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  1. Could Nickajack have been a thing?

    I recently learned about Nickajack, a historical region straddling the eastern part of the Alabama-Tennessee that was historically known for its opposition to the Confederacy. Like West Virginia--indeed, like Appalachia in the South generally--the region's population seems to have been composed...

  2. Could the Treaty of Trianon ever have been made tolerable to Hungary?

    The past weekend, I have been seeing more than a few notes commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon. This 1920 treaty, ending the state of war between Hungary and the allies, remains deeply unpopular in Hungary; a very common criticism is that the treaty was fundamentally...

  3. How Catalan-speaking, relatively speaking, can Catalonia become?

    In the course of writing an answer at Quora explaining why Catalonia is more bilingual in Catalan and Spanish than Québec is in French and English, I made the point that despite superficial similarities Québec and Catalonia have very different language demographics. Each has a population of...

  4. Could the United Netherlands have survived 1830? What impact might it have had on Europe?

    I have been thinking a bit about the potential of the so-called United Kingdom of the Netherlands, that incarnation of the Dutch state created after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 that included what are now the sovereign states of Belgium and Luxembourg within itself, the course of 19th century...

  5. Can we prevent the shrinking of the Salton Sea?

    I've been enjoying the satellite images of different world locations that my Google Chromecast cycles through, screenaver-like, on my television screen. I found the below shot of the Salton Sea, comprising a portion of that sea's eastern shore at Calipatria evocative. In recent decades, this...

  6. WI France suffered more territorial losses, even partition, after Napoleon?

    Over at Quora, last week I answered a question. Why wasn't France partitioned among the Allies after the Napoleonic War? There were some obvious seams, even within the pre-1790 borders: Alsace might well have been brought back into the orbit of Germany, while French Flanders could have plausibly...

  7. What cities might have plausibly done much worse in the 20th century?
    Threadmarks: cities

    Over at Quora last month, I tried to answer a question: "If Istanbul was left to the Greeks to manage, would it be as prosperous as it is today?" I suggested that, if as was barely imaginable it fell to Greece in the early 1920s, the city might well have been a prosperous in per capita terms as...

  8. WI a more successful Carnation Revolution?

    Today, my MP made sure that her social media followers would know that today was the anniversary of Portugal's Carnation Revolution. Portugal's aging, colony-happy autocracy has been brought down by this, the first successful revolution of western Europe in the 1970s. Did this revolution set a...

  9. Could smartphones and tablets have come about earlier?

    This mock up of an alternate Commodore 64, a handheld mobile one, caught my attention when it was posted in a group devoted to the RPG Traveller. In that setting, which blossomed in the 1980s, computers in the far future were almost ludicrously underpowered by our 2020 standards. The Commodore...

  10. The 1914 Diplomacy map as an alternate history

    One of the things that I am doing now, in the early days of my quarantine, is playing an online game of Diplomacy with some old friends. Looking at the standard European map, an elaboration on the map of Europe and adjoining areas, makes me think of the way that this map might better represent...

  11. WI no Halifax Explosion of 1917?

    Today is the 102nd anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, product of a collision between two ships in the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia. This, one of the biggest man-made explosions in the pre-nuclear era, leveled much of the city and killed two thousand people. What would the consequences be...

  12. Could Blackberry have survived?

    This Thursday while I was on a daytrip to Kitchener-Waterloo, I had the chance to see the compact City of Waterloo Museum. There is preserved a memory of the first and still most famous tech company of Kitchener-Waterloo, Blackberry. Blackberry did blossom. It did, eventually, go under as a...

  13. WI France colonizes New York after Verrazzano's 1524 visit?

    Feargus O'Sullivan at CityLab took a look at a new documentary, If New York Was Called Angouleme. What if the site of New York City was colonized by the French in the early 16th century, following on Verrazzano's visit? I am willing to bet that the effects of a French settlement of the Eastern...

  14. WI PrEP, versus HIV, was invented in the 1980s?

    As I type tonight, somewhere in New York City Frank Ocean is presiding over an exclusive queer party in an undisclosed location. The event is called "PrEP+" after PrEP, the acronym for pre-exposure prophylaxis, the newly-mainstream practice of people at high risk of contracting HIV taking the...

  15. Did the First World War really alter the trajectory of German immigrant assimilation?

    Late last month, after getting to the southwest Ontario conurbation of Kitchener-Waterloo to ride the new LRT like on its first day of operation, I saw other things there. In Kitchener's Victoria Park, for instance, I saw this empty plinth overlooking a pond. In 1896, that location had been the...

  16. A divided Patagonia?

    This r/imaginarymaps map, one in a series, imagines a Patagonia divided between multiple rival powers perhaps after the model of the Guyanas. Could Patagonia, only in the 19th century incorporated into independent Argentina and Chile, have seen something like this occur? The region does have...

  17. How could the early Internet have evolved differently?

    With the 30th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web being celebrated last month, there have been some interesting retrospectives on early Internet experiences. The Guardian shared, for instance, a lovely collection of memories from readers who remember their positive experiences on...

  18. WI a Napoleonic unification of Europe?

    The organization of a Europe unified under Napoleonic hegemony in 1820 is laid out in this r/imaginarymaps map. Dark blue denotes areas directly included in the Napoleonic empire, while lighter shades identify client states. (Of note, I think, is the partition of France's rivals of Austria...

  19. What is the latest point at which Romance-speaking Europe might have IDed as speaking one language?

    Monday, I came back from an enormously enjoyable visit several days long to the city of Venice. I saw plenty of history walking alongside the canals ad down narrow alleyways in this city, and imagined plenty of alternate-historical trajectories, too. One perhaps less obvious one was in the...

  20. WI early modern world had a more optimistic view of republics?

    Barry Stocket at New APPS Blog had an interesting piece some years ago noting how the decadence of the republics known to late 18th century Europeans discouraged them from considering the republic as a suitable form of political organization for those interested in implementing Enlightenment...
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