Map Thread XXI
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Series 5 – The Kaiser
Map 5.1 – Worldmap
Vacuity Institute RAV219MEL / Sub-Department of the “Vacuity Galactic and Universal Ministry” of the “United Multiverse Assembly” and the “Supreme Multiuniversal Templar Multiverse-Imperium Assembly”.
### Incoming transmission ###
To Supervisor Martin,
Since the start of my task to catalogue the late Mr. Harlan collection of capsule universes, I have discovered many interesting worlds. It also seems that Mr. Harlan also has a special hobby of self-inserting himself into
historical persons of old earth. Now self-Insertion, manipulating events in the past, time-travels, ISOTs-copies are nothing new and are being used by the multiverse great powers (of which there are to many to count) to bolster their faction in the assembly. Also the rich and powerful are using the same methods to project their influence, gain more power and/or are doing all those time-changing things out of sheer boredom. Now whereas most of the time-changing-time-influencing-historical-interference results in more or less the ending which the powers desired - be it making xyz-country great(er), advancing a nations technology or wining an unwinnable war.
This is where the collection of Mr. Harlan gets interesting. His mostly hands-off approach to many of his little universes (I want to mention that most of the other self-inserts, timetravel etc. are not made using the "capsule universe" method rather they are made in "normal" parallel universes) has resulted in a diverse range of worlds. But this one stood out for me. For its sheer boredom. It seems that Mr. Harlan inserted himself into the early mind of a European potentate - nothing unusual since countless others did the same thing - and rather doing something extraordinaire did nothing. Well he rather enjoyed his 97years (the time he spent in the universe) to enjoy himself - collecting riches (and making his designated country rich), eating good food and wine and very often enjoy the companies of young ladies. Oh he prevented a large war, sold off lots of land (which he didn't owned to begin with...) and made a strong economic and political alliance. But that was it. Nothing more.
So dear Supervisor may I present to you the world of Mr. Harlan - The Kaiser!.
Synth-1234
### End transmission ###
### Start of summary ###
- Mr. Harlan isoted himself into the minds of crown prince Wilhelm (the future German emperor Wilhelm II) and with future knowledge avoided a breech birth. His childhood was more or less uneventful. He was still strictly taught by Hinzpeter but enjoyed riding. He still grew apart from his parents ideals but doesn't have the fractured relationship with his mother. As crown prince he rather enjoyed his teenage and young adult years. Wilhelm remained unmarried by the time of his ascension to the German throne in 1888.
- Rather than dismissing Bismarck the Kaiser let the old chancellor stay at his post until his retirement in late 1897. The Kaiser then appointed Bismarck son - Herbert as chancellor. By this time the old alliance web that the senior Bismarck has created was beginning to unravel. The Kaiser had to choose between an alliance with Austria-Hungary or Russia. He chose Russia.
- With Bismarck backing the Kaiser took a step back from colonial adventures. With Britain he concluded the London Conference of 1890 which effectively seeded control of Samoa, Wituland, Togo and other colonial holdings to London. The Kaiser famously said that he wanted as many colonies as he had fingers on his left hand. By the turn of the century Germany had four colonies - German West Africa (aka. Cameroon), German East Africa (aka. Tanganyika), Southwest Africa and North Papua. A fifth colony has yet to be found or aquired.
- The Kaiser (Mr. Harlan) together with Russia were developing plans to divide Europe into their respective spheres. The Kaiser knew that a small war had to be fought and Russia satisfied so that peace and prosperity (in Germany and western Europe) can happen. His target to achieve this goal was Austria-Hungary. The nation would be dividedaccording to the secret Peterburg protocol, later known as the Leithania Agreement of 1909. The agreement seeks to divide the Danube monarchy along its Austrian and Hungarian parts. With the Austrian parts (minus Galicia-Lodmeria and Dalmatia) going to Germany and the Hungarian parts to Russia and Serbia.
- In 1914 just like Mr. Harlan aka. the Kaiser knew, war was started by the assassination of the Austrian crown prince. Germany moved quickly occupying the Austrian alpine provinces in a matter of weeks (thanks in part due to Mr. Harlan exquisite knowledge of future military tactics and tech), Russia slogged through Galicia and Serbia through Bosnia.
- France did joined Austria in its fight against Germany, Russia and Serbia but it lost hundreds of thousands of men against the German defensive lines in Alsace, achieving little than a few kilometres of advances. Britain meanwhile through careful political moves by the Kaiser remained neutral and aloof.
- Despite putting up a great resistance Austria Hungary collapsed in autumn of 1915, leaving France alone. In the summer of 1916 after losing more than two million men on the slopes of Vosges mountain, the French army mutinied a week later the government was toppled and the new French government sued for peace.
- The Conference of Potsdam in 1916 permanently divided Europe into two spheres a Russian East and a German West. Austria-Hungary was carved up by the two continental powers - Galica, Lodmeria and Bukovina to Russia, Croatia, Bosnia and the Dalmatian coast to Serbia (know Yugoslavia), Italy which only opportunistically joined late in the war got only the Austrian Istrian province, Romania which didn't joined but still demanded Hungarian territories got nothing. Russia and Germany decided to keep the main Hungarian lands intact - as a sort of neutral, demilitarised country between their respective spheres. Germany didn't annexed the remaining Austrian provinces but rather set up a puppet state - the Austrian Kingdom - out of Austria, Bohemia and the Slovenes land. As a puppet king it selected Maximilian von Hohenberg, the son of the late Austrian crown prince. It also gained its fifth colony - Morocco - from France (along with a sizeable war reparation).
