A map I made of Europe with an inverted France and Germany around the year 1500. It's mostly just me messing with borders and seeing what looks funny.
Map Thread XVIII
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A map I made of Europe with an inverted France and Germany around the year 1500. It's mostly just me messing with borders and seeing what looks funny.
A Map I made based on a personal pet-peeve
People often fail to include the successful territory seizures by the Achaemenids during their Greek invasions, I decided to do them justice and show the true full extent of the empire.
People often fail to include the successful territory seizures by the Achaemenids during their Greek invasions, I decided to do them justice and show the true full extent of the empire.
In the same vein as my "alternate Versailles" map, I made a realistically ideal WWII-end map. Germany loses eastern Silesia and the rest of the new Polish border mostly follows the provinical borders of Pomerania and Posen, East Prussia gets its peripheral regions shaved off and is annexed by the USSR (but the Germans are not mass-deported), and a few villages historically controlled by Luxembourg are returned (barely noticeable on the map). East Germany does not control as much of its OTL territory but in return has Pomerania and western Silesia. South Tyrol is returned to Austria and Trieste remains independent as a mixed Italian/Croatian state. Poland controls Lwow and Grodno, but still loses most of its former eastern territories. The USSR's border with Finland is cleaner, the Karelo-Finnish SSR survives as an SSR, and the Moldavian SSR is a little larger. Other than that, this scenario is pretty similar to OTL in terms of borders, but demographically it's a little different, with fewer postwar population exchanges and deportations.
I think you mean "Cut China's population down to an eighth" rather than "by an eighth", which would mean going from 65 to 57 million. Also, holy shit! Even the Mongol invasions only cut population in half. This is approaching Amerindian death tolls.
Unfortunately, you have overcompensated. The Persians conquered/vassalized Macedonia, Thessaly, Phocis, Boeotia and Attica of the Greek mainland and some of the Cyclades and most of the eastern and northern Aegean, but they never went south of Megara or conquered Crete and the Ionian Islands as it shows it your map.
Ah. I'll go change it quick.
As for the figures, those are, from what I gather OTL numbers gathered from censuses of the time. Of course, it has to be noted that the sheer chaos of the time (global cooling, 2 civil wars and 1 barbarian invasion, 2 centuries of strife--fun times!) meant that bureaucrats in China didn't have the means to conduct accurate censures, and entire populations would often just drop off the radar to avoid taxation, recruitment or all the troubles of war, so the figure is likely quite a bit higher.
Still, shocking. Even if you do a more conservative estimate.
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Unlike my previous QBAM series that look like time lapses but aren't, this one actually is!
Starting off in the 1970s with almost-OTL (except that Katanga and Barotseland are independent, because why not), large swathes of southern Africa are under white rule, either Portuguese colonies or the apartheid states of South Africa and Rhodesia. By the 1980s, independence wars have forced Portugal to grant independence to Angola (except for the exclave of Cabinda) and Mozambique, South Africa to grant independence to Southwest Africa as a multiracial state and to partition off the black-majority state of Azania in its western half, and Rhodesia to accept multiracial democracy as the state of Zimbabwe Rhodesia. By the 1990s, the multiethnic projects in Azania, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, and Southwest Africa have failed and brought about further partitions, with the largest ethnic groups in Azania seceding (KwaZulu and Xhosaland) or joining their preexisting states (Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland) and leaving Azania with only the ethnically diverse northeast and Johannesburg area, the white southern half of Southwest Africa rejoining South Africa while the black northern half becomes Ovambia (and East Caprivi joining Barotseland), and Zimbabwe Rhodesia splitting into a reformed Rhodesia along with Matabeleland and Mashonaland. The post-independence civil wars in Angola and Mozambique have also ended in partition, with UNITA forming South Angola and RENAMO forming the Republic of Rombesia while the MPLA and FRELIMO continue to rule communist rump states.
Now that's what I like to see. East Asian countries not "hating each other."
Here's just a little follow-up of the China map I made last week. Featuring a lot less cities and a lot more internal borders, as well as the major rail lines of the country. Felt like the previous map would be nigh unreadable if I added all these, so someone suggested that I create a separate map for the parts that were cut out. Here's the result:
Needless to say, Warlord-era China's something of a bureaucratic nightmare, even after--or *especially* after--the "unification" of the land by the Qing Empire (or the Zhili-run Central Government, po-tay-to po-tah-to
). At least the trains still run on time, I think?
Needless to say, Warlord-era China's something of a bureaucratic nightmare, even after--or *especially* after--the "unification" of the land by the Qing Empire (or the Zhili-run Central Government, po-tay-to po-tah-to
). At least the trains still run on time, I think?I imagine a lot of whites moved to rump South Africa from Azania: OTL, the largest group in the cape area are the "colored", mixed-race people.
I hope China will remain shattered until present day, also by the age of sail, will the various Chinese states take up colonization?
Sorry to disappoint, but nah. China will rise and fall, and rise and fall again, and though China of 220 AD may be horrifyingly unrecognizable to China of 2018, the polity will still be there.
Can't say just yet. Guess you'll have to wait until the full project gets a thread of it's own!
Skallagrim
Banned
I like it a lot (let's face it: I'm a sucker for a surviving and thriving Carolingian Empire), but I think it may be too small.
