Hey Zoidberg, good to see you around. Why not post that material some time? I don't think Napo will mind too much and it'll revive the TL, so.....yeah.
Ask, and ye shall receive. I must have written this about a year ago. Glad to finally post it.
Alternate History Fiction in the Madnessverse: Part One
By Zoidberg12
The literary genre of Alternate History first became popular throughout Europe and the Americas during the 1940's and 1950's. However, the genre existed in a more prototypical form long before that. The earliest works of alternate history include a part of Livy's
Ab Urbe condita, written between 27 BC and 25 BC, in which Alexander the Great expanded his empire westward, and
Tirant lo Blanch, an epic romance written by Valencian knight Joanot Martorell in 1490, in which a Breton Knight stops the Ottoman Turks from taking Constantinople in 1453 [1].
The first pioneering work of alternate-history to be published in the 19th century came in 1837, when Spanish author, orientalist, politician and Napoleonic Wars veteran Modesto Javier Menendez (1788-1846) wrote
Ummah, a novella in which the Spanish Christian armies lost the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 to the Moors, leading to a 19th century where the Muslim world stretches from Occitannia to Austria, from Southern Italy to India, from Central Asia to the Caribbean. In the novella the Muslim world is the world center of art, science, philosophy, and world exploration, while the Christian lands of Northern and Central Europe are a backwater. Muslim navigators have set up trading posts in the New World and traded with the Aztec and Incan Empires, while Christian Europe is made up of a number of constantly feuding kingdoms. Technology is also less advanced and at 17th century levels. The novels protagonists are two Moorish soldiers, one Muslim, one Christian, who prepare to go to battle against an Anglo-Norman/German/Irish/Scandinavian army seeking to regain Italy for the Pope exiled in Dublin. The novella was well received in Europe at the time of its publication, but was quickly forgotten.
The first work of alternate history written in English was
A Nation United, written and published in 1844 by a native New Yorker named Walter Thomas Douglas. Not much is known about Douglas himself. He was born in 1811 in Albany and spent most of his life working as a banker in New York City. He was also a veteran of the Green Mountain War, serving in an infantry division under Sergeant Franklin Pierce [2]. He died in 1888, this being the only book he ever published. In the novel, the Articles of Confederation were abandoned in favor of a new constitution, leading to a United States of America which by the then future of 1900 stretches from the east coast to west coast of North America, encompassing the land that was and would be known as French Louisiana, California, the Reservation Lands, Texas, parts of Russian Alyaska and parts of the Pacific. In the novel, the USA of 1900 is a world power under the novel's protagonist, the fictional President Walter Abernathy, who spends most of the novel attempting to prevent a war between Great Britain and the Franco-Spanish Empire, stuck in a sort of Cold War (referred to as a "Long Struggle" in the book) since the Napoleonic Wars ended with a stalemate between Great Britain and Napoleon's France (the novel briefly mentioned that King George IV was successfully usurped by his brothers). The novel was idealistic, depicting a United States which benevolently spread from coast to coast, bringing democracy and a better life where it went, allowing Native Americans to coexist peacefully in autonomous states (despite some minor wars) and being relatively tolerant of immigrant groups, regardless of their race or religion. Despite its idealism the novel was prophetic in a number of ways; predicting the notion of a Cold War for example. The novel was mostly forgotten after it was published, until the Manifest Destiny Party briefly republished and supported an "edited version" in the 1890s to support its views on "what the old United States should have been and what a new United States should be.", as Warren G. Harding put it once in an 1901 newspaper interview. The novel was again forgotten after the 1910's, with more memorable and true Union propaganda literature overshadowing it.
Another early work of alternate history, also from the RU/America, was "D.'s Correspondince" by Republican Union/American author Nathaniel Hawthrone (1804-1864), first published in the Union Weekly Magazine in 1852. In the story, a New Englander by the name of Willard Crawford Dalton thought to be insane is able to perceive a different reality where a number of long-dead historical figures such as the poets Burns, Shelley and Keats, King George IV, Alexander Hamilton, the actor Edmund Keans, Arthur Wellesley, Caesar Napoleon I and King Ferdinand VII of Spain are all still alive. Some scholars have suggested that the short story may have been inspired by "A Nation United", as Hamilton, Wellesley and Napoleon are all alive at the same time in the reality perceived by Dalton, which could hint that in the reality perceived by Dalton the USA never collapses and the Napoleonic Wars ended in stalemate. Or perhaps they are alive for different reasons. The story never goes into it. Perhaps Hawthorne read "A Nation United" and was inspired by it. Either that or he never read it and simply put a bunch of famous dead historical figures together and decided to have the reader make of it what he or she would [3].
The next famous work of early alternate history came from Virginian author, humorist and politician Samuel Clemens (1835-1921). This work was the short story "A Dark Day in Richmond", first published by Clemens in the Virginian weekly magazine Johnston’s Weekly in their August, 1908 issue. The short story takes place in a future Richmond on New Year’s Eve of the distant year of 2000, the last day of the Twentieth Century, where The Republican Union took over the Southron nations after a bloody and destructive war earlier in the century. The story’s protagonist is a cynical young soldier who can’t help but question the country he lives in, the United States of America. After discovering the truth behind the USA and the brutality the old RU brought upon his country from a smuggled book, the man comes close to madness. After being kidnapped a day later on New Year’s Day, 2001, the first day of the Twenty-First Century, by a rebel group seeking to bring down the US government, the young soldier decides to join them. The book ends on a cliffhanger, with the protagonist assassinating the Prophet-President of the USA with a bomb. Clemens also wrote
The Histories that Never Where in 1911, a book consisting of a series of essays which examine a number of different alternate history scenarios, such as if Rome never fell, the royalists won the English Civil War, if Britain defeated Napoleon, if the British won the American Revolution, if the USA never fell or if King Harold Godwinson defeated William the Conqueror at Hastings in 1066.
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[1] These early works of AH are actually real works.
[2] After the war, Sergeant Franklin Pierce stayed in the RU armies' occupation force in Vermont, becoming a close friend of Military Governor James Polk. He was assassinated on November 26th, 1846 by members of the Skull and Bones society, his body found with multiple stab wounds and hanging from a tree on the outskirts of Burlington. It remained unknown which members of the Skull and Bones did the deed.
[3] This short story is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's OTL short story "P.'s Correspondence".