- So history happens Germany and Russia after a period of close cooperation grew apart from each other. Germany set up a common market for west European nations, which would later be reformed into the West European Union - consisting of twelve nations - Austria, Belgium, Italy, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Germany. Russia after its victory in the west concentrated its gaze to Asia and the rising power of Japan. Their rivalry over China would culminate in the Great Asian War of the 1940s. Japan and its collaborators would after many long and bloody years be kicked out of mainland Asia. Russia would carve out East Asia but not without meeting resistance from a new rising power the United States.
- Russia and the US would enter into a great game in East Asia which still last to this day. Evidence of this are the divided states of China - a more or less Russian aligned North China and a US aligned South China.
- Britain having fought no war but maintaining a global empire started to feel the strain. Many prime ministers succeeded only to apply small bandages to it but all started to unravel in the 1980s Britain went into its second Anarchy and the British Empire was no more.
- The world of 2020 is divided into three camps - a Russian Sphere (although it influence started to wane - it has slipped its grip on North China and lost many influence in Eastern Europe), an American Sphere and a German/West European Sphere (Germany alone cannot maintain a Superpower status but with the backing of the W.E.U. with its 364 million citizens it can still wield considerable influence on the world stage).
### End of summary ###
Authors note: Welcome to the start of the fifth map/infobox series of Timelines of the Capsule Universes or TLCU. This is sort of an idea I had for a very long time - what would or could I do if I were self-inserted into Kaiser Willys mind? Would I be able to stop a war? Be as megalomaniac as the real Kaiser or just simply enjoy myself as a young dandy crown prince? I think I would have really enjoyed myself
- I would have travelled a lot, enjoyed the companies of many ladies, invested in new technologies/markets or spurned their development when I can and tried my damn best to avoid a war - or just limiting it to one or two regions in Europe - thus my thinking of allying with Russia rather than the dead-weight Austria, sucking up to Britain and the US (no High Sea Fleet, less colonies etc.). And in the end maybe creating a better starting point for the 20th century?! And also get filthy rich or richer as the Kaiser. So what would you have done as the German Kaiser?
Last edited:
Series 5 – The Kaiser
Map 5.2 – Germany
The first part of a four-part series showcasing the three most important nations of the world and an interesting one.
Series 5 – The Kaiser
Map 5.3 – Russia
The second part of a four-part series showcasing the three most important nations of the world and an interesting one.
Moon time.
Full resolution:
Terraformed Moon Rough Draft Map by MrCactus04 on DeviantArt
www.deviantart.com
i'l
l probably leave that to whoever wants to use this map for their own projects.
A cover/enhancement/reinterpretation/what have you of this map by @rvbomally . Sans Genghis by RvBOMally on DeviantArt
So, some background (some place names borrowed from Diamond and @SRegan ):
In a world where Genghis Khan was born dead, the biggest benificiaries was the Muslim world. While the reunification of much of the eastern Islamic world under the Khwarezmian Caliphate proved fleeting, the resulting intellectual cross-fertilization and ferment of an Eastern Islamic world unravaged by Mongol invasions kick-started the Islamic Second Flowering, a new era of science and political and economic experiment similar to our world's Renaissance (although without the fascination with Greek and Latin pagans). Technological advances were initially slow (although would accelerate with the spread of the printing press for "secular" documents, something borrowed by the Khazesmian bureaucracy from the Chinese and never returned), but new political and organizational ideas were often decisive. Meanwhile, Europe, unbothered by diseases carried by Mongolian rodents, remained for some time stuck on the rocky shores of the Malthusian limits, plagued by famine, internal warfare, religious unrest, and disease outbreaks bad enough to induce apocalypticism but not enough to seriously change the economic status quo. (Things were not helped by the endless wars of the Plantagenet succession, dragging out for two centuries the question of whether or not Britain and France would have one ruler).
The POD was too late to keep the Spanish kingdoms from kicking the collective butts of the Almohads (in our world the decisive battle of the Tolosa plains took place seven years before Genghis invaded Khwarezmia), and even with the butterflies being a bit kinder Islamic spain was still reduced by the 14th century to a rump little larger than our Granada. This would not be the end of Islam in Iberia, though. New ideas and gunpowder innovations traveled west to the Maghreb, leading to the emergence in the fifteenth century of Murrakush, a vigorous new Berber-dominated state in Morocco and what we would consider western Algeria, which would in the late 1400s invade, like the Almohads and Almoravids before them, to assist fellow Muslims under threat from Christian invasion. More politically astute, better organized, and better armed than their predecessors, they were also aided by the continued fragmentation and internal disputes of the Spanish kingdoms, which had been caught up in the dynastic fallout of the war of the Plantagenet succession. Still, hardened by centuries of Holy War, the Iberian Christian states were a hard nut to crack, and the "De-Conquista" proved impossible to complete.
Meanwhile, the Mamluk state of Egypt developed into a sophisticated meritocratic stratocracy, while a new dynasty in Turkish Anatolia began to expand, west into the remnants of the Byzantine Empire (mercilessly screwed over by Catholic Europe as in our world), east into the crumbling fringes of the Khwarzezmian Caliphate. For a while these two powers would cooperate against the common Christian foe, the Mamlakat invading Italy and the new Rekaniyid Sultanate of Rum (a Kurdo-Turkish dynasty [1]) moving into the Balkans, the Mamlakat achieving even greater success than Murrakush against the fragmented and less military skilled Italian states, although a secure border in the mountains to the north and west would not be established until the 1600s. Europe was not helped by a *reformation even bloodier and more chaotic than in our world, as calls for Church reform combined with millennialist peasant revolts against a system which seemed mostly concerned with squeezing what little blood remained in the land-poor, firmly enserfed peasantry.
