Any idea why "Ismail" was de-Semetized while "Jacob" wasn't?
Map Thread XX
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I was going to say Hoofsmith was my favorite name here until I saw Godhearkenedcancaster
Damn, this is pretty good work for your first (high effort) map. It looks very clean, and I enjoy your sense of color with the choices for each state
I want to see more of this universe.Hi all. I've been lurking for many years and it's about time I made my first post.
Valley of the World's Desire
Mounting Unrest
As World War II ended, tens of thousands of soldiers hailing from the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir returned home after serving in the British Indian Army. Many were Muslims from the Poonch and Mirpur districts. Allowed to keep their arms, and with few employment opportunities, high taxes, and increasing repression by Maharaja Hari Singh’s Jammu and Kashmir State Forces, they revolted against his rule in August 1947, concentrating in the west of the state. On August 15, both Pakistan and India gained their independence, and a mass exodus of Muslims on one hand, and Hindus and Sikhs on the other, occurred as mobs committed horrific atrocities and forced families from their homes. Pakistan, desiring to annex the majority Muslim Jammu and Kashmir, began preparing to send in troops and support the Poonch rebellion. Throughout the summer, the uprisings in Kashmir continued and rebels began assaulting supply trucks of the State Forces.
On October 14, Maharaja Hari Singh was assassinated by a Muslim officer from his own State Forces. Rebels also attempted to capture Karan Singh, his 16-year-old successor, but he managed to escape to India. Now effectively headless, Jammu and Kashmir fell into anarchy, coinciding with the arrival of around 20,000 militiamen from northwest Pakistan. Regulars led by former Indian National Army officers and forces from neighboring Chitral were also on the way. The Pakistan-backed militias quickly advanced through Muzaffarabad and entered Kashmir Valley from the west via Uri, aided by Kashmiri rebels and mutinying Muslim soldiers in the State Forces. They reached Baramulla, and had it not been for the strict command of Major Khurshid Anwar, a campaign of looting and slaughter would have surely commenced. Instead, he led a few hundred militiamen towards Badgam the next day, only a few miles from Srinagar Airfield. The remaining State Forces fought with tenacity, inflicting heavy casualties on the militiamen, but succumbed to the militias’ sheer numbers, with the airfield falling that night.
Formal War
Newly crowned Maharaja Karan Singh signed the Instrument of Ascension in Delhi on November 1, acceding Jammu and Kashmir to the Dominion of India. India declared its intention to defend Jammu and Kashmir, but was unaware of Srinagar Airfield's capture until the first wave of transport planes attempted to land and were peppered with bullets, causing one to crash. On the same day, the Gilgit Scouts in the north sided with Pakistan and overthrew the Maharaja’s governor, laying siege to their namesake. Over the next week, militias advanced through Srinagar and captured the city, finally indulging their desire for plunder. The only remaining entry point for India into the Kashmir Valley was Banihal Pass in the south. Military convoys began moving there in earnest, harassed and hampered by fighters that had infiltrated the road from Kathua to Jammu. When they reached their side of the pass, they were pushed back by mortar fire from rebels that had arrived on the other side of the pass from Islamabad. Upon the forced relievement of Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Armed Forces Frank Messervy, Muhammad Ali Jinnah severed Pakistan from the joint military command under Supreme Commander Claude Auchinleck and appointed native commanders to replace any uncooperative British ones.
With the Kashmir Valley captured and difficult to re-enter, India and Pakistan redoubled their efforts in the Poonch and Ladakh sectors. The Gilgit Scouts advanced up the Indus River towards Leh, successfully laying siege to Kargil and capturing Zoji La. Indian forces coming from Leh were now barred from entering the Kashmir Valley from the east. They then attempted to lay Leh under siege, but were held back by the newly raised Nubra Guards, composed of locals from the Nubra and Shyok river valleys. The Scouts retreated back towards Kargil and dug in. In Poonch, both Indian and Pakistani regulars arrived and made contact. Notable was the use of Stuart light tanks and armored cars in such high altitude and mountainous terrain. After a few months of heavy fighting, the frontlines stabilized and Pakistan firmly held on to Poonch and Pir Panjal Pass, which connected Poonch to the Kashmir Valley, while India cleared the Jammu outskirts and captured Rajouri and the Naoshera valley from the rebels.
With both sides unable to advance into or out of the valley due to the tightly controlled passes, a United Nations-supported ceasefire was declared in August 1948. Pakistan outright rejected the UN Resolution calling for the withdrawal of all Pakistani troops from Kashmir and a plebiscite to be held as it had already captured most of the majority Muslim areas and did not want to risk losing them in a plebiscite where Indian forces could pressure the locals or that could be rigged. India rejected a Pakistani offer to give up the overwhelmingly Buddhist and Hindu Chittagong Hill Tracts, which had been ceded to Pakistan, in exchange for Jammu and Kashmir. The Cease-Fire Line that was established has remained unchanged up to this day.
