Speaking of Shinto; does a government where the head of state is deified count as a theocracy?
An Examination of Extra-Universal Systems of Government
- Thread starter Ephraim Ben Raphael
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Only if the government ministers and administrators are priests.
Bah.
So, say, Napoleon Victorious TL where they take the Classicism too far and reinstate the Imperial Cult wouldn't work either?
Though speaking of, imagine a TL where French Revolution didn't collpase and over time the Cult of the Supreme Being or Cult of Reason ended up wagging the Republican dog.
Yes.
Weirldy, I've been occasionally thinking of the idea of New York City as an independent city-state that operates on a similar principle, where each ethnic enclave runs itself, for awhile.
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I'd rather try it with a country that isn't the United States. Maybe a Germany where the Protestant Reformation leads to a different compromise.
As long as we get a theocracy that believes in the importance of Freedom of Religion, I'm happy.
The third-place finisher in the :"Next EEUSG Entry" poll rvbomally ran on his DA page.
An idea for a spinoff: People from all the different Americas featured here having a chat. "A Marxist, a libertarian, a monarchist, and a neo-Laconian walk into a bar."
Values dissonance galore!
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Serve to Lead
Here's my world map cover of @Mumby's EEUSG entry, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ulster. Many thanks to him for giving me much of the material I needed to make this, including much of the text below.
The Central Powers manage to win WWI, due to a variety of factors including American neutrality and less successful Russian offensives in the East. The Germans manage to take Poland and the Baltics from Russia, while turning Belgium into a vassal, annexing more territory from France and stripping France of her colonies. Britain meanwhile is punished through reparations and having an extremely limited military size, while retaining their territorial integrity, which means the British Empire becomes de facto a German protectorate. France goes militarist similar to Britain, but while Britain aligns with Germany against the threat of Bolshevism, France is very much in it for Revanche. Britain loses India during this time and the older Dominions slip away from her, acknowledging the King but largely ignoring missives from London.
The Bolsheviks in Russia finally go to war with Germany in the early 1950s, and France opportunistically takes advantage to stab Germany in the back, and after some early successes in which all of Europe is overrun and the German government goes into exile in London, Britain becomes the arsenal of Mitteleuropa, deploying the resources of a world-spanning empire[1] and achieving victory. Japan is an Anglo-German ally, and while they attempt to take control of China militarily, the venture ultimately fails. The Japanese never attempt to attack European possessions in Asia, or the Philippines. After the war, Britain's military restrictions are lifted de jure, having become de facto during the war. The 1960s and 1970s see a fairly rapid decline however as Britain struggles to hold on to it's empire, while Germany - having come to the empire game late - lets go more easily. This all comes to a head as the African Bush Wars are clearly being lost and the National Legion government of Ian Smith is couped by Admiral Louis Mountbatten who makes radical reforms that nevertheless preserve Britain's martial democracy. Referendums are organised in the numerous districts of the empire and while some choose to stay with Britain (or are carefully rigged to keep the Royal Navy happy), most become independent.
In the modern day, Britain and Germany are the two most important members of the European Union, forming a world hyperpower through Britain and Germany's relationships with those of their former colonies who are still friendly. Neo-Bolshevism thrives in Africa, and there are a few unpleasant apartheid type regimes backed by South Africa, and the African Bush Wars still churn here. America is still very 'business is our business' and is the biggest economy on the planet, while Japan is realising that their comfortable position at the top in Asia is being challenged by China and India. India in particular is sympathetic to the neo-Bolshevik movements in Africa, and seeks to undermine European power in the African continent to replace it with her own.
[1] Helped along by American financial backing, and the French and Russians turning on each other.
The Army is the Country
Here's my world map cover of @Mumby's EEUSG entry, the Free City of Cawnpore. Many thanks to him for giving me much of the material I needed to make this, including quite a bit of the text below.
- This is a world where Operation Unthinkable happened and nobody won, it just went to shit. Churchill's plan to arm the Wehrmacht meant that for a while there were Wehrmacht warlords running much of Eastern Europe until the nuked Russians got their shit together. America went isolationist again, socialist governments in Britain and France shed their empires mostly because having revolting soldiers meant it wasn't possible to hold any more. Because the colonial empires were dumped quickly with little transition, it meant a lot of chaos in the short and long term, which is only now really being glued back together into something stable.
- The post-war USSR was a military dictatorship, a result of much of the civilian government being killed by Allied nukes. It was an unstable thing, eventually losing Eastern Europe in the 1960s and breaking apart itself in the 1970s. Modern Russia is smaller than the OTL Russian Federation, with more portions of OTL Russia breaking away. The Soviet Union continues to exist in Tajikistan, and claims the entirety of the former Soviet Union as its sovereign territory.
- Germany is torn apart by the Russians, and it never comes back together again. The portion west of the Rhine remained under the control of the Western Allies, and is still a separate Wehrmacht-led dictatorship known as the German Reich, and it still claims the entirety of pre-1939 Germany. The reconstituted Prussia is being dangerously neo-Nazi, as Nazism became conflated with resistance to Soviet occupation after the war.
- The war between the Soviets and the Western Allies gave more hope to the Japanese, which refused to surrender after the (single) atomic bombing that the Americans could muster. Operation Downfall happens, with fewer troops given the renewed hostilities in Europe. Soldier's revolts and the return of America to isolationism allows neo-imperialists to take over Japan, and while they do not have the capability to build an Asian empire anymore, they are still a formidable, Russian-friendly force.
- The post-war governments in Britain and France were very unstable, with much of Europe bombed out and some portions irradiated. This eventually led to major political violence in the 1960s, leading to the fall of the French Fourth Republic and the United Kingdom. While France was able to get its act back together and form what is now known as Eurobloc, the United Kingdom remained fractured.
