Affiliated States of Boreoamerica thread

[Upvoteanthology]

I'd just like to pop in and say that I did have plans to make a Jewish nation in Suriname for this TL. I did message @False Dmitri about it, but I don't know if it could be treated as canon anymore. I made a map for it and everything. If the idea of "commonwealths" (like the one Italy has) is to be expanded, I'd imagine Nieuw-Torarica, Suriname, and New Netherland are all part of the Dutch one.

Btw, I also started making a WorldA map for this TL before I quit the forums, I never ended up posting it anywhere.

Anyway, back to my hobbit hole! Peace!

 

[Frank]

I'd just like to pop in and say that I did have plans to make a Jewish nation in Suriname for this TL. I did message @False Dmitri about it, but I don't know if it could be treated as canon anymore. I made a map for it and everything. If the idea of "commonwealths" (like the one Italy has) is to be expanded, I'd imagine Nieuw-Torarica, Suriname, and New Netherland are all part of the Dutch one.

Btw, I also started making a WorldA map for this TL before I quit the forums, I never ended up posting it anywhere.

Anyway, back to my hobbit hole! Peace!

I like your work, really, but in that area there already is Nuova Toscana, I'm sorry that there are these overlappings.
Maybe we can restore the Dutch Brazil as a Dutch colony in South America? It could fit with this timeline, since the Dutch Brazil has its origins in the 1600, with the defeat of the Portuguese in 1654 they could've survived.
A Gemenebest of New Netherlands, Dutch Brazil, Indonesia and the Netherlands could be cool

 

[Gian]

Also, does anyone have any objections to my little Bohemian Hussite confederation take its historical territories in Silesia and Lusatia?

 

[Tyche]

Also, does anyone have any objections to my little Bohemian Hussite confederation take its historical territories in Silesia and Lusatia?

I'd recommend running it past @False Dmitri first, this is his world after all.

 

[Gian]

I'd recommend running it past @False Dmitri first, this is his world after all.

Hence why I'm asking @False Dmitri

 

[Tyche]

Hence why I'm asking @False Dmitri

Oh, duh. That probably came off as really rude, my apologies

 

[Gian]

OK so here's my little proposal for Bohemia @False Dmitri:

Basically, the main PoD for this is during the Hussite Wars, where a combination of early successes leads the various Hussite forces to form a confederation to unite the various factions and effectively beat back the Catholic crusaders of the HRE. Over time, as the Protestant Reformation takes hold, the Hussites and the new Protestant movements influence each other (such as the Taborites with Calvinism, the Orebites with Luheranism and so on). Overall, their confederation holds on despite attempts by the Holy Roman Emperors (especially under the Hapsburgs) to subjugate it once again (even managing to reconquer Silesia and Lusatia during the 1760s), only managing to be invaded by the armies of Napoleon (who like in Switzerland, would establish a client state there). Of course, Napoleon's client state would eventually be deposed by 1815, and the Old Confederacy restored)

(A lot of this will be based on @Salvador79 's TL A Different Chalice, as I don't particularly know enough of the religious history of Bohemia at this time)

And yes, here's the map (which includes, the cantons, traditional regions, and dominant religious groups and languages):

LUŽICE - LUSATIA
1. Lower Lusatia (Dolní Lužice)
2. Upper Lusatia (Horní Lužice)

ČECHY - BOHEMIA
3. Lipa
4. Oreb
5. Mělník
6. Praha-Město
7. Praha-Krajina
8. Kouřim
9. Kutná Hora
10. Čáslav
11. Chrudim
12. Litomyšl
13. Tábor
14. Budějovice
15. Chelčice
16. Jižní Čechy
17. Plzeň
18. Chodsko
19. Cheb
20. Ohře
21. Ústí
22. Planina
23. Litoměřice
24. Kladsko

MORAVA - MORAVIA
25. Horacko
26. Brno
27. Slovácko
28. Hanácko
29. Olomouc
30. Šumperk
31. Valašsko
32. Lašsko

SLEZSKO - SILESIA
33. Zaháň
34. Hlohov
35. Bytom nad Odrou
36. Javor
37. Lehnice
38. Volov
39. Olešnice
40. Vratislav
41. Zmejhrad
42. Milič
43. Sycov
44. Svídnice
45. Břeh
46. Minstrberk
47. Nysa
48. Opolí
49. Krnov
50. Opava
51. Ratiboř
52. Bytom
53. Pština
54. Těšín

 

[Nyvis]

This Bohemia is probably very culturally diverse, with a lot of religious dissidents fleeing there through history.

 

[Gian]

This Bohemia is probably very culturally diverse, with a lot of religious dissidents fleeing there through history.

Probably, yes. In fact, I think there might also be a number of Anabaptist groups that might migrate there instead of the Americas

 

[Nyvis]

Probably some French Huguenots if the religious troubles happen the same way there too.

