Irritating clichés about Pre-1900 AH

[Alexander Hamilton]

I am shocked, shocked that none of the erudite and witty contributors to this excellent thread have not pointed out three of my most annoying AH cliches. They (surprise, surprise) involve Alexander Hamilton:
1. AH was ineligible to be elected President of the U.S. because he was from some exotic Caribbean island (Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, etc. etc.). I sincerely hope that people will take the time to read the Constitution before making this assertion.
2. The reverse of above. The Constitution was specifically drafted to allow AH to be elected President and he would have been elected President if he had just avoided Maria Reynolds. I don't think so. AH was a brave soldier, a great lawyer, a brilliant writer and a clear headed thinker about the new Republic's economic needs and its possible future. He also apparently never had an unspoken or unwritten thought, was constantly aggrivating friends and potential allies and infuriating political opponents. Not a good personality profile for a successful politician. He was also "the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler" as John Adams so succintly put it and no marriage into the Schuylers or success on the battlefield or the courtroom was going to change that. Secretary of the Treasury? Sure. Chief Magistrate of the Republic? No way.
3. And my all time favorite (?) AH alternate history cliche; AH was the evil genius of monarchism and proto fascism who with a few lucky breaks would have imposed on the Republic a British style monarchy, a Napoleonic empire (with himself as Emperor) or a military dictatorship; take your pick. All according to his long held and secret plans hatched when he was growing up in Bermuda (or was it Jamaica?). In reality, AH was not Dr. Evil but one of many men of property and commerce (we now call them the Federalists) who wanted a stronger and more effective national government and who was willing to make the effort to convince the people of the various states by accepted political means that this was a good idea. A 21st Century "power to the people" democrat? Certainly not. A monarchist or proto fascist? No.

Your obedient servant

 

[The Uchronian]

The "Occasional Raiding Parties" defeated the Cumans, Poland, Georgia, Alania, Volga Bulgars, utterly wrecked the Hungarian royal power to the point where the King was running from castle to castle in Croatia in utter secret, and most importantly set back the Rus so far that upstart Lithuania could make gains against them (whereas before the balance was completely the reverse, Galicia alone was a match for Poland or Hungary, Galicia+Vladimir could do whatever they pleased to whatever other royal army they decided to pick on, good thing it didn't happen all that often).

I severely doubt the utility of such prolonged operations, but to say that the Mongols "barely made it over the Urals"...

Okay, slight misstatement on my part, and I apologize. They were able to do quite a bit of damage in Poland, Hungary, etc. but as far as I know, they weren't actually able to hold everything for all that long, outside of some parts of Russia.

 

[Enigmajones]

Okay, slight misstatement on my part, and I apologize. They were able to do quite a bit of damage in Poland, Hungary, etc. but as far as I know, they weren't actually able to hold everything for all that long, outside of some parts of Russia.

Well they did have that Gigantic Empire in Asia they had to keep control of.

 

[Wolfpaw]

Well they did have that Gigantic Empire in Asia they had to keep control of.

And utterly devastated everything they didn't manage to hold.

 

[Inarius]

What irritate me most is the trend to make "minor" culture/state survive.
People seems here to love make some things survive over the ages like it would not change.

After that, the lack of neutral and global point of view. People here often forget some part of a problem (economy, culture, religion) to focus on military conquest. I could also call this influence of the videogames !

Last : Thinking that if with a POD you can avoid an event, its result in OTL won't happen (the best example is the germanic invasion of the roman empire). Can't you think that, sometimes if this event had happened, it's because the situation had changed so much that it was likely to happen ?

The germanic invasion was a consequence of the weaknesses of the Roman empire and not the contrary ! Idem for 90% of the revolutions/collapse/expansion in the time.

 

[wkwillis]

I disagree. Slavery certainly would exist up until 1870, with the war fresh in memory. Id sat 1885, or so, is when the first states (it would be on the basis of states rights) abolish it. Florida would go first.

The confederate constitution specifically forbid confederate states from abolishing slavery. I suppose the states could have seceded from the confederacy and then abolished slavery.

 

[wkwillis]

Germanscrew? The Germans are currently united in one primary state, which dominates the continent economically and politically, and is likely to do so increasingly in future. The rest of the Germans are in two extremely wealth states of Switzerland and Austria.

And the rest are in the even more extremely wealthy state of Luxemburg.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

But it is actually quite likely! Cortez was EXTREMELY lucky that his adventure into Mexico ended the way it did, as well as the Aztecs grossly underestimating the Spanish. It could very easily have gone south.

That's exactly damn right.

 

[Snake Featherston]

But it is actually quite likely! Cortez was EXTREMELY lucky that his adventure into Mexico ended the way it did, as well as the Aztecs grossly underestimating the Spanish. It could very easily have gone south.

