Alternate Histories Part 2a: I Have No Idea What I'm Talking About

King Solomon greets Queen Makeda of Sheba

 

Shit I Don't Know Entry #1: Where Are We?

Here I must confess as to the greatest difficulty I face with a project that deals extensively with Ethiopian history: if you held a gun to my head, I would not be able to give you a concise, coherent definition of what Ethiopia even is.  The concept of the nation in general is a nebulous one that at even its most vivid doesn't come close to approaching a science.  National consciousness is therefore one which a historical materialist must regard with healthy skepticism, even when it accompanies a struggle for liberation against colonizers.  It certainly isn't a sufficiently robust concept to be the sole basis for the authority of a state.

You will note that I have elected not to take the coward's way out by appealing to a dictionary definition of the word "nation."  There are two reasons for this: first, it's a hacky, middle school essay-ass way to start off an article.  Second, I can't find a single definition of the word that cannot be disputed for some ideological reason or another.  Most center around the existence of linguistic, religious, cultural, or other historical commonalities by peoples within a contiguous area, but bright-line requirements that separate nations from mere states are hard to come by.  This is perhaps something I ought to have considered before I decided to make nationalism the second topic for this series, because Ethiopia's history as a nation is a messy subject even by these standards.

There have, of course, been humans in Ethiopia for nearly as long as there have been humans, with the arrival of Homo sapiens proper dated to over 200,000 years ago.  Most of the population of the Horn of Africa today descend from toolmaking cultures who lived around 12,000 years ago.  These people likely spoke a proto-Afroasiatic language and indeed may have been the progenitors of that entire language family.

The Church of Saint George in Lalibela,
one of many monolithic churches carved
from hillsides during the Zagwe Dynasty.

The earliest known state to emerge was the Kingdom of D'mt around the 10th century BCE.  The people of this kingdom spoke an early Ethio-Semitic language, and traded extensively with the Sabeans of the Southern Arabian peninsula.  (They were almost certainly not descended from Sabean migrants themselves - Ethiopia was, in fact, one of the first places Semitic languages were spoken).  This kingdom gave way to (or evolved into, or was incorporated into) the Kingdom of Axum, a prosperous superpower whose extent at its apex reached across the Red Sea into Yemen.  Notably, it was among the first states to adopt Christianity as an official religion. Axum collapsed under mysterious circumstances in the 10th century CE, even as the heart of its territory remained predominantly Christian.  This was succeeded by the Ethiopian Empire, ruled first by the Zagwe dynasty and then by the Solomonic dynasty - so named because it claimed descent from the first King of Axum, whom they claimed was the son of King Solomon by the Queen of Sheba.  Though the legend predates its writing, the main basis for this claim is found in the medieval Kebre Negast - a national literary epic similar to the Arthurian romances in both its cultural importance and its reputation for reliability among historians.

It is in this medieval period that a cultural and linguistic transformation began to emerge.  Ge'ez remained the liturgical and literary language of the priests, chroniclers, and poets. In the north, the Tigrinya language developed.  But as the political center shifted southward, Amharic, a new language which had acquired lexical and grammatical traits from the Cushitic and Omotic speakers who also lived and traded in the highlands, became a lingua franca.  Under rulers such as Zara Yaqob, Ethiopia flourished, prospering from trade and protecting itself from aggressive neighbors.  But the region was subsequently thrown into chaos when the Sultanate of Adal invaded Ethiopia, armed with imported Turkish cannons.  Ethiopia itself appealed for aid, and the conflict turned into a long, bloody proxy war between the Turks and the Portuguese for dominion over the Red Sea.  In the end, Ethiopia prevailed, but both states were left severely weakened.

This led to the next great influx of people into the Ethiopian state - the Oromo migrations.  Spurred by raids against them from the Abyssinian highlands, as well as the desire for better land for herds and grain, they took advantage of the weakening of the Ethiopian state and collapse of Adal to move north into the highlands, at spearpoint when necessary.  At the time of the migration, they followed their traditional religious beliefs and way of life, governing themselves through a complex and robust form of democracy called gadaa.  Over the next several centuries, their society transformed in proximity to their new neighbors, as some Oromo leaders proclaimed kingdoms or even married into the imperial family.  This transformation occurred through peaceful and gradual integration in some places and times (mostly in the north), and brutal subjugation in others (particularly in the south during the bloody campaigns of Menelik II).

