MotF 181: The Mapmaker Lies Heavy

[Kaiphranos]

MotF 181: The Mapmaker Lies Heavy

The Challenge
Make a map from the perspective of someone in another timeline, showing what they think our timeline would look like.

The Restrictions
There are no restrictions on when the PoD of your map should be. Fantasy, sci-fi, and future maps are allowed.
If you're not sure whether your idea meets the criteria of this challenge, please feel free to PM me or comment in the main thread.
---
Entries will end for this round when the voting thread is posted on Sunday, August 5th, 2018 (extended by one week).

---
ALL DISCUSSION ON THE CONTEST OR ITS ENTRIES MUST TAKE PLACE IN THE MAIN THREAD, PLEASE.
Any discussion must take place in the main thread. If you post anything other than a map entry (or a description accompanying a map entry) in this thread then you will be asked to delete the post.


Remember to vote on the previous MotF round!​

 

[Reagent]

The Portucalense Revolt

 

[Codae]

What if Erik Torvladovich had grown up in Iceland, rather than Russia? Perhaps he would have assumed leadership of an earlier colony in Thule, one with enough time before the Little Ice Age to itself colonize more temperate regions of Hesperia. I assume contact with Europe would be lost when the Black Death (or an equivalent plague) struck in the fourteenth century, to resume sometime in the fifteenth. Here's a map of about 1600, as direct trans-Atlantic voyages become commonplace, eventually with devastating health consequences for the Hesperian Norse and their neighbors.

 

[Baconheimer]

Spoiler: Notes

This is more intended as a sort of test of an idea, to show a blatant piece of propaganda from an alternate world. Regarding choices of characters: Lachlan MacIntosh notably shot Burton Gwinnett, a Declaration of Independence signer. The author likely added him to show the "lawlessness" of the North Americans. John Allaire was a privateer IOTL. He also was born in 1762, and would likely be too young to serve as an effective leader at the time of this map, but that is an attempt to show the mapmaker's ignorance. I also have the writer say, rather hypocritically, that his enemies are hostile to him just because of his political beliefs.

In the writers TL, snakes (as exemplified by the Gadsden flag) are the symbol of democracy and liberty, and monarchy (of a constitutional sort, though) is the standard, as opposed to liberty and freedom, as in our TL.

Anyway, I've had a lot of fun working on the map and setting, and am considering doing more set in this "alternate of an alternate" universe.

 

[TapReflex]

An English superpower: England industrializes after conquering the British Isles

England-wanks are a particular brand of annoying to me. It's an underdog story, but one which stretches the bounds of plausibility.
England is a peripheral economy of a peripheral economy, globally speaking. England would need some serious help in the late Interregnum period possibly as early as the ninth century. You'd need Englishmen controlling the English economy, but Hanseatic and Italian merchants held sway and continued to hold sway until 1060 BS, when Edward VIII expelled them during the Spanish Restoration. England historically has been a backwater of a backwater.

To put it another way, England has to invest in water transport, something that's a natural feature of Bengal. The investment needed is not there in English history, as wool trade could satisfy the economic needs of the English crown. The incentive to grow the economy away from raw materials is not there, and there are many forces in England which have historically pushed against it: The Church, the nobility, as well as the peasantry who were very unhappy with the processes which created a modern industrialized state in England. Foreign powers in the region had a vested interest in keeping the English down even if they took the right steps, and the fractious nature of Europe means some power was moving to suppress rivals.

The Bengali Industrial revolution arose from a unique set of circumstances, from the unification of the global market, the convergence of the Islamic and Indian engineering technologies leading to the introduction of water power to the cotton industry, and the interactive social structures of Mughal Bengal, just to skim the surface. The social change created by the Industrialization of Bengal was decently managed because of the dispersion of power amongst society. European upheavals upon the introduction of industrial modes of production mean whatever state would come out on the other side would not resemble anything we know in Europe today, let alone resemble their predecessors politically.

