Map Thread XIX
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Now Europe falls....
Blank Europe Basemaps edited by Bob Hope
I have, over the years, trawled the internet to find basemaps to use and have even created my own. To save others that trouble I have collected the ones I consider the best together here for anyone to use. Unlike the Q-Bam world maps, Europe does not have a standard format size so I am...
www.alternatehistory.com
Warning
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What Hatsunia is about:
Creating afuturistic (in a near-future sense) and
progressive country that addresses common criticisms of Japan and anything its socioeconomic institutions "lag behind" in.
Themed after a personifiedsoftware whose name means "the first sound from the future."
Japanmissed thesoftware revolution. Hatsunia embraced it.
A classic
"The original artist does not wish to be named. "
HMMMM
@Pipcard I love that redesign, although maybe the eastern islands are a bit too much to the east compared to the older version
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I wanted to have more interesting landforms in the east instead of just repeating the general shape of the western islands.
I'm not feeling good then almost made me throw up
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So, I finished the map I've been working on since late March of 2019.
The good news is, it turned out well! The bad news is, it's even larger than a map which I had a lot of trouble getting to show up on here, via any method I used. So I'm going to have to do what I did with that one, and post a much smaller version here so you can see what it is, and link to the full version.
So here's the small version:
The big one is a bit over ten times larger, in terms of resolution. So don't be surprised if it freezes up your browser for a moment or two when you zoom in.
The good news is, it turned out well! The bad news is, it's even larger than a map which I had a lot of trouble getting to show up on here, via any method I used. So I'm going to have to do what I did with that one, and post a much smaller version here so you can see what it is, and link to the full version.
So here's the small version:
The big one is a bit over ten times larger, in terms of resolution. So don't be surprised if it freezes up your browser for a moment or two when you zoom in.
Deleted member 108228
“When one imagines America, the United States often comes to mind, and for good reason- it is a beacon of freedom, promising relief from poverty, tyranny, and oppression. This is what the United States was founded for, and will always continue to fight for.”
“But there is a country that shares the United States’ southern border. That neighbor of ours is the Confederate States of America. It is a country that has experienced much since its troubled founding. It has gone from a nation that enslaved African-Americans to ensuring equal rights for all. From believing that one man was superior to another based on his skin color, to have the first Negro president be sworn in in Richmond. This is Dixie: A Century of Questioning, Conflict, and Rebirth, brought to you by Harlem News Incorporated.”
“The Confederate States of America began its existence much like its northern neighbor- born in the fires of war. The election of 1860 put Abraham Lincoln, a prominent abolitionist and anti-slavery figure, into power. The state of South Carolina rebelled over fears of their slaves being taken away by Lincoln’s abolitionist policies. As the weeks went by, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida voiced their support and seceded from the Union, forming what is now called the First Confederate Republic. War broke out over a Union-controlled fort in a Confederate harbor- Fort Sumter- and the two republics began to battle for their political fates. By September 1862 the Confederates were winning the war against the Union- so much that Britain and France formally recognized the Confederacy in February of 1863 and condemned United States aggression against the Confederacy. The British declared war on the United States, and the French followed suit. The British deployed soldiers in Canada, sent supplies to the Confederacy, and the rebels, previously fighting for their lives, now had a fighting chance for freedom.”
“The Union’s hands were tied. The British forced the Union to deploy troops near the Great Lakes and France was cutting off the Union’s Atlantic trade routes. It seemed as if the cause was lost. Yet Lincoln, despite protests in his Cabinet, continued to push for nothing short of complete reconquest of the South. Yet as more young men died and Richmond nowhere close to surrender, Lincoln had to make a choice. Continue the war, and risk destruction of the Union, or let the South go and at least manage to survive? After all, Lincoln thought, the South would collapse on its own, and would eventually be absorbed back into the Union. So Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, signed a treaty. It stipulated that the CSA, with all the territories it controlled, would become a sovereign, independent nation, complete with all the responsibilities and struggles that would beset it. In addition, the CSA agreed to withdraw from southern Arizona which it had occupied in exchange for ‘fair compensation for its exploits.’ The Confederacy was no longer a band of states united in revolt against the Union. It was a newborn nation, and was about to take its first steps.”