The Empire remained whole, albeit weakened, until 1769, when Ras Mikael Sehul deposed Emperor Iyoas.  He lacked both the bloodline and the desire to claim the throne for himself, so he installed a puppet in Iyasu II and ruled instead as regent.  This would remain the typical state of affairs during the period of political fragmentation that would come to be known as the Zemene Mesafint - the Era of the Princes.  Though a Negusa Negast would continue to reign in name, Ethiopia was in practice divided into more-or-less independent princedoms whose most powerful rulers would fight to place Solomonic puppets of their own on the throne.  The conflicts of this era at times acquired the dimensions of religious conflict between Christians and Muslims, at other times ethnic conflict between the Amhara, Tigrayans, and Oromo, and at other times feudal squabbling over which the people in general were indifferent (or indeed, some combination of all or none of the three).  It was in certain phases regarded by the people as a local Gondarine affair and at other times a national calamity, the subject of millenarian warnings by itinerant preachers.  It is said that in the 1830s a prophecy popular among the Christian peasantry predicted that peace would be restored to the land by a great emperor who would take the name Tewodros, after a short-lived emperor who was in legend a defender of the poor.

The upstart Tewodros II spent his
early years as a shifta (outlaw)
conducting raids in Sudan.

This may have been on the mind of the upstart Ras Kassa Hailu when he made his bid for the throne.  When he defeated the last of the warlords in 1855 (or 1841, in certain timelines), he was proclaimed Negusa Negast and chose Tewodros II as his throne name.  But though he ended the Era of Princes, he would not bring peace.  His ambitious centralization policies alienated the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and with it the peasantry from which he drew so much of his support.  As his reign dragged on, he became prone to violent outbursts.  He would commit suicide as an invading British army approached, by the end controlling little of the country outside his own castle (thus beginning a long history of British imperial hostility to Ethiopia's existence).  The Zemene Mesafint did not reassert itself, however - instead, Emperor Yohannes IV would take his place through the strength of foreign firearms.

Yohannes's rule permitted significantly more autonomy for the local nobles of his realm than his predecessors, demanding only their loyalty.  This was beneficial for the stability of the Empire, but had the consequence of permitting Menelik, the King of Shewa, to consolidate his power in the hopes that he might some day usurp the throne.  The Egyptians intended to take advantage of this rift when they launched their invasion in 1875, seeking to bring the whole of the Nile under the rule of the Khedive.  But they incurred Menelik's ire when they occupied Harar, which the Emperor and King both regarded as rightful Ethiopian territory.  When Egypt's well-equipped, Western-supported army marched southward, the Ethiopians inflicted two sound defeats upon them.

It is around the twenty years that followed these victories that the question of Ethiopia as a nation turns.

Not long after Ethiopia's victory, the Khedivate of Egypt faced a major crisis, as the Mahdi Rebellion drove the entire Egyptian Army out of all of Sudan except for a beleaguered garrison at Suakin.  Yohannes signed an agreement with Britain and Egypt in which the Khedivate's troops were permitted to withdraw through Ethiopian territory in exchange for access to the Red Sea port of Massawa.  In the Middle Ages, this region, corresponding roughly to modern-day Eritrea, had alternately been directly ruled by, a vassal of, or independent of the Ethiopian Empire.  After the war with Adal, however, it had fallen under Turkish control.  In fact, Britain had no intention of honoring their agreement with Yohannes, later tacitly agreeing to grant the city and its environs to the Italians.

When Yohannes died in battle against the Mahdists in 1889, Ethiopia was thrown into a succession crisis between Menelik and Yohannes's bastard son Mengesha, and Italy was poised to take advantage.  They hoped to create either a civil war or a willing client kingdom.  In the end it was Menelik who came to an agreement with them, signing the Treaty of Wuchale, in which Menelik agreed to recognize Italy's claim to Eritrea in exchange for promises of weapons and economic aid.

However, there were two different versions of the treaty.  One was written in Amharic and contained only those provisions already described.  The other was written in Italian, and effectively established Ethiopia as an Italian protectorate.  Menelik would not learn of this until his correspondence with the German kaiser was answered with a rude reply that insisted he could only deal through the King of Italy.  To Italy's surprise, Menelik responded by repudiating the treaty in its entirety.  Not comprehending their own arrogance, Italy then attempted to placate him by giving him two million rounds of ammunition.  This is generally not remembered as one of history's greatest decisions.

Nor, indeed, was anything the Italians did subsequently.  Expecting, as the Egyptians did, to receive the enthusiastic support of a disgruntled claimant to the throne, they appealed to Ras Mengesha to defect.  He flatly refused.  Then, through the urging of distant politicians in Rome who demanded a decisive victory over the savage Africans to boost their prestige, General Oreste Baratieri marched his army into battle at Adwa, where his outnumbered (and, astonishingly, outgunned) forces were handed a decisive defeat.

But Menelik could go no further.  Ethiopia had already stretched its capacity to supply an army to its limit.  Ironically, had Baratieri waited even two days more, the Ethiopians, who were rich in arms but short on food, may have been forced to disperse.  Thus the destiny of two states was written: Ethiopia had stood together and would remain independent, but Eritrea would not be part of it.  Though Ethiopia and Eritrea would be coupled together in a federation after the Second World War due to American influence (they feared that Italy might form a communist government and put a key Red Sea port in Soviet hands), this union would buckle under the increasing authoritarianism of the Ethiopian government and an ever-strengthening Eritrean nationalist movement.  After a plebiscite in 1993, Eritrea and Ethiopia are now officially recognized as two separate nations.