You mean Cortez and his 100,000 Indian allies that wanted to be Huey Tlatoani instead of the Huey Tlatoani. It wasn't Spaniards v. Indians, it was Spaniards-Indians v. Tenochtitlan.

 

[wolf_brother]

You mean Cortez and his 100,000 Indian allies that wanted to be Huey Tlatoani instead of the Huey Tlatoani. It wasn't Spaniards v. Indians, it was Spaniards-Indians v. Tenochtitlan.

And even then they nearly lost. Disease and pure luck played a greater part in that campaign than force of arms.

 

[Snake Featherston]

And even then they nearly lost. Disease and pure luck played a greater part in that campaign than force of arms.

Well, to be blunt the one time that the mighty whities tried to take on the primitive Stone Age Indians with the tools of the Early Modern era they escaped on a bridge of corpses by the skin of their teeth. Europeans that tried to bull in without divide and conquer failed, the ones that used divide and conquer won as part of a coalition, the key part, but still only *a* part. Pizarro entered a scenario where the population had been halved by plague and further ravaged by civil war and where the military, the greatest in Indigenous America was over-centralized and cumbersome.

It's as if a freebooter were to enter the USSR circa 1922 and take Vladimir Lenin and Josef Trotsky captive.

 

[RGB]

Well, to be blunt the one time that the mighty whities tried to take on the primitive Stone Age Indians with the tools of the Early Modern era they escaped on a bridge of corpses by the skin of their teeth. Europeans that tried to bull in without divide and conquer failed, the ones that used divide and conquer won as part of a coalition, the key part, but still only *a* part. Pizarro entered a scenario where the population had been halved by plague and further ravaged by civil war and where the military, the greatest in Indigenous America was over-centralized and cumbersome.

It's as if a freebooter were to enter the USSR circa 1922 and take Vladimir Lenin and Josef Trotsky captive.

If the local underdogs could defeat the Mexica, they would have defeated the Mexica. They couldn't. They spent the last couple of centuries getting their ass handed to them on a plate.

Step in a handful of cutthroats, and suddenly the Mexica topple within a couple of years.

It's not a case of "mighty whitey", it's both history and obvious. While all factors need to be listed, you can't really ignore the central difference between the two scenarios. A few hundred Spaniards are a tremendous force multiplier.

But hey, it's not like a handful of Europeans brought down Songhai (the Moroccan army was mostly European and mercenary, like Pizarro force), or conquered Siberia, or overthrew the entire Indian Ocean status quo, or got involved in Horn of Africa Wars so successfully that the only thing that stopped them were another Euro-Mediterranean force, namely the Turks.

Once is luck, twice is luck, all the damn time is somewhat of a pattern. Yes, European freebooters of the time die like any other men, but they also win, a lot.

 

[Snake Featherston]

If the local underdogs could defeat the Mexica, they would have defeated the Mexica. They couldn't. They spent the last couple of centuries getting their ass handed to them on a plate.

Step in a handful of cutthroats, and suddenly the Mexica topple within a couple of years.

It's not a case of "mighty whitey", it's both history and obvious. While all factors need to be listed, you can't really ignore the central difference between the two scenarios. A few hundred Spaniards are a tremendous force multiplier.

But hey, it's not like a handful of Europeans brought down Songhai (the Moroccan army was mostly European and mercenary, like Pizarro force), or conquered Siberia, or overthrew the entire Indian Ocean status quo, or got involved in Horn of Africa Wars so successfully that the only thing that stopped them were another Euro-Mediterranean force, namely the Turks.

Once is luck, twice is luck, all the damn time is somewhat of a pattern. Yes, European freebooters of the time die like any other men, but they also win, a lot.

What you're neglecting is La Noche Triste, the nine attempts to conquer Florida which failed, the 40-year-timespan needed to conquer the Tawantinsuyu, the successful revolt of Pope in what's now New Mexico, the Auracaunian War, the Russo-Japanese and First Italo-Ethiopian Wars, that the Chinese army won every single land battle against the French in the Franco-Chinese War......

I assume that in nine times of conquering Mexico that all nine attempts were made by Europeans as intelligent as Pizarro and Cortez, no? The problem was that Europeans couldn't do anything if the locals all wanted them booted out on their asses, this is still so today. See: US intervention in Mogadishu. And you're right, Russia is generally not considered European by the people who admire the "Western way of War", it's seen as "quasi-Eastern" while the force that altered the whole Indian Subcontinent dramatically was not the British but the Mughals who were in the big Indian Empires business first.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

3. And my all time favorite (?) AH alternate history cliche; AH was the evil genius of monarchism and proto fascism who with a few lucky breaks would have imposed on the Republic a British style monarchy, a Napoleonic empire (with himself as Emperor) or a military dictatorship; take your pick. All according to his long held and secret plans hatched when he was growing up in Bermuda (or was it Jamaica?). In reality, AH was not Dr. Evil but one of many men of property and commerce (we now call them the Federalists) who wanted a stronger and more effective national government and who was willing to make the effort to convince the people of the various states by accepted political means that this was a good idea. A 21st Century "power to the people" democrat? Certainly not. A monarchist or proto fascist? No.

