So, to try out the new base map, an old SHWI scenario, Lilburne’s World, in which due to some late 16th century events Britain gets drawn deeper into the war in the Netherlands, which leads to a rather different non-30-years-war and a different British civil war, which leads England to be divided between a northern constitutional monarchy and a southern “republican” dictatorship. Northern England-Scotland unites dynastically with Spain for a while. France goes Republican most of a century earlier. Stuff happens.
In 1974, it is a world without any clear “superpowers”: Russia is still recovering from the civil war brought on by the Chinese Quagmire of the late 40s and 50s, China itself is only recently reunified under an Autocratic government (a place-holder name for a totalitarian form of government rather popular currently with the blood and iron crowd – a bit like *Fascism, but with a bit more coherent philosophy), while there is no United states and Japan, which was opened up to the West later than OTL, is still fairly third-world in this 1974.
There are big powers, and New Spain – a Mexico that became independent earlier and managed to get the bugs out of its system by the 20th century – is rapidly growing in population and wealth and may qualify as a superpower by the end of the century. (The Hispanic Association, which includes, like our Commonwealth, both rich and poor, would collectively be a superpower, but it has been a long time since there was any central authority. Spain is more successfully modernized than OTL, and is almost as big an industrial power as France, but is no longer giving orders). Russia, if it were to reabsorb the sullenly uncooperative south Russians, would nearly qualify. Brazil, which has standards of living comparable to Italy, is close, but hit the demographic transition earlier than in our world and is not quite populous enough, and is no longer growing as fast as rather more populous Mexico. In India, which largely avoided colonization in this world, the Marathi Empire, which has fallen behind somewhat in the last century and a half, comes close through bulk, and the Rajah is striving to carry out a modernization program: the conservative Bengali Sultanate, meanwhile, is increasingly trailing.
After the Third Civil War, and the short and ignominious existence of the True England Autocracy and its failed effort to conquer Scotland, the English are happy to spend and consume in a era of booming economics, thanks in part to the growth of a common European economic union. The fact that the damn Welsh voted themselves out of the Republic rankles, but in an era of atomic weapons and orbital cannon, international aggression is, or should be, Right Out.
North America is also moving into an era of economic union, pioneered by the French-Swedish-British Commonwealth of Kanada: only the isolationist Blackfoot-Crow nation, with its third world living standards, abundance of automatic weapons, and paranoia about outsiders, remains apart from an increasingly integrated economy. Native American states were given a bit of a breathing space by a slower and more contested invasion of the interior of the continent, and by multiple competing powers happy to use armed Indians against eachother: by the late 19th century space was running out, and only two survive, the BCN by keeping everyone out, and the Lakota-Mandan-Sioux by recruiting outsiders (blacks, other native Americans, Indians from the subcontinent…) that won’t root for being swallowed by a White nation (native Americans are now a minority in the LMS confederation, but most immigrants are happy enough with things the way they are).
One minor north American oddity is New Bharat: during the age of Maratha overseas expansion (late 1700s – late 1800s) a lot of Indians came to North America as indentured labor, and upon finding they were treated little better than black slaves, became understandably miffed. In the end, funds were raised to buy land in the Carolinan Wild West, where they ended up having to fight the other kind of Indian for it. Nowadays, New Bharat is prosperous, and in the midst of a vigorous Hindu revival.
Catholicism was rather more successful than OTL: there are minorities everywhere, but only in Kanada, the British Isles, and Scandinavia are Protestants in the majority.
After several failed efforts, Germany finally confederated in the 20th century, although a few bits, most notably the rather “leftist” (in our TLs thinking) Austria-Bavaria, have remained out. The kingdom of Saxony-Bohemia, the core around which the German federation turns, is rather conservative and even a bit stuffy by the standards of this world, although prosperous.
The Italian League finally managed to assimilate the former Papal states in the 60’s, following a popular uprising that ended the secular power of the Popes (the Pope is still the King of Latium and other places, but reigns rather than rules). The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, however, will be a tougher nut: the southerners are relatively contented with their government nowadays, and don’t think much of Northerners. Also, they’re friends with the formidable Spaniards.
Russian efforts to puppetize China and prevent the rise of a regional rival ended in the ten-year quagmire of the Chinese Intervention, which brought the Revolution, but also split the country in three between Radical Republicans, Autocrats, and Constitutional Monarchists. The Monarchists and the Republicans in the end managed to compromise, but the Autocrats in Yugorussia weren’t agreeable, and things remain tense.
