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unoservix — one two three four i declare a cold war
Published: 2014-03-02 01:01:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 4860; Favourites: 31; Downloads: 22
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This map comes from a gargantuan Gundam alternate history story I concocted several years ago, where, among other things, the Confederacy survived the American Civil War by retreating to the Caribbean and World War II ended with a draw between the Allies and Axis, which leaves the world sort of hovering in a permanent six-way Cold War. I scrapped the whole thing when I realized it was stupid and more or less turning into an excuse to have Gundams fighting Nazis and Confederates and Communists at the same time, but the mecha designs live on, and so does this map.I made this out of an old blank template world map from Wikipedia, which, as you can see, was made before things like the Libyan civil war and South Sudan's independence and the Arab Spring. Now that I look at it, there's probably all kinds of cultural/historical ignorance, rank ethnocentrism, and general dumbness built into it, and into the text below. The template had no subnational divisions, so I didn't include any of those, and hence some of the borders and political alliances and stuff might just be the result of laziness and trying to fit modern borders into different ideological/historical/cultural/etc slots. Typing it up, I noticed that apparently this is a story in which the whole ideology of colonialism never really dies. Also I'm fairly sure my German sucks! But it is what it is.
Among other little bits of interest in here:
-One of the big "alternate" parts of the history here is the American Civil War, which lasts for ten devastating years and ends with embittered Confederates fleeing south into the Caribbean, to set up their own country, with hookers and blackjack (haaaaa civil war joke lol). By the time the story starts, the Confederate States of America, as they still call themselves, have conquered just about all of the Caribbean and set up a totalitarian society of aristocratic captains of industry, and of course slaves, increasingly bankrolled by fascist forces abroad (read: the Nazis). It also backs an organization called the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. In reality the Klan is a bunch of looneytoons in goofy robes with abhorrent beliefs; in this story, they're still that, but they were also to be a twofold menace. In the United States, they are a tenacious and dreaded terrorist organization that sweeps across the United States doing their level best to cause chaos throughout the Union. In the Confederacy, meanwhile, the Klan is more or less equivalent to the Nazi Party, as the sole legitimate political institution of the Confederacy and the supplier of the fascistic white supremacy ideology that underlies the Confederacy's totalitarian state. There was a whole lot of Harry Turtledove shit goin' on here, is what I'm getting at. Needless to say, they were kind of the bad guys. I never got far enough in putting this story together to actually come up with a plot or an endgame, but as one would expect, a satisfying ending probably has to include the Ku Klux Klan getting annihilated and its survivors put on trial for the most heinous of crimes against humanity, and I dare say we can all drink to that.
-The British maintain a tenuous alliance up and down Africa, consisting mostly of former colonies. In this map, they completed the Cape to Cairo Railway during their tenure as brutal colonial overlords of Africa, and by the time the story was set, they're still desperately clinging to that railway by maintaining alliances with the various dictatorships and failed states along its route. Economic ruin and sweeping independence movements after World War II forced Britain out of the explicit colonialism business, so now they settle for the more invidious form of colonialism that is patronage.
-Nazi Germany is back in the colonialism business after a lengthy absence, reclaiming some of the old German Empire's colonies. In Africa, its greatest ambition is to create a rival to the British Cape to Cairo Railway, linking the Axis colonies together from Tunisia to Namibia. Unfortunately for them, that means they've got some conquering to do. Unfortunately for the people in those to-be-conquered territories, it means the Axis is coming. To the surprise of many, I'm sure, the Nazis were kind of also the bad guys here.
-Speaking of which, Nazi Germany survived World War II thanks to the simultaneous invasion of the Soviet Union by Japan. Eventually the Russians beat them both back, but that came at the cost of not being able to destroy Germany in the west and the Sakhalin islands in the east. Not sure if that makes sense, but it's what I went with. Germany is spared invasion by the Reds, but at the cost of an enormous Allied invasion in western Europe that wrenches France from Hitler's grip. Anyway, a cranky Hitler dies shortly after the war, leaving his successors to try picking on countries not quite as scary as the Soviet Union. By the time the story begins, they've conquered Sweden and Turkey and gotten themselves back in the African colony business, and they've also cultivated a lucrative relationship with fascist-controlled Argentina. Moreover, they've also pretty much propped up the Confederacy, in hopes that it will provide a nice big distraction for the United States the next time the Nazis try to conquer the world or whatever. I never got far enough in planning this whole thing to figure out the ending, but I'm pretty sure the Nazis lose, and also all die.
