Dislocated to Success (10 page)

There were no real democracies out there. Sweden had a claim to be one, although some young man explained the system to me and I was suitably baffled; after that, the sheer size of those able to vote for the Polish-Lithuanian Sejm meant far more people at least had a potential voice than in many other countries. Other than that, it was a mix of absolutism - varying from
L’Etat c’est moi
to theoretical republics that were actually ruled by small mercantile oligarchies. Democracy building looked like being a rather lengthy task for the Foreign Office - I pretty much confined it to a few leaflets and lectures; it would be better for them to see how a democracy worked before going in and preaching about it.

One of the slight problems - and I blame the Cold War for this - was that many members of the Government, including the Leaderene, did like to have simple divisions between “our friends”, “our enemies” and “annoying neutrals”.  This was very difficult to determine immediately after the Dislocation - and as, in so many states, it depended on the personal imprimatur of the local ruler, it was subject to sometimes capricious change. Take, for example, the not-insignificant Bishopric of Trent: the initial Bishop was a very worldly man who was happy to trade his agricultural surplus through Venice and was mildly interested in public health; his successor was a narrow-minded bigot of the Parmesan school who banned trade with us and even briefly tried to ban antisepsis. However, he ironically succumbed to food poisoning and his successor - a minor Hapsburg by-blow who had spent a year in England - was almost ridiculously pro-British.

However, sometimes it is easier to be a little unclear about the real situation. It was fairly clear that the Scandinavians and the Northern Protestants of the Holy Roman Empire were both interested in business and saw us as a potential ally. Outside of that, it came down to clever men who knew how the world worked - like Joāo of Portugal and Cardinal Fleury - those who saw the possibilities of business - like Hamburg, Jülich and Berg, Genoa and Denmark - and then those who we did a big personal favour for - like Poland-Lithuania. When I asked John Stoye, after leaving office, what he thought the defining moment for Europe after the Dislocation was, I was surprised at the answer - which was
Giving August the Strong insulin
.

One of the mild embarrassments after the Dislocation was the overseas gold reserves; the Bank of England under Threadneedle Street had considerable reserves of gold which belonged to other countries which had now disappeared. Some of this had been European holdings which were kept in London because of our useful 22-mile wide Anti-Tank Ditch - although how this would have worked if the air became uraneous was an interesting matter. However, we also had a number of Commonwealth and Dependent Territory reserves as well. All in all, they were substantial - very substantial - sufficiently so that the Treasury regarded that actual amount as the highest level of state secret, in case it should affect the bimetallism ratio which was so important in the early days. Indeed, the legal cases launched by a couple of trans-embassies and other groups were held
in camera
due to this.

The outcome of it all was that a proportion of the funds held by sovereign bodies should be redistributed back to the ancestor states. However, the PM quite wisely decided that giving £200 million to the Germans willy-nilly would be foolish, and it was decided that the funds should be made available for what were effectively aid projects over a five-year period - although very small sums would just be handed over. There were some very, very small states out there in the Empire whose total bursary would come to less than £25,000, which it was decided was the cash limit. So we set up the friendship companies, which basically looked at the ideas and dispersed the money when it approved of them.  Some took a while to get off the ground; we just kept the money for them, it wasn’t as if it was going anywhere. Others were quicker to react - Denmark came up with its ideas for the full five years within three months, was given the green light and did the job - which gave Denmark quite the jump start on several other states.

Then there were the complexities. The Norwegians had substantial sums, but there was no Norway. We had certain amount of pre-War Czechoslovak gold, but that was eventually split between different Austro-Hungarian polities - although it mainly went to the Kingdom of Bohemia. These were questions that had to be resolved, but delicately - we knew from preliminary talks in Vienna that there was great concern there about nationalism arising. This was the happy joy of what we were doing; not only did we have a great number of entities to deal with, but they also knew what would have happened. This fact alone cause several realignments within Europe: everyone became very wary about France and Brandenburg-Prussia; the Hapsburgs became almost paranoid; and there were reports of people being sent into exile, being imprisoned or even being executed. The Emir of Morocco had all his brothers killed and then sent his late teenage son into exile in the UK, although it was quite a gentle exile which he rather enjoyed. Like many of the younger people who came to the UK through such circumstances, he thrived; others, sadly, did not.

