Map Thread XXI
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So in this world, Britain never loses 'The Dominion of Florida' to the Spanish in 1783? Would that mean that the Americans lost the Revolutionary War after Spain joined the war on their side or they just simply never entered the war in the first place?
Edit: After I posted this I saw the American tourists are in one of the divisions, so it might be that the Americans won the war but the Spanish never joined in.
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It's late August again. Anyone who's been paying close attention to the map thread for the last six years will know what that means. Every year, no matter how active I've been elsewhere on the site, I try to get a big map posted for the anniversary of when I got an account here. I meant to get this up two days ago, and while everything else was done I ran into a wall finishing Morocco, hence why this is a tad delayed. (What?, don't look at me like that, last year's map ended up delayed by a month. Two days is an improvement).
This year is a bit of a departure from form in that I haven't produced any completely new content. Instead I've taken one of my old maps (last year's one to be exact) and re-tooled it to fit the shiny new basemap I've been working on for most of the last year.
(Honestly, a good part of the motivation to start working on the R-QBAM was that my general dissatisfaction with the QBAM over the whole "not in any recognised projection" thing was putting me off making new maps, period. I'd long planned to fully give the QBAM a geography overhaul at some point soon for ages, so what was the point making new maps if they'd be obsolete in a couple of years? In particular, after posting last year's showpiece I really wanted to dig into the wider world of that scenario, but was put off by the fact that, well, the QBAM is a bit flawed. Eventually I just decided to make the new damn map already, on which work slowly continues).
I don't have time to add a key and on-map notes, however as the scenario is largely unchanged from the previous version that shouldn't be too much of a problem - follow the link to the original to get a good enough idea. An extra wordy version should be posted at some point over the next few days to compliment the blank map I'm putting up now.
As mentioned, the original scenario was based heavily on an incomplete almost completely unpublished scenario I worked on years before (see this ancient MotF for the only bit of the original I can remember posting anywhere here). In the year since I posted the last map, I've tweaked and edited the scenario a fair amount - a few things on the map are different, and the original write-up needed to be retooled a little to fit but otherwise not too much has changed.
I'm pushing the POD back a couple of years to about 1810, mostly so that butterflies can give Latin America (or at least bits of it) a leg-up compared to OTL. These changes mostly affect the New World, but changes filter back to Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The Peninsular War is harder fought (wrecking Spain more thoroughly puts the colonial empire in worse shape, leading to an easier independence struggle for its components), because, I dunno, lets kill Wellington on campaign or something. Add in a bit of luck, and the French are successful enough that even once the allies reach the gates of Paris in 1814 following a similarly disastrous French invasion of Russia, Joseph Bonaparte still sits on a shaky throne in Madrid. Fully ousting him isn't completed till 1816, bleeding Spain dry, and forcing them to give up on a reconquest of the colonial empire rather earlier.
There are several other differences. While the general trend is the same, the details of the 1813 campaign are quite variable. In particular, during his last battle Napoleon gets knocked off his horse and breaks a leg. 19th century medical technology being what it was, he's lucky it just requires amputation. Also 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, and the small Napoleonic creation of Salm in addition to Arenberg and Bentheim are further resurrected from the dead, while the tiny Principality of Leyen enclaved within Baden receives an indefinite stay of execution.
The first big change occurs when the Hundred Days War is butterflied - having suffered a crippling but not life-threatening injury in 1813, Napoleon's escape from Elba never comes off (on the bright side, he lives rather longer in a prison where the walls aren't literally coated with arsenic). Peace is signed in 1814 under broadly similar terms to OTL, but with some notable differences. A few small to medium states reemerge as mentioned, France receives more favourable northern borders (keeping lands that were IOTL confiscated following Waterloo) while losing a larger chunk of the Savoy to Piedmont-Sardinia (compensation for the latter not being allowed to annex Genoa ITTL). In addition, several other borders are drawn subtly differently, and a couple of enclaves aren't exchanged; Prussia Keeps East Frisia, Sweden retains their chunk of Pomerania, and Saxe-Lauenberg remains Hannoverian. The Principality of Orange Nassau survives, now in personal union with the new Dutch monarchy. The Kingdom of Naples under Murat tenuously survives, with rump-Sicily remaining under the British thumb. Things proceed to diverge from there.
