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I think the truly remarkable facet of the Antebellum United states is the inverse of your statement. It's not remarkable that the North wasn't willing to appease the South indefinitely, but that the South was so hellbent on provoking the North. The South escalated the conflict at nearly every...

Well, that was interesting. In my mind, Situationism is a kinda cross between Monty Python and the stereotypical 60's hippie... pity it didn't take off in Britain, though the disorganized nature of the movement makes repression a likely outcome IMO even without the dice. Hopefully this world...

Not until 1917; if the provisional government hadn't made such a hash of things and the war with Germany ended sooner it would have been quite unlikely for Russia to go communist.

I think focusing on lowering the death rate from Old World diseases is the wrong way to promote Native American survival. Regardless of the biological specifics, it's going to be horrific and quite hard to alter significantly. The more important factor to Native American survival is their...

Completely wrong again, during this time period Russia was in the middle of the Stolypin Reforms, which were intended to privatize communal land. I'm not going to argue about which system was better, but the peasantry was in the midst of massive changes which were disrupting their way of life...

This view of pre-war Russia is completely wrong. For starters the peasants were being squeezed by attempts to privatize village communal land and the working classes were dealing with some truly horrifying industrial conditions. The Tsar was generally disliked, political terrorism widespread...

As Lazer Raptor said, Imperial Russia was primed for disaster as early as 1906 when the Tsar began backtracking from the mildest of reforms in the October manifesto that were forced on him by the revolution of 1905. An Imperial Russia that manages to win WWI will be neither prosperous or stable...

Famine, Disease, and civil War. Not to mention the virulent racism and antisemitism of Nicholas's regime. Maintaining a total autocracy would likely involve quashing a revolution or three, with accompanying disruptions to the fragile economy and food supply of the nation. Imagine the Russian...

A lot depends on who is Czar and what happens. Nicholas II was perhaps the worst possible Czar at the worst possible time; completely devoted to "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality" at a time when the people wanted more say in their government, yet not bright enough to actually run the nation...

As someone who's long had a fascination with central Asia and the Bactrian Greeks in particular I love this first chapter and am very excited to see where this goes! Seems like we're primed to see some sort of synergistic nomadic/settled empire based out of Transoxiana arise, which would have...

Without POD's earlier than the 1840's, both the British and the US are of a broad mindset that peace is more desirable than war due mainly to trade. There were belligerent voices in the US calling for war over the Oregon territory, but even the most aggressive knew that taking on both Mexico and...

Just caught up and dang, what a war. Sad to see the Societists do so well, but hopefully they get their comeuppances soon. I'm rather surprised nobody busted out nukes by the end; given the level of tech needed for jet planes, chemical warfare, and radio they should have the knowledge to be...

I'd say a China that somehow solves the issues with child-emperors and becomes both more economically merchant focused and outward looking during the Qin/Han era. Strap a somewhat "European imperialist" mindset onto the population and resources of China before anyone else really gets going, flap...

The simplest forms of geothermal and solar energy are steam engines. Use the heat from the sun or the earth to boil water and produce mechanical or electrical power. The problem is, anyone with the knowledge, engineering materials (steel), and ability to do so will be able to make a conventional...

Straight up physically impossible I'm afraid. In order to build the equipment necessary for large-scale geothermal and solar power you need the knowledge and materials from an industrial revolution.

Man I really need to get around to learning about the early (0-500CE) church, I'd never even heard of homoianism before. The late Roman empire really was a gigantic mix of christian strains, eastern religions, and old-school paganism that must have been absolute chaos for a while. Looking...

To do this you need to seriously tone down if not end the Cold War before it begins. So have Stalin trip and break his neck somehow near the end of the war and someone more "moderate" come out on top of the USSR. Meanwhile, have Henry Wallace remain FDR's VP in '44 and become president after he...

Perhaps I should have put that in " " lol. But we do have a hard time understanding the sheer depth of superstition in pre-modern times and how it could affect decision making.

Interesting... I particularly like the attention to the religious aspects which are a somewhat under-appreciated aspect to history we sometimes gloss over because of how different the mindset was to our more rational and enlightened modern mentality. So is this going to see Rome turn into a sort...

I would say that while geography can influence the baseline odds of a civilization rising to global power, when taken into account with all other factors it is by no means deterministic. Yes each region has its own specific geographic features such as topography, waterways, natural resources...