Challenge: Build a Plausible Timeline to Explain This Map

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The challenge: provide a reasonable time-line that arrives at this geopolitical outcome c. 1900.

Clarifications:

1. Ignore the "new" continent in the Pacific. It doesn't exist, for the purposes of this timeline.

2. The burgundy polity in Anatolia, Thrace, and Egypt is the Byzantine Empire. The various small polities in the Levant are the Crusader States.

3. France must emerge as the leading world power, followed by Russian, then the British, although the latter would retain the world's largest navy.

4. The territory outlined in red is the Holy Roman Empire.
 
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Just some things to consider...

The Byzantine Empire's continued exisitence is going to affect both Europe and the Middle East drasticlly.

The same with the Holy Roman Empire... to say nothing of it's continued existance suggesting the Protestant Reformation didn't happen...

Which in turn will affect colinzation and immigration to the new world drasticlly... so you might not even see a United States such as today.
 
Absolutely.

Let me, I guess, try to offer a quick breakdown by region:

The British Isles

I presume it is the French who are to thank for Scotland's continuing independence, as much as any native military genius, which surely couldn't otherwise outweigh the superiority of English armies for quite so long.

The Germanies

I don't know what to do about the Germanies; is a north/south divide, as in OTL, even viable here?

We do know that the primary "players" for German allegiance are the French, the Swedes, the Austrians, the Poles, and the British. How viable is rump Prussia in this scenario?

The Italies

I'd envisioned that both the Piedmontese and Aragonese would be French allies, largely because of the military risk of doing otherwise.

Aragon and the Two Sicilies would be tied to Austria dynastically, but critical of Vienna's self-serving search for empire in northern Italy.

Iberia

Castille looks outward over the sea; the rest, toward the Mediterannean.

Perhaps the Portuguese crown decamped en masse to Brazil, turning Portugal into a reverse-dependency?

North America

The French elected not to trade Quebec for Guadaloupe.

The Confederacy won in 1862 at Antietam, then again after annexing the Mexican territories of Chihuahua and Sonora in the late 1870s. The key to victory in both cases was the recognition of Britain and France, which in the second instance provided naval assistance.

Walker established himself in Nicaragua and is effectively a Confederate client.

Africa

The high incidence of war in Europe and North America sent an enormous number of Europeans to Africa, South America, and Asia, by comparison with OTL.

Asia

I'd like a robust China capable of holding its own even against the Russians, at least for a time. Japan should be of approximately "normal" strength.
 
The Byzantine Empire's continued existence is going to affect both Europe and the Middle East drastically.

The Middle East, well and good. Europe, not so much. What's wrong with the map as it currently stands?

The same with the Holy Roman Empire... to say nothing of it's continued existance suggesting the Protestant Reformation didn't happen...
True enough. Might have to nix that. I was considering it largely as a curiosity. Something Napoleon hadn't eliminated.
 
The North/South divide in Germany was pretty much Protestant/Catholic, we still nixing that one or..?
 
1707 Act of Union does not happen
1710s Spain balkanizes during the the war of spanish succession.
1721 Sweden wins the Great North War. It annexs Norway and keeps the Baltic.
1763 France manages to keep Quebec.
Mid 1700s Sweden annexs Denmark, Iceland and Norway.
Poland does not get swollen up by its neighbors
French revolution and (Napoleonic wars) is butterflied away.
1806 HRE is not disolved. Eventually it becomes proto-EU for German states.
1861 Italy does not unite.
1850s China grants Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjang indepence, but it has de-facto control over Mongolia and Xinjang.
Greece gets Crimea after Crimean War. It also takes more Turkish lands
1863 South wins the Civil War.
1860s Russia does not sell Alaska to US.
1866 Austria wins againist Prussia and annexes Bavaria.
1870s Earlier westernized Japan defeats China and Russia (backed by France). It annexes Korea
1880s South annexs Northwestern Mexico. Scamble of Africa happens but France gets more land than OTL.
1890s Ottoman Empire collaspes. Serbia, Montenegro,Bulgaria and Romania becomes independent. Serbia gets Albania and Bulgaria gets Macedonia. Greece conquers all of Anatolia and parts of Egypt. European countries set up neo-crusader states. Arabs take over the rest. Boer States Survive.
 
