The Two Georges

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The flag used in the world of "The Two Georges" is like our history's "Grand Union Flag". In the world of "The Two Georges", it was retained permanently as the "Jack and Stripes", flag of the North American Union inside the British Empire

The Two Georges is an alternate history novel co-written by science fiction author Harry Turtledove and Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss. It was originally published in 1995 by Hodder & Staughton the United Kingdom, and in 1996 by Tor Books in the United States, and was nominated for the 1995 Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

For more than two centuries, what would have become the United States and Canada are the North American Union, a territory encompassing the northern portion of the continent excepting Alaska, retained under the rule of Russia. It is an integral part of the British Empire as a result of an agreement between George Washington and King George III. This event is commemorated in a Gainsborough painting titled The Two Georges and has itself become a symbol of national unity, much like the Stars and Stripes, which in this world is the "Jack and Stripes"--i.e. the Grand Union Flag.

While being displayed in New Liverpool (this world's Los Angeles), the painting is stolen while a crowd is distracted by the murder of "Honest" Dick (a.k.a "Tricky" Dick), the Steamer King, a nationally-known used Steamer (car) salesman - who, based on his nickname and description is clearly intended to be our world's Richard Nixon. Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police (a term clearly derived from the Canadian Mounties) leads the search for the painting, accompanied by curator Dr. Kathleen Flannery and Captain Samuel Stanley. Some days later, a ransom note is received from the Sons of Liberty, a paramilitary organization that wants to see America independent of Britain.

The search takes Bushell, Flannery, and Stanley across the country via airship (an advanced form of dirigible), train, and steamer. Along the way, the trio's investigations bring them into contact with many members of the Sons of Liberty including Boston newspaper editor John F. Kennedy.

The Governor-General of the North American Union, Sir Martin Luther King, informs Bushell in confidence that the painting must be recovered in time for King Charles III's state visit, or the government will pay the Sons' ransom demand of fifty million pounds.

Bushell and his associates must solve two interlinked mysteries: who is the highly-placed traitor who continually tips off the "Sons" and foils their efforts, and which is the foreign power that supports the subversives with arms and money? For most of the book, the detective (and the reader) tends to suspect, respectively, Sir David Clarke - the suave governor's adviser who had taken away Bushell's wife Irene (a hurt which takes the whole book and Flannery's loving ministrations to heal) and the Russians, the North American Union's brooding neighbors to the north and west.

These suspicions, however, turn out to result from deliberately planted false leads. The true foreign culprit is in the fact the Holy Alliance, a rather unappetizing union of France and Spain controlling everything from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, in which the Inquisition is still active. (It resulted from Napoleon Bonaparte having massacred the crowd trying to storm the Bastille and nipping in the bud the French Revolution - and his own chance to become an Emperor).

The searchers arrive at Victoria (the Washington D.C. of our world) and (thanks to an inspired guess of Flannery) manage to discover The Two Georges an hour before the King arrives. They also discover the true traitor: none other than Bushell's superior officer (and secretly, a fanatic Sons of Liberty sympathizer) Lieutenant General Horace Bragg.

Bragg tries to assassinate the King, not once but twice: with his own hands on the dock where the monarch lands, and at the All Union Art Museum where the King gives a speech in front of the recovered painting (an explosive is hidden in the picture frame). Both attempts are foiled at the last moment by the brilliant detective's quick thinking and frantic action.

(Bragg, described as a North Carolinan descendant of plantation owners who is still bitter at the Empire having freed his family's Black slaves in 1834, is presumably related to our history's Civil War general Braxton Bragg.)

Bragg is headed to the gallows, while Bushell and Stanley are both knighted by the King for their efforts. The story ends with Bushell, at his moment of glory, feeling that he had "never felt more proud to be an American" - which, in his terms, in no way contradicts being a loyal subject to the King of Britain and being rewarded for that loyalty.