(Though less applicable here, there's also a reshuffling of various colonies ITTL. A game of musical chairs is played with the Caribbean islands, Britain takes Dakar and the coast of OTL Senegal from the French, and while Guyana, Ceylon and the Cape are handed back to the Netherlands, the UK here keeps Java and Sumatra plus a few more choice spice islands in the East Indies, much to Dutch annoyance).
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. This has mixed results, as the child in question will grow up to be the rather unpleasant George V, better known to history by the sobriquet 'Bad King George' [1]. 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, with the crowns being reunified by George V once his mother died in the 1860's.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The 1820's see a tepid wave of revolution in Europe's Mediterranean fringe 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 [2]. In the Middle East Iran avoids the OTL Russo-Persian war of 1826, keeping hold of what we today call Armenia. Russia and the Ottomans do however go to war right on schedule, but unlike OTL's Russian victory the result ITTL is more of a draw; the Russians do well in the Balkans (helping along the international recognition of Greece in the process), while losing ground in the Caucasus.
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 just as crappy, 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 a little ahead of schedule in 1847, with changes by now really starting to filter through. Some things follow OTL; the French monarchy is overthrown and replaced by a Republic, Switzerland has a catholic vs protestant civil war that ends with a similar result, and a Hungarian rebellion spills out of Austrian control to the extent that they have to call in the Russians to suppress it. Governments across the continent are forced to enact reforms; written constitutions, greater democracy, freedom of the press and in some of the more backwards nations the abolition of serfdom to name but a few. While some reforms were only token and others were later repealed once the revolutions went sour, a fair number were able to stick long-term. Moreso than OTL in fact - the revolutions here were in general more successful than OTL.
But plenty of things go differently. In France, while OTL's Napoleon III still seizes power, he never proclaims himself emperor (chalk it up to different childhood life experiences) instead transforming the 2nd Republic into a dictatorship centered around himself. In an attempt to gain international prestige, he intervenes in an early US Civil War equivalent (the 1848 election was messy) [3] helping bring an unpleasant confederacy-equivalent into the world a decade ahead of OTL's schedule. Meanwhile in Germany, the German Confederation receives substantial reform akin to OTL's abortive 1848 German Empire (becoming about as tight as, say, the current EU with an added layer of military alliance), and after the King of Prussia turns up his nose at the offer of an extra throne as OTL, the provisional leaders of Germany are able to find a spare Austrian prince more than happy to accept a 'crown from the gutter'. With an overall monarch lending some important legitimacy points to the Confederation, and the new tighter organisation possessing some real teeth, there is little Prussia can do but sulk. In addition, a de-facto republican provisional government establishes itself in Schleswig-Holstein, putting itself under unofficial joint German Confederation protection.
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 the peninsula. 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 the aforementioned worse 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 stem branch of the Hohenzollerns to prevent Italy getting too big too quickly.
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 a little 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 also the last with a clear OTL analogue - a mildly-delayed equivalent to the Crimean War in 1859. 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 once the endeavour becomes an all-great-powers affair to bring Russia down a notch. The Swedes are coaxed out of Neutrality to nab the Aaland Islands, while Austria and Prussia are spurred to act once the war brings on the obligatory once-per-generation Polish uprising, with both powers using the war as a pretext to intervene and effectively recreate the Third Partition while suppressing the revolt, keeping chunks for themselves (though the Austrians would later split their half off under a branch line). Britain retains Sebastopol in the peace treaty, although perhaps more annoying for the Russians is what happens in Circassia, where Russia's then-ongoing effort to genocide the locals gets drawn into the war.
Thanks to a couple of Russian officers dying early in an alternate conclusion to the Napoleonic wars, in addition to a big helping of luck, the Circassians are still holding out well by the time half of Europe decides to kick the Russian bear in the gonads. Backing the ongoing rebellion to spite Moscow becomes all part of the plan, especially when a minor British aristocrat finds fame pulling a Lawrence of Arabia in the northern Caucasus (his military contributions were negligible, but in propaganda value now ...). When the Final peace treaty is signed, the resulting Confederation of Circassia is placed under a very awkward joint Russo-British protectorate, that has only survived as long as it has due to neither power since coming directly to blows. Circassians are a very nervous people - Russia still considers them unfinished business after all.
