Map Thread XVI
- Thread starter Upvoteanthology
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...you know you can just watch the thread with the button at the top of the page, yeah?
@Jcw3 I never got round to replying to you, and there's a new thread!
Africa, like Latin America, is often ignored when you get into the 20th century TLs, and ends up being a sideshow to whatever shenanigans are going on in the Northern Hemisphere, and this is something I'm guilty of, they often end up with identical borders to OTL. So its nice to see very different borders here, its very cool and makes me wonder what happened.
Africa, like Latin America, is often ignored when you get into the 20th century TLs, and ends up being a sideshow to whatever shenanigans are going on in the Northern Hemisphere, and this is something I'm guilty of, they often end up with identical borders to OTL. So its nice to see very different borders here, its very cool and makes me wonder what happened.
Skallagrim
Banned
A wonderful map and a wonderful scenario. Personally, I think a surviving-and-thriving Mu’tazila movement would have been a great thing for the islamic world-- although every such a broad statement no doubt needs a lot more nuance to be meaningful. Your scenario certainly demonstrates the point in beautiful ways.
I think it's fitting that the 'Third Rome' map should be one of the last of Map Thread XV, and yours should be one of the first of Map Thread XVI. Both show ways in which the islamic world could have thrived in fascinating ways. Almost symbolic, the way they go together. (The Alien Space Bats work in mysterious ways?)
Yeah. It is really a tragedy that Islamic attitudes towards science underwent such a drastic change following the Islamic Golden Age.
That's one way to look at it
. I'll be honest though, I left the last section (the modern day world) until I posted it, which was this morning (HK time) partially because I wanted a fresh scenario that was more interesting to read; but mostly because End-of-thread Syndrome is absolutely terrifying.Jcw3
Banned
Terra Sextus
This is a map of a world which diverged from our own in the 1920s, that takes place in the modern day. The basic premise is a more stable and powerful Soviet Union and China, a shorter WW2 (if you can even call it a world war, the people here certainly don’t), and a few other disparities leads to a fairly different world, geopolitically speaking.
This is also a world map for the sixth world the protagonist of my multicross fanfic Coascendancy visits. It’s a very loose adaptation of a particular work of fiction, and this map has virtually nothing to do with that fiction. I was inspired to make this map by something fairly important that was left out of this work of fiction, which I felt implied a heavily different world from our own.
Without further ado, let’s begin. The modern day is September 2011. Credit to @B Munro for the nuclear symbols, they’re great stuff.
The Shadow War, and Its Relation to Modern Day Geopolitics
*The United States is the world’s greatest power, but it isn’t ahead by very much. Combined, the USSR and CPU (Chinese People’s Union) easily outclass it, and both rival it in sheer power.
*Regardless, several close calls that almost led to nuclear war throughout the twentieth century have led to a general detente between the Western Community and the Berlin Agreement. Any conflict between the two blocs is limited to purely economic warfare, with the occasional, rare proxy war.
*The Shadow War, the so-called quiet conflict between the communist and capitalist blocs, lasted from the 1940s to the 1990s, until a period of mismanagement and famine caught up with the CPU and the USSR, crippling them economically and leading to a brief period of loss of government control in many parts of their respective countries.
*Despite the hopes of western pundits, both countries recovered, and by the modern day, are beginning to regain their former strength. Their clients in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia held on, or were forced back into compliance (the coup in Cambodia is widely used as a reminder of the communist threat by Shadow Warrior politicians in western countries). While the Soviets, Chinese and company are far more state capitalist than pure communist, their interests are still unaligned with the western world.
*That said, the Berlin Agreement is much more concerned with economic domination than any long brush wars. Look at all that time the French wasted in Algeria, or how many Americans died taming Panama.
North America
*The end of the Shadow War has led to a conflict within American society itself. The Shadow Warrior mindset of communists lurking in the bushes is rapidly contrasting with a newer mindset, which is tired of their government spending money on carriers and orbital weapons (no Outer Space Treaty here) when they’re buried in debt and they’re seeing globalization kill their communities.
*As such, political polarization is becoming more and more of a problem, and pundits fear that America will wind up in the same state as the communist powers in the 1990s. Radicals on the right and left clash with the centrist establishment, who, while wheezing all the way, have managed to keep a weak grasp on the federal and most state governments.
*Kelvin Farina, an establishment Republican whose policies were viewed as a continuation of Franke Gray, the infamous warhawk (among centrist and left-wing circles) who burned Panama to the ground and whose orders killed tens of thousands of Americans, has record-low approval ratings, and the Democrats swept to power in the 2010 midterms, and under Ron Searcy, a so-called ‘radical incrementalist’, hope to sweep the 2012 election.
