Wine and architecture (January-March, 1874

Immigration]

Motivated by economic (stock market crash at home) and political (civil strife and recruitment) factors, a considerably large group of Spanish and French migrated to Russia following the Ukaze or Refugee Act of Tsar Alexander III.

Within the Spanish there were people of all kinds that were simply categorized as "Spanish", Catalans, Basques, etc. After years of centralization, the French were a much more homogeneous group, although there were some who identified themselves as minorities, Corsicans, French Basques, etc.

Most of the migrants were lower-middle class but there was also a significant number of nobles escaping after defeats and victories on some sides. Legitimists, Orleanists and French Bonapartists, Carlist nobles and of the Spanish Republic, etc.

The majority were religiously speaking, Catholic, with other more dispersed minorities.

It didn't take long for this large number of migrants to obtain some parcels of land or work, which was certainly useful for Russia and for them.

Architects, farmers, teachers, scientists, etc.

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[Architecture]

The 21-year-old Catalan at that time, observed in detail some of the buildings of the "Russian-Byzantine" or "Neo-Byzantine" style, a style developed at the beginning of the 19th century (the father of this architectural style is considered the Russian architect Konstantin Andreevich Ton). Predominant in the capital of the Russian Empire, Saint Petersburg (and in fact also in the Crimean peninsula).

The architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was drinking from the new architectural influences that the Russian Empire offered, the traditional styles of Moscow and Novgorod, the style of the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian baroque, the classism, the pseudo-Russian style, etc.

"Excuse me." Gaudí approaches speaking in his (for the terrible moment) Russian of him to a member of the State Urban Planning Committee. "I would like to work".

At first he was not understood. "Ah! Work! Yes, wait a minute." They responded to the Catalan architect.

Before long, Antoni Gaudí was working in the State Urban Planning Committee, which involved various works of work declared by the Ministry of Finance or Tsar Alexander III. In particular, the committee talked about taking into account the formation of bicycle paths, pedestrian paths, paths for public transport and vehicles, and the formation of parks.

Then there were more freedoms for many other various buildings, churches, apartments, museums, etc.

The architect Antoni Gaudí in particular began his work on bridges and departmental buildings in the Russian Empire, although Gaudí absorbed elements of his adopted homeland he also brought (like many architects in Russia before him) a strong influence of architectural styles from his native country, Spanish-Catalan in this case.

Guadí in particular would be more notable in future years (some argue whether his first great work in 1875 or the beginning of his magnum opus in 1882 is more important), but examples from the early years of his work still remain.

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Alexandre Gustave Bonickhausen dit Eiffel, a Frenchman with German roots, was also a man who started working in Russia around this time. In particular Eiffel as a civil engineer worked on the construction of various bridges and stations of the huge railway lines of the Russian Empire.

As a side note, Eiffel also founded a relatively successful vinegar distillation plant.

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Engineers Vasily Titov and Evgeny Karlovich Knorre got in touch thanks to the various new engineering and construction jobs emerging in the Russian Empire during one of the great eras of industrial growth of the Russian Empire.

This formed a shared dream between the two, which was not fully manifested until 1875.

Titov and Knorre would be the parents of the Moscow Metro (Metropolitan Moskovsky, Моско́вский метрополите́н).

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[Viniculture]

Viniculture and wine production is not something new in Russia, in fact in certain regions it is an ancient tradition that later studies reveal could be millenary. Regions in southern Russia and regions of the North Caucasus.

However there was a considerable increase with the migration of French and Spanish to the Russian Empire in the wine production of the Russian state.

This is partly due to the winemaking traditions of these peoples in Western Europe.

The first wine-producing groups were cooperatives among migrants, but soon Russian-French nobles began to invest or form their own companies for the production of wine.

The number of barrels of wine increased exponentially, with vineyards growing in Crimea and Novorossiya especially. Spanish-French migrants brought part of their winemaking practices to the area.

In the 20th century, the winemaking tradition and alcohol production of the Crimean region would give rise to Russian Champagne.

The increase in wine in Russia allowed the Russian state to sell more abroad, further diversifying the Russian economy.

Some of the alcoholic beverage productions were essentially state-owned (vodka), but others were almost entirely private (wine and beer).

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[Cattle raising]

When it came to the meat industry, there were developments in European Russia and in parts of Central Asia (the Kazakh steppe).

On the one hand in the west of the Russian Empire there was the purchase of farms and the increase of these by foreign immigrants and natives of Russia, there was an increase in the raising of cattle (sheep and cows). On the one hand, there was the increase in the wool industry (with a development of the textile industry) and meat (the increase in the production of dried meat also began).

Spanish immigrants were also part of the increase in the wool industry and sheep farming in Russia.

On the other hand, in the Kazakh steppe the selective breeding of sheep was beginning to give positive developments. Helping the growing livestock and economic development of Russian Turkestan.

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[Grain export]

With the fall in the price of some agricultural products, which partly hurt Russian grain exporters, Tsar Alexander III and the state bought part of the material from grain exporters.

This allowed the czar and the state to divide the purchase into two reserves, one the state-owned army national reserve, and two a more private reserve under the Committee for the Provision of First Aid to victims of accidents and public disasters, in the event of famines or the need to distribute food, etc.

As a side effect it also allowed the interventionist state to control grain prices (considerably important in the Russian diet) to some extent.

