Map Thread XXI
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Route of backpacking trip through the Bloc Continental. The Frankfurt agreement for open borders made everything super easy 
I know it’s a bit of an unusual medium for this board, but what the heck, why not:
1:4,000,000 woodcut of my State of Oregon
OTTOMAN EAST AFRICA IN 1800 AD
In 1589, the Ottomans won, and Mombasa became Ottoman territory. The Age of Portuguese Dominance in the Indian Ocean came to an abrupt end as a result. By 1600 most of the independent Swahili city-states had sworn loyalty to the Ottoman Sultan or had been subjugated under the Ottoman heel. This was the beginning of a new era in African history. As the riches of the Swahili states started to pour into Ottoman coffers, the Ottomans turned their speculative gazes south, and the idea of making East Africa the 'Ottoman America' to gain and colonize riches in the likeness of the Western Europeans in North and South America began to take hold. This was first started by Egyptian Governor Ali Bey, who led an expedition to Darfur in 1599 AD, forcing the tribes of the region to swear loyalty to the Sultan. For the next few decades, the Ottomans solidified their control over the Swahili coast, bolstered by the construction of the Mehmediye Canal constructed from 1604 to 1621 between the Egyptian mainland and the Sinai Peninsula, allowing the Ottomans quick access to the region as well. Trade routes were propped up and the Ottomans consolidated in the region. Tensions with Oromo and Amhara tribes due to trade and the new boss in the region eventually led to the Ottoman-Ethiopian Wars of 1638-1659 which led to the Ottoman subjugation of the region, and the conversion of most elites in Ethiopia to islam, alongside the installation of an Islamic Ethiopian Emperor who declared suzerainty and vassalage to the Ottomans. The fall of Ethiopia to the Ottomans opened the so-called floodgates, and now Ottoman influence in East Africa was unchecked. No other European Power had the ability to project power in the region sufficiently to kick the Ottomans out - not with the Mehmediye Canal under Ottoman control. The Ottomans continued to increase their influence and power in the region in the 17th and 18th centuries, and when in 1798 Napoleon came knocking, with reinforcements from the Ottoman African south, the Ottomans kicked Napoleon out, capturing and killing the rogue French General. As the century turned in 1800 AD with uncertainty in the future for Europe amidst the Revolutionary Wars, the Ottoman Empire, and by extension, Ottoman East Africa was about to enter a time period of unmatched peace and prosperity.
Thoughts and comments?
France long had a presence in India, but it would only be following the Second Years' War that it truly had an empire in it. With the decisive defeat of the British in that theatre (even as it lost outside India), France suddenly not only governed numerous ports, but also Bengal through a puppet. Only a few years later, in 1769, it would also gain vast influence in Oude with recognition from Delhi and, with support from Mysore's effective ruler Hyder Ali, over much of South India. When the Nabob of the Carnatic, in alliance with the British, attempted to overthrow French encirclement in the 1770s, it was slapped down hard, French and Mysorean troops swiftly descended onto the capital and in 1779 the Carnatic was divided between Mysore and France. This gave France influence over Tanjoure as well. But increasingly the French aimed at enlargening their influence over Hyderabad, and using its ties with the British as a fig leaf it then went to war with it and, by 1786, French troops successfully forced the Nizam to grant them the entirety of Hyderabad's coastline, and the Marathas ate much of its remainder. And so, by 1789, France now had a vast empire in India, a land it understood little.
But 1789 was also the year of the French Revolution. At first, it had little effect on India, and though the election to the Estates-General saw some Bengali badraloque elites advocate a right to vote in these elections, they were monopolized by whites. And even at this early stage, there was some Oriental admiration of India in France, with the Bagaouade Gita receiving praise from some radicals - radicals who had barely read it. But then in 1792 came the declaration of a republic, and this all changed. Suddenly, the French armies in India mutinied against their royalist commanders, killed them with fresh new guillotines, and with support from Paris, they now led India. Initially Indian feelings were that these new bosses would be little different, but they were quickly affected by revolutionary temper. When the puppet Nabob of Bengal attempted to use this opportunity to rebel against his masters, he was not only discovered, but he would be publicly guillotined, an action that shocked many; they would be even more shocked, when the governor declared the end of Indian monarchy and the establishment of a republican order under French protection. It destroyed the existing axes of legitimacy and replaced them with something new. When the Nabob of Oude arrested the French solders "protecting" him to prevent himself from suffering the same fate, a French army came from Patna and removed him from power; the bulk of his court was executed by public guillotine.