 

[Goliath]

[
A Turn for the Worse

Now, I know it's a MOD that's quite often done, but I decided to take my own, rather maltopic spin on it. In 1676, years before Virginian independence, back when he was merely a ragabound trapesing through the Virginian countryside and fighting aboriginals, Nathaniel Bacon dies of dysentery. His merry band of supporters fragments after a few piecemeal declarations from the English governor regarding aboriginal threats in the countryside.

The first major consequence of this (other than, of course, the delay of the outlawing of slavery) is the near total destruction of the New England colony at the hands of aboriginal King Philip. IOW three quarters of the English colonists perished at hands of King Philip. Here, it's closer to 95%. Without King Bacon leading a defense from Virginia, reinforcements all the way from England simply take too long, and many Puritans find it simpler to migrant south to Virginia, or as IOW migrate into the Appalachian Mountains. The end result is a repeat of Roanoke, but on a much, much larger scale. Boston is razed to the ground. England is humiliated. France rejoices, and slowly settles the area over the coming century.

England then, is much more dependent on Virginia than in our world. Virginian cotton, here still underpinned by legalized slavery, keeps the English Empire from collapsing for the time. Much of English expansion further west, here directed and planned thousands of miles away in London, is done with the aim of securing good plantation lands, leaving more temperate climates to France. Technological advances like the cotton gin actually reinforce slavery's profitability, and much to London's horror the medieval system of feudalism finds itself recreated in Virginia, in a sort of dark tank fission.

There is still a successful slave revolt in the Caribbean, with the help of local freemen, but no matter how successful Hayiti (*Hispaniola, the name comes from an aboriginal name for the island) is as a prosperous mercantile republic, it's size simply limits its ability to project its vision to the world.

As IOW, there is a 19th century scramble for the interior of North America, however here it is run in a little more lopsided fashion. There are no interior settler states to fight, and the aboriginals are worse armed as a result. France gives her colonies self rule under a nephew of the King. Similarly Liberal England tries to encourage the gradual removal the Virginian Caste system, but is met with heavy refusal on the part of the local aristocracy. When Parliament convinces the Crown to put stricter pressure on Virginia, a revolt arises among those landed elite. They meet, crown their own King, and block off English blockades. After a few years, London at last recognizes an independent "Empire of Virginia" in 1848.

The new nation is a bit of a pariah on the world stage. It long continues slavery (arguably up until the present day, under other names) engages in border disputes with New France, and generally isolates itself into backwardness. New France is a truer superpower than any North American state is in our world, but unable to defend cosmopolitan or liberal sensibilities with an angry ritpick state which is eventually solarpid capable breathing fire on its south side.

War, fortunately, breaks out far less here than IOW. Tensions between New France and Virginia simmer down over the years, and at present they are almost cordial. Mejico and Further Siberia undergo revolutions are this world's largest radical states, and in the modern world New France finds itself uneasily de facto allied with Virginia (though not sharing a common defense system). Further Siberia and Mejico have their own disputes over leadership of the international radical order, but for the moment they are outwardly presenting a common front against New France and Europe's liberality. Virginia for its part, has an alliance with the Russians, which, owing to weakened international pressure, also has an ongoing system of serfdom. Virginia and Russia hope to create a "third way" one day, but for now must work with liberal powers and even Republics like Hayiti to oppose the Ptochocratic menace.

This world may see North America having less border disputes or "rambunctious" states, but solarpid armed standoffs where even the good guys have to side with modern-day slave holders isn't an improvement.

MOD (moment of divergence) =point of divergence
maltopic (from maltopia) =dystopia
IOW (in our world) = IOTL (in our timeline)
dark tank fission = "fun house mirrior"
ritpick = hillbilly
solarpid = nuclear
reactionism = fascism? kinda sorta
Ptochocracy = communism? kinda sorta

 

[NeonHydroxide]

Shamelessly stolen from the Rhomanian-language cable site NewHistory of TL-249. Usernames of participants redacted for privacy/paradox reasons. I've translated the Rhomanian into OTL English for clarity.