*The civil rights movement was a bit more retracted, with a Civil Rights Act equivalent only passing in 1974. That said, Puerto Rico became a state in 1980, even if that was almost certainly a Republican administration trying to take advantage of three extra electoral votes.
*Gender relations, sadly, are still a fair bit behind ours. Despite promising politicians like Sharon Mallory and Betty Willis, only fifty-eight percent of Americans would vote for a qualified, female President.
*The United States has two more states than our own reality, with North California (a similar movement to our own Jefferson) and Puerto Rico counting themselves among the stars on the flag. The idea of Canada or Cuba joining the US is occasionally thrown around, but is almost always just as easily dismissed.
*A War on Drugs equivalent never occurred in this world, so Mexico is a stable, a bit more corrupt, average country, with a close, long lasting friendship with the United States.
*Canada’s a fair bit rougher than in our homeworld, with nuclear weapons, a less established welfare state, and a much larger military budget. They’ve joined America on most of their silly adventures in the Americas.
*Newfoundland is a quiet social democracy that got rich off of fishing money.
*Greenland’s independence movement was sponsored by the United States and reluctantly accepted by Denmark. It makes a great place to put ICBM equivalents.
*Cuba is a decadent flawed democracy, a popular tourist destination for Americans seeking to gamble and play around with hookers.
*Haiti’s democratic (sort of) government was recently overthrown by a communist strongman, but the American public has zero interest in invading and overthrowing yet another tinpot dictatorship, especially such a worthless one. The Berlin Agreement has sent out the bare minimum in aid, but Haiti isn’t worth much to them either.
*The Centroamerican People’s Republic is an unpleasant dictatorship, and came into existence when the United States was embroiled in a brutal war in Panama. There just isn’t enough political will in Washington to remove it. Unlike Haiti, however, they do have significant Soviet and Chinese support, in terms of monetary aid, of course, not military aid. That would start a nuclear war.
*Panama is a tinpot dictatorship kept alive by American arms, and the Canal Zone has been acknowledged as American territory in perpetuity.
South America
*Venezuela is the most likely spot for the next American war. A strongman communist dictatorship that’s occupied the western portion of Guyana, an American ally, for several years now, it’s deep on Washington’s shit list. The problem, of course, being that the memory of Panama is still fresh in American minds, and invading a nation that’s stronger, more well-connected, and stabler than Panama is not something anyone looks forward to. Venezuela’s interest in developing nuclear weapons may, however, force the world’s hand.
*Brazil’s modernizing nicely, and they’ve managed to clean house from their more corrupt past. Rio de Janeiro is now seen as a glistening city of the world, and Brazil hopes to begin to stretch its legs geopolitically. Tired of being America’s little buddy, they dream of having their own sphere of influence on the continent.
*The Andean People’s Union, a leftist flawed democracy born of joint popular revolutions in Peru and Bolivia, has come into trouble lately. Andea’s leaders have been increasingly despotic incompetents, massacring entire villages while desperately looking for counterrevolutionaries to make examples of. The ensuing refugee crisis has led Brazil and Argentina, while cold to each other at the best of times, to consider a joint effort to bring them down. The two have been making noises at the United States for their permission.
*Paraguay was humiliated in a war with Bolivia in the late 1930s, and has resigned itself to being an Argentinean sockpuppet.
*Argentina spends most of its time trying to play catchup with Brazil. They had a brief fling with fascism in the early 2000s that ended when the President For Life was killed by a jealous lover.
Europe
*The Troubles in Ireland were a fair bit nastier in this world, and the agreement to split Ulster between Ireland and Britain in a desperate attempt to quell the bloodshed proved to be an absolutely boneheaded move on London’s part, as riots and bombings remain a fairly common occurrence even decades after the main crisis has ended.
*The United Kingdom is much closer to the United States than in our world, to the point where they’re in America’s main free trade agreement with America, Canada, Cuba, and Mexico.
*The European Union is an economic and military alliance formed in the 1940s to protect against Soviet intrusion and to help Europe be less subverted by American influence. All capitalist nations in Europe besides Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Slovenia and the Vatican are members.
*France is the steady giant of capitalist Europe. After a string of populist, nationalist leaders proved disastrous, with millions of French lives being expended in Algeria and Vietnam (sort of succeeding in the former) France has resigned itself to rule by boring but stable bureaucrats.
*They’re looking cautiously at Germany’s rise. This world’s equivalent of the European Front in WW2 was a lot shorter, with Hitler still rising to power, but managing to tick off the Soviets very quickly. France and Britain jumped in and kicked Germany while they were down, mostly to prevent the Soviets from sharing a border with France proper.
*In the modern day, West Germany is a peaceful liberal democracy, but they still have their fair share of politicians who would like to see Germany rise above their western and southern neighbor when it comes to the European Union’s inner politics.
*Belgium split peacefully in the 1980s. Wallonia, Flanders, and Brussels are independent states with open borders.
