I would agree with WolfBear that the degree of reactionary feeling and hatred across parts of the UT region for the 21st C is being overstated. Especially considering the mess they would find in 1898 US. Not to mention how many people are fanatical enough to give up all those comforts for life in 1898 US?
Agreed. It really depends, but you figure there are going to be people who look at their roles as those of missionaries (in a sense). As far as giving up comforts goes, we aren’t talking a difference between the modern day and the 17th century here…sure the methods are cruder but they’re a lot closer to modern day than you might think.
A lot would depend on how far the UT region falls and how hard. Plus how they interact with the DT world, not just the DT US. There are a lot more players in the field and a number are likely to be less hostile to it than the DT US. Although the sheer size of the UT region and its needs for materials that can't really be provided for the DT world, especially not on the scale that it would want.
It would be a sizable drop, no doubt (for one thing, a lot of pharmaceuticals are currently produced overseas) so both a serious decline in quality of life along with a major economic contraction is unavoidable. The question is how they respond to it, because the U.S. is coming off a major economic panic (1893) and it’ll affect not just the uptime states but everyone. What they won’t have completely lost is the knowledge of how to produce the stuff so there’s still that.
Given that its less than 40 years since the CW would the DT US, prior to it realising how powerful the UT area is or in reaction to its rejection of multiple DT laws and values, view the UT area as a secession? In which case things could get awkward for both sides but especially the DT US.
More likely the western states rediscover the virtues of federalism and largely keep to their own affairs; the country as a whole is largely isolationist (at least as far as Europe goes) and won’t want much to do with Asia (though the Pacific is more or less America’s problem whether they want it or not) but “secession” isn’t in the cards. Nor is either side going to want to get into a war over it.
Reaction with the rest of the world will be complex and interesting. Given this is before Wilhelm and Tirpitz started the challenge to the UK that drive it into the Franco-Russian camp can either [more likely Wilhelm I suspect but still probably unlikely] or other elements in the country manage to avert that? Or do they simply go for a U-Boat type - despite it being technologically incapable at the time and lacking the kudos and economic return for industrialists of a large capital ship fleet.
IIRC its prior to the bloody coup that saw a change of dynasty in Serbia so that could be averted, along with a lot of other future issues. Its likely that certain political prisoners in Russia for instance are going to have a much less cosy time in internal exile in Siberia with some having their sentence and life cut short. How the world reacts to the 9 year old Adolf Hitler as well. Similarly would Fritz Harber be as fanatical a German nationalist given what happened to his fellow Jews under the Nazis?
Well, one side note is that someone may volunteer to do a diagnosis of Wilhelm at this point (some modern historians think he had ADHD for example) and he was quite close to his grandmother Victoria (who is still alive) and so she might be able to coax him into going along with it, not just as a family matter but also as a way to keep the peace between Britain and Germany in the long run (Wilhelm had a rather strange relationship with Britain; he loved it but also was constantly raging at Germany being in its shadow from a “far flung empire” perspective). Though that was as much due to hating his uncle Edward…again, having Queen Victoria potentially able to step in and head off a catastrophe would be quite a boon.
As far as the Balkans go…while the coup won’t happen until 1903, the truth is that Serbia is such a clusterfuck in terms of politics and nationalism that the smart move would be for everyone to just keep the Serbs isolated, or else blast the country into oblivion -they want to pick fights with Austria-Hungary because if the latter succeeded at federalizing and treating its various ethnicities as equals, Serbian dreams of radicalizing the South Slavs and creating Yugoslavia are done for. I’d also note that this is the same bunch that thought educating their populace and embarking on economic development was an evil foreign idea (and given how the Serbs wound up causing so much shit for not only the Balkans but the world at large? It needs to be made absolutely clear to them that there will be no Greater Serbia, and that if they don’t want to get gangbanged by *everybody* else for being the neighborhood assholes, they need to chill the fuck out.
In terms of the Pacific I suspect that even if 1898 US attacks Spain - and it will have other things on its mind - with no Pacific bases its going to be less capable to apply any real pressure in the Pacific. Its down time warships in the region will have to make a hasty return to the Atlantic coast unless the UT and DT US can come to an agreement, which I suspect would be unlikely.
Similarly with Japan and China. The latter is still fairly liberal but has flaws in its constitution that later allows the military and extreme nationalists to seize too much power but possibly that could be averted? China is a mess that I doubt anything can help other than supporting a revolution and trying to make the resulting state stable. However if the UTers try and do that they will have to greatly restrain their own values in the new republic.
