How would you get this map in Europe?

[Glen]

What sequence of events would create borders that looked like this by 2005?

[carlton_bach]

A European superstate creating language-based administrative districts?

Sorry, northing short of a total alteration of European history will produce that.

[chunkeymonkey13q]

The point of Divergence looks much earlier to me. Is that the Holy Roman Empire?

[Nicksplace27]

If the Blue is the Byzantines, then the POD has to be 1095 or somtime around there.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by carlton_bach

A European superstate creating language-based administrative districts?

Sorry, northing short of a total alteration of European history will produce that.

Actually, though many of the areas have a large predominant language, that is not entirely true. Look at that gray nation, for example. I bet there's at least three or four languages there.

[Glen]

I'd like a plausible series of events to get these borders...feel free to theorize which nations those would be.

[Soyuz]

The light grey nation is the one that really disturbs me. There is no way so many nationalities can get along... Unless... the Germans don't expand along the Baltic coast, but on the other hand, to the south of it. This happens around 500-1000AD. This causes the Poles to move south and east, mixing all the Western Slavic tribes together into one group... The other ones are much easier to figure out. One of the reason for no smaller nations might be lighter Dark Ages. If there is some exchange of population, then only one major culture could develop per one nationality. There could have been plenty of smaller nation before, but when a larger one of the same nationality emerged, the smaller ones would rather join it, and not a completely different one.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by Soyuz

The light grey nation is the one that really disturbs me. There is no way so many nationalities can get along... Unless... the Germans don't expand along the Baltic coast, but on the other hand, to the south of it. This happens around 500-1000AD. This causes the Poles to move south and east, mixing all the Western Slavic tribes together into one group... The other ones are much easier to figure out. One of the reason for no smaller nations might be lighter Dark Ages. If there is some exchange of population, then only one major culture could develop per one nationality. There could have been plenty of smaller nation before, but when a larger one of the same nationality emerged, the smaller ones would rather join it, and not a completely different one.

I don't know...I wonder if an Uber Hungarian state couldn't have developed further during the middle ages rather than being taken by the Hapsburgs (or whoever). Wallachia and Romania were vassels at one time or another of Hungary, IIRC, so maybe here that gets more formalized. Then either a conquest of Bohemia or some dynastic deal? I could see something like that explaining the gray state's initial formation. Whether such a state would hold into the 21st century...well, who knows?

Here's a map from 1500 where Hungary and Bohemia were in personal union...add in those principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia and we'd actually have pretty much the same borders as that gray nation.

http://www.euratlas.com/big/big1500.htm

I think one big thing to note in this is that there is no Switzerland...I think that definitely implies an earlier POD, though.

[radical_neutural]

the blue is the greeks. after they split from the ottomans, founded a nice little balkan empire. or it could be serbia goin the other way. the grey state reason france is so small is because all those revolutions weakened it, allowing expansionism into it. allso the hundrad years war turned out a bit different. something to do with the roformation. bohema won the thirty years war and it's the grey. the tuetonic knights anexed poland. prussia is catholic, bismark/marx alliance.

[Grimm Reaper]

I've got it!

I print out these maps and take a flight to Paris with them! Now we've got the map in Europe!

[radical_neutural]

Originally Posted by Grimm Reaper

I've got it!

I print out these maps and take a flight to Paris with them! Now we've got the map in Europe!

that's not the point buddy.

[Glen]

I still would be interested to hear some more ideas about this one.