-"Einsatzgebiet Toteninsel" is what at the time I thought was German for something like "Special Zone Death Island," although Google appears to disagree with me now. Turns out I cannot German. Anyway, Toteninsel is the Nazi name for Svalbard, and it's the site of a whole bunch of special prisons, extermination camps, research facilities, military bases, and other nasty Nazi-ish things. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
-The Spanish are still a fascist state and they still have a vestigial colonial empire, mostly consisting of a huge wedge of South America and a few slices of Central America. They are tenuous allied to the Axis, but prefer to keep Germany and Italy at arm's length, since those guys will proooooobably just get you into trouble.
-The Empire of Japan survived WWII, but with the loss of its lucrative territories in Manchuria, and now that those territories are controlled by the mighty People's Republic of China, they're kind of not an option anymore. Instead, imperial Japan has its eye on Australia to the south and India to the west. However this story was to end, I'm pretty sure the Empire of Japan loses.
-The good old US of A is still the hypocritical quasi-colonial capitalist orgy of consumer-driven imperialistic power that it is today, but the alternate Civil War left some major scars. Most notably, by the time the story begins, the states of the former Confederacy are pretty much all still economic wastelands, still crawling with federal troops, and still a hotbed of support for the terrorists of the KKK and the old Confederate cause. All this internal unrest, as well as a devastating war with the Confederacy that coincided with WWII, has limited US influence on world events; still, by the story's beginning, the US is one of the most powerful countries in the world and a rival to the Communists, the fascists, and the Japanese.
-The Communists aren't really, like, remotely describable as Communist anymore, by the time the story begins. The USSR, China, and India are the bulwarks of the international Marxist menace, but they've all pretty much embraced Chinese-style economic reforms that warded off the stagnation. But that's only been temporary, since it's not like economic reforms have made political repression anymore fun or sustainable. The Russians, Chinese, and Indians never quite get along, and they're all increasingly worrying about various separatist movements throughout their territories. In particular, the Indian Communist regime has spent much blood and treasure in a seemingly endless civil war with the occupied territories of Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the Chinese face a major threat in the fact that the Empire of Japan sits in the way of their access to lucrative markets for cheap lead-painted manufactured shit. Russia, meanwhile, is pretty much in a constant state of Gearing Up For the Big War With the Fascists next door, so the Communist bloc is pretty much a giant mess. I'm fairly sure they wound up losing too. On the other side, since Japan still controls the Korean peninsula in this story, I guess it means no North Korean wackiness.
-Antarctica is not on this map, but I had some vague idea of a race for resources in Antarctica prompting World War III or somethin' like that.
Anyways. Lots of dumb shit up there, but I guess it's context for all these otherwise meaningless robots.
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Comments: 8
I'm not that versed in some of the more international history of post world war 2, but I do have some insight into the Post-Civil War Spain era, although it mostly depends on if the Spanish-American War / Disaster of 98 (as it's taught in Spain) happened or not and how it went. Since that particular war marked the end of any Spanish pretense of holding a colonial Empire, even after the previous South American Wars of Independence caused by the Napoleon's Conquest of Spain and the subsequent Wars of Succession (three Carlist wars and widespread revolts during that period), In essence depending on the Napoleonic Wars and the Spanish-American War this map doesn't really correspond on what Spain would have.
To simplify the Disaster of 98 caused a cultural/economic depression that affected Spain for most of 20th Century.
On the other hand the Spanish Civil War was considered the practice ground for the German LuftWaffe.
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Yeah, I have to admit that the Spanish Empire was one of the parts where I put the least thought in before I scrapped the whole thing.
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Scrapped? I don't know it's fairly elaborated, it sounds like a good alternate history for this.
