Another America: A Map and Graphic Setting

[Keperry]

Yes, it's another thread of maps and graphics in an AH setting based around North America! I've been making maps and flags and heraldry in this setting for quite some time so I figured I might as well jump on the bandwagon and make a thread, which will hopefully also inspire me to keep making more maps. I hesitate to actually call it a timeline because it's more of the working backwards, based on rule of cool more than plausibility, loose interpretation of the butterfly effect school of AH. Divergences take place from around ~1600 onward and have had the effect of making a more politically divided, multilingual, and multicultural North America. I'm also working on elaborating Central and South America and possibly the rest of the world beyond that.

(world map subject to constant change)

 

[Keperry]

Here's the original map of North America as a whole that started this whole thing:

However that's become outdated, here's a map of North America up to date to the current version of the TL:

 

[Keperry]

The United American Provinces were formed as a merger of the colonies of New Netherland and New Sweden and the native Iroquois League, and as a continuation of the Dutch republican government of the United Provinces after it was replaced by a monarchy in Europe. In the following decades it became a powerhouse in industry and trade and also benefited from its long-standing alliance with Acadia. Today the UAP is one of the most populous and prosperous nations in North America (disproportionately to its geographic size), as well as one of the most diverse - in addition to the founding populations of Dutch, Swedish, and Iroquois (the UAP is of course officially trilingual), as a beacon for persecuted groups and other immigrants it has become home to large communities of Germans, Afro-Virginians, English Quakers, Sephardic Jews, Javans, Caribbean and South American creoles, and more - although while tolerance and multiculturalism are celebrated in flourishing cosmopolitan cities like Nieuw Amsterdam (financial center of North America), Bronstad (seat of the North American Community), and Kristina (continuing to assert itself as a hub of Swedish-language culture), a nationalist backlash is growing in the struggling interior regions, hit hard by deindustrialization and the decline of coal.

(this map is slightly out of date as per the QBAM master map; for a more in-date version (which I may get around to actually making and replacing this one with at some point) delete Nieuw Finland, separate Adirondack as its own province, change Acadia to Canada, and straighten out some of the borders)

 

[Keperry]

Between Spaniards and other European colonists, Africans (both Spanish slaves and British and French maroons), and of course the native peoples, Florida developed a distinct triracial creole culture and much of the population is of mixed descent. However, it was still dominated by the white elite for most of its history even after independence in 1821, until the Centennial Revolution of 1921 brought into power a left-wing regime. The Populists soon came into conflict with the right-wing regime of neighboring Virginia, culminating in the Virginian Civil War of 1964-1972 in which Florida intervened extensively, most notably by supporting the Gullah Liberation Army (the core of which was the Afro-Virginian diaspora in Florida), allowing them to carve out an autonomous region (and de facto sphere of Floridian influence) within Virginia. However, the ruling party was left weakened by the war and eventually accepted free multi-party elections in 1987, beginning Florida's transition to democracy, which has been largely successful other than the constant issue of corruption. In recognition of this, Florida was admitted to the North American Community in 1994 - while it is one of the poorest members it is still wealthier than most Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. The free travel that has come along with this has allowed the Floridian tourism industry to flourish.

Worth noting are the Autonomous Nations in the northwest, whose sovereignty has been respected by the Floridian government in exchange for guarding the border (and for internal political support). They have a great deal of political autonomy (still sovereign while the other provinces are just administrative units) and influence (they have veto power over matters that affect them and tend to vote in blocs so politicians are eager to curry their favor), and remain culturally and linguistically distinct. However they also tend to lack in economic opportunity compared to the rest of the country, fueling internal migrations to tourist areas and major cities like San Agustin and Pensacola (between which the capital moved for decades before settling in its original location, the former).

(map out of date per QBAM version: northern border now follows OTL Tennessee's southern border, Chicaza region moved south, Seminol region added in far south, Acadia now Louisiana)

 

[Keperry]

The arms of the Commonwealth of New England, including the arms of its five founding provinces (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Nova Scotia) as well as the pine tree, pine branches, and stag's head representing the country as a whole, the lion and unicorn representing its British heritage, and St Edward's Crown representing the continued dominion of the British monarchy.

The flag of the Dominion of Columbia, with pinecone, beaver, and trident representing its forests and seas.

 

[Keperry]

This is from several iterations ago so it's not quite up to date but the general idea of civil strife in New Brunswick between Anglophones and Francophones remains applicable.

 

[Keperry]

Current version map!

 

[Keperry]

Wiki entry and infobox for the Virginian Civil War!

 

[Keperry]

And here's South America.