*Sweden’s constantly looking over its shoulder at the Soviets, and was the fourth European state to gain nuclear weapons.
*Slovenia broke off from Yugoslavia during the hectic 1990s and is walking a very narrow tightrope to avoid pissing off the Berlin Agreement. If they joined the European Union, it might spark war in Europe, as Yugoslavia still claims the country as a core territory.
*Poland’s doing well for itself, with the Soviet boot taken off their neck in the 1990s, they’ve transitioned into more of a mixed economy, and the wealthy Poles are enjoying the money to be made from being Europe’s sweatshop.
*Spain’s embarrassing fascist period ended decades ago, thankfully.
*East Austria is more an abandoned Soviet military base than an actual country.
Africa
*Becoming more important as minerals and natural wealth is exploited, both by African powers and foreign interlopers.
*Morocco is the only non-European member of the European Union, and enjoys friendly relations with France and America.
*That’s more than can be said for Algeria, a tinpot Islamist dictatorship that keeps saber rattling towards the French territory it claims as part of its country. A brutal twenty year war still in living memory for the country’s leadership will do that to you.
*The so-called ‘Metropole in Africa’ is narrowly majority French, with the local Arab population mostly compliant with Paris’ rule, much to Constantine’s consternation.
*Egypt’s attempts to create an Arab alliance fizzled out, but they still have their nukes to keep them happy. Think something like Iran from our world, except secular, its oppression more focused on non-Arabs.
*The Tuaregs have their own state, Imuhagha, given independence in the 1950s, and they live in constant fear of the day when Algeria decides to attempt to reclaim their old territory. Imuhagha has a rather pathetic joint military, and is overall very decentralized due to being based mostly around loose tribal identity, and the natural geography of the Sahara.
*Guinea leads a small bloc of fairly coherent communist nations in West Africa. Conakry hopes to become a fairly wealthy country off of trade with the renewed communist powers, but it’s more likely that they’ll be used as a neo-colony and resource chest.
*Nigeria suffered quite a bit in their early days, and while they enjoy friendly relations with the Sultanate of Sokoto and New Oyo, they’re a far cry from being an impressive power.
*Niger had a nasty collapse in the 1980s, turning into a failed state after years of incompetent one-party rule, one that Chad, Sokoto and Imuhagha happily exploited.
*The Congolese Republic is a flawed democracy stuck in a cycle of revenge against rebels in its eastern territories.
*Sudan is an Islamist dictatorship facing heavy tension from revolts in Darfur and in its southern territories.
*Aksum, a leftist nation built off of an attempt to build a newer, more African brand of communism, is a terrifying despotic fuckhole, whose attempts to replicate SSRs wound up creating a brutal caste system. Its military, while large, is in shambles. Addis Ababa tried to create a military that wouldn’t lose any more territory, as Somalia did successfully invade and take over Somali-majority areas in the 1990s, but thus far, their efforts have resulted in quantity, not quality.
*Somalia is easily the richest state in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of the closest things to one of our world’s Western European democracies on the continent. Currently struggling with their neighbor being absolutely psychotic.
*Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Madagascar and Somalia are trying to create a regional alliance, and while federalizing is seen as a silly idea, they all agree that they want to prevent foreign intrusion and they also want to keep an eye on Aksum and other rogue states neighboring them. All five are stable, fairly wealthy democracies, and foreign observers have floated the idea that they could create an African century if they continue along their current growth rates and cooperation.
*Katanga was a western-owned corporatist one-party state until the 1980s, when a bloody native revolt caused the western overlords and their collaborators to flee the country. After that bit of ethnic cleansing, the populist, ethnonationalist movement is still struggling with tribal conflicts. Currently trying to appeal to the Berlin Agreement for aid.
*Uganda is currently having a fair bit of problems with decentralization, and Buganda is finally starting to campaign for full independence. Kampala worries that the current trends could lead to civil war.
*The clusterfuck in Rwanda still happened here, in much the same way.
*Tsiowa (Cabinda) is an independent state after accepting Congolese aid for their independence from Angola, and is trying to make it rich as a mercantile world capital. It’s currently going poorly for them.
*Soufrica is the largest state built out of the ruins of a post apartheid-equivalent South Africa, and is still struggling to rebuild from the South African Civil War in the 1990s. Tense, but a decent-ish place to live.
*The Afrikaner Union is a surprisingly pleasant place. Equality between blacks and whites is...iffy at the best of times, with voter suppression being fairly common, but it’s almost a stable, fair democracy.
*Free Zululand is a competent enough one-party ethnostate.
Middle East
*Turkey has done its damnedest to keep its own house in order and to ignore the games of foreign powers, and has succeeded. Its neutrality is threatened by the growing popularity of a leftist party, which threatens to break the traditionalist party’s grasp on power.