 

[Faeelin]

The economic role that New Amsterdam plays in-universe is something I find especially intriguing. Personally, I would imagine that while Internationally New Amsterdam is something more along the lines of OTL São Paulo than OTL NYC in terms of economic influence, I would definitely imagine that New Amsterdam/New Netherland makes up an even greater chunk of the ASB national economy than OTL New York has of the US economy.

One of the things I find interesting about this timeline is that the ASB are clearly poorer than OTL's America. I wonder if that's reflected in outsiders' views of the ASB?

 

[False Dmitri]

So I'm not sure what to do about the overlapping ideas of @Upvoteanthology and @FrankCesco . The difficulty is that both have high-effort, high-quality maps, so it's not as simple as saying, "Hey Frank, could you restrict your country to the French Guiana / Brazil parts? Any reworking would mean considerable duplication of work already done. Any thoughts? It's interesting as this seems to really be transitioning from a solo project to a collaborative world. That's why it's important for me to get some of the known info up on the wiki, to avoid conflicts like that. Upvote, I feel especially bad that I apparently missed or didn't read or didn't respond to that map when you PMed it to me before. All I can say is that we're probably past the point where anyone feels they need to clear everything via PM. I'd like to find a way where both of you can have your ideas in TTL, but I'm not sure what the best solution is.

@Gian, I love it. Now the 15th century is well before the implied PoD, which has been "around" 1600, probably a tad earlier. Now Bohemia had the Utraquists by that time. They were descendants of moderate Hussites who stayed in union with Rome despite having their own way of doing things. Is there a way that you can shift the changes in Bohemia forward to that era, post-Reformation?

Have you thought about the wider geopolitics of Bohemia in TTL? I don't see this confederation as a strong bulwark against Russia-Poland (which a Hapsburg-ruled Austria-Hungary-Bohemia probably would have been), so did Bohemia survive by becoming an ally? Did it move back and forth between alliances and patron countries over the years as the situation demanded?

-----------------------------------------

I made one more "9 ways to divide" map. It's New Hampshire. This is probably the last one for a while, I don't want to spam my own thread... but I really like making these. The 4th map is probably negated by the advent of satellite tv and "new media", but especially with the ASB's more localized TV production landscape, it probably still reflects the common perception. "Pagans" on the 8th map just means "nonreligious". It's wrong but I wanted to keep the alliteration.

 

[Nyvis]

The center one is excellent and made me chuckle out loud.

 

[Gian]

@Gian, I love it. Now the 15th century is well before the implied PoD, which has been "around" 1600, probably a tad earlier. Now Bohemia had the Utraquists by that time. They were descendants of moderate Hussites who stayed in union with Rome despite having their own way of doing things. Is there a way that you can shift the changes in Bohemia forward to that era, post-Reformation?

Have you thought about the wider geopolitics of Bohemia in TTL? I don't see this confederation as a strong bulwark against Russia-Poland (which a Hapsburg-ruled Austria-Hungary-Bohemia probably would have been), so did Bohemia survive by becoming an ally? Did it move back and forth between alliances and patron countries over the years as the situation demanded?

Probably yes. Bear in mind that this isn't really the final product, just a hodgepodge of proposals (based on what I felt like doing) that I think could be modified while not changing the overall structure

As to alliances, Bohemia could've switched sides at every opportunity while keeping the powers at arms' length (basically to preserve its independence at least before the Napoleonic wars)

 

[Gian]

Maybe you can also do an New Scotland/East Acadia version, as well as for Maryland.

 

[Mitro]

Now the 15th century is well before the implied PoD, which has been "around" 1600, probably a tad earlier.

Although this may have been mentioned elsewhere and I just missed it, what is the implied POD?

 

[False Dmitri]

Although this may have been mentioned elsewhere and I just missed it, what is the implied POD?

There isn't one, that's what I meant by "implied". But things start to diverge from the early 1600s, though of course with enough convergences here and there to justify the title.

 

[Neoteros]

More details about the ASB-verse version of Italy:

Milan is a very different city in the ASB-verse: no wars ever turned the city to rubble between 1848 and the present day, thanks to the Confederacy's policy of heavily armed neutrality and, since the South is well developed in this timeline - even though it still lags behind the North, several centuries of feudalism can't be undone in just a century and a half - there was no phenomenon of mass emigration from the South to the North, either.

As a result, the "historical center" of the city is much larger and much more well preserved, and people such as Alessandro Manzoni and Carlo Porta would be able, if taken to the present day, to get around in the city quite easily, while also speaking their native Lombard tongue. A rural belt, the ring-shaped commune of Corpi Santi, separates the city proper from the industrial and post-industrial towns surrounding it; places that in OTL are known as commuter towns or suburban sprawl are in this ATL minor centers of business and industry themselves, that look to Milan but haven't been absorbed by it.

To make an example, if OTL's Quarto Oggiaro is a district of Milan that swelled in size due to mass immigration from the South and became infamous for the presence of organized crime, TTL's Quarto Oggiaro is an independent commune and TTL's equivalent of the Porta Nuova business district, with glistening skyscrapers surrounding an unspoiled and untouched old town.