Empress Taytu's role in defeating the Italians at Adwa may have been even more important than
that of her husband.

Some, however, have questioned whether Ethiopia should be considered a nation at all.  They argue that it is instead a 19th-century imperial invention whose borders and state apparatus arose from alternating conflict, collaboration, and opportunism between the Solomonic dynasty and the Western imperial powers.  There is certainly a coherent case to be made for this.  Most of the southern and eastern portions of the country, containing large portions of its Oromo and Somali populations, in particular, were still in the process of being conquered at the time of Menelik's victory over the Italians at Adwa.  In addition to the people slaughtered directly in the invasion itself, many more died of hunger as a result of the rinderpest zoodemic that the Italians had brought with them to Eritrea.  Menelik's invasions exacerbated the effects of this famine, both through direct looting of healthy livestock and by the mass displacement these destructive wars brought about. The slaves and plunder gained from these conquests, which must fairly be called imperialist, were instrumental in funding the army that defended independence at Adwa.  What's more, much of the success of Menelik's state came from his playing the European powers off of each other.  The Russians, who sympathized with Ethiopians as Orthodox Christians and saw them as a bulwark against British expansion in Africa, were crucial partners.

Furthermore, Ethiopia is far from the homogeneous body that most nationalists want to make when they draw their little maps.  There are eight officially recognized regional languages in Ethiopia, and dozens more ethnolinguistic groups throughout the country.  Though a majority of its citizens are Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, there is also a sizable Muslim minority.  Many of these ethnic and religious minorities have suffered greatly from discrimination and violence, particularly under the Derg and in the latter days of Haile Selassie's reign.  Ethiopia is, in short, the successor state to an empire - a monarchial imposition that you could fit a Texas and a half into.

This position, however, is hardly unique, even among nations whose existence is seldom questioned.  The formation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 was largely the result of political maneuvering by Sardinia-Piedmont, who piggybacked on conflicts between Prussia, Austria, and France to expand their territory.  In each case, their armies had little effect on the outcomes of these wars.  A robust nationalist movement did exist, largely republican in character, but these movements failed to achieve much on their own. Indeed, many of the central figures in unification did more to fight against the movement than for it.  Even as Garibaldi was leading the Expedition of the Thousand to Sicily, the Comte di Cavour, whose kingdom it would help to bring about, was leaking information to the Neapolitans in an effort to undermine him.  Above all else, Cavour's primary aim was to elevate the House of Savoy by any means necessary, no matter which other countries had to fight unrelated conflicts in order to do it, or how many revolutionary countrymen had to die in the process.  Were it not for the vascillating support of Louis-Napoleon, the Kingdom of Italy might have come to be much later than it did, or perhaps even not at all.

The next panel is Victor Emmanuel
kicking Garibaldi in the face and then
selling Nice to the French a second time
for good measure.

The Italian state did, of course, have the legacy of Rome to point to, but if they wanted to do that they needed to get in line.  Half the great powers of Europe claimed their authority from the Roman Empire in some way or another, from the Habsburgs to the Romanovs to the Ottomans.  The historical reality was that a unified, independent state of Italy had not existed in fact since the time of the Lombards, and the ceremonial title within the Holy Roman Empire barely existed even in name by the dawn of the early modern period.  The only Kingdom of Italy to exist in living memory was the Napoleonic puppet kingdom, which didn't even cover the whole peninsula.

Over these long centuries, Italy fragmented into regions with profoundly different cultures and political traditions.  At the date of its founding, almost nobody in this new country could speak or read the Florentine prestige dialect we now call Italian, speaking instead one of several mutually unintelligible regional languages.  The south was particularly disinclined to assimilate - the inefficiencies of the newly-imposed state and economic apparatuses (particularly land distribution) were instrumental in fueling the rise of the Sicilian Mafia.  It was in this climate that the Sardinian aristocrat and statesman Massimo d'Azeglio famously declared that "Italy has been made. Now it remains to make Italians."

If consistent cultural, political, and lingusitic unity are not requirements to effect the transformation from statehood to nationhood, then it would seem the barriers to it are quite low.  Yet even states which had several of these things have failed (by nationalist logic, they were not, in fact, nations at all).  Yugoslavia was the culmination of a sincere Pan-Slavic nationalist movement that seized its moment in the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, reaching an agreement for union with the Kingdom of Serbia.  It had more linguistic unity than Italy at its founding, and its religious divisions were not unique - Albania saw similar levels of religious pluralism.  But Yugoslav unity was an illusion, and it died a violent death within the span of a human lifetime.

