Spring Triumphant

Peaceful transition to liberal constitutionalism occurred in the Netherlands, while Britain remained immune to the revolutionary wave since it had enacted several important liberal reforms during the last two decades. The British regarded the victory of liberalism on the continent with sympathy, and deemed the unification of Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia a useful counterbalance to the power of France and Russia. However, they disliked Russian expansionism in the Balkans and the Middle East, since they deemed it a serious potential threat to their own imperial interests in India. Therefore, when renewed controversy between Russia and the Ottoman Empire about the right of Christian minorities led to a new Russo-Turkish war, Britain intervened to oppose the Russians and convinced France to join them. Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Scandinavia gradually joined the anti-Russian coalition to affirm their own interests in Eastern Europe. The war ended in a decisive Russian defeat and the peace settlement largely forced Russia back within its pre-Napoleonic western borders.

Scandinavia annexed Finland and the United Baltic Duchy of Latvia-Estonia as new member states of its federal union. Poland became independent with Congress Poland, Podlachia, Galicia, and Lithuania. Hungary formed a confederation with the Romanian territories of Bessarabia, Bukovina, Moldavia, and Wallachia. German support for the restoration of Polish independence did a lot to ensure friendly relations between the Germans and the Poles. The subsequent agreement to partition the Province of Posen largely settled the remaining grievances between the two nations. Much the same way, the experience of brutal Russian rule made the Romanians much more agreeable to accept a political union with liberal Hungary, especially once Moldavia and Wallachia got confederal autonomy.

The union with Romania paved the way to a general federal reform of the Hungarian state: the Croats got pretty much the same kind of autonomy as the Danubian Romanians, while the Slovaks and the Transylvanian Romanians got devolution and a confirmation of their cultural rights. Ethnic Germans got an autonomous principality of their own in Transdanubia, the Banat, and Transylvania. This settlement was far from perfect - recurrent haggling and bickering between its component nationalities about the political and administrative status of certain territories became a proverbial feature of the Hungarian state. However, it went a good way to ensure the union was significantly more stable and functional than the Habsburg Empire would have been in the same circumstances.

Over time, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Hungary formed a remarkably stable political, economic, and military bloc, commonly known as Mitteleuropa, the Central Powers, or the Quadruple Alliance. Its features included a common liberal character, compatible and often complementary strategic interests, a defensive military alliance, and a customs and monetary union. The Central European Economic and Monetary Union established a bimetallic (gold and silver) standard. It required that all contracting states strike freely exchangeable gold coins and silver coins according to common specifications. The economic union between the Mitteleuropa countries fostered their vigorous industrialization and economic development since the middle 19th century.

Unification allowed the vast economic potential of Germany to bloom and the country evolved into the industrial giant of Europe. Much the same way if on a lesser scale, united Italy transformed into an industrialized great power. The Italians reaped the fruits of economic reforms and foreign investments with steady growth of industry in the northern regions and modern agriculture and tourism in the southern ones. The government decided to set up a public school system modeled on the German system and make strong investments to boost literacy and spread knowledge of national language among the Italian citizens. The process also considerably improved the socio-economic status of Poland and Hungary and their governments took similar measures to combat illiteracy. Only the parallel ongoing transformation of the United States into an economic superpower surpassed the frantic pace of industrialization and socio-economic development in the Mitteleuropa bloc. A series of foresighted military reforms turned the German army into the most powerful and efficient European military, and the Italians closely imitated the German model, bringing their own army to a similar level of efficiency.

Defeat pushed Russia into a comprehensive program of political, socio-economic, and military reforms. It considerably modernized Russia and substantially increased its strength. However, it did not eliminate the basic authoritarian character of the Russian state and the gap with Western and Central Europe did not entirely disappear.

Resurgent tensions between France, Germany, and Italy exploded into war. The Netherlands joined the conflict since the Dutch felt threatened by French expansionist ambitions on the Flanders. To secure their eastern flank, the Poles and the Hungarians went on a war footing but only provided a limited amount of help to their allies. For the same reason, the Germans and the Italians made a deal with Russia to guarantee its friendly neutrality in exchange for CP support of Russian expansion in the Ottoman Balkans. Britain stayed neutral since it distrusted French expansionist ambitions in the Low Countries and the Rhineland. Against the expectations of many observers, the CP alliance achieved a decisive victory against the French. The German and Italian armies secured an impressive sequence of victories against the French ones, and overrun northern and eastern France.