Despite most sources agreeing that Pakistan was the victor, seeing that it had captured about two-thirds of Kashmir, including the most valuable Kashmir Valley, the price was paid with its heavy casualties. Indian casualties were around 3,000 killed and 5,000 wounded, while Pakistani casualties are estimated to have been between 5,000 and 10,000 killed and many more wounded. A mass exodus of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs mirroring the larger movements from Partition occurred, with tens of thousands on both sides being massacred, primarily by government forces and militias. Thus, Kashmiriyat, the communal harmony and peaceful coexistence of religions for centuries in Kashmir, came to an end. Indian Kashmir became almost entirely Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist, and Pakistani Kashmir became almost entirely Muslim.
Post-War
In 1956, the Republic of China was stamping out the last remnants of its communist and separatist insurgencies and began reasserting its territorial claims on its frontiers. Pakistan readily relinquished its overlapping claims and transferred the Shaksgam Valley to China to improve relations. Of greater importance to China was the North-East Frontier Agency and Aksai Chin, both controlled by India, and the latter because China wanted to build a road through it to connect Tibet with the Tarim Basin. Diplomatic efforts failed as both nations were uncompromising. War erupted, and by the end of the year, China had captured most of the NEFA and Aksai Chin from the outnumbered Indian forces. India was able to hold on to the Karakoram Pass, the Chip Chap and Galwan River valleys (both tributaries of the Shyok), and Khurnak Fort. The 1957 Cease-Fire Line has remained unchanged up to this day.
In 1968, relations between India and Pakistan had soured for the past few years over control of the waters of the Indus River and its tributaries, many of which originate in Kashmir. Tensions boiled over and a brief border war occured along the entirety of the Indian and West Pakistani border, with India supported by the Soviet Union and Pakistan supported by China and the United States. The Kashmir theater saw ultramodern T-55 and M60 tanks fighting at altitudes up to 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) and supported from the sky by MiG-21s, Su-7s, and Il-28s against Freedom Fighters, Sabres, and Canberras. The war ended in a stalemate, and the 1970 Sialkot Accord between India and Pakistan—among other things—reaffirmed the 1948 Cease-Fire Line as the de facto border.
In the 1970s, the Islamist-ruled Pakistani government led by Jamaat-e-Islami instituted the renaming of places deemed to have Hindu connotations, Islamizing and Urduizing them. These renamings included the three biggest Kashmiri cities under Pakistani control: Srinagar → Shamsabad (both roughly meaning City of the Sun) , Anantnag → Islamabad (already officially renamed and called that by the locals, named after Mughal governor Islam Khan), and Baramulla → Janbazabad (after 15th century Sufi saint Syed Janbaz Wali). Other renamings included Bijbehara → Chinar Bagh (Chinar Garden) and Verinag → Shahabad (after Mughal emperor Shah Jahan), as well as official renamings of mountains to reduce British influences: K2 → Chhogori and Broad Peak → Falchan Kangri. Some renamings proved to be controversial, sparking protests by supporters of the Kashmiriyat movement (which advocated for religious unity and a united Kashmir) and subsequent counter-protests by supporters of the Islamist government. The climax of these events would be the 1977 Shehr-e-Khas Riots in downtown Shamsabad, which resulted in 29 deaths and hundreds more wounded.
Insurgent activity picked up on both sides of the border in the 1980s and 1990s. The most notable group was the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, which espoused Kashmiriyat ideals and wanted both India and Pakistan to leave Kashmir so an independent state could be established. Multiple shootings and bombings were carried out on Indian and Pakistani government forces, which encouraged the two governments to cooperate and share intel to suppress the group.
Nowadays, as Indian and Pakistani relations have gradually warmed after the 90s Revolutions, travel routes between the two occupation zones have been reinstated. A shared tunnel has been proposed to connect Banihal and Shahabad to greatly reduce the travel time between Jammu and the Kashmir Valley.
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This is my first map and write up that I put serious effort into (took almost all of my free time for over a week). Although I tried my best, I am aware that some parts may not be realistic. Please point out any issues you have so I can learn and refine my future maps so that they can be more fluid and immersive.
