Omake # 3 It is less a story and more an attempt to imagine the structure of the French empire (probably in a different way than Antony does; although I think I did not contradict anything he explicitly stated in the story). The existence of sub-levels to the vice-royalties (especially territories) is inspired by DracoLazarus map. I'm not exactly satisfied by the names of the Indian principalities, but that's all I managed with my limited knowledge of the region. Any tip on this point is welcome.
I think I remember that there was a story post with alternate names for some North American cities, but I couldn't find it. If I happen to contradict it with the names I gave to the North American provinces capitals, please tell me, I will correct this post.
Of course, still my own interpretation, still not cannon.
Neither Holy, nor Roman, but definitively an Empire (French Empire, 1902-1922)
In the 19th century, managing the numerous and vast dependencies of the French Kingdom had become an increasingly difficult task, each new conquest bringing more land to tend to, and each new year bringing new subjects to administer.
The proclamation of the French Empire in 1905 gave the French government an opportunity to tidy a bit the situation, operative word being “a bit”. Mainly, the term “colony” has disappeared from the official documents and the various provinces of the empire have been reclassified into new categories (some with brand new names) linked to their size and population. The most significant progress was that now two entities part of the same category shared the same devolved powers and responsibilities (unlike what was previously the case for, as an example, the provinces of Québec and Nivernais). Ensuring Louisiana or North Italy didn’t immediately vote for independence relied on the centralized bans on some parties. The newly formed multi-continental state was organized as follows.
Its capital city was Paris. There had been some very harsh debates as to whether Versailles should be chosen instead, with Paris being demoted to the European France capital. Proponent of the home of the empress advocated for a brand new city to emerge from the ground, new monuments welcoming the imperial institutions in a tremendous show of the French architectural
savoir-faire. The additional show of power by a victor of the Great War would of course only have been unforeseen but welcomed consequence. Rumors have it that Paris only kept its status because it would put the French capital ahead of Tokyo, Pékin (Beijing) or Varsovie (Warsaw) in the alphabetical order of the world’s diplomatic
lingua franca. Most economists rather believe that, so soon after the Great War, France was still in no position to spent vast sums of money on building a new capital when it already got one.
Concerning the highest level institutions, Paris is the home of the Assemblée Impériale (Imperial Assembly), the Sénat (Senate) and is one of the three seats the imperial government.
The imperial assembly fields five representatives by canton impérial (imperial canton), which might, or might not, differ from the “canton” (often dubbed “canton provincial”, provincial canton) used in most, but not all, of the empire’s lands for the purpose of lower-level elections. All imperial cantons have (approximately) the same population, and are redrawn (if needed) every ten years. Within the imperial canton, the five seats are attributed
via a two-turn vote: all lists with less than five percent of the votes are eliminated after the first turn; all those between five and ten percent of the votes must combine with other lists (to reach a total above ten percent) to go to the second turn. After the second turn, seats are distributed proportionally to lists with more than ten percent of the votes.
The senate’s goal is to represent the various local sensibilities. Its seats originate from the various duchies of the old French kingdom and their equivalents in the ex-colonies. By 1922, and after the empress managed to reduce once more the power of the high nobility, it is no longer reserved to aristocrats. Its reats are attributed through a two-turns vote. Only the top two candidates go from first to second turn. If a candidate gets more than half the votes in the first turn, he (or, she, but not in the first years of the empire) immediately wins the election.
The Imperial Assembly normally have the final say when in conflict with the Senate. However, in case of a four fifths majority in the senate and less than fifty five percent in the assembly, the senate can block the assembly’s initiatives (but not promote its owns).
Pondichéry and Québec had long been
de facto, and even in some specific domains
de jure, the capitals of French India and America. The development of brand new methods of fast communication, like the telegraph and the telephone, by allowing near-real time exchanges between Paris and all the French lands, was threatening to make them irrelevant. At least when it came down to matter of international importance. Long was gone the time where the Indian wars where declared, led and concluded from Pondichéry alone without any input from Paris.
However, new means of communication also meant that people were expecting their government to react even faster than before. The central authority was more and more expected to answer as swiftly to a developing situation in Saint Louis as to one in Brest. Needless to say, ministers in Paris did not show a great deal of enthusiasm at the idea of dealing with every minor crisis on the other side of the world in the middle of the night. Thus Pondichéry and Québec found themselves a new purpose. As “decentralized sieges of the government”, they found themselves hosts to a fully-fledged administration, including “delegated minister” (of whatever portfolio) to the Americas or to the Indies. Those delegated ministers would (on top of multiplying the government’s expenses) be in charge of day-to day administration (cutting down the load of the “real” ministers to a more human-manageable level) and fast responses. The two imperial governors (in Pondichéry and Québec) would play the role of delegated prime minister.
