AHC: African colony in Europe

With a post 1700 pod it is impossible for any sub-Saharan state to take any part of Europe and almost impossible for any of the North African states to do it either. The closest is Mehmet Ali Pasha taking Greece and Crete in the Greek Revolutionary War, but I'm not sure that this counts since he is Albanian. For this to work you need to get Great Britain, France, and Russia to not interfere in the war, which unlikely.
 

SunDeep

Banned
Does the Dominion of Draka count? :D Seriously though, I think it might just be possible if you leave it late enough. With a subtle POD, things progress pretty much as IOTL until the Cold War era- except that tensions reach breaking point, the Cold War goes Hot, and we see a full-blown nuclear exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. MAD ensures that the eventual winner (probably NATO, but depending on what the POD is, you never know) comes away with a pyrrhic victory, and the vast majority of Europe's population, along with virtually the entirety of its administrative base, is annihilated over the course of the conflict. As by far the least relevant continent in the Cold War power struggles and during the conflict itself, Africa emerges practically unscathed from the nuclear destruction wrought by WW3, with the African nations' power relative to the ROTW vastly increased.

And if WW3 breaks out early enough, before several African nations gain their independence and break away from colonial rule, you'd almost certainly see a few instances where the roles are reversed in the aftermath of WW3; with colonial nations such as Portugal, Belgium, Spain, France and potentially even Great Britain moving their capitals and political administrations to Africa, but retaining their territorial claims to the tattered war-torn remnants of their homelands in Europe by administering them as colonies, with expatriate communities from less desolated regions of the world offered incentives to return as colonists and repopulate the area. It's a pretty bleak way to go about it, definitely more of a ROTW-screw than an Africa-wank, but IOTL that's how any realistic simulation of a nuclear exchange between the two superpower blocs in the Cold War would have inevitably panned out, and it's the most realistic way- perhaps the only realistic way- in which an African nation could establish a colonial foothold in Europe with a POD post-1700.
 
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SunDeep

Banned

So, in this scenario, where in Africa would the European colonial governments be likely to relocate to? For Portugal, in the likelihood that the lack of a military presence on the island spares it from being targeted by a nuclear warhead, the likeliest choice if they want to keep things close to home would be Madeira (with Cape Verde considerably less likely to be spared nuclear attack due to the significant military presence on the archipelago, especially if the Guinea Bissau War of Independence is ongoing), with the capital based in Funchal.

Alternatively, if the Portuguese adopt a more long-term approach and decide to permanently relocate their power base to Africa, with Portuguese Africans forming the new administration, the then prosperous and cosmopolitan city of Luanda in Angola, referred to at the time as 'The Paris of Africa', would almost certainly be the best choice to become the new Portuguese capital. And with Great Britain certain to be targeted and weakened to a far greater degree than Portugal in a full blown nuclear exchange between NATO and the Soviets, you might even see the African Portuguese reasserting their claim to the Zambezi valley, and a renewed attempt to establish the Pink Map, with a land corridor between Angola and Mozambique.

ITTL, an all-out nuclear WW3 may even prove to be something of a blessing for the Portuguese, with the newly reinvented African Portugal having the potential to become the dominant power in Africa, and perhaps one of the major world powers post-war.
 
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I think the Egypt holding onto Crete is the only feasible suggestion so far. I can't even think of anything else possible in this time-frame.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
POD=1700AD or later. Al Andalus was long gone...

Oh, missed that bit. But would a military resurgence in Morocco and the barbary states resulting in a "deconquista" be possible? If you give it two centuries, that should be enough time.
 

SunDeep

Banned
I think the Egypt holding onto Crete is the only feasible suggestion so far. I can't even think of anything else possible in this time-frame.

Not even the all-out nuclear war scenario? If the Cold War boiled over into WW3, which continents' populations are going to be left largely intact to re-colonise the rest of the world? Africa, almost certainly; South America and Australasia, if you're lucky. The rest of the world, especially Europe, is going to be flattened in the nuclear exchange, and geographically, Africa is the best-placed safe haven from which to conduct the recolonisation of Europe once the dust falls and the fallout subsides.

If the Third World War takes place in the era of mutually assured nuclear destruction, then the eventual African colonisation of large swathes of Europe is practically inevitable, and it could even be possible that the entirety of the European continent would be repopulated through the establishment of African colonies. In my opinion, the time-frame isn't an issue in the slightest. Nuclear war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would be a feasible suggestion for a non-ASB TL, and as such, an African colony in Europe could be deemed to be not just feasible, but probable in an ATL with a POD less than fifty years ago.
 

SunDeep

Banned
Oh, and BTW, looking back at the first post and the central premise of TTL, it's having an African Empire claim an area of land in Europe with a POD after 1700. It doesn't say anything at all about enforcing that claim, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to come up with an ATL in which this occurs. In fact you could even say that it happened IOTL, citing Idi Amin's official claim to be the King of Scotland as one of the best-known examples...
 
Just a thought, but what about the Boers? Say they somehow control all of OTL South Africa by 1850, and begin to industrialize. They could establish ports along the West African coastline, perhaps make claims as far north as Morocco. I know it isn't exactly what OP wanted, but it's just something that struck me...
 
Best bet (presuming North Africa counts and transferring bits of the Ottoman Balkans to Cairo do not)?

Step A: The Barbary states rein in their corsairs in time to get into the European state system (perhaps as protectorates to start with, but cutting themselves loose via diplomacy like so).

Step B: Something closely akin to WWII happens post 1900, and they get a Zone of Occupation on one or more of the belligerents (Spain for maximized Irony).
 
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