This is subverted in American King, in which Hamilton is a Republican campaigning against Jackson's Monarchy.

 

[Revolutionary Todyo]

What's really annoying you with Pre-1900 misconsception and clichés in Alternate History?

Dark Ages were..well dark, duh.
Carolingian culture and scholarship want to talk to you in private.

And when they're done there's a few thousand Irish monks who also want a word

European Balance of Power
Every major power of Europe will strive to dominate the others. Especially France and Germany.

 

[RGB]

What you're neglecting is La Noche Triste,

Which was a terrible loss (probably, given the initial numbers) of a few dozen men, and resulted in utter destruction of the most fearsome state in the area mere months later, and wouldn't have happened at all if Cortez didn't have to deal with his bad Cuban past.

the nine attempts to conquer Florida which failed, the 40-year-timespan needed to conquer the Tawantinsuyu, the successful revolt of Pope in what's now New Mexico, the Auracaunian War...

Yes. Guerrilla tactics and asymmetrical warfare work against militarily superior opponents, and they must, because the regular army and the statehood have already been defeated and only the people are left to resist.

I could add the Chukchi wars if you like, and the Chichimeca. But these are not regular conquests, and even so, the Spanish (or Russians) tended to win them rather than lose them. We know the exceptions because they are remarkable.

the Russo-Japanese and First Italo-Ethiopian Wars, that the Chinese army won every single land battle against the French in the Franco-Chinese War......

Forgive me, but that's severely out of the discussion scope. Anything past the 17th c. is another story, and anything that pits two industrial powers is certainly not the same as Cortez vs. Montezuma.

The problem was that Europeans couldn't do anything if the locals all wanted them booted out on their asses, this is still so today. See: US intervention in Mogadishu.

Again, asymmetrical warfare, and nothing to do with the initial conquest at all. Further, why would it be natural for traditional enemies to always ally with each other against the Europeans anyway? The argument that if the indigenous states behaved completely contrary to normal expectations, Spanish conquest would have failed, and we should expect that to happen more often than the reverse (see cliche) - well, it doesn't make sense.

And you're right, Russia is generally not considered European by the people who admire the "Western way of War", it's seen as "quasi-Eastern" while the force that altered the whole Indian Subcontinent dramatically was not the British but the Mughals who were in the big Indian Empires business first.

I was talking about the Portuguese, who really were a tiny handful and had the general run of the place until the Turks intervened.

Russia and Turkey, and even North Africa, I generally see as European/Mediterranean in the 16th/17th c. Certainly the differences in tactics and technology were small.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Which was a terrible loss of a few dozen men, and resulted in utter destruction of the most fearsome state in the area mere months later, and wouldn't have happened at all if Cortez didn't have to deal with his bad Cuban past.

From a group of 200 the loss of a few dozen can be extremely crucial. If Cortez had himself had 100,000 a few dozen would be the chump change of war, he did not. His success was due to his political savvy, not European success in war. Unless Florida attracted a particular group of dumbass soldiers.

Yes. Guerrilla tactics and asymmetrical warfare work against militarily superior opponents, and they must, because the regular army and the statehood have already been defeated and only the people are left to resist.

That's not what happened in Florida those nine times, unless we assume that in nine consecutive times the Spanish came up with nine expeditions led by nine dumbasses.

I could add the Chukchi wars if you like, and the Chichimeca. But these are not regular conquests, and even so, the Spanish (or Russians) tended to win them rather than lose them. We know the exceptions because they are remarkable.

And because they point out that militarily Europeans won by exploiting native politics together with military force, not by crude brute force alone. If one intends to use military brute force against the hostile natives one might find oneself at Moscow at one point and then committing suicide in a bunker at the end of it all. If one exploits politics, one gains immense territory and political power.

forgive me, but that's severely out of the discussion scope. Anything past the 17th c. is another story, and anything that pits two industrial powers is certainly not the same as Cortez vs. Montezuma.

By what standard is the Qing Empire of the 1880s an industrial power?

Again, asymmetrical warfare, and nothing to do with the initial conquest at all. Further, why would it be natural for traditional enemies to always ally with each other against the Europeans anyway? The argument that if the indigenous states behaved completely contrary to normal expectations, Spanish conquest would have failed, and we should expect that to happen more often than the reverse (see cliche) - well, it doesn't make sense.

The problem is the assumption that handfuls of Europeans won over immense indigenous hordes by brute force, not by combining brute force with political maneuverings. Cortez was very good at politics, he was not just a simple brutish soldier. Albeit noting that there was politics involved and quite complicated ones at that is real history, not the heroic myth that people want that history to be.