Under what looked like a pretty existential threat, Catholic Europe managed to at least temporarily unify in a "hang together or be hung separately" mood, with the Anglo-French, Burgundian, and rump "Tolosan France" regimes ceasing their battles over the corpse of the old French kingdom to stop the further advance of Islamic armies, while *Protestant heresy was ruthlessly stamped out and driven back to the Eastern European and Scandinavian fringes, freeing up resources for the fight. By the mid-1600s, as the Rekaniyids and the Mamlakat began to fight over control of Syria, a new balance was established and borders largely became fixed. Of course, there were some other major distractions for both the Islamic and Christian worlds by this point.
With Iberian Christians too busy fighting for their lives to send Colombi in search of Asia or even ships around Africa, and Murrakush uninterested in Atlantic explorations beyond securing the Azores for Islam, the discovery of the New World by the Old was delayed until the late 16th century, and the Chinese, under a new and highly expansionist dynasty, were the first to discover America from the north and west, although Europeans were able to suss out that Scandinavian and Basque fisherman had found more than fish not much later. It did not take the Islamic world very long to take note that Infidels west and east had apparently found some vast new lands across the sea, and by the mid-1600s something of a Scramble for the Americas was taking place, with Murrakush concentrating on south America and the Christian powers of England-France, Burgundy, and Scandinavia - unified to fight off attempts to return them forcibly to the Catholic fold - fighting over North America (named “New Atlantis” by an early explorer and map-maker, and the name, like “America” OTL stuck.
The OTL "best bits" - Mesoamerica and the Andes - already had fallen into the Chinese sphere. Although the Chinese ruled with a lighter hand than our world’s Iberian rulers, generally preferring trade ports, vassals, etc, their sphere in the Americas was still devastated by disease, with a more direct occupation eventually taking place in Mesoamerica as instability attracted European pirates, preachers, and would-be Conquistadors. Even then, they tended to work through local institutions (although some local customs, such as human sacrifice, were suppressed)
In what would later be known as the Meichi republic, Chinese rule would be followed by European rule, Burgundians to be more precise, taking advantage of internal chaos as the client-state system broke down while China was in the throes of dynastic change. (This would be more like the British conquest of India, though: the by this point disease-acclimated Amerindians would remain overwhelmingly dominant, only a minority would Christianize, and European rule would last only about a century and a half before they were pushed out by politically organized locals with Worker's Republic - see below - backing).
In Andean America - “Fusang” to the Chinese - strong local leadership reemerged from the highlands as Chinese influence waned, and thanks to a combination of geography and the arrival of steel, gunpowder, and horses, Islamic efforts to do what the Burgundians had done in mesoamerica failed. There is a sizeable Chinese cultural influence (including some interesting syncretism of Buddhism and indigienous faiths) and a large Chinese and ethnically mixed minority, but the Empire of Four Winds is as much its own thing as OTL Malaysia, and deals with China as an ally of choice, not a vassal or client state.
Christian Europe, having rallied against the Islamic powers at home and found new territories for expansion across the sea, were not disposed to rest on their laurels, and over the next couple centuries after arriving in the new world spread out over the globe, vigorously proselytizing wherever they went. Although largely pre-empted by Islam in most of Africa (pretty much all of England-France and Burgundy's colonies in Africa have been swallowed by Islamic competitors) continental Asia, and Australasia, Christian missionaries have managed to pull off successed in places as wide-spread as former Chinese *California, the Yucatan, the Philippines, and Japan/Happon (well, sort of).
Genghis Khan was an exceptional case, but the historical norm for over a millennium was one of steppe empires cyclically rising and falling, and periodically, driven by poor weather and resource shortages(or just greed) erupting into the lands of their settled neighbors. It may have been almost a century and a half behind schedule, but another great wave of Turkic and Mongol invaders swept south and west in the late 14th century, less formidable than in our world, but still hastening the end of Khwarezmian hegemony, triggering dynastic changes in China, and most notably, smashing hard into the squabbling Russian states (a more-or-less unification under the dominance of Vladimir the Great proved as evanescent as various pre-19th century efforts to unify the HRE) and merging with the already Islamicized eastern Cumans, pushing back the borders of Russian settlement and "liberating" the recently puppetized Volga Bulghars.
Eastern Europe has had a rough time of it: although they missed out on the Mongol invasions of our world, and the steppe Turkish invasions of this world were less destructive, Russian expansion eastward was blocked by wars against the Islamic powers of the southern Steppe, and the expansion of first the Khitai and later Oirat Khanates, and while the Rekaniyids didn’t push as far into the Balkans as the Ottomans OTL, having different priorities, they were certainly happy to stir the pot when central Europe from the southern Rhinelands to Hungary was consumed by Catholic - Reformist religious violence. (Russia had its own brush with religious warfare, as well: Orthodoxy developed its own “reformist” movement, seeking to create a more popular and immediate form of Christianity, which started off in Novgorod and spread chaos from there.
Sans the Mongols, north (Jin) and south (Song) China continued to flourish un-invaded, but Chinese dynasties always have a Sell By Date, and there's always some fool who will decide it's time to Reunify China. A Chinese rise to global dominance has run into some speedbumps in the form of dynastic change: the current regime isn't even the successor to the aforementioned, but the (republican) successor to the dynasty which succeeded the successor. [3] Such political troubles have led to temporary withdrawals from the world stage and the abandonment of colonies abroad, although after a new dynasty is firmly in the saddle it will usually try to re-exert influence in former stomping grounds.
Political evolution has continued. The old Rekaniyid sultanate was replaced in the late 1600s ago by the state which would eventually grow into the Federated States of Eurasia, a democratic republic which would come to be the world's largest power. A century ago, the corrupt and autocratic Anglo-French empire, after losing a war with the Caliphate of Ruma, underwent a bloody revolution, with most of its various territories falling to a revolutionary movement pursuing a radically egalitarian philosophy of central Asian origin, establishing the Atlantic Workers Union, a *syndicalist state which would unnerve both Christian and Islamic powers for the eight decades of its existence. Sixty years ago, the Technocratic Party took control of Iran in a bloodless coup, establishing the world's first state run on (supposedly) scientific principles. On the downside, in multiple Islamic states the rush of modernity was met with ferocious reaction, Islamicist governments coming to power with a programme of Back to the Koran and Traditional Values, often finding common cause with the Christian powers in their hostility to the FSE and its allies and all they stood for.