The French stubbornly refused to acknowledge defeat for a good while, but eventually had to beg for peace after Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles fell to siege. A French civil war between far-leftist revolutionaries and a victorious coalition of conservatives and moderate republicans complicated the situation for a while but after its end, a peace treaty became possible. By its terms, Germany annexed Alsace, half of Lorraine, and northern Romandy; Italy got Savoy, southern Romandy, Corsica, and a border correction in the Alps. The Netherlands took Hainaut and the French Flanders. France had to pay a large war indemnity, and recognize Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya as belonging in the German-Italian spheres of influence. France eventually recovered a semblance of order as a weak republic, but remained plagued by political instability and after a few years it experienced a conservative Bourbon restoration.

Attempts to provide political autonomy and a responsible government to the British North American settler colonies and merge them in an autonomous confederation broke down due to resistance from the oligarchic cliques that controlled the governments of Upper Canada and Lower Canada and contrasts between the colonies. The British put down uprisings from frustrated radicals in the Canadian colonies without excessive effort and this success ultimately encouraged them to maintain the status quo. The situation prevented any real progress towards reform and fostered an atmosphere of frustration and discontent in the Canadian colonies. This gradually drove a sizable portion of the Canadians to develop pro-US and republican sympathies, despite the Loyalist heritage of the English-speaking population and religious and cultural differences between the Franco-Canadians and the Americans.

Groups of Canadian republicans and irredentist Irish expatriates (the Fenians) organized in US territory and started to launch raids into Canada, with the intent to liberate it from British rule or to use it as a bargaining chip to force Britain to give Ireland independence. The Canadian rebels and the Fenians initially reaped some serious successes, throwing the Canadian militias into disarray and overrunning large areas of Canada along the US-Canadian border. They got a serious amount of support from the Canadian settlers that were unhappy with British colonial rule and had developed pro-US and republican sympathies. The British government started deploying troops in Canada, allowing the British to recover the lost areas and defeat most of the rebel and Fenian forces, although they were unable to suppress them entirely. The situation caused tensions between Britain and America to increase considerably: the British largely blamed the USA for the raids and general unrest in Canada, while the Americans harbored widespread sympathy for the rebels and regarded British imperial power in North America with much antipathy.

Russia started to reap dividends from its pact with the CP by supporting the agitation against Ottoman rule of Balkan and Middle Eastern nationalities and Christian communities. The tense situation exploded in several uprisings backed by the intervention of de facto autonomous Serbia and Greece. The Ottoman forces did various well-publicized atrocities to repress them that antagonized European public opinion. Russia declared war to Turkey with protection of persecuted Christians as their casus belli. Russian intervention turned the tide of the conflict as the Russian forces gradually pushed the Ottomans out of the Balkans, overrun eastern Anatolia, and besieged Constantinople. Being true to their deal, the Central Powers supported the Russian offensive by giving it free passage towards the Balkans through their territory. They exploited the opportunity to occupy various Balkan and North African territories they wished to acquire, including Bosnia, Albania, Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya.

Success drove the Russians to increase their gains by expanding the conflict to Persia. The Persians soon suffered the same kind of decisive defeat as the Ottomans and the Russian forces overrun northwestern Iran. Eventually the situation came to a head as the Russian forces conquered Constantinople and Teheran, and reached northern Syria and Mesopotamia. The Turkish and Persian military collapse triggered a chaotic collapse of Ottoman rule and authority across the Middle East.

Britain and France intervened in the conflict to limit Russian gains when their warnings went unheeded. Alliance with France gave Britain confidence to force a decision on the battlefield but turned disastrous since it drove Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands to join the conflict and form an alliance of convenience with Russia. Poland and Hungary mobilized as well to support their allies but initially took a limited role in the conflict against France and Britain, since they remained suspicious of Russia and they were distant from most theaters of the war. The Hungarians, however, took a significant role in the occupation and defense of the Balkans since they had an important stake of their own in the settlement of the region.

The French were very eager for a “revanche” against the Central Powers with British help but their country was still recovering from the recent upheavals of a disastrous defeat, enemy occupation, civil war, and regime change. France was in no real shape yet to fight a general war, even with British assistance. To improve the chances of their coalition, the British and the French persuaded Spain to join the conflict on their side, with the promise of various colonial gains and economic rewards. Portugal, too, joined the Western coalition due to its status as a client state of Britain. In the end, however, this proved far from sufficient since France was not truly fit to match German-Italian power even with British and Spanish assistance and the Western coalition had to fight on multiple fronts. Moreover, Spain’s contribution to the war effort was questionable due to its chronic political instability and backwardness, and further trouble arose in North America.

