One great power per continent

What changes to history needs to be made so that once the 1900's roll around with industrial wafare and global wars, there are 6 major world powers, one based in each continent (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America & Oceania).

The biggest difficulty I see here is making sure there's only 1 European major power, that doesn't get it's strength from a large overseas empire, perhaps something akin to a surviving Rome or centralized HRE.

An African major power also seems difficult without a major early PoD, what would be the best candidate there?

What major powers do you see as likely canidates?
 
It depends on whether you're strictly sticking with the common continental model. Would liminal spaces between them (India for example) be independent regional powers or divided into colonial buffer states? The emergence of some new transnational anticolonial ideology would probably be the ticket for a post-1900 POD. Based on a post in the "Extra-Universal Systems of Government" thread I like the idea of a new political strain of revolutionary Esperanto.

  • The US as hegemon of North America makes sense, especially if an ATL version of the Banana Wars rages through the Caribbean and a Mexico that's fragmented as a result of civil war. If the Spanish-American war eventually results in a liberated Philippines and an America Cuba that helps.
  • South America's a bit more difficult. An influx of refugees from what amounts to a gringo colonization project would destabilize existing Spanish-speaking states, leading to a military leader trying to restore Gran Colombia as a counterweight to the might of the US. It could then fight to the death with some sort of Integralist Brazil over domination of the continent. The Southern Cone tries to play them off of one another but just gets conquered by the "winner".
  • In Africa, the Political Esperanto Movement takes hold as intellectual elements on the continent decide independently that the sorry state of indigenous affairs is the result of a divide and rule strategy, and that a movement that transcends old ethnic and regional hatreds is the only path to prosperity. A wave of anticolonial revolutions sweeps the continent in a World War I analogue called the Liberation War, and Esperanto is installed as an auxiliary language. It's Eurocentricity is part of the appeal, because it doesn't favor one native tongue over the others and, having learned auxiliary European languages already, it's a fairly simple task to swap them with a constructed somewhat related language.
  • Europe meanwhile is unwell. With the devastating losses of the Spanish (to the Americans) and the Russians (to the Japanese), both worse than OTL, it would mark the terminal decline of the imperial project in Africa and Asia. As a reaction against the deliberately nationless Esperantists on the Dark Continent a more militant revanchist version of the Paneuropean movement takes hold in the 1920s, determined to undo the decade of humiliations following the Liberation War. The Paneuropan Union is a roiling mass of nationalities all celebrating their differences and sharpening their knives for use on Green Africa and the perfidious Jewish menace, both entwined in the hated figure of Zamenhoff, the worst figure in European history. Pooling vast resources and expertise from throughout the continent, the Paneuropans are building a vast army, letting them loose on central Asia in a bid to blood them and maintain a stranglehold on the heart of the World Island and India beyond.
  • In a twist on an old alternate history cliche, rather than be established by right of conquest, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is born TTL as a result of an alliance between the Empire of Japan (stretching into Siberia after a tremendous victory against Russia) and a surviving Republic of China. Working together to capitalize on European distraction in Africa the Sphere was able to liberate Indochina and convince the Philippines to join. Operating as a confederation guided by an expansion of the originally Chinese principle of "Five Races Under One Union" the member states have grown closer as the tensions between the Paneuropan Fascists and African Esperantists have grown somehow worse. A looming war between the United States and the Integralist Bolivarian States of America is also causing concern.
  • Australia has grown hugely in population as a result of the influx of Europeans exiled from the old colonies, particularly a large contingent of incredibly bitter Boers and Indochinese French. In order to create a "defensive cordon", the Australian government launched an intervention when the Dutch East Indies began to falter, and chose to keep their spoils rather than leave them to an absent European country or allow them to fall prey to the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
  • Antarctica has no human settlements that could lay claim to the land's vast resources... yet
This is obviously just a bit of fun but it meets the criteria. Obviously it would build to a hellish Liberation War II, with the BSA, Co-Prosperity Sphere, and Green Africa forming a military alliance in the face of "imperialist aggrandizement" by the US, Australia, and PEU, respectively. I think a war ending in a stalemate after a hideous slog would be interesting, allowing the continental states (each more internally united than ever) to fight over Antarctica and dominance in outer space.
 
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This is obviously just a bit of fun but it meets the criteria. Obviously it would build to a hellish Liberation War II, with the BSA, Co-Prosperity Sphere, and Green Africa forming a military alliance in the face of "imperialist aggrandizement" by the US, Australia, and PEU, respectively. I think a war ending in a stalemate after a hideous slog would be interesting, allowing the continental states (each more internally united than ever) to fight over Antarctica and dominance in outer space.
I think all the powers wouldn't be involved in every facet of the Cold War analogue, only certain aspects. Given location a Scramble for Antarctica makes sense between the BSA, Africa and Australia whereas educational advantages would make the US, PEU and Co-Prosperity Sphere the major players in the Space Race. Some joint Esperantist/Co-Prosperist push to spark revolt in India would work as a Vietnam stand-in. I suppose the BSA could peel off in a nod to the Sino-Soviet split too.
 
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I think all the powers wouldn't be involved in every facet of the Cold War analogue, only certain aspects. Given location a Scramble for Antarctica makes sense between the BSA, Africa and Australia whereas educational advantages would make the US, PEU and Co-Prosperity Sphere the major players in the Space Race. Some joint Esperantist/Co-Prosperist push to spark revolt in India would work as a Vietnam stand-in.
I mean...historically a lot of non-Southern nations have played major roles in Antarctic exploration (heck, one of the biggest claims is by Norway), and India and China have old and quite capable space programs. I don't think geography or educational advantage really means all that much in either area. For instance, I could see Africa embracing space exploration as a way of showing that it's not a backwards "dark continent" any more while the more developed countries languish at first because they don't have anything to prove, like the Space Race started IOTL. Or Paneuropa heavily going after Antarctica because of the claims of its constituents to most of the continent.
 
I mean...historically a lot of non-Southern nations have played major roles in Antarctic exploration (heck, one of the biggest claims is by Norway), and India and China have old and quite capable space programs. I don't think geography or educational advantage really means all that much in either area. For instance, I could see Africa embracing space exploration as a way of showing that it's not a backwards "dark continent" any more while the more developed countries languish at first because they don't have anything to prove, like the Space Race started IOTL. Or Paneuropa heavily going after Antarctica because of the claims of its constituents to most of the continent.
With the fact that each continent is host to a great power I think the South Atlantic would be the playground of Africa and South America when it comes to reaching Antarctica, with a similar scenario in the Pacific with Australia. Claims are one thing but actually enforcing them is entirely another.
 
One other little worldbuilding note: regarding Fascism in Paneuropa, the leading lights of the movement considered a racial hierarchy of Europeans outdated and inefficient, especially with Russia joining the Union sans the Siberian coast but not driven into the ground by OTL WWI. This lead to the readoption of certain medieval biblical ideas, namely the sons of Noah. All Europeans are considered descendents of Japheth, while Africans are considered the tainted seed of Ham. Shemites (Asians) are held in contempt because A) Zamenhoff created Esperanto and was Jewish and B) the Sphere took advantage of European distraction to seize territory. Any muttering about an "Aryan master race" is exclusively the province of rebels in India (and Theosophists).
 
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