Two men inherit 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.
Sarrasin builds Ville-France on the western side of the Cascade Range, with public health as its government's primary concern.
Schultze, a militarist and racist, builds Stahlstadt on the east side, a vast industrial and mining complex, devoted to the production of ever more powerful and destructive weapons—and vows to destroy Sarrasin's city.
An Alsatian named Marcel Bruckmann relocates to Stahlstadt, and 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.
[2] It reflects the mindset prevailing in France following its defeat in the Franco-German War of 1870–1871, displaying a bitter anti-German bias completely absent from pre-1871 Verne works such as Journey to the Center of the Earth where all protagonists (save one Icelander) are Germans and quite sympathetic ones.
In acknowledgement, the French government donated to the newly established San Francisco Art Association a collection of copies from original marbles in the Louvre, including twenty-five pieces of the Parthenon frieze.