The northeast coast is largely former plantation colonies (Suriname and Evenaar of the Netherlands, Guyana and Maragnan of France, Trinidad of Britain). Palmares was formed by escaped slaves and unlike OTL managed to survive here by playing the Dutch and Portuguese against each other / acting as a buffer between them. Brazil is still a monarchy, Grao-Para was part of it for a bit but split off again as an independent republic after the Cabanagem. The Spanish-speaking countries became independent similarly to OTL along with a successful Quechua and Aymara rebellion forming Antisuyu at the same time. Nueva Granada was able to balance between centralism and federalism better than in OTL and therefore stayed united. The opposite happened in Argentina and the unitarians of La Plata and the federalists of the Federal League of Free Peoples (also called Gaucheria) stayed separate; the latter admitted the Rio Grande and Juliana Republics after they rebelled against Brazil and therefore became bilingual. Paraguai started off as a Spanish speaking country but went even further with the embrace of Guarani than in OTL and eventually made it the sole official language,hence the different spelling. The British colonized Patagonia, which is now a bilingual English-Welsh (thanks to the Welsh settlement of Y Wladfa) Commonwealth realm, and helped the Mapuches of Araucania maintain their independence from Chile and La Plata as a buffer. Acre was contested by all of its neighbors during the turn-of-the-20th-century rubber boom and in the confusion ended up as an independent bilingual-Spanish-Portuguese republic. Chiloe Island, as the last royalist holdout in the Spanish American wars of independence, remains a Spanish overseas territory.

The two countries with the biggest populations and therefore the two main powers are Nueva Granada and Brazil, unofficial leaders of the Spanish and Portuguese blocs respectively. As in OTL the northeast is largely African-descended (and in some parts Asian-descended), the Andes are largely indigenous-descended, and thesouthern cone is largely European-descended (except for Araucania).

 

[Keperry]

Hey look, a city map!

Nieuw Amsterdam, capital of the United American Provinces and the province of New Netherland, and its satellite cities Breuckelen in Lange Eiland and Bergen in Pavonia, with sites of interests for visitors. The Nieuw Amsterdam area is a major economic and cultural center not just for the UAP but for North America and the world as a whole, and is renowned for its vibrancy and diversity.

 

[Keperry]

Flags! Some are from OTL (and therefore Wikimedia Commons) while others are from my abuse of my newfound power to use FlagMaker 2.0.

 

[Keperry]

 

[Keperry]

Labeled world map!

 

[Keperry]

Rough map of past colonizers. Important to bear in mind that it's anachronistic and not all of these places were colonies of the same empire at the same time (in particular most of the colonies in the Americas were independent by the time that most of Africa and Asia were colonized). In cases where a colony was held by multiple different empires, it's colored for the most influential one. Only holdings outside Europe are shown so many of the colonizers also held larger territories in Europe when they were colonizing. Lighter shades indicate protectorates, which had many different degrees of autonomy, and some of which (*cough* princely states in India *cough*) aren't shown.

 

[Keperry]

And here's a map of modern-day Virginia!

Virginia was founded as an English colony in the 17th century, and fought for and won its independence as the Commonwealth of Virginia towards the end of the 18th century. While nominally a democratic republic, the Commonwealth remained dominated by the white English planter elite at the expense of the poorer white majority (especially the Scotch-Irish descended settlers of the Appalachian backcountry) and the large minority of African-descended slaves even after the extension of universal manhood suffrage to whites and abolition of slavery in the mid-19th century. These divisions were inflamed by the 1921 Populist Revolution in Florida which provoked a backlash in Virginia as the elite sought to hold on to power while disenfranchised populations, particularly Afro-Virginians and Appalachians, agitated for a more egalitarian society.

These divisions culminated in the bloody Virginian Civil War of 1964-1972, which eventually saw the communist rebellion of the Worker's Army in Appalachia and the right-wing Provisional Government established by military coup to confront it defeated by an alliance of the neoliberal Coalition to Restore Democracy and separatist Gullah Liberation Army with international assistance. The postwar Constitution of 1976 ended the Commonwealth of Virginia and in its place established the new Confederation of Virginia, characterized by increased federalism, egalitarianism, and civilian control of the military, autonomy for the Gullah Free State, and participation in the North American integration process culminating in Virginia's accession to the North American Community in 1994.

In the aftermath of the civil war, Virginia's current stability and democracy are applauded as a success story, although deep fractures along racial, regional, and class lines remain and it continues to lag behind the rest of North America in many social and economic indicators. Despite its relative lack of economic clout, its culture (based on the blending of Anglo-Celtic and West African influences) has become quite influential across the rest of the continent in areas such as music, literature, and cuisine, to a significant degree because of the large Virginian diaspora (which saw its largest growth due to the war although many emigrated both before and after for economic and political reasons).

