Dislocated to Success (25 page)

One of the most difficult times I faced in 1984 was the final announcement of the treaty concerning British North America with France. I made a long speech in the House of Lords and faced many interventions and a lot of detailed questioning. This is, of course, what the Lords excel at; my proxies in the Commons got a much easier ride than I did, although there was the usual outrage at allowing the French even the smallest crumbs of the American table. The Lords, however, are somewhat more Commonwealth-minded than the Commons and far more of them apply an almost Liberal level of detail to British North America, but without the Liberals’ fairly easy-going attitude on what British North America actually is.

The whole idea that we were giving up land which was outside of the former cis-Province of Quebec and the cis-State of Louisiana was anathema to some; the fact was that we were stretched in every single direction, and there were more issues over colonisation than we had originally considered. There were various things that we wanted, but even Michael at his most optimistic realised that it might be 50 years before the UK had anything resembling a coherent presence across the continent. There weren’t that many partisans for British Arkansas - there were more from British Ontario, but the natural politeness of cis-Canadians didn’t help them. The price of Detroit had been Labrador, and the price of Toronto would have been politically toxic. Contrary to some reports, the French were willing to give up most of Ontario - but the price in cash, in technology and in geopolitical concessions was too much to pay and would have certainly led to a different result from the Pragmatic war.

Having said that, their Noble Lords are a difficult audience at the best of times; many of them have obscure specialist knowledge and can use it to careful effect. They spent the best part of a week on the Treaty, and I ended up giving a very long summing-up speech which had to be concocted from an array of officials. Only about half their pertinent points had even been considered and prepared for an answer. One of their clearest challenges was “What is the political end of the settlement?”; that was something we didn’t know, and even as I write this book a decade on we still don’t really know. I suspect it will be another generation at least before we know if the Lenape model, the Iroquois model or the Cree model is the best for dealing with the Native American peoples. Similarly, the question of Canada is likely to remain moot, although I intellectually side with the “no Canada” camp - it is clear that the differences in North America are between the West Coast, Texas, Florida, Georgia and the East Coast, not between a “USA” and a “Canada”. However, with the treaty passed, the final post-Dislocation settlement had been made and Michael’s office could start to - supposedly - finalise their long term plans.

Chapter 19

1984 saw the Marathas become restless again. 1983 had seem some minor skirmishing with the Mughals, and the usual confusion in the Punjab, but nothing major as both feared that Nader Shah would come down like the proverbial wolf on the fold. Of course, he had his own problems - he was firstly trying to reform, and secondly dealing with a large number of conspiracies against him. Having realised this, the various Maratha and Mughal proxies started their version of the Great Game again.

By this time, both Maratha and Mughal power had completely dispersed from the far south of India. Former governors, rajahs and - in one case - an army General had started up their own states, and were firstly consolidating their power and secondly trying to ensure good relations with the British or with other dominant Europeans in their immediate area.

However, in Bengal, the Mughals spent much of the dry season re-establishing themselves as a presence over a rather independent-minded Nawab; whilst the Marathas looked to the east coast of India, and particularly Southern Orissa, where a weak coalition of various Mughal-inclined warlords partly changed their minds on who they owed their fealty to, or proceeded to ally with Hyderabad, who was felt in India - somewhat incorrectly - to be in the favour of the UK.

Needless to say, we were keeping well out of it. We were only concerned with the direct neighbours of Bombay, most of which were nominally part of the Maratha confederacy. Otherwise, we sought mainly trade - and, whilst we had some strong partnerships developing especially with smaller states, there were no allies. There was, however, a general feeling than neither Maratha nor Mughal should predominate, and the Indian-born citizenry of the UK were mainly concerned with the Punjab or Gujarat.

However, at the very end of December 1983 news came to us that Yanaon on the Orissa coast had been seized by the Confederacy forces. Yanaon contained a small French commercial concession which they hoped to grow into a factory. The French were somewhat concerned that Madras would be next, and contacted us - purely for information of course, although the military attaché dropped several hints about how we might be able to assist.

The initial reaction of the Government was cool; the Toulouse ministry had not been as cooperative as the Fleury ministry, and there was little inclination to assist the French in any capacity. However, as news got out that a Maratha army was marching down the East Coast, a number of small issues were pointed out which did mean that we were slightly concerned. Madras had been a British factory based out of Fort St. George, and there were a number of trans-British citizens still resident there. Secondly, there was an emergency flying boat facility at Madras occasionally used by the RAF, and lately by Laker Airways as part the Lawrence Marks - Phuket run.

Therefore, it was decided that there may be some British interests that needed safeguarding, and HMS Arethusa was sent from Phuket. They were not to engage under any but the direst circumstances; their job was simply to evacuate if needed, and also to make sure the flying boat facility had nothing worthwhile left in it if needed. Of course, they were also under orders to check on the progress of the Maratha army down the coast - and additionally to take notes on French military progress; whilst most French colonial troops were regarded badly, Madras and Pondicherry had been reinforced recently with good troops and there were a number of suggestions floating around regarding why that could have happened.

By the start of January it was clear that the Marathas were headed down the coast, and that if their destination was Madras it would probably be reached at the end of the month. However, we were surprised to learn that the French had showed considerable acumen. One of Laker's floatplane air taxis had been hired (at great expense) and was monitoring the progress of the Maratha Army. I applauded their cunning, and considered that Madras must be making more money than we had thought.