And then in 1864, a nationalistically blinkered Denmark tries to reconquer Schleswig-Holstein in spite of the de-facto protection of the rest of Germany. The Danes are predictably curb-stomped by a coalition of German states, but almost as soon as the guns fall silent another conflict brews. To prevent the Danes trying anything again, the Holstieners try to formalise their ties to the rest of Germany. Prussia gets pissy when the resulting state starts leaning Austrian, and before you know it, Berlin and Vienna are at war. Prussian dreams of expansion and wresting control of the German states from Austria are however brought to a screeching halt when France decides to join in the fun on the side of Austria. France nabs the Saarland, Austria gets a protectorate over Schleswig-Holstein (later transitioning to annexation after a dodgy referendum), Saxony is expanded greatly at Prussian expense, 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. The Italians use the resulting chaos to annex Lombardy-Venetia while Prussia is distracted.
Cue Spanish intrigues. Thanks to the above Italian annexation, there is now a minor Hohenzollern hanging around looking for a new throne, and what do you know it but a reformist government in Madrid has finally had enough of the Spanish bourbons and their antics, and is casting around for a new dynasty. Bear in mind, this Spain is doing better than OTL - the benefits of losing and giving up on Latin America earlier ITTL in the end outweigh a gnarlier Peninsular War, with the resulting Prussian alliance on welcoming in the new king helps the Spanish Empire find a second wind in African colonisation. Besides the stuff they had already (the Philippines, Cuba ect), Madrid nets most of the Congo basin by pulling the same trick as Belgium OTL (though British-proxy Portugal got most of Katanga's minerals by way of an alternate Pink Map), in addition to a settler colony in Morocco.
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 Albania 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 soundly defeated).
And then there was the damp-squib Anglo-French war in 1893. A Royal Navy vessel tries to capture a ship from noted international pariah the Confederation of Sovereign Republics transporting "totally-not-slaves-we-swear;-they're-just-indentured-labourers-on-multi-generational-contracts" from Confederate Guinea to South Carolina, and a French ship, still technically aligned to the CSR, gets in the way, with unfortunate results. The war is mostly inconclusive barring an impressively loud naval battle in the channel and 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. 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.
[The war also finally prompts a France no longer under dictatorial rule to cut loose the CSR once they realise that the whole "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" thing doesn't mesh well with propping up an unpleasant slaveholding autocracy just to stick a thumb in America's eye. The CSR economy implodes rather spectacularly once French corporations pull out, leading to outright collapse a decade down the line].
As the twentieth century has progressed, two power blocks have been aligning against each other.
On the one hand we have the Consensus Powers [4] doing well from the status quo, with a core around France, the Italian states, Austria and those German states looking warily at Prussia (IE, all of them). 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 expansion, 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 Italy and Russia unpleasant, but has been grandfathered in by its alliance with Prussia, with colonial squabbles with the French providing further encouragement, 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. The Austrian summer of revolution in 1913 got pretty hairy when a reckoning finally came for the still largely unreformed Austrian Empire in the form of massive protests, civil disobedience and the week long self-proclaimed Vienna Commune. The crisis was only resolved when the compromised emperor abdicated in favour of his reasonably reformist son, who then spearheaded a new effort at federalising the Empire. (The Hungarians still get screwed over though). While cooler heads eventually prevailed, things got pretty dicey for a few months before things calmed down again.
And then there were conflicts outside Europe that threatened to spill over. After a century-long run of bad luck, the USA finally catches a break when the CSR finally implodes spectacularly into civil war in 1906. 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 on admittedly flimsy pretexts out of spite. 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 moreover was stretched holding down and imposing a delayed form of Reconstruction on the puppetised southern states as it was. 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. Much easier to retreat back into semi-isolationism with her constellation of satellites and hangers-on than get involved in the affairs of Europe.
[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, although in an exciting different configuration, Gran Colombia is on the verge of collapse [5] 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 after their last attempt at getting the band back together (peacefully this time) came to nothing (everyone can still remember the last time, when they tried with bullets), 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 thinkers 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, Distributionism, Utopianism, Neo-Fourierism and Szalayism 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. The terminology in this world is to lump all schools of thought together as 'Neo-Jacobinism', no matter how much it annoys their many adherents, who often despise each other almost as much as they do the capitalists.
Funnily enough, it was actually Eran that clinched the title of 'first Distributionist nation' ITTL, barring one or two quickly-crushed revolutionary governments (see the Vienna Commune above) and the kinda-sorta Communalism coming out of the Republic of New Benin in former South Carolina (the CSR 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 [6], 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 starting in the 1870's, 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 revolutionary government emerged in Oran, claiming to be the legitimate government of Algeria and aiming to throw off the foreign domination of their country.
