Try to do better than present day 2017

Okay in the negative column, the Mongols ended the Song renaissance, the Islamic Golden Age, put hundreds of millions under the Mongol Yoke, and spread the Black Death.

In the positive column, carbon footprint was significantly reduced due to global de-population.
Missed Pax Mongolica, restoration of the Silk Road and East-West affairs, spread of knowledge and technology like gunpowder worldwide, paving the way for a centralized Russian power (as opposed to the many princes of the Rus before the Mongols), breaking down not a few century old kingdoms/empires, inspiring Timur who would go on to wreck the Persians again (a mixed bag there).

Also, the Mongols weren't the only cause of the end of the Islamic Golden Age, if I recall. Contributed, but pinning all on them ignores quite a bit (pressure from the west during the Reconquista, the presence of other great centers of academia in the Middle East, etc.).
 
Earlier adoption of agriculture?
More food = more people = more complex societies = more advances in productivity and more time to realize which political structures are not so great.
 
Missed Pax Mongolica, restoration of the Silk Road and East-West affairs, spread of knowledge and technology like gunpowder worldwide, paving the way for a centralized Russian power (as opposed to the many princes of the Rus before the Mongols), breaking down not a few century old kingdoms/empires, inspiring Timur who would go on to wreck the Persians again (a mixed bag there).

Also, the Mongols weren't the only cause of the end of the Islamic Golden Age, if I recall. Contributed, but pinning all on them ignores quite a bit (pressure from the west during the Reconquista, the presence of other great centers of academia in the Middle East, etc.).

Well that makes up for 130 million people dying horribly.
 
Well, like I said, mixed bag. Chinggis Khaan's conquests and empire changed so many things that it's hard to say if it would be all good or all bad. How you'd quantify it, too, is a sticking point since one could conceivably argue that the positive social changes and developments caused by the Mongols (like the end of feudalism in Western Europe) ultimately outweigh the deaths of millions (conceivably, I'm not doing that right now. Just saying some would say that). It's just, you butterfly away the Mongols, the entire world changes in so many ways that it's hard to judge whether it was better or worse with or without them.

As for something that might make the present day better...well, keep China, Korea, and Japan from closing their doors (more peaceful Japanese unification keeps Japan from invading Korea and the ensuing two centuries of isolationism in both countries)? Maybe also have Hangul gain royal support in the 1400s so that literacy in Korea explodes. Helps with innovation, I imagine, having the East compete with the West technologically.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
In reverse chronological order:


-- The Allies, despite their misgivings regarding a new war, react adequately to Hitler's aggression. His bullshit regarding Chzechoslovakia isn't tolerated. The instant he tries to annex land in the east, be it from the Czechs or from the Poles, the western powers land on him like a giant hammer. Teach this jerk a lesson before he gets a chance to murder a vast amount of people. And since it's the west doing it, in co-operation with Poland, Czechoslovakia etc., the new german government is going to be a democratic and somewhat anti-Soviet one, installed by the west. Result: no more Hitler, Europe doesn't get raped by the nazis, and basically all of Europe is united in an alliance that won't tolerate Soviet aggression, either.

Side effects: slightly better-organised decolonisation, since no long WW II to mess everything up.


-- World War II is prevented altogether. The Central Powers win the first round by adopting a defensive strategy in the west, and going on the offensive in the east. No Germans in Belgium. No British involvement. No American involvement. In the west, France will get stuck in the trenches. At the very best, they reach the Rhine, but don't manage to cross it. In the east, after initial brutal fighting, the Central Powers gain the clear upper hand just as in OTL, but earlier. Russia collapses by mid-1916. A Brest-Litovsk style peace is signed, whereby German monarchs are installed in the Baltics, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Finland also gets a Hohenzollern monarch, as briefly planned in OTL. Lenin never gets sent to Russia. There is no USSR. Following this, Italy throws in the towel, and France is forced to sue for peace at the end of 1916. Having gained massively in the east, Germany makes no further territorial demands against France, but permanently removes the French from Elzass-Lothringen. Pretty much all of Europe gets absorbed into a Germany-led customs union. There will be no second world war, Russia is too unstable, with its Tsarist government relying on German backing to prevent unrest. France alone is too weak. Britain and the USA are not getting involved. All in all, Europe is in good shape. Austria-Hungary will need to reform or eventually split apart, but Germany will manage the situation either way. The Ottomans struggle on, but even without the war, Turkish reformers and Arab rebels will soon begin to play major roles. I imagine a territorially reduced, much more Turkish empire eventually emerging, which on the flip side is reformed/modernised to a considerable extent.