- Eurobloc was financially backed by the Americans as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, the Americans have pulled the plug, so the French have taken it over and plan on using it as the core of a European union. The French have conditional alliances with the Nordics and the Moroccans.
- The Nordic Federation was formed in response to Soviet dominance in Europe as a military and economic alliance, which eventually grew into a genuine federation governed from Stockholm.
- Baathism was far more successful, without the West to prop up the Arab monarchies. Rival Baathist regimes established themselves in Egypt and Syria, eventually uniting into two competing Baathist federations. They've patched up their differences in recent years.
- In response to the Baathist uprising, the Moroccans started backing Arab monarchies throughout North Africa, and were in turn backed by the French. The Moroccans have since become a major power in North Africa.
- Many European colonial governments remained in place as decolonization occurred, many of which declared unilateral independence and established local dictatorships. Those regimes that survived were eventually backed by South Africa.
- The Republic of the Two Congos acts as an arsenal for native African democracies, opposing the South Africans and their European puppet regimes. The nationalist regime in Australia eventually joined South Africa's efforts, with a grandiose plan to create a proper successor to the British Empire.
- Uganda is under the control of Idi Amin's successor, who still claims to be the King of Scotland and the ruler of the British Empire, among other things.
- The Nationalists win the Chinese Civil War, but aren't powerful enough to maintain control of more peripheral parts of China. They did become the largest economy in Asia in the 1970s and are the second most powerful economy now, with concerns that they will eventually eclipse America.
- The Chinese Communists managed to take control of Manchuria after the Japanese surrender. They remain a thorn in China's side, and committed Maoists.
- Siam was ignored during the end of WWII, and just made separate peace agreements with the exhausted Allies. Siam has since become a major regional power, opposed by the rise of Indonesia-Malaya.
- The Americas are the most stable part of the world, protected by an America that is abiding by a new Monroe Doctrine. The United States is the world's most powerful economy, but has no interest in intervening outside of the Americas.
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Chana is implied to come from a timeline that shares, at least vaguely, the liberalistic/democratic values of the average viewers, and reacts to regimes in gross violation of those basic principles accordingly. I feel like it adds character to the story, and makes it feel more realistic.
I don't have a problem with him having opinions on the regimes he's writing about, or even letting bits of that opinion slip through - I just feel like he shouldn't do so while interviewing the subject. It's one thing to express doubt about a system in his book, its another to do so while interviewing the leader of that country. Ultimately, though, its just a minor annoyance and I'm mostly very happy with this.
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
I'm glad you've liked this.
It's absolutely true that Professor Chana has a bias, like most academics he strives to be non-biased and present nothing less than the truth, but he isn't always successful.
He was born and raised in OTL Paraguay in a deeply authoritarian universe, one of the relatively few where the planet was unified prior to contact with the Nutshell. As a young, illiterate farm laborer in an unimportant, rural part of the world he was able to wander through a portal to the Nutshell when they first appeared before the government could take control of the portals and prevent unauthorized entry. Once on the other-side he was forbidden from returning, and came to realize just how much he didn't know (and how much of what he did was lies). Chana managed to find opportunities for education, eventually gaining acceptance to a prestigious university in New Misr.
He is strongly opposed to what he regards as authoritarianism or violations of human rights- of course not everyone would agree to his views of authoritarianism or human rights.
I'm glad you've liked this.
It's absolutely true that Professor Chana has a bias, like most academics he strives to be non-biased and present nothing less than the truth, but he isn't always successful.
He was born and raised in OTL Paraguay in a deeply authoritarian universe, one of the relatively few where the planet was unified prior to contact with the Nutshell. As a young, illiterate farm laborer in an unimportant, rural part of the world he was able to wander through a portal to the Nutshell when they first appeared before the government could take control of the portals and prevent unauthorized entry. Once on the other-side he was forbidden from returning, and came to realize just how much he didn't know (and how much of what he did was lies). Chana managed to find opportunities for education, eventually gaining acceptance to a prestigious university in New Misr.
He is strongly opposed to what he regards as authoritarianism or violations of human rights- of course not everyone would agree to his views of authoritarianism or human rights.
That makes sense. It tends that most of his subjects tend to have vaguely similar backgrounds to him, in the sense many fled authoritarian regimes.
Just curious, are we ever going to see Mr.Chana's world, or the world with New Misr?
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
At some point I plan to do Chana's world, as for the Nutshell I wrote a NaNoWriMo about it years ago, it's not exactly high literature but you can find it here;
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...is-like-big-game-hunting-my-nanowrimo.218011/
I'm glad you've liked this.
It's absolutely true that Professor Chana has a bias, like most academics he strives to be non-biased and present nothing less than the truth, but he isn't always successful.
He was born and raised in OTL Paraguay in a deeply authoritarian universe, one of the relatively few where the planet was unified prior to contact with the Nutshell. As a young, illiterate farm laborer in an unimportant, rural part of the world he was able to wander through a portal to the Nutshell when they first appeared before the government could take control of the portals and prevent unauthorized entry. Once on the other-side he was forbidden from returning, and came to realize just how much he didn't know (and how much of what he did was lies). Chana managed to find opportunities for education, eventually gaining acceptance to a prestigious university in New Misr.
He is strongly opposed to what he regards as authoritarianism or violations of human rights- of course not everyone would agree to his views of authoritarianism or human rights.
Hm, I should save that militaristic Paraguay for last, then.
Now that looks interesting. Been looking forward to this one for a while just because of the name.
Damnit, why did you have to include a link?
I'm not complaining, it just seems that I always find the interesting new stuff at two in the morning, and its beginning to get annoying.
Also, Guatemala Inc. does look good.
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