So I've updated my thread dedicated to Atlas Altera. Thought I'd share the latest map here as well.
See a crisper version on DeviantArt and follow the conversation on Reddit.
Map Thread XX
- Thread starter Balkanized U.S.A
- Start date
- Status
New Orleans is apart of the US, during the American Civil War it was held onto by the Union for the entirety of the war. It's like a North American Hong Kong a bit.
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Urh...
I would have gone with "Duché de Cibyrrhe" (or just Cibyre to simplify the spelling)
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Crazymachines
Banned
What If the British monarchy was never restored after Cromwell?
Map Date is 1900 ad
Map Date is 1900 ad
This isn't meant to be too serious, I basically did this one for shits and giggles and to get back into the mood of map making.
Despite the goofyness of it, I love this! I can't really say why I love it, but I do.
This isn't meant to be too serious, I basically did this one for shits and giggles and to get back into the mood of map making.
As always, a beautiful map of a fascinating world. Just looking at the map makes me think of all the diverse viewpoints that could be expressed: Navajo interpretations of Manichaeism, or Hindu influences in South Africa.
Yeah that's the reasoning. The goal was for it to be a sticker placed over the map (although in a very poor manner for the coverer, since it just so happens to hide as little of the map as possible
) to represent a conflict between the traditional celebration of the colonial history and the perspective of the Aboriginal peoples.Great to know! And here's to hoping I ever get to share the graphic timeline of which this would be a part then
Hmmm. Does the Spanish Commonwealth suggest there is no monarchy there? Even if their remains nobility. I believe they kept that in the British Isles during and after the Civil War, though might not have been a need to do away with it when so many of the big name noblemen fleeing or collaborating. I don’t know too much of the period, admittedly. Almost a shame this map is 1900 as first I thought it was much earlier and was wondering how the Spanish got so much of North Africa and how they kept it. The question still remains. Lots of forced prostylization or at least the liquidation of those directly involved in the enslavement of Europeans? And what is the situation in the Rheinbund? I assume a grandfathered name. Ahhh, and I believe the Commonwealth never had the Channel Islands. They where Charles little kingdom. Seems like they might be a small independent state here or be absorbed by France.
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I have a little explaining to do.
Normally, every year on the 28th August, I'll post a big show-peice map here on the map thread to celebrate the anniversary of my joining the site. It's a weird tradition I'll admit, but it's a good excuse to get mapping again, especially after a long hiatus. For a variety of RL reasons I haven't been that active on the forums; the last map I posted here was done this time last year, while my TL has lain dormant since last November. Luckily, my old habit was the perfect excuse to be a little more active again.
(If you want to see my last four maps then the links are here)
Annoyingly, there was a hitch - the site was down for maintenance on the evening of the 28th when I would've posted this to keep with my self-imposed deadline. I initially planned on posting the map as soon as the site was back online, but then I realised that I'd been given a chance to add a decent write-up, notes, and a colour key. (While I'm good at making the map on time, I'm terrible about getting the associated writing done on time as well, and this year was no exception).
So, after a full month, I can procrastinate no longer and finally knuckled down to get this done last night. In a departure from normal, I'm posting this as two maps, one very wordy annotated one in the finest traditions of B_Munro, and a second clean map just showing borders and nations to avoid the clutter of labels.
This scenario is a bit of a departure from my usual efforts, in that I decided to return to and re-write an incredibly basic concept I last worked on four years ago. At the time the only thing I posted online that I can remember was this MotF submission, however behind that there was a substantial WIP world-map that I'd today consider to be of laughably poor quality, but that had a few decent ideas behind it that I decided could be fun to expand on. And yes, besides the core-concept of Gran Colombia surviving longer only to break under the pressures of an alt-WW1 not much of that original map concept remains, though there are substantial bits and themes.
I'm not one for firm POD's - I've always preferred a TL to start gradually drifting away rather than immediately splitting. Things start to diverge in this scenario near the end of the Napoleonic wars around 1813-ish. There aren't any significant changes (following defeats against Russia and in the Peninsular War, the Napoleonic Empire had already entered terminal decline), but they do appear and do begin to have effects, even if small and limited in scope. The details of the 1813 campaign can be quite variable from OTL, but the overall trend remains the same. Most notably for the purposes of this map, a handful of small states that were IOTL done in by Napoleon and co. are successfully reestablished as his grip on Europe falls apart.
To be fair, the Republic of Genoa was legitimately resurrected for a few months in 1814 before being subsumed by Savoy-Sardinia IOTL, while other small states that had been suppressed by Napoleon were able to reappear and stick around even in OTL, Brunswick being a case in point. Here the Genoan restoration sticks, while the Republic of Ragusa, a Principality of Orange-Nassau in personal union with the new Dutch monarchy, the small Napoleonic creation of Salm and the Principalities of Arenberg and Bentheim-Steinfurt are further resurrected from the dead, while the tiny Principality of Leyen enclaved within Baden receives an indefinite stay of execution that eventually translates into effective amnesty.
The first big change occurs when the Hundred Days War is butterflied - let's say that Napoleon receives a crippling but not life-threatening injury at the end of the 1813 campaign that prevents his OTL escape from Elba. Peace is signed in 1814 under broadly similar terms to OTL, but with some notable differences - aside from the resurrected small states mentioned above, France receives more favourable northern borders (keeping lands that were IOTL confiscated following Waterloo), a few small bits of territory are not exchanged (Prussia keeps East Frisia, Saxe-Lauenberg remains Hannoverian and Sweden keeps their chunk of Pomerania), and there is a reshuffling of various colonies (the UK for example here hands back Guyana, Ceylon and the Cape to the Dutch, but keeps Java and Sumatra plus a few more choice spice islands in the East Indies).The Kingdom of Naples under Murat tenuously survives, with rump-Sicily remaining under the British thumb. Things proceed to diverge from there.
