Points of Divergence : The United States of America

Points of divergence concerning alternate historical developments within the modern day territory of the United States.

• Native American PODs
• DBWI: The Clovis people survived ?
• Discussion on more advanced Native Americans (1)
• Discussion on more advanced Native Americans (2)
• Ideas about more developed medieval era Amerindian civilizations
• Discussion on a more advanced native civilisation in the Pacific Northwest
• Amerindian Middle Ages
• Would it be likely to have a stronger native population in the US ?
• WI: The Knights Templar colonizing North America (like according to some legends)
• Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.

• Discussion on more advanced Native Americans (1)
• Discussion on more advanced Native Americans (2)
• Would it be likely to have a stronger native population in the US ?
• PODs for a non-US-centric North American union or major power
• Challenge: The Roanoke colony survives and succeeds
• The renaming of Connecticut
• New Guernsey, not New Jersey ?
• Could New Jersey be a country on its own ?
• Plausibility check: California is settled by the French
• Iroquois Nation ?
• Plausibility check: Kingdom of Virginia
• Challenge: An earlier British America
• How likely is a balkanised America ?
• Alternate terms for New England ?
• The renaming of Maryland
• Dominion of New England lasts longer
• Russian California
• Challenge: Independent California
• Maryland absorbed into other colonies, 1692
• WI France takes New Amsterdam/New Netherlands instead of the English ?
• Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.

• Seven Years War Points of Divergence
• Iroquois Nation ?
• How could the Iroquois survive to become a US state ?
• Native Americans as landlords for white settlers
• WI Plains Indians had sheep in addition to horses ?
• Challenge: Very large Asian American population
• Challenge: American frontiersmen use longbows as well as muskets/rifles
• Alternate geographic exploration of the Pacific Northwest and its repercussions
• Earlier American canals
• American Revolution Points of Divergence
• Challenge: No new slave states
• WI: The Constitutional Convention failed ?
• City states in the USA with a POD after 1788
• Challenge: Make German as widely spoken in the US as Spanish (with a POD no earlier than the ratification of the Constitution)
• WI France hadn't sold the Louisiana territory ?
• Challenge: A Louisianian Revolution and secession from France (similar to the American Revolution)
• Vexilology in a United States with a Hohenzollern Monarchy
• How likely is a balkanised America ?
• Challenge: Make every US state a separate country
• If the 13 colonies never unified, how would native confederacies fair ?
• WI: Vermont Republic remains independent
• A proper name for the American (US) South ?
• Challenge: Unitary USA
• Challenge: US speaks Swedish
• WI: An 'American Republican Calendar' (as in revolutionary France)
• If steam power didn't take off, how extensive would the US' canal network be ?
• Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.

• United States Presidents Points of Divergence
• West Point never established
• Challenge: Large French-American population (with a POD after 1803)
• Challenge: Louisiana War of 1804
• WI: Independent Louisiana
• Challenge: Dissolve the USA during the XIX century
• Plausibility check: Groups who were angry about America's earlier government ?
• War of 1812 Points of Divergence
• Plausible size of an "Indian Barrier State" established on the Great Lakes, as per OTL British plan ?
• Challenge: Very large Asian American population
• Which Indian tribes would be good candidates to become states ?
• The USA without a Pacific coastline ?
• Plausibility check: US and Spain go to war over Louisiana Territory before 1840
• WI: Pensacola in Alabama ?
• Alternate US expansions
• The US becoming the owner of Greenland and parts of the Carribean instead of Alaska and Hawaii (with a pre-1900 POD)
• Challenge: Nova Scotia a part of the USA
• West Florida stays independent (1)
• West Florida stays independent (2)
• West Florida admitted as a separate state (1)
• West Florida admitted as a separate state (2)
• Kentucky abolishes slavery in 1824
• No Nat Turner Rebelion: Virginia outlaws slavery 1832
• Virginia abolishes slavery 1832
• WI: South Carolina leaves the Union during the Nullification Crisis of 1832
• Republic of Texas (or other Texan) Points of Divergence
• Avoiding the Mexican-American War (preferrably with a POD after 1835)
• Challenge: Independent California
• Realistic independent California
• Divided Californias
• British California and/or Texas
• Effect of earlier discovery of gold in California on negotiation at Guadalupe-Hidalgo
• Effects of larger Jersey City (1)
• Effects of larger Jersey City (2)
• Challenge: USA gets Cuba before the American Civil War
• Delaware ends slavery in 1847
• Missouri abolishes slavery
• A 'Liberia' In North America
• Liberia PODs
• Challenge: Texan "Liberia"
• WI: Bourbon Democrats retain control of the party ?
• WI the entire Pierce family dies in a train crash in January 1853 ?
• Challenge: Adopt the Broad Gauge in the US
• WI SCOTUS abolishes slavery in the Dred Scott decision (1)
• WI SCOTUS abolishes slavery in the Dred Scott decision (2)
• Republic (or State) of Deseret Points of Divergence
• WI there was a Pig War ?
• WI: Larger and more successful Sioux Uprising in 1862
• American Civil War Points of Divergence
• Confederate States of America Points of Divergence
• Jesse James killed in Missouri in the Civil War
• Freedman California
• WI: "Indian Territory" further east
• Alternate Reconstruction: "Prairie Liberia" and "Negro Carolina"
• Challenge: Christian Socialism popular in the US
• Discussion on name changes to US states
• How likely is a balkanised America ?
• What would a USA without highly protectionist trade policies look like ?
• WI the US gets the Baja Peninsula in the Mexican Cession ?
• Why didn't the US become socialist ?
• Challenge: Make every US state a separate country
• WI US States could buy and sell land from each other ?
• The US becoming the owner of Greenland and parts of the Carribean instead of Alaska and Hawaii (with a pre-1900 POD)
• Challenge: American Iceland
• Plausibility check: Could Spain narrowly win the Spanish-American War ?
• WI: "Bourbon Democrats" retain control of the Democratic party ?
• Alternate Statues of Liberty
• One-party American political system with a POD in the late 19th century
• Challenge: A world war in the Western Hemisphere
• Highway system in a larger USA
• Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.