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. Algeria has become a festering sore, occasionally throwing up separatists and radicals to destabilise the previously begrudgingly contented neighbouring French and Spanish colonies of Numidia and Marruecos. Just last year Moroccan rebels inspired by those over the border rose in the east, overthrowing the Spanish puppet state old Morocco had been reduced to in a doomed bid for independence. Although the revolt has since been mostly ground down into bloody dust, most of Spanish Marruecos remains at a low simmer of rebellion, with the recent revolt of the Riffian tribes upending the applecart once again.
A failure to deal with the problem will come back to bite the powers that be, as a little spillover from the Algerian civil war is about to finally trigger the much-hypothesised general European war pundits have been predicting for over two decades now. The war of words between Spain and France over whose fault the Algerian mess is and who has to clean it up has been ratcheting up for a while, especially since the aforementioned ill-fated Moroccan rebellion. The final straw was the outright invasion of Moroccan territory by French-backed Berber forces, taking the Spanish by surprise and capturing Oujda two weeks ago. Since news has filtered back the Franco-Spanish spat has escalated into a full-blown diplomatic crisis. Ambassadors have been summoned. Lists of demands have been made and presented. Both sides feel national honour must be upheld in the face of foreign aggression. Troops mass on either side of the Pyrenees, glaring at each other menacingly across the border.
But the war will not be started between Spain and France. Realising that now is as good a time as any other to try and unify the peninsula, especially with the rest of Europe distracted, the Italians have decided to clandestinely activate their war-plans for a simultaneous quick annexation of the Papal States and a march up the Po to capture Turin, and have been mobilising troops to this end. Following current timetables, the invasion will begin in four days time. Once it starts, this will in turn draw in more powers, and from there things will spiral as various treaties and commitments snap into action.
In a week, the Great War will begin.
[1] Notorious for being forced to abdicate in 1866 following the double scandals of a particularly nasty murder he almost certainly committed combined with the revelation that his privately-owned colony in OTL Queensland was making extensive use of slave labour to farm the tropical products of its plantations, alongside massive public hostility to him personally.
What? Considering he'd be a half-brother to OTL's Leopold II *cough*Congo-Free-state*cough* of Belgium, I kind of had to make him a wrong-un.
[2] To lay out the gory details in full, Saxe-Meiningen gets shafted relative to OTL, only nabbing Roda, Saxe-Coburg gives up Saalfeld in return for Gotha, with Saxe Hildburghausen gaining Saalfeld in lieu of other territorial expansion, meanwhile Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach gets Altenburg.
[3] America had a bad run ITTL - an outright loss in the War of 1812, a no-score draw in the 1830 rematch and a tougher fight against a bigger and more stable Mexico under the Burr dynasty (butterflies, butterflies) less liable to shed outlying provinces leads to an earlier southern secession once it becomes clear there aren't going to be any more slave states any time soon (Texas staying independent and Britain having nabbed Florida from Spain during the napoleonic era didn't help).
With America doing worse and Mexico doing better, the energies behind France's little OTL Latin American misadventure are instead funnelled into backing an alt-Confederacy that arose a decade early, when the demographic and industrial disparity between north and south was less pronounced.
[4] The French suggested naming their new alliance the 'Continental Synthesis' as a callback to the old Napoleonic Continental System, but the Germans quickly nixed that idea.
[5] 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.
[6] 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.
EDIT; added excessively talky extra map.
This year is a bit of a departure from form in that I haven't produced any completely new content. Instead I've taken one of my old maps (last year's one to be exact) and re-tooled it to fit the shiny new basemap I've been working on for most of the last year.
(Honestly, a good part of the motivation to start working on the R-QBAM was that my general dissatisfaction with the QBAM over the whole "not in any recognised projection" thing was putting me off making new maps, period. I'd long planned to fully give the QBAM a geography overhaul at some point soon for ages, so what was the point making new maps if they'd be obsolete in a couple of years? In particular, after posting last year's showpiece I really wanted to dig into the wider world of that scenario, but was put off by the fact that, well, the QBAM is a bit flawed. Eventually I just decided to make the new damn map already, on which work slowly continues).
I don't have time to add a key and on-map notes, however as the scenario is largely unchanged from the previous version that shouldn't be too much of a problem - follow the link to the original to get a good enough idea. An extra wordy version should be posted at some point over the next few days to compliment the blank map I'm putting up now.
As mentioned, the original scenario was based heavily on an incomplete almost completely unpublished scenario I worked on years before (see this ancient MotF for the only bit of the original I can remember posting anywhere here). In the year since I posted the last map, I've tweaked and edited the scenario a fair amount - a few things on the map are different, and the original write-up needed to be retooled a little to fit but otherwise not too much has changed.
