Can't wait to see more details on Ayutthaya (and the other realms of Southeast Asia).
The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline
- Thread starter Augenis
- Start date
Because Revanchist Japan would be Very hostile to Unitarians(as they overthrew the emperor.)
I'm going to hold off on answering this question until we get more information on India. The next official update is going to cover India, so we won't be waiting long
Is Nusantara a single country? Whiteshore's guest post names it as a confederation of states, and Maritime Southeast Asia is divided into a number of separate countries on the map.
Chapter 97: The Sun Sets
Part 97: The Sun Sets (1948-1951)
The late king had three potential heirs (a few daughters he had were automatically excluded from inheritance), each one of them representing a completely different world. The eldest son and the heir apparent was Prince Robert, a man, while somewhat unknown to the outside world, was noted as a royalist potentially even more reactionary than his father. German and French media was already acquainted with a few visits he had made to the continent as the heir apparent during the War of the Danube, and while the support for the "crusade against Unitarianism" that the British prince gave was a sign of relief, Prince Robert's clearly negative view towards constitutional democracy in Germania, looking down on this "ochlocratic rule" as a sign of weakness, didn't give the Europeans many hopes for rapprochement. It was also an open secret that the heir was influenced by the court politician Earl Oswald Allenby. Britologist historians, well aware of the story of the 18th century anti-intellectualist British politician Sir Henry Braddock, noted a number of similarities between the historical figure and Earl Allenby - a reactionary figure in the British political field espousing a devolution of the recent reforms and technological advances taking place in the kingdom, with plenty of influence in the court and among the Catholic population. A fervently Christian, brutish, though not very likable minister, Allenby used his personal contacts with Prince Robert as a way to strengthen his own power and potentially employ his vision for Britannia through the future monarch. Though he had many powerful friends, the number of enemies he had was just as vast - many courtiers saw the Earl as a threat to their own influence, while the slow, but growing grassroots progressive movement, aiming to restore the limited democracy of the past, viewed him as a condensation of everything terrible with current Britannia.
Earl Oswald Allenby, Britannia's Minister of Learning since 1935
The middle son, Prince Harold, was an air force pilot and had zero aspirations in politics. As soon as The Troubles began, he flew to Swedish Norway to never be seen in the court of Britannia again.
Archbishop Oliver of Canterbury
1948 also marked the resurgence of something which appeared to have already been lost to history - the Irish and the Scottish. Before the 20th century, the dominant Englishmen ran a brutal, but noticeably effective colonization policy in the two Reformist parts of the islands - through a combination of unequal land division and appropriation, religious oppression, encouraged English immigration and English-only education, the two Celtic nations and languages were pushed to the brink of extinction. Thousands emigrated to the New World, forming noticeable Celtic communities in New England, New Sweden, New France, Virginia and the VFS. However, colonization was not absolute, and while the cities of Dublin, Glasgow and Edinburgh had long since become as purely English as Lancashire, Reformism and the cultures associated with them endured in the Highlands and parts of western Ireland - a slow thaw of English oppression in the 19th century, coupled with a shift of colonization routes from the Home Islands to Britannia's colonies, meant that these minorities endured for the long haul. And now, with the situation in the Kingdom slowly deteriorating, the Irish and the Scots raised their heads in awareness of a potential chance for freedom. Organizations like the Irish Brotherhood and the United Scots were brewing trouble by secretly agitating against the government, coming out to the open more and more often, and, most importantly, appealing to other European countries, dealing a heavy blow to Britannia's already imperfect image to the outside world.