The Free City of Constantinople is a relic of a time of Russia-Wank, the brief 18th century triumph in which much of the Balkans, even the City itself, were in Russian hands. The Balkans were lost, but the City and the straits were held onto, until the Civil War, in which the Turks occupied the far side of the straits, and only thanks to Greek and Bulgarian support was invasion averted. Currently, the status of the city remains in doubt, since the Yugorussians, Turks, other Russians, Greeks, and Bulgarians all mutter about war if the city ends up in anyone else’s hands, and a French-led international peacekeeping force tries to keep the City’s various nationalities from murdering eachother.
India is more developed than OTL 1974, although it’s sort of Latin America to OTL western Europe: industrialization was slow to arrive, and the scientific community is still kinda sketchy. The Maratha colonial enterprise was particularly important in East Africa, where many of the local pagan tribes were converted to Hinduism, and when the Indian troops went home during the bloody wars of the late 1800s some rather interesting experiments in state-building followed. Hindu influences penetrated deep into the interior, and the High King of the Mubende League has “Rajah of the Nyanza” among his other titles.
Ethiopia has a long standing alliance with the Marathas.
Japan, opened up later than OTL, and with more catching up to do, is currently growing economically at a fast clip, but isn’t much wealthier relative to the Big Powers than OTL Thailand is nowadays, and with over half again OTLs population, has to import a fair amount of food. Korea, which was opened up at gunpoint by the Russians, is actually ahead by a fair bit in the modernization game.
The Islamic world is somewhat more developed, relatively speaking: Egypt is close to European standards of living, as is the Turkish republic, which started on a path of vigorous modernization after imperial collapse a century and a half before OTL. Since the end of empire came before the bugaboo of ethnic nationalism had gained as much traction as OTL, things were a bit less bloody, and the Armenians indeed benefitted by the decline of Greek influence at court: today there are more Turkish Armenians than those living in the ex-Russian republic. Persia, which took advantage of turmoil in India to expand east, is more backward, and currently seems to be choking to death on all those Sunni easterners they swallowed. The Wahabbi triumph was butterflied away, and the Arabian monarchy is no more iniquitous than the OTL Moroccan one.
The Maori of New Zealand were contacted by Indian and Spanish and Portuguese navigators earlier than OTL, and after some very bloody state-building a unified kingdom emerged by the 19th century, and even managed to grab some pacific islands here and there: their effort to colonize OTL Australia were stymied by New Spain, which declared a proprietary interest, although there is still a small Maori enclave in Tasmania. With no use of deportation as a way to provide colonists and a later start on colonization in any event, Australia is rather less populous than OTL 1974, and is very much a dependency of New Spain.
For various reasons, the Philippines were neglected compared to OTL after the Spanish gained a secure base in the East Indies, and in fact at one point they were sold to the Russians. The Russians failed to really make an effort either, and parts of the Philippines ended going off on their own, although an extensive Russian enclave and naval base exists in Manila Bay right up to 1974.
Sexual equality is the norm in most of the Christian world, and female enfranchisement took place nearly half a century before OTL. On the down side, in places like India, where European influence has been much less, the status of women is actually lower, and South America is only slightly better, than OTL.
Colored wigs for men are going out of style: lots of bling is increasingly in.
Technology is a bit different. Some tech arrived earlier than OTL, others later. Airplanes are less developed than OTL: most passenger planes are still propeller-driven. Electric cars are far more popular. On the other hand, Scottish engineers developed a Bull-type mega-cannon able to send bombs hundreds of miles as early as the 1940s (it was used in the war vs. England). Satellites (equipped with _very_ tough electronics) are still shot into orbit, although rockets are now starting to compete with the cannon. There is a proposal to build a space station (once they get the bugs out of putting people into space) by shooting it’s components into orbit, since it works for satellites – it should be possible to put into space a really sturdy space station.
Currently, there is an increased sense that the rise of new forms of tyranny such as Autocracy is an increasing threat to global security in this era of nuclear weapons and orbital cannon. Only recently, the half-modernized state of New Mysore (Indian colonists, European adventurers, local Bantu…) was brutally attacked by Zimbabwe, a former Portuguese colonial area now modernizing under an Autocratic dictatorship. Only swift intervention on the part of Scotland and Spain prevented Zimbabwe from seizing the fabulously mineral-rich northern territories of New Mysore. Will there be a return to the old “law of the jungle?” Russia is trying to get some sort of international support for its effort to prevent Yugorussia from obtaining nuclear weapons. There is much talk in the air of some sort of world government, or at least some sort of universal forum of nations…
Bruce