Paris would still rule directly over metropolitan France, the Mediterranean islands, Africa (including Aden) and the Atlantic islands. Pondichéry would be in charge of French India, the Indian Ocean and Indonesian islands, Antipodea and those Pacific Ocean islands close to the later. Québec would control America, including the Caribbeans, and the remaining Pacific Ocean islands.
Those three main divisions of the empire were themselves subdivided into a combination of provinces, vice-royalties, principalities and territories. And a few more exotic entities, of course; otherwise things would have been considered too simple.
The four main types of subdivisions originated from the population density differences. Of course, with the passing of time, the evolution of those densities was not uniform, but the divisions generally remained.
Territories were near-uninhabited lands where most of the decision-making is centralized in one of the “three capitals” of the empire. As of 1922, there were two of them: the cold Territoires du Nord-Ouest (North-Western Territories) and the hot Haute Antipodée (Higher Antipodea).
Provinces started as sparsely inhabited lands, like the French ex-colonies in North America. They were delegated the same amount of powers as Vice-Royalties and Principalities, but originally only transfered a trinket of them further down their own subdivisions. The central provincial authority (a provincial governor, along a provincial government and a provincial assembly) is generally completed by a single other level of elected politicians (some kind of city-plus-vast-amount-of-surrounding), but the most populated, like Québec, have already introduced some mid-level assemblies. The French provinces are as follows.
- Under Paris:
- Centrafrique (Centrafrica): capital Faya-Largeau
- Congo: capital Bata
- Côte d’Ivoire: capital Conakry
- Guinée (Guinea): capital Douala
- Libye (Libya): capital Benghazi
- Sénégal: capital Dakar
- Soudan (Sudan): capital Dongola
- Under Pondichéry:
- Antipodée du Nord (North Antipodea): capital Nouvelle Lyon (same geographic position as OTL Darwin, the Batavian city was renamed)
- Basse Antipodée (Lower Antipodea): Bonnes-Eaux (OTL Port Hedland, based on a native name “translated” with that times’ standards)
- Comores (Comoros): capital Mamoudzou
- Maldives: capital Malé (this territory also includes a few islands in the Indian Ocean, like the Andaman and the Chagos)
- Mélanésie française (French Melanesia): capital Suva
- Under Québec:
- Acadie (Acadia): capital Port Royal
- Adamantine: capital La Grande
- Amérique du Sud française (French South America): capital Villeneuve-du-Sud (made up, same geographical position as OTL Punta Arenas)
- Cartier (The debate whether to merge it back into Champlain was fierce. It involved numerous cases of bribery, lies, spread of rumors, bar brawls, street brawls, and even a “brawl” by some not-that-young-anymore delegates on the esplanade of the assembly, which ended in a mere forty seconds, after which the participants were in dire need of catching their breath. The lowest point of the affair was a persistent rumor about a Cartier representative and a she-bear.) Capital: Cartier.
- Champlain: capital La Tourette (OTL French fort)
- Colorado: capital Deux-Rivières (made up, “two-rivers”)
- Grandes Plaines (Great Plains): capital Pierre (OTL French fort)
- Grands Lacs (Great Lakes): capital Pontchartrain
- Labrador: capital Baie-aux-Oies (inspired by OTL Goose Bay)
- Louisiane (Louisiana): capital Bâton-Rouge (yes, New Orleans was pissed, but they lost the war)
- Malouines: capital Port Saint Louis
- Missouri: capital Orléans d’Amérique (Orleans in America) (OTL French fort; the choice of the capital might have something to do with the Louisianian rebellion...)
- Nouvelle Bretagne (New Brittany): capital Nouvelle Angoulême (OTL New York)
- Orléans: capital Duquesne (OTL French fort)
- Polynésie (Polynesia): capital Papeete
- Pacifica: capital Saint Charles du Pacifique (made up, OTL Eureka)
- Québec: capital Québec
- Richelieu: capital Saint Louis du Nord (OTL Saint Louis)
- Suffren: capital Saint Louis du Sud (OTL French fort)
- Terre-Neuve (Newfoundland): capital Plaisance
- Vauvert: capital Cap Triste (made up, OTL Olympia)
- Villars: capital Passe du Nord (OTL Ciudad Juarez, translating its former name)
Vice-royalties were in the beginning moderately populated lands. Much of the delegated powers are actually delegated to their subdivisions. Ideally, a vice-royalty would be divided into régions, themselves divided into départements, and those finally divided into municipalities. However, local realities produced other kinds of subdivisions: vice-royal territories (the empty deserts of Egypt) and various “collectivités à statut particulier” (special status communities) which merged région and département levels in various islands. Each of these levels (except the vice-royal territories) would have their elected government. The vice-royalty level has a bicameral parliament; sub-levels have a single chamber. The French vice-royalties are as follows.
