Look to the West: Thread III, Volume IV (Tottenham Nil)!

[Thande]

I can just think how bored someone from TLL would be with our way names. 'World War One and World War Two?' they'd grumble, 'You had a decent name for the first one with the Great War or the the War to End All Wars. And why not call the latter something relevant, like the Genocide War or something?'

An interesting point, which of course ties back to the fact that what we call a war now is not necessarily what it was called at the time. Surprisingly enough the name "World War One" was rather pessimistically used not long after that war finished. And before that, the term 'Great War' had been used to describe the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As we all know, the name of the American Civil War would have been different if the South had won, and perhaps even if it didn't: it all comes down to how things are viewed. In this TL, the name Popular Wars didn't come about until long afterwards, and as for the Great American War...well, I'll leave that discussion for a future update. The point is that most of these names were given in retrospect.

And excellent update though. Far better than my tongue tied efforts to discuss military technology.

Thanks. Not that my understanding of it is that good, but hopefully none of this is too implausible. I just don't want to take the easy way out of making it exactly like OTL but with a few different names for things.

 

[Alex Richards]

Very interesting, though I really can't say much in relation to the difference with OTL (lack of knowledge on my part)

 

[Zaius]

Three updates in just over a week. You spoil us, Thande. (Feel free to continue).

And as for poetically-named wars, you've just outdone yourself.

 

[OwenM]

Very interesting. And I think I recognise the name and title of that historian....

 

[jmberry]

Did Sanchez really decide to psychoanalyze bobbing for apples?

 

[Roberto]

I love that "Vespa" will have such a different connotation ItTl.

 

[Thande]

Did Sanchez really decide to psychoanalyze bobbing for apples?

Sanchez is definitely the sort for whom a cigar is never just a cigar. It's clearly evidence of the great works that humanity can achieve when Catholic Hispanic Cubans, Protestant Anglo Carolinians and black African tobacco plantation slaves collaborate together I based his character on ideological historians from OTL, especially Marxists, who interpret everything through the prism of their pet theory.

I love that "Vespa" will have such a different connotation ItTl.

Indeed. Makes sense, though, as it means wasp (buzzing for the OTL scooter, a sting in the tail for the ATL gun). I was originally going to use the name for a warplane, but I got impatient

 

[Finn]

Oh, the latter half of the 19th century looks like it's going to be fun (for the readers, of course).

 

[Blair]

Devils Brew, that's awesome, and makes much more sense than "Molotov Cocktail" (unless your a Finn of course)

 

[Thande]

Devils Brew, that's awesome, and makes much more sense than "Molotov Cocktail" (unless your a Finn of course)

Well, I just wanted to do something different from the usual choice of still naming it after a political figure, just somebody else. Devil's Brew is a sardonic reference to Temperance/Prohibition rhetoric by jaded rebels, i.e. some of the more extreme rhetoric would imply a normal bottle of an alcoholic beverage was as dangerous as one of these improvised incendiary weapons.

One thing I've noticed with AH terminology is that people seem rather conservative in how they frame it - for instance, they come up with an alternative term for 'LASER' but their alternate term is also an acronym, when there's no particular reason why it would be. So I've deliberately tried to avoid that in TTL.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

I can just think how bored someone from TLL would be with our way names. 'World War One and World War Two?' they'd grumble, 'You had a decent name for the first one with the Great War or the the War to End All Wars. And why not call the latter something relevant, like the Genocide War or something?'

And excellent update though. Far better than my tongue tied efforts to discuss military technology.

The Soviets, at least, have The Great Patriotic War.


In terms of names changing, I remember vividly a picture in Dad's Britannica of warships steaming with the caption "European War 1939-"!!!!

 

[Beedok]

The Soviets, at least, have The Great Patriotic War.

The Russians also called 'The Great Game' the 'Tournament of Shadows' or something like that. Maybe the greater Russian influence on anglophones in TLL is the reason for the cooler names?

Also the reason the kid follows those fancy rules is because that's how you get a free apple. Break the rules and you get no free apples.

 

[Badshah]

The Russians also called 'The Great Game' the 'Tournament of Shadows' or something like that. Maybe the greater Russian influence on anglophones in TLL is the reason for the cooler names?

Also the reason the kid follows those fancy rules is because that's how you get a free apple. Break the rules and you get no free apples.

Honestly, the Tournament of Shadows just sounds beautiful.

