Create a Victorian era Dystopia
- Thread starter Emperor Norton I
- Start date
what if AIDS was a century sooner in hitting the western world? This was the basis of a story set in Jack the Ripper London, with S.Holmes and Watson nonchalantly sharing needles and dirty scalpels whilst some "African Flu" or something like that ravaged the land.. I dont remember who wrote it or what anthology tho...
It would help with the Victorian era sense of morality: they were the way they were, being as conservative as they were, because they had exited a libertine age that had preceded them. I don't think it would be hard for them to figure our AIDs was related to sex after a while, so that would reinforce that moral uptightness even more, and would contribute to further complicating a convoluted sexuality the Victorians had where their uptightedness led them to think things like having sex with their wives was incestuous because they were the mother of their children which is why having mistresses was ok.
You'd probably also get a fair bit of bigotry, with the possibilities of expelling and sending to locked away asylums the people with the disease since it would be a death sentence for anyone infected unlike the STDs of the day which would wreck your health, or at least ruin your genitalia, and possibly drive you insane but wouldn't kill you. Think of every other hooker in the Wild West and London having some STD, and now think of there also being the possibility of every other Hooker in the West and London having AIDs and you've got a problem. This would be plague-like potentially, expanding just as far and fast as the American railroad and British trade and troop boats could carry it.
Totally, it was very much a possibility in Germany and the UK (although there it would probably be light fabianism, that and as a socialist I fail to see why them winning in either country would be too bad).
I guess we could try making it more dystopic than it already was. In which case it seems to me the best possible ingredient would be to destroy the movements that made life better. Let's say, for instance, a revolutionary French victory that does not succumb to a Napoleon, but instead forms an authoritarian 'liberal' republic that both discredits liberalism and works to prevent the development of alternative versions of it through ideological imperialism, similar to how the USSR promoted its own version of socialism to the world. Thus the Terror would be a sort of 'Stalinist' period that eventually moderates into an inefficient hypocritical mess that nevertheless exerts its will through sheer size.
Without liberalism where do people turn? Well, there's still the socialist alternative, which as industrialism progressed might look more attractive without the mild ameliorative measures liberalization afforded. So we might well see socialism emerge as the major ideological movement, without any of liberalism's moderating impulses influencing the restraint of unlimited state power...
Ooh, there's another source for dystopia: screwing the American Indian over even harder. Perhaps outright extinction of the Native American through aggressive settling campaigns and Indian wars. However, I can't see a specified intended genocide like the holocaust, which has been proposed as an alternate history scenario before but I don't believe would have been possible or plausible.
Very true. The general attitude was we'd naturally fall into extinction, being the view of us as a lesser breed of humanity, out competed like hominids. So any sort of campaign of complete and total genocide, especially as a scape goat, would be pretty strange. I could only see it as a part of ethnic cleansing campaign as a whole, rather than Natives being the primary target.
Consider how bad it's gotten in Africa. The initial outbreak might take a while, but that could be one hell of an ugly scenario once it reaches London.
PS: Though it will derail WWI. Could offer some real potential if the goal is less "make the Victorian era worse" than "keep it from ending".
I suspect an extinction of the Indian would come in the form of a lot of passive (relatively speaking) actions rather than an active attempt at eradication. The things that killed off Natives in actual history, such as being caught up in inter-tribal wars and wars with the settlers and United States, being massacred by settlers and soldiers who got overzealous, dying in massive numbers due to poor conditions and lack of proper food and shelter on their reservations, and of course things like disease. And the factor of Indians intermarrying with Americans (White and Black) and Mexicans and Canadians and Spanish, etc until they've bred themselves out of being Indian into being part of whatever other racial group they married into. You could ramp all that up to 11 in a dystopian situation until the Indian no longer exists, although his ancestors do exist in the bloodlines of other races they married into.
That said, I could very well see bursts of racism and massacres and sporadic campaigns of killings greater than any that may have taken place in the OTL.