Troubles in Ireland and Scotland, coupled with growing unrest in England itself, starting with agitations of various sorts and bread riots, made up the external and most visible part of The Troubles - the game of thrones within the court of Britannia, however, was just as important for the unfolding events. Earl Allenby, as the new King's primary benefactor, immediately received a number of important positions within His Majesty's new government - and this sudden elevation of power gave confidence to the politician. With the Earl's recommendations, Robert III dismissed his father's former liberally minded ministers such as Albert Hart, former Minister of Foreign Affairs (responsible for successfully keeping Britannia neutral during the War of the Danube, despite their intervention through military exports), and Gerald Rand, former Minister of People's Affairs (overseer of the Rand Compromise between the Royal government and the Virginian elite, preventing a full blown rebellion in 1933). However, while consolidating his grip over the state, the Earl made a number of hasty and miscalculated decisions (the purging itself wasn't well liked either, for obvious reasons), which turned much of the court openly against him. This conflict was used by the faction led by the Bishop of Canterbury, which began to call for Allenby's resignation - and not only that, but they also found the guts to declare that the King himself is unfit to rule. No King truly blessed by God would ever consider letting this madman run the show from the sidelines!..
The situation in Britannia itself worsened, and in October of 1948, with the winter slowly creeping in, Franz Wagner, on the behalf of the Kingdom of Germania, approached the British embassy in Vienna and offered economic aid as well as humanitarian relief to prevent a complete collapse of the state. The proposal was discussed in the Royal Court for a number of days until King Robert, after being persuaded by the Earl, officially declined international aid. The loyalists had some justifications for this action - it would be humiliating to the Kingdom to accept relief from foreign heretics, it would most likely come with strings attached, potentially making Britannia economically dependent on the Germans, so on and so forth. However, this explanation didn't sway either the bitter court nor the civilian population. Popular unrest grew even worse, developing into week-long protests across the nation's cities, too much for the police force to handle, despite everything from media shutdowns to police beatings being used to retain order. While at first, these protests had no ideological bent and were only composed of people lashing out at the current poor state of affairs, the message soon changed from this neutral tone to a call for change, restoring the attempt at democracy of the past, bringing pluralism to the nation, so on and so forth. The "People's Priest" and the Mass in Canterbury surely had something to do with this.
A labor strike in Birmingham, September 1948
No King of Britannia had ever abdicated before!
The crown went to his younger brother Harold and stayed on his head for the record time of three hours - that is roughly how long it took for the pilot in his new house in Bergen to write a telegram of abdication. Not that many people even expected for the apolitical Prince to even consider returning to Britannia to rule as a King. And so, King Edmund III of Britannia was coronated in a hastily planned ceremony in London, April 3rd, 1949. As the figurehead of the reformer wing of the Royal Court, Edmund III vested a large amount of political capital, and, much to the dismay of the reactionaries, indeed went through with the feared constitutional reforms. The Royal Decree on the Restoration of the People's Institutions and the Parliament declared, as should be expected by such a name, the restoration of the suspended set of laws published by the past King James III, restoring the state of limited democracy in Britannia. Later royal decrees strengthened the inclusiveness of British democracy, granting semi-universal suffrage similar to other European nations. Foreign aid flowing from the rest of Europe soon began to alleviate the worst of the food crisis and the economic downturn, and once the first democratically elected Ministry was appointed and the nation began to open itself to the world, this recovery continued.
However, Britannia's path to the modern world was far from easy. For one, resistance to democratic reforms persisted. Radical Christian, neo-Puritan and Allenbyist organizations such as the Lord's Resistance Army began to form almost immediately, demanding the destruction of the "heretical" regime, and their fight against it was far from peaceful. In the beginning, when these groups gathered widespread support against all of Britannia, the nation appeared to be on the verge of civil war, but once much of the original leadership found themselves captured, imprisoned or fleeing, the resistance elements began to resort to terrorism. The Troubles, marked by economic downturn, political instability and violence, continued until the early 1960s, and the echo of the events there persist until today. The Scots and the Irish, despite playing an important part of the events, got the shaft - even a democratic Britannia suppressed separatist movements in the north and west, while at the same time denying that this problem even exists. Democracy in Britannia got off a rocky start, too, its first challenge being the January Events in 1951 - King Edmund III, disappointed with the ineffectiveness of the democratically elected government, employed the power of Royal Prerogative to disband it and request a new one to be called, a symbol of the primary difference between Britannia and other constitutional monarchies in Europe. Unlike, say, in Germania, where the King is primarily a figurehead and holds no power, the King of Britannia is a real political power with his own duties and prerogatives, holding the power of vetoing laws and legislative acts, among others, which makes the situation in the Kingdom very precarious, and what has led many politologists to describe it as a "semi-constitutional monarchy". There is a legitimate threat of the democracy in the state being eroded at the whim of the monarch - as it is not just a possibility, but an event which had happened in Britannia's past. The January Events were only the first example of how the power of the British monarch could clash with the will of the people, and their shadow looms over the nation to this day.