Connected with this discovery of what would have been throughout the world, one of the little things I had to do was dealing with a rather odd unfinished thing from David. The Crown Prince of Prussia had come to the UK under a bit of a cloud, after an assassination attempt due to what he would have done in the future. Such things were sadly not uncommon; a history book would reach trans-land and all hell would break loose. Crown Prince Frederick was not the only one; we had given most of Napoleon’s ancestors asylum after several European courts had started to track them down. We had sort of promised the future Frederick the Great, somehow, a place at University etc and put him up in a grace and favour, arranged some English lessons and he’d been given some pocket money. It was all a bit slapdash, to be honest. I did find several notes from members of the Royal Family about what was happening with him; the Firm had at least looked after their own, even if they were distant kin from 250 years ago.

Obviously, this could not go on - I reviewed his file, had a few words at Cambridge and got him a place at Emmanuel. His English teachers said he was doing well, but I did think he would struggle and advised the Master to be somewhat gentle with him. Apart from the Master, his true identity remained a secret and a rather shallow cover-story was dreamed up by someone in the Service. There again, who would go to trans-Stettin to check? I was also surprised to have found out that he had submitted a claim for UK citizenship under the Sophia Naturalisation Act, 1706 - which has to be one of the more obscure pieces of legislation. I had believed that it was long closed; however, he technically qualified as being an
a priori
case. I advised the Home Sec that it would do no harm, and that only 7 others could qualify. It wasn’t worth the court attention.

I did briefly meet him at a social occasion just before he went up; I was rather impressed, he had clearly made massive efforts to fit in as well as possible over three months. His English was stilted but otherwise fluent, he had lost some of the chubbiness which was common in trans-Europe, and he’d had his teeth done. I found all those to be very interesting things to have happened, especially with his claim to UK nationality. I was aware that he had had an exceptional unhappy childhood, and I wondered if he was planning not to go home after University. I also remembered Professor Stoye’s comments, and wondered if that was really a bad thing if he didn’t. We were, of course, to meet again several times as he got older.

Of course, things were not allowed to get into any sort of stable state during that that first year. The Spanish finally decided to tweak the Lion’s tail a little too far. They had frankly been extremely annoying for some time, mainly over Gibraltar; whilst they had probably the best intelligence reports of any nation, their leadership did not have the wit to look at that intelligence properly. We found out somewhat later that they considered our rationing to be the sign of a near-collapse, and to be fair they we not the only ones who thought that. They considered that one shove might send the British house down. They had an interesting plan that might well have worked - in the context of 18th century warfare, and if Britain had been on its knees as they thought; it stood no chance in the context of the 20th century. In essence, they planned to steal the UK’s Caribbean possessions and besiege Gibraltar; this has been widely criticised in various historical journals, but the main thought is they were deceived by the apparently small size of the Royal Navy and encouraged by the problems with some very unhappy elements of the RN trans-fleet at Mahon who felt their loyalties remained with the House of Hannover.

Unfortunately, we had aircraft that spotted the Spanish movements and we had already sent forces to the Caribbean who had met up with the trans-RN there. Various plans had been drawn up to deal with the Spanish problem, and Cabinet decided to implement a very harsh plan upon them. Enough was enough; if they attacked, then Britain would respond with extreme vigour. Entreaties were lavished upon them by both the Portuguese and the French to desist, but all that led to was the temporary expulsion of their ambassadors. Both were extremely irked; whilst France felt they could do nothing against their fellow Bourbons, the Portuguese came to me with a very interesting suggestion which I passed on to Francis - who took it up after consulting with the PM.