I'm pushing the POD back a couple of years to about 1810, mostly so that butterflies can give Latin America (or at least bits of it) a leg-up compared to OTL. These changes mostly affect the New World, but changes filter back to Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The Peninsular War is harder fought (wrecking Spain more thoroughly puts the colonial empire in worse shape, leading to an easier independence struggle for its components), because, I dunno, lets kill Wellington on campaign or something. Add in a bit of luck, and the French are successful enough that even once the allies reach the gates of Paris in 1814 following a similarly disastrous French invasion of Russia, Joseph Bonaparte still sits on a shaky throne in Madrid. Fully ousting him isn't completed till 1816, bleeding Spain dry, and forcing them to give up on a reconquest of the colonial empire rather earlier.
There are several other differences. While the general trend is the same, the details of the 1813 campaign are quite variable. In particular, during his last battle Napoleon gets knocked off his horse and breaks a leg. 19th century medical technology being what it was, he's lucky it just requires amputation. Also 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, and the small Napoleonic creation of Salm in addition to Arenberg and Bentheim are further resurrected from the dead, while the tiny Principality of Leyen enclaved within Baden receives an indefinite stay of execution.
The first big change occurs when the Hundred Days War is butterflied - having suffered a crippling but not life-threatening injury in 1813, Napoleon's escape from Elba never comes off (on the bright side, he lives rather longer in a prison where the walls aren't literally coated with arsenic). Peace is signed in 1814 under broadly similar terms to OTL, but with some notable differences. A few small to medium states reemerge as mentioned, France receives more favourable northern borders (keeping lands that were IOTL confiscated following Waterloo) while losing a larger chunk of the Savoy to Piedmont-Sardinia (compensation for the latter not being allowed to annex Genoa ITTL). In addition, several other borders are drawn subtly differently, and a couple of enclaves aren't exchanged; Prussia Keeps East Frisia, Sweden retains their chunk of Pomerania, and Saxe-Lauenberg remains Hannoverian. The Principality of Orange Nassau survives, now in personal union with the new Dutch monarchy. The Kingdom of Naples under Murat tenuously survives, with rump-Sicily remaining under the British thumb. Things proceed to diverge from there.
(Though less applicable here, there's also a reshuffling of various colonies ITTL. A game of musical chairs is played with the Caribbean islands, Britain takes Dakar and the coast of OTL Senegal from the French, and while Guyana, Ceylon and the Cape are handed back to the Netherlands, the UK here keeps Java and Sumatra plus a few more choice spice islands in the East Indies, much to Dutch annoyance).
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. This has mixed results, as the child in question will grow up to be the rather unpleasant George V, better known to history by the sobriquet 'Bad King George' [1]. 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, with the crowns being reunified by George V once his mother died in the 1860's.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The 1820's see a tepid wave of revolution in Europe's Mediterranean fringe 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 [2]. In the Middle East Iran avoids the OTL Russo-Persian war of 1826, keeping hold of what we today call Armenia. Russia and the Ottomans do however go to war right on schedule, but unlike OTL's Russian victory the result ITTL is more of a draw; the Russians do well in the Balkans (helping along the international recognition of Greece in the process), while losing ground in the Caucasus.
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 just as crappy, 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 a little ahead of schedule in 1847, with changes by now really starting to filter through. Some things follow OTL; the French monarchy is overthrown and replaced by a Republic, Switzerland has a catholic vs protestant civil war that ends with a similar result, and a Hungarian rebellion spills out of Austrian control to the extent that they have to call in the Russians to suppress it. Governments across the continent are forced to enact reforms; written constitutions, greater democracy, freedom of the press and in some of the more backwards nations the abolition of serfdom to name but a few. While some reforms were only token and others were later repealed once the revolutions went sour, a fair number were able to stick long-term. Moreso than OTL in fact - the revolutions here were in general more successful than OTL.
