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We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.-Thomas Paine The whole country can easily be made a solitude, and by the living God, if any insult is offered to me, or to those who have obeyed my orders, I will declare freedom to...

I've been kicking around some ideas for how to get rid of slavery in most of the southern states by the 1790s, and I've been mulling over the consequences for American history. Alas, I genuinely can't figure out what a Southern economy without slavery would look like. Plantation agriculture has...

So, I'm finishing China Marchest West, on the Qing conquest of Mongolia. It's a pretty good book, and basically provides a thorough discussion of why and how the Manchus triumphed over the Russians and Mongolians (mostly the latter) to subdue the region when Chinese dynasties for centuries had...

I generally hate Civil War PODs, but the discussion of gallantry has inspired me. -General Order 233, 1863 So, in 1863, the Confederate Congress threatened to enslave any black soldiers they caught, and to punish any white officers of such units. Because obviously the troops were fugitive...

So, I've come across a few references to Native Americans having gunsmiths who could repair firearms during King Phillip's war. And, in the 19th century, I've seen references to Cherokee blacksmiths. But I haven't seen anything about how and when Native Americans started adopting these...

So, taking the same POD as Calbear did, but presume there's no Anglo-American Nazi War; rather a cold war ensues for a few decades. What on earth happens to Africa during this period?

“The Latvians would be easily evacuated. In Russia, resettlement is not regarded as cruel in itself. The people are used to it. . . Those alien peoples who are of German descent and are currently so ill-treated can be allowed to move into this area and found colonies. [These] do not need to be...

I don't think we've ever really discussed this, but it's worth asking. I think we'd all agree that by, oh, 1760, the industrial revolution was pretty likely. But I'm not sure liberalism was. Before 1775, it looked like the future belonged to the "Enlightened despots"; Catherine, Frederick...

Something that's bugged me about British history, and I know nothing about. In OTL there were efforts to make people become Protestant in Scotland and England. Were these never attempted in Ireland? Or were they just spectacularly unsuccessful?

How important to people are wealth and profit! Human disposition is such that people pursue what is profitable to them, and with profit in mind they will go up against disaster. They gallop in pursuit of it day and night, never satisfied. Since profit is what all people covet, they rush after...

Again, inspired by Crusader Kings... (Forgive me). One of the current debates on the forum is that Paradox added a bunch of formable empires, so if a monarch unites England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, he can form a "high king", the Empire of Britannia. Iberia can be united in a Spanish...

Something inspired by the despair on Paradox about how the Byzantines now usually lose to the Seljuks... How important was Manzikert, really? I mean, the French recovered from Poiters, Crecy, and Agincourt; the Almohads and Almovarids defeated the Spanish Christians on several occassions, but...

Something I've noticed around here.... There are an inordinate number of timelines where Germany avoids the Nazis; whether it becomes an authoritarian democracy a la Putin's Russia, a shiny happy FDR in the 1930s, or some other group starts putting on the Reich, we explore alternate Germany's...

Doing a bit of reading about the Volga Bulgars got me thinking. A lot of Russia (or the former USSR, I suppose), was once ruled by Muslim states. the Volga Bulgars, the Golden Horde and its successor states, etc. How could we have an Islamic state (bonus points if it does not arise...

I picked up a copy of Christopher Hall's British Strategy in the Napoleonic Was recently, and it offers some thoughts about how Britain faced our favorite Frenchman, along with some allohistorical ideas. 1) Although Britain had, on paper, an enormous number of men available to fight, with...

In contrast to the British South, what about 1778 as an American Annus Mirabilis? There were several possibilities for the French and Americans to inflict devastating blows on the British this year. A few near misses, which kept America from dealing death blows to the British. It's easy to see...

We've talked before about the British seizing the southern colonies during the Revolution, but I would like to suggest that, based on actual events in South Carolina during the British occupation, the actual result would be far messier than many envision and merely see the USA and UK at war once...

This is a very woolly thought, but... Once in a while, we've discussed the idea of America losing the Revolution. And we've even toyed with the idea of later revolts. But it occurs to me, reading about the Latin American Wars of Independence, that Spain initially crushed many of the...

As we all know, the collapse of the Byzantien Empire was a historical fluke and frankly the Caesars should be colonizing Epilson Eradani right about now. But after Manzikert, the Empire's situation looked pretty damn grim. By 1077 the Turks had established themselves in Nicaea; Robert...

We see a lot of timelines around here where the Byzantines survive, and a lot of talk about an enduring outremer, but surprisingly little about a stronger Islamic World. Byzantium's fall was very unique; Al-Andalus's was nigh inevitable. And so on. To some extent the middle ages reflects the...