Project Chronology
From the Rush-Bagot Agreement (1817) to the outbreak of war (1931). Key preconditions: the Washington Naval Treaty abandons Japan (1922), the Wall Street Crash (1929), the Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930), the R101 disaster (1930), and the Hoover Moratorium — whose expiry in 1931 is the trigger.
Demilitarises the Great Lakes between the US and British North America. Evaporates immediately upon outbreak of war — both sides scramble to arm civilian vessels and improvise lake flotillas.
At the foot of the Plains of Abraham. Produces .303 British ammunition and shells. Scales up rapidly in war. Makes Quebec City a compound strategic target: Citadel + Van Doos + arsenal + St. Lawrence narrows all in one location.
British portfolio and direct investment estimated at £700–800m (~$3.5–4bn) — the largest single concentration of British overseas investment anywhere, exceeding India, Canada, and Australia combined. Concentrated in railroads, mining, insurance, and land. J.P. Morgan serves as Britain's financial agent in America.
Creates a coordinating military structure across the Empire: shared doctrine, training, planning. CIGS in London is nominally the professional head of the entire imperial military system.
Canadian units earn a fearsome reputation (Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, the Hundred Days). The alliance produces a generation of officers who fought together — but also sows the seeds of American suspicion that they were manipulated into a European quarrel serving financial interests.
Trenchard's vision: strategic bombing as the primary mission. Long-term consequence: Fleet Air Arm starved of resources under RAF control. Produces mediocre carrier aircraft and underdeveloped doctrine compared to the Americans. A critical structural disadvantage.
Imposes rough capital ship parity (5:5:3 ratio with Japan). Britain formally accepts naval equality for the first time in centuries. Treaty forces Britain to abandon the Anglo-Japanese Alliance under American pressure — London resents it; Tokyo feels betrayed. American battlecruiser hulls converted to USS Lexington and Saratoga, producing the most powerful carrier force in the world by 1931.
Drawn up by Lt. Col. James "Buster" Sutherland Brown, Director of Military Operations and Intelligence for Canada. Proposes pre-emptive Canadian raids into the United States — into Maine, toward Albany, into Minnesota, toward Seattle — to buy time for British reinforcement. Brown conducts reconnaissance trips into the northern US incognito.
Core figures — Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), Robert Brand (Lazard's), Geoffrey Dawson (editor of The Times) — occupy central positions in British public life. Rhodes Scholarships as public face; All Souls Oxford as institutional heart. Ultimate private vision: federal union of the English-speaking world. The esoteric faction that pursues a longer game during the war.
Prohibits first use of chemical weapons against other signatories — says nothing about colonial populations. Britain has already used gas against Iraqi rebels in the early 1920s. Italy will use it against Abyssinia. The consistent pattern: gas is a weapon you don't use on Europeans.
Prohibits export of American helium. Near-monopoly from Texas and Kansas natural gas fields. All other nations' airships must use flammable hydrogen — every British Atlantic crossing a flying bomb. USS Akron (commissioned October 1931) uses safe helium.
Declares the Dominions "autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate." A political declaration, not yet law — but represents the agreed understanding of the imperial relationship that Canada's war effort will test.
Incoming Canadian CGS Andrew McNaughton considers it unrealistic. Not destroyed — the thinking survives in the minds of aggressive Canadian officers.
During the Banana Wars in Nicaragua, using Curtiss F8C Helldiver biplanes. Born of necessity — conventional level bombing too inaccurate against small targets. The US Navy picks this up and develops it as carrier strike technique. The British do not pursue an equivalent.
Benjamin Strong (NY Fed) meets Montagu Norman (Bank of England) at a private conference on Long Island. Decision to lower American interest rates pumps cheap money into American markets, inflating the bubble. Friedman and Schwartz call it "the most costly error ever made by the Federal Reserve." Primary beneficiary: the British economy. Strong dies October 1928 — unavailable to answer for his decisions. In the novel's political architecture, this becomes one of the most powerful sources of genuine mass hatred.
Father Coughlin will broadcast to tens of millions the narrative that the crash was engineered to British advantage, originating in the 1927 rate cut. Populist congressmen make it on the floor of the House.
Devastates European economies. Britain's subsequent diplomatic note blaming American trade policy for non-payment of war debts has genuine historical legitimacy.
The British rigid airship crashes in France, killing 48 including the Secretary of State for Air. The British airship programme is effectively ended. R100 — which had successfully crossed the Atlantic to Canada and back — is broken up for scrap in 1931. Poignant detail: Britain had an airship that flew to Canada and back, and destroyed it the year before the war.
Ambitious, theatrical, politically astute. Exactly the kind of personality who would embrace a war with Britain.
A writeup on pulsed radar apparatus entered in the Royal Engineers' Inventions Book. The fundamental science is understood. What's lacking is engineering development, funding, and urgency — exactly what a war provides.
American: ~135,000 Army regulars. Patton (Lt. Col.) at Fort Myer. Eisenhower (Major) on staff of Assistant Secretary of War. Marshall (Colonel) at Fort Benning. Butler (Maj. Gen., USMC) at Quantico, approaching retirement. Navy: 15 battleships including 3 Colorado-class (16-inch guns), USS Lexington and Saratoga (~80 aircraft each), ~30 cruisers.
British/Canadian: Canadian Permanent Active Militia ~4,000. Non-Permanent Active Militia ~50,000. Vast pool of Great War veterans. RN: 15 battleships and battlecruisers (Hood, Nelson, Rodney), carriers Courageous/Glorious/Furious/Eagle/Hermes (all with mediocre air groups under RAF control).
Key figures: Field Marshal Sir George Milne as CIGS. McNaughton as Canadian CGS. Admiral Sir Frederick Field as First Sea Lord. Admiral William V. Pratt as US CNO. Captain Ernest King — brilliant, abrasive, positioned to rise fast.
785 feet long, helium-filled, carries Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk biplanes via internal trapeze system. Long-range maritime reconnaissance over the Atlantic. Arrives right on the novel's timeline.
Hoover Moratorium expires. Britain's partial payment note is selectively leaked to inflame both publics. Moderate voices lose control of the narrative. German intelligence? British Treasury hawk? American financial interests? Ambiguity is the point.
Royal Navy boards American merchant vessel with contempt. American crew member injured. Vessel detained 36 hours. Same day: German intelligence delivers partially fabricated document to American naval intelligence showing British planning for East Coast operations. Howe does not question provenance. First buried complicity.
Defensive measures read as offensive on both sides. Tarrant suspects German intelligence feeding both sides selectively — does not report it. His buried complicity, symmetrical with Howe's.
Neither government quite chose this. The machinery moved faster than their ability to stop it.
Howe commands the Caribbean operation. First meeting with Tarrant at a Washington/New York dinner. Both men privately surprised they like each other. Tarrant files: asset or threat?
American gas attack on Canadian city (aerial delivery most likely). The insult is civilisational. Tarrant disseminates photographic evidence. British war aims begin expanding beyond defence.
British subversion working because the grievances are real. Howe realises he met the man running it. Tarrant's conviction wavers as war aims slide toward "revisit 1776."
Howe approached to lead something that would end American democracy. He refuses. What refusal costs him is an open question. The live wire running into Book Two.