The British succession ends up going rather differently when George IV's only daughter doesn't die in childbirth as OTL in 1817, instead giving birth to a healthy baby boy. Once George IV dies, succession weirdness in Hannover under Salic law means that while the UK ends up with Queen Charlotte I, Hannover instead crowns her teenage son as King. The crowns would be unified again by George V once his mother died in the 1860's, but this little succession hiccup between the UK and Hannover put in motion efforts to unify the two crowns and bring Hannoverian succession law in line with the UK's that would result in a new UK of Great Britain, Ireland and Hannover in the 1890's.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The 1820's see a tepid wave of revolution across Europe that is mostly crushed by the reactionary powers of the day, but this does set the stage for later larger waves, and also kicks off the Greek war of Independence as OTL, leading to a long and bloody war against the Ottomans and Egyptians through the decade. The extinction of the royal house of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg sees a substantial reorganisation of the many tiny Thuringian dutchies as various possessions of that ex-state are partitioned amongst the remaining ernestine duchies. Not everyone is happy with the spoils however, with several enclaves further being exchanged to compensate those states that got less loot than the others. While the process is the same as happened OTL, the final settlement ITTL is rather different, but I'll spare you the gory details (for that see the notes).
As OTL, in 1830 there is another wave of revolutions across Europe that again ultimately produces little; the inevitable Polish uprising is crushed, the old French monarchy is toppled to be replaced by a new one and early efforts at Italian unification by Savoy by harnessing the Carbonari get smacked down by France. On the other hand Greek independence is finally recognised and enforced as OTL, and while the Belgian Revolution is less successful (one of the partition plans is partially implemented, with Prussia and the Netherlands taking bites), a rump-Belgium is established under British protection.
A version of the Springtime of Peoples occurs following a mild delay in 1849, however now changes really start to filter through. Some things follow OTL; the French monarchy is overthrown and replaced by a Republic, Switzerland has the Sonderbund civil war with a similar result, and governments across the continent are forced to enact reforms; written constitutions, greater democracy, you know the drill. While some reforms were only token and others were later repealed once the revolutions went sour, a fair number were able to stick.
Where things really start to diverge is in Italy; with the earlier Savoyard attempt to gobble up more of northern Italy having been put down by a French intervention two decades before, it fell to the Kingdom of Naples to begin the long process of unifying Italy. As the Papal States falls to Revolution and the Pope flees south, he is convinced to sell much of the north of his country to Naples for a song in exchange for rooting out the revolutionaries in Rome. Further north, a nationalist-tinged revolt against Austrian rule breaks out in Lombardy, and quickly spreads to Veneto. With a majority of the peninsula now in their possession, the Kingdom of Naples is re-christened as the Kingdom of Italy, with troops marching north to support the revolutionaries against Austria.
The resulting Austro-Italian war is an embarrassing defeat for Austria, though an understandable one considering they were also dealing with a Hungarian revolt at the same time. France was convinced not to intervene as long as their sphere of influence in Western Italy was left untouched. As a sop to Austrian Pride Lombardy-Venetia would not be immediately annexed, instead propped up as a shaky duchy under a minor German princeling for a few years before being annexed properly.
Needless to say, Italian unification getting started about a decade earlier than OTL has some marked effects.
There were a few more Italian butterflies. The little succession arrangement that IOTL saw the Duke of Lucca cede his duchy to Tuscany once he inherited the Duchy of Parma when that state's previous duchess died gets tangled up in the revolutions when Marie-Louise lives for longer. The old duke is driven out of Lucca by an Italian nationalist Revolution with the aim of instituting a radical (for the 1840's at least) republican constitution. He takes up residence in Parma, knowing full well that he will probably inherit the place soon-ish, while in the chaos of the Austro-Italian War the tiny Second Republic of Lucca is able to slip through the cracks.
The next major conflict is a mildly-delayed equivalent to the Crimean War in 1860. As OTL, Britain and France decide that Russia is getting too powerful and is poised to topple the Ottomans, so go to war with Russia to maintain the balance of power. This goes rather poorly for the Russians, especially when the war coincides with the obligatory once-per-generation Polish uprising, and Prussia and Austria use the excuse of a pre-existing war to intervene and effectively recreate the Third Partition while putting that down, taking most of Russian Poland for themselves (though the Austrians would later split their half off under a branch line).
This is followed hot on the heels by the Schleswig War in 1868. Denmark tries to annex Schleswig-Holstein as OTL, and is soundly defeated by a coalition of German states. Competition over the spoils goes sour however, with Austria and Prussia coming to blows over who gets what. Prussian dreams of expansion and German unification are however brought to a screeching halt when France decides to join in the fun on the side of Austria. France gets the Saarland, Austria Schleswig-Holstein, plenty of small German states avoid Prussian annexation and Prussia itself is humiliated. Prussia funnels this humiliation into some inadvisable settler colonies in South and East Africa, but that is a story for another map.
Around this time Spain finds a second wind in Africa, conquering and setting up a settler colony in Morocco, then nabbing most of the Congo basin, pulling the Same trick Belgium did OTL - none of the major powers wanted the place going to anyone else, with Spain stepping in as a compromise third party (though British-proxy Portugal got most of Katanga's minerals by way of an alternate Pink Map).
At this point however, Italy begins down an unpleasant path. The duchy of Modena gets into a border scrap with Italy, and once invaded calls on France for protection. The following Franco-Italian war is limited, and results in little aside from the Italian annexation of most of Modena (the rest survives as a micronation of enclaves within and around Tuscany and Lucca). The Italian response to their mediocre performance in the war is poor however, with the government doubling down on the militarism and nationalism while curtailing freedoms in the name of the liberation struggle, culminating in a coup by factions of the army to side-line the government and make the King a figurehead. This is received poorly by the man on the street, however thoughts of protest are stifled when a revolt in Lombardy in 1877 is crushed with extreme prejudice. Things only get worse from here.
