It is now 1856 and within the last five years, two more landmasses have been added to the world, nicknamed Lemuria and Mu. Lemuria is a Greenland sized tropical landmass full of basal primates and a derived Austalopithecan from its own timeline, with a range of local mineral resources seeming attractive. Mu is by far the largest of the landmasses, between Australia and Antarctica in size, and comes from a timeline that diverged from ours in the Paleozoic, and so holds almost unrecognisable flora and fauna. Several minor powers have started colonising here, such as the Mexicans, Peruvians, Colombians, Chileans, Japanese and even Hawaiians. The Japanese shogun broke their usual sense of isolation and allowed colonisation of some small islands and a strip of land to the mid-west of Mu for trading purposes.
However, many in Japan proper thought this was minimalistic, and argued it would be better to colonise the main northern peninsula, which was over twice the size of the Korean peninsula and with an even greater amount of natural resources. This ignited a conflict long in the making, and so the Shogun was deposed and Meji restoration happened, with the Japanese now free to colonise Mu as much as they could.
The situation in Atlantis was mostly settled as the powers divided their spheres, however sparsely populated. The situation in Europe though started to deteriorate as temperatures climbed down gradually, even with the man made industrial revolution rising CO2 levels. Soon, even places like the UK experienced Scandinavia like temperatures, and so mass migration to the colonies began. Atlantis, right in the middle of the Gulf Stream, flourished climatically, and so a shift in Western Europe was beginning.
While Europe was beginning to decline, the USA had its own problems in the form of mainly placing slaves in their new Atlantic territory. As America's economy began to dip and abolitionism came on the rise, an enormous mutiny broke out amongst Atlantis' slaves, wishing to establish themselves as an independent nation from their birthplace. Rumours of similar ideals in the Japanese held lands are also heard. As Europe cools, the Americas, Asia and Oceania begin to wax. Where this will lead the world is hard to say.
