AHC: Make Europe have these borders by 1939.

No ASBs allowed.
The PoD must be before 1880.
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It looks like somehow the central powers somehow convinced Russia to join on their side.
The 1914 war will be completely butterflied as England, Scotland and Northern Ireland aren’t united.

Some ideas that could explain.

England is ruled by the house of Habsburg via the son of Mary I and Philip II of Spain.

Without having to send their Armada to England, Spain was able to colonise and defeat Muslim Morocco (who owns the blue spot in north Morocco?)

Italy and Germany was unified under branch candidates of the Austrian Habsburg family; those of Wettin-Habsburg of Saxony and di Buonaparte-Habsburg respectively.
 
The 1914 war will be completely butterflied as England, Scotland and Northern Ireland aren’t united.



Or it could have been forcefully broken apart into that following their loss in the great war.

Ireland rebels with German supplied arms, Scotland is broken off in the final peace after the war.
 
Easy: The Kaiser does not allow the treaty with Russia to lapse. At some point say 1911 (Morocco crisis) Germany goes to war with France. The entire German army invades France. Britain intervenes to protect Belgium. The war still stalls in 1914. However over time the Germans and their Austrian allies can slowly push the French back. To break the stalemate the Germans provide significant weapons to Irish nationalists resulting in a successful Easter Rising. Next the British try to foment rebellion in the Austrian Slavic provinces via Serbia. This fails and Austria takes Serbia. Eventually Scotland rises in rebellion and splits from England as part of the eventual peace. At some later point say 1927 Sweden tries to retake Norway (with the help of their Danish allies). Norway seeks German/Russian aid. Russia and their German allies intervene with Germany taking Denmark and Russia taking Sweden. Around the same time Ibn Saud greatly expands. However, the Ottoman Empire prevents him from taking the Hijaz.
 
The 1914 war will be completely butterflied as England, Scotland and Northern Ireland aren’t united.

Some ideas that could explain.

England is ruled by the house of Habsburg via the son of Mary I and Philip II of Spain.

Without having to send their Armada to England, Spain was able to colonise and defeat Muslim Morocco (who owns the blue spot in north Morocco?)

Italy and Germany was unified under branch candidates of the Austrian Habsburg family; those of Wettin-Habsburg of Saxony and di Buonaparte-Habsburg respectively.

As for the UK, Elizabeth I marrying and having a child would keep England and Scotland separate too :)
 
Easy: The Kaiser does not allow the treaty with Russia to lapse. At some point say 1911 (Morocco crisis) Germany goes to war with France. The entire German army invades France. Britain intervenes to protect Belgium. The war still stalls in 1914. However over time the Germans and their Austrian allies can slowly push the French back. To break the stalemate the Germans provide significant weapons to Irish nationalists resulting in a successful Easter Rising. Next the British try to foment rebellion in the Austrian Slavic provinces via Serbia. This fails and Austria takes Serbia. Eventually Scotland rises in rebellion and splits from England as part of the eventual peace. At some later point say 1927 Sweden tries to retake Norway (with the help of their Danish allies). Norway seeks German/Russian aid. Russia and their German allies intervene with Germany taking Denmark and Russia taking Sweden. Around the same time Ibn Saud greatly expands. However, the Ottoman Empire prevents him from taking the Hijaz.

As Per OP, POD is supposed to be pre-1840, so while yours is fascinating, I am not sure if it fits requirements...
 
Or it could have been forcefully broken apart into that following their loss in the great war.

Ireland rebels with German supplied arms, Scotland is broken off in the final peace after the war.
The POD should be earlier. I can’t see the United Kingdom being split up after a central victory.

International zone.
Fair enough, this is feasible to allow Mediterranean countries to go through the strait without feeling threaten by Spain.

As for the UK, Elizabeth I marrying and having a child would keep England and Scotland separate too :)
But then that wouldn’t explain why Spain is bigger and more influential. I wanted to have a Habsburg England to explain the larger Spain and Ireland.

