2020 Turtledoves - Best Colonialism & Revolutions Timeline POLL

[Zagan]

Dixieland: The Country of Tomorrow, Everyday (yet another Confederate TL); @TastySpam

A More Perfect Union: An Alternate History of the Land of the Free; @HeX

Separated at Birth: America and Drakia; @Ephraim Ben Raphael

Dreams of Liberty: A Failure at Princeton; @ETGalaxy

Pride Goes Before a Fall: A Revolutionary Greece Timeline; @Earl Marshal

God Save these American States; @Confederate Liberal

Empire of Freedom: The History of the American Empire; @Antonio the Komnenoi

Man of the Hour, A Franklin Pierce Story; @CELTICEMPIRE

Rebirth of an Empire "O Renascimento de um Império" v2.0; @Lusitania

 

[Lusitania]

Rebirth of Empire “O Renascimento de um Império” V2.0

“Olá como vais” hi there how are you. I like to start by wishing everyone a great day and hope you and your family and friends are all safe. We would like to invite you to enjoy a very well detailed and thorough TL mixing exploration, war, politics and the required structural reforms to support the above goals.

Rebirth of an Empire is about a people, the Portuguese, who by 1750 had seen the glory days pass when suddenly the country was affected by a huge earthquake and tsunami that left Lisbon and surrounding region devastated. It’s about a man who fate placed at the forefront of the rebuilding and who with a group of reformers set about trying to fix the wrongs plaguing the country. It continues following his death with the country and people who took up the tasks to continue his legacy.

The TL not only deals with Portugal on the Iberian peninsula but also ventures to Brazil, India, Africa, Americas and other parts of Europe as we discuss not only Portuguese but other nationalities as they compete to expand their empires or just try to maintain their independence from European imperialism.

Forefront in the TL are reforms both politically, economically and military as the Portuguese attempt to build a strong empire that foregoes traditional colonial models.

 

[HeX]

Well... I suppose this is as good an introduction to A More Perfect Union as any:

I've had a complicated relationship with the United States and its history over the course of my seventeen years of life on this planet. As a kid, I was of course blindly patriotic. Everyone under the age of eleven is. I didn't know why America was great. It just was. Or at least, that's what I was told. As I grew up, I slowly but surely became obsessed with history, a product of my insatiable hunger to read when I was in elementary and middle school. And I started seeing other sides to (mostly American) history. The bad, dark, gloomy, offensive, throw-up-in-your-mouth disgusting sides. I learned many of my beloved Founding Fathers held slaves, that the United States was horribly racist far longer than it had any right to be, that swathes of native populations were massacred and hundreds of thousands of prospective immigrants were turned away for reasons as simple as the language they spoke or the religion they practiced. I underwent my own little Enlightenment in middle school and early high school, leaving behind the socially conservative politics that had been drilled into my head by my Catholic primary school and jumping ship to a far more tolerant, open stance.

It was then, I think, I fell out of love with America, and instead fell in love with the idea of America. A place where anyone from anywhere could do anything they set their mind to. A place that held the ideals spouted by the sometimes hypocritical Founders and other great, but flawed, people throughout American history. And then something happened. Last year, during my AP US History class, I found myself looking at every wrong turn America had taken on their path to the present and wondering, "What if it happened differently?" My interest in alternate history was but a fling then, but there's only so many times one can stomach hearing about the horrors of slavery, the hypocrisy of the Founders, the failings of the Revolution, the assassination of Reconstruction, and the death of civil rights time and time again. I needed to do something about it.

America always says it's the greatest nation in the history of the world. I decided to make it be the greatest nation in the history of the world. The United States of America would get to be the utopic beacon of liberty and hope it sees itself as in the here and now from its foundation. There's a reason why Ho Chi Minh added the preamble to the American Declaration of Independence unedited into the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, a reason why protesters around the world hoist the Stars and Stripes high as a sign of rebellion and hope, and it's not because of the American subjugation of the Philippines or the internment of innocent Japanese during WWII. It's because of what those symbols represent in the public consciousness. It's because of the idea they stand for.

And that's A More Perfect Union. Where the Revolution never died and the American Dream is a tangible reality.