But plenty of things go differently. In France, while OTL's Napoleon III still seizes power, he never proclaims himself emperor (chalk it up to different childhood life experiences) instead transforming the 2nd Republic into a dictatorship centered around himself. In an attempt to gain international prestige, he intervenes in an early US Civil War equivalent (the 1848 election was messy) [3] helping bring an unpleasant confederacy-equivalent into the world a decade ahead of OTL's schedule. Meanwhile in Germany, the German Confederation receives substantial reform akin to OTL's abortive 1848 German Empire (becoming about as tight as, say, the current EU with an added layer of military alliance), and after the King of Prussia turns up his nose at the offer of an extra throne as OTL, the provisional leaders of Germany are able to find a spare Austrian prince more than happy to accept a 'crown from the gutter'. With an overall monarch lending some important legitimacy points to the Confederation, and the new tighter organisation possessing some real teeth, there is little Prussia can do but sulk. In addition, a de-facto republican provisional government establishes itself in Schleswig-Holstein, putting itself under unofficial joint German Confederation protection.
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 the peninsula. 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 the aforementioned worse 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 stem branch of the Hohenzollerns to prevent Italy getting too big too quickly.
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 a little 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 also the last with a clear OTL analogue - a mildly-delayed equivalent to the Crimean War in 1859. 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 once the endeavour becomes an all-great-powers affair to bring Russia down a notch. The Swedes are coaxed out of Neutrality to nab the Aaland Islands, while Austria and Prussia are spurred to act once the war brings on the obligatory once-per-generation Polish uprising, with both powers using the war as a pretext to intervene and effectively recreate the Third Partition while suppressing the revolt, keeping chunks for themselves (though the Austrians would later split their half off under a branch line). Britain retains Sebastopol in the peace treaty, although perhaps more annoying for the Russians is what happens in Circassia, where Russia's then-ongoing effort to genocide the locals gets drawn into the war.
Thanks to a couple of Russian officers dying early in an alternate conclusion to the Napoleonic wars, in addition to a big helping of luck, the Circassians are still holding out well by the time half of Europe decides to kick the Russian bear in the gonads. Backing the ongoing rebellion to spite Moscow becomes all part of the plan, especially when a minor British aristocrat finds fame pulling a Lawrence of Arabia in the northern Caucasus (his military contributions were negligible, but in propaganda value now ...). When the Final peace treaty is signed, the resulting Confederation of Circassia is placed under a very awkward joint Russo-British protectorate, that has only survived as long as it has due to neither power since coming directly to blows. Circassians are a very nervous people - Russia still considers them unfinished business after all.
And then in 1864, a nationalistically blinkered Denmark tries to reconquer Schleswig-Holstein in spite of the de-facto protection of the rest of Germany. The Danes are predictably curb-stomped by a coalition of German states, but almost as soon as the guns fall silent another conflict brews. To prevent the Danes trying anything again, the Holstieners try to formalise their ties to the rest of Germany. Prussia gets pissy when the resulting state starts leaning Austrian, and before you know it, Berlin and Vienna are at war. Prussian dreams of expansion and wresting control of the German states from Austria are however brought to a screeching halt when France decides to join in the fun on the side of Austria. France nabs the Saarland, Austria gets a protectorate over Schleswig-Holstein (later transitioning to annexation after a dodgy referendum), Saxony is expanded greatly at Prussian expense, 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. The Italians use the resulting chaos to annex Lombardy-Venetia while Prussia is distracted.
Cue Spanish intrigues. Thanks to the above Italian annexation, there is now a minor Hohenzollern hanging around looking for a new throne, and what do you know it but a reformist government in Madrid has finally had enough of the Spanish bourbons and their antics, and is casting around for a new dynasty. Bear in mind, this Spain is doing better than OTL - the benefits of losing and giving up on Latin America earlier ITTL in the end outweigh a gnarlier Peninsular War, with the resulting Prussian alliance on welcoming in the new king helps the Spanish Empire find a second wind in African colonisation. Besides the stuff they had already (the Philippines, Cuba ect), Madrid nets most of the Congo basin by pulling the same trick as Belgium OTL (though British-proxy Portugal got most of Katanga's minerals by way of an alternate Pink Map), in addition to a settler colony in Morocco.
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 Albania 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 soundly defeated).
And then there was the damp-squib Anglo-French war in 1893. A Royal Navy vessel tries to capture a ship from noted international pariah the Confederation of Sovereign Republics transporting "totally-not-slaves-we-swear;-they're-just-indentured-labourers-on-multi-generational-contracts" from Confederate Guinea to South Carolina, and a French ship, still technically aligned to the CSR, gets in the way, with unfortunate results. The war is mostly inconclusive barring an impressively loud naval battle in the channel and 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. 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.
