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Description
A map based on the "GURPS Infinite Worlds" manual game world Gallatin, in which an early death of Alexander Hamilton leads to the failure to ratify the Constitution and an early breakup of the USA. It is, I suspect, a spit-take on SF and AH writer L Neil Smith's "North American Confederacy" series, which takes a perhaps overly rosy view of the results of the US going hardline libertarian from almost the start. There is the name itself, with Albert Gallatin being seen as the founder of Libertarian-World in that setting (one of the novels being titled "The Gallatin Divergence") while the anarchic Ohio Association seems a callback to the Confederation itself, and the the authors certainly don't shy from making the results pretty darn dystopic, with the German Empire (1914 version, not 1940s, but nastier), the Japanese Empire, and the Soviet Union all existing right up to the "present" of 2004 (even name-checking Joe Stalin, never mind how unlikely it is that he still ends up running Russia in a world which diverges from ours in the 18th century).

I have tried to avoid some of the more unlikely coincidences, so consider this something of a "cover" of the original.

The world is divided into four major power blocks, although the fourth isn't exactly unified. There is the Japanese Empire, and it's integrated economic block, similar to the Empire and Greater East Asian co-prosperity Sphere of our world, but with six decades more of experience and brutal repression. There is the German block, centered in the German "system" for Europe, the Europaverein, a German Empire which in the absence of the US won the equivalent of the First World War and has absorbed it's crumbling Austrian sibling: German democracy, still pretty weak in our world's 1914, has been permanently stunted by the state of perpetual mobilization required to keep its dominance of Europe unchallenged. There is what I have chosen to call the Union of People's Syndicates, an anti-capitalist, collectivist dictatorship broadly similar to the USSR of OTL, if a bit less casually wasteful of its own human and material resources (it still killed millions of its own, but hey, not _tens_ of millions!). It allied to the Japanese in its "liberation" of Asia in an attempt to regain losses to the Germans and expand into the middle east while Japan was distracting Germany and the British.

The Japanese somehow developed the atom bomb first (perhaps the Germans were complacent enough that the High Command didn't feel it necessary to follow up weird physicist's notions), and used it to nail down its victory in the east: they ignored Russian request for a joint invasion of India or some bombs to finish off the Germans, and the Russians were barely able to pull off an armistice well short of their ultimate objectives (The Japanese did make some vague threats to send bombs if the Germans didn't make peace, but they weren't very convincing). The Japanese "stab in the back" is still well remembered in Moscow.

The fourth block consists of the British Commonwealth, which the British have managed to turn into a fairly democratic federation of nations, if still rather less integrated than the other great powers, and their allies, the North Americans, which in turn are a military alliance and free trade union of otherwise quite independent and opinionated nations. Texas, in this world the most populous and industrialized nation in North America, leads and has a formidable nuclear arsenal (probably more than is economically sensible, really) and the attitude of a first rank nation in spite of really not being much stronger than say, our worlds 2004 Germany if they went full militarist again. It is also a deeply racist nation which didn't give up slavery till the 1910s, and to this day maintains a form of Jim Crow oppression of its black population with the full weight of the state behind it.

Nuclear weapons are also owned by California and the rump "United States" (five of them), but in numbers more in proportion to their actual importance. The USA is bustling and multiethnic, with a large Jewish minority, well-ordered and law-abiding, and is sometimes referred patronizingly by German tourists as like a "little Germany." California is nowadays essentially bilingual in Spanish and English, but remains racist towards Asians: understandably if regrettably, "Yellow Peril" fears have never really gone away. (Californian politicians often talk as if they could see Japanese Hawaii from their house). The Ohio Association, essentially a free rider on the Texan atomic umbrella, is an annoyance to everyone on the continent, due to the constant smuggling which takes place across its open, open borders, but has its friends in politics, especially those who bank there.

As the world moves into the 21st century, the three great empires of Eurasia are looking a bit long in the tooth: the example of free African states in the British or (admittedly one each so far) Japanese and Syndicalist blocks is making the German position in Africa ever harder, and may Germans think the day may come when Africa is more a burden than a benefit (so far, German Africa overall returns a profit, thanks to an extremely effective (and brutal) resource and labor extraction process, but if the rebel situation gets out of control...) The Syndicalist economic system, if less insanely centralized than the Soviet one (with it's turf wars between the ministries of Tic-Tacs and Smarties) has been almost as bad at creating added-value products, and is suffering from virtual schizophrenia as different factions try to create either a "people's market" or computerized prosperity on the "red plenty" model. At least they haven't reached the "shooting food rioters" stage of things - yet.

And then there's Japan, still trying to fully pacify China after six decades. In the 70s, much of western China became essentially ungovernable thanks to communist infiltrators and their local supporters: the Japanese withdrew east, taking with them everything they could truck away (down to the last can of Who-hash) and anyone fearing for their safety due to being collaborators or just too wealthy, but then radiologically, chemically, and biologically poisoned the area they had left, killing forty million Chinese (in just the short term: long term numbers remain hard to calculate) and declared their willingness to do the same to every inch of China rather than have it fall to the Reds. This nearly started WWIII, but it at least cowed resistance for a while.

Now, rebellion is once again hotting up again as a new generation comes to the fore, the "military frontier zones" are a hell on Earth, and the Japanese government turns to ever more repressive and misogynistic methods to get the birth rate up. Everyone doubts the Japanese government has the guts to repeat their actions of 1974 (for one thing, they've put so much work into their puppet regimes), but if they do, will the Reds decide they will need to respond?

Did I mention I have a Ko-Fi now? ko-fi.com/b_munro_alternatehis…

($3 in a week. This "monetizing" thing is harder than it looks ).