*Syria never managed to stay united after its independence. The Druze State and Nusayra, while hardly powers by any means, have managed to keep their houses in order, as has Syria proper.
*Hejaz is very, very, very careful about its neutrality.
*Yemen is currently involved in a brutal civil war tearing the country apart, started for a variety of reasons, ranging from ethnic and tribal differences to moderate vs. fundamentalist Islam to arms sales from the great powers of the world...oh, it’s just a mess.
*Iraq is dealing with a persistent Kurdish revolt, sponsored by the Soviets.
*Twenty-six percent of the Palestinian population is Jewish, and it’s considered a miracle that the state hasn’t erupted into religious violence. For what it’s worth, while there are Jews who wish that they had a state, most are fairly content to live as minorities within Palestine.
*The Kuwait-Gulf Republic’s mere existence is a precarious balancing act, and mostly only exists because the western powers wanted the oil to be owned by a nicer government than the Najdi Emirate.
Asia
*Iran was the subject of a vicious coup enacted by the Soviets, and has been stridently anticommunist ever since. They’ve been involved in several alliances of convenience with the Western Community in proxy wars in the Middle East, and are fast becoming a greater power in terms of industry and development. They’re one of Moscow’s greatest geopolitical regrets.
*India’s independence was a bit more chaotic on this world, but India’s managed to come out of it fairly strong. Unlike our world, it has no significant rivals on the subcontinent, and has managed to cobble together a monetary union it’s trying to federalize. Well. The non-Muslim parts, at least. Islamophobia is still a fairly big problem in Delhi.
*The Chinese People’s Union developed rather chaotically after they drove out the nationalists in the 1950s, but nothing like the Great Leap Forward ever happened in this world’s China. No mythical strongman figure like Mao ever came about, and so China’s made slow, incremental progress towards modernization, and is still firmly behind America and Russia. Currently trying to make friends with Indonesia, a former communist power that democratized in the 2000s.
*Japan was humiliated by the Soviets, Americans and Chinese in the late 1940s, a short time after the German War. Hokkaido, the Ryukyus and the Kurils are all in communist hands, and that will likely always be the case. Japan itself is a quiet, humbled state, very dependent on the United States, but unlike our world, it still has an active military that’s fought on foreign shores, and it has nukes.
*Korea is independent and wealthy. It broke away from communist influence for a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but when the Berlin Agreement recovered from their stumble, it decided it was easier to resume the status quo than to try and break away from a potentially profitable arrangement. Going well for them so far. They’re one of the only legitimate democracies in the Berlin Agreement.
*Thailand is distant enough and powerful enough that China can’t so easily boss them around, but that’s something Beijing hopes to change.
Oceania
*Indonesia left communist rule in the 2000s, and transitioned to a more conventional Islamist democracy. They very reluctantly allowed Aceh to declare independence after their referendum came out massively in favor of leaving the country.
*Papua was Australian territory that broke away after Melbourne ended its fascist phase, and remains a poor, illiterate nation.
*Australia feels very guilty about those decades under fascist rule, Melbourne assures you. And they’re really sorry for how they treated the aboriginals. Well, the liberals are, anyway. Moderates and conservatives consider it either an unavoidable mistake or the right move, depending on how psychotic they are.
World
*Technology, military-wise is a bit ahead of ours, with orbital weaponry playing a fairly significant role in the arsenals of the great powers. Civilian tech is a bit backwards, with the intrawebs, a loose connection of interconnected, worldwide computer networks, only recently becoming a cornerstone of society.
*The Americans and Soviets have both placed men on Mars, and there are currently one hundred and six people living in space full time.
*Creatures, unnamed at this point, but later designated dronemakers, dwell in deep crevasses, mostly beneath the ocean, and use a form of brainwashing to infect creatures and subvert them to their will, granting them a form of telekinesis so that they can gather biomass and feed the dronemaker.
*Dronemakers are not sapient, and barely sentient, but they are a potential threat and resource for those who are clever enough to exploit them, and they’re the reason that, on the night of September 10, 2011, the leader of the extradimensional empire known as the Coascendancy, arrived in Newcastle, Washington, looking for what he hoped was a new source of easy power.
*This world, designated Terra Sextus by the Coascendancy, would become one of the first worlds to be annexed piecemeal through diplomacy, as opposed to deposing and taking over a horrible dictatorship in one sudden coup, methodically over time, or through the acceptance of refugees from a doomed earth.
Questions, comments and criticism welcome. (Hopefully, this lives up to the hype of a 'phresh Africa'.
)
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Why is the Philippines not under American influence?
Terra Sextus
This is a map of a world which diverged from our own in the 1920s, that takes place in the modern day. The basic premise is a more stable and powerful Soviet Union and China, a shorter WW2 (if you can even call it a world war, the people here certainly don’t), and a few other disparities leads to a fairly different world, geopolitically speaking.
