Things that often get ignored in TLs...

One of the biggest drivers of the post-1492 world and of 1492 itself was and is trade, which factors into 5.1.

The difficulty I see is, how do you show that? Frex, I know the "triangular trade" across the Atlantic drove the OTL economies of Caribbean islands, the U.S., & Britain. I know OTL it contributed to the growth of the slave trade as well as sugar production. Absent simply saying that, IMO far from satisfactory, or listing off statistics,:eek: also far from satisfactory IMO, how do I deal with it? It seems to me some of it can be addressed indirectly, by the growth of infrastructure; it it's fast, the money has to be there. Ditto the growth of armies/navies. (Mention of govts refusing to appropriate $$$? Or of navies "cheating" by claiming "repair" when they're really building whole new ships?:eek: {OTL USN did this, BTW.:D}) Or mention things like immigration? OTL, steamships meant more & more immigrants could go to NAm from Europe, & the number of 3d class passengers jumped as it became possible to make money on them, & as fares came down, more came... OTL, airliners, especially jetliners, finally wiped out this trade. (Had dirigibles:cool: not suffered some bad PR,:eek: they might've managed it, too.:cool:)

In addition, there are sometimes bigger issues. In the OTL Great Depression, economists can't even agree on what caused it, what fixed it, & how. If the experts can't agree, how in hell should I know?:rolleyes: Take an ATL that presumes a cause & hope nobody calls me on it?:eek: (I pick Smoot-Hawley.:D)

I'd say there are similar issues on language. An ATL U.S. is likely to be mostly Anglo-run (unless somebody PoDs Spain beating Britain & their being 13 Spanish colonies:p). It's pretty hard to illustrate changes & still let your audience know what you mean. If I say "Phoenix, Kiowa", frex, you're likely to have some notion where I mean. If I say, "Nueva Zacatela, Kiowa", it's more likely to be, "WTF?" And even "easy" ones, like San Gabriel or Yerba Buena may get a "WTF?" (S.F. & L.A., keeping names dating back a little further.) Which isn't really on point from what you even meant, is it? You see what I mean, tho? Burgess could do it with Clockwork Orange, 'cause he had room to work, & even then, you've got to be intelligible. I've tried using changed grammar in stories I've written (nothing here:() & gotten slammed for being weird, when I was trying to reflect a different cultural dynamic. And I've gotten slammed for using the N-word too freely in ATL culture where it wouldn't be a big deal in the mainstream, any more than it was in the '30s-'50s Deep South U.S. OTL, but the reader didn't get it. A TL here, it's even harder, 'cause you've got so much less contest, usually.

*sigh* I'll stop ranting, now.:p
 
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4) Yeah, you could spin the same PODs different ways, but Sealion is one notorious example of the same impossibility being raised over and over again. Another is the likelihood of a united India prior to Britain's arrival.

Hmm ... to follow up to this, some things are quite impossible. Sealion is probably one of them. However, and this is a pet peeve of mine, sometimes people are too quick to dismiss the low-probability result. This shows up particularly in discussions of WWII. Yes, the Axis was in a bad spot based on material factors, and in OTL they eventually did get swamped by the Allies' superior industrial capacity. This is the most likely outcome, even if Hitler/Mussolini/Whoever was less insane. However, this kind of analysis perhaps fails to give sufficient weight to morale and human factors. The key here is that the Allies (and at least the G's among the Axis) saw the war as an existential struggle, and were prepared to (and did) scrape the bottom of the barrel for resources and the will to fight. If they'd seen it as "just another war" they might've been more willing to settle, even though a material analysis suggested eventual victory.

I could imagine the following possibilities:
* Say Germans did something crazy weird like withdrawing from France (after wrecking everything that could produce weapons) and ceded the whole territory to Vichy? Would this have softened the Western Allies' determination to crush Germany? Would be very interesting to see a one-front war between Germany and Soviets.

* Say Stalin gets couped at a key moment when all seems lost. Might a frantic Soviet cabal be willing to make a B-L type of peace? Would be very interesting to see a one-front war between Germany and Western Allies.

Basic point: Call me loco, but I sometimes like to see "forlorn hope" or low probability type outcomes in TLs! ;)


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[7.3 Atahualpa sez he would like to learn more about this "Christianity" stuff]

7.3) The Spaniards sign a treaty and break it as soon as the ink is dry, as happened in the US. Or alternately, as the Tawantinsuyu disintegrated, you may see the Spaniards simply wait and start playing its division against it, and thus conquer more thoroughly over a longer period of time (and perhaps leading to more indigenous successor ethnic groups in any *2000s Latin America).