Made using Paint.NET, used pyrochild’s Outline Object and dpy’s Circle Text plugins. Fonts used: Frutiger and Frutiger Condensed
I plan for this map to be the first of many in my timeline with the working title Green Wave (please suggest better names), in which there is a larger and much more successful pan-Islamist movement in the 20th century. Possible PODs I've considered including are either the Young Turk Revolution failing or the 1909 Ottoman countercoup succeeding (therefore no entry into WWI), Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Ismail Enver Pasha dying in the Italo-Turkish War (less nationalist/secularist influence), the Rashidis supported by the surviving Ottomans winning against the Saudis and then falling to an Islamist revolution during a succession struggle after WWII, the Muslim Brotherhood coming into power in Egypt (initially under Sayyid Qutb, but he will be replaced with Hassan al-Banna who isn’t assassinated), a stronger/more aggressive Soviet Union and consequently Iran falling to a Soviet-supported officer coup by the Tudeh Party (this will be part of my next map actually), the US being more anti-imperialist than pro-European (possibly helped by WWI being shorter from Ottomans not joining), Nationalist China winning the civil war, and some later PODs like this TLs Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or equivalent agreeing to join the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the Islamic Salvation Front equivalent successfully resisting coup attempts and coming into power in Algeria. The goal is to have a bloc of Islamic states that can challenge the other traditional world alliances. The thing is I'm sure that my earliest mentioned PODs would have butterflied away the subject of this map :/ Hopefully this wall of text isn't too long for this thread.
Map of Europe in the upcoming worldbuilding, September in Marshes
After World War II, the victors of the Allies (United States, United Kingdom, France, and Spain) had divided what remains of Axis powers that they clashed with the Soviet Russians, sparking the beginning of the Cold War in the early 1950s with the European powers including benevolent Britain are in deep decline due to destruction that left colonies ripe for independence and then a proxy competition between the two superpowers.
Starting in Germany where Spain, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States had occupied the liberated portions of what is now West Germany or Germany while the Soviets in the Eastern portions responded by instigating the Berlin Blockade and using tactics to spread the Soviet-style communism that forced the Allies to form a very collective defensive pact in making the first line of defense against the possible Soviet aggression in case of another world war breaks out that might be turned out to be weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile in Greece, the failure of British operations when the Axis forces managed to fight back when most of the Western Allies are busy concentrating in the Pyrenees while breaking the military front line in hopes for them to push into the deep heart of France through D-Day landings in Normandy and late-1944 Italian Campaign including the uprising that led to civil wars and the distraction opened the way for Soviet forces to liberate the occupied country from years of Axis occupation ended with such consequences with the country split into two, owing to allegiance to the ideological bloc.
In Western Europe, the seven countries are banded together into what would be called the 'European Economic Community' which comprises France, Spain, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium as part of the postwar plan to heal the continent from centuries of countless, divisive, and destructive wars from the previous centuries and the most destructive world wars that affected the continent through reconstruction and cooperation which shaped the continent poised on the course into hopeful future for the rest of the 20th century.
- Thomas Wyatt, author of History of Europe in Cold War, circa 1997
Thank you. I actually used colors from the SUCK scheme and lowered the layer's opacity.
Me too. I'll start a thread laying out some general ideas and concerns I have.
Huh, is East Germany a bit smaller than OTL? Is there anything significant in the extra territory that West Germany gained?
Seems like most of Thuringia and a decent part of Saxony-Anhalt. Maybe parts of Mecklenburg too?
i made a fair bit of progress on the Dichotomy world map in the past day, though most of the more obvious changes are just filler colors indicating where something will be going eventually. the bigger significant changes are to the Middle East, where i finally got around to adding some proper borders. i have some prototype borders (and border adjustments) for others set up in photoshop but i'm not committing to them just yet. i also got a proper TL-specific color for Anahuac. what this really spells out for me is that i'll need to get back to work on the color scheme itself since the fact that a few of them are still using UCS/RCS colors is starting to bug me 
of the smaller countries in the area of Russia, only the Caucasus one--tentatively Cossackia--is definitely going to still be part of this in the final version, though the idea is that it'll be an unrecognized state in the contemporary period so the borders shown for that are technically wrong. i was also able to figure out some potentially-finalized borders for the Anatolian state, Rumania (that name is very deliberate the idea is that the Ottoman Empire was replaced by the Rum Empire and, for the sake of irony, i gave its modern descendant the same name as a historical spelling of Romania while Romania itself doesn't exist)
EDIT: i decided to do exactly what i mentioned earlier (about UCS/RCS colors) to an extent and got the proper yellows onto the map. mainly because that one required the least amount of effort and, frankly, i should be getting ready for work right now in the TL-specific color scheme, yellow is going to be used to represent "whites in non-white regions", mainly being (former) settler colonies and ultimately comes from my originally representing the United States with yellow in the very earliest maps that i made for TTL. more specifically, the countries qualifying for this are Australia, (which i've basically decided broke off from Britannia around the turn of the 20th century, partly just to line up more with Code Geass as a formative influence on the project) the Boer Republic, (represented as a filler color right now) Brazil, (which is actually Portugal, which evacuated to the New World because of Napoleon like IOTL but never went back ITTL; this color will also be used for historical Portugal on other maps set ITTL) Tzion, (as a version of the Uganda Plan and TTL's closest equivalent to Israel; the actual area of Israel from OTL is instead occupied by the Jordanian-Palestinian state) and of course the United States (which obviously encompasses much more territory ITTL; that straight latitudinal border in roughly Ontario actually does have a historical basis, incidentally). if i repeated myself here at all, i don't really care this eliminates a few outliers but creates an additional one since now Japan "conflicts" with the basic idea of what yellow is used for here.
