I have finished my map. As per usual, I wanted to do a key but by the time I finished, you know,
the map, I pretty much lost all motivation. Maybe one day I'll go harder - I used to do full-blown B_Munro style maps but alas...
Anyway, as mentioned before, the vague POD is that the British somehow win the American Revolution and the nascent United States dies in the cradle. It's not all bad, though; they get some concessions and despite the revolutionary leaders being hanged, things improve in the colonies. History happens and the territories of British North America expand westward, mostly taking a northwestern route, and through winning wars and other such shenanigans it ends up with roughly the shape you see on the map.
So, what makes this version of America different? Well, the official name of this trans-Pacific federation is the 'Commonwealth of Nations', otherwise called 'the Commonwealth', or just 'America'. It is the current seat of the House of Windsor, currently ruled by Queen Victoria II (though, you know - constitutionally). Like her predecessors, Queen Victoria II's titles go far and wide, but one in particular is of interest here; "Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". Why is that of interest? Because Great Britain and Ireland do not have a queen.
In TTL's "Spring of Nations", Britain wasn't spared. Sometime in the mid-late 19th Century (1850s-1860s, I keep things vague) major urban centres across Britain experienced mass strikes and popular revolt. This wound up erupting into an all-out civil war with a very socialist bent to it, and faciliated an event known to the history books as the "Flight of Windsor". Basically, Queen Victoria I was assassinated, and her family scarfered. Without a figurehead to rally around (or rather, with the figurehead now in America), the traditionalist side of the civil war folded, and Britain became a parliamentary republic. Missives were sent to all the far-flung colonies of the empire, with some accepting the new status quo, and others not. The new administration was on shakey ground from the start. The Royal Navy by and large opted to
remain the "Royal" Navy, which greatly weakened Britain's ability to project power. As a result, rebellion in India succeeded, neutering Britain's "Raj" ambitions.
Anyway, this is a map of 2022. There have been wars, there has been peace, there are no clear superpowers. Russia is still a god-forsaken empire, and incredibly autocratic, though the Tsar himself wields very little actual power. Militarily the strongest nations are undoubtedly the Commonwealth, the Empire of Japan, the Caliphate of Arabia (initially an Egyptian-led project, typically just called 'Arabia' or 'the Caliphate'), and the Republic of Peru (which is on par with OTL's Canada, really). China looks scary but it's frail; the Ughyurs, Mongols, and Tibetans are only
de jure part of the Chinese Empire, but otherwise completely rule themselves.
The current attention-grabbing conflict is the Arab-Iranian War, known to the Arabians as "the military intervention to restore moral order", and known to everyone else as "a shameless land-grab". Since the 1950's, Iran has been steadily liberalising. It's been slow going, as the Iranian government still needs to reconcile western ideas with the natural conservatisim of Islam, but by-and-large they have a functioning democratic tradition, a well-educated populace, and a strong economy with good social programmes in place. The major areas that need working on are in gender and sexual equality, but hey, they're getting there. At least until they got invaded. Fear not, though; Iran is fighting back and doing so
admirably, and foreign weapons are just
flooding across its borders (typically taking a long path from Russia through Central Asia and the Caucasus).
Now, other wee notes:
- In the American southeast, you'll see the Republic of Columbia, a nation born out of a desire to maintain the institution of slavery (and also a nation that committed wholesale genocide against the Seminoles, and still attempted an African colony as a dumping ground for freed blacks when the slavery writing was on the wall). These guys are basically Christian nationalists with some whacky interpretations of the bible. Their tag-line is "there are no gays in Columbia" no matter how statistically impossible that is. They've also been cycling through the same three presidents for about thirty years.
- Mexico is better than OTL. Culturally they are more conservative, leaning into Catholicism, but economically they're better off and income inequality isn't nearly as bad as it is in OTL. They started out as an empire, but that fell to pieces quickly. The Free Republic of Tejas to the north is one result of that. Cuba is also part of Mexico ITTL.
- Brazil's breakup with Portugal was ugly. The north is the Republic of Amazonia. It used to be the Republic of North Brazil, but the Republic of Brazil in the south refused to change their name to "South Brazil" (or so the joke goes). Portugal still controls a small territory in the Northeast which contains suspiciously few ethnic minorities. In terms of independence, south went first, then north.
- Peru still controls Equatorial Africa (a holdover from when the Spanish lumped its administration in with La Plata). It isn't a colony, though, and is a full province. Peru also still controls various islands in the Pacific, including *New Caledonia.
- Several nations remain 'unconquered' from the colonial era. These are:
- *Mali (I'm honestly very unsure what the name of this state should be).
- Bornu (big state around Lake Chad).
- Mossi (Burkina Faso).
- Abyssinia (still an empire, though now a constitutional monarchy).
- Majeerteen (Somalia).
- Madagascar (by some miracle).
- Afghanistan (no Anglo-Afghan Wars).
- Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam (all three are still monarchies and are doing varying levels of 'okay' - Vietnam is probably the best of the bunch).
- Some of the Indian states were spared wholesale conquest, though they did labour under various levels of European influence.
- Both Alaska (Arasuka) and Hawaii (Hawa-i) actually started out as Russian territories, but were taken by Japan in a war along with the Amur region.
- Germany was never a monarchy. It unified late (20th Century) and has been a republic since birth.
- The Hapsburgs still reign in Hungary (which for a while was Hungary-Bohemia until the Czechs got sick of playing second fiddle).
- The House of Osman fell, but Turkiye remains a sultanate. Bulgaria has been rather firmly Islamicised thanks to internal immigration patterns and some unpleasantness. Turkiye is basically the Caliphate's "little brother", though it's an open secret that the Caliphate has designs on Turkish territory (they have designs on a lot of territory, including the entirety of Spain and Portugal, so we'll see how well that works out for them).
- Funnily enough, Iceland having control over Greenland was something I decided to do very early in the map, only to see Bruce add the same feature to his recent map. I'm not copying, I promise!
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