I don't know why but the statue reminds me of miguel from movie The Road to El Dorado
Cinco de Mayo
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Ahhh that makes more sense.
Haha yes, your context was very helpful as a jumping off point!
Yeah, that's more or less it. The impetuses for the hair-trigger alliances you saw IOTL aren't really there and a setup more similar to the old Concert of Europe is there if you squint hard enough. Austria's approach here is A) within the wheelhouse of Great Power approaches to the naval arms race of the period on the merits and B) understandable realpolitik, even if in the end it doesn't work.
Just because something didn't work doesn't mean it was a bad idea, after all.
It would be, and they won't. This is obviously a somewhat slanted bio in its portrayal of Ferdinand. What he really wants to do is exclude Russia and Italy from that sector more effectively.
Not my favorite sport to sit and watch for hours, tbh, but going to games is a lot of fun.
Is it one of those sports that to be enjoyed has to be seen live or played? I've never seen a baseball game live, the magic is in the live show then. Maybe that's why it's restricted to one region.
American football is more popular than baseball, but of the sports invented by the Americans, the most popular is undoubtedly basketball (the king of american sports).
Interesting Times: A History of the Chinese Revolution
"...government Liang pulled together included some of the most respected statesmen in China; as Premier, Tang Shaoyi would head the Cabinet, and in Wu Tingfang there could not have been a better man to serve as Foreign Minister. Liang reserved the position of Minister of Defense for himself, still not entirely trusting the military officials who had made the Constitutional Revolution possible. Li became President of the Republic by acclamation of the Constituent Assembly; he would serve a renewable five year term, and preparations were made for elections to the National Assembly of the Republic of China to occur no later than January of 1913.
The Constitutional Revolution ended the First Republic and inaugurated the Second Republic, also known as the Constitutional Republic or Parliamentary Republic. Liang's vision was to roughly ape the Meiji Constitution of China, much as his mentor Kang Youwei had always sought to do, but unlike original Kangist proposals, the Second Republic's fundamental laws gave the executive (President, in this case) less power than Japan's executive, rather than more. The Cabinet was exclusively responsible to the National Assembly and though the Committee of State, appointed by the President, served as a sort of privy council it held very few powers and was in theory purely advisory. The contours of an independent judiciary and independent civil service were built directly into the constitution, as were a number of rights and privileges enjoyed by the Chinese people. On paper, it was one of the most progressive constitutions ever promulgated, certainly in the Asian context, even if Liang and the others were regarded by the Guomindang as conservatives if not reactionaries.
Deposing Sheng was, of course, the easy part. The Republic, particularly the South, was incredibly unstable, and restoring not just the rule of law but the authority of Nanking over the restless provinces would be no easy task. Liang was not entirely sure whether or not Li would honor the limited and proscribed powers vested in him as President, and it was well known that Li was restless to end the Qing for good, a task now vested in Wang Zhanyuan (sent north to get the ambitious general out of Nanking) and Li's former subordinates as evidence emerged that the Qing were regrouping to push back south of the Xianqong, possibly with actual Russian divisions included in their numbers this time. Finding capable, honest men to staff the judiciary and civil service would take months if not years to fully build out, and the concept of independent institutions uncorrupted by a monarch or despot like Sheng were foreign concepts to most statesmen and even most civilians.
The optimism that burst out of the Constitutional Revolution was palpable, though. American merchants in Shanghai gushed about "the new era of republicanism in China," where "one of the oldest civilizations in the world has overthrown one of the most archaic, despotic systems of government." Considering the racist dismissiveness Americans typically used to speak of Chinese, it was a remarkable shift in tone, presaging an intriguing new age. Other Western governments were more sanguine but no less interested in seeing how this Republic comported itself; suffice to say, the conservative constitutional reformism of the Second Republic was less unpopular with European imperial powers, who would the overthrow of Sheng and Nanking Proclamation as an internal affair, than the revolutionary energy of the Guomindang that seemed like a virus spreading out into their colonial holdings from Canton..."
