A Looser Union

I think I have a solution to this that could work fairly well...

But first, I must finish this world tour.
 
A New Dawn

While the British Salutariat had adapted well to the economic crisis, and the ruination of India, they were decaying. The vast superstructure of the Salutariat was breaking apart and regional divisions and feuds were re-emerging. Unlike France, Russia and Germania they were not a contiguous union, and their experiment in centralised thallasocracy was tumbling down around their ears.

Indeed the one thing tying together the rotting hulk of the British Salutariat was a fear of the alternative. If the Salutariat withdrew from the global scene, they and the few other beacons of Salutist light would be stamped out by French Corporations, American Serf-lords, German aristocrats and Russian imperialists. The world of nobles and entrenched power that the revolutionaries had sought to destroy in the 1910s would be reborn, with no hope of redemption.

So a Constitutional Convention was held on the island of Ceylon. The discussions were violent, but soon about four blocks had emerged, roughly divided by geography. The Atlantics, East Africans, Australians and Indians. Drawing upon inspiration from the Holy Roman Empire of old, Three Circles were inaugurated in which much of the power of the Saluariat was devolved. India remained wracked by poverty, starvation and radioactive fallout and it was believed that putting them in their own circle would be irresponsible. Instead, India was divided between the East African and Australian Circles, until such a time it was able to stand on its own two feet.

The Salutariat was reorganised as an intergovernmental organisation with only a few powers like some economic matters, defence and foreign policy.

With the Salutists rapidly moderating, and a degree of autonomy in defence matters, the future of Salutism was secure. The East Africans could potentially woo the growing force of the Malagassy Bloc, and Australia could exert influence over the markets of the Belgic Federation, while Circle of New Britain could secure their domination of Scandinavia, and potentially overturn some apple carts in the Americas. Starting with Borealia...
 
This is a Salutism-wank. No internal violence or upheaval? Just smooth reform that allows "Salutism" to go troll everyone else?
 
This is a Salutism-wank. No internal violence or upheaval? Just smooth reform that allows "Salutism" to go troll everyone else?

Salutism? Pah. By this point, the Salutariat is not that different to the other superpowers. And its rather sub par at that. The East Africans and Australians compete for influence over the Indian Ocean and plot in the more habitable south of India. The New British try and avoid the tussles between the other two Circles, but are fearful of the changing world. The Salutariat is still decaying, these are just its last death throes. And don't sit there and think that I don't know that the other superpowers are plotting themselves, to finally squash the Salutist project. You think that I'll just let the East Africans take control of swathes of East Africa, or that Borealia will snuggle meekly at Britain's side. I like to think I'm a bit better at this AH lark than that.
 
Actually having thought about it a little, I've decided to completely end the Salutariat, but over an extended period of time.


Unfortunately, the New Circles were unable to hold together the growing nationalisms in the diverse states. While from the 30s to the 60s, a degree of homogenisation had set in as Indians mixed with Africans and Europeans, after the 1960s and as internal migration quietened down, cultural heteroginisation set in.

The first sign of a final break down in the already weakened Salutariat was in East Africa. The Arab-African peoples of the Zanzibar Coast had always resented the conquest from the interior by New Zion. As the coast became home to their own independent fleets, the economy of the region shifted from the interior to the coast. Riots broke out, as the costs of maintaining India fell increasingly on the heads of the Zionese.

A similar process was also happening in Australia. While the Australians were well mixed along the internal borders, the country was essentially divided in two, with Indians and Africans in the West and Europeans, Pacific Islanders and Chinese in the East. The interior was dominated by a mixed Arab-Irish-Indian-Aborigine people of camel and horse herders known as the Bedouin. It wasn't long before the more populous east and the mineral-rich west were at each others throats. And the Bedouin wanted to be separate from both. There were divisions over foreign policy too. The West wanted to build a close relationship with East Africa and pour millions into rebuilding India. The East wanted a constructive relationship with Aotorie and Japan, and concentrate on their own affairs.

There were less divisions between Britain and the Caribbean, as they had become well integrated during the height of the Salutariat. But increasingly, 'Core Britain' wanted out of the fractious situation in Australia, India and East Africa.

In 1986, things came to a head. The weak Salutariat government was officially dissolved, and borders fixed for a whole series of new states. The Bedouin sided with the Easterners, and founded the Republic of Australia. The Westerners created a confederacy, and invited those who had fled during the Revolution back home. East Africa was divided into the republics of New Zion and Zanzibar. India was divided between the irradiated parts under the governance of the League of Nations, a mostly Muslim Northeast, a Tamel-Sinhalese Republic of Greater Ceylon, and two Peninsular Indian states.

In Britain, the Salutariat was officially abolished the United Republics of New Britain was inaugurated. Having inherited a large navy, and the strategic position of ports in the Atlantic, Britain may no longer be a first rate power but for now, its legacy was secure, and it was economically stable enough to rebuild itself.
 
Dorada's Ascent

The rebellion in Patagonia ended in 1987, with the annexation of the Francophone regions to Dorada. The remaining rump of the Republic of Patagonia was now mostly Welsh-speaking and soon out of desperation fell into the British sphere.