A couple decades have passed since the Worker’s Union collapsed, there being no money in it, and the fallout is still ongoing. Currently the Federated States and its allies are deeply involved in North American affairs, where a history of interference in the politics of the local Christian regimes to stymie the Worker's Union has ended up producing political instability and religious terrorism. (Probably the biggest thorn in the FSE's side is the Christian Republic of Tihan, where their backing of the last of the Burgundian royal line in his efforts to "maintain order" in the heavily *Protestant kingdom led, after his overthrow, to an extremely anti-FSE theocracy.) Even those states which aren't outright puppets, occupied territory, or weak client states are still something of a political liability: the Atlantean Republic, an Anglo-French colony that broke away a century before the Revolution, and something of an Army with a Country (being a neighbor of the Worker's Union wasn't fun)is under military rule (again) to squash "religious extremism" and maintain "secular law", while New Zion, a Jewish state founded by wealthy Murrakushan and FSE Jews which essentially bought a slice of colonial territory claimed but unoccupied by Burgundy at the time, has fought a couple brutal wars with its Christian neighbors after political power passed to locally based governments not considering themselves bound by treaties made by the former colonial overlord (especially treaties made with Jews.)
The Traditionalist states are not really up to Jihad'ing the more secular and democratic parts of the Islamic world (especially what with the existence of nuclear weapons), so currently they're settling with attempts to politically subvert through propaganda,[4] exporting a lot of preachers, and backing Islamicist movements in the weaker and more politically unstable parts of the "secular" world. The most worrisome is the Caliphate of Ruma: the old Mamluk stratocracy never really recovered from the lost war with the FSE in which the government was forced to flee from Egypt to Italy (the immediate attempt by England-France to "liberate" the peninsula was also rather traumatic) and was eventually replaced by a regime that can be described as "clerical-fascist", in which a figurehead Caliph legitimizes a theocratic, militarized state which fervently proclaims its intent of redeeming and "re-Islamicizing" its lost lands - and occasionally talks of establishing a new universal Caliphate. This is generally considered to be hyperbole for local consumption, but it sometimes seems the leaders of the Caliphate actually buy their own line, which along with their possession of nuclear weapons means the inhabitants of Der-i Saadet [5] don't always sleep that easily.
Sort of off to one side is the Alliance of the Southern Stars or the Antipodean Emirates, a neutral grouping dedicated to free trade and Minding Your Own Business. Forming a customs union and mutual defense block, they just want the sea lanes kept open and no foreign meddling in their affairs: they're generally more traditionally religious than the FSE and its allies, and consider them a decadent bunch, but they're also generally democratic and find the usual authoritarianism (or, at best, democracy For Dedicated Believers Only)of the Traditionalists alarming and their social policies far too intrusive. Right now, they just don't want to get involved.
The United Technocracies of Man (not really that united) vary from semi-democratic (political parties of an "irrational" bent are banned or shut out of power by various forms of political finagling) to autocratic, and are generally more secular than the Federated States and its allies, outright atheist in some cases. They stand for rationalized, scientific, truly "meritocratic' government (they're big on tests, including ones to determine fitness to run for political office), and are somewhat different from OTL technocrats in that they believe any human-run government is fundamentally prone to error and corruption: the ideal is an automated system in which fallible human judgment is minimized, and the Technocracies spend a lot on artificial intelligence research. (The fact that AI algorithms, at least in early stages of AI, are terribly prone to go off the rails due to, yes, human fallibility on the part of the _programmers_ is beginning to rear its ugly head). The most radical of the Technocratic regimes, the Technate of Mahgreb-the-Farthest or "Occidentia", came to power relatively recently in a genuinely violent revolt, and does not get along at all well with its neighbors.
China has moved from autocratic sort of Confucian monarchy to authoritarian sort of Confucian sort of democracy, with more bureaucracy than ever. Although it has a sizable Christian minority, it remains dominated by Chinese traditional beliefs. While the world's largest economy again, it lags technologically and in terms of living standards behind the Federated states, and has put together its own alliance system to bolster its claims to Top Dog or At Least One of Two Top Dogs status, including the Confederation of Hindustan, a Hindu nationalist state arising from a century-long struggle against Islamic rule, the Republic of Fusang (NOT what the locals call it), a heavily sinicized native American state never fully conquered by anyone, and the Oirat Khanate, bruised badly by a war lost against Happon.
The old Christian core lands of Europe, again pushed together by an outside menace, in this case the secular and revolutionary threat of the Atlantic Workers Union, remain tentatively allied against the non-Christian world under the joint (if occasionally fractious) leadership of Papal Burgundy [6] and the Teutonic Union, forming along with their clients, puppets and hangers on the Holy Roman Union, dedicated to the reunification (and, where needed, re-Christianization) of the Christian world. Current top priorities is winning back England and France (still sort of tenuously unified and suffering from one hell of a post-Syndicalism hangover) for Christendom, and convincing the Iberian Alliance to end their "alliance of convenience" with Marrukush and the Federated States and cleave firmly to the Holy Roman Union. They are occasional allies of convenience with the Alliance for Traditional Values [7], and with the Happonese, although the Happonese insistence that their Emperor is descended from Jesus Christ [8] is still too much for them to stomach to the extent of considering then _proper_ Christians.