This is also a world map for the sixth world the protagonist of my multicross fanfic Coascendancy visits. It’s a very loose adaptation of a particular work of fiction, and this map has virtually nothing to do with that fiction. I was inspired to make this map by something fairly important that was left out of this work of fiction, which I felt implied a heavily different world from our own.
Without further ado, let’s begin. The modern day is September 2011. Credit to @B. Munro for the nuclear symbols, they’re great stuff.
The Shadow War, and Its Relation to Modern Day Geopolitics
*The United States is the world’s greatest power, but it isn’t ahead by very much. Combined, the USSR and CPU (Chinese People’s Union) easily outclass it, and both rival it in sheer power.
*Regardless, several close calls that almost led to nuclear war throughout the twentieth century have led to a general detente between the Western Community and the Berlin Agreement. Any conflict between the two blocs is limited to purely economic warfare, with the occasional, rare proxy war.
*The Shadow War, the so-called quiet conflict between the communist and capitalist blocs, lasted from the 1940s to the 1990s, until a period of mismanagement and famine caught up with the CPU and the USSR, crippling them economically and leading to a brief period of loss of government control in many parts of their respective countries.
*Despite the hopes of western pundits, both countries recovered, and by the modern day, are beginning to regain their former strength. Their clients in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia held on, or were forced back into compliance (the coup in Cambodia is widely used as a reminder of the communist threat by Shadow Warrior politicians in western countries). While the Soviets, Chinese and company are far more state capitalist than pure communist, their interests are still unaligned with the western world.
*That said, the Berlin Agreement is much more concerned with economic domination than any long brush wars. Look at all that time the French wasted in Algeria, or how many Americans died taming Panama.
North America
*The end of the Shadow War has led to a conflict within American society itself. The Shadow Warrior mindset of communists lurking in the bushes is rapidly contrasting with a newer mindset, which is tired of their government spending money on carriers and orbital weapons (no Outer Space Treaty here) when they’re buried in debt and they’re seeing globalization kill their communities.
*As such, political polarization is becoming more and more of a problem, and pundits fear that America will wind up in the same state as the communist powers in the 1990s. Radicals on the right and left clash with the centrist establishment, who, while wheezing all the way, have managed to keep a weak grasp on the federal and most state governments.
*Kelvin Farina, an establishment Republican whose policies were viewed as a continuation of Franke Gray, the infamous warhawk (among centrist and left-wing circles) who burned Panama to the ground and whose orders killed tens of thousands of Americans, has record-low approval ratings, and the Democrats swept to power in the 2010 midterms, and under Ron Searcy, a so-called ‘radical incrementalist’, hope to sweep the 2012 election.
*The civil rights movement was a bit more retracted, with a Civil Rights Act equivalent only passing in 1974. That said, Puerto Rico became a state in 1980, even if that was almost certainly a Republican administration trying to take advantage of three extra electoral votes.
*Gender relations, sadly, are still a fair bit behind ours. Despite promising politicians like Sharon Mallory and Betty Willis, only fifty-eight percent of Americans would vote for a qualified, female President.
*The United States has two more states than our own reality, with North California (a similar movement to our own Jefferson) and Puerto Rico counting themselves among the stars on the flag. The idea of Canada or Cuba joining the US is occasionally thrown around, but is almost always just as easily dismissed.
*A War on Drugs equivalent never occurred in this world, so Mexico is a stable, a bit more corrupt, average country, with a close, long lasting friendship with the United States.
*Canada’s a fair bit rougher than in our homeworld, with nuclear weapons, a less established welfare state, and a much larger military budget. They’ve joined America on most of their silly adventures in the Americas.
*Newfoundland is a quiet social democracy that got rich off of fishing money.
*Greenland’s independence movement was sponsored by the United States and reluctantly accepted by Denmark. It makes a great place to put ICBM equivalents.
*Cuba is a decadent flawed democracy, a popular tourist destination for Americans seeking to gamble and play around with hookers.
*Haiti’s democratic (sort of) government was recently overthrown by a communist strongman, but the American public has zero interest in invading and overthrowing yet another tinpot dictatorship, especially such a worthless one. The Berlin Agreement has sent out the bare minimum in aid, but Haiti isn’t worth much to them either.
*The Centroamerican People’s Republic is an unpleasant dictatorship, and came into existence when the United States was embroiled in a brutal war in Panama. There just isn’t enough political will in Washington to remove it. Unlike Haiti, however, they do have significant Soviet and Chinese support, in terms of monetary aid, of course, not military aid. That would start a nuclear war.
*Panama is a tinpot dictatorship kept alive by American arms, and the Canal Zone has been acknowledged as American territory in perpetuity.