A worse Crimean War for the Russians does not mean it's all plain sailing for the Ottomans either. In 1881 revolts break out against Ottoman rule in the Balkans, and some well-publicised stories of atrocities committed against rebelling Greeks on the island of Lesbos prompts an international intervention. The result is Serbian expansion, the creation of an independent Bulgaria, an odd little new republic on Lesbos, British Crete, French Cyprus, Austrian Bosnia, Italian Cyrenaica and a more defined French pseudo-protectorate over Mount Lebanon as protector of the Maronite Christians for shits and giggles. Russia notably doesn't get involved as they are tied up in a land war in Asia, carving the sparsely-populated Tarim basin, Mongolia and Manchuria from China, with a side-order of beating up Korea and Japan.
(Greece gets nothing in that war (the downsides of neutrality), and in 1884 goes to war with the Ottomans for more of Thessaly. Against just one opponent, the Ottomans fare better, and Greece is curb-stomped).
And then there was the damp-squib Anglo-French war in 1893. Started over some Fashoda-type incident in Africa, the war is mostly inconclusive barring a few minor exchanges in colonial territory, but it is enough to shunt the UK into isolationism. The UK has been in full 'Splendid Isolation'-mode ever since, retreating to her Empire and various allies, hangers-on and captive markets and ignoring external concerns to focus on domestic affairs. As mentioned above, Hannover was directly integrated in 1897 when another woman came up for the succession and it looked like the thrones might split permanently unless something was done, and since then both Hannover and Ireland have been granted home-rule within the UK.
As the twentieth century has progressed, two power blocks have been aligning against each other.
On the one hand we have the Consensus Powers doing well from the status quo, with a core around France, the Italian states, Austria and the German states looking warily at Prussia. This alliance would add Sweden-Norway (having entered an unfortunate not-quite-fascist-but-its-getting-there phase) and the Ottoman Empire, in both cases over historical grudges against Russia.
On the other, we have the Grand Alliance, made up of those powers that for one reason or another have grievances with the current Franco-Austrian order. Militarist Prussia wants revenge with a side-order of German unification, a by now deeply-unpleasant army-dominated Italy hankers for similar ends (think late Imperial Japan). Russia wants to take land from Austria, and help the Balkan Slavs rise up against their Ottoman and Austrian overlords. Spain finds the latter three members of the alliance unpleasant, but feels forced into it as a matter of convenience by colonial squabbles with the French, while the Netherlands has never quite gotten over the loss of half of the East Indies, and remains revanchist.
Balanced between the two power blocks is the United Kingdom. As OTL, the British Empire is a behemoth. Less success in Africa has been compensated for with an expanded Raj into Central Asia and Tibet, and the British East Indies on Java and Sumatra. As several members of the Grand Alliance have designs of various bits of British territory, they are generally considered pro-Consensus Powers, however the UK remains steadfast in her current course of heavily-armed neutrality, favouring the Consensus powers in trade but in no official alliance.
Both sides recognise that Britain could swing any conflict; the Consensus Powers have been trying without success to win over Britain, while the current plan among the high ups of the Grand alliance, devised by the Prussians, is to focus on and deal with the Consensus Powers first while leaving Britain well alone, so that the UK can be dog-piled by a larger alliance later.
This creation of power-blocks has not prevented other conflicts from flaring up, particularly in the New World. After a century-long run of bad luck, (worse war of 1812, worse Mexican-American war, successful southern secession) the USA finally catches a break when the French-backed Confederated Republics implodes spectacularly into civil war in 1906 [1]. Once the upper south was safely re-annexed and the rest spun off as puppet governments under American occupation, the Americans decided to continue their war against the CR's former sponsor. The Franco-American war was an embarrassing defeat for France, resulting in the loss of all Caribbean possessions to the United States and much egg on the national face in Paris.
While this led to some talk that the USA might join the Grand Alliance, this ultimately came to nothing - America had got it's grudge with the French out of its system, and more-over was stretched holding down and imposing a delayed form of Reconstruction on the puppetised southern states. While some more Caribbean territories, and some chunks of Canada and Mexico would certainly look good over the mantlepiece, it is generally felt by those in power in Philadelphia (where the capital was relocated to following the alt-Civil War) to be too much hassle, especially as most further avenues for expansion would mean antagonising the UK, something the Grand Alliance really don't want to do right now.
[With a weaker United States, much of Latin America has fallen into the sway of Pax Brittanica or under the influence of the two major British-aligned states; a more successful and Stable Mexico (America's loss was Mexico's gain) and a big Argentina equivalent, officially called the United Provinces of South America but more commonly known as Platinea. As for the rest, Central America is balkanised as OTL, Gran Colombia is on the verge of collapse [2] and Peru is a basket-case. Uruguay and Chile are notable in their dislike of Platinea, but can't really do much about it. Brazil is missing some quite substantial peripheral provinces, and is currently having a national sulk, so will be no help to anyone.]
