. After three years of war, American forces were completely on the defensive in Kentucky and Virginia. As per the Treaty of Boston, the above mentioned states were allowed to join the Confederacy. Confederate government instituted laws that created a system of internal passports in the newly admitted states. In some cases, what could only be called secret polices were established to keep the dissident members of society into check. However, in the case of Cuba, which never had slavery under American watch, many of the black citizens were allowed, in fact encouraged by the C.S.A. to depart for the Union. Because Virginia was now a Confederate State, the American capital retreated permanently to Philadelphia.
The British, for their assistance, took the lands west of the Columbia River. With Seattle in their possession, coupled with their protectorate over Hawaii, the British were able to check American advances into the Pacific. Despite officials statements, the British were wary of a United America. They saw the United States as a rival, with a potentially unlimited industrial capacity.
For the second time in over twenty years, the United States took a critical hit to their national pride. The only outstanding victories in the Third Anglo-American War came in the Wild West. American cowboys, lawmen and outlaws fought of constant Confederate (and their Indian allies) raid into Nevada and Kansas. In return, a band of two thousand frontier’s men managed to capture Santa Fe in Arizona Territory. However, the fall of Santa Fe was more of a sacking than a conquest. The city was looted by apparently drunken cowboys.
In Europe, the toppling of the last Bourbon monarch sent ripples across France’s colonial possessions. Quebec in particular was hit hard. At first, the Québécois welcomed the deposing of the king. At last, they hoped they would be treated as one amongst equals as the revolutionaries were fighting for. When Quebec was not elevated to a Department of France, it was a let down. When the new republic treated it even more like a colony that the former king, that was the final straw. If Quebec would not be equal, then it shall be separate. In 1851, Quebec declared its independence. To the world’s surprise, France did little to stop it. At the time, France had its own internal conflicts to deal with. When Louis Napoleon declared himself Napoleon III, he granted Quebec’s independence in return for a free trade treaty with them. France would reap the economic benefits of a colony without having to control it, and should the new Republic of Quebec fail, then France would be their to ‘assist’.
In 1861, France had its eyes further south. In April, tens of thousands of French soldiers landed on the shores of Mexico, keen to collect on the debt Mexico had been either unwilling or, more likely, unable to pay. When the Mexicans surrendered, Napoleon III decided to replace its republic with a constitutional monarchy. As the Emperor, he chose an Austrian cousin, Maximilian. The Mexican Emperor was an inept leader, and faced the firing squad in 1867. In response, France invaded again, and this time it did not change the government, but abolished it completely. Mexico joined Algeria and Indochina as French colonies.
Even the British managed to climb back from the pit they entered after losing not only India, but the American colonies. During the 1820s, British nationals launched a land rush on the unclaimed lands south of Rio de la Plata, to which the Prussians did not protest. The land was cold and barren, and the British were welcome to Patagonia. It was a regret of later German Emperors when Patagonia wool began to take up much of Europe’s market.
To replace India, the British managed to wedge themselves in between the Dutch Raj and Siam. Their conquest of Burma was a relatively short affair, unlike their conquest of East Africa. Again the British managed to wedge themselves between two states, Dutch South Africa and Abyssinia. East Africa gave them not only a strategic presence both north and south of the Suez Canal, but helped stretch their influence across central Africa. Though Britain’s star was once again on the rise, it would always be second-rate compared to the United Provinces and its companion stars.