of the smaller countries in the area of Russia, only the Caucasus one--tentatively Cossackia--is definitely going to still be part of this in the final version, though the idea is that it'll be an unrecognized state in the contemporary period so the borders shown for that are technically wrong. i was also able to figure out some potentially-finalized borders for the Anatolian state, Rumania (that name is very deliberate
the idea is that the Ottoman Empire was replaced by the Rum Empire and, for the sake of irony, i gave its modern descendant the same name as a historical spelling of Romania while Romania itself doesn't exist)EDIT: i decided to do exactly what i mentioned earlier (about UCS/RCS colors) to an extent and got the proper yellows onto the map. mainly because that one required the least amount of effort and, frankly, i should be getting ready for work right now
in the TL-specific color scheme, yellow is going to be used to represent "whites in non-white regions", mainly being (former) settler colonies and ultimately comes from my originally representing the United States with yellow in the very earliest maps that i made for TTL. more specifically, the countries qualifying for this are Australia, (which i've basically decided broke off from Britannia around the turn of the 20th century, partly just to line up more with Code Geass as a formative influence on the project) the Boer Republic, (represented as a filler color right now) Brazil, (which is actually Portugal, which evacuated to the New World because of Napoleon like IOTL but never went back ITTL; this color will also be used for historical Portugal on other maps set ITTL) Tzion, (as a version of the Uganda Plan and TTL's closest equivalent to Israel; the actual area of Israel from OTL is instead occupied by the Jordanian-Palestinian state) and of course the United States (which obviously encompasses much more territory ITTL; that straight latitudinal border in roughly Ontario actually does have a historical basis, incidentally). if i repeated myself here at all, i don't really care this eliminates a few outliers but creates an additional one since now Japan "conflicts" with the basic idea of what yellow is used for here.
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Presumably because Jacob is a very normal name in the English lexicon whereas Ismail (which should really be rendered Ishmael in English) is not. But also for the the fun of an absurdly long name.
A map depicting the Eiselen Plan, also featuring the "Coloured Rural Areas". Though never intended to form anything approximating a "homeland" for Cape Coloured people of South Africa, it wouldn't take a whole lot of imagination to use the Rural Areas as at least a starting point for a Cape Coloured bantustan, in some alternate history apartheid South Africa. Even for apartheid, it would sure make an amazingly meagre offering, up in the desert.
From The Atlas of Apartheid, A. J. Christopher (page 124).
Might I suggest posting this here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...war-aims-that-didnt-happen-map-thread.317821/
A map depicting the Eiselen Plan, also featuring the "Coloured Rural Areas". Though never intended to form anything approximating a "homeland" for Cape Coloured people of South Africa, it wouldn't take a whole lot of imagination to use the Rural Areas as at least a starting point for a Cape Coloured bantustan, in some alternate history apartheid South Africa. Even for apartheid, it would sure make an amazingly meagre offering, up in the desert.
From The Atlas of Apartheid, A. J. Christopher (page 124).
View attachment 661298
Modelled from the map https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bantustans_in_South_Africa.svg
The Eiselen Plan & Coloured Rural Areas did in fact happen - their becoming bantustans was just an alt-hist suggestion of mine, the S.A. government never intended for them to even approach becoming bantustans. So I don't think the map would be entirely in-keeping on that thread.
I always forget there is an Old Orleans. Nice work!
Been a bit since I made a map, but I've figured out borders for the NL Timeline I bounced some names around and redid some borders. So here is a the map of North America!
And the no text version:
"There is a chaotic beauty that North America holds." - Excerpt from the Austro-Hungarian Film "Land of the Lost"
And the no text version:
"There is a chaotic beauty that North America holds." - Excerpt from the Austro-Hungarian Film "Land of the Lost"
soviet_killer
Banned
No text, just mep. I wanted to do a Louisiana map, so I did one. Made in photoshop, still playing around with how to make fancy maps in that program
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