I certainly cannot see an American holocaust, and I know a lot of people say that the treatment of the Indians of the OTL was a holocaust, but I fully disagree. It was heinous and horrible, but the United States did not systematically round up all the Indians and put them into death camps, systematically executing and murdering them with the full intent to see them gone forever. The US did force the Indians onto reservations, and life on the reservation was not pleasant and made the Indians a shadow of their former selves, but they were not Nazi death camps. I cannot see any American government creating something like Nazi death camps for Indians, since that requires Nazi fanaticism and racism, and while the settlers were racist against Indians (for the most part, at least), that takes a special level of mathematic bigotry I can't see any American government commit to.
The benefit of the Victorian age is that unlike the modern age, while there is a great deal of moving around, there remains a very, very great deal of not moving around. You may have a troop deployment in India or move to Nevada along the railroad and settle the west, but you aren't going to go on a business trip to London that takes 6 hours and you watch an Adam Sandler movie for half of it and then you fly back home that same day. There's still a lot of people staying where they are, there's still a lot of isolated tribes, still a lot of not moving around. That benefits containment, while at the same time contributing to them taking longer to figure out what it is.
Something to look at as a similarity could be the Influenza outbreak. As a result of WWI, you had all these people in the form of soldiers who were not interacting with one another going and mixing with one another, and as a result you had their germs spreading from one person to the next and then being carried back with them to their homelands.
******
On the issue of American Indians and race, Western racism could take on even more horrific qualities than it did in the OTL with brutality against various races of people, racial motivated massacres and attacks at greater numbers and in more horrific ways than the OTL, and so on. And there is the topic of Scientific racism and Eugenics. That already created dystopic situations in many ways, as well, and came to a head with the terrible, bigoted pseudo-science of Nazism where bigoted eugenics programs and programs based on scientific racism were put into place with active government support as never before, leading to atrocities, torturous experiments and all sorts of scientific horrors. It should be noted, eugenics and scientific racism was also previously put into action not just by private groups or individuals, by by government sponsorship as well. I believe this was a private effort, but in the pre-WW2 period (I'm not sure how far back it goes), there were programs private people offered to blacks where they could bleach their skin to become white (which was horrifically dangerous and damaging to the skin). Up until even the 1970s in certain places (not just some back woods, but the United States as well), there were programs sponsored by the governments where certain individuals and the mentally retarded were forcibly sterilized so they could no longer breed.
The idea of eugenics, being one of strengthening and improving individuals bodily and making healthier people is a worthy idea, but it was so twisted and horribly put to use by our predecessors based on their own stupidities, assumptions and racism that it permitted a lot of horror and cruelty and allowed the perpetrators to excuse it by saying it had a legitimate excuse and reasoning.
If you wanted to increase dystopia, that would certainly be an area to exploit and expand as a narrative concept.
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I'd like to bring in this thread for some potential. I did it long, long ago. I don't know if its Dystopian, but a lot of the stuff is invasive or otherwise out there if not dystopian.
Wacky Alt. Progressive Reforms
Wacky Alt. Progressive Reforms
Well as I said, maybe just averting the Progressive Age alltogether would be worse than that.
Well it didn't turn out very well for Russia did it? I understand its great when it works out, I think if socialism could catch on in the modern world that would be great, but a most likely disorganized revolution in imperialist Europe is probably going to end badly, unless it ends in a totalitarian regime (like Russia, almost certainly a bad thing) it could see a complete reversal of the industrial revolution.
Maybe a major Nihilist poliyical movement and a larger amount of anarchist assassinations.
Anarchism or Nihilism doing that is an interesting idea and seems possible especially if you remove the Progressive age. At the same time, I don't know how you manage to remove Progressivism or something similar as it was a natural reaction to the problems of and that affected an urbanizing society and growing working class and industrialization. Every action has a reaction, and said reaction to that were callings for reforms and protections.
Anyway, back to the topic of nihilism and anarchism, I don't have much for the latter. I know it had traction in the era, and I know anarchists were part of violent actions on occasions and were targeted as having committed them or plotting them (even when they didn't), but I really don't know enough beyond that summary. I don't know if Nihilism had much popularity in the era, but I would throw suggest the prospect of it arising in the aftermath of some great, violent war. Perhaps an even bloodier Civil War or other Western conflict. In the aftermath of wars, especially the major ones, there is a shattering of the wholesome, safe worldview (whatever that may be for the individual), and that is shattered by the cold reality of brutality and insanity and lack of semblance in the raw nature of war, and a situation where you see nature placing no value on any thought or morality, and experience just physical reality. For some people, that leads to revision of their existing perception, but for others it leads to a view that nothing really matters at all.