 

[ETGalaxy]

Hello everyone! I'm the writer of "Dreams of Liberty: A Failure at Princeton," and I just want to start this post by saying that I am so honored that I was even considered for a Turtledove Award, let alone nominated. I've loved both reading and writing alternate history for about over four years by now, and to have my passion project be recognized by the community that has time and time again inspired and uplifted me throughout much of my recent life is an incredible thing. I also want to reiterate @Lusitania's hope for your friends' and families' safety during the current situation going on.

So without further ado, what is Dreams of Liberty?

In its simplest terms, "Dreams of Liberty: A Failure at Princeton" is a timeline that explores what could have happened had the United States of America lost its war of independence after General George Washington is killed at the Battle of Princeton. But I think that very basic description doesn't accurately encapsulate what Dreams of Liberty truly is. This timeline, which has been over two years in the making, analyzes the modern history of an alternate world that is completely alien to us in nearly every sense of the word, be it politically, geographically, culturally, and even technologically.

Dreams of Liberty does not keep the focus solely on North America. In fact, the focus almost immediately shifts elsewhere to a Europe where the status quo is swaying on the edge of destruction. Without a fledgling American republic to the west to look to for ideological inspiration, the French Revolution instead takes a page from the history books of the Roman Republic to create a new and bizarre system of government that mixes classical republicanism, liberalism, populism, and even what we would call Marxism into an ideology, ironically named communism after the communes that governed liberalized French municipalities in this time period. These revolutionary sentiments truly turn the world upside down when an indebted Great Britain succumbs to a Jacobin-esque coup led by none other than Jeremy Bentham, who in this world is an authoritarian strongman with ambitions to conquer the feudal states of Europe in the name of the Plebeian Class.

Dreams of Liberty is a timeline with a global focus, with each chapter jumping from region to region. In one chapter, you'll be reading about Aaron Burr establishing a Dutch vassal republic in South Africa while in the next you'll be reading about a war scourging the entirety of South America that is fought predominantly in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. Despite this immense global focus, I'm a big sucker for the minute details, so you won't miss out on all the zany little tidbits that I think are essential to setting the mood for any alternate history timeline. Dreams of Liberty is full of these fun details, from 19th Century primaries, to Greek constitutional conventions, to pirates-turned-empresses, to speculation about what could have been had those Yankee rebel-rousers in the Columbian Uprising won their war of secession back in the 1770s. Simply put, regardless of what kind of alternate history you enjoy, Dreams of Liberty has something for you.

So to wrap things up, "Dreams of Liberty: A Failure at Princeton" is a timeline with a focus on the history of a world where an aggressively oligarchic British Republic rules the Old World, a New Granadan monarchy with a first for empire building rules the New World, and a Victorian Germanic Empire rules the waves of the 19th Century. If any of this sounds interesting to you, please consider taking a look at "Dreams of Liberty: A Failure at Princeton."

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

Hello everyone, I suppose I should do my job and present my timeline. “Empire of Freedom” is the result of years of maturing in this website, from my badly written attempts in the first years, to my first major timeline in “The Golden Eagle”. All of it served as a test site where I evolved into my current writing style, and then I thought of a PoD, and like in “Golden Eagle”, it starts with a dream.

In Valley Forge during the Christmas night, a saddened George Washington sees the suffering of his men, and especially of one that died in front of him. He came back to his tent where a PTSD-induced dream showed him the failures of the Republic, and instead showed the utopia of an America under his rule. Washington would keep the war as usual but then use the Army and the Federalists to grow his political influence in the 1780s, resulting in him and Hamilton creating a Monarchy, an American Empire.

Meanwhile, in the other side of the ocean, the Napoleonic Eagle spreads it’s wings, allying the Americans to finally defeat the British and capturing Alexander I in Borodino. Arthur Wellesley leads Britain to a fight for independence, becoming the Lord Protector of Britannia, a nation that will do everything to prevent the French hordes from ravaging them again. In Iberia, the most cruel general of the French armies create his personal dominion, ruling over a pile of bodies and ashes.