The old Navigli have been preserved, and public transport in the city is dominated by boats and trams rather than buses and subway trains; if in OTL almost every street in Milan seems to have a place serving Middle Eastern cuisine as fast food, this isn't true of TTL Milan: if doner kebab shops are ubiquitous in Sicily, thanks to the proximity to Tunisia, cuisine from the Horn of Africa has become a favourite of Milanese looking to eat something while not spending much, and pop music from Eritrea and Somalia, especially the reggae-like dhaanto genre, explodes in popularity whenever summer approaches.

However, Milan is not as populous as in OTL, and it never reached the level of cultural and economic dominance over the rest of the peninsula it has in our timeline; if OTL Italy is dominated by Milan, Naples and Rome - and, to a lesser extent, Turin - TTL Italy can be seen as OTL Veneto writ large: a peninsula where quite a few mid-sized (by the standards of our timeline) cities fill different niches in the country's economy, with none of them prevailing over the others - even though, of course, those cities that were already big in 1848 are still very important in TTL 2018; despite how TTL Italy's population is bigger than OTL Italy's, said population is much more spread out.

The mayor of Milan in TTL 2018 is Jiang Min, the 40 year old daughter of a former ambassador of Tianjin to Italy, the founder of the National Progressive Party and a twisted counterpart to OTL's Matteo Salvini: she won the most prestigious seat in the city's government by comparing the achievements of Chinese people in Milan, a "historical minority" of the city, to the backwardness and degeneracy of the new immigrants, sprinkling her speeches with frighteningly racist quotes from Eastern philosophers and Western thinkers, and promising economic and social equality to "proper" Milanese of all genders, races and sexual orientations while sneering at the new arrivals and their conservatism.

Ms. Jiang is especially popular among the city's women, having taken advantage of a few episodes of abuse and violence against women committed by first generation immigrants not belonging to a LoP country to paint men from less privileged backgrounds and regions as a threat to Milan's high standard of gender equality.

And here is one of the dark sides of TTL Italy, racism being adopted on moral grounds by the progressive Left; and it's not just feminists like Jiang, the socialists are starting to view immigrants as nothing but a tool of the Man to drive down wages, too.

 

[Venusian Si]

Wow. This thread's blown up a bit over the last week. And while there's definitely a lot I want to comment on, there's one main point I'd like to make.

So I'm not sure what to do about the overlapping ideas of @Upvoteanthology and @FrankCesco . The difficulty is that both have high-effort, high-quality maps, so it's not as simple as saying, "Hey Frank, could you restrict your country to the French Guiana / Brazil parts? Any reworking would mean considerable duplication of work already done. Any thoughts? It's interesting as this seems to really be transitioning from a solo project to a collaborative world. That's why it's important for me to get some of the known info up on the wiki, to avoid conflicts like that. Upvote, I feel especially bad that I apparently missed or didn't read or didn't respond to that map when you PMed it to me before. All I can say is that we're probably past the point where anyone feels they need to clear everything via PM. I'd like to find a way where both of you can have your ideas in TTL, but I'm not sure what the best solution is.

It goes without saying that both Upvoteanthology and FrankCesco did fantastic work, and while I think both ideas have merit for existing in some form in the ASB, I would like to suggest that the OTL nation of Suriname (or at least the costal region as presented in Upvoteanthology's map) still be allowed to exist in-universe due to the incredible cultural diversity that almost feels like it was custom made for the ASB - such as having the highest percentage of Muslim Citizens of any American Nation and the second highest percentage of Hindu citizens of any American nation - not to mention having a variety of recognized languages such as Javanese and Sarnami Hindustani.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Suriname

Now admittedly, I do agree with FrankCesco's idea of having Dutch Brazil/New Holland survive, but I also don't think you could plausibly in-universe have a similar demographic structure to that of Suriname, and honestly, it feels like such a shame to not honor a cultural gem like Suriname.

I made one more "9 ways to divide" map. It's New Hampshire. This is probably the last one for a while, I don't want to spam my own thread... but I really like making these. The 4th map is probably negated by the advent of satellite tv and "new media", but especially with the ASB's more localized TV production landscape, it probably still reflects the common perception. "Pagans" on the 8th map just means "nonreligious". It's wrong but I wanted to keep the alliteration.

View attachment 367024

I can't speak for anyone else, but if this is what you call spam, then please spam away!

And as for the Pagans bit, why not Post-Religious or Post-Puritan?

 

[Frank]

Now admittedly, I do agree with FrankCesco's idea of having Dutch Brazil/New Holland survive, but I also don't think you could plausibly in-universe have a similar demographic structure to that of Suriname, and honestly, it feels like such a shame to not honor a cultural gem like Suriname.

This is the only solution to the dispute that I thought, the only thing that would change would be the geographical area, if the Dutch could create a multicultural place like the OTL Suriname, I do not see how they could not do the same with the Dutch Brazil.