The Begum's Fortune / The Begum's Millions

Book Online - The Begum's Fortune/The Begum's Millions

The Begum's Fortune (French: Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum), also published as The Begum's Millions, is an 1879 novel by Jules Verne, with some utopian elements and other elements that seem clearly dystopian. It is noteworthy as the first published book in which Verne was cautionary, and somewhat pessimistic about the development of science and technology.

Long after The Begum's Fortune was published, it came out that its story is based on a manuscript by Paschal Grousset​, a Corsican revolutionary who had participated in the Paris Commune and was at the time living in exile in the United States and London. It was bought by Pierre-Jules Hetzel, the publisher of most of Verne's books. The attribution of plot elements between Grousset's original text and Verne's work on it has not been completely defined. Later, Verne worked similarly on two more books by Grousset and published them under his name, before the revolutionary finally got a pardon and was able to return to France and resume publication in his own name.

The book first appeared in a hasty and poorly done English translation soon after its publication in French—one of the bad translations considered to have damaged Verne's reputation in the English-speaking world. W. H. G. Kingston was near death and deeply in debt at the time. His wife, Mrs. A. K. Kingston, who did the translation for him, was certainly otherwise preoccupied than with the accuracy of the text and may have had to rely on outside help. In 2005 a new translation from the French was made by Stanford Luce and published by Wesleyan University.

I. O. Evans, in his introduction to his "Fitzroy Edition" of The Begum's Fortune, suggested a connection between the creation of artificial satellites in this novel and the publication of The Brick Moon by Edward Everett Hale in 1869.

Plot summary

Two men inherited a vast fortune as descendants of a French soldier who settled in India and married the immensely rich widow of a native prince – the begum of the title.

One of the inheritors is a French physician, Dr. Sarrasin, who has long been concerned with the unsanitary conditions of European cities. He decides to establish a utopian model city constructed and maintained with public health as its government's primary concern.

The other is a German scientist Prof. Schultze, a militarist and racist. Though having a French grandmother, he is convinced of the superiority of the "Saxon" (i.e., German) over the "Latin" (primarily, the French), which he believes will lead to the eventual destruction of the latter by the former. Schultze had published many articles "proving" the superiority of the German race. Schultze decides to make his own utopia—a city devoted to the production of ever more powerful and destructive weapons—and vows to destroy Sarrasin's city.

They both get the United States to cede its sovereignty over two cities for the creation of their utopian city-states. One is Ville-France (French: France-Ville, also translated as "Frankville") on the western side of the Cascades, and the other is Stahlstadt ("steel city"), on the east side.

Construction of Ville-France begins in January 1872, by Chinese migrant workers - who are sent away once the city is complete. The book justifies the exclusion as needed to avoid the "difficulties created in other places" by the presence of Chinese communities. This might be an oblique reference to the Chinese Massacre of 1871.

Most of the action takes place in Stahlstadt, a vast industrial and mining complex, where ores are made into steel, then made into weapons. Stahlstadt becomes in a few years the world's biggest producer of arms. Schultze is Stahlstadt's dictator, whose very word is law and who makes all significant decisions personally. There is no mention of Stahlstadt precise legal status vis-à-vis the Oregon or US Federal authorities, but clearly, Schultze behaves as a completely independent head of state.

The strongly fortified city is built in concentric circles, each separated from the next by a high wall, with the "Tower of the Bull" – Schultze's own abode – at its center. The workers are under a semi-military discipline, precisely doing metallurgical jobs. A worker straying into where and what he is not authorized to see and know is punished with immediate expulsion in the outer sectors and with death in the sensitive inner ones.

Dr. Sarrasin, in contrast, is a rather passive figure – a kind of non-hereditary constitutional monarch who, after founding Ville-France, does not take any significant decision in the rest of the book. The book's real protagonist, who actively resists Schultze, is an Alsatian, Marcel Bruckmann, native of the part of France forcibly annexed by Germany in the recent war. As an Alsatian, he is a fluent speaker of German, a requirement for entering Stahlstadt, and is able to pass himself off as being Swiss. He quickly rises high in its hierarchy, gains Schultze's personal confidence, spies out some well-kept secrets, and sends a warning to his French friends. It turns out that Schultze is not content to produce arms, but fully intends to use them first against Ville-France, then establish Germany's worldwide rule. (He casually mentions a plan to seize "some islands off Japan".)

Two weapons are being produced – a super-cannon capable of firing massive incendiary charges to Ville-France, and shells filled with gas. Schultze's gas is designed not only to suffocate its victims but at the same time also freeze them. A special projectile is filled with compressed liquid carbon dioxide that, when released, instantly lowers the surrounding temperature to a hundred degrees Celsius below zero, quick-freezing every living thing in the vicinity.

Schultze, however, meets with poetic justice. Firstly, the incendiary charge fired by the super-cannon at Ville-France not only renders the cannon unusable but also misses its mark. The charge flies over the city and into space. Secondly, as Schultze prepares orders for the final assault, a gas projectile in the office accidentally explodes and kills him.

Stahlstadt collapses since Schultze had kept everything in his own hands and never appointed any deputy. It goes bankrupt and becomes a ghost town. Bruckmann and his friend, Dr. Sarrasin's son, take it over. Schultze would remain forevermore in his self-made tomb, on display as he had planned to do to his foes, while the good Frenchmen take over direction of Stahlstadt in order to let it "serve a good cause from now on.", its arms production being used to defend Ville-France.

Setting

The precise location given for Ville-France (43°11′3″N 124°41′17″W) would place it in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oregon. The nearest point on the coast (43°11′3″N 124°24′07″W) would be near the mouth of Cut Creek, north of Bullards Beach State Park. The location is described as "on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and at the foot of the secondary chain of the Rocky Mountains, called the Cascade Mountains, sixty miles to the north of White Cape, Oregon State, North America" (original French: "au bord de l'océan Pacifique et au pied de la chaîne secondaire des montagnes Rocheuses qui a reçu le nom de Monts-des-Cascades, à vingt lieues au nord du cap Blanc, Etat d'Oregon, Amérique septentrionale"). Sixty miles to the north of White Cape, or more properly, twenty metric leagues, would place it somewhere between Hauser, Oregon and Charleston, Oregon, near the inlet of Coos Bay.

The location of Stahlstadt is less clear. It is "in the United States, to the south of Oregon, ten leagues from the shores of the Pacific. The district is mountainous, its northern limits as yet barely defined by the two neighboring powers." This would place it in the vicinity of Patrick Creek, California, near the Oregon border, unless Verne's phrase ("au sud de l'Oregon") should be taken as "in the south of Oregon." When Prof. Schultze threatens to launch a bomb from Stahlstadt to Ville-France, he says, "one of these shells … will cross the Cascade mountains. Where? There exists a city, separated from us by at most thirty miles, upon whose inhabitants it will come like a thunder-clap…." The Pacific Coast can hardly be described as "at the foot of" the Cascades, which are some one hundred miles from the ocean. It is possible that Verne confused the Cascade Range with the Oregon Coast Range, in which case Stahlstadt might lie somewhere to the west of Roseburg, Oregon.