I really like the subtle signs of the influence of Spanish-as-a-global-language in modern English, like the use of the term "líder" and the writing of centuries with Roman numerals.
 
Charlotte I of Mexico Wikibox
Who’s Charlotte of Mexico?

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Nice Work!,The "Empire of the Americas" sounds very interesting.

I'm glad you like it, another person already comented about it, which is a pity because as you can infer from this wikiboxes it didn't last long and never really covered all the lands it claimed. The Empire of the Americas and the Indies (Imperio de las Américas y las Indias) was the far-fetched attempt of Ferdinand of Bourbon to reimpose the Spanish Empire, just from Mexico City instead of Madrid. It didn't succeed, and as you can see after his death his successors relinquished their claim to non-Novohispanic lands and intitled themselves "Emperors of Mexico", Emperadores de México (or Empresses, Emperatrices, as it seems...)

I really like the subtle signs of the influence of Spanish-as-a-global-language in modern English, like the use of the term "líder" and the writing of centuries with Roman numerals.

I'm ashamed to admit that it was unitended, an interference from my native language: I'm used to writting centuries with Roman numerals, and in the previous updates I took care to follow Wikipedia structure using Arabics, but this time It seems I have forgotten. However, to avoid having to change it, we can assume that ITL the article would be written mainly by Spanish-speaking Texans, who would consider the Roman numerals the norm, so it's their fault and not mine XD

The "liders" idem, when the words sound the same in English and Spanish I sometimes write the Spanish form unwillingly and it doesn't seem wrong when I read to check. Again, in an exercise of immersion we can consider that the Texan equivalent to the Founding Fathers are called Líderes de la Patria, and the world is used in English with the Spanish ortography to talk about Latin American non-authoritarian leaders in analogy to OTL Caudillos and Libertadores.

A change it is intended and that reflects the influence (or lack thereof) of Spanish in English ITTL is the use of "petty warfare" instead of "guerrilla", as the Peninsular War was fundamentally different . I hadn't thought much about it before, but it feels right that with more successful Spanish American countries ITTL, the status of Spanish is more akin to OTL French, regarded as a more prestigious language and less a working class language in the United States (which has a significantly lower Spanish American population owing to less push factors and a bigger European immigrational stream).
 
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I'm ashamed to admit that it was unitended, an interference from my native language: I'm used to writting centuries with Roman numerals, and in the previous updates I took care to follow Wikipedia structure using Arabics, but this time It seems I have forgotten. However, to avoid having to change it, we can assume that ITL the article would be written mainly by Spanish-speaking Texans, who would consider the Roman numerals the norm, so it's their fault and not mine XD

The "liders" idem, when the words sound the same in English and Spanish I sometimes write the Spanish form unwillingly and it doesn't seem wrong when I read to check. Again, in an exercise of immersion we can consider that the Texan equivalent to the Founding Fathers are called Líderes de la Patria, and the world is used in English with the Spanish ortography to talk about Latin American non-authoritarian leaders in analogy to OTL Caudillos and Libertadores.

A change it is intended and that reflects the influence (or lack thereof) of Spanish in English ITTL is the use of "petty warfare" instead of "guerrilla", as the Peninsular War was fundamentally different . I hadn't thought much about it before, but it feels right that with more successful Spanish American countries ITTL, the status of Spanish is more akin to OTL French, regarded as a more prestigious language and less a working class language in the United States (which has a significantly lower Spanish American population owing to less push factors and a bigger European immigrational stream).

What a neat idea! It's always fascinating to see how the prestige of a language can just as much result in not loaning a word to another language. OTL French, while not a global lingua franca, is the clear language of administration and education/second language of choice in many areas such as its former colonies in West Africa. Does Spanish have that kind of relationship with any places? Or is English still insidiously dominant? :p
 
Well, NE world is multipolar, unlike ours, and languages reflect that. English is the primus inter pares among international languages owing to the fact that two of the Great Powers (the most powerful two, in fact) the United Kingdom and the United States, are anglophone, so in world wide events English is the preferred language.

The second most prestigious language is considered to be German, due to the German Empire being a behemoth of continental Europe. It is able to rivalize with English as a scientific language, similarly to its position in OTL a hunder years ago, and it's the preferred second-language in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe and the former German African colonial empire, as well as the German diaspora in the Americas.