And in the Vinlandish Federation, a charismatic new political leader is pushing for the reunification of the former Worker’s Union, at least the bits of it in New Atlantis/North America. The fact that only Saguaney shows any enthusiasm, and that lukewarm at best, doesn’t seem to concern him much…
[1] The House of Osman is never driven west into Anatolia by Mongol armies. The Rekaniyids lack some of the "marcher state" advantages of the Ottomans OTL: on the other hand, they start out with a considerably larger territorial base and a well-established state system.
[2] (Islam beat China to a scientific revolution, but managed to have an almost-industrial-revolution (industrial involution?) well before an Islamic "military-industrial complex" was even a faint twinkle in an Iranian Rationalist's eye)
[3] In the north, they're on the fourth iteration, to be technical: the fall of the second-to-last Imperial dynasty led to a collapse of Chinese political control in the north, allowing the Oirats - the founders of our world's little known Dzungar Khanate - to create the most formidable steppe-based state yet, although its relative lack of manpower and the replacement of mounted bowmen by modern mass infantry gunpowder armies as military-cutting edge led to difficulties by the Christian 19th century.
[4] This new *Internet thing seems like it has possibilities.
[5] The Place of Felicity - our Istanbul.
[6] When the Burgundian royal line died out, the oligarchic but very Catholic elite of Burgundy picked the Pope as their new head of state.
[7] Which are often anything but, as the more secular Islamic nations will never tire of reminding them.
[8] He traveled there after his resurrection, you see. They can show tourists His footprints and everything.
So, some background (some place names borrowed from Diamond and @SRegan ):
In a world where Genghis Khan was born dead, the biggest benificiaries was the Muslim world. While the reunification of much of the eastern Islamic world under the Khwarezmian Caliphate proved fleeting, the resulting intellectual cross-fertilization and ferment of an Eastern Islamic world unravaged by Mongol invasions kick-started the Islamic Second Flowering, a new era of science and political and economic experiment similar to our world's Renaissance (although without the fascination with Greek and Latin pagans). Technological advances were initially slow (although would accelerate with the spread of the printing press for "secular" documents, something borrowed by the Khazesmian bureaucracy from the Chinese and never returned), but new political and organizational ideas were often decisive. Meanwhile, Europe, unbothered by diseases carried by Mongolian rodents, remained for some time stuck on the rocky shores of the Malthusian limits, plagued by famine, internal warfare, religious unrest, and disease outbreaks bad enough to induce apocalypticism but not enough to seriously change the economic status quo. (Things were not helped by the endless wars of the Plantagenet succession, dragging out for two centuries the question of whether or not Britain and France would have one ruler).
The POD was too late to keep the Spanish kingdoms from kicking the collective butts of the Almohads (in our world the decisive battle of the Tolosa plains took place seven years before Genghis invaded Khwarezmia), and even with the butterflies being a bit kinder Islamic spain was still reduced by the 14th century to a rump little larger than our Granada. This would not be the end of Islam in Iberia, though. New ideas and gunpowder innovations traveled west to the Maghreb, leading to the emergence in the fifteenth century of Murrakush, a vigorous new Berber-dominated state in Morocco and what we would consider western Algeria, which would in the late 1400s invade, like the Almohads and Almoravids before them, to assist fellow Muslims under threat from Christian invasion. More politically astute, better organized, and better armed than their predecessors, they were also aided by the continued fragmentation and internal disputes of the Spanish kingdoms, which had been caught up in the dynastic fallout of the war of the Plantagenet succession. Still, hardened by centuries of Holy War, the Iberian Christian states were a hard nut to crack, and the "De-Conquista" proved impossible to complete.
Meanwhile, the Mamluk state of Egypt developed into a sophisticated meritocratic stratocracy, while a new dynasty in Turkish Anatolia began to expand, west into the remnants of the Byzantine Empire (mercilessly screwed over by Catholic Europe as in our world), east into the crumbling fringes of the Khwarzezmian Caliphate. For a while these two powers would cooperate against the common Christian foe, the Mamlakat invading Italy and the new Rekaniyid Sultanate of Rum (a Kurdo-Turkish dynasty [1]) moving into the Balkans, the Mamlakat achieving even greater success than Murrakush against the fragmented and less military skilled Italian states, although a secure border in the mountains to the north and west would not be established until the 1600s. Europe was not helped by a *reformation even bloodier and more chaotic than in our world, as calls for Church reform combined with millennialist peasant revolts against a system which seemed mostly concerned with squeezing what little blood remained in the land-poor, firmly enserfed peasantry.
Under what looked like a pretty existential threat, Catholic Europe managed to at least temporarily unify in a "hang together or be hung separately" mood, with the Anglo-French, Burgundian, and rump "Tolosan France" regimes ceasing their battles over the corpse of the old French kingdom to stop the further advance of Islamic armies, while *Protestant heresy was ruthlessly stamped out and driven back to the Eastern European and Scandinavian fringes, freeing up resources for the fight. By the mid-1600s, as the Rekaniyids and the Mamlakat began to fight over control of Syria, a new balance was established and borders largely became fixed. Of course, there were some other major distractions for both the Islamic and Christian worlds by this point.
With Iberian Christians too busy fighting for their lives to send Colombi in search of Asia or even ships around Africa, and Murrakush uninterested in Atlantic explorations beyond securing the Azores for Islam, the discovery of the New World by the Old was delayed until the late 16th century, and the Chinese, under a new and highly expansionist dynasty, were the first to discover America from the north and west, although Europeans were able to suss out that Scandinavian and Basque fisherman had found more than fish not much later. It did not take the Islamic world very long to take note that Infidels west and east had apparently found some vast new lands across the sea, and by the mid-1600s something of a Scramble for the Americas was taking place, with Murrakush concentrating on south America and the Christian powers of England-France, Burgundy, and Scandinavia - unified to fight off attempts to return them forcibly to the Catholic fold - fighting over North America (named “New Atlantis” by an early explorer and map-maker, and the name, like “America” OTL stuck.
