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The biggest threat is probably more successful Sassanians. Palmyra managed to hold them off until Aurelian could restore control, but if the East shakes out differently, then it will be much more difficult to recapture Egypt et al. (and losing Egypt and its breadbasket means Rome is in a much...

Definitely. It's no coincidence that one of the first largescale acts of violence was the seizure of the Gaspee, a revenue cutter policing smuggling. One major lesson the British learned was that the small amounts of extra taxes they could squeeze out of their settler colonies were not worth the...

It also helped that both of those colonies were much smaller, population-wise. The US population at the 1790 census (so, after a decade of population growth, but also after the emigration of the various loyalists) was just under 4 million. Canada wouldn't reach that population until the 1870s...

One thing to always keep in mind: Nobunaga was extremely competent (although less so when it came to inspiring loyalty in his subordinates), but that doesn't mean his successors would be, or that they would continue the same policies. While his chosen heir died at Honnouji with him, none of his...

Wars of the Roses only ended about 10 years ago, but they ended fairly decisively ITTL (literally every Lancastrian peer of any note other than the Tudors was either dead or imprisoned by the mid 1470s; it's only the chaos after Richard's usurpation that allowed Oxford to escape and others to...

Are we specifically limiting ourselves to pre-1900? Also, must we exclude admirals? Because I'd argue that the US Navy has traditionally been the service with the better record, at least through the end of WWII (partially because the navy actually existed during peacetime, while pre-WWII the...

I suspect your best bet is a large scale nuclear war that devastates most of the coasts and Midwest. Utah is likely a much lower priority target (and the surrounding states, which have significant Mormon populations, are generally even less so). So the Mormons make up a disproportionately large...

Yes, but he also explicitly identified as a Stalwart (i.e., a member of Arthur's faction); he might have been less inclined to assassinate Garfield if someone else was the VP. That said, the election itself was fairly close; having a black running mate would almost certainly have flipped quite...

Except Richard failed to actually use them this way when he was accused of murdering them (unlike Henry VII did with Warwick). And the previous decades had demonstrated clearly that as long as there was a living pretender, someone would be interested in using them as a figurehead for a...

The Princes in the Tower were almost certainly dead by this point, otherwise Richard would have been able to refute the accusations that Henry Tudor and the French were using against him. Even if you don't believe Richard killed him (and I've never heard a particularly good argument for why he...

The 17th century Beaver Wars, which established Iroquois supremacy over many of the (French-aligned) nations of what is now Canada and the Midwest. A much weaker Iroquois Confederacy has enormous knock-on effects on subsequent English and French colonization efforts and the various wars between...

Very much so. The 3/5 Compromise for presidential voting only works if you have something like the Electoral College to weight the votes of different states differently (notably, Jefferson actually benefited from this in 1800, as the pro-Federalist states were either Free or trending that way...

It's not much Pre-Columbian, but the Portuguese easily could have made it earlier than they did (OTL Cabral "discovered" Brazil in 1500, but da Gama had already made it to India by that point, so Brazilian rainforest was less of a priority). If they had encountered Brazil earlier, they might...

It's important to remember that Charles II and James II (who were the two who actually were Catholic, either openly or covertly) had spent a good chunk of their early life in Catholic France, surrounded by Catholics. So it's unsurprising that it would have rubbed off on them (especially since...

Japan had been open and heavily invested in European technology into the 1600s (it was one of the largest manufacturers of firearms during the 16th century, helped by the fact that it spent almost the entire century in the midst of civil war). Isolationism happened after that, and was an...

Africa actually was a disease-ridden death-trap for Europeans for most of history; that didn't stop Europeans from going there. And creating a nationwide fake epidemic requires massive coordination beyond what Japan (or any other country of the time) is realistically capable of. Especially since...

The Allies were willing to let Ney keep on in Etruria and might have been willing to let Murat stay on in Naples if they hadn't joined Napoleon during the 100 Days. If Murat had sided with the Sixth Coalition earlier, and remained with the Allies against Napoleon when he returned (possibly...

I suspect by the time Sakoku was implemented (mid-1600s) it's too late to keep the Europeans away from colonialism; they're already far too established. As for maintaining the isolation, its worth noting that Britain, France and Russia were all at least considering mounting an expedition at...

Long term it probably doesn't make too much difference; England is England, and most of the geopolitical situation is outside of their control. Medium term, it may depend on when it happens; a Lancastrian victory at 1st St Albans that squashes the rebellion basically before it starts looks very...

Sextus Pompey is still running around as well, with enough forces to be a meaningful player for whichever side he ends up joining.