- Interesting Times: A History of the Chinese Revolution
The Constitutional Revolution ended the First Republic and inaugurated the Second Republic, also known as the Constitutional Republic or Parliamentary Republic. Liang's vision was to roughly ape the Meiji Constitution of China, much as his mentor Kang Youwei had always sought to do, but unlike original Kangist proposals, the Second Republic's fundamental laws gave the executive (President, in this case) less power than Japan's executive, rather than more. The Cabinet was exclusively responsible to the National Assembly and though the Committee of State, appointed by the President, served as a sort of privy council it held very few powers and was in theory purely advisory. The contours of an independent judiciary and independent civil service were built directly into the constitution, as were a number of rights and privileges enjoyed by the Chinese people. On paper, it was one of the most progressive constitutions ever promulgated, certainly in the Asian context, even if Liang and the others were regarded by the Guomindang as conservatives if not reactionaries.
Deposing Sheng was, of course, the easy part. The Republic, particularly the South, was incredibly unstable, and restoring not just the rule of law but the authority of Nanking over the restless provinces would be no easy task. Liang was not entirely sure whether or not Li would honor the limited and proscribed powers vested in him as President, and it was well known that Li was restless to end the Qing for good, a task now vested in Wang Zhanyuan (sent north to get the ambitious general out of Nanking) and Li's former subordinates as evidence emerged that the Qing were regrouping to push back south of the Xianqong, possibly with actual Russian divisions included in their numbers this time. Finding capable, honest men to staff the judiciary and civil service would take months if not years to fully build out, and the concept of independent institutions uncorrupted by a monarch or despot like Sheng were foreign concepts to most statesmen and even most civilians.
The optimism that burst out of the Constitutional Revolution was palpable, though. American merchants in Shanghai gushed about "the new era of republicanism in China," where "one of the oldest civilizations in the world has overthrown one of the most archaic, despotic systems of government." Considering the racist dismissiveness Americans typically used to speak of Chinese, it was a remarkable shift in tone, presaging an intriguing new age. Other Western governments were more sanguine but no less interested in seeing how this Republic comported itself; suffice to say, the conservative constitutional reformism of the Second Republic was less unpopular with European imperial powers, who would the overthrow of Sheng and Nanking Proclamation as an internal affair, than the revolutionary energy of the Guomindang that seemed like a virus spreading out into their colonial holdings from Canton..."
- Interesting Times: A History of the Chinese Revolution
Not r
In fact the Zentrum were kept out of influence for a while otl but this was much less true as the Nat Libs ebbed towards the end of the century and well before 1933 otl
Ice hockey live is incredible, especially with good seats.
Is China finally pulling out of its multiple decade long tailspin? Dare we hope?
Is China finally pulling out of its multiple decade long tailspin? Dare we hope?
Yeah, baseball in the stadium is a great game; the ballpark experience is amazing. I love baseball, but struggle to really follow it on television. That being said, I really dislike basketball
Um. You do realize that Taiwan has by far the hightest number of wins of the Little League World Series...
yes taiwan, i forgot about them. It doesn't add much to the list, with the USA some Central American countries and the Asian countries that survived or were rebuilt by the USA. Japan, South Korea and of course Taiwan. (I really didn't remember them, sorry)
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Basketball is one of those sports I just find unremittingly tedious. I follow March Madness every year but that's really just for the bracket and I watch maybe one or two of the games. It really proves a variation of the adage that if everyone's special then no-one's special: if you're shooting and scoring all the time then no individual moment really matters.Yeah, baseball in the stadium is a great game; the ballpark experience is amazing. I love baseball, but struggle to really follow it on television. That being said, I really dislike basketball
Baseball on TV is great once you realise that the protagonist is the pitcher and not the batters.
Plenty of issues left China needs to solve but the worst of the worst is nearing the end. Not having anything as acute as the warlord era will help immensely, too.