Now truly in charge of a giant swathe of India, the Jacobins now had to interpret India's societal structures in their own term. India contains a complex social institution known as djati focused around hereditary occupation, each of which with differing social status within their immediate community, and this was conceptualized and stitched together in a variety of ways such as the ouarna system of fourfold division of society in ancient Indou texts, as well as dubious claims of foreign descent. While many French people previously perceived this as a racial system, calling it caste in analogy to the Spanish system of race, to the Jacobins this was nothing more than an Indian system of "barbarized" guilds. And so, as part of the declaration of abolition of the guilds, so were djati. French officials entered village after village, and declared their end; when villagers resisted, they often sent in the army to force them to submit, and if they refused, the leaders of djati councils found themselves guillotined. Furthermore, the turban which often displayed social status was declared abolished, in favour of the egalitarian Phrygian cap of "republican honour". This was all continually enforced by the French, who substituted zamindar tax collectors for themselves. This caused widespread social chaos and realignment, as well as the sudden rise in banditry. With the abolition of Christianity in France and the rise of the Cults of Reason and the Supreme Being, the institutions of the French empire in India got weirder. Invocations of the Virgin Mary by the state were replaced with invocations of the Indou war goddess Dourga, and in accord to the Radjepout practice guns were blessed in her name. The name of the Indou god Parchouram, who killed much corrupt aristocrats in his stories, was viewed as a corrupted memory of a Cromwellian heroic figure from antiquity, and he was quickly idolized by the French. While the Goddess of Reason was quickly conflated with the Indou goddess of knowledge Sarasouati, and Temples of Reason quickly became non-idolatric temples to her. At the same time, the deist Cult of the Supreme Being was often associated with Islam, a true Islam in contrast to the obscurantist Sufi-inflected Islam of India; when knowledge of Wahhabism came, it was arbitrarily and illogically conflated with this deism. Understanding Islam little, famously the French attempted to commission a great statue of Muhammad from Muslim stone masons; this laughable understanding of Islam caused massive riots. These new movements confused many Indians, utterly befuddled at these interpretations of their religions, while the French zeal to spread them caused revolt that was crushed harshly.
Furthermore, French rule saw new law. During the pre-revolutionary period, to make sense of the "heathen" Indou religion, France sought its original texts, and it believed it found them in the form of the Manousmriti, an ancient compendium of various laws from different ancient states. It contradicted itself, notably both restricting divorce and providing procedure for it, but this was often held up as such. With the rise of Jacobinism, its inherent inegalitarianism saw many view it as a decline of India's "original" republicanism of the Indou god Crichena, who they believed to be a distortion of an ancient republican of his Iädoua clan. And so, inspired by drafts of civil codes coming from Paris, the Jacobins issued "Les loix de Manou originales", meant to be the "original" Indian law. This law had, in truth, little connection to anything Indian, and its implementation confused many Indians even as customary courts were forcibly abolished. But as Indians were forced to go to these courts, they had to understand this law and conceptualize them in their terms; this would have a lasting impact as they morphed in translation into Indoustani, Telougou, and Tamil and changed meaning.
But even as French India was a deeply and utterly chaotic land in this era, many sought to expand the revolution. And so, soldiers utterly uncontrolled by the central government quickly entered the kingdom of Roïlkande, bordering French Oude, and conquered it. Influenced by conceptions of the "Frankish yoke" of a German-descended aristocracy over the Gallic-descended French people, it did this in the name of overthrowing the "Pachetoun aristocracy" of the land. In practice, however, the new guillotines they established killed Indian-descended and Pachetoun-descended aristocrat alike, and flight from the French advance was just as diverse in nature.