The question of nationhood will always be fraught with difficulty, since like all social constructs its definition changes depending on time and political context.  The relationship between Ethiopia's ethnic groups has historically always been complex (far, FAR too complex to adequately describe here), and their relations with each other have evolved over time.  However, they have always related to each other in ways that they do not relate to groups outside the Ethiopian sphere, in ways that include ritual practice, economic adaptation and specialization, and a tendency to unite against common enemies.  Indeed, the Ethiopian nation has more of a historical claim to existence than any American settler-state, and at least as strong a claim as most European states.  The most spirited defense of Ethiopia as a nation that I have found comes from Professor Harold G. Marcus:

"[F]rom time to time, the nation ha[s] disintegrated into component parts, but it ha[s] never disappeared as an idea and always reappeared in fact.  The Axumite Empire may have faded in the seventh century, but the Zagwes followed in the eleventh century; and, of course, the succeeding Solomonic dynasty created a state that incorporated at least two-thirds of its present area. ... Even as the Solomonic monarchy weakened, the imperial tradition remained validated in Ethiopia's monestaries and parish churches.  The northern peasantry was continually reminded of Ethiopia's earlier greatness and exhorted to work toward its renaissance. ... [I]f history is to be our guide, [ethnic factionalism] will give way inevitably to renewed national unity as the logic of geography, economics, tradition, and political culture once again come to dominate politics." 

It is, in other words, the continuity of Ethiopian statehood as a reality and as a concept that gives its nationhood weight.  This, then, is my definition of a nation: a credible claim of the shared tradition and political destiny of a people, backed by state power or a widely accepted claim to it.  Though cultures and ethnicities can exist without the state, the nation implies a claim to Westphalian sovereignty.  This is what Ethiopia has over Yugoslavia, which after the death of Tito had a polycentric language (which the Slovenes didn't speak) and not much else.

But even if you accept this premise, there are holes in this argument.  Just because a multiethnic polity with strong traditions has existed for a long time does not mean that it will - or should - continue to exist in the future.  Ever since the stagnation and collapse of Haile Selassie's economic project in the 1960s laid bare the contradictions of a "modernizing" state whose basis for rule was inescapably tied to religious tradition, much of Ethiopian politics has come to be defined by ethnic warfare.  As the Emperor's capitalist programs uprooted farmers and townsfolk and turned them into field and sweatshop laborers, as the countryside and even many towns of the Amhara heartland were neglected in favor of the capital, and as regional authority saw their autonomy dwindle, the idea of a multiethnic Ethiopian society faded.  Longstanding ethnic and regional conflicts and grievances strengthened and crystallized into political movements as the old regime grew more centralized and oppressive.  When the Empire gave way to the Derg, these trends only worsened, as the army, the police state, and even famine relief were weaponized against opposition movements in the north.  Although there remains a basis for Ethiopia as a culturally pluralistic nation, it remains unclear whether this will continue to hold.  Just as national identities can form over time, so too can they dissolve.  What happened in Eritrea could very well happen elsewhere.

Protests among the Oromo population were instrumental in bringing about the current changes in Ethiopia's government.

This remains an unsettled problem to this day, as the reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed seeks to pick up the pieces from twenty five years of a disastrous authoritarian experiment in ethnic federation run in accordance with Leninist democratic centralism.  In practice, the regime spent most of this period using ethnicity as a tool of control, playing groups against each other to keep the minority Tigrayan People's Democratic Front in power.  Though these conflicts were not by any means caused by this regime, they have undoubtedly been exacerbated to the point of national crisis.

Abiy has called for national unity and free elections, and for now partition appears to be neither imminent nor popular.  As I was finishing this piece, his government had signed a peace treaty with the largest separatist organization within its borders, the Ogaden National Liberation Front.  Uniquely among his party's politicians, his popularity appears to transcend ethnic boundaries.  However, the old ruling party still remains in place, and ethnic violence and mass displacement have continued.  The question of what Ethiopia shall be (if it shall be), and how its people will live in the days to come, has yet to be answered. And I'm certainly not someone who's qualified to give that answer.  I'm not even sure if I'm qualified to ask the question.

Still, if one wishes to support the conclusion that the nation is a useful concept, it is quite hard to exclude Ethiopia from this definition without leaving out a vast number of others.  If the foundations of Ethiopia are state violence and cultural imperialism, that is only because these are the foundations on which all nation-states are built.  If Ethiopia is not a permanent state of affairs, this is only because all nations are historically contingent, dynamic, and subject to change.  This, of course, is a strong argument against the conclusion that the nation is a useful concept.  When you dig down to the foundations, every nation is a straw house built on a mountain of shit that could wash away with the next rainstorm.  But in the case of Ethiopia, that house exists, is still standing, and people are living in it.

And so, after months of work, writing, and research, I am led to tentatively conclude that Ethiopia is probably a thing that exists. I think.  Maybe.  Ask me again in five years.

So how does this funny little video game deal with that issue?

