The Non-Eurasian Option

Even if China or some African nation rose to such worldwide prominence early (certainly within the realm of possibility), the communication and logistic hurdles would prevent an entire world under one flag (as required in the OP). Look at Rome: a dominant power in its day, its sheer size required it to be split for administration purposes. And didn't even control all Europe, much less the world. The technology barely exists now, if at all.

EDIT: Come to think of it, China is still a Eurasian country, so it doesn't fit the OP anyways.

I was responding to someone who said that an Eurasian country couldn't do it either: and I said "in the modern era", by which I didn't mean the _early_ modern Era, but the era which involves things like steamships, telegraphs, and other stuff fourth century Rome lacked.... :)

(Not that I consider that a particularly likely scenario: why should be money and effort be spent civilizing a bunch of barbaric roundeyes? If they want to be civilized, they should come and learn.)

Bruce
 
Actually, the most plausible scenario might be after 1900. Much nastier WWII, where either the Nazis control Europe for a while, or WWIII starts almost immediately after WWII. In such scenarios, the US would be the only remaining superpower, with Britain and the Commonwealth as junior partners. You could then easily see an alt-UN with real teeth, which the US could view as their puppet, at least initially. Then the world capital might be in New York or San Francisco.
 
Actually, the most plausible scenario might be after 1900. Much nastier WWII, where either the Nazis control Europe for a while, or WWIII starts almost immediately after WWII. In such scenarios, the US would be the only remaining superpower, with Britain and the Commonwealth as junior partners. You could then easily see an alt-UN with real teeth, which the US could view as their puppet, at least initially. Then the world capital might be in New York or San Francisco.

This tends to privilege our TL: after all, with PODs after the rise of agriculture in the middle east, similar scenarios might be spun with Japanese speaking, Spanish Speaking, or Basque-language-group superpowers in North America. Calling it "most plausible" is to say that the US is the most likely north American superpower through all the multiverse... :)

Bruce
 
This tends to privilege our TL: after all, with PODs after the rise of agriculture in the middle east, similar scenarios might be spun with Japanese speaking, Spanish Speaking, or Basque-language-group superpowers in North America. Calling it "most plausible" is to say that the US is the most likely north American superpower through all the multiverse... :)

Bruce
1) In many timelines you won't have a single superpower in North America, but more evenly matched ones.
2) In how many TL's are the remaining European states likely to totally destroy themselves? I think having both Hitler and Stalin at that point in history was at least mildly unlikely.
3) sure, with a PoD thousands of years ago, you can do lots of things. but the farther back you go, the greyer any '2000' endpoint will be.
4) it doesn't take much for WWII to be a lot nastier than OTL. It takes quite a bit to have all of Eurasia conquered by a non-Eurasian power, again, without a PoD thousands of years ago.
 
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