Can you please elaborate on this part? Thank you.
Alternate History Ideas and Discussion
- Thread starter AndrewJTalon
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Can you please elaborate on this part? Thank you.
History Learner
Well-known member
Well, for one, it gives an explanation for why fertility collapsed and the demographic transition exists at all, given obvious examples of groups who have resisted it across cultural, ethnic, religious, etc lines. Next, his original article on the Amish I think does provide some context as to the disconnect between the modern ideal fertility of women (consistently above replacement across Europe, Russia and the United States since at least the 1990s) and the lack of accomplishment. Solely cultural or economic arguments don't work, but rather it was a hand in hand sort of deal.
sillygoose
Well-known member
Plus they spent a lot on Trieste and getting to Venice would be a lot more expensive than the closer Trieste.
He was in his 80s by the time of WW1...but he was apparently quite interested in the day to day details of managing the empire. After all he died at his desk reading reports.FJ strikes me as being the kind of guy who enjoyed being lazy and letting things go on autopilot for decades!
Yeah, present-day low fertility is due to environmental factors. And Yes, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if feminism and the idea of career-oriented women is helping lower present-day fertility, especially among the highly educated and liberal. Interestingly enough, among the high-fertility groups, women can sometimes work a lot while still aggressively popping out babies: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel, for instance. When we lived in Israel, my dad saw plenty of such women doing program testing at his work and such women also presumably have a lot of kids and, of course, often have even more kids on the way.
Well, I'm just intrigued by the fact that he didn't force universal suffrage on the Hungarians back in 1907 when the Russians were still very weak and thus neither they nor their allies could actually do anything about this. Waiting until 1917, when FF would have acquired the throne had he lived, would have been a more risky proposition in regards to this.
sillygoose
Well-known member
There was a row in 1905 and FJ threatened to overthrow the Hungarian parliament (Plan U...for Ungarn), since the Hungarians signaled they were going to make the 1907 Ausgleich renegotiations impossible. The deal was that for the Hungarians dropping opposition FJ wouldn't try to alter the deal. Since FJ was fixated on maintaining the empire he didn't want to rock the boat and let it go. They opted to wait for 1917 because FF didn't have the same support in the empire that FJ did; people were sure to fight for FJ, there was no guarantee that they would for FF.
Though one would think that FF being a reformer would have appealed to the troops that belonged to Hungary's ethnic minority groups, no?
A second port could double the trade, though--no? Or would it be easier to just expand Trieste's port in such a scenario?
sillygoose
Well-known member
Not really given the additional costs. They had plenty of ports of the Adriatic anyway though. Trieste was just located in a very geographically favorable area.
Buba
A total creep
Look at the map - all A-H ports were in shit locations, i.e. separated by mountains from the rest of the country. Trst (yup, that's the South Slavic version of name) is the least shitty as it is closest to Austria proper and at the end of a valley.
Other good ports - ARA (Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp) - at end of Danube-Main canal, Constanca - near mouth of Danube. Stettin also would be good if the (first suggested c.1650) Danube-Oder canal was constructed.
Other good ports - ARA (Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp) - at end of Danube-Main canal, Constanca - near mouth of Danube. Stettin also would be good if the (first suggested c.1650) Danube-Oder canal was constructed.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
The Sassanid Empire wasn't "a bunch of weaklings". It was simply exhausted, having just fought the equivalent of a World War. Also, its entire governmental structure was decapitated when Mesopotamia fell, and Mesopotamia is ludicrously vulnerable to invasion from Arabia. This latter factor played a major role in the quick collapse of the Empire, and thus in the swift Muslim conquest.
Moving the government makes a big difference, then. Mespotamia still falls, but pushing beyond Mesopotamia is going to be considerably harder. In fact, it may be decidedly unattractive, because Mesopotamia is the big prize. On the other hand... Mesopotamia is the big prize. If Persia loses that region, it loses its most valuable region. So Persia will be much weakened, after that.
I think that this scenario means that the Muslims conquer Mesopotamia, but after that, Persia is slowly conquered in a series of wars that may last one or even two centuries.
An alternative is that the Muslims consider rump-Persia too uninteresting, and dedicate all their efforts to conquering the Eastern Roman Empire. If this succeeds, they will basically be establishing an ATL Arab equivalent to the Ottoman Empire.
sillygoose
Well-known member
IIRC one of the north German ports being used was the primary reason for the Danube-Elbe canal idea, since it would connect A-H to the main shipping routes and reduce all sorts of transportation costs. Unfortunately the proto-Libertarians in the administration blocked even parliament approved spending to build it in 1904-05. A-H had so much potential in the 20th century if not for the idiots running it and a flawed political system.
FF had to be very careful in how he presented things before his coronation. That might rile up the unruly ethnic groups in the Austrian half of the empire who wanted reforms in their areas. If he could force changes to the Hungarian constitution during/after a rebellion in 1917 over the Ausgleich negotiations that would be one thing and viewed as a punishment to the nobility for rebellion, but if he started talking about it openly before then it would open Pandora's box on electoral reform in the whole empire, which was already a tinderbox of ethnic tensions.
