My first map I've ever posted on here, and
oh man, looking at some of the stuff already on the thread, I don't know if I can compete.
That said, this an in-universe takeoff of another map and writeup of mine that won't show up probably for a good long while,
based on a certain scenario by Philip K. Dick, but set well into the future of it. And a lot of the secondary basis for it -- and a
very special thanks for inspiring me to create maps in the first place -- is from the great
@B_Munro, the master of AH maps... especially since
I might have borrowed the border for Russia from his own take on the subject.
I just don't plain feel like giving a proper writeup right now, and besides, I'd rather save it for the main map scenario anyway for when that's done and finished. That said, I can give some tidbits about this world:
--The current year in-universe is 2008. This might be best thought of as a poster map, or a cover to a celebratory anniversary pamphlet or somesuch similar. Individual EU countries are all marked in their own color, and in fact only Switzerland and Liechtenstein remain out of the EU these days.
--Winston Churchill got
really lucky in several of his pre-WWII political hopes and dreams, both personally and for the British Empire as a whole, trusting the Americans a lot less, and would take on a leading role in helping establish the European Union in the 1948 Congress of Europe... and also especially, British dominance of it.
--World War II was only slightly less pointlessly destructive than OTL, the US turned back inwards for several years due the lack of a red menace, and no Soviet Union let the Europeans a bit ballsier and meaner in trying to keep their various colonies. Pan-European birthrates also remained somewhat high which helped keep its population base up and also boosted white emigration in the various colonies Europe kept and incorporated -- indeed, European society could have been said to be at least as sexist as racist in the ultra-conservative postwar Churchillian era, with an awful lot of European women kept as glorified baby factories.
--For all that, Britain, even bolstered by its federation with various dominions and incorporation of several of its other colonies, has essentially lost top spot within the EU to Germany, which though
divided at first (thankfully minus Hungary in the South German state, because even Churchill's cabinet at the time said "come on!") reunited in the 70s after his death and grew quite fast, having never had to worry about communism, shifted borders or or mass expulsions with Stalin out of the picture. Indeed, it's sort of established its own miniature bloc within the EU of various Central European allies against the Anglo-French bloc within the EU.
--The EU itself is pretty closely intertwined, much more so than in our own world... questions on if the EU is a proper superstate or not are asked much more frequently. However, internal EU politics are incredibly turbulent, with the institution as a whole really only surviving due to inertia, external worries about the USA, karmic vengeance from the OTL third world, and lately a very fast rising China as well. The EU might be best thought of as a barge: stay in front of it and you're going to get crushed, but if you're nimble enough to get out of its way, it's going to have a hard time shifting around to get to you. That's why even if Europe is #1, it's only winning due to points.
--The EU is finally experimenting with the whole "not being racist as hell" thing, giving more legal privileges to "natives" in non-European areas and even citizenship to basically the biggest nonwhite believers in European civilization/sellouts to whitey in "overseas territories." Still, it's incredibly slow-going, and everything from massive complaining to the occasional terrorist bombing European cities every now and then will probably keep happening for the foreseeable future.
--the USA has been rather leftier and in fact far less genuinely racist than our world, and despite the massive size of the European bloc at first, had successfully kept chipping away at it for decades, with a lot of newly independent former colonies siding with it during the cold war with Europe. However, neoliberal obnoxiousness, glorified neocolonialism, and a feeling it wasn't doing enough in the long term to truly stop Europe led a lot of countries to eventually de-align from it, most notoriously China, but also large amounts of the rest of Asia and Africa. It retains some allies in Latin America (rather close by, after all) and the Middle East (good customers of oil) but now external criticisms of US foreign policy are becoming internal criticisms of US domestic policy: many now say the USA is an inherently racist, white-dominated country the way the states of Europe are despite only roughly half of the population being white nowadays. (There had been an awful lot of emigration from old European colonies, and a more concerned, humanitarian USA took as many people in as it could.)
--The election of Angela Davis as the first POC, female, and even communist president has made American history, as well as the fact she got in with only a plurality of the popular and electoral vote. That it's quickly being uncovered her supporters stuffed ballot boxes, intimidated and beat up opposition voters, and all sorts of other illegal tactics will make even more history with the Second American Civil War starting next year.
--In other Earth-shattering news, East Russia will also reunite with West Russia next year, to the joy of European businesses happy to access Siberian resources. However, the incredibly generous political concessions made to incorporate East Russians into the Russian and overall European political system is making a lot of European pols nervous about probable future Russian dominance within the EU, and indeed, East Russian President Limonov has been making plans for that already.