Map Thread XI
- Thread starter Pragmatic Progressive
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Wow, I don't think I've ever seen Australia hold that many independent states. Nice to see someone use Antilles as a name for the Americas! Excellent work as always!
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
Uh-oh. Hope this doesn't fall prey to "end of page" syndrome...folks, there's a nicer version of the map on the previous page!
Bruce
That's why I waited until this page started before posting my new Munroist style map.
(seriously I like your map, particuarly the new name for the Americas, and I am always a fan of Technocrats).The below was inspired by a map someone posted a while ago purporting to show the largest possible surviving Soviet Union, and rapidly turned into something else as I worked out the backstory, it draws further inspiration from a couple other sources as well (some people were talking about a map game where nukes did not exist and I found the idea fascinating). I did step on a few butterflies and invoked at least one ASB, but I think on the whole it's plausible (not realistic but plausible) given the circumstances and I put alot of work into it so comments, criticisms, rotten tomatoes, would not go unappreciated . Also the Free Territory of Trieste is an artifact of the Yugoslav Civil War TTL, before someone points out that it's anachronistic.
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The POD is that during the Russo-Japanese War Major-General Stessel does not surrender Port Arthur after the destruction of the Russian Eastern fleet, but instead holds out hoping to be relieved. General Kuropatkin chooses to hang on at Mukden longer as result reinforcements are able to arrive via the Trans-Siberian railway in time to defeat the Japanese at Mukden, Kuropatkin counter-attacks and by late 1905 the Japanese forces in the Liaodong Peninsula are trapped between Port Arthur and the army bearing down on them. Japan still defeats the Baltic fleet and occupies Sakhalin, but on the mainland are driven back to the Yalu river. In 1906 Japan finally asks America to talk to Russia about peace, the result is that the war ends with Japan getting all of Sakhalin and Russia keeping Port Arthur and its railroads in Manchuria. After that butterflies (those that I allowed to survive) take over and the rest is history.
World War I happens in 1915 when Austro-Hungarian troops chase suspected terrorists into Serbia and Russia seizes on the pretext to go to war, the war happens similarly to OTL with trench warfare in the west and Russian defeat in the east, eventually America gets involved over some incident or the other and the Central Powers lose, the resulting putative treaty punishes Germany and dissolves Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The inter-war however goes different quickly, to start with America joins the League of Nations and neither Stalin nor Hitler survived the Great War. Lenin’s revolution succeeds more so than OTL, Southern Finland falls to the Red Army and the Bolsheviks win a victory in the 1920 Battle of Warsaw and start pushing through western Poland towards the German border. At this point the League of Nations, anxious that the communists may overrun Poland and possibly Germany (which at this point is highly unstable and could potentially fall to communism) authorizes an international intervention that ultimately results in Poland being divided between a rump Free State based in Poznan and a Polish Soviet Socialist Republic based in Warsaw. It does however set the precedence of strong League military interventions, particularly in the face of communism, which accomplishes successful revolutions backed by the USSR in Hungary and Slovakia. The Soviet Union that Trotsky inherits after Lenin’s death is larger than OTL’s (including much of Poland, the Baltics, part of Finland, and Tannu Tuva and Mongolia).
Trotsky’s government is as authoritarian as Lenin’s with counter-revolutionaries and class enemies arrested and sent to forced labor camps, repression of dissent etc. but unlike Stalin Trotsky is sane and not as paranoid and his regime is less concerned with ideological purity than Stalin’s was. Shunning the League of Nations he aggressively backs communist movements in China and Eastern Europe viewing the USSR not as an expanded Russia but as the multi-cultural forerunner of an eventual world state. Of course as a result right-wing nationalist governments rise to prominence in Europe, fascism is invented as “falangism” in Spain where it is ultimately defeated by the Tercerists (communists who disagree with Moscow, Marx was first, Lenin second, hence “Thirdists”) but falangist exiles spread the ideology across Europe and the world where it takes root in Italy, Germany, China, and elsewhere. World War II never happens instead you have two major regional wars and loads of minor local ones, the Great Northern War and the Great Pacific War are the notable examples.
In the first Russia managed to grab Finland and Norway but only after narrowly beating back a multinational German, French, British, and even a little American force from the burnt ruins of Moscow (yay General Winter, plus Trotsky’s military was much more motivated/effective/better armed than Stalin’s) back into Eastern Europe. The exhausted League agreed to pre-war borders in Eastern Europe when it started looking like the Red Army might keep going and Trotsky whose regime was getting a little shaky back home agreed, the west has never recognized the annexation of the rest of Finland or the installation of a puppet government in Norway. Trotsky’s successor was smart enough to normalize relations with the capitalist countries, dial back support for foreign communist groups and even joined the League of Nations (out of an oh so sincere desire for peace and friendship ).
