Upvoteanthology
Donor
Portuguese definitely dominates, but this is a world with a semi-surviving New Holland colony, so Dutch is more popular in the north and east.
Map Thread XVII
- Thread starter Upvoteanthology
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No. The maximum would be 435 states.
(435 is the number of Representatives. Adding 100 senators and the 3 DC votes is how you get 538. The cap is on the 435, not the 538.)
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Awesome map, but why are the borders the same for the rest of South America?
CannedTech
Banned
You thought Pinochet was bad enough, and then he took control of the Amazon, brutal. Excellent work though!
Could've done it, but the line goes from the westernmost to the easternmost part of the border.
The EC is trying for bigger and better, but they've had a few stumbling blocks lately. Perhaps they should withdraw to roughly the borders of 814 and regroup.
What if Europe had been colonized in a manner similar to the Scramble for Africa?
Today, the great Colonial empires no longer span the European continent and the dream of a telegraph line from Madrid to Moscow is dead, but the Scramble for Europe still persists in the continent's borders today.
Today, the great Colonial empires no longer span the European continent and the dream of a telegraph line from Madrid to Moscow is dead, but the Scramble for Europe still persists in the continent's borders today.
except those borders make absolutely no sense and even the European drawn borders in Africa had a reason for why they were there I.E: Following rivers, along rivers, mountains other Geographical features taking into account local land use etc etc etc that map on the other hand makes less than zero sense whatsoever
And further then that, most of the straight borders are in the Sahara Desert, where there aren't a lot of geographical features to define the borders. And where there are, such as the Adrar des Ifoghas, it does delineate the borders, like the Algeria/Mali border.
Skallagrim
Banned
To be fair, it is certain that this Baarslag fellow had some fairly successful (although unsustainable) policies: the region has, by my estimation, over four times the inhabitants it has in OTL. Clearly, the country has prospered for the time being. One can see why his capitalism would be popular: there's about 30 million Amazonians alive in 2018 who would never have been born had Baarslag not created a successful economy!
Then again, it's environmentally unsustainable, so he's handed them a poisoned chalice anyway. I do wonder what the alternative is supposed to be. The map's back-story only really talks about the environmental angle, but the fact remains that if the Amazon region goes back to being a sustainable ecological region, it will never be able to support 40 million inhabitants. Where are these people supposed to go now that the economy that has made their lives possible turns out to be unsustainable? It's not like they're evil people: they didn't ask to be born.
Reversing the unsustainable policies, however, would be asking them to die. Without exploiting the natural resources, they'd have to rely on their own agriculture etc. -- which would destroy the rainforest, too. Either you condemn about 30 million to death, or you send them into a refugee situation (supposing bordering countries are willing to let them in) because their country won't be able to support their existence anymore. It's really no wonder the Amazonians still vote for the Christian League candidate. It's not good, but the alternative is going to be just as bad for most of the Amazonians.
The map by @Upvoteanthology mostly depicts it as an environmental tragedy, but it's very much a human tragedy, too. There's literally no right solution.
The EC is trying for bigger and better, but they've had a few stumbling blocks lately. Perhaps they should withdraw to roughly the borders of 814 and regroup.
And now you guys are getting me thinking of the Germans in WWI renaming anything with the word Frank in the title, like how the Czar renamed the Dutch Sankt-Peterburg. I might just be blowing things out of proportion by thinking of the whole Liberty Cabbage thing though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_of_Niger#/media/File:AOFMap1936.jpg
And even then the borders changed massively. Upper Volta/Burkina Faso is a big one, plus the various attempted unions between French Sudan, Senegal, Ghana, etc. Think Ghana took tested the waters once. Read something about their exiled president becoming co-president of Mali.
Alex Richards
Donor
I've lost track of the number of times I've said stuff like this.
A true colonial division of Britain would be see things like a British Isles where Ireland is a united country, and then the island of Britain is split into 4:
'Scotland' as everything north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde (i.e. the Antonine Wall).
'Northumberland' as everything from there to a southern border along the Humber and Trent, before cutting over to the Weaver just north of Stoke.