King Edmund III speaking during the aftermath of the 1951 British constitutional crisis. The January Events were the first event in Britannia shown on television - a German invention, first introduced during the mid 1930s.
Virginia was the last European colony in South Vespucia to gain its independence, and it joined a brotherhood of extremely diverse nations. You have the Inca Empire, one of the world's most densely populated nations despite being mostly in the Andes mountains, and a growing worldwide tourist attraction due to its combination of rich preserved Native Vespucian culture, pristine ancient monuments and lovely environment; you have the Dominion of New France, a nation which, after the beginning of the oil boom of "Lake" Venezia in the north of the country in the 1920s, devolved from a dominion treading the same democratic path as its original owner into an oil-based oligarchy, dominated by extremely wealthy barons imposing their will over national politics; you have the Sao Martinho Democracy, a tiny African-Vespucian state, the first nation in the world to introduce universal male and female suffrage in the mid 19th century, half a century before France or Germania; and you have the three Portuguese-speaking nations which once composed Manuela, which have abandoned their former wartorn and competitive past. It would be hard to describe South Vespucia in one sentence - it, as the famous early 20th century Incan fantasy writer, the first of his country to reach a worldwide audience, Yuraq Allcca Pillpe, stated, "is a microcosm of human culture".
A different story from Virginia followed the fate of New England. New England, being the last large scale colony founded by Britannia, was always the "problem child" of the Empire. Not because of the people living there, but because of just how hard to colonize it was. Before the construction of the Los Angeles Canal, it was quite literally two oceans away from the British Isles, and even the construction of the canal only slightly alleviated this problem. Few people wanted to live in this distant, unexplored land, and colonization incentives could only get a colony so far. As such, only a small part of the area claimed by the colony of New England was actually colonized and integrated into the Empire - the rest was inhabited by various Native Vespucian tribes, which were often not even aware that they lived in British land. Native British population in 1900 reached only about 200 thousand people, and even the most optimistic estimates of Native Vespucian population put the total of the colony at 500 thousand - extremely sparse for a region eclipsing well over two million square kilometers. This, among other things, made New England extremely vulnerable to the 1905 New England gold rush. On August 3rd, 1905, the Irish colonist James O'Neil struck gold in a mine in the vast New England mountains, sparking an unprecedented rush of immigration from opportunists seeking to acquire riches through gold mining. While British immigration increased somewhat as a result, what overshadowed it was hundred of thousands of immigrants from the nearby Mejico, the absolute majority of them being illegal immigrants. Although Mejico had its own gold and silver mines (though depleted), as well as a developing oil industry along the Eastern Gulf, few of the millions of impoverished peasants living in the agrarian country couldn't have at least salivate st the prospect of moving north and striking gold to live in luxury forever. These Mejican immigrants, most of them Nahua, soon overshadowed the tiny local British population and, as a result, failed to integrate or assimilate. British authority attempts to curtail immigration or deport the immigrants already in failed.
So came The Troubles, and, much like the rest of the Empire, the New Englanders began campaigning for the independence of their own colony - however, this is where they were met with a Mejican reaction. The foundation of the New England Assembly was almost immediately followed by the Sons of Tenochtitlan, who sought Mejican-dominated parts of the colony to join the Empire of Mejico. With British colonial authorities sent to flee, a war between the separatist and the irredentist forces, the Mejican-Englander War, began. And lasted for a grand total of three weeks, as a Mejican military intervention sealed the war in their favor. New England territory up to the city of New York was annexed. What remained was but a shadow of the former colony, the most sparsely inhabited country on the planet, spanning vast reaches of the northwest Vespucian wilderness, yet having only one city above 10 thousand inhabitants, Jamestown, next to Jamestown Island. Though the vast and beautiful nature across the country, completely untouched by man, has since become a tourist hub, New England remains as one of the least developed countries in the New World.
