A commission for
@Lavanya Six based on Nofix’s “A Rigged Deck, for a Rigged System” (
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/tliaw-ii-a-rigged-deck-for-a-rigged-system.351110/ )
This map is for a world where the US presidency (after great and terrible Washington) is reshuffled, with a different set of winners and losers for every election up to 2012. This of course requires a butterfly Deathstar to keep the same presidential competitors in 2012 in spite of a POD in 1796, but the world as a whole does undergo some substantial changes. Including
- An early and non violent end to slavery in 1840
- Mexico avoiding war with the US and developing rather more smoothly
- A successful if limited US-Mexican-South American war vs several European powers in the 1850s
- A joint black-poor white revolt in the 1880s against peonage and debt-slavery, allowing for early civil rights
- A WWI the US stays out of, which still ends in a German defeat
- No communist revolution in Russia
- Successful revolts of the Irish and India against British rule
- Return of the Napoleons in France
- A WWII which is essentially US and Allies vs European Colonialism (with Japan and the US on the same side)
In 2020, much of the world is part of the International League, sort of a League of Nations/UN arising from the alliance which won the World War, although since outright conquering Europe was Not On, it never became a truly universal forum. In some ways it also resembles the Non-Aligned movement, as a block of mainly “former colonies” trying to mutually support each other, economically integrate (Africa is particularly big on economic unions, with several large regional groupings), and mount peacekeeping efforts.
The IL is genuinely democratic, and has some standards for membership: you can be a pretty crappy corrupt OTL-south-American-stereotype-type semi-democracy and still be a member, but outright dictatorships are out, and massacres of minorities is also a no-no. There are procedures for kicking out rogue members, and this has happened several times. (You can get back in, after a probationary period, if you clean up your act). Of course, there are those who politically manipulate the process - Syria might well be in danger of being ejected if it weren’t for US support, while the status of Sri Lanka is now a political football in the rivalry between India and Japan).
Speaking of Japan, Japan and the US are both problems for the IL. Japan is known for manipulating the IL for its own benefit, partly with powerful pocketbook diplomacy, partly through it’s network of Asian client states (see below), to the extent that there is something of a movement among the leftier members of the organization to kick the Japanese out as “neocolonialists”. The USA, while a founding member and still strongly anti-colonial, has not departed very far from it’s historical isolationist, and while it supports peacekeeping efforts and economic development programs, etc., it generally avoids being drawn into any real political commitments or doing anything that might weaken its national sovereignty in the name of strengthening the IL as a true “Parliament of Humanity.” This irritated India, the leader of the Internationalists within the League (other dedicated Internationalists include the West Africans and the Andean states, while Mexico tends to fluctuate between internationalism and “What’s good for Mexico is good for the IL.”
Besides a number of rather undemocratic African and Asian countries, the main absentees from the “Parliament of Humanity” are the British Empire (smaller and whiter) and Europeans in general. Continental Europe west of Russia is dominated by France, which is nowadays a constitutional monarchy under the rule of the house of Napoleon, and has achieved it’s “natural boundaries” in Europe to some extent. France’s principal aims are to keep Europe united, the Germans down, and the US out (getting the British to join up is a contentious notion, since they might challenge France for leadership, especially since the British point of view is that if Britain joins, it should be allowed to bring in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well).
The “White Dominions only” British Empire (the Cape left to join the International League as a way of making peace with Azania) is more racist than OTL (especially Australia) and has rather poor relations with, well, most countries (France may be an ally, but they’re...annoying). Australia and Canada are effectively independent, in spite of US mumbling about Canadian “pawns of the evil empire” but historically poor relations with the US and Australian Yellow Menace has led to a bit of a “hang together or hang separately” point of view. (That applies to internal Canadian politics as well: right now the Quebeqois are less big on separatism than the Alaskans). Australia, as perhaps the biggest single destination of African whites fleeing black rule, has the Boer dialect of Dutch as a second official language.
Canada and Australia have their own atomic weapons, as do Italy and Poland-Lithuania.