The Spanish foolishly pressed on with their folly - and our retribution was, to say the least, terrible. Within 2 days, Spain had no Armada or merchant vessel much bigger than a fishing smack in any of its European ports. Within a fortnight, Gibraltar had been relieved, the threats in the Caribbean had been nullified and Cadiz and the Spanish Treasure Fleet had been seized, and a battalion of mechanised infantry was landing in Lisbon to protect our Portuguese ally whilst the Buccaneers had harried the naval forces, and the few remaining ships in the Caribbean were trapped in a heavily mined Havana and not daring to move. The Harriers had inflicted immense damage on the marching columns of the Spanish Army. We again suggested peace, and they refused.

I’m told the debate in the House of Commons was quite spirited; some Labour members tried to speak against the war, but the majority of the House of Commons was for continuation. The Lords, apart from a confused soul who claimed that Generalissimo Franco was a Christian gentleman, were slightly more thoughtful. No one in the Lords suggested bombing El Escorial. The Portuguese had pressed upon us the need to actually do something meaningful to Spain in order to get a peace. Sadly, this very much proved to be the case and Cabinet agreed to an extension of operations - which meant I had to pay a short visit to Lisbon via float plane. This wasn’t the easiest of journeys, and required refuelling in the Channel Islands, in France and in Northern Portugal; luckily this was now an established route, and facilities were available. It was a fruitful visit.

Chapter 11

With the Spanish threat under control, there were other matters to be looked at whilst we waited for the inevitable. The most pressing one of those for the Foreign Office was the Ottoman Empire; whilst shrunken somewhat from its height under Suleiman the Magnificent, it still controlled much of the Balkans, all of Anatolia and the Levant, Iraq, the Caucasus, Egypt, Libya and parts of Northern Arabia. Its various minions, vassals, puppets and feudatories extended this into Southern Russia, Central Asia and most of North Africa. It could not be ignored, it had to be treated with and it had to be taken as seriously as any other major Western European powers.

However, its political situation was not ideal - according to history, it was leaving a lengthy period of stable decline - caused by the loss of the war to Austria - and entering a period of political tumult. It was, sadly, at war with Persia - which was another interesting case causing a flurry of work amongst our researchers. The end of the Tulip period was nigh, and it was interesting to see what would change. The Empire also had other problems as well - it kept slaves, and whilst the reality was somewhat different from the perceived actualité there was plenty of chance for lurid tales from the Tabloids. The fact that there might be quite a lot of light-skinned children in parts of British North America might appeal for a couple of days, but a harem guarded by eunuchs is rather more exotic and titillating. There were also the “Captive Nations” - who, to be frank, were nothing more than a pain in the neck. It was certainly true that the Ottomans were a multicultural empire that contained many nationalities, but this was before the age of nationalism proper, and for the lucky and talented few - no matter what their background - there were possibilities of advancement.

However, whilst most of the “Captive Nations” had few adherents in the UK, there were three cases where this was not the case. The first was of Cyprus; for historical reasons the vast majority of Greek-speakers in the UK were from Cyprus, as were a not-insignificant number of British Turks. The Turks were mainly of a Kemalist or Socialist leaning, the latter being especially the case with the large number who spoke Kurdish. The Turks were generally content to let things be; the Greeks were out of the gate protesting on the 20th of February. Demonstrations, agitation and lobbying about Cyprus were to be a thing for the next decade; I think the Porte got as tired as we did about it. The second group were the Egyptians; they were not many, but they had money and influence. A mixture of very secular Muslims and Copts, they were nearly all students from good families or well-off businessmen and women. They did not agitate much, but they did start to form links with Egypt as soon as they could. To be perfectly honest, they were our sort of people - they didn’t try and foment rebellion, but they did keep the issue up front. The third group was the Israelis, which was inevitable I suppose. The problem for them was that they had a track record in history; luckily, with most of European and Maghribian Jewry either blissfully unaware of Zionism or happily starting to settle in British colonies, the pressure for a Jewish Homeland was
de minimis.
However, their mere existence incited many other groups to protest against them, and some of those groups found it their beholden duty to try and inform the Ottomans and the local population of the wickedness that lurked back in the UK.