I like this one just to imagine the look on the Spaniards' faces... If something like this were to go down we'd probably see an eventual defeat of the Incas. However, and we're getting back to my favorite flirting-with-ASBs zone, how about we have Atahualpa getting hold of a semi-renegade Jesuit and trying to parlay a forced conversion to Catholicism into survival of his Empire. Imagine Incas thunderously denouncing Spaniards for lack of crusading fervor, as native Crusaders storm Maya strongholds...

[... 7.4 Venice funds Columbus ...]

7.4) Venice would have had a helluva time financing such an expedition. A colonial era built on trade effectively butterflies away the US and much of Latin America. More intensive colonization of Africa is hard to speculate on, one potentiality would be that OTL French Africa would be more Spanish-speaking, and that a Scramble for Africa comes earlier. Possibly more British influence on the New World if Spain refuses to do anything about it.

It's an initial-conditions problem. The colonization of Central and South America was OTL started by Crusaders who had just liberated Spain, and weren't done fighting yet. This shaped the dynamic in the Americas for centuries. A Venetian colonization with different priorities might result in an Italian Carribean (too few natives to resist, too primitive, nothing worth trading) and Venetians/Genoans happily selling guns to Aztecs for gold. This cash would then be funneled into making life miserable for the Ottomans (gotta have a hobby, neh?). Meanwhile Spain, having run out of heretics in Iberia, suddenly rediscovers their Vandal heritage, and decides to apply the "repoblacion" to Morocco. Now they control the Straits of Gibraltar; this causes problems for Venetian trading ships, they will probably have to pay heavy tolls to get back home.

Meanwhile in the Mexica...

[... 7.6 Crassus doesn't suffer an embarrassing defeat ...]
7.6) No, it wouldn't. Carrhae was just one problem, Julius Caesar in Gaul was another. When he succeeded like that, he'd still want war, but Crassus might be experienced enough to give ol' Jules the once-over.

Hmm ... we might not save the republic, but there might well be some serious butterflies in the Middle East. The Wikipedia article on the battle suggests that Rome had had an aura of invincibility until the battle and that afterwards Rome never really tried for permanent gains in the Mesopotamia region. With a few different rolls of the dice, we might end up with a Latin-speaking Mesopotamia. If Romans capture it early, the Parthians are hugely weakened, as that's where most of their tax-base was. I can see this leading to a stable border on the Zagros (sp?) mountains in eastern Iraq, and possibly fewer wars with Persia. Then the butterflies swarm in and we have Roman colonies on Mars by -- okay, I'm calm now.
 
I would note here one feature of the first four societies you mentioned: none of them had any sustained external forces attempting to collapse them

In the case of Britain, I would disagree. She faced threats from Vikings, Celts, & French. The difference was, she was able to develop means to resist. Japan, I would argue, is the model for a country with little/no external threat, & look what happened: the Great Seclusion....:eek:
 
Basic point: Call me loco, but I sometimes like to see "forlorn hope" or low probability type outcomes in TLs! ;)

Just as in real life. Honestly, unlikely things happen all the time. The most powerful leader France ever had was born in an Italian-speaking backwater. The endangered, nonconformist religion of an endangered, nonconformist tribe became the basis for the two largest faiths in the world. A market town in Italy expanded its urban government over the entire Mediterranean and established structures and institutions that endure to this day. For half a century, the world was polarized into two blocs based around two superpowers, one of which began as a principality that dominated its neighbors by cooperating with the Mongols, the other which began as a line of haphazardly governed coastal settlements under constant threat of attack from more powerful neighbors.

In real life, the "most likely" outcome often does not happen. If Alternate History doesn't have any surprises, it's not only unrealistic - it's boring.
 
In the case of Britain, I would disagree. She faced threats from Vikings, Celts, & French. The difference was, she was able to develop means to resist. Japan, I would argue, is the model for a country with little/no external threat, & look what happened: the Great Seclusion....:eek:
If you define "means to resist" as "being conquered by most invaders," then I would agree. The Vikings overran a huge amount of England and were a large influence on the country for centuries. The French (or at least semi-French Normans) conquered England and changed England forever.

And so forth.
 
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