Uncharted Territory (Look to the West Book 2)

by Tom Anderson

December – British/American-occupied Buenos Aires is besieged by Platinean militiamen.

  1767-1771: The War of the Polish Partition. Russia and Prussia fight Austria, with some Poles and Lithuanians fighting on both sides as well as a confusion of private armies behind szlachta candidates for kingship. Russo-Prussian victory; the Commonwealth is divided at the Treaty of Stockholm, which gives Ruthenia to Russia, Krakow to Austria and Royal Prussia and southern Ducal Prussia to Prussia. The remainder of Poland is placed in personal union with Prussia, while Lithuania is separated and the Tsarevich of Russia, Paul, is made Grand Duke as Povilas I.

  1767:

  February – In the Plate, Arbuthnot orders his infamous retreat and abandons Buenos Aires to the Platineans, who raise the Burgundian cross flag in triumph.

  March – The Treaty of Copenhagen ends the First Platinean War, signed on the 17th. Spain concedes Florida to the Empire of North America; all other borders status quo ante bellum.

  April – Austria enters the Polish Civil War, producing a Hapsburg candidate and occupying Krakow as a necessary first step to Warsaw.

  May – Prussia and Russia declare war on Austria. Meanwhile, the Corsican Republic takes the island of Capraia from Genoa, which decides to give up its claim to Corsica and sell it to the French.

  June – The Spanish chief minister, the Marquess of Ensenada, is exiled in disgrace to South America due to the lost war. He eventually goes to Buenos Aires and helps start up the radical Porteño school of political thought there. He is replaced with Richard Wall, a Hiberno-Spaniard.

  July – In Russia, the Kautzmans’ young son Heinrich is kidnapped in a Cossack raid. He will be raised by Yemelyan Pugachev, the Cossack leader.

  August – The Hartford Tea Revolt in Connecticut, one of several taxation protests in America’s “Troubled Sixties”.

  October – Parliament of Great Britain debates whether to grant further powers of self-government to the Empire of North America. Patriot-Whigs for; Tories against.

  1768:

  March – In America, the Georgian colonial government apparatus collapses after Savannah is sacked by the Chickasaw Indians. Georgia is reabsorbed into South Carolina, which will eventually itself reunify with North Carolina.

  May – The French Army invades Corsica.

  June – In Burma a Chinese army, coupled with Toungoo-aligned Burmese forces, marches on Konbaung-controlled Ava.

  July – Pittsburgh Whisky Riots in Pennsylvania, part of the tax protests of the “Troubled Sixties”.

  1769:

  May – The Spanish explorer Captain José de Unzaga discovers the Hidden Gate (San Francisco Bay).

  April – Death of King Joseph I of Portugal. He is succeeded by his daughter Maria as Queen Maria I, later known as Maria the Mad. She rules as co-monarch with her husband Peter (Pedro) III.

  May – Queen Maria of Portugal dismisses the Chief Minister, José de Carvalho e Melo, and replaces him with a stream of incompetent favourites. Carvalho goes into exile in Brazil, eventually moving to Buenos Aires to be with the Porteños.

  June – The French army concludes the conquest of Corsica, though some Republican holdouts remain under the leadership of Filippo Antonio Pasquale de Paoli. Corsica will, however, be a poisoned apple for Bourbon France, as Corsican republican ideas will spread back to France via the French troops stationed there.

  In Tahiti, a British mission led by Captain Henry Anson observes the transit of Venus.

  August – Carlo Buonaparte, a Corsican Republican leader, flees to Britain with his family. He anglicises his name to Charles Bone and converts to Anglicanism so he may read a law degree at Cambridge.

  September – The Chinese and Toungoo forces successfully eject the Konbaungs from Ava. King Naungdawgyi is killed in the siege of Ava-town. The Chinese break up Burma in order to better enforce their will: the Toungoo dynasty, in the form of King Mahadammayaza, is restored to a rump Avan state, with Myat Htun as eminence grise. Pegu, Lanna and Ayutthaya (the last two are Thai states) are freed from Avan control and become direct Chinese vassals. One of Naungdawgyi’s brothers, Minhkaung Nawrahta, creates an independent state out of his viceroyalty of Tougou and plays off the Chinese against the British.

  The King of Ayutthaya, Ekkathat, was killed while fighting in the war and is now succeeded by his brother Uthumphon, a monk who gives up that vocation to rule and proves competent.

