Simple Request

I am a World History Teacher... at the end of the year, we do a "What If" Project...they pick any event, make a different decision than the one made (I'm being very general here)
What are some of your guys' basic ideas for a "What if..."

example...
What if the Apollo 11 Mission had ended in catastrophe? This was a student's idea, where she wrote an alternate history of the world since 1969 after Apollo 11 crashes on the moon.

I'd just like to collect some other ideas. Thanks in advance.
 

Driftless

Donor
I'm a light-weight compared to many on this board, so give that some consideration....

What age group are you teaching?

I think the natural tendency is to go for the big obvious Point-Of-Departure ideas: i.e. what if the South wins the Civil War? But those great big ideas can be an awful lot to chew on if you haven't put considerable thought on it before. You can easily get swallowed up in a cascade of source changes and butterfiles coming from the changes.

Perhaps a smaller, closer to their own experience nugget to work through would be better? I had a conversation with my oldest daughter, born in 1997, about entertainment pre-cable TV & Personal Computer. She is an intelligent young woman, but had a very hard time understanding how different entertainment and information was made available.

*edit* Also, think of the metaphor of playing pool. One ball strikes another, which strikes a third, etc. That is part of the mental excercise that these discussions often get into. One event typically dosen't operate without impacting another.
 
answer

Basic 10th Graders.

Trust me...we're not splitting the atom here.

The "Big" Point of Departure topics are what I'm looking for.
 
10th Grade? Is that 15-16 year olds?

And it depends on what you've taught them before- what were recent topics you've covered in lesson? They could use the knowledge of those lessons to think about the effects of the divergence.
 
Edit: Sorry, missed your comment about ages. I'd say the best ones are the old staples. What if Genghis Khan fell off his horse and died before achieving anything, what if William The Conqueror had fell of his horse and died before achieving anything, what if Emperor Barbarosa didn't fall off his horse and die, what if Humphrey beat Nixon in 1968, what if Hitler died in the Munich putsch. Simple ideas happening in a time when the class would be able to think about and know the background of.
 
yes

15-16 year olds.
It's a project we do at the end of the year. So, basically everything is on the table as far as topics go.
 
Here's my ideas:
- What if the Arab armies failed to conquer Egypt/Levant/North Africa?
- What if Coptic/Aramaic/North African languages (Berber, Punic, African Romance) survived the Arab-Islamic conquests?
- What if Lee Harvey Oswald failed to assasinate JFK?
- What if South Vietnam never fell?
 

Driftless

Donor
Here's a few ideas for some POD's (Point-Of-Departure)

* George Washington is not able to cross the Delaware and win the battle at Trenton in 1776 - what's left of the continental army dwindles away and the American Revolution folds.

* Gavro Princip does not assasinate Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, precipitating the start of WW1

* Nixon's dirty tricksters are not caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972?

* Edward VIII does not abdicate the British crown in 1936. What is the impact?

* What if there was a warning just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack that was acted upon by the US Navy & Army Air Corps?

* What if the US carriers were caught in the Pearl Harbor attack

* What if Rosa Parks got up and moved to the back of the bus?

* What if the early native Americans domesticated the bison, or caribou, or capybaras, or, or, or?

* Pick any of the pre & post Renaisance era scientists: Galilleo, Copernicus, Brahe, Newton and delay their discoveries. What's the impact?

* No Johannes Guttenberg investing/pioneering movable type and the printing press?

* No Martin Luther?

* No Martin Luther King?

* Abraham Lincoln survives. Does that change the Reconstruction Era?

* Werner von Braun goes to the Soviets instead of the US. Does that change the US space program?

* The Wright Brothers experiments fail. Who develops the first practical heavier-than-air plane? Where does that occur?
 

Driftless

Donor
The Rosa Parks idea is a good one for kids that age. I've had that discussion with my kids. The everday hero, who's just put with enough crap for their whole life, and today they stop putting up with the crap and they act. I doubt she had any idea at that moment of the impact of that simple change.
 
Hitler die in 42.

James Dean lives.

Zulu nation that lives to today.

John C. Breckinridge becomes president

German Empire makes a come-back in 1930.