(continued)
 

Sources and Recommended Reading:

Bulatovich, Alexander, trans. Richard Seltzer. Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes.

Holcomb, Bonnie K. The Invention of Ethiopia.

Levine, Donald E. Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society.

Marcus, Harold G. A History of Ethiopia.

Pateman, Roy. Eritrea: Even the Stones Are Burning.

Smith, Denis Mack. Cavour and Garibaldi, 1860: A Study in Political Conflict.

Introduction: A History of Video Game History

The Grande Armée presents the tattered Prussian colors to Napoleon.

Not a Country with an Army but an Army with a Country

The story of Video Game History™ (as distinct from the history of video games, which is of course a different subject) does not, in fact, begin with Sid Meier. Nor even with Francis Tresham, designer of the original Civilization board game that introduced the infamous “tech tree” to the world. No, the long, slow gestation of Video Game History™ predates not only the existence of video games, but of Charles Babbage’s original difference engine. To the extent that any one Great White Man is responsible, the creation of Video Game History™ comes down to one of the greatest and whitest of them all: this bullshit is all Napoleon’s fault.

On October 14th, 1806, Napoleon’s armies crushed the Prussians at the Battles of Jena and Auerstedt, effectively ending Prussia’s involvement in the War of the Fourth Coalition. Their demoralized armies capitulated one by one, and less than two weeks later, Marshal Davout’s army entered Berlin. The Prussian aristocracy, which above all else tied its prestige to the success and discipline of its army, was stunned and humiliated.

They responded to this defeat with a complete and comprehensive overhaul of their military structure, bringing it more in line with the relatively more merit-based French system. Conscription was introduced, the officer corps was opened (for a time) to the middle class, a new war college was opened, and the highest leadership was reorganized into a new general staff, promotion to which would be based on merit. Emphasis was placed on the training of leadership, since they believed that this rather than the quality of the individual soldiers was what had won France the battle. The Prussian General Staff would convene to make plans for every possible contingency, devising first a broad objective to be accomplished which would be clear to all commanders involved. These plans would come to be called “Cases” - each military situation was like an academic problem to be solved. Or, if you like, a level to be beaten.

It was in this environment in the year 1812 that one of these Prussian officers, Lieutenant Georg Leopold von Reiswitz, compiled the original ruleset for a game that would come to be known simply as Kriegsspiel (literally “wargame”). It attracted little attention at first, but in the quiet postwar years, its popularity spread enormously among the officer class thanks to the promotional efforts of Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke. To an officer corps hungry both to plan for future battles and relitigate past defeats, Kriegsspiel was pure catnip.

Kriegsspiel, of course, was not the first game designed to emulate warfare, nor even the first Prussian game to do so. But after the many Prussian (and later German) victories of the 19th century, the popularity of Kriegsspiel began to spread outside Germany to militaries around the world. By the turn of the 20th century, civilian enthusiasts such as Fred T. Jane and even H.G. Wells were developing their own games inspired by Kriegsspiel. Even in the post-World War II boom period, when games like Tactics pioneered a new form of board wargaming for the mass market, the influence of the old Prussian training exercise remained.

Dungeons and Dragons had

its roots in a fantasy supplement

for Gary Gygax's medieval wargame

Chainmail.

Indeed, the mark of Kriegsspiel on tabletop gaming as a whole is not hard to spot. Much of what we now recognize was first introduced here: miniatures to represent units, an organized map grid to mark the field of play, dice rolls to determine probabilistic results, strict rules governing movement speed and combat capability, a simulation of the fog of war, and most notably an impartial third-party observer to determine the results of combat engagements, a direct progenitor to the gamemaster or umpire of today’s games.  The line of influence is as direct as can be - Gary Gygax himself cut his teeth as a wargaming hobbyist. Kriegsspiel is the ghastly foundation on which the entirety of the roleplaying and strategy genres are built. Their very structure and approach to history and problem-solving are drawn from it and cannot be separated from it. Anyone who has ever played Risk, Dungeons & Dragons, Civilization, or Final Fantasy has been training to defeat Napoleon without realizing it.

A Genre Takes Shape

To this point I have used the ironically-trademarked term Video Game History™ without defining it. This is mostly because it’s one of those terms that is simultaneously hard-to-define but which everyone instinctively has a sense of what it means. We all know the standard critique of Civilization’s Tech Tree, after all. This sense of historical determinism is probably what you imagine when I use the phrase. But the particular form the historical telos takes is not important - only the fact that there is one.

Video Game History™, you see, consists of nothing more than the application of the logic of Prussian war exercises to Western historiography. To see this, we need look no further than virtually every historical and political strategy game ever made, every one of which shares the following things in common:

1. They are each fundamentally about the military and/or political leader of one or more nations or armies.
2. The game is meant to test the player’s capacity to, as leader, marshal the resources at their disposal to attain supremacy for their nation/army.
3. This success or failure occurs in direct conflict and competition with other nations, whether through military means or peaceful ones.
4. Success or failure is defined on the level of high command and high command only. National success is dependent entirely on the player.

