California in Peshawar Lancers?

[Faeelin]

Okay, stirling's view is that california was swamped by refugees across mountain passes in the rockies.

Now, given we're in a nuclear winter, with raging blizzards, the passes are really not going to be available for thousands of people to swamp california.

So how does the united State of California develop, if we don't accept stirling's flimsy "people getting through closed mountain passes" theory?

[Straha]

FYI: California is a bunch of nipponese influenced city states in that book not one coherent nation

[Admiral Matt]

Come on, Straha, did you read what he said? The reason California is a bunch of foreign-dominated city-states is because the starving masses flooded over the Rockies.

So, what if they can't? I think they'd obviously claim the entirety of the old US, but the "British" Empire may actually be better positioned to colonize the East Coast. I suppose it might grab Baja off of Mexico or Vancouver from Canada (if they can get away with it). The most interesting effect would be that on Stirling's geopolitics - there are so few noteworthy powers in the world that every one added can have big effects.

This Byzantine US would certainly be a bigger force than the Brazilians and Argentines were, judging in terms of education and industrialization. It might well be the world's last republic... Indian English might not overwhelm the original so well if there was an independent English speaking Power. Hmm...that's all I got.

[Scott Rosenthal]

I always wondered why the Brits didn't try to scoop up California. Very few cities (SF was large enough, but without a US, it was a prize waiting to fall), lots of resources, farmland, and ports. Given the shattering of the state, it doesn't strike me that a determined effort to take this valuable prize by a major power wouldn't have succeeded.

[Faeelin]

I always wondered why the Brits didn't try to scoop up California. Very few cities (SF was large enough, but without a US, it was a prize waiting to fall), lots of resources, farmland, and ports. Given the shattering of the state, it doesn't strike me that a determined effort to take this valuable prize by a major power wouldn't have succeeded.

Or better; argentina. Nearby, still save, plenty of land....

So, what if they can't? I think they'd obviously claim the entirety of the old US, but the "British" Empire may actually be better positioned to colonize the East Coast. I suppose it might grab Baja off of Mexico or Vancouver from Canada (if they can get away with it). The most interesting effect would be that on Stirling's geopolitics - there are so few noteworthy powers in the world that every one added can have big effects.

Actually, if we go with the north atlantic wave, then the rest of the US in the interior is still unexposed. There's a lot of shipping on the mississippi...

And according to sterling, the British had years to get to impoverished India.

Do they all head to argentina, which had plenty of food to go around?

This Byzantine US would certainly be a bigger force than the Brazilians and Argentines were, judging in terms of education and industrialization. It might well be the world's last republic... Indian English might not overwhelm the original so well if there was an independent English speaking Power. Hmm...that's all I got

Well, the other question is if the US refugees don't simply swamp the natives; southern brazil and argentina are due for immigration, and the US is there to provide it. Mexico, ironically, being closer to subsistence agriculture than the US of this time, may collapse demographically.

And two hundred years later, the despotic Raj faces the Estados Unidos de la Americas.

[MerryPrankster]

I think pieces of the comet hit the US too, throwing up even more dust in the air and killing millions (the piece that hit Moscow was the equivalent of 300 kilotons or megatons, I can't remember which, so if it's the latter figure, five or six could do a lot of damage). That'll account for not much in the way of large-scale civilization surviving in East/Central US and the lack of hordes of Americans flowing down the Mississippi into Mexico and Central America.

[Straha]

the "Spanish" spoken by the latin american countris will in this TL be closer to englishand have ltos of english words due ot all the americna refugees

[Faeelin]

I think pieces of the comet hit the US too, throwing up even more dust in the air and killing millions (the piece that hit Moscow was the equivalent of 300 kilotons or megatons, I can't remember which, so if it's the latter figure, five or six could do a lot of damage). That'll account for not much in the way of large-scale civilization surviving in East/Central US and the lack of hordes of Americans flowing down the Mississippi into Mexico and Central America.

Nope; it never says that outright; stirling says so online, but he just didn't want a republic, lest their concept of individual rights destroy the beloved raj.

[Grey Wolf]

Nope; it never says that outright; stirling says so online, but he just didn't want a republic, lest their concept of individual rights destroy the beloved raj.

When is all this supposed to be happening - Tunguska ??

Grey Wolf

[tom]

Grey wolf: 1878.

[MerryPrankster]

"Nope; it never says that outright"

I thought the book jacket said something to the tune of "a series of high-velocity heavenly bodies struck Europe and North America."

[MerryPrankster]

Also, isn't Argentina a republic too?

[David S Poepoe]

Let's take a look at the book. I've got my hardback copy in front of me.

From Appendix One: The Fall p. 400

"The next impact was the largest of all, apparently in the western Atlantic, and the body involved may have been up to a kilometer in diameter. Further large fragments fell all across North America, in a rather wider band than in Europe and as far west as the Rocky Mountains."

"Hours to days later, tsunamis struck the coasts of countries all around the North Atlantic Basin. There were most severe along the Atlantic coast of North America, with wave fronts reaching as far inland as the Appalachians in some places.:

p.402

"North American followed a basically similar trajectory [to Europe], with patches of settled life surviving along the Gulf Coast. The eastern seaboard remained almost clear of human life for generations; on the interior plains there were small farming enclaves toward the east, with nomad hunters and herders (white, Amerind and mixed) further south and west, and a remnant of the Mormons in Utah. Most of the land swiftly reverted to wilderness, and the population was reduced below the leve of 1600.

California suffered less climatically, although the cold and increased rainfall did drastically reduce yields. Attempts to evacuate population from farther east resulted in an impossible overburdening of its resources - a tragic consequence of the survival of the transcontinental railways - and ultimately a number of regressed city-states emerged."