[The war also finally prompts a France no longer under dictatorial rule to cut loose the CSR once they realise that the whole "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" thing doesn't mesh well with propping up an unpleasant slaveholding autocracy just to stick a thumb in America's eye. The CSR economy implodes rather spectacularly once French corporations pull out, leading to outright collapse a decade down the line].
As the twentieth century has progressed, two power blocks have been aligning against each other.
On the one hand we have the Consensus Powers [4] doing well from the status quo, with a core around France, the Italian states, Austria and those German states looking warily at Prussia (IE, all of them). 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 expansion, 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 Italy and Russia unpleasant, but has been grandfathered in by its alliance with Prussia, with colonial squabbles with the French providing further encouragement, 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. The Austrian summer of revolution in 1913 got pretty hairy when a reckoning finally came for the still largely unreformed Austrian Empire in the form of massive protests, civil disobedience and the week long self-proclaimed Vienna Commune. The crisis was only resolved when the compromised emperor abdicated in favour of his reasonably reformist son, who then spearheaded a new effort at federalising the Empire. (The Hungarians still get screwed over though). While cooler heads eventually prevailed, things got pretty dicey for a few months before things calmed down again.
And then there were conflicts outside Europe that threatened to spill over. After a century-long run of bad luck, the USA finally catches a break when the CSR finally implodes spectacularly into civil war in 1906. 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 on admittedly flimsy pretexts out of spite. 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 moreover was stretched holding down and imposing a delayed form of Reconstruction on the puppetised southern states as it was. 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. Much easier to retreat back into semi-isolationism with her constellation of satellites and hangers-on than get involved in the affairs of Europe.
[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, although in an exciting different configuration, Gran Colombia is on the verge of collapse [5] 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 after their last attempt at getting the band back together (peacefully this time) came to nothing (everyone can still remember the last time, when they tried with bullets), 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 thinkers 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, Distributionism, Utopianism, Neo-Fourierism and Szalayism 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. The terminology in this world is to lump all schools of thought together as 'Neo-Jacobinism', no matter how much it annoys their many adherents, who often despise each other almost as much as they do the capitalists.
Funnily enough, it was actually Eran that clinched the title of 'first Distributionist nation' ITTL, barring one or two quickly-crushed revolutionary governments (see the Vienna Commune above) and the kinda-sorta Communalism coming out of the Republic of New Benin in former South Carolina (the CSR 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 [6], 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 starting in the 1870's, 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 revolutionary government emerged in Oran, claiming to be the legitimate government of Algeria and aiming to throw off the foreign domination of their country.
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. Algeria has become a festering sore, occasionally throwing up separatists and radicals to destabilise the previously begrudgingly contented neighbouring French and Spanish colonies of Numidia and Marruecos. Just last year Moroccan rebels inspired by those over the border rose in the east, overthrowing the Spanish puppet state old Morocco had been reduced to in a doomed bid for independence. Although the revolt has since been mostly ground down into bloody dust, most of Spanish Marruecos remains at a low simmer of rebellion, with the recent revolt of the Riffian tribes upending the applecart once again.
A failure to deal with the problem will come back to bite the powers that be, as a little spillover from the Algerian civil war is about to finally trigger the much-hypothesised general European war pundits have been predicting for over two decades now. The war of words between Spain and France over whose fault the Algerian mess is and who has to clean it up has been ratcheting up for a while, especially since the aforementioned ill-fated Moroccan rebellion. The final straw was the outright invasion of Moroccan territory by French-backed Berber forces, taking the Spanish by surprise and capturing Oujda two weeks ago. Since news has filtered back the Franco-Spanish spat has escalated into a full-blown diplomatic crisis. Ambassadors have been summoned. Lists of demands have been made and presented. Both sides feel national honour must be upheld in the face of foreign aggression. Troops mass on either side of the Pyrenees, glaring at each other menacingly across the border.
But the war will not be started between Spain and France. Realising that now is as good a time as any other to try and unify the peninsula, especially with the rest of Europe distracted, the Italians have decided to clandestinely activate their war-plans for a simultaneous quick annexation of the Papal States and a march up the Po to capture Turin, and have been mobilising troops to this end. Following current timetables, the invasion will begin in four days time. Once it starts, this will in turn draw in more powers, and from there things will spiral as various treaties and commitments snap into action.
In a week, the Great War will begin.
[1] Notorious for being forced to abdicate in 1866 following the double scandals of a particularly nasty murder he almost certainly committed combined with the revelation that his privately-owned colony in OTL Queensland was making extensive use of slave labour to farm the tropical products of its plantations, alongside massive public hostility to him personally.