“Empire of Freedom” basically follows the story of a Monarchist America and how that changed the entire world history. Millions will die in brutal wars in Europe and America, Britannia shall continue it’s fall into insanity and paranoia. It is not a finished product, far from it, but I will continue to show this different world where it all changed because of a simple dream.

 

[Virginia Liberal]

Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen and those who fall in between

My timeline God Save these American States is the result of several years of lurking on this site and enjoying the works of others. The Story of God Save These American State is a tale of how America would have developed without George Washington's steady had guiding the Constitutional Convention and the early development of the our fledgling Republic. In the Universe that this timeline takes place in Washington is killed at the begging of the siege of Yorktown Virginia. The American Revolutionary War ends the same with an American French victory however things quickly fall apart for the Americans The Constitutional Convention fails and the Sates slowly go their own ways. Enventually Three Blocks form The Federal Republic of America built by Alexander Hamilton centered around Pennsylvania and New York, The Commonwealth of American Sates dominated by Virginia in the early years, and the United States of New England. As these Republics evolve the FRA and CAS develop a close relationship while New England becomes the Black Sheep of the family eventually returning to the British Crown as the Crown Republic of New England .

Across the Atlantic in Europe the failure of the United States gives pause to the other revolutions that spawned from it in our Timeline. In France King Louis XVI is able to lead France as it transitions into a stable Constitutional Monarchy. However Europe sees the explosive rise of a new Religious political order know as Franciscanism which blends religious teaching of Christ with protoCommunistic policies; developed in Spain Franciscanism quickly over takes Spain and spills over into Europe causing an event know to History as the Troubles which will reshape Europe..

 

[Ephraim Ben Raphael]

Hello, fellow AH comrades.

Separated at Birth: America and Drakia is a cover of the (in)famous Drakaverse by S.M. Stirling. It has similar conceits- a different American Revolution ends with Britain acquiring the Cape Colony from the Dutch early and settling a large number of Loyalists there- but things rapidly become very different. With George Washington dead at the hands of Major Patrick Ferguson it's Washington's second-in-command Artemas Ward who becomes "father of the nation", and the New Englander Ward starts America off down a very different path than the Virginian Washington ever did. The US maintains its alliance with France during the French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleon (the strongman president of a fairly authoritarian French Republic, but never emperor) is victorious in mainland Europe, and things get weirder from there. Technology follows different paths, a flavor of Georgism emerges as a popular revolutionary ideology instead of Communism, wars are started by people messing with objects of furniture in Jerusalem, there are ornithopters and space-guns, and the religious-fundamentalist Drakian Empire evolves into a (similarly horrible but) very distinct place from Stirling's Domination. The TL's focus is as much on America- if not more- than Drakia as it develops and grows, with plenty of attention given towards other nations. The use of dice to determine the outcome of specific events has maintained an element of randomness in the TL, occasionally sending it off in directions that weren't originally planned, and even I don't know how it will end.

One promise though; if Drakia beats the USA then the TL will continue to follow the Drakian Empire until its hegemony collapses and its system fails. Because there is no such thing as a "Last War" or a "Final Society"- every empire falls eventually.

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

Hello everyone!

What is Man of the Hour, a Franklin Pierce Story? The basic idea is that Franklin Pierce, who is consistently ranked close to the bottom of US presidents OTL, becomes a good president. The POD is that the tragic accident that killed his son is averted. Pierce still follows a similar ideology, but takes a more active role in governing. He prevents the Kansas-Nebraska Act from being passed, making the 1850s a very different decade politically as the Republican Party never forms. At the same time, he actively supports William Walker's Filibuster in Nicaragua and America and America plays an active role in Japan. Franklin Pierce and succeeding Democratic administrations continue to balance Northern and Southern interests while the Whig Party increasingly alienates it's southern wing. Will they succeed in preventing a civil war?

 

[Zagan]

The final results of the 2020 Turtledove Awards have been posted here.

The Plaques will be awarded to the winners in a few days.

Congratulations!

 

[Zagan]

Best Colonialism and Revolutions Era Timeline

Pride Goes Before a Fall: A Revolutionary Greece Timeline; @Earl Marshal