And then there was the matter of revolutions - Marx may have been butterflied, but similar ideas began to crop up from a different tranche of revolutionary leaders and theorists ITTL, and by the dawn of the 20th century their much-suppressed efforts began to bear fruit. TTL's leftist movement is more diverse than OTL's, lacking a singular defining criticism of capitalism a la Das Kapital, and with a wide range of reasonably influential variants under many names. Anarchism, Syndicalism, Distributionism and Democratic-Communalism are the most notable variants in Europe, with the odd fusion of Distributionist ideas and Shia Islam coming out of Eran (TTL's transliteration of Iran) becoming increasingly important in the colonised portions of the Islamic world. Of the latter, Distributionism is probably closest to OTL communism, though there are some substantial doctrinal differences, and all are disparaged by the powers-that-be as 'Neo-Jacobin nonsense'
Funnily enough, it was actually Eran that clinched the title of 'first Distributionist nation' ITTL, barring one or two quickly-crushed revolutionary governments and the kinda-sorta Communalism coming out of the Republic of New Benin in former South Carolina (the CR fell hard). In 1915, a popular revolution toppled the Persian monarchy considered too deep in the pockets of the imperial powers, establishing a radical republic in its place. By rights the Eranian Revolution should have been snuffed out, that a truncated version of that revolutionary state survived in the Persian heartlands was down to luck, a very good ATL military commander and squabbling amongst the intervening powers. Between Britain, Russia and the Ottomans, none particularly liked each other much or got on that well, and after a lot of false starts and getting in each other's way, they agreed to shear off the periphery and leave Eran to stew. The Ottomans took Khuzestan, the Russians Iranian Azerbaijan, Gilan and northern Khorasan, while Britain and its proxy Oman carved off chunks along the southern coast and in the east. In spite of loud predictions that the Eranian revolutionary state will collapse any day now, it is still going strong over a decade later, even if its particular brand of radicalism weirds-out most European revolutionaries.
But for all the colonial scuffles, proxy wars using African or Asian native states [3], border skirmishes and leftist agitation, a larger war has so far been avoided. Well, until the chaos in Algeria finally boils over into an international incident.
Back in the 1830's European, and in particular British suspicion of French motives towards Algeria led to a low-level campaign encouraging the French to back off from colonising the place as OTL. Britain however had lost interest in the Maghreb by the latter 19th century, allowing France to colonise Tunisia and an ill-fated separatist state in eastern Algeria, with the rump Regency of Algiers spun off as a puppet state. However Algiers was never particularly stable, and in 1920 when the puppet government acted a bit too obviously puppet-y, and inspired by the recent Eranian revolution, a new faction in Oran declared independence to throw off French Influence.
This didn't work. France and Spain mounted a joint intervention, capturing the city of Oran and annexing the coastal littoral, but they never bothered to clean up the mess they made in the interior. The fragile regime in Algiers fractured, and for the last six years Algeria has been a mess of warlords and separatists that nobody aside from a half-hearted effort on the part of the French has tried to clean up.
This will come back to bite the powers that be, as a little spillover from this civil war is about to finally trigger the much-hypothesised general European war pundits have been predicting for over two decades now. Because when French-backed Berber separatists decide to ignore their overlord and capture Oujda in the Spanish colony of Morocco in support of the Riffian Revolt there, it will put France and Spain at loggerheads. Realising that war is now inevitable, the Italians will decide to activate their war-plans for a simultaneous quick annexation of the Papal States and a march up the Po to capture Turin. This will in turn draw in more powers, and from there things will spiral as various treaties and commitments snap into action.
In Four Days, the Great War will begin.
[1] With America doing worse and Mexico doing better, the energies behind France's little OTL Latin American misadventure in the 1860's are instead funneled into backing an alt-Confederacy.
[2] As it has been for the last few decades. To paraphrase the old joke about the viability of fusion, the collapse of Gran Colombia has been only ten years away for half a century.
[3] TTL's colonisation of Africa followed the older 'direct rule on the coasts, puppet native states in the interior' model of colonisation over OTL's 'ANNEX EVERYTHING' doctrine, and a fair number of states survive in the interior, mostly in West Africa, the Great Lakes and the Copperbelt (think Malê Rising). Interior South Africa outside the Dutch Cape and British Natal is a mess of Boer, Griqua and native states who all hate each other under the thumb of various international mining corporations who mostly answer to London.
Normally, every year on the 28th August, I'll post a big show-peice map here on the map thread to celebrate the anniversary of my joining the site. It's a weird tradition I'll admit, but it's a good excuse to get mapping again, especially after a long hiatus. For a variety of RL reasons I haven't been that active on the forums; the last map I posted here was done this time last year, while my TL has lain dormant since last November. Luckily, my old habit was the perfect excuse to be a little more active again.
(If you want to see my last four maps then the links are here)
Annoyingly, there was a hitch - the site was down for maintenance on the evening of the 28th when I would've posted this to keep with my self-imposed deadline. I initially planned on posting the map as soon as the site was back online, but then I realised that I'd been given a chance to add a decent write-up, notes, and a colour key. (While I'm good at making the map on time, I'm terrible about getting the associated writing done on time as well, and this year was no exception).
So, after a full month, I can procrastinate no longer and finally knuckled down to get this done last night. In a departure from normal, I'm posting this as two maps, one very wordy annotated one in the finest traditions of B_Munro, and a second clean map just showing borders and nations to avoid the clutter of labels.
This scenario is a bit of a departure from my usual efforts, in that I decided to return to and re-write an incredibly basic concept I last worked on four years ago. At the time the only thing I posted online that I can remember was this MotF submission, however behind that there was a substantial WIP world-map that I'd today consider to be of laughably poor quality, but that had a few decent ideas behind it that I decided could be fun to expand on. And yes, besides the core-concept of Gran Colombia surviving longer only to break under the pressures of an alt-WW1 not much of that original map concept remains, though there are substantial bits and themes.
I'm not one for firm POD's - I've always preferred a TL to start gradually drifting away rather than immediately splitting. Things start to diverge in this scenario near the end of the Napoleonic wars around 1813-ish. There aren't any significant changes (following defeats against Russia and in the Peninsular War, the Napoleonic Empire had already entered terminal decline), but they do appear and do begin to have effects, even if small and limited in scope. The details of the 1813 campaign can be quite variable from OTL, but the overall trend remains the same. Most notably for the purposes of this map, a handful of small states that were IOTL done in by Napoleon and co. are successfully reestablished as his grip on Europe falls apart.