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[Novaya Gvineya: Dragon Beans]

The proliferation of subsistence farming promoted by the Russian government in Novaya Gvineya led scientist Nicholas Nicolaevich Miklouho-Maclay to discover the "winged bean" as he originally called it.

Unfortunately the Russian sailors won and the bean was called dragon bean, but that's another matter. The point is that the bean discovered at Novaya Gvineya according to the Miklouho-Maclay study proved to have immense potential.

The leaves can be eaten like spinach, the flowers can be used in salads, the tubers can be eaten raw or cooked, the seeds can be used similarly to soybeans. And there were many more possibilities in its nutritional potential.

The reports were sent to mainland Russia, the discovery of the dragon bean was reported in the botanical studies of Russia, since Miklouho-Maclay was not a botanist or a particular scholar of plant life.

Emperor Alexander III consequently sent a detachment of experts and agricultural equipment (unfortunately due to the infrastructure they were not tractors or the like, but hoes and other hand tools).

The agricultural potential of the dragon bean was fully found.

With this in mind, Emperor Alexander III gave Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay permission to continue his agricultural projects in Novaya Gvineya.

The voluntary work of the Papuan natives timidly evolved from subsistence agriculture to the first Russian plantations in the region, capable of producing an excdente (feeding the local population became easier).

Even the potential use of the dragon bean was discovered to feed fish and potentially domestic birds or other animals, but under the Russian biological expedition, no exotic animals were introduced to Novaya Gvineya at the moment.

Corn, coffee, squash and cucumber remained a subsistence crop in the Russian northeast of Papua New Guinea, but the dragon bean became the first export crop.

Mainly to Hawai'i and Siam, and monthly it could be sent from Hawaii to the Russian Far East and Alyáska, and from Siam to Aceh.

This economic activity entailed the expansion of Cape Maclay to a larger port, where its storage capacities and stations for agricultural and tool control were expanded.

Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay had considerable influence on the cultural development of the Papuans of northeastern Papua New Guinea, impressive considering that only in Cape Maclay in its early days there were only 24 tribes (with 14 different languages or dialects) inhabiting the small region.

Better food and new crops attracted a few more natives to the Russian projects in the area. However, it was obvious that much more economic development and infrastructure was still lacking (something that seemed complicated considering the geographical situation).

Tsar Alexander III consequently allowed Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay and Ivan Shestakov to form a kind of Zemstvo of Novaya Gvineya.

The Zemstvo allowed the participation of tribal leaders and some local men (including Russian sailors, and natives of the island), but they were not as such a legislative body of government.

The Zemstvo of Novaya Gvineya in its beginnings would be simply a body to allow the best local administration, an advisory body for the governors (Miklouho-Maclay and Shestakov in this case) to deal with infrastructure, native affairs, education, medicine, etc.

De-facto no power was given to the natives but they were given a kind of voice (in Miklouho-Maclay's opinion). This also made the local tribal leaders part of a Russian system, affiliated with the emperor and the Russian state in a sense.

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[International]

The British Empire signs the Pangkor treaty with various Malay states, placing British control over the Malay state of Perak.

* Early this year ANOTHER president of the Spanish Republic is forced to retire, in this case Emilio Castelar (and it is not the second, Estanislao Figueras, Francisco Pi y Margall and Nicolás Salmerón were also forced to leave the presidency only in 1873) .

The political instability of the government of the Spanish Republic is notable, especially when a Carlist army is carrying out another offensive in rural Catalonia, although with less success compared to previous months.

* Quite deprived of help, German volunteers in northern Spain try to get more support for the Leopoldist cause, but they fail in their attempts.

* In February and March, the republican forces carry out a successful offensive against the Carlist forces in northern Spain, more specifically in Navarra, where, for example, General Fernando Primo de Rivera participates.

* Although there is another problem, the cantonal revolts in southern Spain are beginning to spread to cities in central Spain.

* After months the negotiations between Italy and Austria-Hungary for greater movements of the Austro-Hungarian fleet near the waters of the Adriatic fail, seriously limiting the support of Austria-Hungary to Bonapartist France due to having to take care not to provoke conflicts with the Italian kingdom.

* In mainland France (in January and mid-February), on the other hand, the Bonapartist forces manage to create a siege of Paris against the Orleanist-legitimist forces. However King Henry V has managed to escape this siege.

On the other front of the war, the Legitimists-Orleanists have finally been able to reach the Mediterranean Sea since their conquests to the south. However, the overextension of army logistics against the government is getting complicated and they have suffered more and more setbacks in border conflicts with rural and radical Bonapartist forces in the cities.

On March 17, Emperor Napoleon IV, who has recently reached 18 years of age and therefore taking the regency council off his back (although he retains his prime minister) proposes to the Legitimist-Orleanist forces a total pardon in exchange for leaving arms or join the Bonapartist army-government.

Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger, a southern monarchist, plays a huge role in keeping morale high and preventing many of the southern army's desertions to the Bonapartist forces. However, with the increasingly difficult logistical situation, the southern army has to choose between its cause and the survival of its men.

With Paris under siege, General Patrice de MacMahon, against the orders of his king, surrenders, ending the destruction in the south and the deaths of more French citizens for the Orleanist-legitimist cause in the south. Patrice de MacMahon is able to retire peacefully, and Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger decides to join the Bonapartist army.

The war seems to be coming to an end with the recent Orleanist-Legitimist defeats.

Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh marry Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia (daughter of the Tsar Alexander II).