• United States Presidents Points of Divergence
• A bigger United States
• Plausibility check: Roosevelt plan for a US Summer Capital (in Colorado)
• Discussion on name changes to US states
• Challenge: Weakest possible United States in the 20th century
• Was a military coup possible at all in the US between the 1930s and the 1940s ?
• WI: American Auto Wank
• WI: No M1911 semi-auto pistol ?
• World War I Points of Divergence
• Challenge : A serious Cascadian (Pacific Northwest) independence movement with a 20th century POD
• Challenge : The OTL post-WWI Alaskan independence/autonomist movement becomes more succesful
• Filipino and Cuban statehood ?
• Effect on US banks if the Central Powers win WWI ?
• If the US did not enter WWI, would Germany win ?
• No US entry into WWI - does the Entente still win ?
• Rough Riders on the Western front ?
• WI Bessie Coleman doesn't die in 1926 ?
• Organised crime in America without prohibiton
• American organized crime PODs and TL ideas
• Challenge: Create Native American Mobsters
• Nationalist/Fascist America vs The World
• Challenge: Spanish Civil War Analogue in 1930s US
• US Armed Forces in a world without WWII
• WI no Air Mail Scandal of 1930 ?
• USAAF never gets transformed into the USAF or undergoes different developments within the US armed forces
• World War II Points of Divergence
• WI Germany had not declared war on USA
• WI: America considering joining the Axis
• USA joins the Axis
• Japan chooses not to attack Pearl Harbour. What do Americans do ?
• WI the U.S. Navy had put torpedo netting around their battleships at Pearl Harbor ?
• Alternative attacks to Pearl Harbour ?
• WI: Pearl Harbor Had Been a Sea Battle
• Japanese invasion of Hawaii succeeds, but ends in disaster
• Plausibility check: How bad could the war have gone for the US when it was fighting Japan ?
• Plausibility check: Large-scale American anti-war movement in WWII ?
• Plausibility check: Large-scale American anti-war movement in WWII ?
• Plausibility check: American intervention in the Chinese Civil War ?
• How would politics in the US develop without the Cold War ?
• Cold War Points of Divergence
• Korean War Points of Divergence
• Challenge: Prevent the Great American Streetcar Scandal
• Challenge: Prevent the extinction of the jaguar in the US
• Challenge: Conservative Counterculture
• An ATL 1960s counterculture in an USA which lost WWII
• Vietnam War Points of Divergence
• Spaceflight Points of Divergence
• Why hasn't Handball caught on in the US ?
• Challenge: Keep the US from being a superpower after 1945
• Challenge: Save American cities from badly thought out urban renewal
• Challenge: A less anti-feminist postwar US
• Challenge: Avert the Long Hot Summer of 1967
• Would a non-existent Vietnam War casue less riots in 1967 ?
• Challenge : US force projection in Gulf as uncontroversial as in Europe & Pacific
• WI the US military retains the M-14 rifle ? (1)
• WI the US military retains the M-14 rifle ? (2)
• WI the US adopted the FN FAL ?
• SIG 226 beating out the Beretta 92 as the US service pistol
• WI: CVLs for the modern US Navy
• Non-US designed Aircraft in servive with the USAF/USN/USMC
• What if Charles Manson didn't exist ?
• Challenge: Keep Detroit from dying
• Challenge and WI: No War on Drugs
• Challenge: Feminist female president in late 70s USA
• WI the Conch Republic seriously gains independence ? (1)
• WI the Conch Republic seriously gains independence ? (2)
• Plausibility check: Last chance to save Detroit
• Plausibility check: Direct US involvement in Angola and Mozambique during the mid-to-late 1970s ?
• US war in Angola during the presidency of Gerald Ford
• Challenge: A Third American Red Scare caused by communist takeovers in Angola and elsewhere
• WI: Hovercraft passenger ferries on the Great Lakes and Mississippi river system
• M1 series cancelled, M60A4 project instead
• America's fighting women: A search for good PODs on women being admitted as frontline troops
• WI: Apple goes under in the 1990s
• WI: The first black president was a Republican ?
• Challenge: Metro Expo Line in LA underground
• Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.

• WI: The first black president was a Republican ?
• Challenge: Metro Expo Line in LA underground
• WI: Capitol destroyed on 9/11
• Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.

• American cities that could have been more prominent
• Underused American political PODs/scenarios ?
• How would American culture be different with the draft ?
• Challenge: Unite the Third Party Tendencies of the US in 1890s-1930s
• Supreme Court Cases as PODs
• Alternate people on US dollars (primarily non-politicians)
• Unbuilt America : Forgotten architecture from Thomas Jefferson to the space age
• How many people can live in Alaska ?
• Great Lakes fortifications
• Alternate American cultural capitals
• Challenge: New York City not the largest US city in 2100
• Challenge: Independent Alaska (with POD between 1799 and today)
• Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.

• U.S. Military ISOTed to 1900 United States
• WI: 1998 United States, Kenya and Tanzania ISOTed to 1961
• US gets its population proportionally rescaled to that of Vatican City
• Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.

USA

United States of America Timelines and Scenarios

Useful Resources about The United States of America

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