 

[Keperry]

And here's Australia!

The continent of Australia has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years but began to take its current shape in the 17th century when New Holland was discovered and named by Dutch navigators. Coastal outposts were established to protect the sea route to the Dutch East Indies while active settlement and colonization efforts on the west coast began in the late 18th century along with and in response to the British who established the penal colony of New Wales on the east coast and the French who colonized Terre Napoleon and Ile Dufresne (previously named Diemensland by the Dutch). The settler population of all three colonies grew steadily through the 19th century, aided by several gold rushes (while the indigenous population steadily declined).

Terre Napoleon was the first to become independent, breaking free from France during one of the latter’s many changes of government during the late 19th century and rechristening itself as the Republic of Napolia. Around the turn of the 20th century, the several British colonies united into the rather presumptuously named (much to the rest of the continent’s annoyance even to this day) federation of Australia as a British dominion while New Holland became a full constituent country of the crown of the Netherlands. Several decades later New Holland voted to become an independent republic, while Australia remains a Commonwealth realm sharing the British monarchy to this day.

New Holland and Napolia have similar population sizes while Australia has over twice that. All three countries have European majorities and smaller Aboriginal minorities; New Holland also has a substantial Indonesian population (forming pluralities in some of the northern provinces where Javanese is a co-official language) while Australia has East Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant minorities. The whole continent’s economy is substantially based on mining and agriculture (sheep in Australia, cattle in New Holland, wine in Napolia, wheat everywhere) as well as manufacturing. The main financial and cultural centers are Port Jackson, Batmania, Zwanenstad, Baudinville, and Peyroux.

 

[Keperry]

Here's a map of the United Kingdom, which in this timeline is a federation of its four OTL countries plus Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands (the latter two of which are now fully integrated parts of the UK rather than Crown Dependencies). While sharing a common monarchy and parliament at Westminster, each of its constituent states has its own parliament and ceremonial monarchy (eg, in Cornwall the monarch is simultaneously Duke/Duchess of Cornwall and King/Queen of the United Kingdom, and so on for the other states; however in Ulster the monarch is considered to be King of Ireland rather than Earl and in the Channel Islands the monarch is considered to be Duke of Normandy rather than Bailiff since those states are considered to be part of the Kingdom of Ireland and Duchy of Normandy respectively even though they're the only parts of those realms still in the UK). English is still the majority spoken language in every constituent country but their local native languages are a good deal more widely spoken than in OTL, with Gaelic and Welsh in particular benefiting from sharing a language with countries in the Americas.

 

[Keperry]

And while I'm posting things, I've retroactively decided that the map I made of the Middle East is part of this timeline too (which doesn't *really* make sense with any POD long before WW1 but I'm already standing atop a mountain of dead butterflies so whatever), so here it is!

The Ottoman Empire fell to nationalist revolutions by the Armenians, Kurds, Greeks, and Arabs; in the latter case Britain and France agreed to recognize the new monarchy of Hashemite Arabia, located in land they had been intending to colonize, in exchange for its ceding the territories along its Mediterranean coast as zones of influence and homelands for religious minorities - including one for the Jews, thus allowing Jewish migration and statehood to occur relatively peacefully. With no real Arab-Israeli conflict, less of a feeling of betrayal or anger at the West, and a strong Arab nation-state existing in the form of Hashemite Arabia, Nasser-style left-wing Arab nationalism never really took off, resulting in less internal political conflict in Arab countries and more Arab monarchies remaining in place.

A notable exception is Iraq, originally carved out by the British as a protectorate and granted to the Sunni al-Sabah dynasty of Kuwait who ruled over the Shia majority. Sectarian dissatisfaction resulted in a revolution overthrowing the monarchy and replacing it with a theocratic Islamic Republic supervised by Shia clerics, which fought a series of wars with Iran, Nejd, and the Trucial States in which each side tried and failed to claim the other's territory (Shia-majority Bahrain and Arab-majority Khuzestan for Iraq, access to the gulf coast for Nejd) and to change the other's government (Iran to restore the Iraqi monarchy, Iraq to replace Iran's increasingly secular monarchy - and while this was unsuccessful the pressure of the war did result in the Shah accepting democratizing reforms and Iran becoming a properly constitutional monarchy). Iraq remained a pariah state for several decades although in recent years relations have mostly normalized and Iraq has been allowed to rejoin the Middle Eastern community.

