Interesting AH ideas that aren't commonly used
- Thread starter lerk
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McPherson
Banned
This caught my eye, but it is kind of difficult to develop.
Neither nation has much of a navy in 1889, nor much of a merchant fleet. Both are nascent imperialist powers.
The Apia typhoon was a small event in the burgeoning Pacific competition among the European states in the Western Pacific, with the race to carve up China in the 1880s heating up (A decade in which France is especially active.)
It cannot be a spark point in isolation. The Americans have their eyes on other interests. Although the Spanish German connection is overlooked in a lot of historical treatments of the era.
So...
This conflict could ignite as a small naval brushfire war in the Pacific with German commerce raiders and American "peace cruisers" going after each other's merchant marines and raiding each other's outposts and flare into something serious as a premature Spanish American war suddenly spirals out of it. (Both want Guam.) Then we have the French sitting over in Indo China with a still sizeable Pacific presence as late as 1890 and the Philippines are in worse shape in 1890 than in 1898. It is still Bismark and Kaiser Bill I, not Bill II and his collection of advisors, but Germany was not too light on the feet with Morrocco, and the Egyptians question, so the opportunity to really torque off Washington and Paris is quite butterfly possible. And France is always on the lookout for anti-German allies. OOPs.
Both Germany and the US could build quickly, both in that era are technological innovators, and it would be an interesting PoD to see the world war that eventually results.
McPherson
Banned
Actually I do know a bit of Philippine history. Racism and tribalism, which extended over to dialectal prejudice, was a constant problem for the Spanish and it bedeviled the Americans, too. Upon Independence the Philippines Republic only had two real shots at a lingua Filipina, or a universal national language. It has to be either English or Spanish. Either choice, as you must know, is fraught with enormous cultural problems.
If this developed in this manner, it would be difficult to imagine that the UK, Russia and Japan would sit on the sidelines for long. Sooner or later someone would sink the wrong the ship or someone would get ambitious when they see an opportunity to steal the spoils.
McPherson
Banned
Exactly, which is why I have no interest in opening that can of worms. I have an ongoing with the limited Southwest Pacific Ocean Area with the MacArthur / Curtin circus, CinCPAC politics and a host of other butterflies that go all the way over to the Battle Of Narvik's impact on the Battle of Savo Island and the torpedo tactics in use, (Those Marvelous Tin Fish). This (^^^) is an even worse nightmare to ATL, since the technological PoDs are still in open flux and no-one has quite developed the all steel big gun armored battleship as the late ne plus ultra 19th century means of decisive war-making it will become in the 1890s until it is rendered futile by torpedo and plane in the late 1930s.
The naval butterflies are too big.
At the same time, depicting the diverse cast that made up the Pre-Dreadnoughts would be fun as every nation had a different naval philosophy.
McPherson
Banned
I can think of a limited deep time historical event that would be doable and not too ASB. There was an asteroid that cracked the Earth about 35 million years ago that helped form Chesapeake Bay. Suppose it missed? The geography pre-impact suggests that the land between Maryland and Virginia would be a flat alluvial fertile plain, with a barrier shield much like North Carolina today if the Bay had not been blasted open. Think about what that means to American seapower? Move the centers of it north to New England, obviously. Not much else has to change, except Yorktown becomes a lot more complicated, both ships and battles. And the American civil war becomes harder for the Confederates.
Germany goes Brandenburg and the Americans go Holland and Katahdin much earlier, we'll get to see if the Indianas get built at all, or if it is the Brooklyns that slide down the weighs. I do think Bradley Fiske would be a huge butterfly.
Driftless
Donor
Earlier you'd alluded to the whole can-o-worms connected to politics and technology change in the 1890's to 1910's range. Throw in the technology dead-ends the US invested time and treasure in: double-stacked turrets and the pneumatic dynamite gun. With the home-front politics of the era, what POD would shift the US from low freeboard coastal defense ship mindset? The Iowa, New York, and Brooklyn were the best of the blue water lot on the USN list. In a naval building race, who commits more effort and treasure into more productive innovations like turbine propulsion, continuous aim & fire, and eventually multiple big guns (as fire control improves)?
McPherson
Banned
The US catches fire. Google Bradley Fiske.