Never thought of it that way before (baseball, that is) but... checks out!
Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
"...Eduardo Schaerer's inauguration in August of 1912 was widely viewed as the conclusion of the long-simmering civil war in Paraguay and brought his Liberal Party, or the Azules, to power in both the Presidency and the National Congress. Schaerer's government was more traditionally liberal in the South American sense of the word and focused on internal economic and cultural development (particularly railroads and schools), an anti-corruption campaign to restore confidence in the government and judiciary, and above all stabilizing the poor, war-torn country; his foreign ministry was courteous and friendly to both Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, clear-eyed about little Paraguay's position between the Southern Cone's two hegemons. Schaerer is, today, considered one of Paraguay's finer Presidents, particularly for his ability to reunite the country in his four-year Presidency and establish a relatively secure and functional democracy that survives to this day, but also for his skill in navigating the geopolitical minefield of the Great American War that broke out just a year after his inaugural and keeping Paraguay neutral while surrounded on all sides by belligerents.
Brazil did not quite see things that way, though, and even deep into the war, once it was clear Schaerer had every intention of being neutral, believed that he was another of the "Little Alems" and that their periphery was collapsing into a noose of Argentinean clients. The ideological component of the Bloc Sud began to come into focus with Paraguay's "fall to radicalism;" in a speech before the Chamber of Deputies, Pinheiro Machado declared "the threat of counter-imperial forces grows monthly, adds to its ranks and within a half-decade will surround us," imploring an acceleration of the Army spending bill passed just the year before. Hermes da Fonseca, the Chief of Staff, was even more belligerent, advocating publicly for the first time "a crusade against godlessness and the enemies of Brazil," and describing the bill that would be voted on, and passed, in October of 1912 as "the difference between national salvation and national obliteration." Draft plans for Brazilian offensives against Argentina and Uruguay were updated continuously throughout the fall and war games conducted every other month through the following spring to refine them, and the largest military exercises in history of the Brazilian Army would be held in the days before the General Assembly took a vote on the accelerated military budget act, an unsubtle reminder by Fonseca to the democratically-elected legislature.
Argentinean policymakers did not take such developments lightly. Brazil's strategic rail plans which would dramatically enhance her mobilization capabilities were designed, first and foremost, to strengthen its reach into the Parana and were very plainly aimed against a hypothetical Argentina-Uruguay bloc. At the existing pace under a number of strategic rail plans passed since the early 1890s and the construction completed so far, the railroad coverage for a best-case Brazilian deployment to the Parana would be done sometime in mid-to-late 1915. The Argentine General Staff in a secret memorandum to President Drago suggested that the accelerated construction schedule would take a while to come into effect but could shave the timetable down anywhere from twelve to eighteen months, possibly even having the railroads totally finished by Christmas of 1913 in an absolute best-case scenario for Rio. In combination with Brazil's worrying naval expansions this meant, in effect, that Argentina had a "ticking clock" to reinforce her own frontiers and prop up Uruguay against Brazilian aggression before the advantage of the larger neighbor became considerably more substantive, and Argentina's own window for opportunity to have what was becoming increasingly seen as an inevitable war on relatively equal terms would be closing sometime after the next year was over..."
- Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
Brazil did not quite see things that way, though, and even deep into the war, once it was clear Schaerer had every intention of being neutral, believed that he was another of the "Little Alems" and that their periphery was collapsing into a noose of Argentinean clients. The ideological component of the Bloc Sud began to come into focus with Paraguay's "fall to radicalism;" in a speech before the Chamber of Deputies, Pinheiro Machado declared "the threat of counter-imperial forces grows monthly, adds to its ranks and within a half-decade will surround us," imploring an acceleration of the Army spending bill passed just the year before. Hermes da Fonseca, the Chief of Staff, was even more belligerent, advocating publicly for the first time "a crusade against godlessness and the enemies of Brazil," and describing the bill that would be voted on, and passed, in October of 1912 as "the difference between national salvation and national obliteration." Draft plans for Brazilian offensives against Argentina and Uruguay were updated continuously throughout the fall and war games conducted every other month through the following spring to refine them, and the largest military exercises in history of the Brazilian Army would be held in the days before the General Assembly took a vote on the accelerated military budget act, an unsubtle reminder by Fonseca to the democratically-elected legislature.