The third would be the French, but it's importance in international communication has been decreasing since the Great War, superseded by English and German. It carries over the prestige of having been THE language of dimplomacy, but nowadays it's restricted to the French colonial empire, New French dispora on Canada and the Maritime Union and non-German continental Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece...)

From this point on there's no objective classification. Italian is important because of the greater influence of TTL Italy, but paralells French in that is not much useful outside the direct area of Italian influence. Spanish, as I've pointed, is more valued because there are significant Spanish-speaking countries, so if you wanna do bussiness in Latin America you need Spanish (English penetration there is reduced compared to OTL). Phillipines needs a mention too, since it is a Spanish-speaking republic among the lines of the Latin American ones, so Spanish has a foothold in Asia too. Portuguese is mostly like IOTL, although in Brazil Spanish is more valued.

Japanese is also an important language in Asia, but due to its "alienness", penetration in the West is very limited. Russian too could be considered an international language, due to the sizable Russian diaspora and the hugeness of the Russian Republic, but again it is of limited penetration in the West. Arabic is one the official languages of the Ottoman Empire, and among the Arab world and diaspora, so it is important too.
 
Europe at the dawn of the Great War, 1906
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"An entire generation butchered, just because we wanted a splendid little war". - Napoleon IV, former Emperor of the French, in his Belgian exile.​
 
Yes, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland and Overseas Dominions (is that a plausible name?) functions as a kind of federation in all but name, with a parliament in Westminster where MP's from all territories discuss external policy, defense and other supraterritorial affairs, while the individual territories posses their own parliaments (in some cases, federal parliaments with provincial assemblies below) for internal affairs.

It didn't arise from attempts at federalizing the empire, but as a consequence of the sucess of the Irish and Scottish home rule bills passed in the 1910s, that granted internal autonomy to them while maintaining representation at Westminster. Colonies under responsible governments begun to demand a similar arrangement instead of heading towards independence, and by the 1930s many achieved it. The lack of a "blood baptism" for colonial troops in WWI (and Second Boer War before) also meant a decreased national consciousness and a much more widespread "overseas Briton" mentality, coupled with the UK not bankrupting itself fighting two world wars and remaining a global Great Power making staying in the empire beneficial.
 
Europe at the aftermath of the Great War, 1912
Sorry for the absence, I haven't been able to work in the TL for the past few days, so (to keep it alive) I have been tampering with Inkscape over a map I had already done trying to get it to look cooler. As you can see, I'm focused at the moment in the Great War, and I hope to be able to prepare a biggish update in the next week(s) centered around it.

Botswana looks like an empty space on the map.

To be honest, I don't really know much about Botswana except a vague notion of it being IOTL sucessful by African standards. A quick and shallow research seems to indicate that is the case, with relatively high growth standards and a strong economy centered on mining. So, ITTL, I plan it to be somewhat more sucessful, a British aligned republic with a democratic history tracing back to their very independence, a strong rule of law and human rights observance, which uses revenue afforded by its natural resources to fund a strong social state that provides welfare to its citizens, and that is able to better cope with the HIV epidemic of Africa.

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Disclaimer: this index is elaborated by a British company, and as such it is biased in its interptretation of "democracy"; as a result, this does not reflect perception by a country's citizens, but a Western one.
This interests me. Which countries are more (or less, or just differently) democratic than the map would let on?
 
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View attachment 483449

Disclaimer: this index is elaborated by a British company, and as such it is biased in its interptretation of "democracy"; as a result, this does not reflect perception by a country's citizens, but a Western one.

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Let me ask you two questions:
  1. How did India became neither Full or Flawed democracies?
  2. Why is the Ottoman Empire has medium score on democracy index? Is the country has flawed democratic characteristics?
 
This interests me. Which countries are more (or less, or just differently) democratic than the map would let on?

Keep in mind that about many areas of the world I only have a broad idea of how they are ITTL, I need to thoroughly research more before establishing a cannon and I don´t want to have to retcon things, but one of such examples would be China.

