Hello. This is Victoria, Narrative Design Lead of Victoria 3, and today I will be covering the narrative content that will be coming in Pivot of Empire. I will also be covering some important free features which I ran out of space to write about in diary #134.
Pivot of Empire is centred around British India, its progression from the East India Company to the British Raj, and the Indian struggle for independence. It also includes a selection of narrative content for the Sikh Empire, Princely States, and the Mughal Emperor in Delhi. Owners of Pivot of Empire will be able to experience a myriad of historical and alt-historical courses, from a revived Mughal Empire to an all-encompassing Company run according to the principles of Utilitarianism.
Imperialism of Promise
During the early nineteenth century, many of the British East India Company’s administrators were influenced by the works of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of modern utilitarianism. The most notable of these figures is John Stuart Mill, who served as an East India Company administrator for thirty years, famously authoring a tract defending Company rule in the aftermath of the Indian Uprising of 1857. Following his return to Britain after the establishment of crown rule in India, Mill would become one of the most notable proponents of utilitarianism.
Utilitarian principles served as a crucial element in justifying British rule over India to the British populace. James Mill, father of John Stuart Mill and a noteworthy follower of Bentham, was a notable advocate for the British Empire in India, publishing The History of British India in 1817. The idea of India as a stagnant region which required the intervention of a dynamic foreign power to prosper was a common attitude amongst the British administration. In the eyes of the utilitarians, the purpose of the British administration was to rationalise the fundamentally irrational society of India. Ideology based around an imagined dichotomy between a dynamic, rationalist West and a stagnant, irrational East is a persistent theme amongst the European intelligentsia of the Victorian era, most often referred to as “Orientalism”.
Historically, the efforts of the utilitarians were primarily concentrated upon codifying and standardising various aspects of Indian society that had formerly gone unwritten. The traditional Indian reliance upon spoken agreement and personal meetings was anathema to the sensibilities of the British administration, who wished to establish absolute, uncontested control over Indian society whilst simultaneously remaining distant from their subjects. British India was characterised by the tension between the need to maintain Indian intermediaries to govern the subcontinent, and a near-total lack of trust in these intermediaries. In such an environment, the administration developed an obsession with paperwork, which it retreated behind in order to distance itself from what it saw as a chaotic and unpleasant society. This fixation is represented in-game through the traits and ideologies of the East India Company interest group, which was revealed in Dev Diary #134.
For much of its existence, the British administration was split between elements which wished to govern by making use of traditional Indian institutions, and those who sought to impose British systems of governance on Indian society. The utilitarian administrators of the East India Company, with their ambitious social reform programs and dreams of benevolent despotism, represented the latter tendency. The government of the British Raj immediately following the Indian Uprising [also referred to as the Sepoy Mutiny] largely represented the former.
The utilitarian administrators are represented by the Utilitarian ideology, which favours a variety of ambitious bureaucratic and social reforms. Utilitarians are connected to the Utilitarian movement, which may appear for any country with the English, Australian, or Anglo-Canadian primary cultures.
The East India Company has a Utilitarian movement at game start, which has a support base largely consisting of European bureaucrats and other Company officials. In a colony such as India, the Utilitarian movement has great difficulty attracting support outside of the administration itself.
If the Utilitarian movement acquires sufficient support amongst the members of an interest group, said interest group is said to be pressured by the movement. A pressured interest group gains the ability to generate leaders with the movement’s ideologies, as well as promoting agitators supporting this movement to leadership positions.
If the East India Company gets a Utilitarian leader, either through random generation or promoting a character such as John Stuart Mill, it will become immensely more receptive to various progressive reforms. However, the utilitarians are deeply unpopular with the Indian population, and their relentless drive to impose their vision upon society will deepen tensions between the colonial government and the Indian populace.
The presence of a notable utilitarian reformer within British India will trigger the Imperialism of Promise journal entry, which covers the efforts of the utilitarian administrators to realise their ideological goals. It will require an enormous expansion of the colonial bureaucracy to complete, as well as passing numerous reforms. These reforms are based on historical policies advocated for by the Company’s utilitarian administrators.
The Indian Penal Code of 1860, the first codified all-Indian system of law, was a utilitarian project incorporating various proposals by James Mill. Another utilitarian, Thomas Macaulay, served as one of the framers of both the Penal Code and the British Indian education system. Despite being drafted prior to the start of the game under Company rule, it took twenty-five years for it to be finalised and enacted by the government of the British Raj. The Penal Code nominally abolished slavery within India, although the practice remained widespread until the twentieth century.
Other notable utilitarian reforms in India include the abolition of Sati and the creation of the English education system under Lord Bentinck, and the legalisation of the remarriage of widows under Lord Dalhousie.