MSG: NHC: Antesian state
MSG: Would it be possible to have an independent Antesian state appear and survive to the modern era? Let's say with no changepoint before 1500 or so.
MSG: What is Antesia?
MSG: Artemisia is your friend. Antesians were an ethnic group in the Suomic empire which essentially have been totally assimilated since the 2400s. Don't know how OP thought this up.
MSG: Sorry, I didn't think they were that obscure. In Taurida they are taught in schools as an early example of Grecian trade contacts.
MSG: I think I saw this concept somewhere before.
MSG: I honestly don't see how you get a handful of tribes to survive as a state in one of the most hotly contested areas of the world. Are Rhomania and Suomia just going to stop going at each other for a few hundred years to allow the Antesians to get settled?
MSG: It would really have to be as some sort of client state, but that would inevitably be very short-lived considering Rhomania's tendency to grab and settle everything in sight...
MSG: Aren't you Rhomanian?
MSG: 2769 =/= 2400s
MSG: suggesting Rhomania's policy is actually all that different now
MSG: To return to the topic at hand, I think the best shot at this is if Silla wins the Suomic-Sillan war of 2348, to an extent which the Suomic Empire falls apart then and there. As Rhomania was still tangling with Teotihuacania at that point, there's an opportunity for breakaway states to survive in the vacuum.
MSG: 'tangling' is a very euphemistic way to put it lol
MSG: remind me, what was the last time Rhomania invaded one of her neighbors?
MSG: but again were there really many of them left by then?
MSG: Found it! There's a book called the Atlas of Imaginary Places which covers this idea. The changepoint isn't clear from the map, though.
MSG: you would if Silla wasn't there to stop you
MSG: can you post the map?
MSG: yeah I'll go ahead and scan it
MSG: stop wasting my chunks with your political trash
MSG: Is that legal?
MSG: This site is hosted in Vedia, no one really cares
MSG: is that true?
MSG: well, a lot of posters do seem to treat bull like it was holy
MSG: transfer link: [removed]
MSG: It's about five mil
MSG: zeus' beard it better be interesting for five mil
MSG: Is the cable really that bad in Taurida?
MSG: The cable's that bad anywhere not touching the Mediterranean. Don't get the site censored while I'm gone.
>CABLE TRANSFER START
>CABLE TRANSFER COMPLETE

>RECONNECTING
MSG: you're willing to slaughter the Embera wholesale for a warm-water port
MSG: that was literally 400 years ago
MSG: sorry but this map is kind of shit
MSG: but your consul has never apologized for it or even acknowledged it
MSG: because it was literally 400 years ago
MSG: What about the Bodans, by the way? You all aren't exactly clean either.
MSG: What's wrong with it?
MSG: classic Rhomanian deflection
MSG: I'm Sogdian, but thanks for the racist assumption
MSG: can't you people fight about this somewhere else?
MSG: not my fault the mods tolerate barbarians on the site
MSG: yeah so first off what is 'slavonshyna' and what are these moon runes?
MSG: 'Slavs' were the Antesians' name for themselves - as for the lettering, idk, a lot of the book is like that - sort of faux-alternate alphabet
MSG: if anyone is a 'barbarian', it's the people who were riding horses around the desert while we were inventing paper
MSG: these borders make absolutely no sense whatsoever, and where do these placenames come from? (not even touching the oh-so-edgy standard)
MSG: well, like I said, the changepoint isn't clear. it would probably have to be real early -somewhere between 500 and 1000
MSG: it just strikes me as very casual - sort of like a nationalists' wank, if there were any antesians left to make bad maps
MSG: lol, the cinians invented paper, you just conquered them
MSG: look, it's mass market newhistory, what do you expect. I didn't endorse it, just said I saw it
MSG: fair enough I guess
MSG: actually, the archaeological record suggests the Cahokians invented paper as early as 200 PUC, but this has been suppressed by racist historians
MSG: I think I'm done for the day anyways - wasted too many chunks receiving this blather
MSG: yeah, someone needs to get control of this system. where's CahuillaUrsa when you need him?
MSG: talk to you all later
>DISCONNECTING