The OTL "best bits" - Mesoamerica and the Andes - already had fallen into the Chinese sphere. Although the Chinese ruled with a lighter hand than our world’s Iberian rulers, generally preferring trade ports, vassals, etc, their sphere in the Americas was still devastated by disease, with a more direct occupation eventually taking place in Mesoamerica as instability attracted European pirates, preachers, and would-be Conquistadors. Even then, they tended to work through local institutions (although some local customs, such as human sacrifice, were suppressed)
In what would later be known as the Meichi republic, Chinese rule would be followed by European rule, Burgundians to be more precise, taking advantage of internal chaos as the client-state system broke down while China was in the throes of dynastic change. (This would be more like the British conquest of India, though: the by this point disease-acclimated Amerindians would remain overwhelmingly dominant, only a minority would Christianize, and European rule would last only about a century and a half before they were pushed out by politically organized locals with Worker's Republic - see below - backing).
In Andean America - “Fusang” to the Chinese - strong local leadership reemerged from the highlands as Chinese influence waned, and thanks to a combination of geography and the arrival of steel, gunpowder, and horses, Islamic efforts to do what the Burgundians had done in mesoamerica failed. There is a sizeable Chinese cultural influence (including some interesting syncretism of Buddhism and indigienous faiths) and a large Chinese and ethnically mixed minority, but the Empire of Four Winds is as much its own thing as OTL Malaysia, and deals with China as an ally of choice, not a vassal or client state.
Christian Europe, having rallied against the Islamic powers at home and found new territories for expansion across the sea, were not disposed to rest on their laurels, and over the next couple centuries after arriving in the new world spread out over the globe, vigorously proselytizing wherever they went. Although largely pre-empted by Islam in most of Africa (pretty much all of England-France and Burgundy's colonies in Africa have been swallowed by Islamic competitors) continental Asia, and Australasia, Christian missionaries have managed to pull off successed in places as wide-spread as former Chinese *California, the Yucatan, the Philippines, and Japan/Happon (well, sort of).
Genghis Khan was an exceptional case, but the historical norm for over a millennium was one of steppe empires cyclically rising and falling, and periodically, driven by poor weather and resource shortages(or just greed) erupting into the lands of their settled neighbors. It may have been almost a century and a half behind schedule, but another great wave of Turkic and Mongol invaders swept south and west in the late 14th century, less formidable than in our world, but still hastening the end of Khwarezmian hegemony, triggering dynastic changes in China, and most notably, smashing hard into the squabbling Russian states (a more-or-less unification under the dominance of Vladimir the Great proved as evanescent as various pre-19th century efforts to unify the HRE) and merging with the already Islamicized eastern Cumans, pushing back the borders of Russian settlement and "liberating" the recently puppetized Volga Bulghars.
Eastern Europe has had a rough time of it: although they missed out on the Mongol invasions of our world, and the steppe Turkish invasions of this world were less destructive, Russian expansion eastward was blocked by wars against the Islamic powers of the southern Steppe, and the expansion of first the Khitai and later Oirat Khanates, and while the Rekaniyids didn’t push as far into the Balkans as the Ottomans OTL, having different priorities, they were certainly happy to stir the pot when central Europe from the southern Rhinelands to Hungary was consumed by Catholic - Reformist religious violence. (Russia had its own brush with religious warfare, as well: Orthodoxy developed its own “reformist” movement, seeking to create a more popular and immediate form of Christianity, which started off in Novgorod and spread chaos from there.
Sans the Mongols, north (Jin) and south (Song) China continued to flourish un-invaded, but Chinese dynasties always have a Sell By Date, and there's always some fool who will decide it's time to Reunify China. A Chinese rise to global dominance has run into some speedbumps in the form of dynastic change: the current regime isn't even the successor to the aforementioned, but the (republican) successor to the dynasty which succeeded the successor. [3] Such political troubles have led to temporary withdrawals from the world stage and the abandonment of colonies abroad, although after a new dynasty is firmly in the saddle it will usually try to re-exert influence in former stomping grounds.
Political evolution has continued. The old Rekaniyid sultanate was replaced in the late 1600s ago by the state which would eventually grow into the Federated States of Eurasia, a democratic republic which would come to be the world's largest power. A century ago, the corrupt and autocratic Anglo-French empire, after losing a war with the Caliphate of Ruma, underwent a bloody revolution, with most of its various territories falling to a revolutionary movement pursuing a radically egalitarian philosophy of central Asian origin, establishing the Atlantic Workers Union, a *syndicalist state which would unnerve both Christian and Islamic powers for the eight decades of its existence. Sixty years ago, the Technocratic Party took control of Iran in a bloodless coup, establishing the world's first state run on (supposedly) scientific principles. On the downside, in multiple Islamic states the rush of modernity was met with ferocious reaction, Islamicist governments coming to power with a programme of Back to the Koran and Traditional Values, often finding common cause with the Christian powers in their hostility to the FSE and its allies and all they stood for.
A couple decades have passed since the Worker’s Union collapsed, there being no money in it, and the fallout is still ongoing. Currently the Federated States and its allies are deeply involved in North American affairs, where a history of interference in the politics of the local Christian regimes to stymie the Worker's Union has ended up producing political instability and religious terrorism. (Probably the biggest thorn in the FSE's side is the Christian Republic of Tihan, where their backing of the last of the Burgundian royal line in his efforts to "maintain order" in the heavily *Protestant kingdom led, after his overthrow, to an extremely anti-FSE theocracy.) Even those states which aren't outright puppets, occupied territory, or weak client states are still something of a political liability: the Atlantean Republic, an Anglo-French colony that broke away a century before the Revolution, and something of an Army with a Country (being a neighbor of the Worker's Union wasn't fun)is under military rule (again) to squash "religious extremism" and maintain "secular law", while New Zion, a Jewish state founded by wealthy Murrakushan and FSE Jews which essentially bought a slice of colonial territory claimed but unoccupied by Burgundy at the time, has fought a couple brutal wars with its Christian neighbors after political power passed to locally based governments not considering themselves bound by treaties made by the former colonial overlord (especially treaties made with Jews.)
