18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 33

[cahn]

And, I mean, it doesn't have to be just 18th century characters, either!

(also, waiting for Yuletide!)

Comments

1730 Trending Topics: Dunkirk

[mildred_of_midgard]

This map's 200 years too late, but Dunkirk hasn't moved, so here you go.



Early 1730

Great Britain: Look, France, when Charles II sold you the harbour of Dunkirk in northern France, just across the Channel from England, we didn't mean you could fortify it and turn it into a naval base and ship Jacobites across to invade our country! You must dismantle your fortifications like you agreed 16 years ago when the War of the Spanish Succession ended. We care so much we almost overthrew our ministry just now over the fact that they STILL haven't gotten you to dismantle the goddamn Dunkirk fortifications!

France: Uh, yeah, sorry, the most recent fortification activity was totally unauthorized. Louis XV himself personally apologizes and says it won't happen again and we'll tear down what we have pronto.

British Parliament: Okay, good. Walpole and allies, you may remain in power.

Mid 1730

Great Britain: France, we have seen LITERALLY no activity on tearing down those fortifications. You promised!

France: Yeah, well, uh, we said we'd tear those down, did we. Such a good memory you have. That was four whole months ago!

Great Britain: Look, we as Parliamentary ministers have to justify this highly unpopular alliance with our old enemy France during what historians will call the Second Hundred Years War to a voting public. Are we allies or not?

France: Yes! Yes, definitely, absolutely...maybe. For now. You think this alliance is any more popular here? They may not vote, but they sure do riot when they're upset.

Great Britain: So about those fortifications, ALLY.

France: The French ministry can't come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the tone. *beeep*

Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Dunkirk

[cahn]

Again, I have nothing to say about this except that it was hilarious and that I appreciate you putting this into simplistic (and funny!) terms I can understand :D (also thank you for maps!)

Re: 1730 Trending Topics: Dunkirk

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm glad it was simple and funny enough for you! As Blanning said,

Even the most gifted narrator would find it difficult to construct an account of the 1720s both coherent and interesting, or indeed either of those things.

I at least have the advantage over most of these potential narrators of being able to use fandomspeak to keep it interesting! But it was still crazy hard, omg. I had to read the Whitworth bio 3 times! and various other things at least twice. My notes doc has 36,000 words (copy-pasted passages, mostly).

Then once I had all this information in my head, I struggled to figure out how to present it. Eventually I settled on breaking it into sections, because no one way of structuring it (trending topics, people, international relations, treaties) was sufficient.

Finally, at one point I was preparing to write an essay, until I realized that you all would fall asleep while reading it, except you wouldn't have the chance, because I would fall asleep while writing it. :P Then I remembered my dialogue trick, and then it was fun to write. (And yes, I realize countries keep switching back and forth between first person singular and first person plural. Neither really feels right, ugh.)

So there we go: an intro to the 1720s, with emphasis on pedagogy rather than scholarship (with an eye toward my future self wanting to reference this when I've forgotten the details).