As Per OP, POD is supposed to be pre-1840, so while yours is fascinating, I am not sure if it fits requirements...
A lot of the explanations are after 1840
 
If the POD is before 1800, Napoleon wins, but then the French empire collapses somehow under one of his successors.

So the German empire happens, but when the new borders are made France gets screwed harder than it did IOTL in 1870-3. Italy and Lotharangia become buffer states under some sort of cadet dynasties.

For butterflied reasons that I can't conceive of, Germany and Russia form a pact and divide Scandinavia between each other.

Because Britain was defeated by Napoleon, it was broken up and satellite kingdoms created in Scotland and Ireland.
 
Why would Sweden be a Grand Duchy? It was a Kingdom, and when the Russian Czar took kingly titles OTL he did not demote them - Poland remained a Kingdom with the Czar as King. Finland was created as a Grand Duchy under Swedish rule from 1604 or so, when Karl IX claimed the title, so it made sense for the Czar to be Grand Duke of Finland.
 
Why would Sweden be a Grand Duchy? It was a Kingdom, and when the Russian Czar took kingly titles OTL he did not demote them - Poland remained a Kingdom with the Czar as King. Finland was created as a Grand Duchy under Swedish rule from 1604 or so, when Karl IX claimed the title, so it made sense for the Czar to be Grand Duke of Finland.
It might not be ruled by the Tsar but most likely and annex similar to Duchy of Courtland and Georgia.

This could be a case with a candidate branch of the Romanov family.
 
It might not be ruled by the Tsar but most likely and annex similar to Duchy of Courtland and Georgia.

This could be a case with a candidate branch of the Romanov family.

Which would work since the Romanov dynasty are the senior Vasa branch through Anna Petrovna and Karl Fredrik of Holstein-Gottorp (nephew of Karl XII).

I don't have a problem with Russia conttolling Sweden in an ATL, they should not have downgraded it to a Grand Duchy from a Kingdom - they did not do that with Poland.

Unless the PoD is moved back until before the Pope acknowledged Suecia/Svealand/Svithjod/Sweden as a Kingdom sometime in the 1100s Sweden would be a Kingdom and there's no reason for the Russians to downgrade that.

They kept Estonia, Livonia and Courland as Duchies. They kept Lithuania and Finland as Grand Duchies and they kept Poland as a Kingdom. If they controlled Sweden, they would have kept it as a Kingdom.
 
As Per OP, POD is supposed to be pre-1840, so while yours is fascinating, I am not sure if it fits requirements...
I misread that. You are correct I was using a post 1880 POD. Here's an interesting one. Kaiser Fredrick gives up smoking as a young man and does not die of throat cancer in 1888 but instead lives another 10 years. He maintains the reinsurance treaty (given that he is more sophisticated than his son). However, he is unable to liberalize Germany. Consequently when his son comes to the Imperial Throne in 1898 the navel arms race begins but now with Russian support etc. Therefore, my real POD is pre 1880 but the major result occurs in 1890. I recognize this is borderline cheating but perhaps fun (after all the Fredrick giving up smoking is pretty minor... but would almost certainly have large consequences).
 
Looks like a Holy Alliance on steroids. Maybe the 1848 revolutions were worse and the alliance needed to reform and really stick it to the revolutionaries. Sweden and Denmark were annexed after falling to revolutionaries, as were Belgium and the Netherlands. A large chunk of France was cut off and turned into Lotharingia in order to give Germany a buffer between her and France (Prussia likely unified by 'liberating' the rest of Germany from the revolutionaries). The British navy is in bad shape from the revolt and the islands are left open to invasion for the first time in centuries. The UK is dissolved as part of the peace treaty. The Ottomans are also subject to a wave of revolts as the Holy Alliance then turns on their neighbor to the south.
 
No ASBs allowed.
The PoD must be before 1880.