- Under Paris:
- Égypte (Egypt) capital Alexandrie (Alexandria)
- Under Pondichéry:
- Java (and the surrounding islands) capital Jakarta
- Under Québec:
- Saint Domingue et Antilles (Saint Domingue and Antilles) (for historical reasons) capital Port-au-Prince
Metropolitan France is also divided according to the same system. The metropolitan régions are as follow.
- Alsace (capital Strasbourg)
- Anjou-et-Maine (capital Angers)
- Aquitaine (capital Bordeaux)
- Auvergne (capital Clermont-Ferrand)
- Baléares (capital Palma de Majorque)
- Béarn (capital Pau, now including lands south of the Pyrenees)
- Bourbonnais-Berry-Nivernais (later: “Centre”) (capital Bourges)
- Bourgogne (capital Dijon)
- Brabant (capital Bruxelles)
- Bretagne (capital Rennes)
- Catalogne (capital Barcelone)
- Champagne (capital Troyes)
- Corse (capital Bastia)
- Dauphiné (capital Lyon)
- Émilie-Romagne (captial Bologne)
- Flandres (capital Lille)
- Franche-Compté (capital Besançon)
- Île-de-France (capital Paris)
- Languedoc (capital Toulouse)
- Ligurie (capital Gênes)
- Lombardie (capital Milan)
- Lorraine (capital Nancy)
- Navarre (captial Pamplune)
- Orléannais (capital Orléans)
- Palatinat (capital Trèves)
- Pays Basque (capital: Saint Sébastien)
- Picardie (capital Amiens)
- Piedmont (capital Turin)
- Poitou (capital Poitier)
- Provence (capital Aix-en-Provence)
- Rhénanie (capital Aix-la-Chapelle)
- Sardaigne (capital Cagliari)
- Vénitie (capital Venise)
- Wallonie (capital Lièges)
Principalities were created in the highly populated India. They are geographically smaller than provinces and vice-royalties but started with levels of population that would rival those of said vice-royalties. All the fourteen of them are situated in French India. They have the same amount of self-government as provinces and vice-royalties, except where geographical scale comes to matter, as is the case with long distance transport infrastructures (like canals or transcontinental roads and railroads). All the principalities are constitutionally bound to delegate those powers to an
ad hoc authority, whose members are not elected but nominated by the elected representatives of the principalities, with the approval of the imperial government. Principalities have at least two sub-levels of divisions administrated by elected bodies: districts and municipalities. The French principalities are as follows.
- Bas Coromandel (includes Pondichéry)
- Berar
- Bijapur
- Ceylon
- Deccan (far smaller than what the name could imply)
- Gondwana
- Gujarat
- Haut Coromandel
- Konkan
- Mahanadi
- Malabar
- Mysore (far smaller than the kingdom conquered during the Great War)
- Orissa
- Telingana
The remaining lands of the French Empire have various statuses listed as follow.
- Collectivité impériale autonome de Chypres (Cyprus autonomous imperial community), aggregating the powers of vice-royalty and région. It is divided into three départements, further subdivided into municipalities.
- Collectivités impériales (imperial communities): Malte (Malta), Aden and various Atlantic islands aggregate each the powers of région and départements. They depend directly of Metropolitan France and are subdivided into municipalities.
- Collectivités insulaires impériales de l’Océan Indien (Indian Ocean imperial island communities): Bourbon, Maurice, Socotra, the Andaman islands and the Kerguelen islands each aggregate the powers of région, département, … and part of the powers normally reserved to a vice-royalty. They are subdivided into municipalities. The remaining vice-royal powers are exercised by Pondichéry in the name of the imperial government. The vice-royalty of Java started as a collection of such entities, grouped together after the annexation of the Malagasy territories.
- Territoires insulaires antarctiques (Antarctic islands territories): various small islands with no permanent population like the Crozet islands are administered directly from Paris. Clipperton also became part of those territories as the direct consequence of the inability of the representatives of Pacifica and Polynesia to agree upon its status and of the queen, soon-to-be empress, Charlotte growing out of patience. Despite its position north of the equator, the “Antarctic” part of the name was kept, mostly to avoid the bother of fighting bureaucratic inertia on this subject.
- Administration militaire de la base de Sambava (Sambava base military administration): Malagasy territory under the direct rule of the imperial government (more specifically: Pondichéry), with a few delegated powers (parts of those normally reserved for municipalities) for the civilian parts of the territory.
- Protectorat français de Palestine (Palestine French Protectorate): technically an independent state which happens to have the very same government and head of state as the French Empire, and to be situated on lands belonging to the French Empire but leased on a day-by-day basis. For those who consider that any part of a sentence following a “technically” can be safely ignored, it is just a part of the empire where the laws are slightly different.
All said and done, this is a state where bureaucracy is in no risk of extinction.
EDIT: corrected typo on a province name
