Spain

[Philippe]

I'm still struggling through the early stages of learning how to play this game, so anything I say falls under the rubric of raw initial reactions.

There's a short list of nineteenth century wars I really want to see simulated by the game model. Taiping rebellion and the last phase of the Opium Wars happens to be at the top of my list, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

But what I really want to see are the Guano Wars in South America. There may not be much room in the system to show former colonies duking it out over natural resources, but the first act of the Guano Wars involved Spain making an unabashed grab for South American Nitrate resources that probably included the first transatlantic use of ironclads. You don't get any more imperialistic than that.

Spain may have been a shadow of its former self in the 19th century, but any way you look at it she was still a major (and occasionally interventionist) colonial power until her run-in with the United States. She needs her own permanent slot in the Grand Campaign, even if no one ever cooks up a scenario involving Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. Some things shouldn't be left to modders.

[PhilThib]

I need more info on the "war" to produce an event for it. Date, participant, cause (CB?), objectives, etc...

[Schwarzer Herzog]

Hi Philippe,

that's one of events I sent you for two months
Here are the links in wikipedia in French and English.
They speak about Numancia battleship, it resisted the bombardment of the coastal defenses of El Callao and it showed the advantage of the ironclads in a real combat.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerre_hispano-sud-am%C3%A9ricaine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chincha_Islands_War

Cheers

[Laruku]

While visiting the Naval Museum in Madrid I saw a piece of Numancia's armour that was hit during the bombing of El Callao (1866).

More info about the Numancia warship (Spanish):

http://www.armada.mde.es/ArmadaPortal/page/Portal/ArmadaEspannola//ciencia_museo/07_actividades_y_noticias/04_pieza_del_mes/2010/2010_06_02_es?_selectedNodeID=408136&_pageAction=selectItem

[PhilThib]

Thanks. The fact is that I had no time to look into these events for weeks

[Philippe]

The objective of Spain's intervention in South America was, uh, guano. Sea gulls have been flying to those islands off the coast of Chile and Peru for millions of years and making a mess, with a result that the islands had been converted into gigantic lumps of solidified bird droppings floating in the southern ocean. Until modern chemistry discovered that this meant that the islands were basically made up of concentrated nitrate (bird-made rather than man-made) they were merely disgusting. In modern terms, these bird-besmirched islands were the nineteenth century equivalent of finding an unknown offshore oil deposit in shallow water with the equivalent of twenty percent of the world's proven reserves. The islands were like floating gold mines, albeit a bit smelly. Anyone who's ever had a pet bird and had to clean and scrape the bottom of the bird cage will know what I'm talking about.

I studied the islands many years ago when I was in school taking a course on on the methods of ancient agriculture. When the time came to look at pre-modern fertilizer, you suddenly found yourself confronted with a wealth of articles by chemists on why the guano on those islands was so concentrated. It's not just that they were covered with nitrates: the nitrates had been building up for so long that to use them in agriculture you had to dilute them or they would burn the crops. Those guano islands were not only a rich source of exportable chemical wealth, they were a goldmine for graduate students in chemistry who needed to churn out articles.

As an aside, every decent roman farm had a dove-cote, which is a fancy term for a pigeon coop. Until I read about the guano islands I could never understand why anyone would want to live in close proximity to such messy birds. Now I understand -- what you scrape off the floor of the dove cote comes very close to pure chemical fertilizer, and being able to fertilize your crops can be the difference between starvation and a bumper harvest. In the pre-modern world, this kind of thing was very important.

Here's a link to what happened after the first phase of the guano wars. It deserves to be included, but the players were confined to South America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific

[Kensai]

Philippe, if what you say is not an elaborate joke, then it is truly amazing! Very interesting information indeed! apy:

[Philippe]

Truth is often stranger than fiction.

It's been more years than I'd care to admit since I studied chemistry, so I got a few things wrong.

Here's a wiki on guano:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano


I was having a Nora Ephrom moment. Guano is indeed rich in nitrates, but it's the phosphorus that makes it valuable for agriculture.