Of course, the conception of history as a struggle between armies, nations, and their leaders’ ability to command them was not invented by Baron von Reiswitz in the year 1812. But it was in no small part through their Prussian lineage that strategy games inherited this attitude, which they retained as strategy wargames evolved into grand strategy games.

Grand strategy games first began to develop in the latter days of the tabletop wargaming boom of the 1970s and early 1980s, beginning with games such as Axis and Allies, which was designed in 1981 but republished by Milton Bradley in 1984, one year after Koei released their first computer grand strategy game, Nobunaga no Yabō (first in the series known in the West as Nobunaga’s Ambition).

The fourteenth entry in the Nobunaga's Ambition series.

The title of the latter should be enough to clue you into the fact that the approach hasn’t changed. The player assumes the role of one of the daimyo of Japan’s sengoku period, and your mission is to conquer all of the others to unite the country and become shogun. “Case Nihon,” the Prussians might call it. This time, however, you are placed in charge of the people and resources of the entirety of your holdings. In addition to raising and commanding armies, you must manage the economy and ensure that your peasants are happy, loyal, and well-fed. The larger the peasant base you have to work from, the larger and more effective your armies can be - a more underhanded player can even raise and train ninja. The goal is still conquest and the emphasis is still on leadership, but the logic has expanded to the idea of a total war - fought by entire populations, but commanded and decided by their noble leaders.

The original motivation behind the series even mirrors Prussian relitigation of Jena and Auerstedt. Kou Shibusawa, creator of the series, states that his inspiration was his long-held admiration for Nobunaga, and his belief that Japan may have become a stronger, more modern country far sooner had he lived long enough to become shogun. The notion of what might have happened if he had never risen to power and another daimyo had done so instead also intrigued him - surely Japanese history would be very different if any of these dozens of samurai possessed Nobunaga’s titular ambition. Setting aside the dubious truth value and Great Man-itude of such a statement, it is important to note that this viewpoint, as well as the game constructed around it, fundamentally views the driving force of history as a problem of command. If X general had made Y maneuver, Z country could have Won History. Grand strategy games are a marvelous place to play out this sort of alternate-history-as-command-exercise.

Koei would continue to make grand strategy games along these lines, the most popular of which are the Sangokushi series (Romance of the Three Kingdoms in its English release) . Throughout the 80s and much of the early 90s they were nearly synonymous with the grand strategy genre, at least on the computer and console. The most notable of the other companies to make forays into the grand strategy was the American developer Strategic Simulations, better known for more traditional wargames like the Panzer General series. Their contributions to grand strategy were mostly set in World War II, with the exception of Colonial Conquest, set during the Scramble for Africa. As one would expect, these games hewed even more closely to the logic of the original Kriegsspiel.

Our Words Are Backed with Technological Determinism

While reasonably popular, the grand strategy genre still served what was primarily a niche market. At the same time Koei was making the Nobunaga’s Ambition series, other developers were taking the logic of tabletop wargaming in a more abstract direction which would ultimately prove to be more commercially successful (though this wasn’t the case at first). This group of broadly similar games form the loose genre known as 4X. The four X’s stand for their four most important elements of gameplay: eXplore (scout around the map), eXpand (acquire more territory), eXploit (gather and make use of resources at your disposal), and eXterminate (attack and defeat rival players).

Though nearly all players agree that 4X is a distinct genre, it is nonetheless difficult to say precisely where this genre diverges from grand strategy. The goals of a player of Europa Universalis are fundamentally similar to those of a player of Alpha Centauri. The primary difference lies in their aesthetic priorities - grand strategy tends to emphasize detail and historical or technical accuracy even at the expense of balance or accessibility, whereas 4X games are more willing to depart from reality for gameplay’s sake even if it makes the game more “gamey.” A country as powerful as, say, the Ottoman Empire in Europa Universalis IV would never make it into a historical 4X game, regardless of how powerful they were in real life. (This is not to say that 4X can’t be slavishly representationalist or that grand strategy never takes balance into account - it merely describes a preference).

The most notable example of the 4X genre is, of course, Civilization. Indeed, as hard a genre as 4X is to pin down, “games that are like Civilization” may be the best possible definition. For most, computer strategy begins here. For some, it ends here, too. This is not entirely unfair, either - the long shadow of Sid Meier continues to loom over the 4X genre, and virtually every other strategy genre as well. People who play and make strategy games aren’t thinking of a Prussian wargame almost nobody’s ever heard of, or even the tabletop games it inspired - they’re thinking of Civilization.

I'm still curious as to how you tame an animal

before you know how to trap it.