Oceania was a geopolitical oddity. Composed of over a hundred islands and one entire continent, it was nevertheless all governed as a single colony and thus, during The Troubles, broke away as one nation. One massive nation, almost as large as all of Europe on its own - in size, of course, not in population, which only counted about 11 million in 1948. An another notable thing to mention about Oceanian nationalism is that it was nigh-intrinsically tied to the ideology of Unitarianism. This was because early Oceanian separatist organizations, which later former the basis of the colony's independence struggle, were heavily influenced by the nearby Commonwealth, especially India, which, in an effort to strengthen its own sphere of influence, fostered the Oceanian separatist movement by providing it funding, arm and Aankhein agent support. Some historians guess that Harold Stassen, the leader of the independence movement and later the 1st Democrat of Oceania, was either himself an Aankhein agent or held very close ties with the Indian secret service.
The role of the All-Virginian Conference and the New England Assembly in Oceania was executed by the elected Committee for the Liberation of Oceania, which declared the independence of the Unitarian Republic of Oceania - a move which instantly sparked the Oceanic Civil War. The Unitarians in control of the Committee clashed with both the British colonial units and their democratic nationalist counterparts, led by the charismatic, but far less nationally influential Benedict Scrooge, not to mention Maori and Native Oceanian separatist uprisings, turning Oceania's path to independence the most bloody across the whole Empire, with over 100 000 people post in a conflict that spanned over a year. In the end, the result of the war came down to foreign support, and while Scrooge received some material and financial help from EASA, it was simply overwhelmed by the funding, large equipment support and "boots on the ground" which were sent by Nijasure. In the beginning of 1950, Unitarian landships stormed the last holdings held by Oceanic democratic forces on the islands of Terra Ultima. The Unitarian Republic of Oceania applied to join the Commonwealth the same year. "Controlled Revolution" claimed yet another victim.
Britannia's African holdings was perhaps the only part of the former Empire that it managed to keep, for a variety of reasons. The obvious one was that here, the Brits were a minority, overshadowed by the local Africans. In addition, the colonies here were the most recent, only started in the 19th century, and the majority of Brits here were bureaucrats and colonial overseers, rather than colonists. Only the Portuguese attempted settler colonialism in Africa. With... odd results. Despite that, Britannia's sphere of influence over Central Africa suffered. Many of the statelets here ended up shifting to a wealthier and stronger benefactor - France.
But hey, at least it's better than nothing...
---
You may notice that this chapter has no map update.
This is because I originally did not plan this update to be all about Britannia - however, it turns out that the Britannia parts of the chapter ended up as a full chapter in of themselves.
There will soon be a second, parallel chapter, which will detail the plenty of worldwide events which happened during this time. I need a rest.
The Troubles and imperial collapse were over a lot sooner than expected. One could assume that they're just the prelude to a more drawn-out conflict within the Home Islands or Africa later, but the discussion of Britannian semi-constitutionalism in the present tense implies that there's been no radical changes in the way things work in London since 1951.
I didn't see that coming. I guess this is what I get for not reading 1984...
So, what became of (OTL) New Guinea during what happened to Oceania, I may ask? Also, what OTL city is roughly analogous location-wise to Conway? Buenos Aires?
New Guinea remains divided between Lusang and Oceania. Conway is Buenos Aires.
Guys, you won't believe what I found. So I was browsing TvTropes and found this http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheSilverKnight
The page is pretty short and barren though.
The page is pretty short and barren though.
Holy crap. And it's updated to the most recent chapter, too! I love this.
Can we start compiling tropes to add there? I'd start with The Empire with the Lithuanians, Ottomans, Mughals, Chinese, and Inca as examples with the Shun and Inca lasting until the "present day".
