Snake Featherston
Banned
obviously yes, in fact you could almoust say the many battles and wars are in fact by-products of the rest, sometimes even tips of the iceberg in a way, or critical moments of system overload and crash
but it is simpler for people to concentrate on the obvious and supposedly familiar, all the more so since if you actually went digging into all the historical facts about all that constituted the, mostly not so turbulent and for some not so interesting course of history, you risk getting lost in a mountain of converging stories and emergent systems in which all parts are almost equally important
so people stick to what they are familiar with, interested in, or can find on wikipedia
As I said, depending on how it's done, this can make an AH world more realistic. If I were to use linguistics, I'd ask someone like Leo who has a degree in the field to help check my facts, for instance. That's one of the great aspects of AH.com, there are resources here in terms of the members, not just the Internet.
How do you deal with that well? Some things are fairly obvious; bigger esperanto, for instance. But charting an entirely new language?
Extrapolate from OTL trends and note the role that the legacies of military and economic imperialism can play in the world's largest language. It might have been an eternal French-speaking Lingua Franca world had it not been for the financial issues with French colonization of the New World, after all, the French and Spanish were first....
On the other hand, France is still here after what, 1200 years? Perhaps there will always be an England...
I would not consider today's republican France to be anything at all like the western half of the split of Verdun, or even like the very first Republic of 1789. Yes, France is still here, but the France of today is a radically different society (albeit in a very positive, not at all negative direction.) As for England, the England of today is the predominant power in the Union of England, Scotland, and Wales, but the England of today is not that of Alfred the Great, either.
I wish I had your confidence here. Look at North Korea; and Stalin followed, after all, Lenin.
North Korea is allowed to continue to exist because none of the neighboring countries can afford the humanitarian and financial crisis from the collapse of the regime, and unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, those neighboring countries can grab Uncle Sam by the balls financially enough to keep us from going in and doing it anyway. As for Stalin...there's no Soviet Union anymore, is there?
There have been a few of these, I think. Hrmm. I forget which, though. Oh, Bentham is one with a fairly different philosophical context.
I did try my hand at this; search for Answers for Milinda, for Hellenistic Buddhism tying into incipient Gallic urbanization.
I will look into your TL as well. I do appreciate, by the way, all the suggestions and TLs people are saying to look into, it's really nice.
I've given some thought as to what Modern Latin might look like in a Roman-Empire-survives-to-the-present-day world. Unfortunately--and this is why it's better that most AH scenarios don't delve much into language--I'm not a qualified linguist or a speaker of the language I was considering. I like to study linguistics, and I know more about it than the average person. But I am by no means an expert on how language changes over the centuries. And neither are most people who deal with AH. If I tried to actually work out the structure of a Modern Latin, the result might impress laymen, but real linguists would just point and laugh.
You could ask Leo, I'm sure he'd be willing to help you. He is the resident linguist, after all. And the shape of your modern Latin would depend highly on the nature of the Roman society you invision and other aspects of the world, as well.
If I may, do you have any suggestions for a good crash course on economics for a writer to use instead of the stuff pulled out of his arse?
I do not, but what I would suggest is to search for different viewpoints and interpretations of economics, as there's no guarantee ATL X or ATL Y will follow the economic ideas of OTL, but a good knowledge of things like Voodoo Economics, Keynesianism, Monetarism, and things like Libertarianism, and yes, Communism are all worth having.
Also I seem to have mixed up 4 & 5 with 5 & 5.1...
Tis OK, it happens.
1. Because i dont think anyone of us is a professor in linguistics and i dont see why this should be a factor in ATLs when OTLs history books never tell who speaks what language.
Leo Caesius is. And I don't about the ones you read, but the ones I read track the emergence of national identities and what happened with the rise of nationalism and language (IOTW, tiny dialetical region imposes itself over all others).
2 - 4. Because we dont think like that/dont want it to happen?
Then you'd better come up with damn plausible reasons why it doesn't.
5. I dont care much about Africa IRL, why should i care about a African WI?
Different strokes for different folks. As nice as all the American history WIs is as an American, I want to deal with WIs that affect entirely different aspects of Planet Earth. If you don't, well, that's fine, it's not like you're required to do this.
5.1 I am no economic historian and no only economic basics and thus i avoid writing about it.
If you want realism like that why not write one yourself. I dont see the fun in writing all of this into stories
I'm working on such a TL, If I Forget You O Samaria. That's the reason for the slowness of the next update, I'm seeking to provide a snapshot of the world at the time of the rise of Rome.
Cant really, my POD is a bit too late (WMA).
Well, if your POD's too late, then it's too late. That's all right.
That is definetely going to happen for at least two nations in my TL.
Look forward to reading it.
That has already happened to Germany in my TL, although in an unorthodox, highly violent fashion.
Now I'm more intrigued, considering OTL German Unification, I wonder how much more violent...
Havent dealt with Australia and Africa yet because im a little occupied with Europe, but plan radical butterflies there.
Look forward to reading that, as well.
Ive just done that with my latest post, and I can say the Bismarcks will play a large role in financial history in my ATL.
Excellent...
Ah, I think I have done some cultural intermixing in South America. India too is more interesting; heck the Danes are there...
Danish South Africa? Your TL will be one of the first I look at.
but all 6. are valid points, people really do neglect a huge load of what constitutes the totality of reality when making conclusions about history
its just that any which way you approach t you cant avoid simplification, you simply dont have enough facts
You can't avoid it, no, but you can't ignore it altogether the way so many people do. For instance, assuming by some divine intervention Nazi Germany wins WWII, people need to consider the effects of such a victory on both the economic structure of Germany, on the demographics of Europe, and on the wider world at large, especially since any Axis victory would have seen only the European Axis win, the Asian ones would have lost.
This point is apt; I will include finance and economics in We'll Meet Again but my knowledge is limited. Besides, I have to build financial systems in the ATL, and that requires quite a lot of knowledge. A complex system of economics in the ATL is impossible; i can really only talk about the foundation of certain systems to make things easier later on and certain booms and busts.
And that's better than most, so I will look forward to checking out We'll Meet Again.