Rememberences of Map Contests Past

OK. I think I'll try another approach tomorrow.

 

(This is my thread, so I can restart it, right?)

 

That's what the warning says.

 

Well, back to MoTF 116. @Tsar of New Zealand , do you still have that map somewhere? It's been devoured by imgur's changes of policy.

Here's Zalesky's:

The Two Armenias

Soon after WWI and the ensuing Russian Civil War Two nations were carved out of the Caucasus.
TWO ARMENIAS! Both puppets to their respective masters. NATO and the Eastern Bloc.
Today they serve as a testing ground for new weapons from both sides, an Aghanistan of the West.

 

Here's rvbomally:


The PoD is that the Lusitania is not sunk, giving the Americans fewer reasons to enter Great War. They ultimately remain neutral during the Great War, and so Wilson does not serve as an obstacle for the French in the post-war negotiations. The French manage to create an independent Rhineland, but while this state is originally a protectorate of France, the French and Germans agree in 1934 to turn the Rhineland into an armed neutral state, after the Germans make some noise about "reuniting German territory" and scare Paris into thinking that the Germans may start a second world war. After all, the agreements said that if either state attacked the Rhineland, that would be tantamount to a declaration of war against the other. Of course, the Germans broke their promise by invading in 1940, starting the Second Great War in Europe.

 

Stateless the watermelon:

The POD for my map is that the British, as a result of the War of 1812, secured an independent Native American buffer state between Ontario and the USA as part of the peace settlement, essentially created out of Indiana Territory. This was something the British had pushed for, but been unable to achieve in OTL.

This map is supposed to be set somewhere in the 1940s, with the opening of a bridge on the Ohio River, making travel between the fractious neighbours of the Indian Tribal Confederation and the United States of America far simpler. This tourist map existed to promote the Indian Tribal Confederation as a tourist destination for Americans.

 

Reagent:

Arvanitika

Context: In the 14th and 15th centuries, much of Attica, Boeotia, and the Peloponnese were depopulated due to conflicts between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. These lands were repopulated by Orthodox Albanians, known as the Arvantikans. IOTL, this group has largely assimilated into the Greek population after Greek Independence.

POD: Ottoman forces at Nafplio hold out long enough to be relieved.

In 1821, revolts of Greeks took place across the Ottoman Empire. In most places, local soldiers were able to suppress the revolt, though Greek rebels took control of much of Morea and Central Greece. The Ottoman fortress of Nafplio managed to hold out against repeated Greek assaults, effectively dividing Greek controlled territory in two. Despite this split, the war settled into a stalemate. Eventually, the soldiers of Muhammad Ali joined the Ottomans and the Muslim forces began to make significant gains. Central Greece was recaptured fairly quickly, and an Egyptian-Ottoman force was readying to capture Morea. However, due to a number of massacres of Orthodox Greeks (Orthodox Albanians were largely spared by Muhammad Ali, an ethnic compatriot, if of a different religion) intervention by the Great Powers was prompted. The Ottomans were forced to cease their assault against Greece, leaving a rump Hellenic Republic to exist in Morea. The Duchy of Naxos was revived by France on the invitation of the Catholic populace of the Cyclades Islands. The Hellenic Republic openly claimed the right to govern all Greek lands, causing panic among Ottoman officials who feared another revolt. To kill the nascent Greek States dreams in its cradle, the Ottomans decided to create a client principality in regions of Greece populated by Orthodox Albanians. By creating the Principality of Arvanitika, the Ottomans hoped both to win over the loyalty of Orthodox Albanians, and create a buffer against further Greek expansion.

Arvanitika has largely served its desired effect. While there were later Greek revolts, the Hellenic Republic was unable to provide any meaningful aid to the revolutionaries. Arvanitika eventually drifted out of the Ottoman orbit, pursuing a policy of neutrality (though being against any form of Greek expansionism). Lately, the Orthodox nation has grown close to Russia, who has sought to expand her influence in the Aegean region. The Hellenic Republic has become close with the United Kingdom, the latter of which ceded the Ionian Islands (except Corfu and surrounding islands, which joined Italy) to the Republic in the 1860s. Upon the nation's creation, the French King was also the Duke of the Duchy of Naxos. In 1848, when French revolutionaries overthrew the monarchy, the King of France fled to the Duchy, where his family remains ceremonial rulers. Claims to the throne of France are maintained, though the Duchy has positive relations with the French Republic. Irredentists in the Hellenic Republic still claim Arvanitika and vast swathes of European Turkey, but they are increasingly viewed as a fringe group, as the Hellenic Republic seeks to foster closer regional cooperation with her neighbors.