American public opinion had taken an anti-British stance due to events in Canada. Once the war in Europe started this much worsened once the Anglo-French enacted a blockade of the Eastern powers and US trade considerably suffered as a result. History rhymed as the situation of 1812 repeated and the USA declared war to Britain, France, and Spain. The British scrambled to redeploy a sizable portion of their military power to North America and felt the bite of overextension on multiple fronts. However, they still expected a relatively quick and easy victory against the ‘colonials’ since they underestimated US power and neglected the military value of ACW experience. The Americans rose in patriotic mobilization against the overbearing British Empire and its allies; they engaged in a massive effort to rebuild the vast army they had created to fight the civil war. Some lingering exhaustion from the ACW existed, but it was not a serious problem thanks to the relatively quick end of that conflict and the success of Reconstruction.

Yugoslavia and Greece joined the Russian sphere of influence, which now spanned the Balkans and the Near East. Poland and Hungary remained part of the German-Italian sphere of influence and Occitania and Brittany joined them. Mitteleuropa now spanned most of Europe with the formation of the Germanic and Latin unions and the subjugation of France. The Germans and the Italians shared few illusions about the attitudes of the French towards their hegemony but also assumed they had brought France so low it ceased to be a serious threat. The war consolidated their strategic partnership and they strengthened their bloc with the establishment of a Pan-European economic and monetary union and military alliance. The CEMU became the European Economic and Monetary Union, dropping the 'Central' label.

The Central Powers and Russia put down all unrest in the Arab lands of the former Ottoman Empire and carved them up in a few client states of theirs. They established Palestine and Lebanon as a homeland and haven for those Middle Eastern Christians and Jews who avoided annexation by a European state. Over time, it also came to experience a considerable amount of Jew and Christian immigration from Europe and Russia. To give political structure to this new entity the victor powers revived the medieval Kingdom of Jerusalem. Syria and Mesopotamia became the Kingdom of Greater Syria under the Hashemite dynasty. The Arabian Peninsula became the Kingdom of Rashidi Arabia under the Rashidi dynasty. Egypt became a Kingdom as well and kept Sudan. Greater Syria and Rashidi Arabia became client states of Russia, while Egypt became a client of the Central Powers. Persia got Baluchistan and western Afghanistan, Russia annexed the northern portion of the Emirate, and British India got the southeastern area. The Central Powers and Russia agreed to share control of the Suez Canal and influence on the Kingdom of Jerusalem on equal terms.

A vast mass expulsion of Muslims from conquered territories in Europe and the Near East occurred that the victor powers (and European public opinion at large) supported or tolerated out of their own anti-Islamic prejudice. The vast majority of Muslims in the Balkans, the western Anatolian coast, the Aegean islands, Cyprus, Palestine, Lebanon, and eastern Anatolia (Turks, Kurds, Chechens, Circassians, and Abkhaz) suffered ethnic cleansing and had to immigrate to Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Greater Syria, and Rashidi Arabia. The mass expulsion also came to include most of the Muslims in the Caucasus region, which the Russians had eventually managed to pacify after a savage decades-long struggle.

They were mostly replaced by expansion of autochthonous Christian groups and nationalities (Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, Assyrians, and Maronites), resettlement of Russian, Belarusians, and Ukrainian immigrants in the Russian territories, and immigration of Middle Eastern and European Jews and Christians to Palestine and Lebanon. There were a few exceptions to this mass-expulsion pattern; they mostly involved those nationalities deemed sufficiently loyal, liable to conversion and cultural assimilation, or simply not worth the effort. These more fortunate cases included the Albanians, Azerbaijanis, and Muslim Bosnians. However, in most cases even these surviving Muslim communities ended up converting to Christianity or picking a secular and lukewarm attitude towards Islam because of European rule and cultural influence.