To be fair, the Republic of Genoa was legitimately resurrected for a few months in 1814 before being subsumed by Savoy-Sardinia IOTL, while other small states that had been suppressed by Napoleon were able to reappear and stick around even in OTL, Brunswick being a case in point. Here the Genoan restoration sticks, while the Republic of Ragusa, a Principality of Orange-Nassau in personal union with the new Dutch monarchy, the small Napoleonic creation of Salm and the Principalities of Arenberg and Bentheim-Steinfurt are further resurrected from the dead, while the tiny Principality of Leyen enclaved within Baden receives an indefinite stay of execution that eventually translates into effective amnesty.
The first big change occurs when the Hundred Days War is butterflied - let's say that Napoleon receives a crippling but not life-threatening injury at the end of the 1813 campaign that prevents his OTL escape from Elba. Peace is signed in 1814 under broadly similar terms to OTL, but with some notable differences - aside from the resurrected small states mentioned above, France receives more favourable northern borders (keeping lands that were IOTL confiscated following Waterloo), a few small bits of territory are not exchanged (Prussia keeps East Frisia, Saxe-Lauenberg remains Hannoverian and Sweden keeps their chunk of Pomerania), and there is a reshuffling of various colonies (the UK for example here hands back Guyana, Ceylon and the Cape to the Dutch, but keeps Java and Sumatra plus a few more choice spice islands in the East Indies).The Kingdom of Naples under Murat tenuously survives, with rump-Sicily remaining under the British thumb. Things proceed to diverge from there.
The British succession ends up going rather differently when George IV's only daughter doesn't die in childbirth as OTL in 1817, instead giving birth to a healthy baby boy. Once George IV dies, succession weirdness in Hannover under Salic law means that while the UK ends up with Queen Charlotte I, Hannover instead crowns her teenage son as King. The crowns would be unified again by George V once his mother died in the 1860's, but this little succession hiccup between the UK and Hannover put in motion efforts to unify the two crowns and bring Hannoverian succession law in line with the UK's that would result in a new UK of Great Britain, Ireland and Hannover in the 1890's.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The 1820's see a tepid wave of revolution across Europe that is mostly crushed by the reactionary powers of the day, but this does set the stage for later larger waves, and also kicks off the Greek war of Independence as OTL, leading to a long and bloody war against the Ottomans and Egyptians through the decade. The extinction of the royal house of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg sees a substantial reorganisation of the many tiny Thuringian dutchies as various possessions of that ex-state are partitioned amongst the remaining ernestine duchies. Not everyone is happy with the spoils however, with several enclaves further being exchanged to compensate those states that got less loot than the others. While the process is the same as happened OTL, the final settlement ITTL is rather different, but I'll spare you the gory details (for that see the notes).
As OTL, in 1830 there is another wave of revolutions across Europe that again ultimately produces little; the inevitable Polish uprising is crushed, the old French monarchy is toppled to be replaced by a new one and early efforts at Italian unification by Savoy by harnessing the Carbonari get smacked down by France. On the other hand Greek independence is finally recognised and enforced as OTL, and while the Belgian Revolution is less successful (one of the partition plans is partially implemented, with Prussia and the Netherlands taking bites), a rump-Belgium is established under British protection.
A version of the Springtime of Peoples occurs following a mild delay in 1849, however now changes really start to filter through. Some things follow OTL; the French monarchy is overthrown and replaced by a Republic, Switzerland has the Sonderbund civil war with a similar result, and governments across the continent are forced to enact reforms; written constitutions, greater democracy, you know the drill. While some reforms were only token and others were later repealed once the revolutions went sour, a fair number were able to stick.
Where things really start to diverge is in Italy; with the earlier Savoyard attempt to gobble up more of northern Italy having been put down by a French intervention two decades before, it fell to the Kingdom of Naples to begin the long process of unifying Italy. As the Papal States falls to Revolution and the Pope flees south, he is convinced to sell much of the north of his country to Naples for a song in exchange for rooting out the revolutionaries in Rome. Further north, a nationalist-tinged revolt against Austrian rule breaks out in Lombardy, and quickly spreads to Veneto. With a majority of the peninsula now in their possession, the Kingdom of Naples is re-christened as the Kingdom of Italy, with troops marching north to support the revolutionaries against Austria.
The resulting Austro-Italian war is an embarrassing defeat for Austria, though an understandable one considering they were also dealing with a Hungarian revolt at the same time. France was convinced not to intervene as long as their sphere of influence in Western Italy was left untouched. As a sop to Austrian Pride Lombardy-Venetia would not be immediately annexed, instead propped up as a shaky duchy under a minor German princeling for a few years before being annexed properly.
Needless to say, Italian unification getting started about a decade earlier than OTL has some marked effects.
There were a few more Italian butterflies. The little succession arrangement that IOTL saw the Duke of Lucca cede his duchy to Tuscany once he inherited the Duchy of Parma when that state's previous duchess died gets tangled up in the revolutions when Marie-Louise lives for longer. The old duke is driven out of Lucca by an Italian nationalist Revolution with the aim of instituting a radical (for the 1840's at least) republican constitution. He takes up residence in Parma, knowing full well that he will probably inherit the place soon-ish, while in the chaos of the Austro-Italian War the tiny Second Republic of Lucca is able to slip through the cracks.
The next major conflict is a mildly-delayed equivalent to the Crimean War in 1860. As OTL, Britain and France decide that Russia is getting too powerful and is poised to topple the Ottomans, so go to war with Russia to maintain the balance of power. This goes rather poorly for the Russians, especially when the war coincides with the obligatory once-per-generation Polish uprising, and Prussia and Austria use the excuse of a pre-existing war to intervene and effectively recreate the Third Partition while putting that down, taking most of Russian Poland for themselves (though the Austrians would later split their half off under a branch line).