Side effects: Irish Home Rule goes through on schedule without WW I to mess things up. With Britain out of the war, the collapse of the Empire is avoided. It still ends, but it's far more gradual and far less messy. Expect a Commonwealth on steroids. Expect decolonisation in general to take that shape. Former colonies of the various European powers will generally be in much better shape due to this peaceful transition, and due to the absence of the horrid (often Soviet-backed) communist regimes that cropped up in several former colonies in OTL.


-- As the South secedes from the Union, the Union actually respects the tenth amendment of its own damn constitution and thus recognises the secession as perfectly legal. This prevents any border state from seceding in the first place. The CSA is just the Deep South. The Union then aggressively pursues a policy of ending slavery in its own domain. Right after that, it works with Britain and other leading world powers to completely embargo the CSA until slavery ends. With no customers for their raw materials, and no-one willing to sell them anything, the Confederates are left with no choice but to obey. [I know this is ASB, but this is how I wish it had gone.]

Side effects: international co-operation for humanitarian purposes becomes a thing earlier, and secession is more widely recognised as a legal right.


-- The more radical French Enlightenment thinkers, who for the most part knew each other personally in OTL, hold a large ATL meeting in a salon early on in their careers. The building burns down and they all die. Their works are entirely forgotten. Names such as Rousseau and Diderot are largely lost to history. Following the French involvement in the ARW, France is still in trouble. But without the radical influence of the aformentioned thinkers, the more radical revolutionary streaks are butterflied away entirely. If there is a French revolution, it is more like the American one, with the ideas of thinkers like Turgot, Quesnay and Condorcet forming the intellectual cadre. The resulting state may be a constitutional monarchy or a republic, but it isn't going to be lopping off heads on a large scale. The royal family, even if the monarchy is abolished, will be treated well. Frace is going to be a sane and stable country. No Robespierre. No Terror. And in the end, no space for a man like Napoleon to put a crown on his own head. The French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars simply don't occur.

Side effects: Europe isn't messed up by bloody wars. Pre-revolutionary crowns remain in power, but an evolution towards constitutionalism is inevitable. There is no hardline 'Concert of Europe'-reaction to radical republicanism, either, so we get a far more peaceful and gradual political evolution. Without the French revolution, the later OTL revolutions get butterflied. Socialism and communism as we know them don't even arise. Nor does anything like Nazism. the whole basis for modern Western collectivist totalitarianism has been removed at the root. All in all, there is much less (totalitarian) radicalism in the world.


-- Charlemagne marries Irene Sarantapechaina of the ERE. They produce an heir. Their other respective children later die mysteriously in freak accidents. Yielding to Byzantine custom, Charlemagne adbandons the Franks' succesion laws, and from that moment on, the empire is given over, undivided, to one heir. The union of east and west restores the Roman Empire, more or less. The Great Schism is avoided as a result of the resulting unity. By and large, Europe is politically and religiously united from the dawn of the ninth century. Eventually, this empire comes to include all of Christendom. There is no Reformation. In this world, despite some sects, Christianity is mostly undivided, and also largely contained within the borders of what we may call a universal empire. No wars of religion, or other wars between European peoples.


-- Hadrian gets a sudden brainwave. Instead of abandoning Mesopotamia and keeping Britain, he abandons Britain and puts a lot of energy into keeping Mesopotamia. He understands that denying it to Persia will weaken Persia to a massive degree. Seeing as he also keeps Armenia, this denies two vital areas to Persia. A Persian attempt to take back these regions fails, although the fight is bloody. In the aftermath, Persia collapses into civil war. Rome makes Media and Susiana into client states, to serve as a buffer in the east. Persia never recovers from the losses, while the wealthy eastern lands grant immense wealth to Rome. Which Rome uses to expand its northern border, eventually establishing a border that follows the Elbe, then the northern Czech and Slovak mountains, then the Dniester to the Black Sea. That kind of set-up should allow Rome to survive basically any threat. The eastern conquests should initially provide great extra wealth. Once the heavy plough and three-field rotation get discovered, the northern conquests will prove to be a new breadbasket, just as gradual climate change is making the old one (North Africa) less fertile.

Side effects: this undivided Roman Empire lasts for a good long time, too strong to be threatened, and the great wealth of the conquered areas largely contains OTL economic troubles. Peace reigns within the borders of the empire.


-- Hephaistion doesn't die in 324 BC. Alexander the Great's self-destructive spiral of grief is thus avoided. Alexander conquers Arabia and the western Med during his lifetime (plus some other modest bits here and there) and carries out his infrastructural plans. By the time of his death, two decades later than in OTL, there's a half-Macedonian half-Persian elite emerging, examplified by Alexander's son and heir. The Great Oikoumene lasts for a long time, and brings extensive east-west contact. Science, philosophy and art flourish greatly. The great works of not only Hellenic culture, but also of Persian culture and many others, are fully preserved to the current day. The world is infinitely richer for it.
 