Russia, in spite of a serious beating at the hands of a French-led alliance in the late 1930s, was just too large and remote for France to puppetize in the long run, and has slowly pulled out of the French orbit as it has also democratized. It’s still a fairly backwards country, but doesn’t have the sort of systemic problems our Russia has, and has been growing closer to the US and the International League nations.
The Ottoman Empire, having stayed out of the Great War, collapsed during peacetime, when efforts to make it into a Turkish ethnic supremacist nation did not go well. As a result, no state of Israel was ever founded. (There was talk of setting up a Jewish state in East Africa, but in the end the UK elite decided that it would much rather settle the highlands with white gentiles, and the Jewish Conspiracy could just deal with it). Jews have had a some rough spots, especially during the Military Regency era in Russia, but there haven’t been any large-scale massacres and Yiddish culture is only now slowly fading out in Eastern Europe as barriers to assimilation continue to shrink.
Without the humiliations of OTL, secular Arab nationalism has been more successful, and hardline Salafism is largely limited in the Arab world to the Wahabbi state in eastern Arabia (the Rashidis of Hail substantially diminished the clan of Saud, but were unable to eliminate the Wahabbim). Iraq is somewhat theocratic, if Shi’a rather than Sunni (enough so to occasionally embarrass their Iranian allies). Having been spared the long, long struggle against the French of OTL, Algeria is doing rather better, as is the Maghreb as a whole.
Africa is complicated, messy, growing economically at a great rate but politically often rather messed up, and full of economic and political unions, successful, failed, in the works, or highly theoretical. There’s a lot of calls for African Unity, although nobody is really quite sure what that will mean. (As OTL, there’s an all-African African Union which is mostly a talking shop). There are very few Europeans, but quite a lot of Americans with an eye on the main chance, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, with Latin Americans often showing up in the Catholic and French or Portuguese and Italian-speaking areas. East Africa leans leftist, west Africa more conventionally capitalist but also bigger on international integration. The Azanians sort of worry people.
As one of the victors of the World War, Japan managed to build its own “Co-Prosperity Sphere” on a fairly peaceful basis, if not without a certain amount of arm twisting, and has maintained it with mostly economic pressures and generous support both economic and military for types with a collaborator streak. The Japanese Economic Community has indeed delivered impressive economic growth, if a bit weak on the whole democracy thing (this has changed in the last generation or so, not necessarily to Japan’s advantage).
Japan suffers from a fair bit of US-envy: whether a less entrepreneurial culture, fewer resources, or just not enough people, Japan has never been able to seriously challenge the US as the premiere economic power of the International League (although they’ve managed to come close to challenging them as the high-tech leaders). And now China is challenging them economically and politically as they seek to become the new leaders of East Asia, the terrifyingly hard-working Koreans are challenging them for leadership _within_ the Economic Community, and the Indonesians are acting up. Meanwhile, Japan’s population is no longer reproducing itself: the demographic transition arrived a bit later in a Japan where “traditional values” were unchallenged by foreign conquest, but arrive it did, with brutal abruptness. The Japanese Prime Minister, in spite of hostility by most of the public and much of his own party, has, with the Emperor’s backing, signed new legislation that will make it much easier for foreign nationals to gain Japanese citizenship. [1]
The Five-Color Republic of China is pushily nationalistic (the Chinese got kicked around by Europeans and Russians than OTL) and while happy to partner with India in making the International League a more powerful organization, intend to do so while reestablishing Chinese dominance in it’s traditional sphere of influence. Their economy is more driven by internal markets than external trade compared to OTL China: like the US in this world, they have a more protectionist economy.
Taiwan is, of course, China’s Alsace-Lorraine. Never mind the Japanese took it from the French.