 

Zalesky won that one, with Reagent second and rvbomally in third. More weekly, hopefully.

 

I have it if you really want it, but as my first Inkscape map I consider it a bit of an old shame.

 

Send me a PM and attach/link the map. If it's too grody, be assured it will not see the light of day.

 

What changes of policy do you mean?

 

I'm ... unsure? But a lot of stuff linked to imgur is no longer available.

Anyhoo, MoTF 117.

False Friends


The Challenge
Make a map showing a place, event, organisation, or similar thing from an ATL that shares a name - but little else - with a place or event from OTL.

First, zalezsky:
Battle of Waterloo

The Natives have had enough! No longer will the British and French yolk [1] pretend upon their ancestral lands!
Thanks to the Genoese traders in the region large sums of Beaver furs paid for mass stockpile of arms and armour. Now the Natives take back their lands!
The League of the Defiant grows in manpower and zeal.

PS: I know that most of the cities are unlabeled (its supposed to be that way since they're insignificant states/cities)

PPS: My old family home is in Waterloo, Canada



[1] No doubt someone egged them on (Italics mine)



https://www.deviantart.com/zalezsky/art/League-of-the-Defiant-534576603

 

Martin23230:

On 12 February 1950, 23 European broadcasters met in Torquay to form the European Broadcasting Union. Although originally envisioned as a cooperative organisation, it soon drew the attention of national security services who saw the control of radio and television as an important interest during the Cold War. As such the EBU began to divert from its intended course, plans for pan-European cultural projects were shelved and instead cooperation and standardisation turned towards control and censorship....

This is a darker world than ours. Powerful EBU-sponsored propaganda made Western Europe far more paranoid and isolationist than previously, and this had a knock-on effect in the East. When their citizens finally had enough and rose up in revolt communism did not go quietly into the night. The European Liberation Wars which followed resulted in victory for the forces of `democracy', and in the fires of Europe the European Union was re-forged in the the European Confederation, a powerful super-state stretching from Iceland to the Urals.

The Confederation became heavenly centralised in the newly-rebuilt city of Prague, and ruled with an iron fist. The European populations became xenophobic and isolationist, combined with feelings of superiority from defeating communism without the help of the United States. All this was played up by the all-powerful EBU, which heavily censored newspapers, broadcasters and access the Global Internet.

It is the year 2015. The European Confederation is the most powerful state in the world, both externally and internally. Its citizens have a reasonable quality of life but at the cost of their freedoms.

Most powerful of the security services are the eyes and ears of Europe, who see and hear everything that occurs within the Confederation. It is organised into regional blocks so as the better pool resources and focus on different parts of the world, there have recently been talk of including Australia in order to focus on the growing Asia-Pacific region but many see that as only a temporary possibility. It operates under a name as feared by the populace as that of the KGB or the Stasi, the one thing that unites Europeans more than anything. It is...

 

Tsar of New Zealand:

An alternate Nova Scotia:

A Brief History of New Zealand said:
With the beginning of British colonisation of New Zealand in 1818, Scottish intellectuals and adventurers began to wonder if they might stand to gain from the best chance of a colonial pressure valve they had had since the abortive Acadian colony two centuries earlier (which itself had seen immigration of Irish moving to neighbouring Nova Hibernia, the new ‘Ireland-in-America’ [1]), and promptly formed the Alba Association.