"The Confederacy’s first years were chaotic. Plantations mutinied, the slave population had to be controlled, and the nation’s unity needed to be preserved. After the Davis presidency, the Confederacy needed leaders that had proven themselves effective during the civil war- or, as the Confederacy calls it, the Confederate Revolution. Robert E. Lee quickly proved himself the most capable of this generation of men. He was a skilled general who had commanded the Confederate Army during the war, and was a natural for the office of president. Once president he attempted to preserve the state’s unity, but it took a toll on his health- in December 1873 he suffered a stroke and spent the rest of 1874 invalid. He died in 1875 a national hero, mourned by the entire Confederacy.”
“Lee’s successor, Nathaniel Bradford, was like his predecessors’. He presided over intense debates in the Confederate Congress and constant strife between the state governments. After the administration came Richard Stevens and Donald Shaw, men who continued what Lee had began- the continued unity of the Confederate States of America.”
“At least, during the first year.”
“1890 has been described as the beginning of the end of the First Confederate Republic, and for one small reason- a little cotton-eating insect named the boll weevil. The boll weevil devastated the Confederacy’s economy, a plantation economy that was overly reliant on the export of cotton to Britain and France. This sparked the Cotton Crisis, which ultimately spelled the end of the First Republic.”
“In 1891, the French revoked most major trade agreements with the Confederacy due to the lack of a stable cotton supply. The country’s finances contracted and President Shaw enforced austerity measures to spend as little money as possible over a certain amount of time, while saving money for a national development plan. This was feared by the states, who distrusted Richmond as per Confederate tradition. As such, they resisted any attempts to implement a coherent policy.”
“1892. What seemed to be a relatively small disturbance on the Adamson plantation spiraled out of control, and from there, a series of plantation revolts wreaked havoc on the state of Alabama. The Confederate Army, a long decrepit institution, was called to crush the rebellion. Five months and 20,000 negroes later, the rebellion was crushed, but not without tearing throughout Alabama. Somehow, even after they were crushed, they continued to enslave the Negro, unaware that they had enough of being bonded, of being forced to work on the fields for what seemed like an eternity.”
“1893. The country was in ruins. With no clear plan of action, and with constant string of plantation revolts, it seemed almost inevitable that this experiment would end, and that the Confederacy would end in a way befitting to it. It never was united, and now it would die disunited. However that would not be how it went. By 1893, there were those that had known nothing but the Confederacy, and wished to see it continue on, even if it was not in its original form. On June 8, 1893, several members of this group stormed the Grey House, Congress, and Supreme Court, and demanded that they either surrender and resign, or join the National Council For Harmony.”
“Many states refused to accept the authority of the Council, for they represented an antithesis, a disease to what the South stood for, and they refused to accept the Council’s declaration. Soon after the coup, four southern states seceded, but on their own terms. They were not going to be part of some state-building scheme. They were more concerned about their survival; nothing more, nothing less. They waged a war against the now Council-controlled Richmond government- a conflict that would determine the direction of Confederate society going onward in history.”
“But first, a word from our sponsors…”
“...”
“In the beginning days of the rebellion, many domestic and international observers had the expectation that the individual states would crush the then rotting Confederate Army. After all, the Confederate Army hadn’t fought in a serious conflict in over 30 years. Yet despite that, the NCH did not attempt to use the traditional army. With the country’s future on the line, the Council decided to create a more flexible military, one intended to respond effectively to changes on the frontline. Officers would be given more freedom in planning and enacting offensives, as to ensure a more cohesive offensive. However, with the rebelling states pushing against the Confederacy’s advances, something had to be done. That something would change the racial composition of the Confederacy for the foreseeable future.”