'Wales' as everything west of the Severn, then going straight from the northernmost point on the Severn to the southernmost point of the Dee and following that north.
'England' as the rest.
And yes this produces some things that look sort of right (like Wales that is almost but not quite a sort of very nationalist view of Wales's proper borders), but it also produces some really odd borders (The Wirral at the end of this really long tongue of land that's clearly just to give 'England' a border on the Irish Sea) and that's entirely the point.
Upvoteanthology
Donor
Actually, according to the source I used, the area of Amazonia I counted actually has 32 million inhabitants IOTL. So I only upped its population by, like, 8 million. However, the source could've been wrong!
Skallagrim
Banned
I took a pretty wild stab at it, I admit, and my own guess was indeed too low. The population of Northern Brazil has really exploded in OTL (more than I was aware). I still don't think 32 million is correct, either, though.
It's a bit hard to tell exactly which parts of Brazil are included. There are some areas on the coast that are very densely populated. Most of them look to be outside Amazonia. Best I can tell, only part of Maranhão is included, and exactly how much of it (and how many people live there) can make a difference of several million(!) people. I'd say that there are at most some 20 million Brazillians living in the area covered here. There are a lot of people living on the coast, so every small adjustment there makes a huge difference. The hinterland, meanwhile, is very sparsely settled.
Those parts hugging the Andes, and parts of Bolivia... again: sparsely populated. Bolivia's got 11 million people in total, but they're concentrated in the south-west, and you've instead added exactly the most sparsely settled areas of the country to Amazonia. That's maybe 500.000 people. Same with Peru: the area in question's got fewer than a million inhabitants. We can generously call that 1,5 million combined. Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana have a combined population of fewer than 1,5 million, but let's round up there, too. I can't find exact figures for Venezuela right now, but this map clearly shows that the areas in question are also pretty empty. (Same with Bolivia, next door. The inland areas are all just very, very sparsely inhabited.) Another 1,5 in total? That seems excessive to me, but let's be generous.
That yields a total of about 25 million in OTL. I'll frankly admit: your number of 32 million was much closer than my guess of 10 million. (Brazilians are way less concentrated in the south than they use to be!) It still yields an OTL-ATL difference of some 15 million people. Somewhat more manageable, but still not something the Amazon can support and remain ecologically sound. The region is threatened in OTL, after all. 15 million extra is literally just half as bad as 30 million extra, but it's still a huge crisis. You've really created a disaster scenario here!
Crosspost from the MOTF thread
The Little Red Book of Nations is a factbook published every year by the World Solidarity Fund, an organisation started by member nations of the Syndicalist Internationale and is freely distributed among schools across Europe,Africa and Asia. Starting in 1951, it has featured maps and information about the members states of the Internationale. While the first few versions where rudimentary, it has since expanded and features information and maps from everything from industry and population density to agriculture. It gets most of it's figures from the respective countries government but has since tried to gather it's own results. Here is a small excerpt from the 1961 edition on the agriculture and horticulture of the Low Countries
The Little Red Book of Nations is a factbook published every year by the World Solidarity Fund, an organisation started by member nations of the Syndicalist Internationale and is freely distributed among schools across Europe,Africa and Asia. Starting in 1951, it has featured maps and information about the members states of the Internationale. While the first few versions where rudimentary, it has since expanded and features information and maps from everything from industry and population density to agriculture. It gets most of it's figures from the respective countries government but has since tried to gather it's own results. Here is a small excerpt from the 1961 edition on the agriculture and horticulture of the Low Countries
Crosspost from the MOTF thread
The Little Red Book of Nations is a factbook published every year by the World Solidarity Fund, an organisation started by member nations of the Syndicalist Internationale and is freely distributed among schools across Europe,Africa and Asia. Starting in 1951, it has featured maps and information about the members states of the Internationale. While the first few versions where rudimentary, it has since expanded and features information and maps from everything from industry and population density to agriculture. It gets most of it's figures from the respective countries government but has since tried to gather it's own results. Here is a small excerpt from the 1961 edition on the agriculture and horticulture of the Low Countries
That is utterly gorgeous, sir
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