Short explanation. Prior to the Manifest Destiny Republicans (Roosevelt Wing of the American Republican party) the US Congress was an isolationist lot with an aversion to a blue water navy, which they correctly saw as an invitation to internationalism, imperialism and all the attendant evils of colonialism. In this political environment, the American navy was more or less seen as a mobile coast defense force. The creation of the Flying Squadron during the Spanish American War and even such odd outliers like the Endicott coast defense program and the invention of the Howell torpedo show the "political" influence on the practical American navy as it oriented toward monitors, and coast defense ships. It is a misread of American history, especially of her naval history to suggest that they, the USN, went all Mahan all the time in 1886. It took the Spanish American War, a panicked New England delegation and McKinley being assassinated to bring all the politics together to make the Great White Fleet possible. The thought of Brandenbergs off the New England coasts shelling New York and Boston in 1891, though, and it is all over but the rolling of armor plate and the laying of keels. Congress will spend that money like water and buy what the navy wants.
Technology...
Bradley Fiske is the great telemerist of the American navy. Start with his navigation aid and extrapolate into something like a fire control system. America by 1890 is the world leader in analog card punch and cam controlled differential calculator systems. She has a full decade jump on Great Britain. War unfortunately has proven a great technological driver. So, just off the top of my head, stereo-coincidence direct lay gunsights with cam-operated correct lead ballistic analog computers. Anything that automates the gun-lay out to 8,000 meters gives a huge American range advantage. The shift from the Howell to the Whitehead torpedo as the Americans look desperately for some way to neutralize German naval artillery superiority and someone remembers that you can close cycle a Brayton engine or at least snort off of it is another PoD. The result is heavy metal versus grunge rock or something like the Kaiser's floating behemoths having to beware of American submarines if they approach the American coasts. And if you look closely at the USS Brooklyn and the USS New York, one notices that in the armored cruisers, the Americans have gone all one uniform caliber centerline and wing main armament a decade before Dreadnought.
But... those are just the preliminary butterflies. There is seizing bases, arranging allies, fudging the politics (See US Congress above.), arranging coal, buying off the Russians, diplomacy with Japan, arranging bribes in Madrid, working things out with Paris, on the American side, and suddenly if I were Bismark, things do not look too good. THIS is why Apia actually never exploded. Those guys back then may not known all that we know now, but they knew enough not to be too stupid. Benjamin Harrison may have been a fool when it came to the American Navy, but his Secretary of the Navy was not. Grover Cleveland, who built the foundation of Mister McKinley's navy, was not a fool either. The Apia disaster was actually the PoD in OTL for the Spanish American War. The USN realized it needed better bases for the Umzug über den Pazifik.
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Maybe some Iberian Muslim rulers employ a "Varangian" guard out of Norse people who in turn convert and have their own distinct culture some even returning to their native lands living a lifestyle of mixed culture backgrounds.
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Alternate Human species (Neanderthals are obviously a possibility), surviving Dinosaurs, a Venus that was not struck by a giant space rock and was habitable, slightly different continental drift, etc. This is foremost geological and zoological and anthropology, with the Kings and Battles histories as a result of that (if there even is something comparable to a King or Battle). That's the hard part. It's not so much "What does Spain do in the Age of Discovery if the Americas were divided by a narrow sea strait due to a slightly altered Ice Age" as much as that sea strait and the impact it has since it would mean no Spain, or any other as-is-history since geography and weather patterns would have butterfly effects. Deep Time is basically the view of Earth existing as an entity people happen to live on if they can manage it, and with the Earth having no conscious regard for people. It's deep, it can be a pain, but it is a ripe area to discuss as much as we can discuss; we can't determine infinity, but we can try to figure out what we can.
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Deep time should be allowed in before 1900 imo and the butterfly fanatics are welcome to found their own site. "What would spain do in the age of discovery if the americas were two continents?" is imo a pefectly legitimite AH question.
McPherson
Banned
Ugh. Chaos theory.
The problem is that when you scale the butterfly up, the chances of being able to postulate a quantum observer vanishes to close to zero.
As smacking a giant rock into the Moon would be more than enough to wipe humanity out, or a volcano burping wrong [cough "Yellowstone" cough] one has to pick and choose the events in deep time that can be believability modulated and survivable. The situation I picked is small enough, and limited impact (literally) to make a recognizable history template with just one geological or geographic disjoint that can be managed. (Still incredibly complex. Example... The Americans will be speaking a more Germanic English... Yeah, from space rock to Pennsylvanians speaking Germanized English, but I could probably do it.)
