Programme Pelagique

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A series of Alternate History novels written by the French author Andre Du Mer between 2356 and 2363. The basic plot involves The fictitious Seventh Republic of France, remarkable for its position as the greatest maritime power on earth, and the only nation to have entire provinces beneath the waves. It owes this reputation to the Programme Pelagique, from which the title is derived, the great French mission to colonise the seas.
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The Programme Pelagique is the French underwater colonisation effort (literally Deep-sea Program). Formalised in 1967 by President [[Jacques-Yves Cousteau]], it has driven four centuries of gradual economic, scientific and territorial expansion in the Seventh Republic.  
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== Notable Achievements ==
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== The Alternate History Timeline ==
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=== French Algeria ===
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Although it predates the phrase "Programme Pelagique" by 4 years, the 1963 negotiated surrender of the Algerian FLN (National Liberation Front), under Ahmed Ben Bella is generally held up as a key example of the military aspect of the Programme. Three secret undersea bases, off the coasts of Oran, Algiers and Annaba, coupled with a small fleet of submarine landing craft allowed the French military to completely drive the rebels away from the coast. No matter how successful the Rebels were (such as their captures of Algiers, in 1960 and 62), they were unable to discover and eradicate, or even merely terrorise the French presence, and by 63, their tenuous alliance was so frayed that they no longer had an army to field. This operation is commonly described by military historians as the ultimate trump card against guerilla war - but apart from France, no other nation has seen fit to develop such a capability.
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===De Gaulle's Rise ===
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=== Atlantis ===
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Atlantis is the 40th province of France, with over 1,000,000 acknowledged citizens. It consists of a network of underwater habitation domes and aquaculture plantations extending out to the edge of the continental shelf - about as far west as Ireland. It was the incorporation of this province into the State that prompted the peaceful dissolution of the Sixth Republic, and the incorporation of the Seventh, in 2249.
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After the Second World War, France was shattered and thrown into political turmoil. The re-establishment of the pre-war constitution as the Fourth Republic failed spectacularly in 1952, with the coup by Charles De Gaulle, and the foundation of the fascist Fifth Republic. It's worth noting that despite a commonality of ideology, De Gaulle's "Union des post-Démocrates pour la République" were violently opposed to their German brothers - German agitation along the Rhine frontier being one of the final triggers for the coup. French fascism, though, had two chief problems - an inability to manipulate the business community, as in Germany, leading to rampant corruption, as well as simply unethical and damaging business practices, and a lack of allies. Apart from the similarly ruined Britain, De Gaulle had few friends, having alienated the Americans during the bungled Operation Torch, and ideologically opposed to the USSR and China. He needed a big project to unite the country, and in 1956, he found a man with big ideas, Jacque-Yves Cousteau, a minor war-hero and naval scientist, now making short-run underwater documentaries. In perhaps the most fateful leap of faith in French history, he appointed the 44-year-old Cousteau, with no political experience, to the Ministry of Science.
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=== Cousteau ===
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The most dramatic and recent advance of the Programme Pelagique is the colony of Cousteau, on Callisto, the sea-covered moon of Jupiter. Unveiled in 2347, little is yet known of this secretive colony, apart from its location on the surface, and its depth, an impressive 5,600 meters. Engineers propose that the low gravity of Callisto must make the water pressure significantly less than it would be on earth, but little more can be surmised, given the advancement of French technology in this specialised area.
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== Cousteau's dream ==
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== Notable Rumors ==
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The Programme Pelagique is highly secretive, and significantly more advanced in a branch of technology that most other powers have virtually ignored.
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Cousteau's plan was ambitious and daring - and he had already laid the public relations groundwork with his award-winning film 'The Silent World' (1956). He proposed that instead of racing for the stars, France become the first power to colonise the bottom of the ocean, and partake of its unimaginable riches. Results quickly followed - by 1961, two years before Yuri Gargarin's moonwalk, France had a permanent research base just south of Brest - the Atlantisse I. By 1965, with the domination of Algiers assured by Cousteau's experimental sub-sea military bases, De Gaulle was becoming worried about the power of his protege. De Gaulle was raising taxes and slashing services to pay off the war bonds now coming due, but Cousteau gave the people nothing but good news. On May Day, 1965 De Gaulle had ordered the troops onto the streets of Paris for the fifth time that year, to deal with a noisy student protest. When the students pelted troops on the Champs-Elysee with cobblestones at 12.30pm, the troops opened fire, killing 21 in the opening seconds. Compounding the disaster was the ordered encirclement of the protest route by the post-Democratique paramilitary, the Organisation de l'Armée Nationaliste, who also opened fire on the trapped students. By the time the field commander, Major Jean-Michel Dujardin, could relay the order to cease fire, more than 230 students were dead, including Jacque's son, Phillipe Cousteau.
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=== Frogs ===
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By 2.00pm, Jacques Cousteau had been placed under arrest, and only learnt of his son's death early the next morning from a fellow detainee. Events were now moving too fast for De Gaulle to control, as Parisians called a general strike, and the army sided with them against the ODAN forces rampaging indiscriminately through the streets. Similar scenes erupted throughout the major cities of France, but most notably in Marseilles and Tours, where the army similarly turned against the paramilitaries. De Gaulle was placed under house arrest by his own bodyguard on the 4th of May, but Parisians, suspecting it was a ploy to save his life, stormed the house, and hung their former leader from a lamp-post. Cousteau, one of the last popular members of the government, and considered blameless in the riots, was freed from prison the same day, and put forward by the army as a potential president. By the next week, the riots were subsiding, and Cousteau, yet to bury his son, was proclaimed President of the Sixth French republic, with surviving parliamentarians of the fourth invited to reform a parliament.
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One of the most enduring rumours, particularly popular in nearby England, is that the French are pursuing banned genetic manipulation in order to create soldiers that can operate underwater without asssistance, or in its more fanciful manifestations, preparing to move the whole French populace permanently underwater. Gilled corpses supposedly washed up on beaches from Brighton to Cork, and even as far as Wales are advanced as proof of this theory, but none have ever made publicly available. For now, this theory falls into the same category as UFOs.
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=== Project Viper Mer ===
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== Programme Pelagique and the Slow Empire ==
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A more worrying prospect to military planners is the possibility of Project Viper Mer (Sea Snake). In 2281, disgruntled, and possibly schizophrenic military scientist Emanuel Poisson published a airport thriller, which he later claimed was based on fact. In it, he discussed a network of clandestine undersea nuclear launch facilities, some actually inside the territorial waters of other nations, and capable of delivering a variety of warheads without betraying the location of the launch point, or the nationality of the launcher. Naturally, the French government denies such a scheme entirely, and points to the cost of its underwater operations and the impossibility of constructing one undetected.
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Although the French people had lost their appetite for Fascism, their enthusiasm for the policy that Cousteau was soon to formalise as the Programme Pelagique (Deep-sea program) was undiminished. A chastened and ashamed army was put under tight civilian controls, and stacked with leaders amenable to parliamentary government. The ODANs were disbanded, but not before many were killed in brutal reprisals for their reign of terror. Most importantly for the two great French problems, Cousteau had no love for the business community, and showed them no mercy for their role in the Fifth Republic's collapse; and though his socialist policies alienated the British, they attracted a much more powerful and important ally - the USSR, keen to deal with any power bearing Germany such a fierce emnity. Cousteau also realised that despite his program's popularity, he could not afford to overspend on it - any diminution of living standards would not be tolerated by the French people. Announcing his Programme Pelagique to the French people, he coined the famous phrase that would be used to describe the French by supporters and critics of the policy - the doctrine of the "Slow Empire", one which prioritised growth before expansion, and the citizens before the state. There is no doubt that this policy stunted potential French expansion, but, on the other hand, the notoriously rebellion prone French nation has gone nearly 300 years without a major uprising, and consistently ranks at the top of national contentment surveys.
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The Seventh Republic was officially declared in 2249, with the incorporation of the Province of Atlantis, a network of cities and aquacultural plantations stretching hundreds of kilometres into the Atlantic, and comprising more than 1 million citizens.
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In 2347, France announced the official unveiling of the colony of Cousteau on the planet Callisto, 5,600 meters below sea level, and the first human colony on the sea-covered moon. In 2360, it attempted to claim sovereignty over the entire, unbroken undersea landmass of Callisto, and seems set to succeed in gaining international acquiesence by the end of the decade.
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The novels are huge best-sellers in France, as well as throughout the two English-speaking empires.
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Revision as of 12:14, 28 June 2006