South America
*Venezuela is the most likely spot for the next American war. A strongman communist dictatorship that’s occupied the western portion of Guyana, an American ally, for several years now, it’s deep on Washington’s shit list. The problem, of course, being that the memory of Panama is still fresh in American minds, and invading a nation that’s stronger, more well-connected, and stabler than Panama is not something anyone looks forward to. Venezuela’s interest in developing nuclear weapons may, however, force the world’s hand.
*Brazil’s modernizing nicely, and they’ve managed to clean house from their more corrupt past. Rio de Janeiro is now seen as a glistening city of the world, and Brazil hopes to begin to stretch its legs geopolitically. Tired of being America’s little buddy, they dream of having their own sphere of influence on the continent.
*The Andean People’s Union, a leftist flawed democracy born of joint popular revolutions in Peru and Bolivia, has come into trouble lately. Andea’s leaders have been increasingly despotic incompetents, massacring entire villages while desperately looking for counterrevolutionaries to make examples of. The ensuing refugee crisis has led Brazil and Argentina, while cold to each other at the best of times, to consider a joint effort to bring them down. The two have been making noises at the United States for their permission.
*Paraguay was humiliated in a war with Bolivia in the late 1930s, and has resigned itself to being an Argentinean sockpuppet.
*Argentina spends most of its time trying to play catchup with Brazil. They had a brief fling with fascism in the early 2000s that ended when the President For Life was killed by a jealous lover.
Europe
*The Troubles in Ireland were a fair bit nastier in this world, and the agreement to split Ulster between Ireland and Britain in a desperate attempt to quell the bloodshed proved to be an absolutely boneheaded move on London’s part, as riots and bombings remain a fairly common occurrence even decades after the main crisis has ended.
*The United Kingdom is much closer to the United States than in our world, to the point where they’re in America’s main free trade agreement with America, Canada, Cuba, and Mexico.
*The European Union is an economic and military alliance formed in the 1940s to protect against Soviet intrusion and to help Europe be less subverted by American influence. All capitalist nations in Europe besides Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Slovenia and the Vatican are members.
*France is the steady giant of capitalist Europe. After a string of populist, nationalist leaders proved disastrous, with millions of French lives being expended in Algeria and Vietnam (sort of succeeding in the former) France has resigned itself to rule by boring but stable bureaucrats.
*They’re looking cautiously at Germany’s rise. This world’s equivalent of the European Front in WW2 was a lot shorter, with Hitler still rising to power, but managing to tick off the Soviets very quickly. France and Britain jumped in and kicked Germany while they were down, mostly to prevent the Soviets from sharing a border with France proper.
*In the modern day, West Germany is a peaceful liberal democracy, but they still have their fair share of politicians who would like to see Germany rise above their western and southern neighbor when it comes to the European Union’s inner politics.
*Belgium split peacefully in the 1980s. Wallonia, Flanders, and Brussels are independent states with open borders.
*Sweden’s constantly looking over its shoulder at the Soviets, and was the fourth European state to gain nuclear weapons.
*Slovenia broke off from Yugoslavia during the hectic 1990s and is walking a very narrow tightrope to avoid pissing off the Berlin Agreement. If they joined the European Union, it might spark war in Europe, as Yugoslavia still claims the country as a core territory.
*Poland’s doing well for itself, with the Soviet boot taken off their neck in the 1990s, they’ve transitioned into more of a mixed economy, and the wealthy Poles are enjoying the money to be made from being Europe’s sweatshop.
*Spain’s embarrassing fascist period ended decades ago, thankfully.
*East Austria is more an abandoned Soviet military base than an actual country.
Africa
*Becoming more important as minerals and natural wealth is exploited, both by African powers and foreign interlopers.
*Morocco is the only non-European member of the European Union, and enjoys friendly relations with France and America.
*That’s more than can be said for Algeria, a tinpot Islamist dictatorship that keeps saber rattling towards the French territory it claims as part of its country. A brutal twenty year war still in living memory for the country’s leadership will do that to you.
*The so-called ‘Metropole in Africa’ is narrowly majority French, with the local Arab population mostly compliant with Paris’ rule, much to Constantine’s consternation.
*Egypt’s attempts to create an Arab alliance fizzled out, but they still have their nukes to keep them happy. Think something like Iran from our world, except secular, its oppression more focused on non-Arabs.
*The Tuaregs have their own state, Imuhagha, given independence in the 1950s, and they live in constant fear of the day when Algeria decides to attempt to reclaim their old territory. Imuhagha has a rather pathetic joint military, and is overall very decentralized due to being based mostly around loose tribal identity, and the natural geography of the Sahara.
*Guinea leads a small bloc of fairly coherent communist nations in West Africa. Conakry hopes to become a fairly wealthy country off of trade with the renewed communist powers, but it’s more likely that they’ll be used as a neo-colony and resource chest.