YMMV. And it should; my approach is strictly based on my understanding of how difficult it is to chart a course where for example Spain does not exist: means China does not exist for me either. The idea of a channel in the isthmus of Panama could and should have Gobi plateau weather and human migration implications... Anyway, limit the main butterfly effect and the chaos it generates is my preferred approach. It is perfectly legitimate to use any ATL approach that works for the person who employs it.
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The USA shifts to adopt a form of proportional representation in the period 1890-1950, and it becomes the national norm in all elections, leading perhaps to a quasi-proportional Presidential election system as well.
A specific opportunity exists, I suspect. From late in the 19th century to well into the 20th, into the 1940s in fact, momentum existed in the form of cities adopting a PR system for city councils and the like. The analysis of the rise, and more to the point, near total fall, of this movement tends by consensus to assume it was inherently a sideshow, but I think it could have gone otherwise quite plausibly. I suspect that part of the problem that caused the movement to stagnate and start falling, really put paid to by the Cold War sentiment and very disingenuous campaigns in favor of returning to first past the post as the patriotic option, related to the form of PR adopted. The Single Transferable Vote system was the OTL model.
I suggest a different model might have sustained the momentum, jumped to electing state legislatures, and thus put pressure on changing how the House and ultimately even the US Senate was elected. If it could go that far then I think the process would eventually at some opportunity go to completion with an Amendment or two mandating the alternate system for the House and even an adapted quasi-proportional system preserving the equality of all states in the Senate as well, and thus perhaps lay the groundwork for elimination of the current state EV system for electing the President in favor of a more directly democratic and national system.
Specifically, I for one find STV to be a bit strange and confusing in the manner it might achieve a truly proportional representative body. Perhaps I could get to like it, but analyses suggest that PR did not achieve the great increases in voter turnout and general engagement PR advocates predicted by its nature, showing statistically that turnout was largely unaffected. (What did happen under PR was a great improvement of demographic representation, with African Americans and other minorities appearing on governing bodies they had hitherto been excluded from). I suggest though that maybe voters were indeed put off by STV's complexities and obscure workings, but that there was a countervailing tendency for them to feel more engaged indeed, and the two factors cancelled in general outcome.
What then if there were an alternative approach to PR that seemed simpler and more transparent in its workings? Might we not then see more momentum and enthusiasm for switching over and taking it farther? Furthermore, I gather that if STV is going to enable a proportional outcome, it is by means of creating large districts which elect many officers, so a city council of say 50 would be elected in 5 districts each electing ten councilors instead of 50 districts each electing one. This may or may not work well for a city (I dislike any system calling itself proportional that subdivides the electorate like that, a truly proportional system should include the whole electorate in arriving at proportionality) but it is a bit awkward to adapt to say a state legislature, and breaks down completely trying to apply it to Congress.
In my proposed alternate system, the philosophy is that one creates just half as many districts as there are offices. (I actually then say and add one more office, to make the total odd, but that is not strictly necessary). Then people vote as in familiar FPTP for a single candidate in their district, but in addition to selecting a single FPTP plurality winner in each district, their votes are then tallied by party as well. Each candidate they could vote for is also a candidate for a party (and I would make due and flexible provision for independent candidates to form meaningful coalitions with others so as to capture votes across the city or state or nation as well) and out of the larger total number of seats to win, the parties are assigned these proportionally. I strongly urge using Hamilton's system as the most inclusive. Then, to make up the roster of all seats a party has won, the strongest vote winners in the districts where their party did not win the plurality race are taken in order of total number of votes each got, so that the parties are each represented in the body by the candidates who polled the strongest for that party. Thus they will tend to come from locations that are particularly strong in supporting that party.
I happen to have done a case study based on Michigan in 2012 where I can discuss how the outcome would look down to the names and parties of the legislators from each district. If this AH idea sparks any interest, or someone wants to discuss it by PM or in Chat, I would be quite pleased to. It would help illustrate reasons why I think the outcome would be pleasing to large minorities and yet "feel" more like normal American FPTP in process and some aspects of outcome, such as an attachment of specific office holders to specific districts. But I forego it for now to stick to the ATL proposal.
Being district related, transitioning say a state legislature is a matter of either doubling the size of the body (thus doubling the number of representatives per citizen) or consolidating two former districts into one, and then proceeding much as before.