Angels sang out
in immaculate Down from the heavens
Descended the Ottomans
Who delivered an invasion
Which could shatter nations
Into the south
Of the Triple Crown
Who fell over on the ground
Writhing in pain
As England changed back
Into protestant
But Ottomans saw through
Their clever disguise
And they crushed their allies
In between it's army
P.S:
want to see my post?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ry-based-on-drew-durnil.437179/#post-16532531
Read more: Lemon Demon - The Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny Lyrics | MetroLyrics
So, which of the "Big Four" (China, India, France, and Germania) is roughly the most powerful?
Chapter 98: Miracles
Part 98: Miracles (1948-1951)
Five years had passed since the end of the Russo-Lithuanian War, and through a combination of careful government interventionism and restored political stability, the economy and society of Lithuania had fully recovered (although was still considerably weaker than Germania or even Bohemia and Hungary) - and this, combined with many other factors, but especially Lithuania's participation in the Defense Commission, is what led to perhaps the most defining event in postwar Lithuania. The Lithuanian economic miracle.
In the 1948 Lithuanian legislative election, Democrat Antanas Garšva etched his name into Lithuanian history by becoming the first democratically elected head of state of Lithuania to obtain a second term - despite his party slowly dividing itself under ideological lines and the postwar high of national unity fading away, the White Shroud nevertheless collected a little bit over 40 percent of the vote, a notable plurality which, after some coalition negotiations, granted Garšva the mandate of the Prezidiumas. A notable result of the election came for the Lithuanian Avengers, the unofficial successor of the Revival Front, which, having lost much of their original momentum, only gathered about 7 percent of the electorate and thus faded from the spotlight, for now. A coalition of Unitarian parties fared even worse, failing to gather even a single percent. Post-election violence, radical nationalist and revolutionary Unitarian guerrillas, clashes with the Russians and Ruthenians had become history.
The reasonable political situation in Lithuania as well as their participation in the Defense Commission cooled off many worried heads - no, the Lithuanians were not going to restore their nationalist dictatorship nor turn Unitarian all of a sudden, you are all safe. This foreign confidence in Lithuanian stability allowed European, especially German, investors, to look into the potential strengths this country had to offer - and in a world whose economy was rapidly switching from an industrial economy to technology based post-industrialism, this Eastern European country was like a perfect match. Compared to Western Europe or even other Central European states, the workforce here was notoriously cheap, yet at the same time educated and qualified thanks to effective education reforms. The transport and logistics infrastructure Lithuania inherited from Revivalism and improved upon was not an inch worse than the equivalents found in the West, either - thus, even if natural resources there were scarce, bringing them from neighboring states was not too difficult. And finally, when compared to the rest of Europe, Lithuania has traditionally been a country with a higher level of government interventionism than most others - ever since the years of the Empire, in fact, when much of . While some saw this as a big minus, others definitely enjoyed the stability provided by a more state influenced economy, especially the types of industries which were still unproven and thus needed all the stability they get - for example, consumer electronics, or modern biotechnology.
Rapidly rising levels of foreign investment was what kickstarted the Economic Miracle - massive French and German conglomerates such as the automotive giant "Picardie", one of the world's primary producer of consumer automobiles, and the Sengupta producer "Riederer", just to give a few examples, began establishing themselves in this 'virgin land', especially in the recently established free economic zones of Lentvaris (next to Vilnius), Reval, Liepoja and Grodno - the economic boom would later turn all four of them into major cities, as dozens of thousands would move there through the following decade in search of a wealthier life. The sudden surge of foreign investment was a major cause of inflation (combated by the National Bank of Lithuania through deflationary measures), but at the same time increased the amount of capital in the hands of the Lithuanians themselves, especially in foreign currency, kickstarting rapid domestic economic development. This all, to put in bluntly, resulted in rapid growth of real GDP beyond even the wildest expectations of both domestic and foreign economists. The 1950s would become the era which saw many Lithuanian start-ups that later became worldwide giants, especially the Kaunas-based company "Santarvė" ("Harmony"), founded by two former landowners' sons, Martynas Žukauskas and Antanas Sniečkus, which was one of the first in the world to apply the technology of transistors, first discovered in German military laboratories in the last inches of the War of the Danube, and would go on to revolutionize the field of consumer electronics as we know it.