This is followed hot on the heels by the Schleswig War in 1868. Denmark tries to annex Schleswig-Holstein as OTL, and is soundly defeated by a coalition of German states. Competition over the spoils goes sour however, with Austria and Prussia coming to blows over who gets what. Prussian dreams of expansion and German unification are however brought to a screeching halt when France decides to join in the fun on the side of Austria. France gets the Saarland, Austria Schleswig-Holstein, plenty of small German states avoid Prussian annexation and Prussia itself is humiliated. Prussia funnels this humiliation into some inadvisable settler colonies in South and East Africa, but that is a story for another map.
Around this time Spain finds a second wind in Africa, conquering and setting up a settler colony in Morocco, then nabbing most of the Congo basin, pulling the Same trick Belgium did OTL - none of the major powers wanted the place going to anyone else, with Spain stepping in as a compromise third party (though British-proxy Portugal got most of Katanga's minerals by way of an alternate Pink Map).
At this point however, Italy begins down an unpleasant path. The duchy of Modena gets into a border scrap with Italy, and once invaded calls on France for protection. The following Franco-Italian war is limited, and results in little aside from the Italian annexation of most of Modena (the rest survives as a micronation of enclaves within and around Tuscany and Lucca). The Italian response to their mediocre performance in the war is poor however, with the government doubling down on the militarism and nationalism while curtailing freedoms in the name of the liberation struggle, culminating in a coup by factions of the army to side-line the government and make the King a figurehead. This is received poorly by the man on the street, however thoughts of protest are stifled when a revolt in Lombardy in 1877 is crushed with extreme prejudice. Things only get worse from here.
A worse Crimean War for the Russians does not mean it's all plain sailing for the Ottomans either. In 1881 revolts break out against Ottoman rule in the Balkans, and some well-publicised stories of atrocities committed against rebelling Greeks on the island of Lesbos prompts an international intervention. The result is Serbian expansion, the creation of an independent Bulgaria, an odd little new republic on Lesbos, British Crete, French Cyprus, Austrian Bosnia, Italian Cyrenaica and a more defined French pseudo-protectorate over Mount Lebanon as protector of the Maronite Christians for shits and giggles. Russia notably doesn't get involved as they are tied up in a land war in Asia, carving the sparsely-populated Tarim basin, Mongolia and Manchuria from China, with a side-order of beating up Korea and Japan.
(Greece gets nothing in that war (the downsides of neutrality), and in 1884 goes to war with the Ottomans for more of Thessaly. Against just one opponent, the Ottomans fare better, and Greece is curb-stomped).
And then there was the damp-squib Anglo-French war in 1893. Started over some Fashoda-type incident in Africa, the war is mostly inconclusive barring a few minor exchanges in colonial territory, but it is enough to shunt the UK into isolationism. The UK has been in full 'Splendid Isolation'-mode ever since, retreating to her Empire and various allies, hangers-on and captive markets and ignoring external concerns to focus on domestic affairs. As mentioned above, Hannover was directly integrated in 1897 when another woman came up for the succession and it looked like the thrones might split permanently unless something was done, and since then both Hannover and Ireland have been granted home-rule within the UK.
As the twentieth century has progressed, two power blocks have been aligning against each other.
On the one hand we have the Consensus Powers doing well from the status quo, with a core around France, the Italian states, Austria and the German states looking warily at Prussia. This alliance would add Sweden-Norway (having entered an unfortunate not-quite-fascist-but-its-getting-there phase) and the Ottoman Empire, in both cases over historical grudges against Russia.
On the other, we have the Grand Alliance, made up of those powers that for one reason or another have grievances with the current Franco-Austrian order. Militarist Prussia wants revenge with a side-order of German unification, a by now deeply-unpleasant army-dominated Italy hankers for similar ends (think late Imperial Japan). Russia wants to take land from Austria, and help the Balkan Slavs rise up against their Ottoman and Austrian overlords. Spain finds the latter three members of the alliance unpleasant, but feels forced into it as a matter of convenience by colonial squabbles with the French, while the Netherlands has never quite gotten over the loss of half of the East Indies, and remains revanchist.
Balanced between the two power blocks is the United Kingdom. As OTL, the British Empire is a behemoth. Less success in Africa has been compensated for with an expanded Raj into Central Asia and Tibet, and the British East Indies on Java and Sumatra. As several members of the Grand Alliance have designs of various bits of British territory, they are generally considered pro-Consensus Powers, however the UK remains steadfast in her current course of heavily-armed neutrality, favouring the Consensus powers in trade but in no official alliance.
Both sides recognise that Britain could swing any conflict; the Consensus Powers have been trying without success to win over Britain, while the current plan among the high ups of the Grand alliance, devised by the Prussians, is to focus on and deal with the Consensus Powers first while leaving Britain well alone, so that the UK can be dog-piled by a larger alliance later.
This creation of power-blocks has not prevented other conflicts from flaring up, particularly in the New World. After a century-long run of bad luck, (worse war of 1812, worse Mexican-American war, successful southern secession) the USA finally catches a break when the French-backed Confederated Republics implodes spectacularly into civil war in 1906 [1]. Once the upper south was safely re-annexed and the rest spun off as puppet governments under American occupation, the Americans decided to continue their war against the CR's former sponsor. The Franco-American war was an embarrassing defeat for France, resulting in the loss of all Caribbean possessions to the United States and much egg on the national face in Paris.
While this led to some talk that the USA might join the Grand Alliance, this ultimately came to nothing - America had got it's grudge with the French out of its system, and more-over was stretched holding down and imposing a delayed form of Reconstruction on the puppetised southern states. While some more Caribbean territories, and some chunks of Canada and Mexico would certainly look good over the mantlepiece, it is generally felt by those in power in Philadelphia (where the capital was relocated to following the alt-Civil War) to be too much hassle, especially as most further avenues for expansion would mean antagonising the UK, something the Grand Alliance really don't want to do right now.