Its most influential innovation, of course, is the much-discussed Tech Tree - the most significant development in Video Game History™ since the Prince of Orange handed his sword to Prince Murat. It is at this point almost prosaic to point out that the presentation of technological, philosophical, and social development as a linear hierarchy of progressive upgrades presents a eurocentric view of history that is ahistorical even on its own terms. But from a gameplay perspective, the tech tree just works. It gives each game a natural rhythm - a feeling of a beginning, middle, and end - and a sense of epic historical scope. It provides multiple options for gaining particular qualitative advantages depending on the player’s situation and playstyle. This was the conscious design motivation for the invention of the tech tree. Not only is the tech tree a major factor in Civilization’s success, it seems hard to imagine how the strategy genre ever managed without it.

There’s a reason the tech tree fits the genre so well - like everything else in strategy gaming, it treats history as a problem of command. The knowledge produced by your civilization is a resource to be harnessed toward a particular end goal. It is up to you, the Great Leader of your nation to allocate those resources based on strategic needs. Do you take the military upgrade now, despite lacking the funds to turn your Pikemen to Musketmen? Or do you go for the economic upgrade?

Obviously no society, anywhere, has ever had its achievements and discoveries (to the extent that you can credit whole societies with such things) directed by a single person, one invention at a time. (Again, 4X games aren’t afraid to be “gamey” and non-representational with their history). This bears far more of a resemblance to a battlefield commander waiting for reinforcements or new equipment, and accounting for their resources. Should you take the oil fields now, or wait for the new tanks to arrive?

There is another sense in which the tech tree represents an unconscious return to the roots of the strategy genre. The framing of history as a deterministic techno-cultural hierarchy - a ladder of which every rung describes an inherently more valuable civilization - reflects the worldview of the time in which they lived. The 19th century marked the point at which capitalism and imperialism became a world-encompassing social narrative. Africa and Asia were carved up and subjugated by the European powers with the ostensible goal of bringing civilization to its people.

Here is where Kriegsspiel meets its other half, and Video Game History™ becomes complete. Field Marshal von Moltke has found his world to conquer. History is a linear and upward progression from barbarism to Enlightenment, from a village to an empire, from a stone hut to Alpha Centauri. If one is to be victorious over history, one must maneuver carefully and marshal all their nation’s forces to conquer it. The field is yours, Herr General - march over it, and all else who stand on it.

This is the story of Video Game History™, and with it the entire strategy genre. It cannot be separated from the ambitions of the German military aristocracy. Its vision of the 19th century is the primary story it tells.

But is that all that strategy games are capable of? Are there no other stories it can tell? It feels as though we’re forgetting something. Or someone.

Ludonarrative Marxism

The military aristocracy would not be the only Prussians who would have found sense in Video Game History™. A time traveling factory owner from Berlin would find it very intuitive. A hierarchical tech tree reflects his experience of material reality. The transition of Europe to an economy of machines and factories created unprecedented amounts of wealth, which led to the development of newer machines and more efficient factories, which led to more efficiency and created more wealth.

Until it didn’t. You see, there’s a funny thing that tends to happen to the rate of profit.

Yeah. There’s another historical narrative that came about around the same time, wasn’t there? Started with that German fellow with the big beard. I suspect many readers are familiar with him. Some of you may have even read some of the stuff he wrote about history. Probably a lot more of it than I have. But I’m committed to this project, so I guess I’ll have to take a stab at a crude summary.

Marx was the first to articulate what he referred to as the materialist conception of history. But much of the popular understanding of historical materialism derives from the later summaries written by Friedrich Engels. (Or even more accurately, the Bolshevik works which derived their understanding of it from Engels). This excerpt from his pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific serves as a decent summary:

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.

Because humans must meet their material needs to survive, the first concern of any society will be the means by which the goods that meet them will be gathered, produced, and exchanged. Societies are therefore organized in accordance with these modes of production, and are divided into classes through the division of labor and ownership. (The better adherents will acknowledge that it is not the only reason social arrangements can exist, but it’s easy for some to forget).

One can therefore view history as a succession of modes of production, which arise not through the plans of great leaders but the action and reaction of the existing classes of the current mode of production. In Europe, for instance, the urban bourgeoisie of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern period brought about the transition to industrial capitalism with ever-larger and more organized workshops and manufactories. As the producers of goods became more independent and the bonds of feudal society weakened, the state hastened their collapse by enclosing common lands, bringing a flood of former peasants from the fields to the mills and sweatshops. Their allegiance belonged not to a liege lord, but to the factory owners who extracted surplus value from their labor - the capitalists. As this arrangement continues, the exploited classes will become more aware of their role in capitalist society and acquire class consciousness. Then, when avenues for growth have been exhausted and the rate of profit dries up, when even the state-enforced stopgaps have failed, the organized working class will resolve the contradictions of capitalism by seizing the means of production and ushering in the next mode of production: socialism.

Or so the story goes.

