WesWorld

The United Kingdoms of the Netherlands
General Information

Preamble : The Alt-Turkey / Turklantis issue, and Persia's breaking of relations with the UKN rather than KoN, made me think I should clarify what the UKN is for those who are interested. I regard it as similar to the British commonwealth - common monarch, separate realms.

It is not new stuff, most of it has been mentioned elsewhere I believe, just consolidated and explained : )

Founded in 1907, the United Kingdoms of the Netherlands now consists of three Kingdoms

1. The Kingdom of the Netherlands and it's provinces of Dutch Guiana and Netherlands East Indies.

2. Since 1907, The Kingdom of the Kongo, and its autonomous Grand Duchy of Ubangi-Shari (CAR)

3. Since 1934, The Kingdom of Belgium.

The three Kingdoms are bound by a common monarch, in this case Queen Wilhelmina of Orange, and a short Constitution enumerating shared values.

Each Kingdom retains control of it's foreign policy and may make treaties effecting only that Kingdom. Each Kingdom is solely responsible for it's internal affairs, subject to the UKN common constitution. The Netherlands and Belgium are democracies, the Kongo and Ubangi-Shari are feudal with democratic trappings.

The Kingdoms in conjunction can also agree to a treaty as the United Kingdom. Treaties are subject to scrutiny at the United Kingdom level. Given that the monarch has the final "okey dokey" for treaties at both levels, there are no great conflicts.

United Kingdom Treaties :
Cleito, SANTA, SAER.

Kingdom of the Netherlands treaties :
LON, AANM, Danish alliance, Benelux trade agreement, PETA, RATS,

Kingdom of the Kongo treaties :
none. The Kongo conducts foreign affairs through the Monarch, often with the Dutch
foreign ministry fronting.

Kingdom of Belgium treaties :
LON, Benelux trade agreement. Still fuzzy if the 1916 Alliance with France and
England is still valid, I think it may be.

Citizens of one Kingdom are free to live, work, invest, or own property anywhere within the United Kingdoms.

A treaty binds the participants to a constitution establishing basic rights, free trade, mutual patents, governmental cooperation and fiscal support, and citizenship rights while living in the other nations.

The treaty has clauses for mutual defense, and joint donations to research and naval budgets. As the Dutch fiscal contribution far exceeds the others at this time, they effectively control those funds. Provisions addressing military cooperation clarify seniority issues, provide for joint academies and cross training, and allow each military to recruit from each nation.

Edited for the @#$@ squares.

Wow, and I thought I suffered from multipul personality disorder playing 4 nations. KON, KOB and KOKT all under the banner of UKN.

Daaaiiii, I'm confused already!

heh it gets worse.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands has at least 3 main political "players" with different points of view. Queen DMZSBD, Land.. and the secondary players of de Voor, de Berg, and the Prince.

Belgium has it's own agenda, mainly focusing on rebuilding their economy while keeping their identity in this larger nation.

The Kongo's easy, as they echo the Queen, though they have a distinct pro-SAE bent... and are not keen on the Belgians.

So, responding to Vukolads allegation in the other thread, and respecting his not unreasonable wish not to pollute his motorcycle thread further :

No clue why that would be access denied, never ran into that previously. I apparently can post here, and I dont see a lock shown for it.

As for the AH comparison, it does not hold up well. More to the point, as the player, I said it was not a good one- the relationships of the Kingdoms of the UKN simply do not operate in the same manner the AH Empire did.

Numerous differences :
1. Austria-Hungary was not a voluntary association, the UKN is. Events of 1848 showed that should Hungary attempt to leave, the Austrians would forcibly retain it. In Budapest there is a Austrian fortress overlooking the city to aid in such control. Nice views.

2. For that matter, the Austrian and Hungarian thrones are strictly hereditary, technically the Belgian throne is not, hence why they were able to select a monarch.

3. Austria-Hungary had a common govt. at the Empire level, with a bureaucracy, that ran a lot of things, over the two semi-autonomous realms. The UKN has no bureaucracy, at that level, and 3 autonomous realms.

4. Foreign Policy was controlled at the Empire level by the Monarch.
Not only is there no bureaucracy or officials at the UKN level excepting the monarch, but all nations of the UKN can still pursue their own foreign policy and military choices. The Monarch does have input through the Council of State, and could choose to abstain or otherwise reject a treaty, but certainly has no mechanism to force one on Belgium or the Netherlands.

