So this is a thread idea I have had for a while and the only thing really keeping me from posting it was that I have been debating with myself as to whether this belongs in the After 1900 or the Before 1900 section.
The idea of it is based off of a detailed and extensive timeline that I've been working on for a few months where there is a POD in the 13th Century while the actual story takes place in the 1950s-60s.
I decided to start a thread about this because I find the idea of how culture, economics, and politics could have gone differently fascinating (and I think that these things get too small of a focus compared to wars in most timelines, including my own).
I'll start.
With a divergence at about 1200, Temujin is either sidelined or killed and his brother Hasar goes on to become Genghis Khan and build the Mongol Empire, but with different successes and failures. The empire ends up focusing more resources east instead of west, never conquering Russia (which is eventually unified by Novgorod and never expands outside of the northern half of European Russia + Finland today) and successfully conquering Japan.
This causes a spiral of differences into a modern world where chemistry is barely an evolved form of alchemy, electricity was never discovered, and the modern world is a very different place (and in many ways, not that different from the centuries that preceded it).
With the lack of mass media outside of written media, comic books, newspapers, and magazines become overwhelmingly popular for people with disposable income (which is not the majority of people) over time. Instead of comics becoming synonymous with superhero stories, they would usually be collections of comic strips, little games (mazes and collectibles and such), with superheroes being a part of a bigger whole (there is a trend towards releasing comics with just superheroes in it, but that's regarded as nerdy among kids).
Western Europe is politically dominated by ideologies that descend from Enlightened Despotism (which remained dominant, if not entirely successful, in a lot of countries) and this has lead to tighter control of North Africa by the Europeans. France, Spain, the Papal Kingdom, and the Lowland countries are in a tense alliance where the countries cooperate while being incredible skeptical of one another. All of them (besides the Lowland countries) hold land in North Africa and are working together to develop an Atlantropa-inspired project where they make artificial lakes and rivers throughout Africa to allow their citizens to settle it. This project is immensely expensive and has been gradually worked on since the end of the Second World War (1913-1918), and is only now seeing progress. This comes with a new ideal for Europe, where they see settler colonies as the only kind worth anything. There are plans for eventually conquering Somalia (a series of small independent states by this time) and Madagascar (was a colony of the Union of Columbia (the US ITTL), but has become de-facto independent since the Columbian Civil War started). Scholars are preemptively calling this the Third Wave of Colonialism. The First Wave was the settler colonies of the New World and expansion in East Asia and along the coast of Africa. (ITTL) The Second Wave was the Scramble for Africa and the outright domination of OTL Indonesia, Nippon, and the Middle East (Indian nations mostly remained independent).
Politically, the entire world went throw a few phases approximating liberalism and socialism from reality, but all world trends have been far more repressive lately. As TTL went into the Great Depression in 1947 and the only major forms of transportation are by ship, zeppelin, and train (all public, massive, and not usually taken all the time), politics has become more authoritarian despite the ideals of natural order and personal freedom present in most ideologies.
Thanks for reading and please post any of your own ideas below.
The idea of it is based off of a detailed and extensive timeline that I've been working on for a few months where there is a POD in the 13th Century while the actual story takes place in the 1950s-60s.
I decided to start a thread about this because I find the idea of how culture, economics, and politics could have gone differently fascinating (and I think that these things get too small of a focus compared to wars in most timelines, including my own).
I'll start.
With a divergence at about 1200, Temujin is either sidelined or killed and his brother Hasar goes on to become Genghis Khan and build the Mongol Empire, but with different successes and failures. The empire ends up focusing more resources east instead of west, never conquering Russia (which is eventually unified by Novgorod and never expands outside of the northern half of European Russia + Finland today) and successfully conquering Japan.
This causes a spiral of differences into a modern world where chemistry is barely an evolved form of alchemy, electricity was never discovered, and the modern world is a very different place (and in many ways, not that different from the centuries that preceded it).
With the lack of mass media outside of written media, comic books, newspapers, and magazines become overwhelmingly popular for people with disposable income (which is not the majority of people) over time. Instead of comics becoming synonymous with superhero stories, they would usually be collections of comic strips, little games (mazes and collectibles and such), with superheroes being a part of a bigger whole (there is a trend towards releasing comics with just superheroes in it, but that's regarded as nerdy among kids).
Western Europe is politically dominated by ideologies that descend from Enlightened Despotism (which remained dominant, if not entirely successful, in a lot of countries) and this has lead to tighter control of North Africa by the Europeans. France, Spain, the Papal Kingdom, and the Lowland countries are in a tense alliance where the countries cooperate while being incredible skeptical of one another. All of them (besides the Lowland countries) hold land in North Africa and are working together to develop an Atlantropa-inspired project where they make artificial lakes and rivers throughout Africa to allow their citizens to settle it. This project is immensely expensive and has been gradually worked on since the end of the Second World War (1913-1918), and is only now seeing progress. This comes with a new ideal for Europe, where they see settler colonies as the only kind worth anything. There are plans for eventually conquering Somalia (a series of small independent states by this time) and Madagascar (was a colony of the Union of Columbia (the US ITTL), but has become de-facto independent since the Columbian Civil War started). Scholars are preemptively calling this the Third Wave of Colonialism. The First Wave was the settler colonies of the New World and expansion in East Asia and along the coast of Africa. (ITTL) The Second Wave was the Scramble for Africa and the outright domination of OTL Indonesia, Nippon, and the Middle East (Indian nations mostly remained independent).
Politically, the entire world went throw a few phases approximating liberalism and socialism from reality, but all world trends have been far more repressive lately. As TTL went into the Great Depression in 1947 and the only major forms of transportation are by ship, zeppelin, and train (all public, massive, and not usually taken all the time), politics has become more authoritarian despite the ideals of natural order and personal freedom present in most ideologies.
Thanks for reading and please post any of your own ideas below.