Whilst all this was going on, I also had to act as the go-between to sort out the tricky issue of young Mr Martí. Our erstwhile hero of the Cuban resistance had been sufficiently feted by Richard Branson to spend the winter at his island in the Caribbean, from which he was planning on launching some exclusive holiday resorts in other islands in the vicinity. He had also invited a certain Royal Personage along; keeping that out of the Press involved the careful dispensation of a number of favours - Private Eye was the only one to suggest that “Yvonne” might be discussing exotic Ugandan relations. Luckily the Personage returned in February, refreshed from her break, and we decided to quietly deal with the Martí problem by finding him a useful sinecure in the Caribbean, involved with the welfare of Cuban refugees - but also well away from Mr Branson’s holiday island.

It had been otherwise fairly quiet for most of February, nothing really that couldn't be dealt with at reasonable leisure. Minor matters like dealing with the lengthy list of problems of the rulers of East Frisia and the complicated inheritance issues of Braunschweig were in hand. A bit of medical treatment in the first case and a blanket "No" on the second were the best in both cases, although I must admit I have never seen a young man more miserable than Karel Edzard of East Frisia when he arrived in the UK. Karel was a bit of a tricky case; the family were fairly broke, but there was a substantial opinion amongst the states of the Lower Rhine that we should try and help him - they didn’t want a Prussian succession, so they pitched in a bit to his college fund. Given his rather limited education, the best we could manage was some classes at an FE college, which he seemed to quite settle into; we also got him some appropriate medical treatment for his melancholy. Of course, he didn’t stay long; we’d just about started to sort him out when his father went and died on us, forcing him to return. However, oddly enough, he returned with a British bride he’d picked up at his FE college - luckily the house law of East Frisia wasn’t very status-conscious. He also managed to learn enough about us to ask us for help with the Emden situation, which we were happy to help with. The results so far have been fairly positive, although the underlying political culture of East Frisia may well have helped.

In the middle of February we also got surprising news about the Maratha advance on Madras, news that caused the MoD into re-evaluating the capabilities of trans-armies. The French in Madras had used their spotter plane well - they had cleared villages and stores out of the line of march, ambushed and harried the army’s supply train at every opportunity, conducted raids landed by boat behind the army and even used a few steam trucks as mobile cannon platforms - for the latter, the accuracy was utterly awful, but it was the action that counted. The Maratha never even got to Madras; demoralised, tired and hungry, they had executed their general and returned north to beyond Yanaon. We had seen towards the end of the Spanish war that guerrilla tactics could at least cause fewer losses; the French appeared to have refined those somewhat. Alan Clark, in particular, pointed out in a paper that we needed to be much more wary of this, especially as training had been provided by former soldiers to a number of cis-armies. Clark does sometimes have his uses in areas like this.

Of course, by that time we had just about managed to contact nearly everything worthy of calling itself a nation in the world; even if the Ryukyu Kingdom had been more a case of "stop that or we will shell you", we even managed to interest them in forestry to deal with their denuded islands  - they also gave us a little insight into Japan, which was helpful. Not that we had embassies everywhere, but there was generally supposed to be a chap who could get in contact with us. We'd even managed to finally make some very tentative relations in East Africa and Central Asia. Qing China didn't formally recognise us, but there were a growing number of back channels and people you could talk to; experts told me that this was about as close as we could expect at the time.

Then there was Japan. Of course, nearly all their neighbours told us that they weren't worth bothering with, with the Koreans being particularly poisonous about them. The Hermit Kingdom was indeed a Hermit Kingdom; there was the odd whisper, the odd suggestion that we should do a Commander Perry on them, but frankly there wasn't much interest. There were certainly quite a few people around who suggested that Japan staying cut off was a good thing - a lot of them had fought the Japanese in the war. The VOC told us they were intrigued with us but not sure what to do.

However, at the end of February 1984, they turned up at Phuket. Two large war junks - we much later learned there had been three originally - with a small force of "marines" aboard and some minor dignitaries. There was much scurrying around to see if we knew anything about any of the minor dignitaries - it turned out that it was one of those situations where a couple of the names were known, but it wasn't known what for. Photos were wanted as well, just in case any known cis names had turned up; one or two of the Japanese embassy staff had gone wandering and not returned. However, a decent quality photo would take a few days to arrive - trying to recognise one sent over a telecopier was always interesting,

It seems that they had obviously been talking to the Koreans; their initial suggestion was for official contact to be done through Phuket and a series of official visits to each other’s realms. There was little mention of trade, but some rather comforting phrases about "our great island nations". Obviously, someone had to go to Phuket and have a bit of a chat; I did consider it - the weather would be  better than the mixed sleet and snow that had been much of February - but I decided that the journey was a little bit much, so after a quick word with Willie, I sent for little Rifkind; unfortunately he was out there for some time, and we both attracted the ire of the Whips.

Among the more interesting and more unpredictable things I had to deal with were the various powers East of Calcutta. Some were more predictable than others, and our expertise had been seriously weak in the area; however, since we had come to terms with the United Provinces, the VOC had been fairly helpful in acting as a conduit of learning. In fact the VOC had become very useful in a number of ways East of Bombay, although they were earning some very good profits through their actions.

The minor powers in South-East Asia fell into three categories: those who wished trade; those who tried to involve us in their internal squabbles; and those who tried to ignore us. Ayutthaya and the petty kingdoms of the Khmer and the Lao were friendly, and we tried - and to some extent succeeded - in creating some harmony amongst them. The various Burmese, Vietnamese, Malay and Sumatran states varied between plotting and ignoring us. Brunei was rather more tricky, partly due to some lawsuits - Prince Jefri had been in the UK and had eventually gained control of the substantial Brunean cash assets held in the UK; we had thought that he would stay in the UK and spend it on his playboy lifestyle, but he had returned to Brunei and was busy there.