China is (I insist, not yet thought in depth) what we Westerners would call a dictatorship, dominated by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), which follows a twisted take on the doctrine of Sun Yat-Sen: Chinese nationalism, strongly anti-Western, anti-liberal and anti-capitalist. A longer a more brutal civil war, as well as the absence of the Soviet Union to support and organize the party along Leninist vanguardist lines in its early days, the Kuomintang's ideology had more time (and reasons) to diverge from OTL. By the late 50s the party managed to unite by the force of arms (and despite Western Powers allying themselves with various warlords) most of the former Qing Empire. In the aftermath, great purges ensued to secure orthodoxy in the Party, which was itself the new apparatus of state, and everything resembling Western ideas was persecuted. Since the late 90s, purges have all but officially ended, and while orthodoxy is enforced it is not as brutal. The Party itself is meritocratic, with little room for any participative process, while the parallel state apparatus is a combination of meritocracy and demarchy, with officials drawn randomly from a pool a suitable candidates, again unaccountable to the citizenry. Feeling-wise, 2019's NE China would be to 1965's NE China what 1980's OTL Soviet Union was to 1938's OTL Soviet Union; to a Westerner (both ITL and IOTL) living in China would be living in a state that does not respect our civil rights and which isn't accountable to the population, but to a NE Chinaman it would be the normal state of affairs, seeing our liberal system with disdain and considering it a corrupt-ridden oclocracy.

Let me ask you two questions:
  1. How did India became neither Full or Flawed democracies?
  2. Why is the Ottoman Empire has medium score on democracy index? Is the country has flawed democratic characteristics?

Well, the Republic of India is a democracy indeed, not fully flawed yet not at the level of say the United Kingdom nor the German Empire, but it doesn't have much to envy (politically-wise) the United States. The process of independence from the UK was longer and more cooperative from the metropole, progressively building a sucessful state before finally cuting the colonial links. The lack of partition has also contributed to create a modern democratic state. The Ottoman State is a constitutional democracy, but to Western standards it is a badly flawed democracy, I'm sorry I cannot go fully into it but I haven't sorted out the details yet :coldsweat:
 
Treaty of Vladivostok
Awesome! Did japan get additional territory in the Russian Far East? (I guess if it did it lost them latter)

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Also how bad is life in the Transvaal for its different inhabitant , and orange free state/southern Rhodesia?

In Rhodesia (it dropped the "South" after Zambia renamed itself shortly after attaining self-rule), for Euro-Rhodesians life is quite good, the country is doing well economically, while for Afro-Rhodesians it is quite frankly like living in OTL 1950 US South: segregation, discrimination and poverty are rife within the community, and the areas designated as Native Land (basically like reservations for Africans) are mismanaged. Afrhodies officially have political rights, but are specifically less that the ones Eurhodies enjoy, and even those they have (like voting) are difficult to exercise due to Eurhodie discrimination. The administration of the state is mostly composed of Eurhodies, including police and military, and abuse of authority isn'tuncommon.

Orange Free State is officially an ethnic homeland for Afrikaners as per its constitution, Apartheid is official and so Africans are treated as foreigners and have literally no rights in their own land. Even European immigrants, while not openly discriminated against, are suspicious and the process for naturalization is lengthy and difficult, requiring learning Afrikaner and converting to one of the State-sanctioned Christian denominations. It is a parliamentary republic, but since the franchise is limited to citizens (that is, ethnic Afrikaners and those Europeans crazy enough to immigrate and endure the naturalization process, by definition active supporters of the OFS and its policies), it acts as a one-party state.

The South African Republic (Transvaal) was similar to OFS, but dropped it's façade of "democracy" and ended up becoming a dictatorship, with even Afrikaners opposed to the state policies persecuted and "reeducated". Here Apartheid is taken to it's extreme, with Black South Africans relocated to Bantustans and closely watched. They can only abandon them under official approval in order to work in state-sanctioned enterprises, cannot bring their families with them and are rutinely rotated. The State has a extensive vigilant network, basically controling nearly every citizen to detect the slightest sign of disloyalty the earliest possible, and non-citizens to avoid the risk of uprisings. South Afrikaners are heavily indoctrinated, and thanks to the state-owned mineral wealth of the Republic (leased to primarly British-owned companies at under-market prices) enjoy comfortable lives. Bantustaners, living in underdeveloped lands, are also controlled by the state surveillance and indoctrinated by coopted Blacks who in exchange live wealthy (compared to the average African's standards, not the Afrikaner's) lifes. Despite this borderland-nazi hostility, the Republic aknowledges within its ranks the necessity of the Black laborforce, so there aren't policies of extermination nor expulsion; however, due to fears of uprisings, the policy is to maintain the Black population static, with a fertility rate just below replacement of 2, through a combination of available contraception, abortion and sterilization, all of which are vetoed to Afrikaners under severe penalties.