Despite their liberal political character, the Germanic and Latin Unions also ended up enacting a similar colonial policy in North Africa, although in this case there was some genuine acceptance of natives that showed willingness to collaborate European rule and go along with cultural assimilation. Reasons for this included the Central Powers' wish to secure their economic and strategic control of the Mediterranean, Italy’s drive to absorb its ‘Fourth Shore’, and Iberia's long-standing aspirations for expansion in North Africa. The Germanics and the Latins in their respective North African colonies applied more or less the same ruthless mix of settler colonization, forced assimilation of collaborationist natives, and extermination or ethnic cleansing of rebel elements to accomplish Europeanization of their North African colonies. Northwest Africa became the target of extensive European settlement the colonial authorities encouraged with economic incentives and infrastructure development. Despite desperate Arab and Berber resistance, it looked like Northwest Africa was bound to become an extension of Europe in a few decades, much the same way Islam had largely ceased to exist in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and large portions of the Middle East.

The USA annexed the rest of North America. The war gave Manifest Destiny a massive boost and persuaded the American elites and public opinion that national security absolutely required complete control and undisputed US rule of the North American continent. This strategic imperative overrode any possible concern about the addition of people of different race, ethnicity, language, or religion to the American nation. Because of the circumstances that had led to America’s entry in the war, many Canadians had developed pro-US and republican sympathies in their opposition to British colonial rule, and most others at least deemed union with the USA beneficial in economic and political terms or simply inevitable. Therefore, incorporation of the Canadian section in the Union and the American political system occurred remarkably easily. Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and Columbia soon became US states, and the rest of Western Canada was set for statehood once it achieved an appropriate level of development, same as the other Western US territories. Prince Edward’s Island merged with Nova Scotia due to insufficient population to become a US state on its own.

Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, and the British and French colonies in the Caribbean became US territories. Their Black population was included in the ‘Liberia program’ of mass resettlement to West Africa. The European powers acquiesced to the US demand to cede their territorial possessions in the Western Hemisphere, so Russia sold Alaska to the USA and the Germanic Union ceded Greenland, the Danish West Indies, and the Dutch Antilles. In a similar way, Columbia agreed to cede Panama to the USA. Venezuela and Brazil partitioned British, Dutch, and French Guyana, and Argentina got the Falkland Islands. The peace treaty acknowledged the Monroe Doctrine as part of international law.

The Americans and the Central Powers tried to win independence for Ireland at the peace table, but they failed since they had not enough advantage to impose such an onerous concession on Britain. Therefore, the British were eventually able to quell unrest in Ireland. For similar reasons, the British and the Russians agreed to set the border between their spheres of influence in Central Asia on the western outskirts of the Indus River basin. In the immediate postwar period, France experienced massive political backlash from defeat, the brutal peace settlement, and economic collapse caused by the crippling reparations and territorial losses, which took the form of a socialist revolution. The Central Powers, however, were unwilling to let a socialist revolutionary state exist on their borders that might become a haven for far-leftist subversion across Europe. They also feared it would become a vehicle for French revanchism, especially once unrest seemingly started to spread to Occitania. Therefore, a CP expeditionary corps marched into France, easily defeated the revolutionary French army, and restored a moderate government in Paris. They likewise suppressed all revolutionary and pro-French unrest in Occitania. After the intervention, however, the victor powers realized they had to do something besides military repression to stabilize France. Consequently, an international conference significantly mitigated the reparations regime and granted France various economic relief measures.

Out of desperation for the future of their nation, a few French politicians and intellectuals conceived the idea of an Anglo-French union, on the model of the Germanic and Latin states. The idea gained momentum among the weary French populace, and took popularity in Britain since it seemed a good way to counterbalance the overwhelming power of the Central Powers and Russia. In a few years, negotiations led to the establishment of the Anglo-French union, with joint citizenship, defense, foreign, financial, and economic policies. Since they were reluctant to undergo another conflict with Britain, the Central Powers grudgingly allowed the union to form. The French willingly gave up republicanism and allegiance to the Bourbon or the Bonaparte as failed experiments and embraced the British monarchy as their own head of state. In exchange for this show of allegiance, the British reigning royal house, which had already renamed itself the House of Windsor and abandoned all tiles held under the German Crown during the war, again renamed itself the House of Windsor-Versailles.

