Why 1886?

What's so important about that year?

Hello everyone! I hope the Americans among you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday and are gearing up for Christmas.

In my less-than-serious (yes, I’m going to keep saying that) Alternate History serial A Greater Union about Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I start the story in the year 1886. What’s so special about that year, I hear you ask? Or at least I’m pretty sure I heard you ask that. In any case, even if you didn’t ask, I’m going to tell you!

This time period is a fascinating one for a number of reasons. First of all, the game Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts, upon which this story is based, begins in the year 1890, so just shortly after our story begins. That’s convenient for me as I can get a little bit of story in before the game actually starts.

This is really the point in time where the race for large steel-hulled, armored, and heavily armed naval warships accelerates to a breakneck pace. HMS Warrior, the first armor-plated, iron-hulled warship was launched on December 29th, 1860. By 1873 she was made obsolete by the launch of the HMS Devastation, which took the general hull shape and characteristics of what we think of as battleships. Warrior displaced a little over 9,000 tons. Devastation displaced over 13,000 at full load. By 1900, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and several others were commissioning pre-dreadnought battleships of 15,000-16,000 tons displacement. In terms of technology, HMS Warrior wasn’t even in shouting distance of the pre-dreadnoughts. And very soon they, too, would be rendered obsolete.

Beyond naval technology there were other interesting things brewing. As you can read in Part 1 of A Greater Union, the first true motor launch started puttering up and down the Nekar River, the brainchild of Gottleib Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. It took a while, but this heralded a revolution in warship propulsion. Coal would slowly fade away, replaced by fuel oil and diesel.

Alfred Thayer Mahan

In the United States a book that would have almost incalculable impact on the world was published. The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1883 by Alfred Thayar Mahan received immediate acclaim, especially in Europe. As President of the US Naval War College at the time, Mahan’s ideas had significant impact in our own country as well, possibly influencing Theodore Roosevelt’s insistence on a strong Navy. Mahan’s books have been pointed to as one cause of the massive naval arms race that preceded World War 1.

Closer to home for our characters, and of singular importance for our protagonist, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary, the only son of Emperor Franz Joseph I, and his wife, Princess Stephanie of Belgium, became seriously ill and had to retire to an estate on an Adriatic island off the coast of Croatia to recover. This trip happens in 1886, of all years, and the Crown Prince would never fully recover. Likely overtaken by a serious gonorrhea infection (which he also gave to his wife), he would become increasingly unstable for the next several years until he and his mistress committed suicide in 1890. This series of events catapulted Franz Ferdinand into the position of Heir Apparent to the Dual Monarchy and put him on a course towards that fateful street in Sarejevo on June 28th, 1914.

And possibly most interesting of all, in 1888 Kaiser Wilhelm I died, followed shortly thereafter by his son Frederick III. Succeeding him was his own son, Wilhelm II, who would remain Kaiser through the end of World War 1. Wilhelm II disagreed with many of his father’s and grandfather’s positions, and vehemently disagreed with the careful diplomacy of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. In 1890, their mutual disagreements led to Bismarck’s dismissal and replacement with a politician who was more amenable to Wilhem II’s more aggressive foreign policy objectives. With Bismarck’s departure went the last bolt holding together Germany’s long-held foreign policy objectives. Within a few years France and Russia would enter into an alliance. Once that would leave Germany beset on both sides by powerful enemies and arrange the final pieces on the board that would become World War 1.

All of these events alone are interesting. But together, they leave me with one burning question.

What if?

And that question is the central theme of Alternate History. What if Franz Ferdinand became far more interested in the Navy? What if a wedge was driven between Germany and Austria-Hungary? What if history as we know it never existed? So many interesting questions, so little time.

I hope that you come along with me on a journey to explore at least one, or maybe a bunch of these questions. Until that time, thanks for reading!