Disclaimer: there are plenty of Afrikaners/Cape Dutch in the Cape and the rest of the UK and the world that oppose all this policies and are among the most vocal detractors of the OFS and the SAR. I don't harbour animosity towards Afrikaners nor any other group and this is a work of fiction

I feel sick writting this, I hope it's because they are good villains.
 
This time I've tried an alternative format, in the way of an excerpt of an in-world History textbook, as an introduction to the namesake of the TL.

[THIS IS CONSIDERED NO LONGER CANON]

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Chapter 12: The Spanish Revolution
...and although that could have been an escape valve in a less delicate situation, the expansion of suffrage not only would not be able to placate the demands of the elements opposed to the Crown but would also demonstrate a decisive factor in the fall of the monarchical regime in Spain . When the dynastic parties agreed to the measure, traditional leaders hoped to replicate, even on a larger scale, the old tactics that had allowed them to marginalize opposing parties and take turns in power. However, the newly enfranchised masses had no connection to the old party apparatuses, since most belonged to the lowest strata of society: neither could they benefit from the caciquil structures nor their position was seriously threatened by them. In fact, it would be these urban masses, uprooted and influenced by the socialist, anarchist and republican propaganda that dominated the cities, who would cause the collapse, by action and omission, of the House of Bourbon.

The General Election of 1913
The date for the first general elections held in Spain under universal male suffrage was set on March 1, 1913. Although the Crown pressed for it to be delayed as much as possible, the social situation was deemed too explosive to decree a suspension of constitutional guarantees. During the electoral campaign, the Liberal and Conservative parties, confident, dedicated themselves to engaging in sterile debates among themselves, without noticing the force that the new radical ideologies took on the new urban electorate. Republican groups of various petty-bourgeois tendencies agreed in the Assembly of Valencia to present a united front against the regime, through the Republican Union, while the Socialists of the PSOE declined to unite and presented themselves under their own acronym. From the anarchist ranks, calls to abstentionism were lowered, which would undoubtedly have an influence on the proletariat.

On February 22, a week before the elections, there was a battle between the native rebels and the Spanish army in the Rif, north of the Moroccan protectorate, which resulted in 1,500 Spanish casualties. The news spread rapidly, unleashing a wave of indignation. The dynastic parties, whose members had conflicting interests in the Moroccan adventure, closed ranks and branded opponents of the war as antipatriotic, while the latter appealed to the anti-war sentiment of the masses whose children died in an enterprise outside their interests.

The result of the election gave a narrow plurality to the Liberals over the Conservatives, although both republicans and socialists gained the upper hand in the main cities and industrial belts, so even if both dynastic parties agreed a coalition, they would be outvoted by the opposition. The tie would need to be broken by the ultramontane of the Catholic Communion movement, traditionalists who rejected parliamentary politics, so a deadlock was reached in which neither block could form a majority.

The Proclamation of the Republic
The climate of tension coincided with Vannier's coup d'état in France, which replaced the newly proclaimed Third French Republic with the future National Gouvernement. The repercussions of this in Spain led Republicans and socialists to forge an extra-parliamentary alliance to organize a mass movement that prevented the acting government of Liberal Laureano Rosellón from suspending constitutional guarantees.

On March 15 the first protesters met at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, demanding that the government amnesty for the opponents and that the subsistence crisis be stopped. Little by little, more people joined, in the capital and in different places in Spain. It did not take long to join the demands of a democratic republic and, where the Socialists dominated, the abolition of private property and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The paralyzed government decided to order the dissolution of the demonstrations, but in many places the police refused to shoot the protesters and in others they joined them. The high command, unable to secure the situation, suggested that the government enter into negotiations with the Republican Union so that it could enter the government and that King Charles VI leave the country to avoid further bloodshed or even a civil war.

Situation of the country on March 27, a day before the official proclamation of the Republic by the Provisional Government.
Orange: areas of major unrest and pro-republican demonstrations.
Red: areas of socialist influence.
Black: areas under anarchist control.
 
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United States presidential election, 1844
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Do you like this way of jumping from one topic to another giving small bits at a time with ocasional bigger updates or would you prefer the updates to follow thematic lines (p. e. not getting into America until closing the Great War and resulting revolutions)?
 
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