ITTL, if colonial conflicts come up in the future, or if there are a series of them, I could imagine something like the 'Wars of the Savages' or something being used as the name; especially if Linnaeanism continues to have some influence in the future.

EDIT: "The Savage Wars"

 

[Petike]

[5] Courtenay is being a little anachronistic in his choice of naming terminology here, aided and abetted by the fact that nobody, then or now, is quite sure what to call the Austrian Hapsburg state in the years of Francis II’s reign.

Reminds me of the time when you told me you read a book by a British historian, who kept mentioning Austria-Hungary during the Napoleonic period.

I love that "Vespa" will have such a different connotation ItTl.

Verily, tis' amusing.

 

[OwenM]

Reminds me of the time when you told me you read a book by a British historian, who kept mentioning Austria-Hungary during the Napoleonic period.

Yes, but MrP (if it is he) seems less the type to do that willy-nilly.

 

[Analytical Engine]

Oh, how you do tease us, Mr Thande, with your extra wars that won't be posted about for absolutely ages...

I'm guessing the Pandoric War is either TTL's equivalent to the Russian Revolution/Civil War, when the UPSA (in whatever its borders will be at that point, plus some allies, too, probably) is turned into the Societist Combine, or the first major conflict between the Combine and (part of) what eventually becomes the Diversitarian alliance thingy, whatever it's called. Or the war that pushes the UPSA over the edge, making it turn into the Combine.

Anyway, one of those.

Gosh, the Great American War is going to be complicated. I had a feeling that the French would be drawn into it at some point, partially because there's been a note of French Tasmania being an Adamantine Republic during the late 19th Century. Assuming that has anything at all to do with the War, anyway - maybe a whole bunch of Adamantine types end up there, and break away from France because of some spat or other.

So, the Concordat - I'm guessing this will consist of the Confederation of Carolina, the Grand Duchy of Louisiana, and possibly California and/or other bits that break off from New Spain following/during/as a result of this revolt that's going to happen in Iberia. Maybe even Superia and their native allies will either join in, or at least declare independence whilst ENA is distracted.

Possibly the UPSA will sneek in and do some land-grabbing, or give (covert) support to breakaway areas of the ENS.

 

[Thande]

Reminds me of the time when you told me you read a book by a British historian, who kept mentioning Austria-Hungary during the Napoleonic period.

To be fair he only did it once, but it stuck out like a sore thumb to me. "The War of Wars" by Robert Harvey, about the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (now there's a different take on titling a war, as we were discussing above ). He also had this view that Pitt the Younger thought the French Revolution was absolutely amazing and only very reluctantly fought the French because they insisted on it, which seems a bit questionable.

In terms of names changing, I remember vividly a picture in Dad's Britannica of warships steaming with the caption "European War 1939-"!!!!

Tolkien's "The Notion Club Papers" was written in 1944 and set in 1986; he had to retrospectively refer to WW2 before it had been definitively named, and came up with "The Six Years' War" and "The Second German War" as possible names.

 

[OwenM]

"Six Years War" seems a surprising name for him to call it, while there's certainly precedent, one looks a lot sillier calling a war that lasted seven years that than by calling it by a name that one knows will be fairly accurate(Second German War definitely qualifies, as would European War, and a couple of others I can think of).

 

[Thande]

"Six Years War" seems a surprising name for him to call it, while there's certainly precedent, one looks a lot sillier calling a war that lasted seven years that than by calling it by a name that one knows will be fairly accurate(Second German War definitely qualifies, as would European War, and a couple of others I can think of).

I think it was fairly obvious at the time that the war would be over within a year. And he was writing that story as a private joke among friends (it started out as a parody of his discussions with CS Lewis and the other Inklings), it wasn't meant for publication.

When it comes to predictions, the main reason people discuss this story is that it talks about a nuclear disaster, a space programme disaster and the greatest hurricane ever to hit England...all in 1986. OK, the last one was out by a few months.

 

[teg]

I really liked this update because it shows the fundamental difference between Societism and Communism, beyond one arguably being less hypocritical than the other... If Marx had made Sanchez's remark in OTL, he probably would have argued the opposite of Sanchez; the game is just an excuse for the acquisition of material goods, the justification of material inequality offered by the game being a bonus. In contrast, Sanchez is essentially arguing that the game is an end in itself with the material reward just being a token...

It would be interesting if that sometime in the latter 20th century, we start getting a strongly economic-centric version of history called post-modernism...

teg

Edit:

1000 posts in this thread. Awesome