Brittany remained mostly immune to postwar revolutionary unrest that swept France and troubled Occitania, mostly because Breton nationalism proved sufficiently efficient to establish an alternate identity for its people, especially given the sorry state of France immediately after the war. Ruling Breton nationalists strived to entrench their newfound independence by emphasizing the Celtic character of Brittany and its role as a haven and model for all the other Celtic nations under foreign rule. The formation of the Anglo-French union and the consequent stabilization of France, however, tilted the balance considerably in favor of the French nationalists and more so did the generous covert support provided by the Anglo-French. The result was the explosion of a civil war in Brittany between Breton and French nationalists, which gave the Anglo-French a pretext to intervene and annex Brittany. The Central Powers reacted with considerable annoyance and for a while, tensions threatened the explosion of a new general conflict.

In the end, however, the great powers contained the crisis, mostly because the Central Powers assumed formation of the Anglo-French union mostly made independence of Brittany strategically unsustainable in the long term. Therefore, they were reluctant to fight for what they saw as a doomed cause and settled down for recognizing the new status quo in exchange for a few colonial and economic compensations. However, they made clear they would not tolerate any support for French revanchism about Occitania or the lost eastern territories, or any new Anglo-French attempts to destabilize the postwar status quo of Europe. They declared the Quadruple Alliance would answer any such destabilization with military force. The Germanics and the Latins redoubled their efforts to build up Occitania as a separate nation and suppress all French influence within their own territories. Besides the formation of the union with France and the annexation of Brittany, postwar Britain and later the Anglo-French union focused on defense and stabilization of the British Empire, rebuilding France in a good shape, and colonial development of India, Australasia, and Southern Africa.

After the war, the victor powers mostly turned to internal development, pursuit of industrialization, and proper pacification, stabilization, and development of their gains. This however did not entirely stop them from indulging in some serious colonial expansion, which in the first decade after the war mostly took place in Asia. The Central Powers engaged in the colonization of Southeast Asia. According to the spheres of influence agreement between Berlin and Rome, this meant Indonesia, the Malay Peninsula, Burma, and Siam for the Germanic Union and the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos for the Latin Union. The Central Powers brought these areas under their control in a series of colonial wars. In a similar way, Russia strived to expand its colonial penetration in various areas of western and northern China.

The Germanic and Latin drive to seize control of Annam, Tonkin, and northern Burma caused increased tensions with China that regarded these areas as part of its sphere of influence, and eventually a state of war between China and the Central Powers. China’s troubles further increased when Russia joined the conflict to fulfill its own expansionist ambitions on the northern borderlands of the Chinese Empire. The Russian government picked the excuse of border clashes in Xinjiang to declare war. Mid-19th century ethnic and religious rebellions and conflicts with European powers had seriously weakened China’s ability to keep control of distant Xinjiang, leaving the region in a chaotic state. Russia had exploited the situation to occupy part of the province, and Qing attempts to restore their control led to armed clashes.

To add to China’s troubles, a group of pro-Japanese reformers briefly overthrew the pro-Chinese conservative Korean government in a bloody coup. However, the pro-Chinese faction, with assistance from Chinese troops, succeeded in regaining control in an equally bloody counter-coup. These coups resulted in the deaths of a number of reformers, but also caused the burning of the Japanese legation and the deaths of several legation guards and citizens. China had long held Korea as a tributary state. Japan had engaged a very successful program of modernization and industrialization during the last two decades. It wished to increase its influence in Korea, both to use its mineral and agricultural resources for its own growing economy and population and to eliminate the threat a Korean Peninsula in the hands of a hostile foreign power represented for Japan. Escalation to war between China and Japan was the result.

The Russian and Japanese interventions fostered an agreement between Russia and Japan to define their respective strategic interests in Northeast Asia. The Russians recognized Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril islands in the Japanese sphere of influence, and the Japanese acknowledged Manchuria and Mongolia as a Russian interest. The Germanic and Latin navies destroyed the Chinese southern fleets, bombed several South Chinese ports, and imposed a blockade of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. The Germanic and Latin armies defeated the Chinese and their Vietnamese and Burmese allies in Tonkin and northern Burma and landed in Hainan and Formosa. The war with China dramatically showed the positive effects of the modernization process in Japan. The Japanese navy crushed the Chinese northern fleet, while Japanese armies landed in the Korean Peninsula, pushed Chinese forces out of it, overrun Korea, and imposed a pro-Japanese government. Russian armies penetrated deep into northern Manchuria and western Xinjiang, defeating Chinese forces. In the meanwhile, the Germanic and Latin armies consolidated their hold of Tonkin, northern Burma, Hainan, and Formosa, and invaded Yunnan and Guangxi. The Japanese advanced in southern Manchuria and northern China, eventually joining hands with the Russians.

