Is Bulgarian a monarchy or a republic? Much as I dislike the Tsarist system, the title of Tsar is, in of itself, pretty cool.
I suspect the royal visit to India will be jet propelled, or, at least, I hope so.
Bulgaria was an autonomous principality up to this point, so it would probably become independent as a (constitutional) monarchy, with the prince becoming Tsar. This would make two Tsars in TTL's world (the other one also has the titles of King and Governor of Eritrea).
I'd imagine that there would be civil jet aircraft in service by 1961 - you've got a better idea of what they'd use than I do.
JE, I have a question about astronomy in TTL. Do radio telescopes exist or is astronomy limited to visual telescopes?
Hmmm, not something I know much about. Wikipedia says that the first radio telescopes were developed in the 1930s, and that the invention of radar was an important step in radio astronomy. Given that radar (or EMR, as it's called in TTL) has existed since the late 1920s, and radio technology in general is as advanced or more so as OTL, I'd expect there to be radio telescopes by now, albeit primitive by today's standards.
When are they going to hit oil in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, and Angola? Equatorial Guinea's oilfields are in the shallow waters, so when will offshore, shallow-water drilling start?
All of those except Congo and Equatorial Guinea have been discovered by now. The first Niger Delta and Angola oil fields were found in the 1950s OTL, and the first fields in Gabon were discovered (I believe) in the 1960s, so with those regions more developed ITTL, I'd imagine that the oil would be found earlier. The discovery of oil in Gabon will actually be a significant plot point in the next update.
The first oil discoveries in Congo-Brazzaville were also made in the 1950s IOTL, but exploration there was prompted in part by the deteriorating situation in French Algeria. In TTL, with that part of the Congo under German rule through the early 50s, the potential loss of oil reserves elsewhere wouldn't come into the picture, and exploration might happen a little later. And the Equatorial Guinea reserves, as you say, are offshore, and I'm not sure that offshore drilling in Africa would be economically viable just yet. Of course, that might not be the case for much longer, given that a more developed Global South means more demand for oil and that the exploration and drilling capabilities of that region are increasing.
Well, written "formal" Arabic has largely remained under one main standard since about the age of Muhammad. Fusha Arabic is not a modern creation as you seem to imply, but rather a largely Medieval one is in many regards, especially in the written form (most case endings are dropped in common modern pronounciation, but they aren't written anyway).
So, there would be relatively little need for "standardization", like IOTL.
Thanks. I did have the misconception that MSA was a modern standardization, but I see I was mistaken. Is this true of formal spoken Arabic as well - for instance, is the Fusha Arabic "received pronunciation" used by television broadcasters a 20th-century thing or does that go back further? I'd imagine that radio and television would have at least some leveling effect, although Arabic diglossia seems to be more pronounced than anywhere outside Norway.
In general, I think that the reasons that made a politically very fractured Arabic world to stick with a modernized standard version of the classical language across the whole Arabic space IOTL are largely going to stay there ITTL. Arabic has even more prestige ITTL, and it would be even less rational for countries such as, say, Tunisia to change that for official adoption of a Tunisian spoken variety whose standardization is all to be done.
Fair enough. There's also still a religious imperative to have a common written language; the Tunisians don't want to be in a position of "translating" the Koran.
However, ITTL there is not any major form of Arabic Nationalism steeped in desperate romanticism against an intractable and utterly hostile geopolitical context, that IOTL has fostered an strong focus on Arabic language as a symbolic and identitary rallying point.
So that spoken varieties may have more room to gradually trickle into more formal uses earlier and less challenged (as they had started to do all along the Ottoman age AFAIK, before the modernization set in). "Minority" langauges as the Berber varieties or Nubi may be in a better shape as well.
I general, the result is likely to resemble the complex interplay of varieties (or level of formality) of OTL's Arab world in the general lines.