From Appendix Three: The Angrezi Raj/British Empire p. 410-411

"North America: The Empire claimed the whole North American continent."

"On the west coast, city-states of Anglo-Hispano background occupied the coast of California; initially backward, they played off the Empire against Dai-Nippon, and some maintained a substantial degree of independence from both the Raj and the East Asian empire. Explorers and entrepreneurs from Australia had established footholds and colonies along the Oregon and British Columbian coasts, while Dai-Nippon claimed Alaska and had some fishing and fur-trading settlements there.

The Empire's American establishments numberedsome 6 million in all; there were probably as many again in the Free Cities of California, and another few million among the wild tribes of the interior."

So it appears that California is probably much like ancient Greece with its city states - tho probably much more like the OTL Latin America. The Free Cities - San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and some others (I think there would be a concentration in the San Francisco Bay area) appear to have formed a loose league or confederation and have successfully remained mostly independent.

[wkwillis]

Stirling has some historical constraints on his book. He wanted to write a Talbot Mundy raj book and it was very hard to make it work.
In the 'real' world the railroads stop working when you can't get anybody to drive the locomotives one thousand miles through the Sierras and the deserts or plains. Bear in mind that you have to have somebody mining enough coal for fuel someplace along the way. The railroads will stop working long before civilisation falls on the west coast. Remember, the US west coast in any period of it's history was very reliant on pastoralism and fishing. Not just rainfed (and soggy or droughted) crops, or irrigated (and dried up or flooded) fields. Expecting civilisation to fall is not realistic with that nutritional base. This was much more true of the colonial areas in general than Europe or Asia. The pastoral areas of Asia are also more weather dependent than North America and Australia. If the rain stops falling on the steppes you are much worse off than if rain stops falling on the lowlands. The lowlands have water meadows and swamps that dry up much slower than the steppes. In Asia and Europe these areas are drained and full of farmers. In the Americas and Australia the farmers hadn't settled everywhere.
Civilisation is a structure that lets you make investments like blast furnaces and copper mines. Stirling assumes that a time of cannibalism will defeat the ability of people to work together long after the period of hunger. This did happen in most civilisations after the years without a summer of 536/541. Only the ability of the Roman empire to retreat to the islands of the Mediterranean allowed it to survive the attacks of the pastoral civilisations of the Balkans and Persia long enough for plague to even out the surviving population strengths.
But the structure of civilisation in the US was much stronger in terms of railroads, mines, blast furnaces, smelters, glass kilns, oil wells, and other persistent forms of wealth. Even a ninety percent decrease in population wouldn't shut down the railroads once they were built. It's to easy to cannibalize short lines and keep the coal mines, metal mines, and industrial areas at the ends of the rail net.
He can have starvation and cannibalism, or plague, but not starvation and cannibalism followed by plague. The population density and cannibal caused isolationism prevents plague from transmitting. 90% is the best he can do in any realistic scenario.
Keeping the post catastrophe raj going in India is pretty much impossible before 1900. There just isn't enough difference in the firepower between the farmers and the soldiers. This is also true of the French empire in Algeria and Tunisia. The last time a modern army was destroyed by pastoralists was in 1920 in Morroco, when the Spanish lost an army.
After 1900 there is a built up scientific base that wouldn't allow the population to recover before the more resistant areas would have essentially built modern civilisation. Not just electricity, but sanitation and chemistry. Electricity was pretty much a going thing in 1863, let alone 1881 or whenever Stirling has the comet hit.
Now if he kept the British empire going in Australia by having an 1863 strike take out the Europeans through a year without a summer, while the Chinese were having the Taiping and the US was having the civil war, then the Australians and the west coast of North and South America would have been essentially unharmed. That means no Pacific tsunamis because Australia was much more sea oriented than the US west coast. The tsunamis would have done much more proportional damage to the Australians.
Unfortunately for Stirling the US had more people in California than the British had in Australia pretty much always after 1860. Australia got a head start in 1786 since the US did not really arrive until 1846, but once the gold, mercury, silver, and copper rushes hit California and Nevada the population kept booming.
Maybe the Great Eastern (Western?) could have kept going after the shipping industry was wiped out by tsunami caused damage in ports, or by high winds round the capes caused by thermal inertia caused temperature differences between the seas and the lands? They could have made round trips using coal and were much more resistant to winds than the clippers. In 188? their were far more steamers and far bigger and wave resistant ones than in 1863.

[Mr_ Bondoc]

A big problem with the idea of Japanese occupation of California, even considering the ASB element, fails to recognize one major issue. First, in 1881, the Japanese Empire had developed serious rivalries against the Russians, the British, the United States, the Chinese, and the Australians...etc. There was also th eissue that there were serious "race riots" in California throughout the1880s and 1890s against Japanese and Chinese. The "Yellow Peril" came out of the period's media generated scare in 1892. It is more like ly that California would have been a mosaic blend of different cultures, similar to Morrocco...

[Admiral Matt]

Eh, there isn't really a Japanese occupation of California. It is just that a lot of the local city-states are under Japanese influence because the alternative would be outright annexation by the Raj.

[Grimm Reaper]

I believe that the book implies that US was hit even harder. On the other hand, if the East Coast was obliterated in the opening minutes, where did so many refugees come from? And how did they move so far, given the years of winter and the inevitable loss of the railroads and famine/disease. I could imagine the midwest overwhelmed and the south reduced to remnants under the pressure of northern refugees(especially with Jim Crow still relatively new!) as well as the Native Americans still fighting it out, but some remnant would likely have remained in the southwest and California in particular.

For an alternative, imagine the US government had a Disraeli and managed to evacuate specialists and held out in California, Utah, and the Deep South?