With the Saudis limited to Nejd, Wahhabism never became nearly as influential and religious extremism is much less widespread. On the other Ibadism has become more influential with the Imams of Oman retaining their independence from the Sultans of Muscat - and therefore retaining control over their oilfields. The Saudis' leading position on the Arabian peninsula has been taken by the Trucial States of Arabia, a fabulously wealthy league of oil-producing emirates such as Abu Dhabi and Qatar on the Gulf Coast, which exerts influence over the much poorer monarchies to its south and east. The Federation of South Arabia - essentially Aden and its hinterland - maintains strong ties with Britain.

Israel and Lebanon have likewise maintained strong ties to their former protectors in both Europe and Hashemite Arabia and are known for being diverse and prosperous democracies rather than being defined by conflict (Alawia has tended to lag slightly behind economically and has spent much of its time under strongman rule). Israel, despite tensions with the Arab minority, enjoys good relations with its neighbors (many of whom still have native Mizrahi Jewish populations). Due to the lack of a Palestinian refugee influx, Lebanon, while often chaotic, stayed just stable enough to avoid civil war and remain the "Paris of the Middle East". Hashemite Arabia has modernized and democratized in fits and starts and despite social, economic, and regional tensions through its history remains a center of the Arab and Islamic worlds, as the protector of the holy cities and self-proclaimed nation-state of the Arab people.

The patchwork of nation-states to the north of the Arab lands spent much of the middle of the twentieth century fighting ethnic-inspired border wars against each other as well as civil wars against various insurgencies but have stabilized since then. Turkey is still the largest and strongest of them, but still quite a bit weaker than in OTL, and with the Kemalists having lost the War of Independence, Turkey has no particular history of Western-facing secular nationalism or European aspirations.

Several areas are under international control, such as the International Straits Zone including Istanbul/Constantinople (smaller but more religiously and ethnically diverse than OTL) left over from the Ottoman collapse, the "corpus separatum" of the International City of Jerusalem (including Bethlehem) governed jointly by representatives of each of its three religions under international supervision, and the International Suez Canal Zone created as a result of the Sinai War between Egypt and Hashemite Arabia.

 

[Keperry]

Through two centuries of revolutions, wars both external and internal, and other upheavals that caused its membership to fluctuate severely through the years, the German Confederation has survived into the modern day evolving from its origins as a semi-feudal successor to the Holy Roman Empire into a modern political and economic union of German-speaking states headquartered in Frankfurt. Its seven full members share a number of political and cultural institutions and are joined together in a currency and customs union, while its five associate members (Bohemia, Carniola, and Banat with large German minorities, the former Prussian colony of Southwest Africa, distant but with a German majority, and reluctant-to-join Switzerland) are members of the Zollverein customs union without sharing the Bundsthaler currency. Some Confederal institutions also apply in the associate regions of Posen, formerly part of Prussia and now part of Poland, and Schleswig, part of Denmark, both of which have significant German populations. The Confederation also serves as an advisory power in the International Cities of Danzig (together with Prussia individually and Poland), Pressburg (together with Bohemia and Austria individually and Hungary), Trieste and Fiume (together with Carniola and Austria individually, Venice, Italy, and Croatia), and the International Zone of Amikejo (together with Rhineland individually, the Netherlands, Wallonia, and the Universal Esperanto Association). Despite occasional disagreements between its members, and accusations that it is just a mechanism for Prussia to dominate the rest, the German Confederation is largely considered a success and has inspired attempts to emulate it in other regions of Europe.

(This does change the official borders of the world map, which will be changed to match... eventually)

 

[Keperry]

Here's a map of the alternately colonized southern half of Africa - greater/surviving-er empires for the Dutch, Portuguese, Germans and Spanish, less British colonization, no Belgium, and greater use of native protectorates all around - including maps of languages showing both the Bantu languages, by group where applicable, and European languages (the background color is the most-spoken official/national language and the squares indicate additional official/national languages) giving a picture of which European powers colonized what, and by ethnicity, showing which states have significant African majorities under African governments, both traditional monarchies that survived the colonial era as protectorates or were revived after it and republics newly formed after independence, the multiracial states of Angola and Kenya (the latter of which has a large Indian population in addition to the African natives and European settlers), the apartheid states of Transvaal and Mocambique, the surviving Portuguese colony in Cabinda, the Sultanate of Zanzibar dominated by its Arab and Indian minorities, and the settler states of Capeland and Southwest Africa, with European majorities and African and mixed-race minorities, and Griqualand, with a mixed-race majority.

Fun(?) fact: in this timeline, talking about the "occupation of Gaza" refers to Mocambique. While recognized by the international community at large, Mocambique is not recognized by most African countries, who consider it to be illegally occupying the Republic of Gaza, homeland of the Tsonga people. (In contrast, due to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by its white minority to avert a transition to minority rule, Transvaal is unrecognized and considered an illegal regime by almost the entire international community, including all of its neighbors except Mocambique.)