Argentinean policymakers did not take such developments lightly. Brazil's strategic rail plans which would dramatically enhance her mobilization capabilities were designed, first and foremost, to strengthen its reach into the Parana and were very plainly aimed against a hypothetical Argentina-Uruguay bloc. At the existing pace under a number of strategic rail plans passed since the early 1890s and the construction completed so far, the railroad coverage for a best-case Brazilian deployment to the Parana would be done sometime in mid-to-late 1915. The Argentine General Staff in a secret memorandum to President Drago suggested that the accelerated construction schedule would take a while to come into effect but could shave the timetable down anywhere from twelve to eighteen months, possibly even having the railroads totally finished by Christmas of 1913 in an absolute best-case scenario for Rio. In combination with Brazil's worrying naval expansions this meant, in effect, that Argentina had a "ticking clock" to reinforce her own frontiers and prop up Uruguay against Brazilian aggression before the advantage of the larger neighbor became considerably more substantive, and Argentina's own window for opportunity to have what was becoming increasingly seen as an inevitable war on relatively equal terms would be closing sometime after the next year was over..."
- Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
Glad to see Paraguay will develop in a healthy democracy, especially compared what happened to them otl and them being sorrounded by so many belligerent neighbors.
Considering what happened to them in the 1860s/70s, things have to work out for them at some point, right?
Mirrors what's going on in the CSA - they're also worried that if they don't attack the North yesterday they'll lose whatever advantage they currently have. I do like the idea of (at least) one country in each alliance being like "we gotta get this party started now" and possibly being unnecessarily bellicose as a result. Makes things less black-and-white.
Seems Paraguay has a better fate than OTL. Good on them. This whole time I was trying to guess if they'd stay neutral or openly ally with RArgentina - seems they chose the former. (Then again, given their last experience with other South American powers fighting them, I can't blame the government that much.)
I can definitely see the US being less willing to prop up right-wing military governments like in OTL's cold War. The sense I get is that TTL's USA remains more focused on the Americas than OTL's world power. The biggest long-term rival in the hemisphere is going to be a strongly conservative - perhaps Integralist - Brazilian Empire. A whole lot of later US actions OTL were done in the name of preventing communist-aligned governments in those countries - without that, and with the primary rival being a more right-wing government, some of that probably won't happen. Oh, sure, you'll probably stil get some interventions for questionable reasons, but I'd suspect less than OTL overall.
I can definitely see the US being less willing to prop up right-wing military governments like in OTL's cold War. The sense I get is that TTL's USA remains more focused on the Americas than OTL's world power. The biggest long-term rival in the hemisphere is going to be a strongly conservative - perhaps Integralist - Brazilian Empire. A whole lot of later US actions OTL were done in the name of preventing communist-aligned governments in those countries - without that, and with the primary rival being a more right-wing government, some of that probably won't happen. Oh, sure, you'll probably stil get some interventions for questionable reasons, but I'd suspect less than OTL overall.
I think it will depend on a number of things; especially just how wedded the Cinqo-verse US is to it's business interests. Because I could see a situation whereas right-wing dictatorships would still be preferable in comparison to liberal-populist regimes which might still try to nationalize certain industries to undermine US economic interests in their country. However, if an Integralist Empire of Brazil is seen as the BBEG from the American point of view, and it is openly supporting anti-US Integralist regimes in South and Central America, then from the point of view of both the US _AND_ Populist Liberal regimes a natural alliance against Brazil may be in their best interests.
At least we have one happy ending for a country. Feels like the majority is unknown or going to get worse from here on out.
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