Historically, the projects of the utilitarians fell short of their goals, unable to overcome the contradiction between the administration’s desire for uncontested control and its unwillingness to trust non-Europeans. Despite their enormous bureaucracy, vast railway networks, and unparalleled capacity for violence, the British never truly managed to secure supreme political power in India. Outside of the employment of violent measures, their ability to effectively and sustainably govern India was relatively limited. The outbreak of the Indian Uprising in 1857 and the end of Company rule shifted the priorities of the British administration–the utilitarian outlook of reforming Indian society mostly fell out of fashion, and the Raj shifted towards a more conservative sort of administration that made greater use of Indian intermediaries and traditional institutions in its governance.
If one can complete this journal entry, however, they will have successfully realised the utilitarians’ vision for India–an all-encompassing bureaucracy devoted to codifying, rationalising, and anglicising all aspects of life across the subcontinent.
Indian Nationalism
Once pan-nationalism is researched by British India, it will become eligible for the Indian National Movement. This is a unique political movement which represents Indian secular nationalist organisations such as the Indian National Congress. It has the Sovereignist ideology, which favours basic civil liberties, equal rights for native Indians, and policing laws that institutionally favour Indian landowners over the colonial government.
The Indian National Movement represents the more secular form of Indian nationalism that characterised organisations such as the Indian National Congress. India also has movements that represent the explicitly Hindu and Muslim nationalist movements, which will be addressed later in this dev diary under “Communal Divides”.
An astute observer may note that the movement cares about more than just law stances. Political movements may now possess scripted factors which adjust their Activism in various directions according to any condition one may think of. In the case of the Indian national movement, having a high liberty desire increases their activism, as does being a less autonomous subject type. If British India can achieve Dominion status, this will appease the Indian national movement just as much as possessing a favourable law will.
The Indian Home Rule journal entry represents the initial demands of the Indian national movement - improved status within the British imperial system, and later the granting of self-government to India. Whilst steps in the direction of self-government were taken historically, these measures were only implemented after the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 had turned the Indian nationalist movement towards full independence.
Whilst the Indian Home Rule journal entry is active, the government of British India will be able to petition the British government for permission to democratise its administration. The chances of success will be determined by the progress bar, which represents the level of trust that Britain has in India. Poor relations with Britain will harm its progress, as will famines or aggressive governments on either side.
Once the Home Rule journal entry appears, Britain will receive a journal entry interfacing with it. If the British AI feels that its rule over India will be threatened if reform is not carried out, it will be inclined to press these buttons, creating an Indian legislature and democratic elections for such.
However, if a civil war of any kind breaks out, or if the Activism of the Indian national movement rises above 50%, British soldiers will fire on the protestors, and India will be sent into a downward spiral.
Once the Amritsar Massacre occurs, all hope for reconciliation between British administrators and Indian subjects is over, and the only option left for the British authorities is to hold onto India for as long as possible whilst trying to avert civil war. The Indian Nation journal entry will persist until the Indian national movement is marginalised, or India has been granted independence.
If a civil war breaks out in India whilst India possesses the Indian Nation journal entry, Britain will be inclined to pull its agents out of India and either leave the subcontinent to collapse, or hand over governance to whoever the rebel leader is. The former option will create an absolute mess in the formerly British-controlled regions for the newly-independent Indian state to deal with, whilst the latter will give the revolt control over all of India.
A British evacuation does not always signal the end for the Raj. In some circumstances, the British administration may choose to take a third option, and ignore the British call for withdrawal.
Pivot of Empire also includes numerous events related to the Indian national movement, such as the famous Salt March and various other actions carried out by Indian nationalists against British rule.
Communal Divides
Once you advance sufficiently into the game, and as ethno-religious identities start to emerge and solidify, you will have to contend with the growing issue of Hindu-Muslim intercommunal tensions. Juggling the political interests and desires of these two groups will not be an easy task, and you will periodically get events that complicate it even further.
As long as the Communal Divides journal entry is active, radicals from discrimination and attraction to religious nationalist political movements will be increased, so resolving the issue will quickly become a priority.
An Indian federation, wherein Muslim majority states will be granted autonomy will be one way to tackle the issue, but reneging on the promise of autonomy later on will result in massive unrest in your country’s Muslim population.
The Dravidian Movement
The early twentieth century in British India saw the emergence of several popular movements opposing caste discrimination. The Dravidian Movement began in opposition to the dominance of Brahmins in the administration of the Madras Presidency, and eventually led to the establishment of caste-based reservations in Madras.
The British East India Company starts with the Caste Not Enforced law, to represent the yet-uncodified status of the caste system in the 1830s. Once the British Raj is established, the Caste System Codified law is automatically enacted, representing the efforts of British administrators to codify the caste system nationwide in the aftermath of the Indian Uprising of 1857. The incorporation of native Indians into the Indian Civil Service under the British Raj was, historically, enormously skewed towards Brahmins. This inequality sets the stage for the future Dravidian Movement.
The Dravidian Movement journal entry covers more than the historical Dravidian Movement. To expand the scope of this narrative from the Madras Presidency to all of India, we have wrapped several other historical anti-caste movements into this journal entry, such as the the Self-Respect Movement of Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy [or Periyar] and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s “annihilation of caste”.
Whilst the Dravidian Movement is active, events pertaining to the struggle against caste discrimination will periodically appear in British India.
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