  November – Another brother of King Naungdawgyi, Hsinbyushin, takes what remains of the Konbaung forces south and west and invades and occupies Arakan, overthrowing the native rulers. A new state, Konbaung-Arakan, is formed and swiftly becomes an ally of the British.

  1770:

  July – Accession of King Hyojang of Corea. He reverses some of the policies of his predecessor Yeongjo, tolerating the practice of Catholicism and the Silhak Movement, led by Jeong Yak-yong, which combines Neo-Confucianism and Corean nationalism with some Christian ideas.

  August – The electric eel is first reported in South America. In Britain, Henry Cavendish is able to duplicate the effects of the eel and the torpedo fish, another electric fish, using Leyden Jars inside a synthetic fish – demonstrating, controversially, that animal and synthetic electricity are the same.

  September – King Uthumphon of Ayutthaya, taking advantage of political instability in Lanna, successfully unites it with Ayutthaya to form a single Thai state (known either as Ayutthaya or Siam).

  Famine of 1770 in Bengal, worsened by the British East India Company’s policies such as forcing farmers to grow opium poppies instead of food crops. The young Nurul Huq loses family members to starvation and develops a burning hatred of the British as a result.

  October – Effective end of the War of the Polish Partition after defeat of the Austrian Army of Silesia by the Prussians and the retreat to Krakow on the eastern front. It will take months for the politicians to negotiate a treaty, however.

  November – Death of Joseph François Dupleix, Governor-General of the French East India Company. He is succeeded by Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau. This is largely an attempt by Paris, invoking Silhouettiste policies, to place more central royal control over the FEIC – Rochambeau is the King’s man.

  1771:

  January – Treaty of Stockholm ends the War of the Polish Partition. Austria, Prussia and Russia all annex some territory (Krakow, Royal and southern Ducal Prussia and Ruthenia respectively) while the rump Poland becomes a kingdom in personal union with Prussia, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is placed under the Russian Tsarevich Paul as Grand Duke Povilas.

  March – After much wrangling, the North Commission publishes the ‘North Plan’ for the Empire of North America, popularly known as ‘One Empire and Five Confederations’. This will be the basis for the American Constitution.

  1772-1774: First Mysore-Haidarabad War between Mysorean and FEIC forces on one side and Haidarabad and BEIC forces on the other. This particular war results in a minor Mysorean victory.

  1772:

  February – Emperor Peter III of Russia’s wife Catherine makes a failed coup attempt involving the collusion of the Leib Guards. After securing his position and purging the Guards, Peter sends her into exile at Yekaterinburg.

  March – Great Britain, Ireland and the Empire of North America switch over from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. This causes some riots, partly because people believe days have actually been lost from their lives, but mostly because the governments cunningly put the switchover at a time where the days lost should have been holidays.

  April – In Austria, the demands of the last two wars coupled to some unwise speculation lead to an economic crash. Austrian policy in the Germanies is weakened for a decade or so as the treasury struggles to recover, though Austrian interference in northern Italy continues apace.

  August – Moritz Benyovsky, a Slovakian leader of one of the Polish patriotic brigades, flees the destruction of his force by the Prussians and ends up in Lithuania, where he joins the ne
wly reformed Lithuanian Army.

  September – Death of Louis XV of France, who dies a deeply unpopular man due to his habit of returning conquered provinces after wars and for failing to reform the French tax system. He is succeeded by his son the Dauphin, Louis-Ferdinand, as King Louis XVI.

  November – France’s King Louis XVI approves the revival of stalled research into Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot’s steam-tractor technology.

  1773:

  March – With the death of Richard Wall, Charles III of Spain appoints his old Neapolitan chief minister, Bernardo Tanucci, as chief minister of Spain. The hardline anti-clericalist Tanucci swiftly proves unpopular, especially in Spain’s colonial possessions.

  April – John Pitt enlists in the BEIC as a cornet of cavalry.

  May – Birth of Aleksandr Potemkin, allegedly the son of Grigory Potemkin and Empress Catherine of Russia.

  June – In Persia, Shah/Advocate Abol Fath Khan defeats the Qajars in Mazanderan. The Qajar leader, Agha Mohammed Khan, is killed in the battle. The future of Zand Persia is secured.