The Great Pacific War was Japan v America, Britain, and China (and unofficially the Netherlands since Japan sent serious military aid to falangist Indonesian rebels- we’re talking military advisors with tanks) and ended predictably with Japan’s defeat in the face of superior numbers- the Emperor surrendered after the Americans started methodically firebombing Japanese cities and a very brief intercine shoot-out occured between the “we need to give up” and the “we need to fight to the death” factions in the Japanese military (the former came out on top). Ironically the lack of nukes (never invented ITTL -I’m pulling an ASB for that) resulted in even more Japanese deaths since the firebombing was much more widespread and lasted for longer. Half the population of Okinawa died during the battle for the Ryukus and eventually joined the USA as a state in the 1990s after fifty years of popular American administration and a demographic shift caused by America using Okinawa as a base for military operations in Indonesia, China, and elsewhere and the resultant immigration of Americans and Filipinos. 75% of the population speaks English, and half the population has either American, Chinese, or Filipino descent somewhere in their ancestry.
Three way civil war resulted in three Chinese governments, also the Soviets annexing Xinjiang (they held a rigged referendum first but it still destroyed the credibility of the Chinese Communists and cost them victory in the civil war) and Manchuria, the Communist Chinese are puppets of Moscow, the good old Nationalist Chinese restricted to Hanian (sound familiar?), and the Chinese falangists took the better part of the country establishing a very demented regime with a bone to pick against Europeans and anyone associated with Europeans (such as Chinese Christians and Muslims- they’d hate Jews if they had enough to be worth noticing). As a consequence no one has ever recognized the Harmonious Union of China, the League of Nations continues to consider the Nationalist government the legitimate Chinese government (although the USSR regularly brings up motions to change this to the communist government) and all those European enclaves on China’s coast either stayed European or eventually became independent (or stayed independent- keeping it international Shanghai!).
The collapse of the Dutch East Indies was very messy, the (falangist) Republic of Indonesia and the (nominally democratic) United States of Indonesia continue to feud- often violently, Kalimantan is a corrupt dictatorship that exploits Borneo’s resources to enrich its leaders, and West New Guinea is dominated by exiled Eurasians who still recognize the monarch of the Netherlands as their ceremonial ruler.
India is a decentralized confederacy that includes OTL Pakistan, without Nehru’s unified state intervention in the economy it’s much poorer though.
Antarctica is run by the League of Nations.
Decolonization was just as f*ed up ITTL as OTL, France figured out that establishing puppet dictatorships in in its former colonies and continuing to exploit those countries' resources was cheaper than retaining them as colonies- it is gradually figuring out that trying to hang on to northern Algeria anyway is still not worth it. Britain did a pretty good job overall (Rhodesia notwithstanding) and the Commonwealth is among the world’s most powerful military alliances, second only to the indistinctly defined Western Allies who include the Commonwealth, America, and France. It was only in the last couple decades that various filibusters started taking advantage of the League’s deadlock to add to African chaos in the Congo (listen, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and when I steal I do so from the best- Linkwerk your Katanga TL is amazing) and elsewhere.
What’s that you say? Deadlock?
When the West and the Communists vetoed Germany’s attempts to intervene and save the falangist government of Italy from going down the Germans (and allies) got even by cooking up an excuse to side with the communists during the Romanian Crisis resulting in the fall of the capitalist (and democratic) government of Romania. Since then things have gone downhill with the different alliance blocs knee-jerk preventing any action of any kind by the League that any of their rivals propose, which has rendered the League of Nations virtually impotent to act period and as a result the situation has allowed various minor international crises to deteriorate into major international crises. Not to mention several major governments (notably China) are not League members and do not obey its dictates.
This is a world on the edge, a world where there are no superpowers only great powers, where the space race is still going on, where nuclear weapons do not exist, where Esperanto is a significant language in the world of diplomacy and academia, where utopian ideologies still move the minds of the masses and anarchism, communism, *fascism, objectivism, and the technocracy movement are all worth taking seriously. The League of Nations has done its job of preventing a second world war admirably, doing as well as anyone could reasonably expect, but the fragile peace it worked so hard to maintain is weakening in the aftermath of the violent collapse of the Portuguese falangist regime and the world is inching towards a precipice…
I love scenarios with tons of ideologies running around! That reminds me, you should start updating An Examination of Extra-Universal Systems of Government.
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
I love scenarios with tons of ideologies running around! That reminds me, you should start updating An Examination of Extra-Universal Systems of Government.
As do I. And you're right, I really should get back to that one of these days.
Very nice! A few questions: does the non-functionality of atomic bombs extend to atomic power plants? Since if it does, this world also faces worse pollution and global warming problems (more coal being burned) and probably a worse eventual energy crisis.
Who is paying for Greenland? (It's subsidized by Denmark OTL). Perhaps the Germans, in exchange for military basing?
Why independent Taiwan?
Who would the Japanese be imperialistic to?
Quibbles: not sure the French would still be sticking it out in north Algeria (which is after all where pretty much all the Algerians are) as late as 2013.
I find the notion of a successful Communist coup in Romania a bit iffy, unless it's one backed by a Soviet invasion. (Real case of cutting off your nose to spite your face there, Germans.)
It's been, what, 60 years since the last big war? That everyone has been _sensible_ so long seems unlikely in a world without nuclear weapons...