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warning: long reply is long
Well, the older I get and the more I learn about world history and other cultures and stuff, the more it becomes apparent that my alternate history here is kind of dubious. You've already pointed out the flaws in my thinking (or lack thereof) about a modern-day Spanish Empire. It's also occurred to me that I had the American Civil War ending in 1870, with defeated Confederates fleeing south into the Caribbean to set up their own state--but the Caribbean was almost exclusively colonized by European powers that probably wouldn't take kindly to a bunch of butthurt American slaveowners and their troops seizing these Caribbean colonies. And bedraggled Confederate remnants probably wouldn't have been in any shape to take on Britain, France, and Spain, after just losing the war to the Union.
Looking over what remains of this idea, at the time I was fascinated with naval power and strategy, and it looks like this whole idea highlighted the world's navies more than anything. In fact, one of the key points of political crisis as the story began was, within the story, the recent Confederate capture of Honduras from the Spanish Empire. The Confederate Navy had become powerful, as one would expect from a country that consists entirely of islands, and the capture of Honduras gave them a small coastline on the Pacific Ocean, which raised the possibility of Confederate activity in the Pacific, and the US did not like that one bit. However, this was all in 2010; I'm not really sure naval power is the central focus of all military and foreign policy the way it was in this story, especially not in the same story that's full of, y'know, giant robots. But at the very least, that explains the supply of amphibious mecha I drew.
And there were other considerations. It was about 2009-2010 when I came up with this whole thing, and I intended the story to be set at that time. But it also included things like space colonies, and I felt that going from Sputnik to Gundam-style space colonies in the span of sixty years strained credulity a bit too much. Moreover, each space colony was controlled by one of the big factions on Earth--which meant the central conflict of the story wasn't Earth vs. space, it was countries on Earth vs. each other. Even if you took out the space colonies, it was still a Gundam story, which involved all kinds of giant robots running around in 2010--and by removing space colonies entirely, it removed one of the signal features of the Gundam franchise, and it's kind of hard to write a story about the conflict between people on Earth and in space when there's nobody in space. And at that point I had to wonder why I was still calling it Gundam.
Not to mention, this being all set in 2010, it meant we would still have the kinds of massive global supply chains and sprawling international conglomerates and complex trade agreements and global communications systems that we have in reality. And all those things made it hard for me to believe that the world could still be so openly and antagonistically divided. It would also fly in the face of the theory that countries with a middle class strong enough to support a McDonalds network probably won't go to war with each other once they've both got McDonalds locations. I suppose the consequence of the world of this story is that a McDonalds kind of global network is just impossible, since McDonalds probably wouldn't be invited to set up shop in Nazi Germany and the USSR. Then again, that kind of investment and economic activity is what this story's background requires in order to keep the Soviet Union from just imploding, so that started to strain my credulity.
Not to mention, stepping back and looking at all of this, it feels like it would very easily turn into just one uninformed dingbat ranting about international politics in the guise of a giant robot cartoon fanfic. I'm not sure it's realistic for any government, even one as oppressive and aggressive as Nazi Germany, to still have overseas colonies in 2014 the way Europe did in 1914. Like I said, you've already pointed out the problems of trying to project the pre-Napoleonic Spanish Empire into the 21st century. I still had Israel wedged in there, and Israel always seems to get everyone pissed off, so that alone would've brought me a lot of rancor. I had Venezuela firmly and explicitly in the Communist camp and in Moscow's orbit, which I'm sure would've pissed some people off. I had the Confederates clearly and obviously cast as villains, and I know that would draw some ire. I'm not sure the Third Reich would've suffered a free and Western-allied France to continue existing on its doorstep, as it does here. As it so happens, the version of France I wound up with in this story is sort of a paranoid fortress-state that constantly anticipates war with the Nazis, which I'm not sure is a realistic course for French history to take in the 20th and 21st centuries. Many important bits of world history played out in this story pretty much the same way they did in reality; e.g. the West sill backed an autocratic Shah in Iran, who got overthrown by Khomeini, who ushered in an autocratic Islamic theocracy. Other things just sprang out of laziness; e.g. rather than figuring out the various strategic interests and whatnot of the many states on the Arabian peninsula, I just lumped them all into one state. But even so, I'm not sure it's realistic to think that this Arabian megastate would willingly ally itself in any way with the Islamic Republic of Iran. And obviously this whole thing was dreamed up by an American, and it was practically an irresistible impulse to at least put my own country in the camp with the good guys. It resulted in conceits like a close-knit military and economic alliance between Canada, the US, and Mexico that has started to blur the distinctions between the three countries, and equally close alliances with Britain, France, Brazil, and Australia. Looking back, it kind of has a subtle nationalistic vibe, where America might do bad stuff, but its enemies are those nasty Nazis and the vicious imperial Japanese and the fascistic Communists and the virulently racist Confederates and they're all way worse. Kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.
