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Description
I was asked to do a full world map for this map I posted a few months ago, a take on Steven Barnes's "Lion's Blood" AH novels: www.deviantart.com/quantumbran…

(They will call it the coal wars because Africans first began their expansion into western Great Britain in search of industrial raw materials: there are few places in Africa where coal and iron are found in abundance and easily brought together. African interest in what would be northern France and Belgium would grow for the same reason. Although the wars that would overturn the African balance of power and transform Europe in ways none of its inhabitants would have imagined had to do with more than coal and iron, more even than colonial rivalries, coal would be at the beginning of the story).

This is a world where some alt-plagues and wars wrecked Roman and Greek civilization early on, and Africa managed to get a bit of a boost. Nowadays "modernity" is mostly an African thing, with some genuine science and technology at about mid-19th century levels (steamships and railways and someone's working on a telegraph, but no airships or gatling guns yet). Europe is one of the world's more backwards spots: north of Mediterranean areas under African influence, it's mostly still pagan in the old-fashioned, non-doctrinal manner, and is mostly wee kingdoms, the Celts retaining their old skills at political fragmentation, and German unification not aided by multiple brutal steppe invasion into the heart of Europe. The most advanced are the Scandinavians, whose old Germanic viking faith has been somewhat systematized by African influence (they've also mostly given up human sacrifice), and whose military kit is about on a Peak Pre-Modern Ottomans level: enough to discourage Africans, so far.

Slavery is normal in this world, and the plantations of Ioruba north *America require regular fresh recruits. The biggest source of slaves is Europe, prisoners of war taken in Celt on German/Celt on Celt/German on Slav wars, or the product of Jutlander slave raiding (something they have recently expanded to positively industrial scales). The Suihon/Swedish Empire does some raiding on the crumbling Slavic and Finnish edges of the Turkish empire, but it's a smaller scale - and necessarily more cautious - enterprise. (The Amurizag *Caribbean generally uses debt-slaves and indentured labor from the more backwards parts of tropical Africa - the climate and disease environment from central Florida south just kills off Europeans faster than they can work off their purchase costs. European slaves are, however, widely used in the less deadly climes of the Mediterranean and near east, and in Europe itself, of course).

Persia, like the far east, is considered semi-civilized by Africans, having worked hard to keep up with the Egyptian Joneses over the centuries, and currently is in an expansionist phase, although unless something badly weakens Khemet they will probably go after softer targets to the north and East. India has been much invaded, with no Muslims but plenty of Zoroastrians and followers of the rather non-pacifist Turkish version of Buddhism. China has been divided into north and south for a long time: the border occasionally moves north or south, but reunion is looking rather unlikely at this stage.

Asides from Zoroastrianism, various flavors of Buddhism, and a rather different Jewish diaspora, the Tungusic rulers of north China follow a syncretic religion derived from Mongol shamanism, south China is as OTL Buddhist and Confucian but also a very mystical brand of Daoism, and much of Africa follows a monotheist religion founded by an Arab prophet who found no supporters in his homeland but did rather better in Aksum/Ethiopia. (It's about as similar to OTL Islam as OTL Islam is to Mormonism.) The Ioruba follow a systematized paganism, with their calendar dating from the supposed founding of their ancient capital by a semi-divine being: the Kwilu Federation has a dozen major religions.

I've made the colony on the OTL US west coast (whose name I stole from Tormsen) Japanese rather than Chinese, not out of Japan-wankery, but because frankly I think a China interested enough in overseas affairs to set up colonies on the other side of the Pacific is going to be rather more disruptive to African global dominance than the Japanese doing so would be.

P.S. - I have a Ko-Fi.

Description
I was asked to do a full world map for this map I posted a few months ago, a take on Steven Barnes's "Lion's Blood" AH novels: www.deviantart.com/quantumbran…

(They will call it the coal wars because Africans first began their expansion into western Great Britain in search of industrial raw materials: there are few places in Africa where coal and iron are found in abundance and easily brought together. African interest in what would be northern France and Belgium would grow for the same reason. Although the wars that would overturn the African balance of power and transform Europe in ways none of its inhabitants would have imagined had to do with more than coal and iron, more even than colonial rivalries, coal would be at the beginning of the story).

This is a world where some alt-plagues and wars wrecked Roman and Greek civilization early on, and Africa managed to get a bit of a boost. Nowadays "modernity" is mostly an African thing, with some genuine science and technology at about mid-19th century levels (steamships and railways and someone's working on a telegraph, but no airships or gatling guns yet). Europe is one of the world's more backwards spots: north of Mediterranean areas under African influence, it's mostly still pagan in the old-fashioned, non-doctrinal manner, and is mostly wee kingdoms, the Celts retaining their old skills at political fragmentation, and German unification not aided by multiple brutal steppe invasion into the heart of Europe. The most advanced are the Scandinavians, whose old Germanic viking faith has been somewhat systematized by African influence (they've also mostly given up human sacrifice), and whose military kit is about on a Peak Pre-Modern Ottomans level: enough to discourage Africans, so far.

Slavery is normal in this world, and the plantations of Ioruba north *America require regular fresh recruits. The biggest source of slaves is Europe, prisoners of war taken in Celt on German/Celt on Celt/German on Slav wars, or the product of Jutlander slave raiding (something they have recently expanded to positively industrial scales). The Suihon/Swedish Empire does some raiding on the crumbling Slavic and Finnish edges of the Turkish empire, but it's a smaller scale - and necessarily more cautious - enterprise. (The Amurizag *Caribbean generally uses debt-slaves and indentured labor from the more backwards parts of tropical Africa - the climate and disease environment from central Florida south just kills off Europeans faster than they can work off their purchase costs. European slaves are, however, widely used in the less deadly climes of the Mediterranean and near east, and in Europe itself, of course).

Persia, like the far east, is considered semi-civilized by Africans, having worked hard to keep up with the Egyptian Joneses over the centuries, and currently is in an expansionist phase, although unless something badly weakens Khemet they will probably go after softer targets to the north and East. India has been much invaded, with no Muslims but plenty of Zoroastrians and followers of the rather non-pacifist Turkish version of Buddhism. China has been divided into north and south for a long time: the border occasionally moves north or south, but reunion is looking rather unlikely at this stage.

Asides from Zoroastrianism, various flavors of Buddhism, and a rather different Jewish diaspora, the Tungusic rulers of north China follow a syncretic religion derived from Mongol shamanism, south China is as OTL Buddhist and Confucian but also a very mystical brand of Daoism, and much of Africa follows a monotheist religion founded by an Arab prophet who found no supporters in his homeland but did rather better in Aksum/Ethiopia. (It's about as similar to OTL Islam as OTL Islam is to Mormonism.) The Ioruba follow a systematized paganism, with their calendar dating from the supposed founding of their ancient capital by a semi-divine being: the Kwilu Federation has a dozen major religions.

I've made the colony on the OTL US west coast (whose name I stole from Tormsen) Japanese rather than Chinese, not out of Japan-wankery, but because frankly I think a China interested enough in overseas affairs to set up colonies on the other side of the Pacific is going to be rather more disruptive to African global dominance than the Japanese doing so would be.

P.S. - I have a Ko-Fi.