[With a weaker United States, much of Latin America has fallen into the sway of Pax Brittanica or under the influence of the two major British-aligned states; a more successful and Stable Mexico (America's loss was Mexico's gain) and a big Argentina equivalent, officially called the United Provinces of South America but more commonly known as Platinea. As for the rest, Central America is balkanised as OTL, Gran Colombia is on the verge of collapse [2] and Peru is a basket-case. Uruguay and Chile are notable in their dislike of Platinea, but can't really do much about it. Brazil is missing some quite substantial peripheral provinces, and is currently having a national sulk, so will be no help to anyone.]
And then there was the matter of revolutions - Marx may have been butterflied, but similar ideas began to crop up from a different tranche of revolutionary leaders and theorists ITTL, and by the dawn of the 20th century their much-suppressed efforts began to bear fruit. TTL's leftist movement is more diverse than OTL's, lacking a singular defining criticism of capitalism a la Das Kapital, and with a wide range of reasonably influential variants under many names. Anarchism, Syndicalism, Distributionism and Democratic-Communalism are the most notable variants in Europe, with the odd fusion of Distributionist ideas and Shia Islam coming out of Eran (TTL's transliteration of Iran) becoming increasingly important in the colonised portions of the Islamic world. Of the latter, Distributionism is probably closest to OTL communism, though there are some substantial doctrinal differences, and all are disparaged by the powers-that-be as 'Neo-Jacobin nonsense'
Funnily enough, it was actually Eran that clinched the title of 'first Distributionist nation' ITTL, barring one or two quickly-crushed revolutionary governments and the kinda-sorta Communalism coming out of the Republic of New Benin in former South Carolina (the CR fell hard). In 1915, a popular revolution toppled the Persian monarchy considered too deep in the pockets of the imperial powers, establishing a radical republic in its place. By rights the Eranian Revolution should have been snuffed out, that a truncated version of that revolutionary state survived in the Persian heartlands was down to luck, a very good ATL military commander and squabbling amongst the intervening powers. Between Britain, Russia and the Ottomans, none particularly liked each other much or got on that well, and after a lot of false starts and getting in each other's way, they agreed to shear off the periphery and leave Eran to stew. The Ottomans took Khuzestan, the Russians Iranian Azerbaijan, Gilan and northern Khorasan, while Britain and its proxy Oman carved off chunks along the southern coast and in the east. In spite of loud predictions that the Eranian revolutionary state will collapse any day now, it is still going strong over a decade later, even if its particular brand of radicalism weirds-out most European revolutionaries.
But for all the colonial scuffles, proxy wars using African or Asian native states [3], border skirmishes and leftist agitation, a larger war has so far been avoided. Well, until the chaos in Algeria finally boils over into an international incident.
Back in the 1830's European, and in particular British suspicion of French motives towards Algeria led to a low-level campaign encouraging the French to back off from colonising the place as OTL. Britain however had lost interest in the Maghreb by the latter 19th century, allowing France to colonise Tunisia and an ill-fated separatist state in eastern Algeria, with the rump Regency of Algiers spun off as a puppet state. However Algiers was never particularly stable, and in 1920 when the puppet government acted a bit too obviously puppet-y, and inspired by the recent Eranian revolution, a new faction in Oran declared independence to throw off French Influence.
This didn't work. France and Spain mounted a joint intervention, capturing the city of Oran and annexing the coastal littoral, but they never bothered to clean up the mess they made in the interior. The fragile regime in Algiers fractured, and for the last six years Algeria has been a mess of warlords and separatists that nobody aside from a half-hearted effort on the part of the French has tried to clean up.
This will come back to bite the powers that be, as a little spillover from this civil war is about to finally trigger the much-hypothesised general European war pundits have been predicting for over two decades now. Because when French-backed Berber separatists decide to ignore their overlord and capture Oujda in the Spanish colony of Morocco in support of the Riffian Revolt there, it will put France and Spain at loggerheads. Realising that war is now inevitable, the Italians will decide to activate their war-plans for a simultaneous quick annexation of the Papal States and a march up the Po to capture Turin. This will in turn draw in more powers, and from there things will spiral as various treaties and commitments snap into action.
In Four Days, the Great War will begin.
[1] With America doing worse and Mexico doing better, the energies behind France's little OTL Latin American misadventure in the 1860's are instead funneled into backing an alt-Confederacy.
[2] As it has been for the last few decades. To paraphrase the old joke about the viability of fusion, the collapse of Gran Colombia has been only ten years away for half a century.
[3] TTL's colonisation of Africa followed the older 'direct rule on the coasts, puppet native states in the interior' model of colonisation over OTL's 'ANNEX EVERYTHING' doctrine, and a fair number of states survive in the interior, mostly in West Africa, the Great Lakes and the Copperbelt (think Malê Rising). Interior South Africa outside the Dutch Cape and British Natal is a mess of Boer, Griqua and native states who all hate each other under the thumb of various international mining corporations who mostly answer to London.
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Crazymachines
Banned
This is really great but if you printed out all of this text and dropped it on someone it would be enough to kill a small child
How can you give us only a map of Europe with this amazing TL?!
Also, I love how you've allowed Albion to continue perfid'ing instead of having to commit to something.
EDIT: Also love the perfectly square subdivisions in Iran.
As I said, I'm terrible at getting the write-ups done on time because I can't help myself from going into stupid levels of detail. That takes time.
Damn, should now be fixed.
Because making good maps takes time, and I wanted to get this one done before I moved on to other regions (I could probably get Africa, North or South America done at some point, but to be honest I was more interested in doing the aftermath of TTL's WW1 analogue first. I do know who wins after all.