Being proportional, the evils done by misapportionment of districts (a flagrant problem in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century before SCOTUS finally cracked down on it) and by gerrymandering are largely wiped out; one way or another groups of voters who are numerous enough to merit a few representatives will be able to be heard. Therefore the process of attempting to draw right sized and fair districts is much relaxed; arbitrary methods that are simple can be used without doing harm.
-----
For purposes of ATL development then I propose that in the late 19th century, major reform societies and leagues that campaigned for proportional city government adopted a system like this instead of STV, and cities that OTL went over to STV used this system instead. And that instead of a push in terms of turnout and engagement, the cities that adopt it experience a significant rise in voter participation. Furthermore, overall the form of government of these cities is remarkably improved, and reformers in other cities who either never went PR at all OTL or did so later do it sooner and more, so it becomes increasingly normal across many regions for cities and towns to be run in this way.
Gradually the pressure is on, especially in the early 1910s, for some states to adapt their legislatures to use the same form, some doubling their legislature size, others consolidating their districts, and after transition the majority of these states have good experiences with the outcomes; citizens feel they have better options and are better connected to state government.
Thus they start to look beyond, in large states with high numbers of Congress members apportioned to them anyway, to consider electing their Congress delegations in the same way, so that half are elected in districts twice the size of before and the other half plus one when the number is odd make the partisan proportion of the total delegation match as much as the size of the delegation allows.
By the Great Depression a majority of states have gone proportional, a majority of the House is elected proportionally state by state (this is already being recognized as imperfect yet a big improvement on before) and there is a movement to mandate a form of the system for all states, integrating the whole national popular vote, which requires an Amendment of course.
FDR or some other butterflied champion of the majority who enjoys massive support either wants this reform themselves or is forced by the expediencies of building a *New Deal alliance to champion it, and shepherds it through the adoption process.
By this time a reform of the Senate, perhaps demonstrated on a local scale in some states, is also in the works and this too passes.
WWII elections are carried out under the new national system, and postwar there are a number of new third parties that win small but consistent shares, the postwar political order is thus transformed. The Cold War involves an organized movement to try to push back and restore FPTP, and has some success in some places, but cannot overturn the amended form, the courts come to recognize it as more properly democratic and republican than going back to FPTP and frown on that more and more, and by the 1960s the transition is irreversible. Conservatives often lament it but talking about trying to reverse it is like talking about abolishing Social Security or eliminating the income tax or minimum wage, extreme radical talk; the vast majority are adapted to it and take it as normal and inevitable.
A specific opportunity exists, I suspect. From late in the 19th century to well into the 20th, into the 1940s in fact, momentum existed in the form of cities adopting a PR system for city councils and the like. The analysis of the rise, and more to the point, near total fall, of this movement tends by consensus to assume it was inherently a sideshow, but I think it could have gone otherwise quite plausibly. I suspect that part of the problem that caused the movement to stagnate and start falling, really put paid to by the Cold War sentiment and very disingenuous campaigns in favor of returning to first past the post as the patriotic option, related to the form of PR adopted. The Single Transferable Vote system was the OTL model.
I suggest a different model might have sustained the momentum, jumped to electing state legislatures, and thus put pressure on changing how the House and ultimately even the US Senate was elected. If it could go that far then I think the process would eventually at some opportunity go to completion with an Amendment or two mandating the alternate system for the House and even an adapted quasi-proportional system preserving the equality of all states in the Senate as well, and thus perhaps lay the groundwork for elimination of the current state EV system for electing the President in favor of a more directly democratic and national system.
Specifically, I for one find STV to be a bit strange and confusing in the manner it might achieve a truly proportional representative body. Perhaps I could get to like it, but analyses suggest that PR did not achieve the great increases in voter turnout and general engagement PR advocates predicted by its nature, showing statistically that turnout was largely unaffected. (What did happen under PR was a great improvement of demographic representation, with African Americans and other minorities appearing on governing bodies they had hitherto been excluded from). I suggest though that maybe voters were indeed put off by STV's complexities and obscure workings, but that there was a countervailing tendency for them to feel more engaged indeed, and the two factors cancelled in general outcome.
What then if there were an alternative approach to PR that seemed simpler and more transparent in its workings? Might we not then see more momentum and enthusiasm for switching over and taking it farther? Furthermore, I gather that if STV is going to enable a proportional outcome, it is by means of creating large districts which elect many officers, so a city council of say 50 would be elected in 5 districts each electing ten councilors instead of 50 districts each electing one. This may or may not work well for a city (I dislike any system calling itself proportional that subdivides the electorate like that, a truly proportional system should include the whole electorate in arriving at proportionality) but it is a bit awkward to adapt to say a state legislature, and breaks down completely trying to apply it to Congress.