Anyway, tl;dr the whole thing just got so bloated and contrived and silly that I just decided to dump it on dA and forget about it. I'm sure there's plenty of salvageable stuff in here, but overall it kind of started to strain credulity.
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Wow that is long, and frankly not that badly done as that an AH idea, and the McDonald's network reminded me a bit of the concept of the Corporate Nation, basically a Company that has gained extraterritoriality where they become a nation onto themselves within their own properties. Check something called Shadowrun if you want more, it's a fairly entertaining idea.
Also you overvalued the amount of actual power the European powers exerted over the Caribbean in the late 1800s who unlike the American Confederates would have relied on transatlantic resupplying and reinforcements of the various islands and forts across the Caribbean which had mostly been weakened after a period of internal power struggles in Europe had left the Caribbean out of European orbit for a long time prompting most of the Spanish Colonial Holdings to declare independence during the Napoleonic Wars, leaving fledgling nations out in the water with no real European support. In fact the only real bastion of European power left in the Caribbean if the Confederates had taken Honduras would have been Spanish Cuba that wasn't taken by the USA until 1898.
In essence had the Confederates done a mass retreat/invasion of the Caribbean they could have had massive holdings in that area and effectively held it against most contenders, the only doubt could possible be the English Navy which was and still is one of the largest navies in the world. If I remember correctly on the onset of the First World War their Naval policy was to have a Navy that was 3 times larger than the next to largest navy.
Now my main problem with a Spanish Empire that survives into the later 20th Century is that during that period Spain isn't the most stable of Countries to actually maintain Colonies, Although maintaining Cuba during the 1898 might have inspires a later rebirth of Spanish Imperialism during the First World War while the other Countries where duking it out in France and Eastern Europe, a period of relative stability and pronounced Economic growth in Spain. As such having a largely uncontested control of the Atlantic could allow them to stage a large scale Reconquest of the Caribbean, something which Spanish culture is very in favour of regardless of the Era. If politicians phrased it properly they would have called it the "Reconquista del Caribe" and have had a lot of popular backing since, ever since the Expulsion of the Moors in 1492, it's been drilled into every History book that retaking Spanish land is a holy prerogative, at least that's how I felt it was considering how hung up we are about that particular period.
If a Spanish invasion of the Caribbean and South America had been even Marginally Successful we could justify a Spanish Colonial Empire in the late 20th century which would have allowed for a Home Power that may have averted the Civil War which crippled Spain during the Second World War.
In essence what I'm saying here is that the Confederate control of the Caribbean would have been largely contested by a not depressed reinvigorated Spain.
Now as for central to eastern Europe all it takes for the survival of Nazi Germany in a post war era would have been that the planned assassination of Hitler by some of his officers to have gone as they had planned and that a small coup had taken place allowing for the peace talks they had planned to go forward with the Allies, this may have left Japan and whichever side of the Americans had the major influence in the Pacific to fight it out until either side gave up, depending on if the Americans reached Japan, the bombs were dropped or any other outcome (Japan couldn't win against both America, China and the Commonwealth).
The Russian/Chinese history would have remained largely unchanged except for the communist rise in India and probably the redistribution of Indonesia between them afterwards.
Also you have to remember that during those 200 years there were several very influential individuals that shaped the World Map in very surprising ways, so remember that a handful of individuals can really change history.
Anyway that was long but hey I enjoy Historical Evaluation.
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