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Who was Napoleon I?
It is hard to see socialism avoiding rehabilitating elements of liberalism; consider the vapid constitutionalism of the moral force faction of the Chartists. Or Fabianism. You're reading 19th century socialism through the lens of Bolshevism, and it shows, quite badly.
yours,
Sam R.
Well one direct way to make the Victorian Era decidedly crapper is have King Leopold rule over more of Africa and for longer.
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Let's say good old Ernest Augustus takes the throne per usual. Democracy is hindered, have the reactionary Tory and Whig wings break off to form a new "National Party" that is basically a seat for the King's favourites. Through gerrymandering, patronage, treating and the like they are effectively in charge of a one-party state, although internal factions and alliances means there's enough competition to maintain British tradition.
This causes even greater unrest in the period, combine with harsher Poor Laws, and Irish unrest. Have a moderate like Peel killed by a (supposed) Irish Nationalists. This sets off British ire and the Police are armed and greatly expanded.
Now to make things sillier, thanks to continued State patronage Charles Babbage creates the Difference Engine in the 1830s/40s which allows British industry and state power to thrive, allowing greater control over the people.
Fearful of Irish Nationalism, Britain encourages emigrants to flee to the Emerald Isle to create new towns, to provide a Protestant work ethic to make the land thrive.
Have those chemical shells used in the Crimea. Considered horrible but limited enough in use (and a censored in the British press) to avoid huge backlash.
Come the Indian Mutiny, a vicious response sees rebellious villages gassed, all suspected agitators put into work camps and a revised caste system used to provide a strong minority loyal to Britain and loathed by the majority.
In Britain, all trade unions are state controlled and work camps in the Orkneys and elsewhere are quietly being set up. In the spirit of economic liberalism and due to fear of the increasingly powerful national Royal Constabulary, companies are granted the power to establish their own security forces to guard their factories, mines and company towns and crucially serve justice with only limited supervision from the state.
In the west of Ireland, camps for 'nationalists' are already a fact of life. The New Towns range from places of intolerance to complete segregation, with walls, barbed wire fences and check points. An internal passport system is also in place.
Small scale unrest is moderately common but is often subdued by threats of 'bottling' in which rebellious towns are completely cut off from the outside and all supplies denied access. Rumours abound that man made famine and gassing have spread to Ireland from Mutiny veterans. The entirely Protestant RIC, heavily armed even by mainland standards ensure a brutal brand of justice. The banning of Catholic schools means illiteracy and general ignorance is rampant.
Combined with a Government happy to see Catholics flee, state propagandists happily believe Ireland will finally be truly 'British' by 1900.
In Britain itself, for those happy to bow to the bosses who supply clothes, food and shelter, life is not so bad. They have democracy by show of hand, regulations to provide safe working environments for their children and entertainment in the picture papers, music halls and public hangings. Apparently the War in Hanover will be over by Christmas, and with the new Gatling guns and aerial dirty bombs pounding Berlin, who are we to disbelieve the Government Cryers?
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Let's say good old Ernest Augustus takes the throne per usual. Democracy is hindered, have the reactionary Tory and Whig wings break off to form a new "National Party" that is basically a seat for the King's favourites. Through gerrymandering, patronage, treating and the like they are effectively in charge of a one-party state, although internal factions and alliances means there's enough competition to maintain British tradition.
This causes even greater unrest in the period, combine with harsher Poor Laws, and Irish unrest. Have a moderate like Peel killed by a (supposed) Irish Nationalists. This sets off British ire and the Police are armed and greatly expanded.
Now to make things sillier, thanks to continued State patronage Charles Babbage creates the Difference Engine in the 1830s/40s which allows British industry and state power to thrive, allowing greater control over the people.
Fearful of Irish Nationalism, Britain encourages emigrants to flee to the Emerald Isle to create new towns, to provide a Protestant work ethic to make the land thrive.
Have those chemical shells used in the Crimea. Considered horrible but limited enough in use (and a censored in the British press) to avoid huge backlash.
