On October 3, 1878, large objects from space hit Europe and North America with the force of hundreds of megatons. An Atlantic strike caused tsunamis. Rising vapor decreased insolation. Crops failed. Millions died.
The British authorities maintained order and food supplies long enough to evacuate many people to India, Africa and Australia:
aristocracy and gentry;
upper middle classes;
soldiers and their families;
skilled workers with machines and equipment.
In London in 1881, when rationing had broken down, a rioting mob killed Prime Minister Disraeli and the British remnant reverted to barbarism. In India, suppression of the Second Mutiny led to a new British Empire ruled from Delhi.
Threats from space need not be intelligent. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle proposed a novel (Footfall) about invading aliens hitting Earth with asteroids but were then asked to precede it with another novel (Lucifer's Hammer) about an undirected comet hitting Earth. Stirling describes not a comet approaching and striking Earth but political history a century and a half later.
6 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Mention was also made of a French remnant fleeing to North Africa and setting up "France outre mer" there. Altho I did find the idea of a Bonaparte dynasty ruling there some what unlikely. If only because there were so few Bonapartes left by 1878. My thought was that some kind of Bourbon restoration would have been more plausible, both because pro Bourbon sentiment was much stronger in France at that time and due to these Capetians being much more PROLIFIC than the Bonapartes.
We also see mention of a new caliphate, presumunably non Ottoman, arising within Islam.
And Japan also managed to preserve some kind of order and went on to conquer China.
Russia, alas, went down some very DARK ways. But I'm trying to avoid revealing too many spoilers!
Sean
Hi, Paul!
I should have remembered to add in my previous note that Poul Anderson wrote one novel showing Earth being deliberately destroyed, AFTER DOOMSDAY. Altho, alas, it's not as well known as Larry Niven and Jerry Pounelle's excellent and fascinating LUCIFER'S HAMMER and FOOTFALL.
Sean
The Fall was only five years after the fall of Napoleon III. As it is, the current Bonapartist pretender to the French imperial throne is Napoleon VII Jean-Christophe, born in 1986, the descendant of Napoleon I's younger brother Jerome (as well as Louis XVI, though he is nowhere near close to being King of France in pretense).
John,
Thank you for all your comments. Please continue.
Paul.
Dear Mr. Cowan,
Just a small correction, there are no descendants of Louis XVI of France living today. The only child of that ill-starred monarch to survive to adulthood, Marie Therese, was childless.
I still think it would have been more plausible if Stirling had France-Outre-Mer being ruled by descendants of one of the Spanish or Italian branches of the Bourbons. Because there were so FEW Bonapartes in 1878 when Napoeleon III's only son was already dead. To say nothing of the Bonapartes being discredited by France's defeat in the Franco/Prussian War.
Sean
Dear Mr. Cowan,
I need to make a correction. I erred saying Napoelon III's son Napoleon Eugene Bonaparte was already dead by October of 1878. He was only killed in the Anglo/Zulu war of 1879 on June 1 of that year. But I don't know if Napoleon Eugene was still in the UK in the October 1878 of THE PESHAWAR LANCERS. If so, I suppose he could have made his way to French North Africa and there founded France Outre-Mer, which would have lessened, to me, the implausibility of a continued Bonapartist dynasty.
But a France-Outre-Mer ruled by descendants of a Spanish or Italian branch of the Bourbons still seems more plausible to me, if only because they were so much more more numerous than the Bonapartes.
Sean
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