With the rise of the Directoire in 1794-5, this chaotic realm was brought under control. New centrally-appointed governors were sent to rule over the land, along with new soldiers under their command. They aimed at centralizing the French empire in India, but this also necessitated removing Jacobin soldiers. With many being unwilling to lose their status as fiefs, they quickly fled the advance. Many soldiers joined up with native states, leading the charge in reforming and modernizing their armies. Others, however, sought to establish their fiefdoms elsewhere. And so, in this period, Jacobin invasions occurred in Hyderabad, although they failed to conquer it, and instead it came to French forces following them. Others invaded Orissa, under weak Maratha control. The nominal "republic" they established saw many of the chaotic reforms, but in addition came a special focus towards the city of Pouri's famous idol of the Indou god Djaggarnate and the famous festival where it was put on a chariot dragged by devotees. This was viewed as characteristic of Indou "heathenness", while many Europeans believed due to nonsensical accounts that this festival included human sacrifice on the chariot's wheels. As such, the new Jacobin authorities declared the end of human sacrifice in this festival; this, few noticed because no such human sacrifice existed. But, it quickly became more radical. The sacred wooden idols of Djaggarnate, destroyed annually and replaced with replicas, was Jacobinized and now it was topped with a Phrygian cap. This scandal, of tainting with representations of the divine, caused a municipal revolt removing the Jacobins from the city. But also came French troops following the Jacobins, and they swiftly occupied Orissa. They declared the Djaggarnate rituals could proceed as normal.
But the most horror came when Jacobins, pushed out of Roïlkande, crossed the Ganges and Djamouna. Here, they conquered Delhi itself and declared the end of the Mughal Empire and its replacement by a "republic". Most infamously they executed Chah Alam II by guillotine, an event that causes shock. Though he had already been blinded by the Roïla Pachetounes in 1788 and he was a Maratha puppet afterwards, this shocked virtually everyone. Even Tipou Sultan, the firm modernizing French-allied ruler of Mysore who was known as the only Jacobin king, who established a puppet republic in Goa, and who routinely mocked the Mughals for their weakness, was shocked and horrified by this, and almost universally there came a call for their overthrow. And this the French swiftly answered, invading Delhi before the Marathas could answer sooner. Here, they declared that the Mughal Emperor could resume his rule over Delhi, and across India as a spiritual ruler. But the shockwaves continued to shatter across India, and most notably the Marathas refused to recognize this and those territories they nominally held on behalf of the Mughal emperor they now declared held in their own right.
But at the same time, the Directoire continued the bizarre structures of legitimacy that were established. Durga continued to be evoked in places where the Virgin Mary would be, and the new Temples of Reason and of the Supreme Being were not tampered with. The Jacobin understanding of the Indou religion continued. But this period saw the growth of one thing in particular, Masonic temples. But in India, they were understood as temples in the religious sense, focused on a theology of parables centred around a formless god and the character Solomon, and they quickly misunderstood this as quasi-Muslim. Inevitably, Freemasonry was considered a Sufi-Baqueti order by Indians. Many Indians, with this understanding, established their own Masonic temples. And thus began a new religious order.
In 1799, the Directoire came to an end, and in came Napoleon Bonaparte at the head of a vigorous new order. He sought in general to run society in an ordered model, meshing together new ideas with the old, and in India, this was no exception. Seeking to end the religious confusion, he declared the inauguration of a Choura of Indous and Muslims in French territory, headed by the Mughal emperor, to agree on law. In practice, this consisted of clerics who responded to him. They then ratified a new law code presented to them, already written by French-aligned Bengali badraloque. Notably, it declared the Mughal Emperor both the Caliph and Indoupati (Lord of the Indous) of India, simultaneously a conservative and revolutionary gesture seeking to conciliate the Sufi-Baqueti nature of resistance. Furthermore, banditry was resolved by the French administration, while Jacobin soldiers still in territory were forced to surrender or leave. This, however, caused yet more widespread chaos. From Hyderabad, Jacobin soldiers brutally sacked Nagpoure and Aurangabade, until their nonexistent lines were destroyed. From Delhi Jacobin soldiers sacked Goualioure and in that they helped cause the decline of the Scindias; an attempt to do the same in Radjastane was stopped by Djachouante Rao Olquar of Indore in the massive Battle of Baratpoure, widely compared to the Maabarata in sheer scale. And other French soldiers simply deserted and joined the Sikh Empire.