What? Considering he'd be a half-brother to OTL's Leopold II *cough*Congo-Free-state*cough* of Belgium, I kind of had to make him a wrong-un.
[2] To lay out the gory details in full, Saxe-Meiningen gets shafted relative to OTL, only nabbing Roda, Saxe-Coburg gives up Saalfeld in return for Gotha, with Saxe Hildburghausen gaining Saalfeld in lieu of other territorial expansion, meanwhile Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach gets Altenburg.
[3] America had a bad run ITTL - an outright loss in the War of 1812, a no-score draw in the 1830 rematch and a tougher fight against a bigger and more stable Mexico under the Burr dynasty (butterflies, butterflies) less liable to shed outlying provinces leads to an earlier southern secession once it becomes clear there aren't going to be any more slave states any time soon (Texas staying independent and Britain having nabbed Florida from Spain during the napoleonic era didn't help).
With America doing worse and Mexico doing better, the energies behind France's little OTL Latin American misadventure are instead funnelled into backing an alt-Confederacy that arose a decade early, when the demographic and industrial disparity between north and south was less pronounced.
[4] The French suggested naming their new alliance the 'Continental Synthesis' as a callback to the old Napoleonic Continental System, but the Germans quickly nixed that idea.
[5] 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.
[6] 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.
EDIT; added excessively talky extra map.
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this is amazing but god why did you keep the checkerboard persia it pains me so much
I think you manage to create a fairly balanced great war. I'm honestly clueless as to who would win this match, I'm leaning towards a grand alliance victory, if Prussia can get its shit together and crush the small German states and gang up on Austria together with Russia and Italy after that and also if Britain stays neutral, which are not a given. And also, I don't think the Russian and Italian regimes are particularly stable, so it may be a little detrimental to the grand alliance to have two of its main backers be potentially two OTL Russia's.
Another little map, this time of Mars:From a previous scenario, here's the South Asian Federation at its height.
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If everything goes to plan, I should have the (excessively) annotated and labelled second map done and edited into the last post by tomorrow, Friday at the latest, so pay attention for that.
But first for some replies;
Some interesting analysis. I'll be keeping my lips sealed as to the result 'till I've got a post-war Europe map done, though I want to make more progress adding to the R-QBAM first.
Iran went *communist*, and is currently going through an excessively revolutionary phase, part of which is experimenting with grid-square administrative divisions. The idea is based on an old proposal put forward during the French revolution to "rationalise" French administrative divisions that I've spoilered below. It's just so pointlessly, stupidly, idealistically revolutionary that I had to include it to show how wacky ITTL's Iran currently is. The system has however decayed a little by this point, with about a dozen major cities (and some minor ones) having since been granted autonomy, breaking up the squares a little.
Given a couple of years, they'll mellow, scrapping the perfect squares and adopting more reasonable internal borders. For now though, its squares all the way.
Bear in mind, it took me five months to create that new Europe basemap largely from scratch, so a world map, while definitely in the cards, will take time. Based on current rates of progress, I'd guess that Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa should be done by the end of the year, so Africa's probably the next region of TTL I'll be mapping, if I don't do a post-war map of Europe first.
Bonus, the French map mentioned above
But first for some replies;
Some interesting analysis. I'll be keeping my lips sealed as to the result 'till I've got a post-war Europe map done, though I want to make more progress adding to the R-QBAM first.
Iran went *communist*, and is currently going through an excessively revolutionary phase, part of which is experimenting with grid-square administrative divisions. The idea is based on an old proposal put forward during the French revolution to "rationalise" French administrative divisions that I've spoilered below. It's just so pointlessly, stupidly, idealistically revolutionary that I had to include it to show how wacky ITTL's Iran currently is. The system has however decayed a little by this point, with about a dozen major cities (and some minor ones) having since been granted autonomy, breaking up the squares a little.
Given a couple of years, they'll mellow, scrapping the perfect squares and adopting more reasonable internal borders. For now though, its squares all the way.
Bear in mind, it took me five months to create that new Europe basemap largely from scratch, so a world map, while definitely in the cards, will take time. Based on current rates of progress, I'd guess that Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa should be done by the end of the year, so Africa's probably the next region of TTL I'll be mapping, if I don't do a post-war map of Europe first.
Bonus, the French map mentioned above
Believe it or not, but the ancestor/inspiration for the current departement division.
France's monomaniacal obsession with centralization never ceases to infuriate me.
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