"The Confederacy needed men, and in order to fill this shortage, the Confederacy decided to allow any and all negroes to enlist in this New Army. Savannah was liberated from rebel control and the Confederate government now held access to the sea, thus being able to import materials for the war effort.”
“The Cotton War, as the rebellion would be called by future historians , ended with a Council victory. The battles of New Orleans and Mississippi strangled the four rebellious states and the sieges of Jackson and Vicksburg ultimately settled the war in the Council’s favor. The feuding independent republics surrendered to Richmond and the treaty signed ending the war declared, ironically, that any attempt at secession from the government would be, from now onwards, illegal.”
“With the nation unified, the Council began to institute reforms. The Council knew that the unrestricted power of the states had doomed the First Republic and that the constitution had allowed this. The Council also knew that creating a new constitution would also spell disaster for the fledgling military junta. So in the end, they decided on a social program, the Harmonic Convergence. It was a simple fifteen-point program that would direct the country towards economic reconstruction and further development. Some of the points were as follows:”
“Point 1: The Confederate States of America will do whatever it takes to bind its people in an ever greater compact of harmony and unity, unbound by the shackles of oppression and privilege.
“Point 2: To do this, there must be a systematic erasure of any system of exploitation and privilege, whether it be the hierarchy of race, the plantation system, or the lynching of negroes.
“Point 3: In conjunction with point 2, there must also be an upliftment of the Confederate nation from an unequal, race-based monetary system, to one where the people are able to move freely along the economic ladder on their own ability.”
“Point 4: To achieve point 3, the economy of the CSA must be redirected away from an agrarian, mass-plantation economy, to one where the people are the masters of the economy.
“Interestingly enough, point fifteen is both realist and idealist.”
“Point 15: Fulfilling the needs of all Confederate citizens is nigh impossible, but the NCH shall alleviate both the suffering of the white man and the negro, so that they can move past their differences and become a new force. A force for harmony.”
“The Harmonic Convergence stipulated, above all else, the need to develop a strong economy, one that was not bound by any specific resource. A resource that had doomed the First Republic. In the Council’s first few months of rule, its leader, Chief Executive Joshua Milton, established what would be called the Green Movement. The Green Movement first destroyed the plantation elite, executing over a thousand while the rest fled to the Bahamas or Spanish Cuba. But for Milton, the results were satisfactory; the elites that had ruined the South were gone, and now the country could move forward.”
“With the end of one century came the beginning of another, and it was not without risks.”
“Under the Council’s regime, the Confederacy made strides in mending the wounds inflicted by the Cotton War. Though it was a healing nation, it still bore scars that couldn’t be healed, either by incentives or the bullet. These were the scars of state nationalism, the idea that one state could be superior to the other. To address this, Robert Ford, the new Chief Executive, implemented a series of reforms known as the Heart and Soul Initiative. These reforms were meant to create a sense of national unity and moral character that would hold the Confederacy together.”
“By the beginning of the 1910s, the Confederacy was no longer a slave state focused on domination of the negro race. It had instead united them in a compact of brotherhood by patriotism- but also by force. It was a new Confederacy, vastly different from the states that had rebelled against the Union all those years ago. “
“...”
“When the Global War began, the world knew that it would not be an easy victory. The Young Turks, a group of officers who were committed to reform in the Ottoman Empire, seized power and allied themselves with the Germans and Russians, eager to support an oil regime against the British and French. The Confederacy, in a display of good faith, joined the war in favor of the Entente. Richmond hoped that between the might of Paris and the Royal Navy, the German-Russian-Turkish Triple Alliance would be crushed easily.”
“They were wrong. The Battle of Ypres, the Alsatian Offensives, and the continued body count would only serve to remind the Entente that this war would not end quickly. By the second year of the campaign, it was estimated that over 3 million men had died in the trenches of the Rhineland. A new kind of war was born.”