Economic data from the period shows it all - in 1945, when Lithuanian postwar recovery was still taking place and not yet fully done with, the Second Republic had a GDP per capita of 5500 German thalers, which, while above average for the rest of the world (after all, it was composed of the wealthiest and most developed parts of the former Empire of Lithuania), it was smaller than the Visegradian successor countries' average of 7500 thalers, not even talking about the 12 000 of Germania or 11 500 of France. By 1956 - interestingly enough, an another very important year for Lithuanian history - this balance had changed: Lithuania's GDP per capita had risen to almost 10 000 thalers, beating out much of Central and Southern Europe (not Italy, of course) and getting closer to the established Western European states. However, this was not the end of Lithuanian economic history - the Economic Miracle had to end some day, too. That happened in the late 1960s, when growing fears from Western and Central Europe about Lithuanian competition would have severe adverse affects on the Lithuanian economy. But that is just the distant future.
A sight from the Lentvaris FEZ - the Lentvaris Thermoelecric Plant. Electricity production to supply the resource-hungry economy was one of the main priorities of the economic side of the Garšva administration.
Much like the Crimean militarists expected, Germania only issued protests and sent humanitarian aid to the Ruthenian government, but there was an important factor that hadn't been considered - the two Russias. Despite their common fight against Revivalist Lithuania in the form of the Russian united front, Russia and Volga had somewhat distanced themselves from each other - the democratic Volgak society didn't feel right supporting an authoritarian regime, while Russia was too busy rebuilding to turn their relationship into anything greater. However, the news of the Crimean invasion of Krajina threw them both into the same bag. Despite already being 75 years old, Alexei Krutov enthusiastically lent support to his nation's southern neighbour, first starting out with generous military equipment supplies to Kiev and finally declaring war on the Crimean-Ruthenian alliance in early July. While not many Russians actually saw the battlefield - only about eight thousand volunteers - but their support and experience in the form of invited veteran officers was vital in reorganizing and strengthening the Ruthenian army. Volga and its new chairman Nikolay Shervanadze were a lot more reluctant and stayed out of the war in the end, partially to not incite their own Crimean Tatar population - however, they nevertheless denounced the aggressive Crimean invasion, enacting a trade embargo on the alliance and supporting the Ruthenians with volunteers and equipment.
The tide of the war turned with the five-week long Battle of Mariupol on the coast of the Azov Sea - the initially rapidly advancing Crimean armored forces were halted by a multi-layered Ruthenian defense, and a defender counterattack, costly for both sides, pushed the Tatars back. From there, it was nothing but retreat for the formerly victorious Crimean forces, and after a few attempts to delay the Slavic advance, the military government gave the command to retreat behind the Iskandar's Wall. Alongside the Crimean military, some 200 000 Tatars living in Krajina retreated to the peninsula, worsening the situation in the already overpopulated nation. Here, the war turned into a stalemate - the Ruthenians had no capability to breach through the chokepoint and the navy guarding it, while the Crimeans had no chance of making a second push. Circassia couldn't even be reached by land, lest Ruthenia had to go through neutral Volga. As such, even though the hostilities in the Crimean War ceased by 1950, the actual armistice was only signed in 1955, after some threats of Volgak intervention and some careful negotiations. A full peace treaty never happened.
However, while the result of the war was inconclusive, what it did was reignite the idea of pan-East Slavic unity, and this time for good. It had been the third time in these few decades that the three East Slavic nations - the Ruthenians, the Russians and the Volgaks - banded together against an enemy. The fight against the Empire of Lithuania during the Great European War and the Russian War of Independence; the Russian united front during the Russo-Lithuanian War; and now the Crimean War. With every one of these wars, each of the three East Slavic nations would start to see each other less like indifferent neighbors and more like brotherly allies. And this time, it was no longer just an idea limited to pan-Slavist circles or to nationalist parties - even the governments of the countries themselves began to see that with a strengthening Lithuania, an ever-powerful Germania, a rising China and a growingly threatening India all around them, the only path the East Slavs could take was a closely knit defensive and economic union, slightly similar to the European Defense Commission which Germania headed, except even more tightly bound. Far from everyone would have agreed to this plan, but most recognized that without each other, the Slavs are only one step away from being divided and reconquered again.