The Traditionalist states are not really up to Jihad'ing the more secular and democratic parts of the Islamic world (especially what with the existence of nuclear weapons), so currently they're settling with attempts to politically subvert through propaganda,[4] exporting a lot of preachers, and backing Islamicist movements in the weaker and more politically unstable parts of the "secular" world. The most worrisome is the Caliphate of Ruma: the old Mamluk stratocracy never really recovered from the lost war with the FSE in which the government was forced to flee from Egypt to Italy (the immediate attempt by England-France to "liberate" the peninsula was also rather traumatic) and was eventually replaced by a regime that can be described as "clerical-fascist", in which a figurehead Caliph legitimizes a theocratic, militarized state which fervently proclaims its intent of redeeming and "re-Islamicizing" its lost lands - and occasionally talks of establishing a new universal Caliphate. This is generally considered to be hyperbole for local consumption, but it sometimes seems the leaders of the Caliphate actually buy their own line, which along with their possession of nuclear weapons means the inhabitants of Der-i Saadet [5] don't always sleep that easily.
Sort of off to one side is the Alliance of the Southern Stars or the Antipodean Emirates, a neutral grouping dedicated to free trade and Minding Your Own Business. Forming a customs union and mutual defense block, they just want the sea lanes kept open and no foreign meddling in their affairs: they're generally more traditionally religious than the FSE and its allies, and consider them a decadent bunch, but they're also generally democratic and find the usual authoritarianism (or, at best, democracy For Dedicated Believers Only)of the Traditionalists alarming and their social policies far too intrusive. Right now, they just don't want to get involved.
The United Technocracies of Man (not really that united) vary from semi-democratic (political parties of an "irrational" bent are banned or shut out of power by various forms of political finagling) to autocratic, and are generally more secular than the Federated States and its allies, outright atheist in some cases. They stand for rationalized, scientific, truly "meritocratic' government (they're big on tests, including ones to determine fitness to run for political office), and are somewhat different from OTL technocrats in that they believe any human-run government is fundamentally prone to error and corruption: the ideal is an automated system in which fallible human judgment is minimized, and the Technocracies spend a lot on artificial intelligence research. (The fact that AI algorithms, at least in early stages of AI, are terribly prone to go off the rails due to, yes, human fallibility on the part of the _programmers_ is beginning to rear its ugly head). The most radical of the Technocratic regimes, the Technate of Mahgreb-the-Farthest or "Occidentia", came to power relatively recently in a genuinely violent revolt, and does not get along at all well with its neighbors.
China has moved from autocratic sort of Confucian monarchy to authoritarian sort of Confucian sort of democracy, with more bureaucracy than ever. Although it has a sizable Christian minority, it remains dominated by Chinese traditional beliefs. While the world's largest economy again, it lags technologically and in terms of living standards behind the Federated states, and has put together its own alliance system to bolster its claims to Top Dog or At Least One of Two Top Dogs status, including the Confederation of Hindustan, a Hindu nationalist state arising from a century-long struggle against Islamic rule, the Republic of Fusang (NOT what the locals call it), a heavily sinicized native American state never fully conquered by anyone, and the Oirat Khanate, bruised badly by a war lost against Happon.
The old Christian core lands of Europe, again pushed together by an outside menace, in this case the secular and revolutionary threat of the Atlantic Workers Union, remain tentatively allied against the non-Christian world under the joint (if occasionally fractious) leadership of Papal Burgundy [6] and the Teutonic Union, forming along with their clients, puppets and hangers on the Holy Roman Union, dedicated to the reunification (and, where needed, re-Christianization) of the Christian world. Current top priorities is winning back England and France (still sort of tenuously unified and suffering from one hell of a post-Syndicalism hangover) for Christendom, and convincing the Iberian Alliance to end their "alliance of convenience" with Marrukush and the Federated States and cleave firmly to the Holy Roman Union. They are occasional allies of convenience with the Alliance for Traditional Values [7], and with the Happonese, although the Happonese insistence that their Emperor is descended from Jesus Christ [8] is still too much for them to stomach to the extent of considering then _proper_ Christians.
And in the Vinlandish Federation, a charismatic new political leader is pushing for the reunification of the former Worker’s Union, at least the bits of it in New Atlantis/North America. The fact that only Saguaney shows any enthusiasm, and that lukewarm at best, doesn’t seem to concern him much…
[1] The House of Osman is never driven west into Anatolia by Mongol armies. The Rekaniyids lack some of the "marcher state" advantages of the Ottomans OTL: on the other hand, they start out with a considerably larger territorial base and a well-established state system.
[2] (Islam beat China to a scientific revolution, but managed to have an almost-industrial-revolution (industrial involution?) well before an Islamic "military-industrial complex" was even a faint twinkle in an Iranian Rationalist's eye)
[3] In the north, they're on the fourth iteration, to be technical: the fall of the second-to-last Imperial dynasty led to a collapse of Chinese political control in the north, allowing the Oirats - the founders of our world's little known Dzungar Khanate - to create the most formidable steppe-based state yet, although its relative lack of manpower and the replacement of mounted bowmen by modern mass infantry gunpowder armies as military-cutting edge led to difficulties by the Christian 19th century.
[4] This new *Internet thing seems like it has possibilities.
[5] The Place of Felicity - our Istanbul.
