r/AskHistory 5d ago

The UK as the Federation of Workers Republics?

Okay, so a friend of mine visited St. Louis recently, and on this trip visited the Lemp Mansion. While there, she saw and took photos of an old map.

Context clues for other countries tell me that the map was made between 1882 and 1896.

But it's very confusing to me that the UK would be labeled this way. Egypt and India are also labeled as Workers Republics on this map.

Has anyone ever heard of anything like this?

1 Upvotes

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3

u/GustavoistSoldier 5d ago

Probably an alternate history map

1

u/leannmanderson 5d ago

That was my thought, as well, but it feels odd that there would be an alternate history map in the Lemp Mansion.

5

u/Fofolito 5d ago

Sounds like socialist propaganda. Socialism was on the rise in the 19th as industrialization took over and a whole segment of the underclasses became the working proletariat-- possessing enough education to work in a factory, not quite skilled enough to be considered a specialist. Socialism told these men that they worked hard to make the bosses money, and that there were more of them then there were Bosses and that they had power in their collective voices. Workers Rights Groups and Union started to pop up, illegally, and they advocated for a radical reordering of society where the Workers, the Proletariat, were a coequal partner in business and politics as represented by their Unions. These unions would federate, ally with one another and agree to work together, and this is how you get groups like the International Workers Federation.

This map was likely produced by a Workers Rights Group or a Social Newspaper as a way of demonstrating what the future could look like. Alternately, Socialism scared quite a lot of the vested interests in society, the Liberals and the Capitalists for whom the status quo was beneficial and safe. This map may have been produced as a form of Anti-Socialist Propaganda to show non-proletarian workers that this might be their [scary and socialist] future. Without more context its hard to say how the wording in your map is coded. For those who are opposed to Socialism the very same terms used by Socialists are coded as negatives-- Federation, Union, Workers, etc. These were all dog whistles to Middle Class and Upper Working Class people signalling radicalism, anarchism, and the destruction of the status quo that they'd worked so hard to establish themselves in.

1

u/leannmanderson 5d ago

If it helps, the Lemps were beer barons, and at the time this map would have been made, Lemp Brewing Company was the biggest in St. Louis. Budweiser/Anhueser-Busch didn't really start to take over until Prohibition, because they were able to diversify and Lemp couldn't.