[edit] Social and political themes

An American reader brought up on the history of his or her country in the years following 1775 might well feel that the clandestine Sons of Liberty and The Independence Party, their legal political wing (a relationship apparently modelled on the IRA/Sinn Féin duo) have a point. Such a reader might find it difficult to identify with a plot in which they are the unquestioned Bad Guys and the main protagonist spends the entire book in ceaseless efforts to foil them. To forestall this danger the writers take, quite early on, several strong measures to blacken the Sons and conversely present the Empire in a positive light.

• The "Sons of Liberty" are rabid racists, and the North American independence they envisage would involve a massive ethnic cleansing of anyone who is not English-speaking white. Their militants (calling themselves "Roundheads" for Oliver Cromwell's soldiers, but clearly modelled on our skinheads) spend their energy more on attacking various non-white ethnic and religious groups than on opposing British rule. They are so bigoted as to reject out of hand any idea of making a common cause with the French-speaking Québécois to the north and the "Nuevoespañolans" (i.e. Mexicans) in the Southwest, some of whom have their own reasons to oppose being part of the British Empire. All this is a bit unfair to Tom Paine, who was a staunch opponent of slavery and racism, and the title of whose book "Common Sense" is appropriated by the "Sons" as the name of their racist paper. (Presumably, they look no further than to Paine having dissented from George Washington's compromise with the British.)

• Conversely, the Empire is eminently enlightened towards Blacks. Not only were they emancipated in 1834 with no need of a civil war, but they were actively offered wide avenues of upward mobility and especially entry into senior positions in the civil service (which is, by the way, not what happened in our timeline's British colonies, such as South Africa or the Carribean islands - where Blacks were freed from slavery but remained on the bottom of society). The depiction of Martin Luther King as Governor-General of North America, a staunch Tory upholder of the existing order in which Blacks have a considerable stake, in emblematic. (Turtledove, "The Master of Alternate History", was obviously well-aware of how improbable it would be for a recognizeable Martin Luther King to be at all born in this timeline's 1929, in a history where the lives of Blacks were so radically different all along the preceding century)

• Moreover, in this timeline the Native Americans got a bit less of a raw deal than in ours. The tide of white settlement westwards was a bit slower (Washington in mentioned as having held it up until 1798, for which Native Americans hold his memory in high esteem). Consequently, at least some tribes got the chance to modernize themselves - such tribes keeping a large part of their lands and getting a considerable autonomy, equivalent to the Princely States in British India. A major part of the book takes place in the flourishing land of the Iroquois, with its careful and highly-successful blend of traditional and modern social, political and cultural elements. The map included in the book indicates that also the Cherokees managed to keep their original lands and were spared the Trail of Tears.

• Germany in this world was never unified, and obviously there was no Nazi Germany and Jews were spared the Holocaust. Also, from the fact that there are only a few Jews in this North America one may conclude that the Tsarist regime, here not threatened with revolution, did not feel the need to divert popular discontent by actively fomenting antisemitism and pogroms. Hence, there was no big East European Jewish migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the one from which most American Jews of our timeline are descended.

• In this history there was never a United States Constitution and specifically no Second Amendment. The very concept enshrined in that amendment - that possession of firearms is a basic civil right - seems completely unthinkable on this timeline. Firearms are decidedly not available to the general public, and criminals or terrorists/freedom fighters need to go to considerable pains to smuggle them from abroad. The police also go mainly unarmed (as the British "Bobby" used to do in our timeline) and deployment of armed police is authorized only under special, exceptional circumstances. As a result, ten firearm murders per year in the New Liverpool (i.e. Los Angeles) area seem a high rate... This aspect of the book leaves little doubt about where Turtledove and Dreyfuss stand on gun control (just as the plot of the alternate history novel "1945" by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen makes quite clear that its authors stand on the opposite side of the same debate).

