Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Sobel Wiki: government in a minor key







Sunday, January 20, 2013

Sobel Wiki: Disunited Empire Disloyalists

This week's featured article at the Sobel Wiki is another one of the really core articles: the State of Jefferson. As I've noted before, For Want of a Nail can be seen as a whole series of events from our history going the other way, starting with the subtitular Battle of Saratoga. The founding of Jefferson in 1782 is the next in line after Burgoyne's victory. In our own history, the American victory in the Revolutionary War led to thousands of Loyalists emigrating to Nova Scotia and Quebec, thereby creating the bilingual Canada that serves as a Loyalist counterpart to the United States of America. In the Sobel Timeline, the American defeat in the war leads to thousands of Patriots emigrating to Spanish Texas, thereby creating the bilingual Mexico that serves as a Patriot counterpart to the Confederation of North America.

One of Noel Maurer's biggest complaints about Nail was that Sobel just didn't know enough about Mexico to create a plausible alternate version of it. Sobel's description of Spanish Texas in the early 1780s is a pretty good illustration of this. Sobel speaks of Texas* having three main areas of Spanish settlement, which was true. Then he names them: San Antonio, Espiritu Santo, and San Xavier. San Antonio is right on the money, but Espiritu Santo? There was a settlement about a hundred miles down the San Antonio River from San Antonio, and it was partly based on a mission called Nuestra Señora de la Bahía del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga that was founded in 1722, but that settlement was called La Bahía, not Espíritu Santo. And San Xavier? There were several short-lived missions named after St. Francis Xavier, but they had all been abandoned by 1782. The third chief settlement in Spanish Texas at the time was called Nacogdoches.

Now, I know they didn't have the internet back in 1971, but Sobel was a college professor with all the resources of Hofstra University at his command. How hard would it have been for him to find a book on Spanish Texas and get the names right?

*One of Sobel's little jokes in Nail is that he invariably refers to Texas as Jefferson, the name given to it by its American settlers. Sobel was messing with Texas!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

FAN #313: "Uncommon Women" by David Mix Barrington

Up today at the Sobel Wiki is the new latest For All Nails vignette, #313: "Uncommon Women" by David Mix Barrington, in which Dave MB's Sobel Timeline alter-ego enjoys an outing with his girlfriend in August 1976.

This is the first new FAN vignette to be written entirely by someone who wasn't me since Mike "President Chester A. Arthur" Davis posted his last Martin Cole vignette two years and eight days ago. (There were two other non-Pez vignettes posted to soc.history.what-if in the interval, but both Jonathan Edelstein's "Domestic Scene" from exactly two years ago, and Dave's "Notes from the Investigation, Part 2" from last August 25, were largely written in the early oughts, and only completed and posted after I started the ball rolling again two and a half years ago.)

It pleases me no end to see For All Nails continuing its slow but inexorable revival, so I'd like to take this opportunity to remind the members of my vast global audience that the resurrected FAN Cabal is open to anyone who wants to take a whack at extending the Sobel Timeline, whether they were part of the original Cabal or not.

"Uncommon Women" was also posted to shw-i earlier today.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Sobel Wiki: rocky mountain way

This week's featured article at the Sobel Wiki is on the Rocky Mountain War, which is pretty much the central event in For Want of a Nail... (and I'm not just saying that because I wrote half a dozen For All Nails vignettes about the war). As Sobel says in the first paragraph of his preface, the United States of Mexico and the Confederation of North America are more than neighbors, they're more like cousins. They were both offspring of the American Revolution (or, as it's known in the Sobel Timeline, the North American Rebellion), but they took different paths afterwards. You could say much the same thing about our world's U.S.A. and Canada, but those two countries are, as Trudeau famously observed, like a mouse beside an elephant. Sobel created a world where the Patriots and the Loyalists each got their own country, and the two countries were an even match for each other.

"Robert Sobel", the Australian business historian who is the nominal author of Nail, is a firm believer in the idea that the two nations are natural enemies, have always been so, and will always be so. He plays this theme up throughout the book, in spite of considerable evidence in the narrative that it isn't so. To cite one instance, Simon Cardenes, Mexico's leading author in the late 19th century, is also a particular favorite among North Americans, and when Mexican dictator Benito Hermión names him the U.S.M.'s ambassador to the C.N.A., Sobel lauds Hermión for making an excellent choice.

But there are a few instances where the two countries are genuinely hostile to each other, and the Rocky Mountain War is the most serious one. It's an eight-year-long all-out war between the two countries, and "Robert Sobel", the anti-Mexican ideologue, makes the most of it. Chapter 11, "California Gold", ends with a growing series of border clashes between the two countries in the late summer of 1845. Chapter 12, "The Rocky Mountain War", sees the clashes grow into full scale war between the two countries, as the C.N.A. carries out a series of invasions of the U.S.M., each more costly than the last. The chapter ends with growing popular opposition to the war in both nations resulting in the election of peace candidates in each. Chapter 13, "The C.N.A.: The Corruption of Progress", begins with the two national leaders agreeing to a truce in the summer of 1853, with the signing of a peace treaty two years later.

The war is a defining moment for both countries. The cost of the war permanently sours the people of the C.N.A. on imperialism, and the country becomes isolationist and pacifistic, even as the world's other major powers are swept up in a constant struggle for overseas colonies that ends in worldwide war in the 20th century. For the Mexicans, the war has the opposite effect. The territorial losses suffered in the peace agreement, minor though they are, cause the U.S.M. to become steadily more militant over time, carving out a colonial empire that includes much of South America and a significant section of Asia, culminating in an unprovoked attack on Japan in 1942.

For Want of a Nail... ends in 1971, with the C.N.A. and U.S.M. seemingly replicating the slow descent towards war of the 1840s. The discovery of a Mexican spy ring in the C.N.A. in 1969 causes the two nations to break off relations and close their borders, and guerrilla activity has begun to break out along the long border. In For All Nails, the two nations achieve a detente, and even form a tentative military alliance in the mid-1970s, but I don't think that's how Sobel meant the story to end.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The siblings and the credit card







The second sibling stood and pondered what to do . . .

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Sobel Wiki: Sobel and the feudal spirit







Saturday, January 5, 2013

Impeachment poll update with extra added Benghazi







Tuesday, January 1, 2013

See what you miss when you don't pay attention?

I've definitely got to spend more time parked in front of my computer, because somehow I missed this fantastic rant by Lindy West of Jezebel back when it first appeared in October. Stil, better late than never.