In my proposed alternate system, the philosophy is that one creates just half as many districts as there are offices. (I actually then say and add one more office, to make the total odd, but that is not strictly necessary). Then people vote as in familiar FPTP for a single candidate in their district, but in addition to selecting a single FPTP plurality winner in each district, their votes are then tallied by party as well. Each candidate they could vote for is also a candidate for a party (and I would make due and flexible provision for independent candidates to form meaningful coalitions with others so as to capture votes across the city or state or nation as well) and out of the larger total number of seats to win, the parties are assigned these proportionally. I strongly urge using Hamilton's system as the most inclusive. Then, to make up the roster of all seats a party has won, the strongest vote winners in the districts where their party did not win the plurality race are taken in order of total number of votes each got, so that the parties are each represented in the body by the candidates who polled the strongest for that party. Thus they will tend to come from locations that are particularly strong in supporting that party.
I happen to have done a case study based on Michigan in 2012 where I can discuss how the outcome would look down to the names and parties of the legislators from each district. If this AH idea sparks any interest, or someone wants to discuss it by PM or in Chat, I would be quite pleased to. It would help illustrate reasons why I think the outcome would be pleasing to large minorities and yet "feel" more like normal American FPTP in process and some aspects of outcome, such as an attachment of specific office holders to specific districts. But I forego it for now to stick to the ATL proposal.
Being district related, transitioning say a state legislature is a matter of either doubling the size of the body (thus doubling the number of representatives per citizen) or consolidating two former districts into one, and then proceeding much as before.
Being proportional, the evils done by misapportionment of districts (a flagrant problem in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century before SCOTUS finally cracked down on it) and by gerrymandering are largely wiped out; one way or another groups of voters who are numerous enough to merit a few representatives will be able to be heard. Therefore the process of attempting to draw right sized and fair districts is much relaxed; arbitrary methods that are simple can be used without doing harm.
-----
For purposes of ATL development then I propose that in the late 19th century, major reform societies and leagues that campaigned for proportional city government adopted a system like this instead of STV, and cities that OTL went over to STV used this system instead. And that instead of a push in terms of turnout and engagement, the cities that adopt it experience a significant rise in voter participation. Furthermore, overall the form of government of these cities is remarkably improved, and reformers in other cities who either never went PR at all OTL or did so later do it sooner and more, so it becomes increasingly normal across many regions for cities and towns to be run in this way.
Gradually the pressure is on, especially in the early 1910s, for some states to adapt their legislatures to use the same form, some doubling their legislature size, others consolidating their districts, and after transition the majority of these states have good experiences with the outcomes; citizens feel they have better options and are better connected to state government.
Thus they start to look beyond, in large states with high numbers of Congress members apportioned to them anyway, to consider electing their Congress delegations in the same way, so that half are elected in districts twice the size of before and the other half plus one when the number is odd make the partisan proportion of the total delegation match as much as the size of the delegation allows.
By the Great Depression a majority of states have gone proportional, a majority of the House is elected proportionally state by state (this is already being recognized as imperfect yet a big improvement on before) and there is a movement to mandate a form of the system for all states, integrating the whole national popular vote, which requires an Amendment of course.
FDR or some other butterflied champion of the majority who enjoys massive support either wants this reform themselves or is forced by the expediencies of building a *New Deal alliance to champion it, and shepherds it through the adoption process.
By this time a reform of the Senate, perhaps demonstrated on a local scale in some states, is also in the works and this too passes.
WWII elections are carried out under the new national system, and postwar there are a number of new third parties that win small but consistent shares, the postwar political order is thus transformed. The Cold War involves an organized movement to try to push back and restore FPTP, and has some success in some places, but cannot overturn the amended form, the courts come to recognize it as more properly democratic and republican than going back to FPTP and frown on that more and more, and by the 1960s the transition is irreversible. Conservatives often lament it but talking about trying to reverse it is like talking about abolishing Social Security or eliminating the income tax or minimum wage, extreme radical talk; the vast majority are adapted to it and take it as normal and inevitable.
Not sure if I already brought this up...
WI: Vince McMahon buys The Arena Football League in the 90s.
WI: Vince McMahon buys The Arena Football League in the 90s.