• The North America of the book is more slow-moving and less of a consumer society than out timeline's US. Partly it is due to having had no world wars to spur technological innovation (coal is still used as the main energy source, trains still move by steam, etc...) To a considerable degree, however, a more slow and relaxed way of life is a conscious choice and cultural trait: for passengers, leisurely dirigibles are the preferred way of travelling by air, fast-moving airplanes being regarded as vulgar and reserved for military purposes (and at that, they are only relatively fast, as the Jet aircraft was not invented). Similarly, TV exists but is mainly restricted to pubs and other public places, and installing one in a private home is considered vulgar as well as being highly expansive. The prevailing fashion in which women's dresses actually show the ankles is considered quite daring. (However, hotels seem to turn a blind eye to male and female guests spending the night in each other's rooms, as long as they do it discreetly.) Less attractive features include that homosexuality is still illegal (though it is remarked that "The Sons of Liberty" are "more intolerant in that respect than His Majesty's Judges"), and that in this Britain and its Empire the idea of abolishing the death penalty does not yet seem to have come up for serious discussion.

• The seamy side of the Empire and its North American Union is seen in the section taking place at the miners' town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, in the neighbourhood of Pittsburgh. The miners on whom this society depends for its main energy source live under terrible squalor, exploitation and health-destroying pollution, and - though they manifest their protest in various violent and non-violent ways - there is no mention of any trade unions. It is no surprise that among these miners - who are predominantly Irish - there is widespread support for the "Sons of Liberty". The only one of the "Sons" who is presented sympathetically is a miner (and explosives expert) named Michael O'Flynn (given Turtledove's well-known brand of humours, it might be no accident that this is almost identical to the name of a fellow Science Fiction writer, Michael Flynn). The strong feeling of being discriminated and "left behind" in this society is moreover prevalent also among many well-off Irish, for example in Boston - as is manifested in the part featuring the (highly unsympathetic) analogue of John F. Kennedy. In this history, in the wake of the potato famine hordes of destitute and desperate Irish arrived in North America just as the recently emancipated Blacks embarked on their successful climb up the social ladder - which would make all too likely the Irish attraction to such groups as "The Sons of Liberty". At the conclusion, while the main protagonist has his moment of glory and gets knighted, he muses that "something must be done about the miners", but there are no details as to precisely what should be done and who would do it.

• International relations seem based on a sort of permanent cold war between three equally matched empires: Britain, Russia and the Franco-Spanish Holy Alliance; three, evidently, make for a more stable balance than two. Minor powers, some with their own smaller empires, live in the shadow of the Big Three: The Netherlands (including our Belgium), Denmark (including Norway), Sweden, Austro-Hungaria, Portugal, Japan, and the fragments of Germany and Italy - both of which never got united. There had been no great wars in this history since the Eighteenth Century. The world was thus spared the death and destruction of the two World Wars - but also what the wars did to shake up hidebound social and political structures. Democracy in this world seems restricted to Britain and its European-settled dominions, the rest of humanity living under absolute monarchies, feudal remnants or various versions of the colonial "White Man's Burden". In this world there had never been a Gestapo, but in Spanish-speaking countries the Inquisition is alive and kicking (and presumably torturing and burning at the stake).

[edit] Literary Connections

• A similar theme, but with reversed sympathies, appears in Richard C. Meredith's At the Narrow Passage (1973) where a heroic ARA (American Republican Army) wages a valiant liberation struggle against a cruel and rapacious British Empire. That world resulted, however, from Britain having crushed the 18th Century rebels rather than compromise with them.

[edit] The British Empire and dirigibles

The assumption that survival of the British Empire as a political entity would entail survival of the dirigible as the main or only way of traveling by air is shared by various other alternate British Empires (otherwise considerably different from each other) such as those depicted in The Warlord of the Air (Michael Moorcock), Great Work of Time (John Crowley), The Peshawar Lancers (S.M. Stirling) and the aforementioned At the Narrow Passage (Richard C. Meredith).

[edit] External links

• An Annotated Guide to The Two Georges
• Uchronia.net: The Two Georges
• Amazon Reviews