No, I'm actually serious. I know that you already went big, but think about it: if the Carolingian Empire basically controls all of Europa (and literally all of Atlantic-facing Europe) its manpower and resources for colonisation efforts will be vast by default. It will also face no competitors. In OTL, Spain, Portugal, France, Britain and various more minor players competed. In this scenario, all of those guys are parts of the same "team". They're going at it together. The colonial domains of the united Carolingian Empire should basically look like... well, like someone united the Spanish, Portuguese, British and French colonial empires at their greatest extent. (Interestingly, when you consider the fact that other powers are not in such a great position to colonise, the above could just mean that the Carolingian Empire would just go on to conquer the world. Having the resources of all European colonies of OTL available to one power essentially makes that power invincible.)
So my question is... why isn't this modern-day Carolingian Empire ruling the world? Native Americans surviving and keeping out the Europeans seems unlikely in a world where the Europeans are one empire and can't even be played off against each other. The only scenario I see is that the Carolingians ruled a much vaster Empire at one point, but various USA-like revolutions have torn away various settler colonies, while a wave of decolonisation has ended the colonial empire in places like Africa. If something like that hasn't happened, I can't really figure out why the Empire hasn't conquered more.
(A) that's true, and (B) what about all of the bits that have become independent in the meantime?
There are arguments to be made that, without competition in the colonial game, you'd do worse at it - same kind of argument that says competition is needed for a good society, economy, market, etc which basically says that, without the knowledge that someone could take those resources/lands/etc from you if you're not quick about it, you'd have less motivation to colonise well/efficiently/etc... There are also arguments to be made about how much the OTL Europeans success in the Americas had to do with timing, focus, policies, luck, etc that could be used as arguments for why this Hyper Carolingia has a smaller 'New World Empire' than Europe collectively did IOTL.
And this is without getting into butterflies or simultaneous PODs.
Isaac Beach
Banned
Here's a half-decent map I made a half-year ago and don't intend to do anything with. I stole the idea from @CannedTech, who did a way, way better version of it over in the Alternate Planets thread. It was going to be a part of a now defunct world-building project of a wacky Milky Way with lots of ludicrous alien species: this guy, the Inkanyamba, would be a self-aggrandizing, continent-sized alien intent on being involved in interstellar affairs despite being operatively terrible at politics and diplomacy. Kinda like Trump if he was a giant snake.
Skallagrim
Banned
Simultaneous PODs could do the trick (for instance: just add more advanced Native Americans), although I have some doubt about 'mere' butterflies acieving the outcome we see here. There are butterflies that could screw this ATL Carolingian Empire, but short of simultaneous PODs, I see few ways it could get as powerful as it is on the map without also becoming more powerful. The fact is: it controls access to Atlantic, which goes a long way to ruling out Russian/Byzantine/Ottoman/other Islamic colonisers of the Americas.
Naturally, there are people who believe that European disease played a relatively minor role in killing off the Native Americans, but I firmly subscribe to the view that European disease in fact wiped out in excess of 90% of their population-- and that, as such, the conquest of the Americas was almost a certainty as soon as anyone became willing to attempt it. I consider the idea that it was (in large part) the result of happenstance to be nonsense. I can certainly buy an Andean Empire holding out, or some Mesoamerican state converting and becoming a vassal/ally, but the idea that the native inhabitants could keep the Europeans out of large parts of the Americas simply strikes me as wishful thinking. As such, without viable colonial competitors, I'd say the Carolingian Empire gobbles up all or nearly all of the Americas by virtue of just being there. It happens simply because it can happen, and it's profitable. (Cynical, to be sure, but colonisation is inherently a cynical affair.)
I grant that a lack of competition could easily mean a lack of efficiency, and I subscribe to the view that competition in general is good... but mostly because any challenge is good. I can see the Empire stagnating after it conquers everything it could want, but I don't see it somehow being listless in its expansion phase. Especially since there must still be credible enemies to the east (which would keep; the Empire 'on its toes', so to speak). After all... if such rivals aren't there, then why hasn't this Empire just conquered a lot of land to the east? Carried out successful crusades? That would explain a lack of presence in the Americas, but leaves us with the highly similar question "why doesn't this Empire extend to border on the Urals and Persia or something?"
I imagine that it's because Russia and one or more Islamic powers simply keep the Empire hemmed in on the east. Especially, I suspect (North-)East africa must be firmly Islamic, and that access to the "East Indies" is blocked (and that those are probably all Islamic, too). As a result, access to China and further East Asia is blocked, too. Maybe all of Oceania has been colonised by an Islamic power? Thing like that would explain the lack of Carolingian presence in the east.
But all of that gives us only more reason to expect (more of) West Africa and pretty much all of the Americas to be held by the Empire. Its colonisation efforts would be more concentrated on those regions than in OTL, and even if they are less efficient, this factor should more than compensate. My central question remains: why doesn't the Empire rule all of the Americas? The only expanation that comes to me is that there has been some sort of independence war (or a number of them). I can't escape the thought that this Carolingian Empire must at one point have been larger than it is on this map. Either it was much larger in the east (there were no powerful foes there and it controlled vast tracts of land in Eurasia, which explains the lack of need or will to conquer much of the Americas) or it was much larger in the Americas (there were powerful foes to the east, denying the Empire access there, forcing it to focus all expansion efforts on the Americas).
Either way, I still wonder why it is currently the size that it is now. Either it should be bigger, or it was bigger at some earlier point, and something happened to break substantial parts away.
Counter-point: One of the prime motivations for European colonialism was competition. Without any home-continent competition, there is relatively little "push" motivation to explore. The desire to seek new sourc es of spices still exists, but again without political boundaries in place, there would be little reason to find a navigable route west to the known spice producing areas.
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