Modernization 1914: The Proud Tower
The second installation in the Modernization series, in which various years from throughout history are "modernized," featuring the year 1914.
- The United States is viewed similarly to OTL's modern China in that everyone is anticipating that it'll be the next great global superpower. It's actually pretty similar to OTL 2019's USA, save for all the 1914 politicians (though their political beliefs have been "modernized"), though it's a little more left-wing thanks to no Cold War against communism (communism is a comparatively new ideology and nobody's had the opportunity to try it out yet outside of a few small-scale projects) and the Civil War having been to abolish segregation instead of slavery. (Corporations used to have quite a bit of influence in government, but President Roosevelt helped break up the especially big companies and crippled corporate power in America.)
- Europe is a backwards, divided powderkeg full of dictatorships, and even in states that claim to be democratic like Britain and France, the only options are some variation of Christian right-wing. Europe's days of global domination are long gone, and many fear that a massive war will break out in Europe and cause a global war, which has been unheard of before- the closest thing to a "global war" was the international coalition that assembled to take down Napoleon, and nukes hadn't been developed yet then.
- Britain is a major power no longer, having given up the last of its colonies decades ago, save a few minor ones like Newfoundland and the Gambia. Its current major problem is Ireland, which it fears will erupt into revolution soon, and though the British have tried to suppress Irish dissent, the Irish have been using the internet to organize protests both peaceful and violent anyway. Ironically, Britain is increasingly influenced by India these days, even though the British tried to set it up so that they'd retain some modicum of control when they were retreating from their parts of India back in the 1850s.
- France is actually making an effort to be democratic, but its politics are heavily influenced by religion and there's only one party that's vaguely to the left of center. France is still extremely bitter about the loss of Alsace-Lorraine several decades ago, and French television and news websites (which are almost always government-controlled) are constantly showing pictures of "good French men and women suffering under the German yoke" in Alsace-Lorraine.
- Germany is very similar to OTL modern Iran, but with an elaborate cult of personality around the Kaiser and neocolonialism in Africa.
- Serbia is an Orthodox theocracy. It's also a totalitarian rogue state backed by Russia and is currently pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
- The Russian Confederation is a corrupt oligarchy under the control of Vozhd Nikolai Aleksandrovich that isn't all that different from OTL's modern Russia in terms of how it's run. Though Russia is rather poor, it's trying to claw its way up to being a great power and for some reason thinks that helping Serbia's nuclear program is an excellent way to achieve that goal more quickly.
- About two-thirds of Africa has joined the post-colonial African Union, which is much like OTL's EU except that most of the members are flawed democracies or dictatorships and most of the time it ends up being a "Let's Talk About How Much We Hate Europe" club. The economic aid for the less well-off members is an added perk, and some speculate that a united African Union could be a major global power.
- Tanganyika is a right-wing one-party state and is a regional power in Africa aligned with Germany, though some members of the ruling party have been growing increasingly sympathetic to Bharat.
- South Africa is an unapologetic apartheid state and has aligned with its fellow white supremacist regimes in Algeria, Batavia, Kaiser Wilhelm Land, and Indochina. The international community is divided on how it views them, with the Bharati bloc seeing them as rogue states and the European Alliance not really caring what they do as long as they don't interfere with their plans.
- The Ottoman Empire used to be a rich regional power thanks to oil, but Arab secessionist movements, incursions by the scattered nations of the Arabian peninsula, the recent collapse of the Republic of the Empty Quarter, and the declining oil market as green power becomes increasingly prevalent have brought it down a few notches.
- Bharat is an independent democratic state (albeit with the white ruling class still having disproportionate influence in the southern parts that were formerly owned by Britain) and looks to be the great global superpower with the ongoing collapse of China. It's taken much of Britain's former colonial empire under its wing, though it's ironically ended up starting neocolonialism in many of them. Though Bharat is left-leaning, it also has a lot of institutionalized Islamophobia- Muslims who leave Pakistan and Bengal tend to have a lot of trouble getting anywhere in Bharati society, which has led to many Muslims leaving Bharat for the Middle East and secessionist movements in the majority-Muslim parts of the country.
- China was once a global superpower, but after a string of increasingly incompetent populist leaders gradually ran the country into the ground, it's slowly starting to crumble. Several revolutions have started across the country, almost all of them backed by one of the various global powers.
- Japan is trying to make itself a future superpower and has started by stealing Taiwan from China when nobody was looking and turning Korea into an economic colony. It's a dominant-party right-wing state, and while nobody really thinks any of its "Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere" bullshit has any chance of actually working, who knows?
- Anarchism is the ideology that's currently "hip" and "cool" with edgy teenagers on the internet, though underground communist movements have been gaining popularity in Russia.
- Technology is pretty much the same as OTL 2019, including nuclear technology (though nukes have never actually been used in a war yet), though it has a distinct 1910s aesthetic.