The Programme Pelagique is the French underwater colonisation effort (literally Deep-sea Program). Formalised in 1967 by President Jacques-Yves Cousteau, it has driven four centuries of gradual economic, scientific and territorial expansion in the Seventh Republic.

Contents

Notable Achievements

French Algeria

Although it predates the phrase "Programme Pelagique" by 4 years, the 1963 negotiated surrender of the Algerian FLN (National Liberation Front), under Ahmed Ben Bella is generally held up as a key example of the military aspect of the Programme. Three secret undersea bases, off the coasts of Oran, Algiers and Annaba, coupled with a small fleet of submarine landing craft allowed the French military to completely drive the rebels away from the coast. No matter how successful the Rebels were (such as their captures of Algiers, in 1960 and 62), they were unable to discover and eradicate, or even merely terrorise the French presence, and by 63, their tenuous alliance was so frayed that they no longer had an army to field. This operation is commonly described by military historians as the ultimate trump card against guerilla war - but apart from France, no other nation has seen fit to develop such a capability.

Atlantis

Atlantis is the 40th province of France, with over 1,000,000 acknowledged citizens. It consists of a network of underwater habitation domes and aquaculture plantations extending out to the edge of the continental shelf - about as far west as Ireland. It was the incorporation of this province into the State that prompted the peaceful dissolution of the Sixth Republic, and the incorporation of the Seventh, in 2249.

Cousteau

The most dramatic and recent advance of the Programme Pelagique is the colony of Cousteau, on Callisto, the sea-covered moon of Jupiter. Unveiled in 2347, little is yet known of this secretive colony, apart from its location on the surface, and its depth, an impressive 5,600 meters. Engineers propose that the low gravity of Callisto must make the water pressure significantly less than it would be on earth, but little more can be surmised, given the advancement of French technology in this specialised area.

Notable Rumors

The Programme Pelagique is highly secretive, and significantly more advanced in a branch of technology that most other powers have virtually ignored.

Frogs

One of the most enduring rumours, particularly popular in nearby England, is that the French are pursuing banned genetic manipulation in order to create soldiers that can operate underwater without asssistance, or in its more fanciful manifestations, preparing to move the whole French populace permanently underwater. Gilled corpses supposedly washed up on beaches from Brighton to Cork, and even as far as Wales are advanced as proof of this theory, but none have ever made publicly available. For now, this theory falls into the same category as UFOs.

Project Viper Mer

A more worrying prospect to military planners is the possibility of Project Viper Mer (Sea Snake). In 2281, disgruntled, and possibly schizophrenic military scientist Emanuel Poisson published a airport thriller, which he later claimed was based on fact. In it, he discussed a network of clandestine undersea nuclear launch facilities, some actually inside the territorial waters of other nations, and capable of delivering a variety of warheads without betraying the location of the launch point, or the nationality of the launcher. Naturally, the French government denies such a scheme entirely, and points to the cost of its underwater operations and the impossibility of constructing one undetected.

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