As powerful enemies encircled China and sent its armies on the run on multiple fronts, the Qing dynasty decided to beg for peace after an unsuccessful attempt to get help from other powers. China recognized the Germanic protectorate on Burma and ceded Yunnan to the Germanic Union. It likewise recognized the Latin protectorate on Vietnam and ceded Hainan and Formosa to the Latin Union. The Central Powers had to spend a few more years to entrench their control of their conquests, but were ultimately successful. Russia annexed Manchuria, Xinjiang, and Mongolia, and engaged in a successful multi-year attempt to pacify the conquered regions. China recognized Japanese control of Korea.

European expansion in East Asia was one reason the USA decided to annex the Hawaii. Due to the last few wars, Russia had accumulated a considerable debt, which the Alaska Purchase had helped lessen even if it was not by any means a complete solution. Given the successful precedent of the Alaska Purchase, they conceived the idea to sell a portion of the Russian Far East to the USA. With cession of Alaska and acquisition of Manchuria, Kolyma and Kamchatka had lost much of their economic and strategic importance for the Russian Empire, and their mineral wealth was still unknown. On its part, the USA was skeptical about the economic value of the area, but interested in the acquisition of Kamchatka to extend its strategic and economic influence in the Pacific region. Not without some controversy in America about purchasing another “icebox”, the USA and Russia agreed upon and ratified American purchase of Kolyma and Kamchatka.

Japan quickly moved to make Korea a protectorate and in a few years turned it into formal annexation. It also annexed Sakhalin (renamed Karafuto by the Japanese). The Japanese strived to integrate Korea in the Japanese Empire and to enact the same modernization and industrialization program that had been so successful in their homeland. Japanese rule faced the opposition of nationalist scholars and the Confucian conservative elites that had thrived under the Joseon dynasty. Its modernizing reforms and the social progress and economic development they brought won it the support of progressive members of the upper and middle classes and many commoners.

The Japanese government strived to integrate the Korean economy and society fully with Japan. Thus, it introduced many modern economic and social institutions, invested heavily in infrastructure, including schools, railroads and utilities, and it fostered parallel industrialization of Japan and Korea. It promoted mediatization and intermarriage of the Korean royal household and Yangban elite in the Japanese royal family and peerage. Cultural assimilation efforts, such as support for adoption of Japanese-style names during transition to a modern family registry system, balanced with respect for Korean cultural heritage. The Japanese administration introduced a public education system modeled after the Japanese school system. The public curriculum focused on western knowledge, patriotic moral and political instruction, and a hybrid system of Korean and Japanese history and language studies.

Official Japanese policy promoted equality between ethnic Koreans and ethnic Japanese and the notion of racial and imperial unity of Korea and Japan. Many Koreans could sympathize since they came to associate the Korean kingdom, which had utterly failed to modernize on its own, with backwardness, the Confucian caste system, and poverty, while the Japanese Empire meant modernity, social progress, and economic development. As a result, they gradually came to focus their political aspirations as a community on equality with the Japanese or autonomy rather than independence; otherwise, they usually aligned with the ideological agendas of like-minded Japanese.

Before and after the Great War, Germany, Italy, and America continued their vigorous industrialization process, which after the annexations caused by the conflict spread to Scandinavia, Iberia, and all of North America. Economic prosperity cemented the majority consensus for the political regime created by the liberal revolutions, the formation of the Germanic and Latin unions, and US conquest of North America. Industrialization brought some serious social issues of its own but as a rule they remained entirely manageable for the ruling classes. Industrialization turned the Germanic Union into an economic and military giant and its secondary spread into Poland and Hungary helped bring modernization, economic development, and political stability to Central Europe. Much the same way, it gradually erased all traces of backwardness from Italy and Iberia, and firmly entrenched the Latin Union in the ranks of industrialized great powers.

Prosperity also allowed the American republic to digest the burden of the civil war and the Great War, assimilate the Canadian, Southern, and Hispanic sections in the Union, and help the former slave states transition into industrial modernity. The Union gradually completed its settlement of the Western territories and put down all resistance to its undisputed rule of North America, be it from hostile Amerindian tribes, British Loyalist diehards, or Latin American nationalists. Over time, most inhabitants of the Hispanic section came to acknowledge the benefits of US rule in terms of political stability, liberal democracy, economic development, social modernization, and made themselves content with the status of US citizens.