Xšayār̥šā, King of Kings (and so forth) approves of this map.
Map Thread XXI
- Thread starter fluttersky
- Start date
-
- Tags
- map map thread
- Status
That's fair enough. My thinking with the compromised borders was that IIRC apparently Italy at some point did reach a point where they were willing to compromise with the Habsburgs, and at this point, their biggest concern was Italian control of the Trentino, with Trieste still being given to the Italians as well. Regarding fascism, there probably is still a significant fascist movement, perhaps even led by Mussolini, but my thinking is that a stronger democratic government combined with Victor Emmanuel III being a lot firmer against the fascists leads to them ultimately falling apart after a failed March on Rome.
That still may not be the best solution to addressing Italian fascism, but I do feel like it's an improvement over the first scenario of my map of Europe. Alternatively, if I ever revisit TTL I could still have Italy become fascist, seeing as it fits the general "interwar-punk" feeling I'm going for. I do still have the USSR to represent communism after all, so an Italy that represents fascism could fit. Of course, even with the fascist government, I don't see them declaring war on the Habsburgs due to them being a reasonably entrenched European power at this point, so once in power, the government probably focuses more on empire-building in the Balkans and Africa.
Of course, this all depends on if I even go back to TTL or if I leave it where it is.
This is clearly a really well thought out scenario, but you should probably put it in the alternate Wikipedia infoboxes thread instead of the map thread.
Your premise of the North American Amerindians having polities is historically and factually incorrect. Most Amerindians in North America, prior to 1492, were not societally advanced or organized enough to form their own states with actual monarchs; instead, the vast majority of them lived in tribes and clans without any well-defined boundaries of where they inhabited. On the other hand, the Aztecs in Central America and Incas in South America were both at a higher stage of organization than their North American counterparts that allowed them to form complex societies with social stratification, developed civilization, urban culture, scientific/technological progress, and established boundaries of their territorial control.
Point of order, there is evidence of at least a few polities within shouting distance of Mesoamerican degrees of organization/construction. The issue is that the Old World Diseases hit them hard before the colonists arrived in earnest.
Yes, but just because the Mound Builders had distinctive structures, doesn’t mean that they were on the level of societal organization that the Aztecs and Incas were at, not does that mean that they had an actual civilization. It’s like saying that a random Polynesian island in the Pacific was “very societally organized” and “had a civilization” prior to its colonization by Europeans just due to the discovery of a bunch of random stone carvings some archeologists just happened to stumble on.
While true monarchies were a rarity (the role of chiefs varied by culture and was usually hereditary, but didn't truly "rule" and often worked in councils), to say the Amerindians of the modern US/Canada did not have well-defined boundaries is absolutely inaccurate. Outside of a few small-scale groups which were nomadic and had minimal concept of ownership (which was a few groups in the desert and mountains of the West), there was a clear concept of territorial boundaries and what was owned by which group. This was marked by mountains, streams, certain rocks, etc. and they enforced these borders with violence or demanding a settlement for trespassing. These borders were even altered by native peace treaties. European explorers knew this since they'd usually been warned by their native guides they were entering hostile territory.
Now granted, I'm not sure how many of these warrant inclusion on a map since there's a clear difference between the organized Mississippian confederacies encountered by DeSoto and those small-scale desert tribes I mentioned. And said Mississippian confederacies were closer to the historic Creeks or Cherokee than something as formalized as Mesoamerica's states, but I would say the system was an organized one given how these tribes worked.
The most jarring errors is how the map portrays different regions in different years (some of those tribes probably weren't where they were in the early 16th century, assuming they even existed given groups like the Catawba, Choctaw, etc. coalesced that century) and totally lacks Baja California and northern Mexico. Both of these have decently known archaeology (and the latter numerous written 16th century accounts) that we more or less know who lived there, even if it's generic names like "Tamaulipec" the Spanish lumped a number of tribes under.
I feel like I should point out again that this wasn’t created from my own research. It was based on a pre-existing map. Maybe I could’ve used different border colors to indicate the less-organized tribes, but I was already getting tired of staring at it and didn’t want to spend several more hours tidying my version up.
Note that his map doesn't have "polities" anywhere. It has nations, tribes, etc -- these aren't states, he doesn't claim they're states, and if you're getting the states from the way he's drawn the borders alone then you've gotta go back and edit out every single hard border before, like, 600 BCE or so. What made you think he asserted that premise?
(Also, it's generally agreed that Native Americans in the to-be-USA had some polities, see the Paramount chiefs of the de Soto expedition, or the *Haudenosaunee*, or the Three Fires, etc)
Then the other continents should also be edited considering they also had nations/tribes/etc that are not depicted in the WorldA.
Why is the CSA being invaded by what looks to be some kind of Caribbean Federation or Britain through Florida?
Out of honest curiosity...
What, exactly, was missing out of the Mississippian culture that prevents it from being on the same level of "civilization" as it Meso-American neighbors?
At the very least, Cahokia should be compared to the Mesopotamian city states
Cahokia was a complex city--modern estimates say that it took until the late 18th century for a city in North America to surpass Cahokia in terms of population. It wasn't just a collection of mounds I the middle of Illinois--it had proto-suburbs (a general area of settlements around the city that provided raw materials and foodstuff to Cahokia proper), a sprawling immigrant community that kept the city alive for much longer than it would have otherwise. It was a major exporter of goods to other Mississippian people. I don't know if you know better, but you're really downplaying just how complex Cahokia was. You make it sound like it's just a couple dones in the middle of nowhere with tools around. In reality, it was the New York City of 1000s America
It's also worth noting that there were long-range trade networks. Trade networks important enough that people think that the copper mining people in Michigan may have been replaced by the Chippewa around the 17th or 18th Centuries because of the trade networks falling apart, causing their highly export-oriented economy to collapse.
- Status