“As the war dragged into its fifth year, the US, which was under a Socialist government, entered the war on behalf of the Entente. They argued that the genocide in Young Turks territory would signal the beginning of reactionary proliferation, and that if the US didn’t support the lesser evil, then Socialism was at stake. Most interestingly, the United States was now fighting on the same side as the Confederacy. The irony was not lost on anyone, as two nations that had fought each other for the right to own people, now fought on the same side.”
“After the Global War, the Confederacy saw itself as a nation that had triumphed against the reactionary forces of Europe, and had managed to secure a peace. Yet there was a main issue of returning troops. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands, they had to reintegrate themselves in a society that didn’t have any plans of integrating them. This would spark the beginning of the Confederate Extra Army, an army composed of former veterans who were unemployed, destitute, and angry at a government that saw prestige as more important than their well-being. They began to congregate in the state capitals, hunkering down for months on end. They assumed that the Council would cave in, and give them some stipend for sacrificing their lives for the war. However, no such payment came, and so they continued. Eventually, people saw this and decided to help, seeing their fellow Confederate toil.”
“When news heard, many in the Council hierarchy panicked, for assumed that this was the beginning of a revolution. Many proposed a crackdown on the Extra Army, while others saw reconciliation as the key. The Chief Executive at the time chose the former, and ordered the Confederate Armed Forces to disperse the Extra Army and their supporters.”
“This didn’t go as planned, and what resulted from this decision would shake the country to its core. Violence resulted from dispersing, and over 60 people were left dead. What this did do was incite a spree of violence against the Council and their enforcers. Then came the crackdowns, which only incited more violence. Eventually the Chief Executive called for an end to violence, lest it cost him his head. Surprisingly, the rioters agreed to negotiations. What they wanted was simple, a constitution, the right to vote for their leader, as well as the lifting of many Cotton War-era provisions. The Chief Executive agreed, on the condition that he served as the first president of the new republic.”
“With the legalization of political parties in 1924, there became a flourishing of political parties, and many in the United States saw this as the end of the equalist junta and the beginning of democracy. However that flourishing quickly was suppressed. Many parties that espoused radical ideologies were banned on the spot. Even those that wished to see an end to Harmonalism were also banned. Yet many saw this as an improvement to the old ways, so they accepted some control.”
“However the elections continued to be dominated by the Harmonalist Party, though a number of minor parties began to proliferate. One example was the Upliftment Board, a welfare party dedicated to improving the living conditions of the Upper South region. Then came the Agrarian Party, which was one focused on the destitute Councilers and farmers of the West. Interestingly, there was the SPF, a mostly native coalition who votes in their interests, which is intertwined with the interests of the Harmonalists. While natives in the US have suffered, at least in the CSA they have a voice.”
“1954, the fifth Confederate elections. One of the most intense in the history of the Second Republic. Elijah Miller, incumbent for the past 2 terms, ran against Robert MacLellan, Chairman of the People’s Party. MacLellan denounced the Harmonalist Party as an extension of the military, as well as the enforcers of an increasingly rigid regime. This election, seen by much of the developed world as a gateway to true democracy, would determine the fate of this country. MacLellan’s victory could result in the beginning of true democracy for the Confederacy. However the Harmonalists, with their strong voter base in the Southron People’s Bloc, were re-elected in a landslide despite what many had predicted.”
“MacLellan declared defeat, and would retire from politics at the behest of Elijah Miller.”
“Nearly a century of turmoil and conflict left the Confederacy a shaken mess, and many are now warming up to the conclusion that the negro-mulatto dominated Confederacy is not ready for democracy, and that the United States should do something. Whatever that may be, it is unknown, but for now, the world watches the CSA continue on like nothing happened.”
I'm dead serious. A Gnomonic basemap. Year is 1910. I'll probably finish it tomorrow.
Gotcha. I didn't catch that border between Delaware and Maryland. And I'm not saying West Virginia and Nickajack/Watauga/whatever without the civil war is implausible; the differences that caused those regions to take the Unionist side OTL would still exist, war or no war.
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