Come the Indian Mutiny, a vicious response sees rebellious villages gassed, all suspected agitators put into work camps and a revised caste system used to provide a strong minority loyal to Britain and loathed by the majority.
In Britain, all trade unions are state controlled and work camps in the Orkneys and elsewhere are quietly being set up. In the spirit of economic liberalism and due to fear of the increasingly powerful national Royal Constabulary, companies are granted the power to establish their own security forces to guard their factories, mines and company towns and crucially serve justice with only limited supervision from the state.
In the west of Ireland, camps for 'nationalists' are already a fact of life. The New Towns range from places of intolerance to complete segregation, with walls, barbed wire fences and check points. An internal passport system is also in place.
Small scale unrest is moderately common but is often subdued by threats of 'bottling' in which rebellious towns are completely cut off from the outside and all supplies denied access. Rumours abound that man made famine and gassing have spread to Ireland from Mutiny veterans. The entirely Protestant RIC, heavily armed even by mainland standards ensure a brutal brand of justice. The banning of Catholic schools means illiteracy and general ignorance is rampant.
Combined with a Government happy to see Catholics flee, state propagandists happily believe Ireland will finally be truly 'British' by 1900.
In Britain itself, for those happy to bow to the bosses who supply clothes, food and shelter, life is not so bad. They have democracy by show of hand, regulations to provide safe working environments for their children and entertainment in the picture papers, music halls and public hangings. Apparently the War in Hanover will be over by Christmas, and with the new Gatling guns and aerial dirty bombs pounding Berlin, who are we to disbelieve the Government Cryers?
I really like this idea, I've actually sort of toyed with it before (a sort of post apocalyptic Victorian-era, but really just a major population drop and a regression to a few centuries before). This made me remember that scenario and kind of rework it... Here are the results, tell me what you think, I'm sure it's horrid... This is more meant to be dramatic AH than totally plausible AH.
Civil War; France and UK realize USA is getting too powerful, intervene on the side of the South. During the war, biological warfare is used for the first time; a french scientist develops a method for deployment of [horrible disease] in several northern cities. The north is forced to sue for peace as the government is basically collapsing, with people fleeing the core cities to avoid the plague.
The border between the USA and the CSA begins to resemble OTL's border between North and South Korea. Huge fortresses with complicated trenchworks arise on both sides. Washington DC is essentially turned into a big military base. The rest of the border is heavily patrolled by southern cavalry, to prevent refugees from the north from bringing in more plagues. No one is allowed across. Both sides spy on each other constantly, and there are guerillas in many places on both sides of the border still fighting the war unofficially. If you want to go in between you have to around through either Mormon territory, or through California/Cascadia/Canada. The north is pretty dystopic, because the government is really poor and its had basically this major holocaust. Huge numbers of people die (here is where I would put some actual population statistics if I was good at AH), and the little money that the government has all goes into maintaining the military. The government becomes increasingly authoritarian/fascist in an effort to harness the labor-power of recent immigrants to maintain what little industry is left. Needless to say, ITTL immigration from Europe dries up fairly quickly, though there may still be limited amounts to the CSA and the independent western states. There are lots of intelligence officers on every street corner, and the government seems everywhere. The feeling is sort of post-apocalyptic, with the largest cities like New york and Boston being somewhat barren, with so many people having died or run away. Occasionally plagues will break out again from time to time...
This is one reason the CSA is so keen to protect their side of the border; a few times their military plagues have come back and bit them in the ass, so now they also spend an inordinate amount of money (much of it borrowed from the UK, France, and Brazil [I have vague plans for Brazil to be a big deal in this timeline, as it receives many more of the immigrants who went to America IOTL) maintaining their military presence along the entire border. Needless to say the government is very oppressive here as well; violence is a part of everyday life in the south, with duels, riots, and slave revolts common occurrences.
Meanwhile, in Europe, all kinds of people are horrified by the atrocities the governments have committed. People start dealing with it by both legal and extralegal means, so many of the officials responsible are tried in court; but some of the higher-ups are able to escape by claiming they weren’t involved; since they don’t take responsibility the courts let them go, but individual vigilantes begin to take them out. basically over a short period of time assassinations, anti-government terrorist bombings, and duels become very common in the capital cities of the UK and France, and personal freedoms are curtailed as a result. By the 1870s it becomes much harder for ordinary citizens to freely travel around the western world in general -- even within their own countries. Cities that have not begun their police departments yet do so, and cities with police arm them more and more.