Also, nice to know there's interest in the wider world of TTL.
(and I am quite happy with the pointless-but-revolutionary prefect grid-squares in Iran, they came out well. It won't last long term (as I said in the notes, its a terrible idea), but I thought I'd throw it in).
Someone posted a map years ago about a proposal in Revolutionary France to divide the country into squares, and it was amazing to see things like a district on 2 different sides of incredibly high mountains.
Thanks! Although, to be clear, that colouration in Arizona is denoting what I call the "Kachinan" faith.
I look ahead to any new maps set in this TL, regardless of geographic location (although I'd probably be a bit disappointed with a map of Lucca and only Lucca, to be honest.)
Hey, I forgot I made that first one! What a blast from the past!
I've got an updated worlda of FANTL 1977, but have shelved it in favour of a yuuuge (wall-map size) svg I'm doing in inkscape of FANTL c.1980. Watch this space.
The year is 1914, and there’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. Mycroft Holmes is 67 years old already and the German-Hungarian-Russian Alliance is out for blood. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared…
The British Empire is the largest empire in history and the world's foremost power. It does not matter whether the current Prime Minister's name is Lord Bellinger or Trelawney Hope; in fact, Mycroft Holmes is the British government.
Tibet. After his defeat of Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes spent two years in Tibet. This included some time living in Lhasa, where he spent several days with the head Lama himself (“The Empty House”).
The Sublime State of Iran. Holmes then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which he has communicated to the Foreign Office (“The Empty House”).
The United States of Brazil. Isadora Klein was a celebrated beauty and adventuress who resided in London. Isadora was pure Spanish, the real blood of the masterful Conquistadors, and her people have been leaders in Pernambuco, Brazil for generations (“The Three Gables”). Portugal was annexed to Castile during the 1383-1385 war.
The Abyssinian Empire. In 1899, Sherlock Holmes solved the case of two Coptic patriarchs (“The Retired Colourman”). The gratitude of the Emperor of Abyssinia significantly increased British influence in the region.
The Republic of San Pedro. San Pedro is a Central American republic with a white and green flag infamous for its dictator Don Juan Murillo, who was overthrown in 1886 and fled into exile in Europe with much of his fortune (“Wisteria Lodge”).
The South African Republic. There were three Boer Wars. The First Boer War, which ended in March 1881; the Second Boer War, which ended in May 1902 (“The Three Garridebs”); and the Third Boer War, which ended in January 1903 (“The Blanched Soldier”). The Boers referred to the three wars as the Freedom Wars. Over the following decade, many returned to South Africa and never signed the undertaking. In 1914, the bittereinders and their allies took part in the uprising to re-establish the South African Republic in the Transvaal.
The Ubangi country is a Belgian colony. Native shamans use a powder of radix pedis diaboli as an ordeal drug (“The Devil's Foot”).
Senegambia is a French colony. There was a series of crimes committed by the Andaman islanders (“The Sign of the Four”).
The Netherland-Sumatra Company is a corporation founded by a government-directed consolidation of several rival Dutch trading companies. Colonization of the island of Sumatra was greatly slowed down by infallibly deadly and horribly contagious Sumatran diseases (“The Dying Detective”), giant rats of Sumatra (“The Sussex Vampire”), the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis (“The Reigate Squires “) and scandals in the ruling family of Holland (“A Scandal in Bohemia”, ”A Case of Identity”).
The Grand Principality of Transylvania. According to the Holmes's Index, there have been some cases involving vampires in Transylvania and Hungary. (“The Sussex Vampire”)
The Holy Polish Empire. Irene Adler pursued a career in opera as a contralto, performing as prima donna at the Imperial Opera of Warsaw. (“A Scandal in Bohemia”) Since the Imperial Operas in the Russian Empire could only be opened in St. Petersburg and Moscow, it is obvious that Poland was an independent empire.
Little Russia. In 1887, Holmes was summoned to Odessa on the case of Trepoff murder (“A Scandal in Bohemia”). Dmitry Trepoff was the son of the St. Petersburg governor who was expected to have a great career in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. One way or another, when the 1905 nihilist revolution broke out in Russia, the organization of its armed suppression left much to be desired and Little Russia gained independence. In addition, Grodno is located on the territory of Little Russia (“The Hound of the Baskervilles”), so it is obvious that “Belorussia” and “Malorussia” have never been separated.
The Italian Republic. The Red Circle was a Neapolitan society, which was allied to the old Carbonari, but unlike the latter, it did not cease to exist in 1831 and continued into the 20th century (“The Red Circle”). When the nihilists started the revolution in Russia, the Red Circle also began a coup in their country, and eventually seized power.
The Kingdom of Bohemia. Wilhelm von Ormstein, the hereditary king of Bohemia, was a client of Sherlock Holmes. (“A Scandal in Bohemia”)
The Kingdom of Scandinavia. Sherlock Holmes assisted the royal family of Scandinavia at least twice - in 1888 and in 1891. (“The Noble Bachelor”, “The Final Problem”)
The Sultanate of Turkey. In 1903, Sherlock Holmes performed some services for the Sultan of Turkey on an issue of immediate and critical importance. ("The Blanched Soldier") As a result of Holmes's actions, the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising was prevented, but later Turkey became a de facto protectorate of the British Empire.
The Kingdom of Siam. In March 1888, Mycroft Holmes was personally involved in resolving the situation in Siam. ("A Scandal in Bohemia")
The United States of America is being torn apart by secret societies and criminal organizations. The most notable are the Irish secret societies (“The Valley of Fear”), Mormons (“A Study in Scarlet”) and the Ku Klux Klan (“The Five Orange Pips”).
I've been making fantasy redistricting maps for a while. This is one of them. I was wondering what people think of the city inset idea.
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