*Nigeria suffered quite a bit in their early days, and while they enjoy friendly relations with the Sultanate of Sokoto and New Oyo, they’re a far cry from being an impressive power.
*Niger had a nasty collapse in the 1980s, turning into a failed state after years of incompetent one-party rule, one that Chad, Sokoto and Imuhagha happily exploited.
*The Congolese Republic is a flawed democracy stuck in a cycle of revenge against rebels in its eastern territories.
*Sudan is an Islamist dictatorship facing heavy tension from revolts in Darfur and in its southern territories.
*Aksum, a leftist nation built off of an attempt to build a newer, more African brand of communism, is a terrifying despotic fuckhole, whose attempts to replicate SSRs wound up creating a brutal caste system. Its military, while large, is in shambles. Addis Ababa tried to create a military that wouldn’t lose any more territory, as Somalia did successfully invade and take over Somali-majority areas in the 1990s, but thus far, their efforts have resulted in quantity, not quality.
*Somalia is easily the richest state in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of the closest things to one of our world’s Western European democracies on the continent. Currently struggling with their neighbor being absolutely psychotic.
*Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Madagascar and Somalia are trying to create a regional alliance, and while federalizing is seen as a silly idea, they all agree that they want to prevent foreign intrusion and they also want to keep an eye on Aksum and other rogue states neighboring them. All five are stable, fairly wealthy democracies, and foreign observers have floated the idea that they could create an African century if they continue along their current growth rates and cooperation.
*Katanga was a western-owned corporatist one-party state until the 1980s, when a bloody native revolt caused the western overlords and their collaborators to flee the country. After that bit of ethnic cleansing, the populist, ethnonationalist movement is still struggling with tribal conflicts. Currently trying to appeal to the Berlin Agreement for aid.
*Uganda is currently having a fair bit of problems with decentralization, and Buganda is finally starting to campaign for full independence. Kampala worries that the current trends could lead to civil war.
*The clusterfuck in Rwanda still happened here, in much the same way.
*Tsiowa (Cabinda) is an independent state after accepting Congolese aid for their independence from Angola, and is trying to make it rich as a mercantile world capital. It’s currently going poorly for them.
*Soufrica is the largest state built out of the ruins of a post apartheid-equivalent South Africa, and is still struggling to rebuild from the South African Civil War in the 1990s. Tense, but a decent-ish place to live.
*The Afrikaner Union is a surprisingly pleasant place. Equality between blacks and whites is...iffy at the best of times, with voter suppression being fairly common, but it’s almost a stable, fair democracy.
*Free Zululand is a competent enough one-party ethnostate.
Middle East
*Turkey has done its damnedest to keep its own house in order and to ignore the games of foreign powers, and has succeeded. Its neutrality is threatened by the growing popularity of a leftist party, which threatens to break the traditionalist party’s grasp on power.
*Syria never managed to stay united after its independence. The Druze State and Nusayra, while hardly powers by any means, have managed to keep their houses in order, as has Syria proper.
*Hejaz is very, very, very careful about its neutrality.
*Yemen is currently involved in a brutal civil war tearing the country apart, started for a variety of reasons, ranging from ethnic and tribal differences to moderate vs. fundamentalist Islam to arms sales from the great powers of the world...oh, it’s just a mess.
*Iraq is dealing with a persistent Kurdish revolt, sponsored by the Soviets.
*Twenty-six percent of the Palestinian population is Jewish, and it’s considered a miracle that the state hasn’t erupted into religious violence. For what it’s worth, while there are Jews who wish that they had a state, most are fairly content to live as minorities within Palestine.
*The Kuwait-Gulf Republic’s mere existence is a precarious balancing act, and mostly only exists because the western powers wanted the oil to be owned by a nicer government than the Najdi Emirate.
Asia
*Iran was the subject of a vicious coup enacted by the Soviets, and has been stridently anticommunist ever since. They’ve been involved in several alliances of convenience with the Western Community in proxy wars in the Middle East, and are fast becoming a greater power in terms of industry and development. They’re one of Moscow’s greatest geopolitical regrets.
*India’s independence was a bit more chaotic on this world, but India’s managed to come out of it fairly strong. Unlike our world, it has no significant rivals on the subcontinent, and has managed to cobble together a monetary union it’s trying to federalize. Well. The non-Muslim parts, at least. Islamophobia is still a fairly big problem in Delhi.
*The Chinese People’s Union developed rather chaotically after they drove out the nationalists in the 1950s, but nothing like the Great Leap Forward ever happened in this world’s China. No mythical strongman figure like Mao ever came about, and so China’s made slow, incremental progress towards modernization, and is still firmly behind America and Russia. Currently trying to make friends with Indonesia, a former communist power that democratized in the 2000s.