The article mentions lack of odor. Everything is relative. You have lots of sea air and salt water spray and breezes, so that probably makes things a bit better. I've never been to those islands so I can't vouch for how smelly they are or aren't. But I have had the unfortunate experience of being parked on a railway siding in Florida for half an hour next to what was essentially a phosphorus mine: huge cone-shaped piles of bright yellow-orange dirt/powder. The smell was so strong that it almost made it hard to breathe, and I was very glad when we left. Running over a skunk on the highway is worse, but this was pretty bad. So I can see why a guano island might not be considered as smelly as a phosphorus mine, though I've never had the (dis)pleasure.

[Kensai]

I had already gone to the guano article in Wikipedia, after reading your first link. The gull picture is simply priceless!

Regarding the odor, I think guano and bird excrement in general is smelly only when fresh and, as in human, after specific dietary habits.

[yellow ribbon]

chemistry, eh ?

well, you missed some points...

it also contains up to an average of 1/10 Potassium Nitrate (dont know the right translation, thus: KNO3), which made it valuable [color="Red"]to substitute Chile-saltpeter[/color] for many countries until Ballisit and other explosives were commonly used about 1900 to be independent from nitrates as far as possible.

Nauru had the highest per capita income of the world till 1990s (sic!) due to Guano, and it was even "mined" at the penguin islands of [color="Red"]Namibia[/color].

and of course, on all land with lot of rain, it would ruin the earth with the high level of nitrates.
it also destroyed the groundwater of whole areas, when they tried it outside of south america as an "immediate" fertilizer.

so true, phosphate were the deal as fertilizer, gained from its solved, acid form

EDIT:

just look for the meaning of [color="Red"]NPK-rating[/color], to figure out how the elementals work(ed) out in agriculture

[Hobbes]

Wonderful stuff! I had no idea.

Cheers, Chris

[StephenT]

So to sum up the war for game purposes, based on the Wikipedia articles:

The war was initially between Spain and Peru, starting in April 1864. It later expanded to include Chile (September 1865), Ecuador (January 1866) and Bolivia (March 1866).

The war effectively ended in May 1866 when the Spanish withdrew their forces back to Europe, but a formal armistice was not signed until 1871. Both sides claim to have won the war.

The initial casus belli was an incident where some Peruvians murdered a Spanish settler in Peru. Spain demanded compensation and an apology, which Peru refused to give. The long-term dispute was because Spain had refused to formally recognise Peru's independence back in 1821, arguing that Peru still owed them money.

Spain declared war on Chile because they had refused to let Spanish ships resupply in their ports, while sending volunteers and supplies to Peru. The other two countries allied with Peru and Chile later in solidarity, but didn't do much for the war effort other than banning the Spanish from their ports as well.

The Spanish objective was purely prestige: they wanted to force Peru to apologise, and generally re-establish their influence in the region. They had no territorial objectives. (They did seize control temporarily of the nitrate-rich Chincha Islands, but they're too small to show on the PoN map.)

Military action, other than the Chincha Islands, was entirely naval. The Spanish blockaded the enemy coastline, attacked their merchant ships, and bombarded Valparaiso and Callao.

After the latter action the Spanish claimed they'd "made their point" and declared victory before going back home. The South Americans also claimed they'd won, because they'd "defended their independence" against Spain.

The USA formally protested against the Spanish action, which was a clear breach of the Monroe Doctrine, but did nothing to interfere. Of course they did have a slight civil war going on at the time.

[Philippe]

Good summary.

This war was actually a sort of preamble to a much more interesting war between South American nations over resources that resulted in Bolivia losing its corridor to the Pacific. Chile, Bolivia, and Peru squaring off over the border province would be fascinating to see in a game, but I'm not sure it would make it into Gloire des Nations because none of the belligerents were major European powers (might make an interesting small battle scenario, though).