Svalbard a _casino_ economy? Really? There are no casinos in Europe that aren't located in a frozen wasteland? And think of the initial investment of building big 'ol casinos in frozen soil, creating some sort of power plant to warm the buildings, creating paths and...no. Frankly, it would take a Randian in the first place to believe this could work: you haven't been tempted over to the dark side, Ephraim old pal?
Bruce
Who is paying for Greenland? (It's subsidized by Denmark OTL). Perhaps the Germans, in exchange for military basing?
Why independent Taiwan?
Who would the Japanese be imperialistic to?
Quibbles: not sure the French would still be sticking it out in north Algeria (which is after all where pretty much all the Algerians are) as late as 2013.
I find the notion of a successful Communist coup in Romania a bit iffy, unless it's one backed by a Soviet invasion. (Real case of cutting off your nose to spite your face there, Germans.)
It's been, what, 60 years since the last big war? That everyone has been _sensible_ so long seems unlikely in a world without nuclear weapons...
Svalbard a _casino_ economy? Really? There are no casinos in Europe that aren't located in a frozen wasteland? And think of the initial investment of building big 'ol casinos in frozen soil, creating some sort of power plant to warm the buildings, creating paths and...no. Frankly, it would take a Randian in the first place to believe this could work: you haven't been tempted over to the dark side, Ephraim old pal?
Bruce
Well it is that map, with annotations.
Here is a text version.
Actually it's not: It is the same colour as the Cape Verde Islands, East Timor, Ambazonia, Sao Tome and Antarctica, namely in the LoN colour as seen in the legend. Took me a moment to notice as well.
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Hax. I call hax.
How else did you get Moltres when you're not even in the Kanto region?
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
What Iserlohn said, Spanish Sahara is administered by the LON, it's the first territory ever to be dealt with in such a manner and as its status has yet to be determined the question of its ownership remains unsettled.
Thank you!
As atomic power was invented as an extension of nuclear research, that is the case. Pollution is a serious problem and Global Warming is becoming one.
Germany, they have airfields and missle bases there much to the annoyance of Canada and America.
After the Great Pacific War Taiwan fell under American and British administration for a few years, when they finally held a referendum the island voted for independence instead of either protectorate status or union with a war-torn China. They're a scrupulously neutral democracy.
Who would the Japanese be imperialistic to?
Indochina, Indonesia maybe. We're taking economic imperialism, maybe sending money and arms to a favorable government (or a favorable rebellion). Nothing that America hasn't done OTL, right now Japan is talking with Shanghai about a mutual defense pact in case of China and a free trade agreement.
They tried to get as many Algerians as posisble to move south to Berberia through a combination of bribes and intimidation while inviting friendly immigrants from all over the world to settle and thus change the demographics. Needless to say it's worked less than spectacularly.
Romania and Yugoslavia were the last non-communist countries in Eastern Europe to refuse to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, the Romanian government correctly worked out that Pact membership meant being a German puppet rather than a Russian one and was pretty forward about their defiance towards German pressure to join. Eventually some officers in the Romanian army tried a falangist coup that resulted in a left-wing (Trotskyites, Tercerists, Social Democrats, and Bourgeousie Liberals)counter-revolution, the counter-revolution turned into a shoot out between the leftists and the arrival of volunteer Trotskyite brigades from the USSR eventually tipped the scale in favor of a communist victory.
It's been, what, 60 years since the last big war? That everyone has been _sensible_ so long seems unlikely in a world without nuclear weapons...
No nukes doesn't mean that weapons haven't been getting more and more horrific and deadly since those wars ended. Nerve gas and biological weapons might be illegal but both are still being stockpiled by countries worldwide and the Americans showed in the Great Pacific War that purely conventional strategic bombing can be devastating to civilian populations. An apocalyptic second world war is a common theme of science fiction ITTL, usually with emphasis on gas and diseases. And those sixty years have hardly been peaceful, plenty of minor wars for people to get involved in going around. The big stabilizer of course is the tri-polar nature of this world, West+Falangists against the Communists, Communists+West against the Falangists, and Falangists+Communists against the West. No one alliance bloc wants to fight the other two alliance blocs at once and that's kept a world war of the radar.
Hmm, you may have a point. That said OTL Svalbard took in 317 million NOK in tourism alone, with mining still brining in 2 billion NOK. Maybe not a casino economy, but an emphasis on tourism during the summer, a resort where people go to look at the Polar Bears and the wildlife, freely availible recreational drugs, a port for cruise ships and a yearly blues festival and I think you could still turn a profit.
No, god forbid I should go over to the dark side!
I just wanted a token "good guy" in the Objectivist/Corpratist countries who was reasonable enough to not go overboard on the exploitation thing.Glad you liked it!
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Two things;
1. Australia has since it was founded in 1901 been caled the Commonwealth of Australia, it has never used the word 'Dominion', in fact Canada is the sole country that ever has used that word as part of their long name, and they dropped it over half a century ago.
2. With a PoD in WWI leading to what it did I sincerely doubt Rand would've existed in the same way, or if she did that she'd create objectivism.
Well, due to the way British (and thus Canadian) law works, the title "Dominion" is still used in some of our older, still-valid documents, just not the newer ones.
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