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Well, I guess that would save a few million lives...

...and butterfly a couple billion...

Very true. These butteflies would be gigantic if POD is Temji's early death. TL could take almost what direction, depending what writer wants. 2017 would be very unrecognisble and it might be better or worse than OTL.
 
This is Before 1900. How far back can we go?
This is really far back, but if you prevent the Bronze Age Collapse in c.1200 BC; we could possibly be 300 or 400 years ahead technologically by the present. Civilization in the eastern Mediterranean basically had to reboot itself after a 4 century dark age: The Hittites collapsed; Egypt collapsed; Greece entered a dark age and even forgot how to write. Unfortunately to prevent this means preventing climate change, which is ASB.
Technological 'progression' doesn't really work like it does in Sid Meier's Civilization. Time is not the only ingredient here. See: China.
Young Temujin falls off his horse, breaks his neck.
Wow. That would be...quite a different world, wouldn't it? Perhaps one that continues to be dominated by the East.
That's actually the main thrust for a timeline idea I want to make into a graphic novel.

Long story short, no Black Death causes overpopulation in relation to food supply in Europe, causing the Great Famines and Peasants' Revolts that tear apart the fabric of European nobility (with the clergy's power remaining intact).

End result is no liberalism (or free trade), weaker industrial revolution, and a 1950s (when the graphic novel would be set) that look more like the 1880s.
Hey, I'd read that. But why does the clergy stay in power? Especially since they seem powerless to stop the famines and later megawinters...
In reverse chronological order:


-- The Allies, despite their misgivings regarding a new war, react adequately to Hitler's aggression. His bullshit regarding Chzechoslovakia isn't tolerated. The instant he tries to annex land in the east, be it from the Czechs or from the Poles, the western powers land on him like a giant hammer. Teach this jerk a lesson before he gets a chance to murder a vast amount of people. And since it's the west doing it, in co-operation with Poland, Czechoslovakia etc., the new german government is going to be a democratic and somewhat anti-Soviet one, installed by the west. Result: no more Hitler, Europe doesn't get raped by the nazis, and basically all of Europe is united in an alliance that won't tolerate Soviet aggression, either.

Side effects: slightly better-organised decolonisation, since no long WW II to mess everything up.
This brings the echoes of a long-discussed can of worms, which sometimes comes to the reluctant conclusion that the evil of Hitler and Nazi Germany had some profound good effects on the world as lessons learned in blood. First and foremost they're responsible for the utter revulsion we have to fascism today, along with many other ideas and policies. The German people, and the rest of the world, needed to see firsthand the effects of fascism, ardent nationalism, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. It was here that the nations of the world began to realize the connection they have with each other on our planet. It's through the fires of World War II that the United Nations was born with the specific directive to prevent another world war.

Consider there are many places insulated from the worst of Hitler, e.g America, where fascism is de facto frowned upon but its details are just unknown enough for similar ideologies to achieve a significant following. Now imagine a world where fascism and Nazism didn't achieve full freedom and power; there would still be many advocating for it.

If Germany was defeated too soon, the fascism, Nazism, and anti-Semitism may not go away at all.
-- As the South secedes from the Union, the Union actually respects the tenth amendment of its own damn constitution and thus recognises the secession as perfectly legal. This prevents any border state from seceding in the first place. The CSA is just the Deep South. The Union then aggressively pursues a policy of ending slavery in its own domain. Right after that, it works with Britain and other leading world powers to completely embargo the CSA until slavery ends. With no customers for their raw materials, and no-one willing to sell them anything, the Confederates are left with no choice but to obey. [I know this is ASB, but this is how I wish it had gone.]

Side effects: international co-operation for humanitarian purposes becomes a thing earlier, and secession is more widely recognised as a legal right.
That might...actually work. I think there's still a chance for the South to attack anyway if they feel like they're being oppressed too much or need resources.
-- Charlemagne marries Irene Sarantapechaina of the ERE. They produce an heir. Their other respective children later die mysteriously in freak accidents. Yielding to Byzantine custom, Charlemagne adbandons the Franks' succesion laws, and from that moment on, the empire is given over, undivided, to one heir. The union of east and west restores the Roman Empire, more or less. The Great Schism is avoided as a result of the resulting unity. By and large, Europe is politically and religiously united from the dawn of the ninth century. Eventually, this empire comes to include all of Christendom. There is no Reformation. In this world, despite some sects, Christianity is mostly undivided, and also largely contained within the borders of what we may call a universal empire. No wars of religion, or other wars between European peoples.
I think it'll take more than political unity to prevent the Great Schism. The actual religious sides would have to reconcile grievances in some way.