It is perhaps fitting that three months after the alliance known as The Three Bogatyrs, encompassing Russia, Krajina and Volga, was officially signed and founded in the town of Donetsk, not far from the tri-point of the countries' borders, that the most vocal supporter of the "Greater Russian" union, Alexei Krutov, died. More accurately, he died in June 30, 1951. Having been the ruler of Russia for over 20 years and having championed its struggle for independence a decade prior to that, Krutov immortalized himself as one of the most famous Russians of all time, on the same rank and personality cult as the 16th century revolutionary Ivan Kratkov.
Urban warfare in Mariupol, 1949
The echoes of the Troubles in Britannia, meanwhile, were picked up in the colony of New Sweden. With the fall of British authority over Virginia and New England, New Sweden and Spanish Caribbean had become the only colonies left in the New World - and while the latter ad already been thoroughly assimilated into Spanish culture and politics much like Argelia, the former was not happy with the current situation at all. Though sparsely populated, New Sweden had developed a sophisticated autonomous society with its own developed national identity, and this population sparsity had been the only thing keeping the colony in line for now. In 1950, the inhabitants of the colony decided to repeat the formula which worked in Virginia and New England - an independently held election, organized by the local separatists parties, formed the Assembly of Vinland - "Vinland" being the historical Viking name for the region, adopted by the independence-seeking politicians of the colony to differentiate themselves from the mainland.
Unlike in Britannia, the odds seemed to be against the Vinlanders, as Sweden was definitely not in the same shambling position - however, at the same time, Sweden proved to be unwilling to fight. New Sweden had been, through and through, a money sink since its foundation, requiring money for further colonization efforts and other matters. While in the past it used to pay for part of its cost through fur export, the continuous drop in fur demand as people switched to other types of textile meant that even that was no longer an option. Of course, outright abandoning their only major colony was not an option either, the Swedes still had their pride - thus, the colonizers and the colonists entered negotiations. While at first, the Vinlanders seemed to only want full independence, a further examination of their economical and geopolitical situation led the separatists to reexamine their choices, and eventually they agreed to a New France-style dominion approach. With all set and done, 1951 saw the foundation of the Dominion of Vinland - still with the King of Sweden as their head of state, but an independent democratic government and essentially full independence, minus some ties to Sweden.
Vinland's path through history would become a difficult one, however, and the nation would eventually become economically reliant on their southern neighbor and an economic giant, the Vespucia Free State.
Outside of the Crimean War and the collapse of the British Empire to carefully observe, Europe, especially Central Europe, was also setting its sights on Hungary - a country which had just done the unthinkable. The postwar period was not a peaceful one for the Hungarians - the nation found it hard to cope with the baggage placed under it after the Confederation of Unitarian States and the fall of Visegrad. Provisional governments kept forming and disbanding one after another, and public trust in the leadership sunk to a new low. With nothing else left to choose, and hoping to create even an ounce of stability in a figurehead, the Hungarian government of July 1950 decided to invite Karel von Luxemburg, a businessowner in Leipzig and a cousin of the deceased Ferenc III, the last monarch of Visegrad, as the first King of the restored Kingdom of Hungary, Karoly I. This was immediately met with negative responses from Poland and Bohemia - after all, a monarchist restoration in Hungary is only one step away from ambitions to recreate Visegrad, right? Despite Karoly I's constant guarantees that he does not seek to claim the vacant thrones of Poland and Bohemia, the relations of the three states suffered regardless.
The world was slowly, but surely returning to its normal rhythm, one so forgotten after the War of the Danube - however, that rhythm was not going to be permanent. For a particular death would soon set the conditions needed for a change to the history of the world so drastic that few could have anticipated it.
The world in 1951
Also added Nusantara Federation, because apparently I forgot about them for 20 years. (Says a lot about this TL in general
)Well, once again, the answer depends on how you define the question. A country can be powerful militarily, economically, diplomatically... and the answer differs a lot depending on what you're trying to ask.