  July – Death of Ahmad Shah Abdali, the great Afghan conqueror, from cancer exacerbated by constant travel in his campaigns. The Afghans call a Loya Jirga assembly which splits the Durrani Empire, the Afghan domains going to his first son Timur and the Indian ones to his second son Nadir, who becomes Emperor of the East Durrani or ‘Neo-Mughal’ Empire.

  1774:

  February – Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the Swedish apothecary and chemist, begins his research into lufts [gases]. This will eventually result in the discovery of elluftium [oxygen] and illuftium [nitrogen], as well as a gas known as ‘scheelium’ at the time which will one day be identified as murium [chlorine]. This is more or less as OTL, but in OTL Scheele’s discoveries were never widely publicised.

  April – Pavel Lebedev-Lastoschkin, out of Yakutsk, leads a Russian trade expedition to Edzo [Hokkaido], northernmost island of Japan. He is rebuffed by the local Matsumae Han, who indicate they have no authority from the Shogun to conclude such deals and that trade with Japan is only available via Nagasaki. This is unreasonably far away from the Russian ports, and a disappointed Lebedev returns to Yakutsk.

  July – Charles Bone receives his doctorate in law from the University of Cambridge and he founds a law practice in London, specialising in defending Catholics from employers who abuse the Test Acts.

  1775:

  January – Birth of Ivan Potemkin.

  May – John Acton, a Briton in service with the Tuscan navy, distinguishes himself in an action against Algerine pirates at Algiers itself, in cooperation with the French and Spanish. Soon afterwards, his fame leads him to to leave the Tuscans and go to Naples, where he is employed in reorganising the Neapolitans’ own outdated naval forces.

  1776:

  March – After months of argument between their representatives, the New England colonies of the ENA are amalgamated into the Confederation of New England, with its capital at Boston. This is the first of the Five Confederations to be formally created.

  April – Exiled Emperor of Daiviet Le Cung Tong appeals to the Daguo Emperor of China for help in regaining his throne; Daguo agrees.

  July – Irish-born war veteran and MP Anthony St. Leger (together with the Prime Minister Lord Rockingham) sets up the St. Leger Stakes, a series of high-stakes horse races, in Doncaster. Rockingham’s patronage soon provokes much interest in the races from the Westminster political establishment.

  1777 :

  Charles Bone’s son Leo (Napoleone Buonaparte) enters the Royal Navy as a midshipman and serves on HMS Ardent.

  1778-1781: Second Mysore-Haidarabad War between Mysorean and FEIC forces on one side and Haidarabad and BEIC forces on the other. Haidarabad takes back Mysore’s gains in the last war, but the BEIC loses influence at the Nizam’s court due to mishandling by the British resident there.

  1778:

  Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovers elluftium [oxygen].

  The Qing Chinese army defeats the Nguyen Lords of Daiviet at Than Hoa, restoring Emperor Le Cung Tong to his position as a Chinese puppet ruling northern Daiviet (Tonkin) while the Nguyens are left with the south (Cochinchina).

  The rules of cricket are codified by the Pall Mall Cricket Club.

  Part 5: The Age of Revolution (1779-1799)

  1779-1785: The Second Platinean War. Spain and (theoretically) France vs. Peruvian Indian rebels, Platinean and Chilean colonial rebels, Britain and America, and (unofficially) Portugal. Defeat of the Bourbons with the creation of what will become the UPSA, although Britain suffers some embarrassing naval defeats in the process.

  1779:

  José Gabriel Condorcanqui, taking the name Tupac Amaru II as Sapa Inca of the Tahuantinsuyo people, shoots the tyrannical Spanish Governor of Peru, Antonio de Arriaga, and begins the Great Andean Rebellion. The rest of the year sees an unsuccessful attempt by the colonial authorities to quell the revolt.

  First deployment of the Ferguson breech-loading rifle by the British Army. Initially the rifle is not widely adopted due to its high cost and long production time, although it sees some use by frontier forces in the ENA. Breech-loaders will not be popularised until the 1820s. At the same time, the Austrian army first deploys the Repetierwindbüchse (repeating air rifle) designed by Bartholomäus Girandoni, which though not suitable for general adoption, sees considerable use by skirmishers.

  1780:

  Linnaeus’ Taxonomy of Man is published posthumously, in which he argues that man is simply another of the primates. The book causes an uproar, but its impact on natural history and theology is somewhat overshadowed by the fact that the chapters dealing with the different races of men become the kernel of the ideology of Linnaean Racism.