These PODs are really cool though and I'd like to see TLs made on most of them...it's been a while since I've read a feelgood TL where everything just...goes okay in the end. Probably because it's not realistic.
 
Hmmm.

How about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is created with a more stable type of government? Say, something more reminiscent of a constitutional monarchy or what would come about in England after the Glorious Revolution. You'd have a powerful democratic state in Europe about 200 years earlier than OTL, and if the PLC is also more successful, then it could also serve as inspiration for the rest of Europe.

Maybe absolutism and the reactionary period after the OTL Napoleonic Wars could be butterflied away completely, especially if the Enlightenment becomes even stronger due to Poland being an example, and replaced by a period of liberalism and constitutionalism? That would be a big boon to economic and cultural development and could also butterfly away the worst of what happened in the 19th and 20th centuries.
 
Lincoln lives.
Mao Zedong dies in 1948. The CCP vanishes and the Chinese Republic stays around.
The Communist Revolution fails.
Theodore Roosevelt wins the 1912 Presidential election.
Al Gore wins in 2000.
 
The Russian Republic survives, consolidates, and becomes a beacon of liberal democracy, supporting Republican movements worldwide (including China!).
The various states in England are never formed into a united kingdom, leaving it a poor backwater which fails to establish colonial dominance over a huge part of the world (yeah, I went there, screw the Empire).
More generally for European global dominance, Byzantium never falls entirely and therefore the Renaissance never occurs in Italy (because Greek scholars don't flee west), leaving Europe a collection of squabbling feudal states which allow the non-Western world to develop more organically (probably a pipe dream, to be honest, given that empires more or less naturally form, so SOMEONE will become a colonizer).
The Revolutions of 1848 are much more successful and see radical republics spring up across Europe.
A less authoritarian and oligarchic Kuomintang eventually wins over the communists and establishes a democratic China that doesn't try to ethnically cleanse Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia (unlike IOTL).
The Mughals remains a powerful empire in India and are able to fend off colonialism and eventually industrialize, leading to a a modern-day Indian Great Power without colonial interference.
Native states in the Americas (I'm thinking the Inca for sure, and perhaps the Haida and Muscogee in North America) are able to survive and resist colonial infringement due to certain PODs (too complex to get into here) and remain a strong presence in the modern day.
Gran Columbia remains unified due to better communication and compromise between the various factions, and eventually becomes a leading light for democracy in South America and the world.

Of course, better is subjective. There are lots of people who would probably highly dislike my ideas.
 
Lincoln lives.
Mao Zedong dies in 1948. The CCP vanishes and the Chinese Republic stays around.
The Communist Revolution fails.
Theodore Roosevelt wins the 1912 Presidential election.
Al Gore wins in 2000.

1. Probably. At least there would be better reconstruction politics and lesser harsh Jim Crow laws.
2. Someone else would take leadership and Commies still would win. Nationalist army and its tactics were terrible. But probably we can avoid disastrous Great Leap without Mao.
3. This would definitely make things better.
4. I don't know would this be better. Altough TR wasn't so racist as Wilson.
5. Surely.
 
2. Someone else would take leadership and Commies still would win. Nationalist army and its tactics were terrible. But probably we can avoid disastrous Great Leap without Mao.
I mean, the actual POD there is basically "Communists lose the Chinese Civil War." That was just a means of getting to it.
 
Byzantium never falls entirely and therefore the Renaissance never occurs in Italy (because Greek scholars don't flee west), leaving Europe a collection of squabbling feudal states
Uhh, what? By the 15th century, the whole "squabbling feudal states" shtick was mostly gone in favor of large, centralized kingdoms, like what happened in Iberia, Scandinavia and England and was happening in France.

And either way, the Renaissance didn't affect it's development, it was a cultural, not a political phenomenon.

(plus the Renaissance had already started by 1453 but whatever)
 

Decius00009

Banned
Napoleon doesn't invade Russia, or at the least doesn't get drawn into its hinterland to lose his army. The Russians come to terms, the French keep their boots on Prussia's throat, the Austrians stay sulking, Britain eventually treats, realising that it can't win when Bonaparte himself gets fed up with the failures in Spain and takes charge himself. Europe is at peace under a rational regime, Germany never unites. Better 2017 from my perspective, but I'm a massive Francophile
 
First Black Plague never happens, Europe sees a Dark Ages lasting half to a third as long, and the time of Charlemagne looks more like that of the Second Crusade in terms of overall development. Maybe more Roman engineering techniques and knowledge are preserved...
 
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