Of course, Marxist historiography is open to criticism of its own, even from the left - particularly if one hews to the vulgar, reductionist version expounded by certain users of certain microblogging platforms. But as an alternative to Video Game History™, even the version of Marxism you get from anime avatars with flags in their profile names offers a crucial advantage. It gives us a different story - one which doesn’t completely center around leadership and Great Men, one which doesn’t measure the success of whole nations by a Great Man’s decisions, one where the strength of an empire can be acknowledged as detrimental to many of the people in it. But because it is a framework that makes predictions about the development of human societies which are at least to some extent deterministic, it’s a story which can still be fitted to the shape and pace of a strategy game.

So it should be no surprise that someone’s done it.

The Swedish Empire of Grand Strategy

Indeed, this isn’t even the first time I’ve covered the developers who did it. You may recall that last year Marsfelder and I recorded a two-hour Let’s Play/vodcast of the game Crusader Kings II, one of many grand strategy games created by the Swedish company Paradox Development Studio. Indeed, over the past decade and change, they have been nearly synonymous with the genre in the West, making series such as Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron into some of the best selling grand strategy games ever. Over the course of two hours of discussion and gameplay, I argued that the primary appeal of Paradox games was their generative, organic storytelling. Their design is such that the gameplay itself creates masterfully compelling and detailed narratives with the feel and scope of centuries of history.

Naturally, this made them the ideal candidate to develop the series that made hardcore gamers fall in love with covert Marxist propaganda. So it was that in 2003, Paradox released Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun, to a raucous response of...complete and utter indifference. Seven years later, they tried again with Victoria II, which didn’t sell that well either. It did well enough, however, to receive two DLC expansions, and it retains a sizable cult following which only continues to grow as the player base for their other series expands.

Revolution comes five years early to Germany.

Victoria II spans exactly one century of history, between the years 1836 and 1936. This is a much shorter time scale than Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis. But its years are long ones - it takes place during a century of social, political, and economic transformation, in a world alive with revolt. The world map you see at the beginning of the game will not resemble the one you see at the end. At the beginning, the old monarchies of Europe struggle to suppress the rise of liberalism and bourgeois nationalism. In the midgame, they struggle for continental and colonial dominance as socialism emerges. At the end, fascism lurks in the shadow of crises of overproduction and (usually) the aftermath of a world war. Elsewhere, non-western nations must adapt or be squashed under the bootheel of global imperialism.

What makes Victoria II unique, however, are the game mechanics that drive these changes. There is, as one would expect, a complex economic system that models the production and exchange of goods. But its true distinguishing game mechanic is the POP system, the elaborate means by which it models and characterizes assorted groups of people ranging in size from a few dozen to hundreds of thousands. All POPs in Victoria II are categorized by culture and, most importantly, by class. Farmer and Laborer POPs gather raw resources, which is sold on the market by the Aristocrat, who owns the land. Craftsman POPs work in factories, which are owned by Capitalists and managed by Clerks. Each POP has their own set of goods, that they need, both for basic subsistence and emotional well being. Most importantly, the POPs are dynamic - their size, wealth, political affiliation, militancy, and class consciousness changes in direct response to their material conditions.

Let me repeat that last one for the folks in the back: This game has a number to keep track of class consciousness.

This does not provide us with an entirely clean break from Prussian militarism. Nothing programmed in something called the Clausewitz engine ever could. In many instances, the historical materialism embedded in the game’s design merely provides an explanation for the imperialist behavior most players would be expected to engage in anyway. For instance, colonization allows for increased access to the raw materials required by Capitalist POPs, as well as providing them with new markets of exploited colonial Laborers and Farmers to which to sell their finished goods. But if it can’t completely break free of the baggage of its own genre, perhaps it can at least offer a self-critique. Or maybe even give the player a chance to create a better history.

But it wouldn’t be very materialist of me to simply tell you to take my word for it. Better we should test my assertions through direct demonstration.

Tewodros’s Ambition: Let’s Play Victoria II

Which brings me to the actual reason I wrote all of this in the first place. See, this entire essay is just an introduction to a Let’s Play I started planning back when I thought Paradox was about to announce Victoria III. (They, uh...did not).

This will be an informative Let’s Play, divided into 20-30 minute segments. I will try to introduce and explain Victoria II’s intimidating and complex mechanics, and also try to sprinkle in a few nuggets of historical insight as we go along.
 

I have chosen to play as Ethiopia, due mostly to its historical status as a center of resistance to imperialism, and due also to the challenge of prospering in a geopolitical climate which was historically hostile to attempts to industrialize “the periphery.” But there is a part of me that shares Kou Shibusawa’s fascination with particular moments in history - the day that upstart noble who united his nation was waylaid by the enemy, his friends having abandoned and betrayed him, and who, as the walls closed in, chose death instead of surrender. Of course, I’m talking about a different guy. But it’s the same question...what if?

What other stories could we have told about Africa, if this one hadn’t been interrupted?