  The American Squadron is created by the Royal Navy, a kernel of the later Imperial Navy.

  On Christmas Day, Tupac Amaru II takes Cusco from the Spanish colonial authorities and has himself formally coronated.

  1781:

  February – Forces of the Viceroyalty of Peru fail to retake Cusco from Tupac Amaru II’s rebelling Indians.

  May – In Upper Peru (OTL Bolivia) Tomas Katari, another Indian rebel leader, is defeated before La Paz and, pursued by Spanish regulars, retreats into Lower Peru. He combines his forces with Tupac Amaru II’s, strengthening them.

  June – In India, after many failed rebellions against the Durrani Afghans, the Sikhs finally win their independence.

  August – In Lithuania, Grand Duke Povilas (the future Emperor Paul of Russia) institutes a new shipbuilding programme, known as the Patriotic Fleet as it embodies the idea of a Lithuania which has its own independent forces and is not merely a vassal of Russia.

  1782:

  January – Carl Wilhelm Scheele publishes, in Swedish, his work on gases. Because of Linnaeus’ controversies resulting in many leading European thinkers learning Swedish to read his work in the original, Scheele’s discoveries become more widely known.

  March – King Louis XVI launches a French expedition to South America, although at the time of launch, it is still unclear which side he is supporting in the war there. The expedition is led by Admiral de Grasse and the Duc de Noailles.

  April – The Africa Bubble scandal results in the resignation of the Marquess of Rockingham as Prime Minister of Great Britain. He is replaced by the Duke of Portland, but real power rests in the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Edmund Burke. The ruling Patriot party shifts its ideological positioning slightly and becomes known as the Liberal Whigs.

  May – Birth of Philip Hamilton (son of Alexander Hamilton) in New York City.

  August – The Duc de Noailles’ expedition reaches the Plate. The Spanish have told their colonists that the French are their allies, while the French believe that they are there to attack the Spaniards in their moment of weakness, due to figurative crossed wires at the French foreign ministry. The result is a bloody occupation of undefended Buenos Aires by Noailles’ army, with the Platineans bitterly blaming the Spanish for the
incident. This is amplified by Spanish propaganda praising (invented) victories by the French against Tupac Amaru II.

  1783:

  January – Beginning of the Southern Rebellion, as the Rio de la Plata and Chile both rise in revolt against the Spanish. The Platineans begin building up their old militias again around cadres of veterans of the First Platinean War, and attack the French – initially without much success, as Noailles’ forces are numerous and well-equipped.

  February – Britain and the ENA enter the war in support of the Platinean rebels, hoping for expanded trade rights with any postwar independent state.

  March – Tupac Amaru II takes Lima from the Spanish, but has trouble holding the strongly pro-Spanish city down.

  April – Midshipman Leo Bone passes his lieutenancy examination in Gibraltar. The new lieutenant is reassigned to HMS Raisonnable, where he first meets Lieutenant Horatio Nelson.

  May – Maximilian III Wittelsbach, Elector of Bavaria, dies without issue. The electorate passes to Charles Theodore Sulzbach, Elector Palatine. Charles Theodore concludes a deal with the Austrians to swap Bavaria for the Austrian Netherlands, which now become the Duchy of Flanders. Bavaria is integrated into Austria (not very popular with the Bavarians) while Charles Theodore retains the Palatinate as well as Flanders. Although the Prussians would like to declare war over this (as in OTL), they are too busy trying to hold down the latest Polish rebellion to respond.

  July – Anglo-American fleet under Admiral Howe defeats de Grasse at the Battle of the River Plate. The British fleet lands an army of mostly American troops led by General George Augustine Washington, who joins up with the Platinean rebels in order to attack the French in Buenos Aires.

  August – Prince Henry of Prussia, uncle to King Frederick William II, is killed by Polish partisans in an ambush during the ongoing Polish rebellion. The loss of Henry as a valuable advisor is a blow to the King, who adopts savage retributions against the Poles which only poisons internal relations further.

  September – Franco-Spanish fleet assembles at Cadiz to escort fresh troops to South America. The fleet is ambushed by Admiral Augustus Keppel in the Battle of Trafalgar, which is a shock defeat for the Royal Navy. Keppel is court-martialled and resigns in disgrace. However, the RN has destroyed enough French and Spanish troopships that the expedition is called off.