The Royal New Zealand Company, pleased at the prospect of a quick influx of capital, gladly allowed the Alba Association to purchase a large portion of the South Island below the Rangitata River which was to be the new colony of Nova Scotia (Gaelic: Alba Nuadh), a home for the masses of Scots who felt there was nothing left for them in Scotland proper. With the issuing of Letters Patent in 1838 the nascent colony was separated from the rest of New Zealand, as the English in the north feared being overwhelmed by ‘Jocks,’ and the Scots in turn tired of funding English wars against the restive Maori of the Colony of New Zealand (who had some words to say about being evicted from their ancestral lands). The English had good reason to fear being outnumbered: by 1853 there were 30,000 Scottish settlers in the colony, aided by a Church mission to establish Presbyterian missions in the new lands.

The Nova Scotian Gold Rush of the 1860s was integral to securing the colony’s success, and towns sprouted across the Otago Highlands as Dunedin became the largest city in New Zealand and Nova Scotia put together, with the colony’s population rising above 80,000 by 1864 – it is no coincidence that the majority of Scottish emigration remained consistently directed to Nova Scotia – and although the gold rush had largely died down by 1867, the majority of Scots in particular stayed in a colony which seemed – and indeed, was – tailored to their kind.

Of course, the boom didn’t last forever; as emigration began drying up with the continued industrialisation of Scotland the motivation to make the long voyage south was less and less appealing. Still, by 1871 the population of Nova Scotia was about fifty-four percent Scottish or of Scottish origin [2], with Gaelic widely spoken as a first or second language, especially in County Wallace and the Otago Highlands (many placenames today are simple transliterations of the Gaelic). The largely democratic principles espoused by the Alba Association also helped to retain settlers, as the contrast with the increasingly baronial system of landholdings in the Province of Canterbury over the border made Nova Scotia seem wonderful in comparison.

Nonetheless, by the 1890s the viability of the colony had been called into question and, forced to decide between union with the rest of New Zealand as an influential province or with Australia as an uninfluential sheep farm, Nova Scotia’s legislature entered into negotiations with the Colonial Legislature of New Zealand, with canny Treasurer Julius Vogel helping persuade the ‘Jocks’ to vote for union on June 7, 1893 – a date since celebrated as Union Day.

While Nova Scotia’s existence was relatively brief, its major role in New Zealand’s early history and colonial period is not to be understated; today there are as many speakers of Gaelic in Nova Scotia as in Scotland, and cultural ties remain strong. Union also brought a major shift in the culture of New Zealand as the incorporation of tens of thousands of independent-minded Nova Scotians led to a period of democratic upheaval and – just as importantly – resulted in the relocation of the colonial capital from Auckland to the small regional port of Wellington [3]. Although the twentieth century would open Nova Scotia up to increased immigration and diversity, evidence of its Scottish heritage is still clear: from stately Dunedin to booming Kinloch, icy Invercargill to slightly-less icy Invercullen, and throughout the patchwork of small towns from Winton to Selkirk to Peebles to Geraldine, the Scottish spirit lives on at the bottom of the world.

[1] OTL Nova Scotia/New Brunswick. The neighbouring province of Avalon has remained largely English since the expulsion of the French Acadians in the 1760s.
[2] Followed by English settlers (including Australians), Irish, and sizable numbers of Welsh around Pembroke and Croats near Lochinvar.
[3] Although it must be said that many of the more hardcore Presbyterians were somewhat shocked at the idea of adopting female suffrage, which New Zealand had adopted in 1887.
Flag credit goes to Martin23230

 

Aven:

Green Ukraine

Here we see an map of the Far Eastern State of Cossacks, Buryats and Ukrainians, also known as "Green Ukraine" during the Ukrainian Crisis. The Russian Federation has been rocked by instability after instability since the Second Russian Civil War which ended the failed communist "utopia" that was the USSR. The UN ban on fossil fuel cars and the subsequent fall of oil exports to almost zero was the last straw as the government suddenly found its coffers dry and was unable to fund any but the most basic social programs. All major cities were experiencing protests, rioting and looting and the police was doing all it could to stop a complete collapse of order. That was when the Ukrainian Home Militias started popping up all over the ethnically Ukrainian areas in the Far East. Some wondered how they managed to get their hands on armored vehicles and even attack helicopters. Russian allegations towards the Federal Ukrainian State, independent since WWI and thriving on the bio-fuels produced on their great plains, were brushed off as lacking any evidence. They very quickly declared themselves an independent country from Russia. By the time the Russians organized any sort of coherent military front, they were met by the advancing militias. The organized power of the Russians has proven to be a bonus over the rebels and they were pushed to the Amur where they only just managed to hold the line with various cities and towns like Blagoveschenck coming under siege by the Russians. The area threatened to turn into a humanitarian crisis when Russia cut off all water and power to the region. However western Ukrainian State declared it could not stay idle during such a time as this and have been regularly sending naval convoys to deliver humanitarian aid to their eastern brethren. The rebels, probably due to the high quality Ukrainian food deliveries, quickly regained their strength and have pushed the Russians back. They even managed to stage a successful landing in the north (though due to their lack of naval capacity, it is still a mystery how they achieved this) and have since managed to cut off a sizable portion of the Russian army in the east. The Russian Navy, diminished to a minimum over the years of chaos, can't stop the Ukrainian convoy and is doing all it can to evacuate the Russian soldiers from the enclave. The fighting has recently stalled in the north as it moves back up into the highlands. With both sides exhausted, and with the nearing winter, an armistice has been agreed to and an artillery-demilitarized zone set up. Some say that this is just a ploy on the rebel side to resupply and start anew in the spring. Well, who knows?

Original too damn big. Here's the link: http://sta.sh/01natrfnhx63

 

Guildencrantz:

This didn't really turn out the way I wanted to, since about halfway through, I realized that a tourism brochure for Bermuda of all places isn't really necessary since, well, it's Bermuda. But dang it! I spent all that time and brain power to try to shoe horn Brazilian things into an Anglo-Bermudian context and I figured that this would be the best way to do it.

Some notes of clarification:
As noted, England got her colony on Brasil just like they did IOTL. Except ITTL, the British sailor who wrecked on shore wasn't a Dorsetman, but an Anglo-Irishman. So instead of being named the Somers Isles, Bermuda got named after the mythological island of Hy-Brasil

The British Empire is still chugging along and kept control over the United States. This caused Brasil to have a much higher population than OTL Bemuda.

The Great War went on from 1927 to 1935 and was fought between Britain and France with . The British Isles were briefly invaded. During the invasion, the king and queen were killed in a bombing raid. By that point, their children had already left on a boat bound for the American colonies. However, due to bad weather and the French navy, the new queen Anne II and her sisters had to hole up in Brasil for a few years.

The Amazon is a really big statue of a woman holding a sword.

Almain is what English speakers ITTL call Germany.

 

(I didn't add General Mosh's alt-California because while is a very nice map, it's basically just a very nice map of the Philippines with a different name: there's no backstory and not much AH. Sorry)

Zalezsky won, Aven was second, with Emperor of New Zealand and Martin23230 tying for third.

 

Oops! Forgot to update. Will do so tomorrow.

 

MoTF 118:

The Pale Continent


The Challenge
Make a map showing all or part of Europe in a timeline where it was colonised by countries from another region.

The Restrictions
There are no restrictions on when your PoD or map may be set. Fantasy, sci-fi, and future maps are allowed, but blatantly implausible (ASB) maps are not.

If you're not sure whether your idea meets the criteria of this challenge, please feel free to PM me.

---

 

Falkanner:

Fine, China

So, I took a stab at MotF. I was originally going to go all the way to to the late 1800s, but I got lazy, so sue me. I may add onto this sometime in the future.

Anyway, there are two main POD's in this timeline. The first POD is that the Black Death never occurs, meaning that feudalism never ends, Europe is still overpopulated, and there is enough of a butterfly effect to allow Europe's progress to be halted even more (for instance, Portugal has to abandon its exploration to fight a losing war with Spain). The second POD is that Zheng He's Treasure Voyages lead to the establishment of profitable trading posts throughout the Indian Ocean, which China builds off of until they are eventually able to make direct sea-contact with Europe at Portugal. China comes onto good terms with land-power obsessed Spain, and the king of Spain eventually grants Lisbon to China after a Chinese general helps to put down a Portugese rebellion.

Things are only going to get worse for Europe, just so you know.