Latin America is more developed and politically democratic than OTL, notably so in the cases of Mexico and Argentina, which has begun it’s own little rebellion against Mexican more-or-less-dominance of Latin America. (The US, again, could displace Mexico as the regional hegemon, but doesn’t want the trouble). Mexico is an important mid-sized power on the level of France or Germany OTL, and there is considerable fuss about immigration from the poorer parts of Latin America and the Caribbean (although nobody is calling for a wall: for one thing, there’s nowhere to put it.
The United States is as convinced as OTL of it’s singular status, perhaps a bit more deservedly. It’s economically more leftist, less racist, and somewhat more genuinely democratic than OTL. Admittedly, it’s two main parties have converged somewhat, and many citizens may feel, more justifiably than OTL, that’s their vote is a matter of a choice between tweedledee and tweedledum. The initially labor/social democrat-type Reform party has drifted to the right as it has expanded its voter base, diluting its original working class nature. The Federalist meanwhile remain largely pragmatic Republicans Lite, with a touch of Rockerfellerianism and more support for “state capitalism.”
The Vice president retains some real power as head of the Senate, and there have been a few times when the President and Vice President have gone positively medieval on each other.
There’s a strong social safety net and still strong unions. The economy is fairly protectionist, with the devotees of universal free trade (which in recent decades has included members of the Reform party) never fully winning their argument, although the US does have free trade agreements with a number of countries both in the Americas and the Olde Worlde. (The idea of an all-American free trade block has been floated again, and the media has been full of “jobs been flushed south” talk once again). This has done some damage to the competitiveness of US product abroad, but then it’s not a fully globalized world overall.
The country remains strongly pro-democracy and anti-colonialist, but in a non-interventionist way (or “cheapskate, self-satisfied, toss an occasional coin to the peasants way”, according to some Indian politicians). The country is less racist than OTL, black civil rights having been solidly in place since the late 19th century: while the black population has not fully integrated with the white population (in part due to black efforts to define their own identity), standards of living have converged rather more than OTL, with black Americans being wealthier compared to Euro-Americans than Hispanics OTL. (There are somewhat less hispanics, proportionally, than OTL, more Jews and Africans and Arabs)
The insane prison-industrial complex of OTL doesn’t exist, either.
The world is more “leftist” than OTL, but there’s also less of a hard sharp “capitalist vs commies” division. There has never been a take over of a major nation by leftist hardliners in this world, the closest being a *Communist [2] takeover of the German Union after defeat in the Great European War, and that was stomped out by the French, Italians, and Poles before it could prove itself for good or bad. There are a number of different forms of leftism rather than an established “orthodoxy”, and the degree of government intervention in the economy is a problem studied more pragmatically, although there still are those who we would call “libertarians” as well as “all power to the workers” types, as well as a lively anarchist movement. Government intervention and “state capitalist” interventions for the common good are widely accepted, and nobody but the frothiest of loonies claim that decent healthcare leads to the gulag.
Technologically the world is roughly on a par with OTL, a bit ahead in some areas, a bit behind in others, a wider prosperity compensating for the lack of a Cold War to drive technological research. (There certainly is hostility and competition between Europe and America, but no full blown apocalyptic arms race - there is no existential competition between two ways of life, just old grudges). A number of nations have atomic weapons, but there aren’t any giant arsenals on the scale of OTL’s US and USSR. There are a bunch of internets, but less globally integrated.
Space travel is both more and less advanced than OTL. While Nixon’s call for an American on the Moon by the end of the century inspired a lot of people, there’s wasn’t a race with a USSR-type peer, and by the end of the century there were some space stations and a lot of satellites, along with various space probes, but no man on the Moon. This had not changed much by 2018, although by that point both the US and France had developed single-stage-to-orbit technology and were doing better at reusable launches than anything Elon Musk is doing. And then the Japanese, in pursuit of national prestige projects to burnish their somewhat shaky World Power status, managed to put a single Japanese astronaut on the Moon: it was a risky and somewhat marginal effort, but they pulled it off, and left in the process quite a bit of egg on US and European faces.
[1] Well, fellow east Asians, anyway. It’s not like they’re planning to let in
Africans.
[2] Similar but not identical notions to OTL.