Lack of Pacific bases at this time isn’t a handicap -when Dewey launched the campaign against the Philippines and Guam, he was staging out of Hong Kong. Not to mention that if push comes to shove, the uptime states have the majority of America’s modern naval assets (and Hawaii is a key submarine base so annihilating the Spanish fleet would be child’s play. Hell it was child’s play OTL because as bad as the Americans were at gunnery, the Spanish were much, much worse at that and at even *operating* their ships).
Anyway, the problem in heading off a war between Spain and the U.S. is that, even with future knowledge, the Spanish are still dumb enough to be high-handed in dealing with the Americans. Sure, Hearst rather infamously exaggerated things in Cuba to help push war fever, but the Spanish weren’t exactly being gentle in how they were dealing with Cuban or Flilipino dissidents, either (being racist fucks still stuck in a 16th century view of colonialism has its downsides). The only key difference is likely that we don’t actively annex the Philippines (though it would be tempting, I doubt the U.S. would want to re-fight the Philippine Insurrection ). Maybe offer statehood instead but I’m willing to be Aguinaldo and Co politely decline, at which point the Americans agree with a stipulation that they get to establish (re-establish?) a naval base at Subic Bay, and possibly one or two other locations. Likewise they’ll want a base at Gitmo again. Guam, meanwhile, becomes U.S. territory. Probably Puerto Rico as well, though statehood is a question mark (the uptimers likely wouldn’t care, but the downtimers might -the biggest reason there were complaints about territorial acquisition by the U.S. in the war was racism.
As far as Japan goes (I presume you goofed and meant “the former” given the history of both Japan and China), hard to say. Curtailing Japanese ambitions might be possible. The Emperor Meiji is still in charge (and would reign until 1925), and it is possible to amend the thing to avoid the military or anyone else gaining too much power (though to be frank, the problems were really with Hirohito being just fine with the various abuses going on by the military and nobility (the whole “Hirohito didn’t really do anything wrong” bit stems from the U.S. making a pragmatic decision to end World War II without additional fighting).
As far as China goes…at this point there’s no real saving it except maybe lending support to Sun Yat-sen and hoping things don’t go to shit as he tries to rebuild. Reining in the warlords would mean active shooting, and I don’t think anyone really wants to do that, especially if it means giving the Europeans or the Japanese an excuse to intervene themselves. They might do some targeted strikes against Mao and the Communists but even so, they don’t really exist yet.
I forget about Elephant in the room - Federal Reserve.Which,in fact,belong to Wall Street,not USA,and created fiat money,which lead USA to economical disaster now.
1898 USA would certainly avoid that mistake and keep silver dollar.
Just the opposite. They’d move to establish it SOONER and likewise get off the gold standard ASAP once it gets explained to Washington just *why* they keep having financial panics and economic crises on a regular basis.
Now, since you also clearly don’t know the history, let me give you the Cliffs Notes version. Basically, due to the fact that the availability of credit tended to cycle with agricultural seasons (due to the U.S. traditionally being an agrarian country for the first century or so) and with U.S. banking regulations being extremely convoluted, as well as a tendency among banks to hoard specie (that is, gold) in good times meant that credit wasn’t as readily available. While in theory that was not a problem per se, it also meant that at the slightest hint of trouble, banks would tighten up EVEN MORE and so nobody could get credit when they most needed it (which is why there were panics/crises in 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1907). It basically took a couple of banks coordinating to try and help limit the damage, but it also meant that economic crises in the U.S. were much worse than they needed to be. After the 1907 panic, we’ll, while the catastrophe was averted by J.P. Morgan (the man himself, that is) in coordination with James Stillman of what is now Citibank, everyone basically agreed that enough was enough and that a formal system was needed to avoid things like this. So, yes, while the Federal Reserve was drawn up by the leading lights of Wall Street, THAT DID NOT AND DOES NOT MEAN IT WAS A BAD IDEA. And to continue in this vein, the gold standard was thrown out in 1933 for the same reason we ditched the Independent Treasury system in favor of the Fed: BECAUSE IT WAS KEEPING LIQUIDITY TOO TIGHT.
Note that for all the bitching about giving the banks too big a safety net (and ironically Citi in 2008 was hands down the biggest offender in that regard while Morgan’s literal successors did exactly what they should have done), it’s been government (that is, Congress and the White House) mismanagement of economic responses rather than anything the Fed or private actors did. About the only thing I’d change is shifting oversight of financial soundness from the Fed to the FDIC but other than that, we are in a HELL of a lot better shape now than the U.S. was in 1898. Not to mention Britain and most other countries left the gold standard before we did ANYWAY.