Yet, as Napoleonic control proved decisive, colonialism was now restored to full force, to a new generation. The famines of the pre-revolutionary era, caused by state policy of cash crops and export, saw a vicious return, and in this manner they likely killed far more people than any Jacobin fief. The destruction of the djati system was in practice replaced by pure French overlordship, proving far more unequal in every way. The new religious sentiments continued to proliferate and they often gained radically different form; increasingly they were directed against the French. Because the French attempted to replace it with the bicorne, the Phrygian cap became a symbol of the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity, even if those ideas were understood in quite different terms. And so, underneath the surface there was an anger at the French. It must come to no surprise, therefore, that in 1814, when King Louis XVIII called many French solders from India to protect his regime, the colonial regime entirely collapsed; when Napoleon did the same to more soldiers as part of his Hundred Days, French rule withered away outside main ports. With the collapse in power caused by the end of French rule, the hole was filled in part by the Maratha Empire and by Mysore, but also by something else - Sufi-Baqueti-Masonic quasi-republican monarchies. Thus, India would never be the same.
well, what do you know, three different napoleon wank scenarios in quick successionRoute of backpacking trip through the Bloc Continental. The Frankfurt agreement for open borders made everything super easy
Astonishing level of detail, but putting names of the states on the map itself would make it more convenient to read, imho.Unigov's Throne
Loving those, truely great mapmaking skills there, very nice can't wait to see more of these and your timeline.plugging my timeline again lol
The Russo-German invasion of Austria-Hungary.
The final map of my series of potential states of the Pacific Southwest, closing in on Cabrillo, a state formed from California's San Diego and Imperial counties.
Home to the Salton Sea, and very soon home to America's lithium mining industry.
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/ynot1989/art/State-of-Cabrillo-917326499
A Fallout map for a large project I am working on. This here being the Kansas waste, the so called Sunflower Wasteland. Again experimenting with color schemes and overall look so don't hesitate to shout possible improvements!
An offshoot of the Midwest brotherhood that developed an unhealthy fascination with nuclear weaponry. Have been busy establishing themselves in Kansas in an obsessive search for active warheads in the many empty missile silos in the region. Most fortunately were destroyed or damaged in one way or another by Red counterstrikes during the Great War.
Zealous in their quest the Atomic Brotherhood is considered completely renegade by the other Chapters. The Atomic Brotherhood has no qualms about squashing wastelanders in the way of their goals.
From the ruins of Dodge City the remnants of the local sheriff's department banded together post-war and sought to reestablish law and order in the region. Over time they stabilized the general Ford county region and began to actively patrol the Cimarron and Arkansas Rivers as a trickle of trade began to reassert itself. They also maintain a “fort” at Medicine Lodge, partly as a recon mission to scout the Runguns and partly to assert some sort of order (no law yet) into the south central Kansas region
The Marshalls are now in a bit of a mid-life crisis. Do they continue to act as neutral lawmen out of their Dodge City base or do they utilize their substantial military and political heft to build a law and order state out of the Sunflower Waste. This crisis threatens to split the Marshalls neatly down the middle as both factions enjoy near half support.
One of the strangest groupings of people in the Fallout world, pacifists to the last man. Well mostly, they do have small selfsschutz (self defense militias) run by the less well respected members of the communities. Descendants of the substantial rural Mennonite community prior to the Great War. Currently also occasionally bickering about whether or not the selfsschutz should be a necessity in a Kansas that is increasingly hostile.
That said the Mennovolk have a certain knack for agriculture and their villages are productively humming away in southwest Kansas. The carnivorous sunflowers and rampaging herds of vebison notwithstanding.
Strange folk from down south who cultishly follow some sort of worship of Route 66. They have fully embraced the highway nomad culture. They were originally attracted to Boomtown by way of Highway 56 and now maintain to “stations” near the Sunflower border, battling it out with Dodge Marshalls or the Collectors.
Vicious bastards with a slaver streak, selling excess ‘supplie’s to some sort of far off monster in the West. A primary reason for the sudden excess of selfsschutz in the Menofolk villages.
The ghouls of Ghoul Haven decided to found a country for ghouls, by ghouls! Bent County is slowly becoming a beacon of ghoul refugees from the Rocky Wastes and even from those fleeing persecution and destruction in the Southwest.
Bent County is steadily developing the small little slice of irrigated eastern Colorado that they control and Ghoul Haven is regarded by traders, scavengers and all manners of folks to be an excellent way station between the Midwest and the West Coast.