[6] When the Burgundian royal line died out, the oligarchic but very Catholic elite of Burgundy picked the Pope as their new head of state.
[7] Which are often anything but, as the more secular Islamic nations will never tire of reminding them.
[8] He traveled there after his resurrection, you see. They can show tourists His footprints and everything.
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Only thing I noticed is that if they had a 47k per capita GDP, the total GDP would be closer to 21 trillion.
Really like the amount of detail here. Nice stuff.And map.
Series 5 – The Kaiser
Map 5.4 – United States of America
The third part of a four-part series showcasing the last of the three most important nations of the world.
Series 5 – The Kaiser
Map 5.5 – Tanganyika
The last part of a four-part series showcasing the three most important nations of the world and this interesting one.
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B_Munro is probably the most talented mapper here, you can always expect quality content from him
Life has been busy lately, and I haven't has as much time to do these maps as of late, but recently I was able to crank one out. Welcome to the final one with actual countries still on the map.
Of all the worlds created by this scenario, this is by far the most peaceful. Where others see tribal wars and conflicts between great powers, this one doesn't really see much of anything. the last major conflict was the collapse of South Africa in the early days. The worst this world has seen since was a couple of border disputes and battles against and between pirates.
Chile is one of the three great (and only) pacific powers. They maintain the second strongest navy on earth, and the strongest fishing fleet on earth. They were one of the principle nations in the restoration of the UN and the establishment & internationalization of the Persian Gulf settlements. There were a couple of border disputes with Argentina, and some small skirmishes, not much of note has happened in the foreign policy sphere. Like all other nations on earth, Chile maintains a healthy democracy.
Argentina is the most populated nation on earth, something they take great pride in. Their exports are prolific around the world, and the country is growing rapidly, both in land and people. They produce more foodstuffs than all other nations on earth (but combined Argentina and New Zealand beat them), and thanks to all that this world is in no danger of famine. They are still prone to having economic swings, but life is still good. Uruguay and Rio Grande are still somewhat untrusting of the Argentinians, and have refused many requests to join the confederation several times.
South Africa saw the deadliest war in this new world's history in the early days. The Zulu and Xhosa seceded, the Boers did what they do best, and Lesotho is still there. There is still some lingering animosity between these states, but overall things are going well. The various Boer states have recently been able to unite into a confederation after *much* bickering. Lesotho holds the "honor" of being the poorest state on earth, although this title used to belong to the Mooi Republic, which is now a member of the United Boer Republic.
Australia and New Zealand are doing well, and there really isn't much else to say about either. Australia has been one of the more skeptical about the more global system, and has been hesitant to get integrated with it. They have even settled in Timor to get fuel independent from the Gulf Settlements. The two countries have come to an agreement on how to divide up the pacific, and New Zealand's claim to Tahiti and the surrounding islands is one of the few active border disputes in the world.
What happened to the small sausage factory that started it all?
Series 5 – The Kaiser
Map 5.5 – Tanganyika
The last part of a four-part series showcasing the three most important nations of the world and this interesting one.
(For those unfamiliar, this is a reference to Blackadder, a show you should watch.)
I didn't remember what the series was at first and this line made me think this was a chronological timeline where nuclear war killed off the northern two thirds of the globe... and then things kept getting even worse.
THE FRANCO-BRITISH UNION STATE
As the Battle of France ended in disaster in 1940, the French Government was in tatters and on the verge of surrender. Prime Minister Reynaud in June 1940 refused to sign an armistice under German auspices and dispatched Rene Pleven, his deputy in a last-ditch attempt to secure continued French support for the Allies in the War. The proposal of a Franco-British Union. An idea that had reached its peak during the Anglo-French wars of the Plantagenets but one that had died afterward. Prime Minister Churchill was ecstatic at the idea [Major PoD] and agreed to it and on 16 June 1940, the British Cabinet voted to accept the offer. On the 18th of June, 1940, both the French and British Parliaments voted in majority for the proposal, and the next day, history changed, as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the French Third Republic ceased to exist - in its place, the Franco-British Union State arose. Mainland France fell not soon afterward, but the new haphazardly made Union State continued the fight against the Germans until the German Surrender in 1945. Despite much skepticism, the Union survived after the war, and is today considered to be one of the greater powers of the world - as in not strong enough to be a Superpower, but not weak enough to be designated as a simple great power.
A/N: Unlikely scenario, but still thoughts?
If Britain is the bigger partner in the union, I imagine France would be pressured to decolonize rather than fight for every inch of soil outside of metropolitan France. It may not be pulled off smoothly (just look at the Raj), but there probably won't be a Dien Bien Phu or Vietnam War.THE FRANCO-BRITISH UNION STATEAs the Battle of France ended in disaster in 1940, the French Government was in tatters and on the verge of surrender. Prime Minister Reynaud in June 1940 refused to sign an armistice under German auspices and dispatched Rene Pleven, his deputy in a last-ditch attempt to secure continued French support for the Allies in the War. The proposal of a Franco-British Union. An idea that had reached its peak during the Anglo-French wars of the Plantagenets but one that had died afterward. Prime Minister Churchill was ecstatic at the idea [Major PoD] and agreed to it and on 16 June 1940, the British Cabinet voted to accept the offer. On the 18th of June, 1940, both the French and British Parliaments voted in majority for the proposal, and the next day, history changed, as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the French Third Republic ceased to exist - in its place, the Franco-British Union State arose. Mainland France fell not soon afterward, but the new haphazardly made Union State continued the fight against the Germans until the German Surrender in 1945. Despite much skepticism, the Union survived after the war, and is today considered to be one of the greater powers of the world - as in not strong enough to be a Superpower, but not weak enough to be designated as a simple great power.
A/N: Unlikely scenario, but still thoughts?
- Status