Tensions flare with regards to Germany; France knows of Prussia’s ambitions and cannot allow them to happen, and so consistently tries to undermine their attempts at dominating Germany. Something like the Franco-Prussian war breaks out in a similar timescale but France is a bit more prepared for it. They have more gatling guns and deploy them with their infantry instead of with their artillery, along with other doctrinal and technical changes and a bit of luck. The war goes on for longer (a few months) before the French army routs. However, since the war was much more taxing on Prussia it is not as able to unite germany.
The ultimate results by the 1880’s-1890’s.
-Britain: Still the most powerful country in the world, but with an extremely bloody past. Using chemical and biological warfare in crimea and during their intervention in the *American Civil War and *Franco-Prussian War (and possibly the *Crimean War?? Or does that take the POD back too far?). Extremely brutal colonialists in India, Australia and Africa as OTL... at home, almost no democracy. Victoria has dissolved parliament and granted control to a military junta who care little for human rights. All dissenters are repressed under a General who some quietly term the "New Cromwell."
-France: the *Franco-Prussian war lasted longer than OTL but was ultimately more destructive. the central government has completely collapsed. Some liberal revolutionaries attempted to establish a republic, which was recognized by the UK. On the other hand, some parts of the country are dominated by socialists, who argue between reformist vs revolutionary tendencies. One of the characters in the story can be Marx himself!
-USA: All the land west of the Dakotas and south of Oklahoma has been lost. Population centers have been drained due to plagues, and are mostly abandoned. The government struggles to maintain control over a fractured society that is more-or-less abandoning industrialism in favor of rural subsistence farming, far away from urban centers. What little industry remains is jealously guarded by the military, who use it to maintain their impressive fortresses along the border with the CSA, and to a lesser extent Canada and the new western border. A few hyper-rich industrialists remain, amongst the now-empty highrises of NYC or in the fortress-city of DC.
-CSA: Riots, slave revolts, and terrorist attacks are common in the south. The government is barely around, and has mostly privatized the military into several mercenary companies. British pounds pay their salary in return for an uninterrupted source of cotton for british textiles.
I need to work on the rest of the world, of course, these are just the countries that are most obviously relevant... I was thinking that as a result of Germany not uniting, science would be held back somewhat. I know how much German scientists contributed to all of our knowledge in this period; though obviously this wouldn't be stopped ITTL it might be a less focused and sustained trend, nor might it receive the same funding...
I think only in a sort of indirect way, like how the Nazis used early IBM computing machines to keep track of records of who they were killing in the death camps or whatever. An evil country could gain some advantages from having a functioning Difference Engine, and more still from a functioning Analytical Engine.
EDIT: Another thing I was thinking. Especially in the late Victorian period, Eugenics was very much in vogue.
Civil War; France and UK realize USA is getting too powerful, intervene on the side of the South. During the war, biological warfare is used for the first time; a french scientist develops a method for deployment of [horrible disease] in several northern cities. The north is forced to sue for peace as the government is basically collapsing, with people fleeing the core cities to avoid the plague.
The border between the USA and the CSA begins to resemble OTL's border between North and South Korea. Huge fortresses with complicated trenchworks arise on both sides. Washington DC is essentially turned into a big military base. The rest of the border is heavily patrolled by southern cavalry, to prevent refugees from the north from bringing in more plagues. No one is allowed across. Both sides spy on each other constantly, and there are guerillas in many places on both sides of the border still fighting the war unofficially. If you want to go in between you have to around through either Mormon territory, or through California/Cascadia/Canada. The north is pretty dystopic, because the government is really poor and its had basically this major holocaust. Huge numbers of people die (here is where I would put some actual population statistics if I was good at AH), and the little money that the government has all goes into maintaining the military. The government becomes increasingly authoritarian/fascist in an effort to harness the labor-power of recent immigrants to maintain what little industry is left. Needless to say, ITTL immigration from Europe dries up fairly quickly, though there may still be limited amounts to the CSA and the independent western states. There are lots of intelligence officers on every street corner, and the government seems everywhere. The feeling is sort of post-apocalyptic, with the largest cities like New york and Boston being somewhat barren, with so many people having died or run away. Occasionally plagues will break out again from time to time...