A FEV research facility outside of Manhattan was unfortunately not spared a nuclear strike. Within its bowels a supermutant band rose up to form an empire. Led by the flamboyant Lady Maybith, as the name suggest her favorite activity involves running around with guns.
Currently battling Atomic Brotherhood recon parties in its northern frontiers and Free Union forward defense units in the East. Despite that, little has truly stopped the Rungun Band from steadily sweeping westwards into Central Kansas, slowly overtaking and capturing/enslaving all survivors in the region. The Kingdom of Salt and Oz are incoming however and will likely not prove such easy victims.
The great salt mines of Hutchinson Kansas provided a beautiful refuge even for the nuclear fallout. Those that survived the horrible early years after the war were able to eek out a living in the hidden salt safe haven. In time they developed a thriving underground culture that only now is really entering the above ground world again in a substantial fashion.
Vast mushroom and saltwater shrimp farms in the salt mines provide the Salties with enough food and nutrition, they only venture to the Above to scavenge for loot and supplies. Rather opaque in what their end game is as more and more Saltie scavenging parties establish themselves in the Sunflower Wasteland.
“Oh, you liquidated her, eh? Very resourceful!” Someone got caught up a little too much in good old Kansas fiction. A crazy set of drug addled goons out of the Flint Hills have set up the fabled Kingdom of Oz with the capital located at Emerald City, formerly Russel. From there they make synthetic hallucinates, carry out periodic raids for booty and “courage” and are a general nuisance in the region.
They are remarkably handy though and have quite the fleet of poorly constructed yet serviceable guided hot air balloons. This gives them weight and range in their “courage” operations to terrorize a great deal of Kansas. The Rungun Band however has dampened their enthusiasm of late and more and more Ozzer balloons are scouting for supermutant intrusions instead of the more fun courage raids.
Divided into the Northern and Southern tribes the Grasslanders are remnants of Coloradans that retreated into the Comanche National Grasslands with goat herds after the Great War. The goats mutated to become rather large with sick twisted horns and the Grasslanders took aptly to riding them.
Completely nomadic now with no actual territory or settlements to speak of (are actually rather harsh to sedentary cultures except for the ghouls with whom they have a special relationship). The Southern Grasslanders are known for their more violent sadistic tendencies, perhaps brought about by closer contact with Caesar’s Legion. The Northern Grasslanders are more open to foreigners and less likely to raid into the Denver region or into central Nebraska.
The descendants of Red Plains Energy workers who maintained the emptying gas field of Hugoton Kansas, the gas capital of the world. Now studiously maintaining a surviving mega-compression station that annually release excess pressure, hence the boom that gave the town its new name.
The Collectors recently were kicked out of Boomtown by a Router attack and only a desperate last ditch battle gave them the drive to liberate the ancestral plant. Now extremely militaristic and have a nasty penchant for flamethrower weaponry, fueled by what is now a tremendous reserve of natural gas.
The Sunflower Wastelands
Factions
The Atomic Brotherhood of Steel
An offshoot of the Midwest brotherhood that developed an unhealthy fascination with nuclear weaponry. Have been busy establishing themselves in Kansas in an obsessive search for active warheads in the many empty missile silos in the region. Most fortunately were destroyed or damaged in one way or another by Red counterstrikes during the Great War.
Zealous in their quest the Atomic Brotherhood is considered completely renegade by the other Chapters. The Atomic Brotherhood has no qualms about squashing wastelanders in the way of their goals.
The Dodge Marshalls
From the ruins of Dodge City the remnants of the local sheriff's department banded together post-war and sought to reestablish law and order in the region. Over time they stabilized the general Ford county region and began to actively patrol the Cimarron and Arkansas Rivers as a trickle of trade began to reassert itself. They also maintain a “fort” at Medicine Lodge, partly as a recon mission to scout the Runguns and partly to assert some sort of order (no law yet) into the south central Kansas region
The Marshalls are now in a bit of a mid-life crisis. Do they continue to act as neutral lawmen out of their Dodge City base or do they utilize their substantial military and political heft to build a law and order state out of the Sunflower Waste. This crisis threatens to split the Marshalls neatly down the middle as both factions enjoy near half support.
Mennovolk
One of the strangest groupings of people in the Fallout world, pacifists to the last man. Well mostly, they do have small selfsschutz (self defense militias) run by the less well respected members of the communities. Descendants of the substantial rural Mennonite community prior to the Great War. Currently also occasionally bickering about whether or not the selfsschutz should be a necessity in a Kansas that is increasingly hostile.
