I imagine this obsession with "socialist radicalism" would have nothing to do with the Australian focus on indigenous rights.
And now a teaser for the next update...
These Fair Shores: The Commonwealth of New England
- Thread starter CosmicAsh
- Start date
So it seems that not only did the anglophone colonies on the Australian(?) continent not unite, but they also don't have the best relationship.
And now a teaser for the next update...
Can't wait to see what you have in store for them!
I'm surprised that it's even allowed to exist at all, given how the Empire is hostile to any form of separatism.
Around the mid-1800s, mainly to better integrate newly-acquired Spanish colonies in the Caribbean.
I'm a little amused at how horrified everyone was to see what the United States became in this world, and now we're finding out that this is actually an improved state of affairs that only occurred around a decade ago.
This update was made possible by @Veridian who helped immensly with research, copyediting, structure, and the format of this update. I must also thank @Erinthecute for her copyediting and formatting help as well!
Chills down the spine.
This is incredible. I've wanted to see something like this ever since I realised what TTL's United States were like. Speaking as someone trying and struggling mightily with Wiki edits, your work is an inspiration. My hat's off. And now for the questions:
- I notice a lot of the heads of state are Southerners. Hogan seems to be the only one from a state I wouldn't consider 'Southern' (though I suppose that depends on what you think about Kentucky). I'd surmised that, with New England having gone its own way, TTL's USA is more Southern-centric, so this doesn't surprise me. I am a bit surprised, though, not to see many Midwesterners here. You've said before that the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri rivers are the heart of TTL's USA, and the capital is Cincinnati.
- Playing off of the above, when a foreigner (say, a New Englander or a Canadian) hears an American leader, odds are that person hails from the Mississippi area. Does the average Anglophone in TTL think of the "American accent" as what we'd consider a Southern one? Come to think of it, how (if at all) has the altered spelling impacted the American accent?
- Constitutional Convention #3 in 1936? Can you provide a bit more detail as to what the first two looked like and how they failed? For that matter, was the United States ever under an alt-Articles of Confederation ITTL?
- I'm also very much reminded of the Soviet Union here. Howard Smith is obviously Stalin, then we have a succession of old men raised in his shadow jockeying for power and (mostly) continuing his legacy. Jaims Martin, like Brezhnev, provides a return to the hard line... and then we have Larri Hogan, who is a Gorbachev of sorts (though perhaps Deng Xiaoping would be a better analogy). Just an observation, mind, and obviously the similarities only go so far.
Down south to Mexico - so close and yet so far from home.
"Improved"
In many ways, everything that's been going on recently with the U.S. is just the natural end point of Hamiltonianism and a byzantine government that, time and again, snuffed out every bit of meaningful reform that didn't go towards sustaining the system for a little while longer. Everything is relative - we're excited to get to how America ended up like this When It's Ready.
- Right on the mark. It's mentioned in a few places in the update, but the absence of a New England, among other factors, means that for all intents and purposes TFS!USA is dominated by the South politically, economically, and culturally. The lack of any Midwestern leaders stems from the vast patronage systems that leaders like Smith and Unruh especially have upheld benefiting their Southern peers, although of course that doesn't mean pols from other parts of the country won't be important at all in later updates. But I couldn't possibly comment.
- Pretty much. Imperial media features Southern gentlemen with Louisianan drawls as villains, that kind of stuff. You'd be a touch surprised at the extent of that last part - it'd be difficult but still entirely possible for an average American IOTL to converse with their counterparts ITTL. Old habits die hard; it only took a little over a century ago for naming conventions to adapt after all.
- Yes on the Articles of Confederation. Spoilers on the rest
- It's an apt observation - I will concede that we did take inspiration from the USSR in ebbs and flows, such as Morton being a Chernenko and Sale as Andropov. The two aren't equivocal at all by any means and allusion only goes as far (I'm more partial to Hogan as Assad), but take that as you will.
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I just wanted to chime in and say what Veridian says on the U.S. is, in fact, canon. The United States has been a joint development project, and will continue to be so moving forward.
Now taking bets on how long it will be before there's a Fifth Constitutional Convention.
Assuming there's a United States left after the war, of course.
If there is, it'll be far smaller, and sans much of the South and Texas, probably, if Louisiana's secession is anything to go by
Judging by the increasing resistance to the Imperial invasion and the general unfeasibility of occupying a country as large as TTL's United States, I doubt the United States will be completely dissolved even if public anger is enough to sustain a military effort for another year or so. At this point, the secession of the former American possessions in the Caribbean is practically a done deal, and Lousiana's resistance has been successful enough so far that they should be able to secure British protection, but the worryingly unclear situation in Texas doesn't leave me with high hopes that further attempts to bite off peripheral regions will succeed. However, I'm interested to see what the economic situation in the US is. Since the business oligarchs have reemerged, I can't imagine many of them are pleased by the new turn of events, although they may be on a short enough leash that they don't feel comfortable risking the hardliners' ire. The corporate control of the economy seems to be well-entrenched, though, and some degree of investment will be necessary to rebuild the devastated regions after the war. Overall, there are so many unknown factors that it's difficult to say what direction this war will take.
Quite a few, although judging from the spelling only Australia, Westralia, and Darwin are the White-Majority nations. The rest are aboriginal.
ITTL Australia is a group of several countries with varying levels of government understandable to westerners
Not CosmicAsh, but I believe I can answer this one: all are separate entities. Australia and Westralia (as well as Darwin) were founded by white settlers but went their own ways; the others are all Aboriginal tribes of varying degrees of Westphalian nation-state-ness.