Russia and Turkey, and even North Africa, I generally see as European/Mediterranean in the 16th/17th c. Certainly the differences in tactics and technology were small.

You might, a lot of people don't, even though these "non-European" states occupied a fair chunk of Europe and were key players in European politics from then up until now. European is a slippery word with no consistent definition.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

Well, to be blunt the one time that the mighty whities tried to take on the primitive Stone Age Indians with the tools of the Early Modern era they escaped on a bridge of corpses by the skin of their teeth. Europeans that tried to bull in without divide and conquer failed, the ones that used divide and conquer won as part of a coalition, the key part, but still only *a* part. Pizarro entered a scenario where the population had been halved by plague and further ravaged by civil war and where the military, the greatest in Indigenous America was over-centralized and cumbersome.

It's as if a freebooter were to enter the USSR circa 1922 and take Vladimir Lenin and Josef Trotsky captive.

Little known fact, the first real battle between Mesoamericans and Europeans was between the force of a Maya batab of some minor province (at least I think Moch Couoh was a batab, he may have been a halach uinic though, either way Chakanputun wasn't exactly massive kingdom) and a Spanish force of roughly 200 soldiers and sailors at a place called Costa de la Mala Pelea. It was a resounding Maya victory, at least 50 Spaniards died and all the rest save for one were wounded. In any case, RGB is seriously underestimating the importance of the native allies. The way Cortez fought the Aztecs was simply using native tactics, save for the siege of Tenochtitlan. The way the locals fought was to have their armies collide and fight while trying to create or exploit a gap or a flank to destroy the enemy. What Cortez did was use his Spaniards as extremely effective shock troops, plunging through the ranks with cavalry and steel, to be followed by legions of Tlaxcallan warriors. But without the Tlaxcallan warriors he'd be dead in no time. And La Noche Triste wasn't some minor little incident where he lost a few guys, he came inches from losing his entire army and his own life. Luck alone saved him there.

 

[RGB]

In any case, RGB is seriously underestimating the importance of the native allies. The way Cortez fought the Aztecs was simply using native tactics, save for the siege of Tenochtitlan. The way the locals fought was to have their armies collide and fight while trying to create or exploit a gap or a flank to destroy the enemy. What Cortez did was use his Spaniards as extremely effective shock troops, plunging through the ranks with cavalry and steel, to be followed by legions of Tlaxcallan warriors. But without the Tlaxcallan warriors he'd be dead in no time. And La Noche Triste wasn't some minor little incident where he lost a few guys, he came inches from losing his entire army and his own life. Luck alone saved him there.

RGB is just being contrarian, at the heart of it. I fully appreciate the very complex array of factors that was involved, but I find the dismissal of the actual Spanish fighting ability kind of annoying.

If they weren't noticeably a force to be reckoned with, a few hundred or so couldn't have done what they did. If they were a non-factor, the Aztecs or the Incas would have had serious rivals capable of taking on them on their own without the Spanish. If they weren't too much to handle in anything approaching respectable numbers, they would have been crushed by their former allies as soon as the Aztecs fell; but they were not.

To assume that they ONLY won because of politics is to assume that all native leaders were terminally stupid, much like Snake's 9 Stupid Dead Spanish Generals in Florida.

So while there's a paramount need to describe HOW exactly does such a lopsided conquest happen, I disagree that it happening is unrealistic to the point of being an annoying cliche. I find it actually, quite likely, all in all, one just needs to work out the details, and the ability to deliver death is a major factor in the "divide and conquer politics". You cannot divide and conquer if you cannot conquer in principle.

 

[Snake Featherston]

RGB is just being contrarian, at the heart of it. I fully appreciate the very complex array of factors that was involved, but I find the dismissal of the actual Spanish fighting ability kind of annoying.

If they weren't noticeably a force to be reckoned with, a few hundred or so couldn't have done what they did. If they were a non-factor, the Aztecs or the Incas would have had serious rivals capable of taking on them on their own without the Spanish. If they weren't too much to handle in anything approaching respectable numbers, they would have been crushed by their former allies as soon as the Aztecs fell; but they were not.

To assume that they ONLY won because of politics is to assume that all native leaders were terminally stupid, much like Snake's 9 Stupid Dead Spanish Generals in Florida.

So while there's a paramount need to describe HOW exactly does such a lopsided conquest happen, I disagree that it happening is unrealistic to the point of being an annoying cliche. I find it actually, quite likely, all in all, one jut needs to work out the details.

Except I did not dismiss the Spanish, I credited them with the ability to exploit politics among the locals to the point that they almost always overran any area they stayed in too long. That actually gives them more credit then their using guns and swords to play king of the mountain.