That said the Mennovolk have a certain knack for agriculture and their villages are productively humming away in southwest Kansas. The carnivorous sunflowers and rampaging herds of vebison notwithstanding.
Routers
Strange folk from down south who cultishly follow some sort of worship of Route 66. They have fully embraced the highway nomad culture. They were originally attracted to Boomtown by way of Highway 56 and now maintain to “stations” near the Sunflower border, battling it out with Dodge Marshalls or the Collectors.
Vicious bastards with a slaver streak, selling excess ‘supplie’s to some sort of far off monster in the West. A primary reason for the sudden excess of selfsschutz in the Menofolk villages.
Republic of Bent County
The ghouls of Ghoul Haven decided to found a country for ghouls, by ghouls! Bent County is slowly becoming a beacon of ghoul refugees from the Rocky Wastes and even from those fleeing persecution and destruction in the Southwest.
Bent County is steadily developing the small little slice of irrigated eastern Colorado that they control and Ghoul Haven is regarded by traders, scavengers and all manners of folks to be an excellent way station between the Midwest and the West Coast.
Rungun Band of Supers
A FEV research facility outside of Manhattan was unfortunately not spared a nuclear strike. Within its bowels a supermutant band rose up to form an empire. Led by the flamboyant Lady Maybith, as the name suggest her favorite activity involves running around with guns.
Currently battling Atomic Brotherhood recon parties in its northern frontiers and Free Union forward defense units in the East. Despite that, little has truly stopped the Rungun Band from steadily sweeping westwards into Central Kansas, slowly overtaking and capturing/enslaving all survivors in the region. The Kingdom of Salt and Oz are incoming however and will likely not prove such easy victims.
The Kingdom of Salt
The great salt mines of Hutchinson Kansas provided a beautiful refuge even for the nuclear fallout. Those that survived the horrible early years after the war were able to eek out a living in the hidden salt safe haven. In time they developed a thriving underground culture that only now is really entering the above ground world again in a substantial fashion.
Vast mushroom and saltwater shrimp farms in the salt mines provide the Salties with enough food and nutrition, they only venture to the Above to scavenge for loot and supplies. Rather opaque in what their end game is as more and more Saltie scavenging parties establish themselves in the Sunflower Wasteland.
The Ozzers
“Oh, you liquidated her, eh? Very resourceful!” Someone got caught up a little too much in good old Kansas fiction. A crazy set of drug addled goons out of the Flint Hills have set up the fabled Kingdom of Oz with the capital located at Emerald City, formerly Russel. From there they make synthetic hallucinates, carry out periodic raids for booty and “courage” and are a general nuisance in the region.
They are remarkably handy though and have quite the fleet of poorly constructed yet serviceable guided hot air balloons. This gives them weight and range in their “courage” operations to terrorize a great deal of Kansas. The Rungun Band however has dampened their enthusiasm of late and more and more Ozzer balloons are scouting for supermutant intrusions instead of the more fun courage raids.
Grasslanders
Divided into the Northern and Southern tribes the Grasslanders are remnants of Coloradans that retreated into the Comanche National Grasslands with goat herds after the Great War. The goats mutated to become rather large with sick twisted horns and the Grasslanders took aptly to riding them.
Completely nomadic now with no actual territory or settlements to speak of (are actually rather harsh to sedentary cultures except for the ghouls with whom they have a special relationship). The Southern Grasslanders are known for their more violent sadistic tendencies, perhaps brought about by closer contact with Caesar’s Legion. The Northern Grasslanders are more open to foreigners and less likely to raid into the Denver region or into central Nebraska.
The Collectors
The descendants of Red Plains Energy workers who maintained the emptying gas field of Hugoton Kansas, the gas capital of the world. Now studiously maintaining a surviving mega-compression station that annually release excess pressure, hence the boom that gave the town its new name.
The Collectors recently were kicked out of Boomtown by a Router attack and only a desperate last ditch battle gave them the drive to liberate the ancestral plant. Now extremely militaristic and have a nasty penchant for flamethrower weaponry, fueled by what is now a tremendous reserve of natural gas.