So, colloquialisms and loanwords from border regions might become accepted for written use in the areas where they're spoken, and then spread throughout the Arab world via literature and mass media? I wonder if pop culture might also result in some infiltration of European languages, with Arabic ITTL having a few expressions equivalent to "le weekend" (or "el weekend" if you're Spanish).
Jonathan, very interesting, however, it's quite hard to know which colour is which in the wealth map. They are all very similar.
Yeah, I consider single-color gradients more aesthetically pleasing than a rainbow, but they always carry the risk of being hard to tell apart - especially where, as with this map, there's a concentration in one part of the scale.
The general patterns should be apparent, though: the Niger Valley, coastal West Africa, the Copperbelt and "metropolitan" South Africa are richest, while central Africa and the East African states recovering from the Bloody Forties are poorest.
What is funny to see is the contrast with an OTL map of Africa: there is so few straight lines!
Then again, the straight lines in OTL are mainly in the Sahara.
In France, I don't know of regionalist movements before late 20th century. However, the regional identities were strongly suppressed by Republicans of Jacobinist tradition in the name of indivisibility. The matter took a more dramatic turn with the reforms of Jules Ferry in education which had forbidden the teaching of other languages than French. The other stepstone was the Great War which somewhat standardized the languages used: Bretons, Basques and Corsicans couldn't but speak in French to understand each other.
I can conceive that the Empire doesn't be engaged in active suppression of regional identities like the Third Republic, and I can say that the Bonaparte family (Napoleon III and his cousin, our TTL Napoleon IV) were very attached to the Corsican roots of the family. Still, one can't take away what happened in the trenches, the fraternity forged there between soldiers from all the Empire.
Certainly not. The regionalism in TTL is a reaction to the Red Twenty, in which the right wing has taken up support of the "purer" regional cultures over what it sees as the degraded urban society, but the solidarity created by the Great War and political struggles, as well as the leveling effect of mass media, is still there. Very few people speak
only Breton or Occitan at this point; everyone learns French in school and hears it on the television. And metropolitan France isn't going anywhere: the French empire might shed some African territories that were relative latecomers and ambivalent about being part of the French project, but no one at all is advocating independence for Brittany - the more so since most of the regionalists are also right-wing French patriots.
The issue with France and French is that the country's jacobine attitude towards regionalism will be there, and as the balance of power shifts to Parliament, no matter how 'tolerant' Marianne might be, the liberals and conservatives (and probably the socialists too) will not be looking forward to any sort of decentralisation or toleration of minority languages.
Marianne is a Jacobin herself, albeit a moderate one (yes, I did just type the phrase "moderate Jacobin") who thinks of French identity mainly in political terms. She has no problem with regional languages or cultural preservation, as long as everyone learns French too, but she, and nearly all the French political spectrum, would draw the line at
political decentralization of the state. There will most likely be a few administrative and cultural compromises, but as I said above, France will be one of the countries ITTL that buys into post-Westphalianism the least.
Wow, that's a lot of middle-income countries on that map!
Well, there surely are more middle-income countries in this Africa than in our Africa - and it's
1955 
I do enjoy how Africa is considerably better off then OTL
And a lot better developed democratically, etc. Love the differing levels of relations France has with Africa.
Keep in mind that the countries shown as middle-income on the map are middle-income by 1955 world standards. And Africa is still underdeveloped compared to Europe or North America: I believe (although I'm too lazy to check) that lower middle income countries are both the median and the mode, and the only country that exceeds the high middle income category is the Kingdom of the Arabs with its low population and huge oil reserves.
Perhaps I missed it, but has Zanzibar's empire completely collapsed into independent states (doubtful given the concept of sovereignty and states ITTL)...or is this an update to come? And Algeria is still French in someway shape or form...
The breakup of Zanzibar's northern and western provinces happened
here and
here, although it was building for a long time.
And "in some way, shape or form" is a key phrase - you'll notice that Algeria isn't an integral French province any more. The detail will be in the next update, but the existence of a proportionally Puerto Rican-size Algerian diaspora in metropolitan France is a major factor, and the vote will be a close one.