*Japan was humiliated by the Soviets, Americans and Chinese in the late 1940s, a short time after the German War. Hokkaido, the Ryukyus and the Kurils are all in communist hands, and that will likely always be the case. Japan itself is a quiet, humbled state, very dependent on the United States, but unlike our world, it still has an active military that’s fought on foreign shores, and it has nukes.
*Korea is independent and wealthy. It broke away from communist influence for a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but when the Berlin Agreement recovered from their stumble, it decided it was easier to resume the status quo than to try and break away from a potentially profitable arrangement. Going well for them so far. They’re one of the only legitimate democracies in the Berlin Agreement.
*Thailand is distant enough and powerful enough that China can’t so easily boss them around, but that’s something Beijing hopes to change.
Oceania
*Indonesia left communist rule in the 2000s, and transitioned to a more conventional Islamist democracy. They very reluctantly allowed Aceh to declare independence after their referendum came out massively in favor of leaving the country.
*Papua was Australian territory that broke away after Melbourne ended its fascist phase, and remains a poor, illiterate nation.
*Australia feels very guilty about those decades under fascist rule, Melbourne assures you. And they’re really sorry for how they treated the aboriginals. Well, the liberals are, anyway. Moderates and conservatives consider it either an unavoidable mistake or the right move, depending on how psychotic they are.
World
*Technology, military-wise is a bit ahead of ours, with orbital weaponry playing a fairly significant role in the arsenals of the great powers. Civilian tech is a bit backwards, with the intrawebs, a loose connection of interconnected, worldwide computer networks, only recently becoming a cornerstone of society.
*The Americans and Soviets have both placed men on Mars, and there are currently one hundred and six people living in space full time.
*Creatures, unnamed at this point, but later designated dronemakers, dwell in deep crevasses, mostly beneath the ocean, and use a form of brainwashing to infect creatures and subvert them to their will, granting them a form of telekinesis so that they can gather biomass and feed the dronemaker.
*Dronemakers are not sapient, and barely sentient, but they are a potential threat and resource for those who are clever enough to exploit them, and they’re the reason that, on the night of September 10, 2011, the leader of the extradimensional empire known as the Coascendancy, arrived in Newcastle, Washington, looking for what he hoped was a new source of easy power.
*This world, designated Terra Sextus by the Coascendancy, would become one of the first worlds to be annexed piecemeal through diplomacy, as opposed to deposing and taking over a horrible dictatorship in one sudden coup, methodically over time, or through the acceptance of refugees from a doomed earth.
Questions, comments and criticism welcome. (Hopefully, this lives up to the hype of a 'phresh Africa'.
This is a cyberpunk OTL Cold War map, sometime in the year 198X. Feel free to use it as a base map (though credit would be nice). It likely has several errors in the islands, and unfortunately my basemap did not distinguish between coastlines and borders, but it should be useful for that cyberpunk feel. With a little tweaking it could represent modern day borders too.
Shows NATO and allies, Warsaw Pact and Allies, China and ally (Albania), India and Mercosur.
Comes in Matrix Green and Megacorp White.
Thanksforallthefish Inc. does not cover user modifications to this map. Use at own risk. Also, don't forget to buy the soundtrack:
Shows NATO and allies, Warsaw Pact and Allies, China and ally (Albania), India and Mercosur.
Comes in Matrix Green and Megacorp White.
Thanksforallthefish Inc. does not cover user modifications to this map. Use at own risk. Also, don't forget to buy the soundtrack:
A map I made for Kaiser Chris's Lone Star Republic timeline. The US has won its Civil War, and Texas and Yucatan had an interesting war with Mexico, but as we head into 1864 things are looking good (unless you are a bitter ex-Confederate).
Depends on the area. Turkey is about as OTL, same with the Middle East, though Persia has seen maybe 25% convert to Sunniism, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Austria are 75% Muslim, Southern France maybe 50-60%, and in the north Christians make up the majority. Christians are a significant population, but the popular and efficient government is strong enough to deal with any possible revolts, and Christians are fairly happy so there aren't many revolts.
Why are there so many Canadian land reclamation projects? The Saint Lawrence delta, North of Manatoulin Island, East of Vancouver Island, Lac St Clair, the list goes on...
Because iTTL, Canada was settled by the Dutch and it is ingrained in their DNA. You don't want to see the TL where they settle the Hawaiian Islands; a century later, you've got one landmass running from the former big Island out to Wake.Why are there so many Canadian land reclamation projects? The Saint Lawrence delta, North of Manatoulin Island, East of Vancouver Island, Lac St Clair, the list goes on...
Bad blank map, dude...Why are there so many Canadian land reclamation projects? The Saint Lawrence delta, North of Manatoulin Island, East of Vancouver Island, Lac St Clair, the list goes on...
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