Description
A map based on the "GURPS Infinite Worlds" manual game world Gallatin, in which an early death of Alexander Hamilton leads to the failure to ratify the Constitution and an early breakup of the USA. It is, I suspect, a spit-take on SF and AH writer L Neil Smith's "North American Confederacy" series, which takes a perhaps overly rosy view of the results of the US going hardline libertarian from almost the start. There is the name itself, with Albert Gallatin being seen as the founder of Libertarian-World in that setting (one of the novels being titled "The Gallatin Divergence") while the anarchic Ohio Association seems a callback to the Confederation itself, and the the authors certainly don't shy from making the results pretty darn dystopic, with the German Empire (1914 version, not 1940s, but nastier), the Japanese Empire, and the Soviet Union all existing right up to the "present" of 2004 (even name-checking Joe Stalin, never mind how unlikely it is that he still ends up running Russia in a world which diverges from ours in the 18th century).

I have tried to avoid some of the more unlikely coincidences, so consider this something of a "cover" of the original.

The world is divided into four major power blocks, although the fourth isn't exactly unified. There is the Japanese Empire, and it's integrated economic block, similar to the Empire and Greater East Asian co-prosperity Sphere of our world, but with six decades more of experience and brutal repression. There is the German block, centered in the German "system" for Europe, the Europaverein, a German Empire which in the absence of the US won the equivalent of the First World War and has absorbed it's crumbling Austrian sibling: German democracy, still pretty weak in our world's 1914, has been permanently stunted by the state of perpetual mobilization required to keep its dominance of Europe unchallenged. There is what I have chosen to call the Union of People's Syndicates, an anti-capitalist, collectivist dictatorship broadly similar to the USSR of OTL, if a bit less casually wasteful of its own human and material resources (it still killed millions of its own, but hey, not _tens_ of millions!). It allied to the Japanese in its "liberation" of Asia in an attempt to regain losses to the Germans and expand into the middle east while Japan was distracting Germany and the British.

The Japanese somehow developed the atom bomb first (perhaps the Germans were complacent enough that the High Command didn't feel it necessary to follow up weird physicist's notions), and used it to nail down its victory in the east: they ignored Russian request for a joint invasion of India or some bombs to finish off the Germans, and the Russians were barely able to pull off an armistice well short of their ultimate objectives (The Japanese did make some vague threats to send bombs if the Germans didn't make peace, but they weren't very convincing). The Japanese "stab in the back" is still well remembered in Moscow.

The fourth block consists of the British Commonwealth, which the British have managed to turn into a fairly democratic federation of nations, if still rather less integrated than the other great powers, and their allies, the North Americans, which in turn are a military alliance and free trade union of otherwise quite independent and opinionated nations. Texas, in this world the most populous and industrialized nation in North America, leads and has a formidable nuclear arsenal (probably more than is economically sensible, really) and the attitude of a first rank nation in spite of really not being much stronger than say, our worlds 2004 Germany if they went full militarist again. It is also a deeply racist nation which didn't give up slavery till the 1910s, and to this day maintains a form of Jim Crow oppression of its black population with the full weight of the state behind it.

Nuclear weapons are also owned by California and the rump "United States" (five of them), but in numbers more in proportion to their actual importance. The USA is bustling and multiethnic, with a large Jewish minority, well-ordered and law-abiding, and is sometimes referred patronizingly by German tourists as like a "little Germany." California is nowadays essentially bilingual in Spanish and English, but remains racist towards Asians: understandably if regrettably, "Yellow Peril" fears have never really gone away. (Californian politicians often talk as if they could see Japanese Hawaii from their house). The Ohio Association, essentially a free rider on the Texan atomic umbrella, is an annoyance to everyone on the continent, due to the constant smuggling which takes place across its open, open borders, but has its friends in politics, especially those who bank there.

As the world moves into the 21st century, the three great empires of Eurasia are looking a bit long in the tooth: the example of free African states in the British or (admittedly one each so far) Japanese and Syndicalist blocks is making the German position in Africa ever harder, and may Germans think the day may come when Africa is more a burden than a benefit (so far, German Africa overall returns a profit, thanks to an extremely effective (and brutal) resource and labor extraction process, but if the rebel situation gets out of control...) The Syndicalist economic system, if less insanely centralized than the Soviet one (with it's turf wars between the ministries of Tic-Tacs and Smarties) has been almost as bad at creating added-value products, and is suffering from virtual schizophrenia as different factions try to create either a "people's market" or computerized prosperity on the "red plenty" model. At least they haven't reached the "shooting food rioters" stage of things - yet.

And then there's Japan, still trying to fully pacify China after six decades. In the 70s, much of western China became essentially ungovernable thanks to communist infiltrators and their local supporters: the Japanese withdrew east, taking with them everything they could truck away (down to the last can of Who-hash) and anyone fearing for their safety due to being collaborators or just too wealthy, but then radiologically, chemically, and biologically poisoned the area they had left, killing forty million Chinese (in just the short term: long term numbers remain hard to calculate) and declared their willingness to do the same to every inch of China rather than have it fall to the Reds. This nearly started WWIII, but it at least cowed resistance for a while.

Now, rebellion is once again hotting up again as a new generation comes to the fore, the "military frontier zones" are a hell on Earth, and the Japanese government turns to ever more repressive and misogynistic methods to get the birth rate up. Everyone doubts the Japanese government has the guts to repeat their actions of 1974 (for one thing, they've put so much work into their puppet regimes), but if they do, will the Reds decide they will need to respond?

Did I mention I have a Ko-Fi now? ko-fi.com/b_munro_alternatehis…

($3 in a week. This "monetizing" thing is harder than it looks ).