But on the flip side, with Britain staying out of the CEW, their science fiction might be brighter...
Cinco de Mayo
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Tolkien just called, he’d like to know your location so he could beat the living daylights out of you (or at least give you a fireman “for the last time, I think Analogy like that is stupid and I had the idea in mind before the First World War!”
Partially true - he had his world in mind and many of the major cycles of the Silmarillion were in an embryoptic stage. But he didn't really start conceiving of LoTR until after the publication of the Hobbit (which famously sprung out of him suddenly coming up with the opening line one day), which was considerably post-war. Although, lord knows, you're oh so very right about his hatred of analogy.
Perhaps, in this ATL, his magum opus is more first or second age, rather than third age, in it's setting. Personally, I would LOVE to see him publish an extended version of the Children of Hurin in the ATL; though I suspect that that may not be optimistic enough (in fact, downright the opposite) to catch the public's imagination the way LoTR eventually did. Perhapse, in the Cinqo-verse, rather than one grand epic, Tolkein publishes a number of his stories as stand alone novels.
Also, considerin Tolkein's staunch Catholicism, as well as his stodgey conservativism and environmentalism, I wonder if he may not have become popular with different groups than in OTL (I'm suddenly imagining young, rebellious, environmentally concious conservative kids, reading Tolkein to prove their credentials. LOL) and what impact this will have on Fantasy as a genre.
The World in 1913
The World in 1913
(Special thanks to @CountofDooku for making this cleaner, sharper and more detailed version of the CdM map!)
With the dawning of 1913, the world is starting to feel the slowly rising tensions and bubbling issues of this uncertain new age. Most critically is in the United Kingdom, where both Ireland close to home and the jewel in its imperial crown, India, are starting to agitate definitively for, if not independence, then at least some kind of autonomy and Home Rule for themselves, with the government of Richard Haldane flummoxed between its pragmatism and the rigid reactionary stance of its Nationalist opposition. Meanwhile, on the European continent, the longstanding detente between France and Germany, and their respective allies, seems to be finding its first cracks, as rivalries abroad and close to home start to define the relationship after the economic binds fray in the wake of a deep depression in the early 1910s. Contests between the various Great Powers, a quartet that includes Russia, is most acute in the Orient, where the shockwaves of the rise of Japan, the independence of the Philippines and the spectacular, unprecedented European-sponsored bloodshed of the Chinese Revolution ripple out across Asia and its periphery in ways that will take decades to sort out.
But it is in the Americas that the eyes of European capitals turn first, as the tensions rising between an axis of the United States and Argentina and the Bloc Sud of the Confederate States, Mexico, Brazil and Chile becomes undeniable and looks for the first time credibly likely to plunge much of two continents into war. What is the trigger, they wonder? Is it little Uruguay, barely a spot on the map in the Old World's imagination but a passionate and critical sphere of contest between Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro? Will it be the need for a response to the Nicaragua Canal built by the United States, which threatens to completely upend the military and economic balance of the Hemisphere in Washington's favor? The ticking time bomb of the expiration of the Treaty of Havana between the sister republics, which guarantees American shipping access through the Confederate waters of the Chesapeake Bay and, more importantly, the Mississippi River? Or some combination of the three? Never before in the relations of the New World have so many points of disagreement, mapped out relatively neatly onto two competing coalitions with very different views of governance, liberty and even the right of men to not be owned as property, coalesced to demand an answer all at the same time - and the answers to these questions are likely not ones anyone will want to hear...
He can complain all he likes but it seems unarguable to me that his experiences in the trenches didn’t at least in some way influence his designs for the Third Age
Just curious, is the border between "Egypt" and "Libya" not exactly North-South, or is that a map artifact? Are there chunks of the Western Sahara not claimed? (and *how* is Britain controlling its Western Sahara colony (with help of the French or the Moroccans)
Who controls East Africa?, that isn't the UK color, but it doesn't look the same as Congo...
Who controls East Africa?, that isn't the UK color, but it doesn't look the same as Congo...
I had two questions as well.
1) I hadn't realized that Japan still controls Korea in this timeline (I had been under the impression they did not - though I'm not sure why). Hopefully the occupation is less ... vicious than in OTL.
2) What is going on in Agentine. There seems to be a dark burguny blob overlapping with the Argentine purple; unless I'm reading that wrong?
Western Sahara should be Spanish? East Africa is a UK region, mostly to keep France out. That looks like an artifact of the map, Egypt has been (somewhat) reintegrated into the OE’s hierarchy
Whoops, no Korea is fully independent
Argentina’s control of much of its south was purely de jure - that’s an artifact of the mapping tool, I believe
In regards to Argentina, my *assumption* was that these are the "different shades of the same color" used to indicate national posessions that aren't at full integration/rights with the country. See Confederate Oklahoma and Arizona.
Also, Alberta and Saskatchewan didn't spend any time as Territories iOTL, what causes them to do so iTTL? (and Canada never had a border between territories that was on the exact longitude of the OTL Saskatchewan Manitoba border through the arctic)
By 1920 at the earliest, per the 1900 agreement that concluded the Utah War. Hearst elected not to amend that for fear of derailing his agenda early on with something that controversial. Mormons are *very* unpopular, still, ITTL’s USA
speaking of south america, acre is pink, and it seems brazil and colombia haven't had the bogota treaty yet.Paraguay doesn't have all the chaco.
the uk has almost no colonies in africa.
Bogota treaty
the uk has almost no colonies in africa.
Bogota treaty
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From the original older map I worked as a basis I would claim the Western Sahara territory in the British color is like most of Nigeria and other regions more of a local Kingdom/ Protectorate under their political, economical and partially military control. So I would argue that these region is protected by the British against furhter French agression and ambitions in Western Sahara, but not directly controlled, or administrated in either way, more a ally or protectorate, that in my opinion would be best connected with by the British trough Morocco.
As for the Ottoman Empire, it follows pre-existing divisions between gained regions/ provinces, as well as some internal tribal/ Kingdom territories, while Egpt/ Sudan are split among the Arab/ Muslim and African Natice/ Christian areas.
Who is it that controls Taiwan? It looks somewhat French but of a vaguely different color. I guess that means Japan seizes it in the Central European War.
Like West Africa and most of Indochina it should be French Protectorate color, not a outright colony, I hope that's right.
It is French, more of a direct rule than Indochina but less of a direct control than, say, French West Africa.
France controls Hainan, too.
So Mexico has to either invade California directly or go through confederate territory to attack the US?
For some reason I didn’t realise that the border with California was the only direct route between the US and Mexico.
For some reason I didn’t realise that the border with California was the only direct route between the US and Mexico.
Correct. Which is why that part of the US, at least, won’t really be at a ton of risk of violence
Not quite, it’s just that it’s very difficult terrain for the CSA and to a much lesser extent Mexico to sustain any level of offensives and supply operations on but also an area where the US has a bad hand in trying to project power into remote corners of the enemy powers beyond isolated points of strategic value. There’ll be some overrepresentation of this part of the war due to certain POV books/characters but from a strategic standpoint there’s bigger fish to fry
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