The War of the Pacific (which will probably never appear in the game) had a profound influence on the development of military mindsets and military cultures of the three countries involved. And the war had long-lasting repercussions: Bolivia fought the Chaco War with Paraguay in the twentieth century in some respects to regain lost military glory and/or compensate for being cut off from expansion to the west. These questions may seem remote and academic to someone who lives in Europe or North America, but try talking to someone who's been through the Chilean military about what they think about when they're not preparing to defend the Andes and the Tierra del Fuego from Argentina. I remember going on a business trip with a bunch of Chileans, and when they waxed nostalgic about their military service, the training event they all seemed to remember was defending that northern province from incursions by Peru and Bolivia.

[Schwarzer Herzog]

The years of the American Civil War were an opportunity for European countries to make influence in America.
The better known one is the intervention of the French Empire in Mexico (with initial help of troops of GB and Spain in Veracruz).
Spain had the naval war in the Pacific against the andine countries and retook Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) after a petition of the goverment of this republic, in these years too (1861-1865).

Santo Domingo hat a very dangerous neighbour, Haiti. Haiti invaded Santo Domingo in differents years and it was a permanently threat to this young republic.
The Dominicans had two parties, one for USA and other for Spain, in the years of the ACW, the party pro-Spain got a return of the country to the old colonial power to protect his people of the Haitians.
The end of the war in North-America did the end of the Spanish colonial administration in Santo Domingo, the island had nothing interesting for Spaniards and the pressure of a local guerrilla (with USA) did the rest.

Other prestige intervention of Spain was in Cochinchina with the French.
France wants a region in South Asia and Spain had Phillipines there, it was a good base to attack Vietnam, an incident with spanish and french missionaries and a killed spanish bishop was the spark to the war.
The war was easy for the europeans, taking Saigon and Da-Nang. But the spanish goverment didn't given any supply and money to continue the campaign and finally all the glory was for the French, they started the colonization of Indochina.

The handicap for the spaniards these years was the internal problems.
They had still a good geopolitical and colonial position, but external polities was not the priority for the politicians and the generals, all interested to get the power in goverment
Finally USA took its place in the world in the war of 1898.

[Schwarzer Herzog]

An internal theme in Spain in the XIX Century and not very famous was the confiscation of the eclesiastical goods and properties.
It was made for the goverments from 1798 until 1924 in different steps, the most known was in 1836 of Minister Mendizabal but the biggest was from 1855 of Minister Madoz (in the years of PoN ).

The incomes were awesome for the public finances, the negative side was the corruption with the distribution of the lands because they weren't given to the little farmers, which worked the lands.
The rich families and the Town Councils (dominated for the rich families) bought the lands and it was only a change of owner, from Catholic Church and Religious Orders to the big families, some of them of the nobility and it didn't resolved the social problems in the rural zones of Spain.

[Laruku]

Well, as you know, while testing Spain the Madoz's event fired in 1854 with no text and no effects whatsoever. I was playing in Spanish language, I don't know if that was the reason.

[Kensai]

Philippe and others, are you interested in joining our multiplayer game?

We have already a couple of guys who know more or less how to mod our ongoing session and I, myself, am willing to struggle while learning. There are 3 nations available and many more possibly to be added. We need someone to run Spain there, for example. This doesn't have to interfere with your single player campaign, after all turn submission is rather slow, once per day.

Check it out! ouet:

[Philippe]

As tempting as the idea is (and it is very tempting indeed), I'll have to pass for the moment because of too many other commitments. As things stand I'm having trouble keeping up with two non-AGEOD pbem games I'm currently playing, and one of them only involves a turn a week.

Multiplayer pbem is probably the best way to go for something like Gloire des Nations. When I was at university many years ago the history department organized a large multiplayer simulation of the Crimean War that played out on a map of Europe and the Near East. The game was sufficiently complex that it required teams to run each country (political, economic, and military players). Queen Victoria was literally sleeping with Tsar Nicholas, and this made me intensely nervous because as the Tsar's military commander I was afraid of what might be revealed in pillow talk. They had more important things to talk about, though, and broke up shortly thereafter.

I take it that Spain is only being included in the game as a mod rather than as part of an official beta.