This is one reason the CSA is so keen to protect their side of the border; a few times their military plagues have come back and bit them in the ass, so now they also spend an inordinate amount of money (much of it borrowed from the UK, France, and Brazil [I have vague plans for Brazil to be a big deal in this timeline, as it receives many more of the immigrants who went to America IOTL) maintaining their military presence along the entire border. Needless to say the government is very oppressive here as well; violence is a part of everyday life in the south, with duels, riots, and slave revolts common occurrences.
Meanwhile, in Europe, all kinds of people are horrified by the atrocities the governments have committed. People start dealing with it by both legal and extralegal means, so many of the officials responsible are tried in court; but some of the higher-ups are able to escape by claiming they weren’t involved; since they don’t take responsibility the courts let them go, but individual vigilantes begin to take them out. basically over a short period of time assassinations, anti-government terrorist bombings, and duels become very common in the capital cities of the UK and France, and personal freedoms are curtailed as a result. By the 1870s it becomes much harder for ordinary citizens to freely travel around the western world in general -- even within their own countries. Cities that have not begun their police departments yet do so, and cities with police arm them more and more.
Tensions flare with regards to Germany; France knows of Prussia’s ambitions and cannot allow them to happen, and so consistently tries to undermine their attempts at dominating Germany. Something like the Franco-Prussian war breaks out in a similar timescale but France is a bit more prepared for it. They have more gatling guns and deploy them with their infantry instead of with their artillery, along with other doctrinal and technical changes and a bit of luck. The war goes on for longer (a few months) before the French army routs. However, since the war was much more taxing on Prussia it is not as able to unite germany.
The ultimate results by the 1880’s-1890’s.
-Britain: Still the most powerful country in the world, but with an extremely bloody past. Using chemical and biological warfare in crimea and during their intervention in the *American Civil War and *Franco-Prussian War (and possibly the *Crimean War?? Or does that take the POD back too far?). Extremely brutal colonialists in India, Australia and Africa as OTL... at home, almost no democracy. Victoria has dissolved parliament and granted control to a military junta who care little for human rights. All dissenters are repressed under a General who some quietly term the "New Cromwell."
-France: the *Franco-Prussian war lasted longer than OTL but was ultimately more destructive. the central government has completely collapsed. Some liberal revolutionaries attempted to establish a republic, which was recognized by the UK. On the other hand, some parts of the country are dominated by socialists, who argue between reformist vs revolutionary tendencies. One of the characters in the story can be Marx himself!
-USA: All the land west of the Dakotas and south of Oklahoma has been lost. Population centers have been drained due to plagues, and are mostly abandoned. The government struggles to maintain control over a fractured society that is more-or-less abandoning industrialism in favor of rural subsistence farming, far away from urban centers. What little industry remains is jealously guarded by the military, who use it to maintain their impressive fortresses along the border with the CSA, and to a lesser extent Canada and the new western border. A few hyper-rich industrialists remain, amongst the now-empty highrises of NYC or in the fortress-city of DC.
-CSA: Riots, slave revolts, and terrorist attacks are common in the south. The government is barely around, and has mostly privatized the military into several mercenary companies. British pounds pay their salary in return for an uninterrupted source of cotton for british textiles.
I need to work on the rest of the world, of course, these are just the countries that are most obviously relevant... I was thinking that as a result of Germany not uniting, science would be held back somewhat. I know how much German scientists contributed to all of our knowledge in this period; though obviously this wouldn't be stopped ITTL it might be a less focused and sustained trend, nor might it receive the same funding...
I think only in a sort of indirect way, like how the Nazis used early IBM computing machines to keep track of records of who they were killing in the death camps or whatever. An evil country could gain some advantages from having a functioning Difference Engine, and more still from a functioning Analytical Engine.
EDIT: Another thing I was thinking. Especially in the late Victorian period, Eugenics was very much in vogue.
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