Japanese Empire survives

Just my thoughts
 
Another round of my ideas:
- Jacobite forces won the battle of Boyne and Antrim over Williamite forces.
- No Irish Great Famine of the 1840s.
- No expulsion of Moriscos from 17th century Spain.
- "Liberia" is located in RL eastern South Africa.
- Spanish-speaking Californian leaders successfully convinced the federal government to create a state of their own.
- Rudolph Valentino lives and makes more movies.
- Greta Garbo continued her career until late 1980s-1991.
 
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Driftless

Donor
A few more.....

* Viking settlements are sustained in North America for hundreds of years

* The early sustained European contact with the Americas is by the English? or Dutch? or Irish? instead of Spain?

* Chinese explorers land on the west coast of North America and establish colonies in the 1400's to 1500's

* John Deere (or others) do not invent the steel moldboard plow, until much later. How does that impact the settlement of the Great Plains?

* Native Americans sail East and discover Europe, or Africa

* 732 Charles Martel loses the battle of Tours and the Moors control larger parts of Europe

* Delayed development of wheat, or rice, or maize as a crop. What is the impact on all of civilization?
 
I'd just like to collect some other ideas. Thanks in advance.

For 15-16th? It's probably best to keep things simple, critically with events your students could easily search about.

Failure of Apollo 11 is an actually good idea.

- Alexander the Great doesn't dies young : For young students, critically if they like action and peplum-esque stuff, it could be interesting.
- Rome loose Punic Wars.
- Mongols doesn't conquers Asia.
- Germany doesn't unite in the XIXth century.
- USMNT win the World Cup in 1930 : Soccer is as popular in USA than in other western
- No New Deal
- Delayed or butterflied A-Bomb
- Any Civil Rights movement event : MLK not being murdered or being murdered earlier, by exemple.
- 9/11 attacks fails
 
A few off the top of my head:

- In 1528 Anne Boleyn caught the dreaded sweating sickness, but against all odds survived. Five years later Henry VIII broke the Catholic Church in England from Rome in order to marry Anne, starting a Reformation that ended with England becoming a largely Protestant nation under Anne and Henry's daughter Elizabeth I. This also eventually led to many of England's colonies becoming Protestant majority countries as well. What if Anne had died in 1528?

- Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC. What if Caesar had listened to the soothsayer who warned him and had avoided the assassination? What if the conspiracy had been discovered before the assassination?

- Napoleon dies during the 1812 invasion of Russia. It's easy enough; although he would have never frozen or starved to death in the winter like many of his men because he a) was the leader and b) left before the worst of it, bullets and bacteria are no respecters of rank. How would his death affect the rest of Western Europe?

- FDR's polio leaves him in an iron lung. How would America have handled the Great Depression with a different president at the helm?

- The Silk Road doesn't move northward in Central Asia in the 1300s, and travellers never wander close to the dens of the marmots that carry an especially virulent strain of Yersinia pestis. They don't spread the disease westward, and the pandemic now called the Black Death doesn't occur. So what does?
 
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Another round of ideas:
- Nice and Savoy remained Italian.
- Turks consolidated their dominance over Central Asia.
- More Huguenot refugees settled in Switzerland,
- Florida (especially the central and southern parts), remained Spanish, and its role on the Cuban Revolution and its aftermath.
- A unified Bengal.
- Hugo Chavez successfully deposed in 2002.
 
Hmm. I'll add something from myself ;)

-Polish partitions weren't unavoidable- to be honest, they were most unlikely outcome. Tzaritza Catherina the Great proposed settlement to king Stanislaw and Czartoryscy. She'd help with partial reforms in exchange for alienation of Polish aristocracy (they were supposed to commit political suicide). OTL both parties agreed, but Polish side broke the deal. How would Europe look like with big Poland in central Europe (under Russian protectorate) having big chances to break free from Russia in close future?

-Julius Caesar doesn't cross Rubikon?

-Stilichon forges an agreement with Goths (there was a proposition to settle them in Noricum in exchange for their help) and stops barbarian at Rhine?

-Casimir the Great has male heir so Piast line stays in power in Poland?
 

Driftless

Donor
Three more...

* Corazon Aquino stays out of public life - what is the impact on Philippine history?

* No Lech Walesa - what's the impact on modern Poland?

* No Vaclav Havel - what's the impact on Czechoslovakia?
 
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