5. Military  The Empire had a common military, with the two realms having relatively small home guard armies. The UKN has no common military, each nation fields its own army (still building in the case of the Kongo). There is a joint 4-division Belgo-Dutch force agreed to in principle, to operate under a Belgian Commander, but the closest thing to a common military is the Dutch Navy, simply because the other two lack one- a state of effective dependency which the Belgians are trying to correct.

6. Trade- the common Austrian Hungarian Govt. had control of external trade, the UKN has no such provisions, simply removes internal barriers- which several of the trade treaties in WW also do.

You seem to be focusing on the common monarch as the link. Consider the British Commonwealth realms, where the British Monarch is the link, add a bill of rights type agreement and you have a similar thing. I shied away from that analogy as historically places like Australia were called Dominions and had Royal governors, suggesting a subservient role to GB, which is not the case with the UKN.

Alternately I used the EU because it can illustrate a common head of state (EU presidency), disparate foreign policies (France vs. UK over Chiracs time), and disparate membership in various treaties, voluntary participation in the joint level (via things like Maasricht and Lisbon treaties), several joint military endeavors such as the Franco-Dutch, Franco-German, common citizenship rights, some principles engraved in a document, etc.

The UKN isn't the EU, nor the Commonwealth Realms, but it is closer to those than the AH Empire.

1. In 1848 there was no Austro-Hungary, the Ausgleich didnt happen until 1867

2. Didnt know that Belgium had a Elective Monarchy

3. The Goverments of Austria and St. Stephan had considerable influence on policy and budgets and this gave the Imperial Goverment a lot of headaches (see Navy Budgets as an example). I assumed that the UKN Regency Council had a similair role to the Imperial goverment in coordinating the budget transfers, army cooperation (joint curreny?)

4. That is a pure techinicality since it was stated that the UKN had defence agreements, free trade and movement within the UKN. So if the Netherlands is embroiled in a war due to say SAER are you claiming that the mutual defense policy does not apply?

5. Yes the A-H had a common army but the Landwehr and Honved were neither small nor Homeguards they were line formations (and not seldom with different equipment due to separate acquisition organizations). This is again mirrored in the UKN by the Household troops and National Armies

The Homeguards were Landsturm (Austria) and Népfelkelés (Hungary)

6. True

Quoted

Originally posted by Vukovlad
1. Yes, but the revolts of 1848 led to a civil war with the Army devastating large parts of Hungary, thus leading to the 1867 agreement.

2. As best as I can tell, the Crown is not automatic, but is bestowed by the Govt. Of course, tradition means in practice it is hereditary in OTL, but it gave a way to make choosing the Dutch queen as monarch.

3. The presumption of a UKN Regency council or beaucracy would make the comparison make more sense. There simply is no such body. Budget transfers are rare, and handled as foreign aid, army cooperation is still developing as Belgium just joined, and Netherlands& Kongo use the Guilder, but Belgium still uses whatever it uses.

4. The way one would see if is if Italy was attacked- AANM would be triggered and the Netherlands would be involved. The Kongo and Belgium would not.

SAER was signed by Govts of all three at the signing ceremony in Liege. Why did Belgium join SAER?- because it wants England, France and the Netherlands to be favorably inclined towards fighting for it against Germany, and this was a cheap way to renew alliances while basically risking no territory. The English alliance with Germany was *not* on the schedule Most distressing.

Where the UKN tie would come in would be if Germany (or another) attacked Belgium (or another)- then Kongo and the Netherlands would be bound to defend Belgium. The Kongo's participation may be rather...faint... in such a case. Not keen on Belgians.

5. The AH Imperial army is listed by Wiki as 57 Divisions and 250 regiments. The Austrian force was 54 regiments, the Hungarian 78 regiments, and Wiki istates "In terms of the Compromise, the Imperial and Royal (k. und k.) units had the priority of training and access to the new equipments, the Landwehr and the Honvédség have only inferior equipment. "

Consider in the UKN, the "Household" troops are all Dutch , consisting 27,000 men in 6 Dutch Royal Regiments, and the 1st Brigade of Marines. It's not a UKN force per se and far, far smaller than the National Armies- even Kongo has a standing force of 45,000+ and an air force in addition to levies.

I really think the presumption of a UKN level govt explains allot, but there is nothing at that level. If something needs to be discussed, the appropriate ministers (be it war, treasury or foreign) are dispatched to go talk to each other.