As I understand, this does not have to happen at once.

1st step, In the mid-XVIII Karl Peter Ulrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, inherits both crowns he entitled to, Russian and Swedish. In a view of the potential opportunities (and in a fear of Russian invasion) Swedish Riksdag (in which pro-Russian party is quite strong) waives Lutheranism requirement for a King of Sweden with a provision that the Lutheran Church remains dominant on the Swedish territories and that lands of the Swedish crown (Sweden and Finland) to be ruled by a vice-roy who is a Lutheran. The "wrong" things on a map are (a) Grand Duchy status for Sweden (it remains a kingdom) on a map (and Finland as a separate entity, well, over the time it may get a Grand Duchy status within Sweden) and (b) status of the Southern Sweden (by the time of the Russian-Swedish union it was in Swedish hands).

In 1706 England and Scotland are NOT signing Treaty of the Union remaining formally separate kingdoms ruled (for a while) by the same monarch. In 1745 the Jacobites are successful in Scotland (and are staying in Scotland) and, with the French help, are managing to keep it separate from England.

During the French Revolution (in 1796), there is an anti-English uprising in Ireland helped by the French invasion army 15,000 strong led by Louis Lazare Hoche, one of the best generals of the French Revolution. The English government could not sent an adequate military force to Ireland out of fear of a potential invasion from Scotland. The English troops evacuated the island and Ireland declared its independence. Failed colonial activities in India and a need to maintain a secure border with Scotland and Western coast protected against potential invasion from Ireland, limit English ability to interfere into the continental affairs after a costly failure of the English-Russian landing in the Netherlands in 1797 and unsuccessful attack on the French fleet at Abukir in 1799. The European peace was achieved in 1802 with French Republic retaining border on the Rhine (including Belgium), the Netherlands being returned to the House of Orange and ante-bellum borders restored in Italy with the exception of Savoy, which went to the French Republic. As a "consolation prize" England was allowed to keep Malta. Gibraltar went back to Spain.

Not directly related to the map:
Eventually, losses from the diseases and French defeats in Italy and Germany forced general Bonaparte to evacuate Egypt but, while he was acquitted from the charges of disobeying the orders, he had to resign from a military service; with a considerable capital accumulated during the Italian Campaign he dedicated his energy to the military inventions making himself quite famous as an inventor of the "Napoleon's naval bombing gun" (adopted by the French Navy in 1801; proved to be an effective "equalizer" of the English numeric superiority at the seas) and of "Napoleon's 12-pounder howitzer" adopted by the French army in 1803 as the main field gun. However, his "crown jewel" was a field kitchen (see below various models produced by "Bonaparte Manufacturing"; the 1st one dated by 1800) - invention that truly revolutionized the whole military food supply system and seriously decreased "traditional" food-related losses. Unfortunately, he died from cancer in 1804, only a day after he was made a Senator by President of the French Republic, Jean Baptist Bernadotte. :teary:
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In the mid-XIX Italy with the French help managed to unite against the Austrian opposition. Its border with Austria was settled as a result of the Independence Wars.

In 1848 Russian Empire officially transferred all titular rights to Schleswig-Holstein (which the Russian emperors held since the time of Peter III) to the House of Hohenzollern.

In 1864 during the 2nd Schlezwig War Prussian army successfully occupied the whole Denmark. King of Denmark fled to Norway.

In 1870 united Germany defeated coalition of France and the Netherlands. Belgium (part of France) and the Netherlands had been absorbed into a newly-created German Empire and independent status of Lorraine (annexed in 1776) had been restored. Prussian-occupied Denmark was officially made a part of the German Empire.

War of 1877/78 in which Russia and Austria fought against the Ottoman Empire resulted in Austrian annexation of some of the Ottoman territories (Serbia, part of Walachia, etc.) while Russia annexed Moldavia and created a vassal state of Greater Bulgaria.
 
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