Buba
A total creep
Around 1900 FJ was well past "best by" date and should had been put down.
sillygoose
Well-known member
You're not wrong, but the problem being that given the ethnic tensions and general rickety-ness of the empire him being so long serving and virtually deified by everyone in the empire since his rule is all they had ever known is arguably all that was holding the empire together. He was the symbol of the empire and his death or removal would severely weaken the power of the monarchy and open up demands to end 'the prison of nations'. Even with FJ in charge the Magyar nobility was scheming to break up the empire (not realizing that if independent their people would turn on them) and it was clear that as soon as someone replaced him they'd try something to prevent the Ausgleich from being renewed and replace it with a personal union. So FJ stayed to hold the whole thing together. Not a great way to run a country, but then any reforms might end it, so they were stuck in a rather bizarre stasis from the previous century, which itself was a makeshift mess of necessity.
Frankly I think they should have just ended the Ausgleich in 1907 and just had a personal union with a military alliance and a customs/currency union and coordination on certain policies and things like military production. That would have solved quite a few issues, though several would still be on the table...though those should have been easier to tackle then without the pissing match between the Austrian and Hungarian leaders.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
First of all, we're in a "successive bubbles" pattern, where every economic crisis is "solved" via debt increase (private and public) and monetary debasement, which will make he next crisis inevitable and make it worse. The bigger a building "crisis bubble" gets before it blows apart, the worse the crisis. The longer it's allowed to grow, the bigger it gets. Therefore: an earlier crisis is (marginally) less bad. That makes little difference at the start, but recovery might be slightly faster.
Major political effect: Bush is blamed for it all. His efforts to handle the crisis will do nothing, and he'll be there for several years, very visible, in charge, and failing. 2006 is a landslide for the Congressional Democrats. 2008 is a landslide Presidential victory for them.
Hillary Clinton almost certainly wins the nomination for that election. She can just keep banging the drum that "under the previous Clinton administration, the economy boomed and we had a surplus". That's technically not so accurate, but most people know fuck-all about ecnomic realities anyway. Hillary can play the progressive card ("time for a female President to fix what these entitled old men have ruined!"), especially if she picks a suitably left-leaning running mate. She herself is more the (supposedly!) experienced centrist. If she's not retarded, she just runs constant ads that:
1. endlessly repeat George W. Bush fumbling and saying dumb things;
2. show loads of imagery of clowed-up store-fronts & give alarming numbers about unemployment et cetera, and;
3. have Hillary respond to every Bush quote with "It's the economy, stupid!"
That way, you effectively use a phrase already associated with the Clinton brand, make Bush look dumb, make Clinton look smart, and constantly reinforce the notion that she'll fix things. I don't think she'd be able to lose.
How do you figure this? In OTL, things eventually stabilised, but even by the end of Obama's time in office, things never recovered to pre-crisis levels. That only happened under Trump. A good eight years after the crisis hit.
2008 - 2016 equates to 2005 - 2013. I suggested that recovery might be a bit quicker, but I mean "e fem months", rather than "several years".
So really, the probable outcome here is that Hillary wins in 2008, and we don't really see any real recovery in her first term. She'll get a second term, to be sure: Bush and the GOP will still be seen as the ones who caused the crisis (to a large degree untrue, sine its causes you back decades, but that didn't stop this dumb meme in OTL).
Thing is... we probably won't see much recovery in her second term, either. The OTL recovery may honestly be called the "Trump boom". It literally started the day he won the election, not the day he actually started governing. Hillary, by contrast, will keep doing the same old same old, and it will not work.
So by 2016, the crisis will be over, and the worst of the slump will even be over... but the economy will not quite have recovered to pre-2005 levels. People will feel that it's time for a change. For a different economic approach. For a President who puts American jobs first, not some globalist bureaucrat like Clinton. But not some neo-con like Bush, either. A new kind of Republican. The kind of leader who can... make America great again.
Buba
A total creep
I sometimes wonder about such an Austria which had ditched the Hungarian part. A big hit in status, as population and economy would be in the Italian ballpark. Hopefully keeping Croatia-Slavonia (and ... ewww Bosnia).
10M Germans*, 7M Yugoslavs
, 6,5M Czechs, 4,5M Poles, 3,5M Ukrainians, 2M JewsI admit that Galicia would look unsightly on the map, like a penis enfolded by Russia and Hungary.
* 2M of the twelve million German speakers of A-H were in Hungary
Skallagrim
Well-known member
If push really comes to shove, I think they'd be able to crush the Hungarians, and terminate the dualist structure altogether. The Germans, Croats, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Romanians and Jews in the Hungarian half would surely consider it an improvement.I sometimes wonder about such an Austria which had ditched the Hungarian part. A big hit in status, as population and economy would be in the Italian ballpark. Hopefully keeping Croatia-Slavonia (and ... ewww Bosnia).
10M Germans*, 7M Yugoslavs
I admit that Galicia would look unsightly on the map, like a penis enfolded by Russia and Hungary.
* 2M of the twelve million German speakers of A-H were in Hungary
FWIW, I was specifically thinking about having FF appeal to the Hungarian troops that belong to ethnic minority groups.