The long struggle had largely come to an end thanks to the death throes of the British Salutariat. Hobbled by rationing, Spartan lifestyle and vast spending on reconstruction in India, from 1981 onwards, the Welsh speakers were on the back foot. After 1986, when resources were pulled back to the Atlantic, and money had been raised from selling arms to the newly independent republic of the former Salutariat, the British government was once more able to prop up the Patagonians. With little of Patagonia actually under their control, a new name was adopted. The Republic of Uladfa.

Dorada on the other hand was once more emerging as a great power. Her long held ambition of dominating Patagonia had finally been accomplished, and her increasingly transatlantic nature was bringing even greater glory to the Golden Republic.
 
Ask and ye shall receive.

looserunionworldmap2.png
 
Interesting. Personally rooting for New Zion, myself (and any separatists in the British Floridabama region). Wonder how the French are chugging along, considering that they look like the unchallenged global hegemon right about now.
 
I continue to hope Borealia can fix itself.

It is very slowly democratising, but only in the directions that its ruling aristocracy permits. I might do a section on Borealia. The fall of the Salutariat will have had a massice effect on the way the regime thinks.
 
Interesting. Personally rooting for New Zion, myself (and any separatists in the British Floridabama region). Wonder how the French are chugging along, considering that they look like the unchallenged global hegemon right about now.

I doubt anything serious is going to kick off in the Caribbean. By this point, the ethnic makeup of the Caribbean is as mixed as that of Britain, and culturally they are no longer that dissimilar.

The French meanwhile are the world's most obvious leader. The fall of the Salutariat and the end of the Salutist threat will cause a sort of Victory Syndrome in which Frenchmen will go on about the end of history and how the Long War has been won. No doubt the Germans, Russians and soon the Americans will have something to say about that. And the reconstruction of parts of irradiated China will soon be bearing fruit, as new radical states are formed in the ashen wastelands.
 
I'm a bit puzzled by the east-west split in India: that does not follow any historical cultural division, and India is going to be more homogenous than OTL anyway. I'd think a Dravidian dominated south India and perhaps a Maratha-centered Hindi state would be more plausible. (Also, that Muslim state occupies a lot of Hindu territory, but I suppose what with alternate migrations and internal movements...)


Also, Tamil-Sinhalese? The Tamils have more in common with their fellow Dravidians in south India, while historically they have been seen as intruders by the Sinhalese, who speak an Indo-European language and are mostly Buddhist, not Hindus. A Tamil state might carve a chunk out of northern Sri Lanka, but a happy shiny partnership seems unlikely, although I suppose stranger things happen in even the most realistic of TLs. :)

Bruce
 
I'm a bit puzzled by the east-west split in India: that does not follow any historical cultural division, and India is going to be more homogenous than OTL anyway. I'd think a Dravidian dominated south India and perhaps a Maratha-centered Hindi state would be more plausible. (Also, that Muslim state occupies a lot of Hindu territory, but I suppose what with alternate migrations and internal movements...)


Also, Tamil-Sinhalese? The Tamils have more in common with their fellow Dravidians in south India, while historically they have been seen as intruders by the Sinhalese, who speak an Indo-European language and are mostly Buddhist, not Hindus. A Tamil state might carve a chunk out of northern Sri Lanka, but a happy shiny partnership seems unlikely, although I suppose stranger things happen in even the most realistic of TLs. :)

Bruce

These are some good points. I didn't think a united Indian identity was likely in TTL, but I wasn't sure where to draw the borders. The Northeastern state is not officially Muslim, and is laregly formed out of those states which co-operated most after the nuclear war. The strcutures for a union already existed.

I will revise those states further south. The Tamil-Sinhalese state was a bit dodgy in my head anyway.
 
Horrors of the Long War

While peace had appeared to have broken out since the summer of 69, the rapid technological developments of the 70s soon found military applications. Germs and diseases were developed behind closed doors as the nuclear weapons were disarmed. Experiments into the durability of human tissue and how it could be improved were carried out. The double helix was torn apart and put back together again, and monstrous abominations were born and died in the harsh light of laboratories around the globe.

While all powers engaged in these experiments, they each had their own focusses. The British were more concerned with machinery, and how that could be applied to the secret battles of the Long War. Assassins with cybernetic limbs, miniscule submarines and planes, increasing dexterity in the emerging info-net. The Japanese believed stimulants and drugs could make their soldiers superior. While the British cyborgs were effective, they suffered from poor immune systems and rejection of implants. A Japanese soldier with the right cocktail of drugs could take sprint for an hour and take a sledgehammer to the chest, and still strip and clean a sidearm in under a minute. The French, with a lack of morals, produced the most tightly concealed secret weapons of all. Embryoes manipulated with genes and what they had learned about radiation to produce living weapons. Indoctrinated from 'birth' these inhuman agents were fanatically loyal and far stronger and more resilient than any drugged up would-be samurai. The remnants of the Popular Union's Ubermenschen Project was absorbed into the French programme, alongside lessons learned in the Black Camps of Central Africa by the Iberians.

When the Salutariat collapsed, France appeared to have won the Long War. Japan was wallowing in the irradiated mess of North China, the United States was a close ally, the German block wasn't really a block or German, and Russia had turned in on itself. The plan had been to simply decommission their creatures, and pretend the whole thing had never happened. But it is never that simple...
 
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