Another one of my “covers” of someone else’s work: I decided to do a world map combining the three maps Atom has given us for his mega Russia/Napoleonic World Empire gone red scenario.
In this world, things diverged early on both in the American revolutionary era and in the French revolution to follow. Napoleon’s career was different from OTL, but ultimately far more successful…
It's 1932, 3 decades after Red Revolution swept the Napoleonic Empire and its colonies and spread like a virus over much of the world. The world’s biggest power is Russia, which expanded earlier and more energetically into Asia and the Balkans in an effort to counterbalance the enormous empire of Napoleon and his heirs. Sheer size, plus reforms prompted by fears of the unrest generated by the Revolution, has led to the currently rather federal arrangement of the Empire, [1] but there’s enough power in the hands of Czar and Duma that the whole colossal organization can be (slowly, admittedly) made to go in a common direction. (The Czar is theoretically still an absolute Monarch, but a heavily reformed Russian system and the now-considerable power of the Duma means that he must be fairly careful in exercising it. Fortunately, during the 20th century so far Russia has had a run of non-idiot Czars). A sizeable part of Europe formerly within the French sphere spilled away with Russian help during the revolution, but neither the Prussians nor the Austrians are in anyway eager to serve as the battlegrounds of the next Big War, so they are a largely neutral (if heavily armed) buffer region.
The International Congress of Worker’s Republics is a rather weak union: a number of poor, shaky or just too damn close to France states do tend to jump when France says frog, but by and large most of the states do their own damn thing while playing lip service to Socialist unity. The French subtly maneuver behind the scenes for influence vs. the growing challenge of the Marathas and their associated Indian states (
rather more industrialized and formidable than India OTL in 1930s). The system is really only held together by fear of the Capitalists and the need of many of its members for military and/or economic support. (In spite of their success in beating off a combined Chinese-Russian attack a decade ago, Marathan India still feels a need for French military aid: their victory was like that of OTL China in Korea, a horribly bloody one). Once atomic bombs are developed, if things don’t go up in smoke in a Nuclear Horror, the war-discouraging effects of nuclear arsenals will probably lead to a Franco-Indian (and quite likely a Franco-English) Split. The French, who are fairly civilized for Commies, often wonder if they should just eject some of the ghastlier states (England, Congo, the Philippines, Pegu…) from the Congress outright, but the need for Unity In the Face of the Capitalist Enemy so far has trumped all such considerations.
The US is in this TL an elective monarchy, the King-President being elected from either the Washington line (also Kings on a more permanent basis of the Federation of Virginia) or the British line in *Canada, which is tied to the US within the wider North American Union by a variety of mutual obligations, pacts, treaties, etc. The King of British North America is also king of what in our world would be eastern Australia and New Zealand, which through him are associate members of the Union. US states are more autonomous than that of OTL: a Civil War was avoided (although there was that unfortunate business in the Carolinas in 1911) and the central government remains somewhat weak. As a result, although the richest nation on Earth, with an economy even bigger than that of the Russian colossus, the US tends to have a rather wavering foreign policy, and a relatively weak military (even after its post-Mexican Revolution beefing up): the Western Hemisphere Defense Pact is as much a British/Canadian initiative as a US one.
The Russians are frankly highly dubious about the US as any sort of anti-Communist ally, especially after the labor-left revolt against the distinctly Robber Baron-Gilded Age economic setup left several chunks of the country under the control of “Revolutionary Congresses”, which although a general amnesty has been declared are in no great hurry to disband themselves until they are sure the various new worker’s and Union rights and social safety net measures they won aren’t going to be taken away with the next national elections. (The US is in no real danger of a Red takeover, really: most US leftists have been rather disappointed in the results of the World Revolution and just want Social Democracy in place of the rather conservative capitalism of previous decades. Things will only really go south if the reactionary elements in US society are seriously stupid).
Bruce
[1] I know, I didn’t show the Cossack regions, but if I showed one, I’d have to show all…