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  1. Small OTL History Questions thread (Before 1900)

    If it's 1400s central Europe, maybe some variation on Rat-/Rada? By that point it's passed into the West Slavic languages, and is the name for most kinds of municipal council governments (at least the German ones; for the Slavs this would still be the age of powerful veches/wieces/etc.)...
  2. Alternate names for America?

    From the Caliph TL. I'm guessing it's SJG's attempt at a backformation from at-Talantis. (FWIW, the "Frankish" quarter of North America in that world was called Braseal.)
  3. What's your favourite kind of China?

    For the sake of writing possibilities: there is no China but Taiping China, and Hong Xiuquan is its Heavenly Younger Brother.
  4. Religious: Shi'Ism in India and eastward

    They do, and aggressively did. Then they got overrun by Sunni dynasties. So it goes. I've been wondering this myself, though. I don't know that much about Twelver conversion efforts, but most of the South Asian successes of Ismaili da'wa seem to have been with mercantile classes (the Dawoodi...
  5. Alternate Weapons of War thread...

    Looking at that, I can't help but get the feeling that it has (a) really low operating pressures, and (b) a LOT of recoil. I'd hate to be a serviceman issued one, but it'd be the coolest safari rifle ever.
  6. The first alternate history story(ies) you read

    Got into this as an extension of world-building. First actual AH I remember reading is "All About My Brother," here. Second was The Peshawar Lancers. I was much less impressed.
  7. An Islamic Japan

    I'm gonna assume that the initial Islamic Korean conquest was a success; probably a taxing one, but a success anyways. Or not. There's probably a fair bit of the whole burn-desecrate-pillage routine in the initial conquest, but there's no way to say what Islamic Korea's own attitudes towards...
  8. An Islamic Japan

    Not "basically" (nothing is certain; this is far gone beyond the realm of fantasy writing), but that's actually a metaphor I hadn't thought of. What's the relationship between the mainland and the archipelago? Invading Yashima isn't trivial, and depending on how *Japan is administered I could...
  9. An Islamic Japan

    I've read. I'm just really unconvinced that Islamic Goryeo-wank is more plausible than "Islamic Goryeo:Japan::Ottoman Turkey:Serbia." Doubly impossible to say. At this point we're talking two nonexistent societies here, one of which is contingent on the other. Given Sumeragi's idea, though? My...
  10. Challenge: Have “Meiji Restorations” in as many nations as possible!

    I've played with the idea of Korea pulling this off. Around the 1850s, have a traumatic experience with being forcibly opened by England or France, a la the black ships. Start looking around, noticing that China's disintegrating as you watch. Once you've dusted off from the Tonghak Rebellions...
  11. An Islamic Japan

    Creating an Islamic Japan is impossible. Not ASB. Impossible. What makes me say that is that Japan is as far away from the Islamic heartland as you're going to get. This is not going to be a proper vanilla Islamicate society, any more than Indonesia is, because getting a vanilla Islamicate...
  12. WI Islam wasn`t anti-alcohol?

    Probably less than you'd think. The Qur'an and hadith never stopped the Muslim world from drinking, although it did lead to viticulture becoming a Christian-specific job in Spain.) On the other hand, it could affect the decisionmaking that led Volodymyr the Great to convert Kievan Rus' to...
  13. Magical Steampunk: yeah or nay?

    I abstain from voting; I have no feelings about magical steampunk in principle. I'll probably complain about most of it, because a lot of steampunk strikes me as gratuitous and unnecessary. (Kinda like alien fanservice: I get that it was thrown in, and it must have appealed to somebody, but I...
  14. Irritating clichés about Pre-1900 AH

    I'm willing to give this one a bit of a slide. Great-power wars come in cycles. That said, there's no reason at all for great wars to be the same great wars. That's laziness.
  15. Title for a Leader

    Depending on the nature of the revolution, "Marshall" might work. Not a noble title and not overtly grandiose, but definitely the top dog.
  16. Which defunct countries you would like to survive in an ATL

    In no particular order: Jahwarid Cordoba, out of curiosity. Cordoba was the only Andalusian taifa that didn't go dictatorial; after they abolished the Caliphate (and they abolished a Caliphate) it turned into a republican city-state. It'd need work to survive, but I would put that work in...
  17. Alternate Historical Myths

    Myth: Karl Marx was Prussian. Fact: The first works under the name "Karl Marx" were in fact published in Bern, Switzerland, and show every sign of having been written by a native of the city. The "Prussian Marx" first appeared around 1835, and was responsible for bringing the writings of the...
  18. AHC: Arabian Science Continues

    Baghdad is probably salvageable, but even if it survives I'm not sure you could stop its decline. (And saving Baghdad causes a mass extinction of butterflies re: Islam's self-image, which are so contingent on Hulegu's post-POD career that it's hard to guess at them.) The standout fields of...
  19. Most brutal country-screw in AH fiction?

    Indeed they aren't. Neither is any Confederate victory scenario. This thread isn't about plausibility, it's about the impact of the screw, and I've never seen Egypt screwed like that.
  20. Most brutal country-screw in AH fiction?

    I just got GURPS Alternate Earths 2 a few days ago, and it hit me last night: Egypt, in the Caliph TL. And it's completely glossed over. Egypt was a major power during the major-power war in the early 1300s, which was fought with roughly World War-equivalent tech on all sides. Since serious...
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