North America

The French elected not to trade Quebec for Guadaloupe.

The Confederacy won in 1862 at Antietam, then again after annexing the Mexican territories of Chihuahua and Sonora in the late 1870s. The key to victory in both cases was the recognition of Britain and France, which in the second instance provided naval assistance.

Walker established himself in Nicaragua and is effectively a Confederate client.
I think it more likly that the US annexxed North Mexico in the Mex America war 1846
This allowed the CS to win the ACW.
 
I think it more likly that the US annexxed North Mexico in the Mex America war 1846
This allowed the CS to win the ACW.

What's the necessary connection?

Confederate annexation of Chihuahua and Sonora was to be the cassus belli that sparked the so-called Second Mexican War (actually the Second War Between the States).

The Confederacy was to win by virtue of exceeding fine generalship and the defensive advantage, blunting a Federal thrust across the Ohio River and then stopping a larger army group in northern Virginia through skillful employment of trench systems and fixed defenses.

The Federal government was also to be distracted by a Mormon uprising in Utah and Nevada; a Confederate column wrecking havoc in northern Arizona/New Mexico, and aggrivated assault on its merchant shipping and coastline by the French and British.

1850s China grants Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjang indepence, but it has de-facto control over Mongolia and Xinjang.

I'd say that Mongolia and Tibet are disputed between the Chinese and the British and Russians. China got the upper hand in Mongolia through direct and continued occupation. Xinjiang was invaded by Russia, and China otherwise has a precarious hold in the south of that territory, probably a legacy of the days of Yakub Beg.

1890s Ottoman Empire collaspes. Serbia, Montenegro,Bulgaria and Romania becomes independent. Serbia gets Albania and Bulgaria gets Macedonia. Greece conquers all of Anatolia and parts of Egypt. European countries set up neo-crusader states. Arabs take over the rest. Boer States Survive.

How could the Greeks accomplish so much? Wouldn't Russia stream into the gap?

This is one of the better explanations of why Europe looks the way it does, though. If the Ottomans were around, at some point, and the Byzantines were only just recently reestablished...
 
It appears to have ignored butterflies, it has the Byzantine empire and the Crusader states with the CSA and some kind of Quebecian state.
 
The seven years war wont happen if the Byzantine Empire survives ... butterflies man!

I'm still trying to contemplate a Byzantine Empire and Holy Roman Empire surviving and killing the Protestant Reformation, and the New World turning out mostly the same. :p
 
I'm still trying to contemplate a Byzantine Empire and Holy Roman Empire surviving and killing the Protestant Reformation, and the New World turning out mostly the same.

Why would that kill off the Protestant Reformation? The Latin and Greek churches were already sundered. The Holy Roman Empire, too, was still puttering around until Napoleon's time.

I envision that the Holy Roman Empire would be Austria's forum for provoking trouble in the Germanies, much to French chagrin.
 
Desert Journeyman, I have to say. It's a fun scenario and good for the game, but it's not very plausible timeline-wise. The non-collapse of a Byzantine Empire would 'butterfly' (simply put, the changes would mean that anyone who's parents were affected by the change wouldn't exist due to different sperm fertilizing the egg) everything. Even if we cast a butterfly net, it's not that plausible. Byzantium's non-collapse would mean no scholars flee it to Italy, meaning the Renaissance is very different. The Balkans would be different, because it would be unlikely that the Hapsburgs have gained so much territory in the Balkans. Including Hungary, which is not threatened by any Ottoman invasion.
Tamerlane is affected by the non-collapse of the Byzantines, if he exists. That means Mughals will probably be gone. That means a different India. That means a different British Empire. That means a different America. And so on and so forth.
 
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