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France has a colonial empire second only to the British one, and their relation to the British who have great coal and iron is very good. Italy though had always to play second fiddle to someone else to keep it running, during WW1 nearly all of their coal came from Britain, which meant that...

British help depends on what happens in Europe - just because Germany didn't invade Poland doesn't mean all is fine there and can be ignored by the British. Support for the Chinese against the Soviets would take much more resources and weapons than the British could afford anyway. Weapons and...

Without WW2 you're not getting the sweeping historical democratic victory, remember, most of Europe too is going to be one flavor of autocracy or another. Liberal democracy is just another form of government that a few European and North American states claim to practice, not the one everyone...

Industry isn't created by governments, except in socialist countries during times of forced collectivization but this is nearly 1000 years before socialist theory has been developed. In case of Song China they have the same problems as nearly all other ancient empires: -Merchants who would be...

Iron is one of the most abundant elements on earth, about 5 and a half percent of the crust is iron. If you want to form a cartel you need some a commodity that's actually rare, a sand OPEC is a lot more viable than one for iron, believe it or not there's a shortage of good quality sand due to...

I'd guess somewhere in the range of - 20 % and + 20 % comapred to today. Avoiding the maoist idocy has the potential of putting China 30 years ahead in its demographic transition which would work againt the commonly held idea that the population would be larger.

Shouldn't the existence of colonies preclude all of the bigger WW1 participants from being anything but a minus 10 on that scale? The British election in 1914 had 4.8 million votes cast, out of a population of 450 million or so. Just 1 percent of the population were permitted to participate in...

That would be uncharacteristic for the time, there's thousands working at shipyards and every single one of them walks past that hole in the ground where something is being assembled, mid Cold War you can get that kind of security. In the 30s the whole town is going to know what's being...

They can trade Belgium for the colonies, and then negotiate with Belgium/France for their colonies. Tbh, Belgium itself would be infinitely more useful, but Willy Zwo wants his African wastelands...

They're too made in dockyards, and it's not like there's serious op-sec in the 30s, just talk with a worker in a bar, give him a free beer.

Dockyards are large open areas, you can't hide them or what's happening in them.

In other threads people put this idea on the head, first you need higher productivity in agriculture to free up labor, then you put that unemployed surplus labor into manufacturies working for bare subsistence, occasionally below.

Europe to Shanghai at 120 kmh or so is slightly under 3 days as the crow flies. Would be great for large mission critical equipment when something breaks down.

I work in a machine factory, having an airship like the Cargolifter would be a huge boon to us, it would cut down transportation time of special machinery to East Asia from two months to 3 days. Just pick it up at our place and put it down at the customers, no middle men or choke points necessary.

Airships may fill a nieche between airfreight, rail and ship transport. They're faster then rail or ship, but slower than plane, they'd be cheaper then air freight. It would be intereting to avoid logistical chokepoints like Suez, trans border paperwork like with rail, it doesn't need any...

There's also the possibility for a revival of the airship. The Cargolifter project just failed because the projected funding needed to complete it turned out to be two times of what they had at the time of insolvency. In todays investment climate they probably would just shrug and continue with...

East Africa was a great supplier of tropical woods, incense and spices to ancient Egypt, the commerce went mainly by sea. West Africa didn't seem to have much naval tradition though. There's only some tales of Carthaginian traders who may have went there to barter with the locals but that ended...

It's actually the other way around. Going to 20 % enriched takes more time and energy than going from 20 % to 95 %, it requires a lot less enrichment cycles in the separation plant than from 0.0closetonothing % to 20 %. The hard part is the industrial production. 30.000 centrifuges capable of...

It doesn't get any more "west" than Alaska, though they got there by going east.

I think it could work already during Babylonian times, but they haven't invented money yet, so paying could be tiresome dependin on how much grain you have to carry around. Also working wood was a bit of a problem, first there's no good sources of wood there, you'd have to import the stuff from...