I love this map! The detail! I've never seen a map of an extensive Ottoman Empire in Africa. It is very beautiful. I have a few questions about it: Did the Ottomans get their foothold in Southeast Africa from conquering Oman, who controlled the territory at the time? If they did, wouldn't it make more sense to have a puppeted Sultanate of Zanzibar control the area, as the cost of controlling the huge area of land, detached from all Ottoman land supply routes, would far outweigh the benefits? Also, how would the Ottoman Empire reconcile this incredible expansion in Africa with their losses in the Balkans, Crimea, and Ukraine--the Ottomans were getting defeated by the Russian Empire constantly over this era, and the Russians were annexing new land with every passing war. Would they just abandon Europe (aside from Constantinople) to focus on Africa in your timeline?OTTOMAN EAST AFRICA IN 1800 ADIn 1589, the Ottomans won, and Mombasa became Ottoman territory. The Age of Portuguese Dominance in the Indian Ocean came to an abrupt end as a result. By 1600 most of the independent Swahili city-states had sworn loyalty to the Ottoman Sultan or had been subjugated under the Ottoman heel. This was the beginning of a new era in African history. As the riches of the Swahili states started to pour into Ottoman coffers, the Ottomans turned their speculative gazes south, and the idea of making East Africa the 'Ottoman America' to gain and colonize riches in the likeness of the Western Europeans in North and South America began to take hold. This was first started by Egyptian Governor Ali Bey, who led an expedition to Darfur in 1599 AD, forcing the tribes of the region to swear loyalty to the Sultan. For the next few decades, the Ottomans solidified their control over the Swahili coast, bolstered by the construction of the Mehmediye Canal constructed from 1604 to 1621 between the Egyptian mainland and the Sinai Peninsula, allowing the Ottomans quick access to the region as well. Trade routes were propped up and the Ottomans consolidated in the region. Tensions with Oromo and Amhara tribes due to trade and the new boss in the region eventually led to the Ottoman-Ethiopian Wars of 1638-1659 which led to the Ottoman subjugation of the region, and the conversion of most elites in Ethiopia to islam, alongside the installation of an Islamic Ethiopian Emperor who declared suzerainty and vassalage to the Ottomans. The fall of Ethiopia to the Ottomans opened the so-called floodgates, and now Ottoman influence in East Africa was unchecked. No other European Power had the ability to project power in the region sufficiently to kick the Ottomans out - not with the Mehmediye Canal under Ottoman control. The Ottomans continued to increase their influence and power in the region in the 17th and 18th centuries, and when in 1798 Napoleon came knocking, with reinforcements from the Ottoman African south, the Ottomans kicked Napoleon out, capturing and killing the rogue French General. As the century turned in 1800 AD with uncertainty in the future for Europe amidst the Revolutionary Wars, the Ottoman Empire, and by extension, Ottoman East Africa was about to enter a time period of unmatched peace and prosperity.
Thoughts and comments?
And what about when the Ottoman Sultans were undergoing dynastical disputes/assassinations? I assume many East Africans would resent being under Ottoman control, as the Ottomans would promote the slave trade every bit as much as the Omanis did, and thus at least some would try to break away from Ottoman influence. If Livingstone still exists in this timeline, him and his condemnation of Slavery--that convinced all of Europe to explore Africa to prevent slavery--how would the Ottomans reconcile their slave-dealing with other European Powers?
Also, surely the British would be upset with Ottoman control over the Canal, as that would shift the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean signifcantly. What do you think their reaction would be, and what could, or would, the Ottomans do to stop it?
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It’s not mean to be realistic, it‘s inspired by a Danish alternate history book from 1994 “the Explosion in May“ with a occupied Denmark and some ideas I had about it. The POD in the book is that Stalin tell the Danish communists not to join the resistance and as result of the weaker Resistance Movement, Denmark is seen as German ally. In the book East Denmark end up a SSR because it’s too small to be a independent communist country. Inspired by that book I thought about how to make East Denmark bigger and the easiest solution was to give it German territory.
The Genuine history of the Turks uncovered
🇹🇷 Al bayrağın dalgalandığı her yerde Biz VARIZ
Seems about right.
A sort of "Mormonism, but this time it's Turkish, and also they go back around the long way".
The Genuine history of the Turks uncovered
🇹🇷 Al bayrağın dalgalandığı her yerde Biz VARIZ
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