Hey guys
I’ve been writing this TL for three years now, and for the most part, I’ve been extremely happy with it. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have any things I regret about the direction this TL has gone in, so I’m going to share some things I’d revise, whether it be through a retcon or in a future Maps & Graphics TL.
First,
the map. I’m for the most part pretty satisfied with how the world map looks as of now, and most of the changes I’d like to make are minor ones in more peripheral regions of the world, but they’re changes nonetheless, and I might rip the band-aid off with the biggest change of them all:
I don’t like the Scandinavian New Zealand idea.
Yes, I know it’s something you guys were insistent on (and something I initially agreed to), and I have ancestral ties to the region that cause me to have an interest in the region (I’d be interested in doing a surviving-Kalmar-Union-turned-Scandinavian-Empire TL someday). However, there’s a reason I called my first New Zealand update “The Improbably Colony”, that being that I find colonies established on the other side of the world by two mid-sized powers exceedingly unlikely. I’ve had a soft spot for a German colony in New Zealand (or a German settler colony anywhere) for a while now, but that doesn’t seem much more likely than Scandinavian New Zealand. Neither Prussia nor Austria were ever naval powers (
despite attempts from both), and while there were German settlements in New Zealand IOTL (notably in
Nelson, plus a proposal to settle the
Chatham Islands), they were organized through the British New Zealand Company. However, I did have them colonize New Caledonia shortly after the Nords colonized New Zealand in this timeline, so maybe I just have them colonize New Zealand anyway? I don’t know, I’ll figure this out.
Moving across the Tasman Sea to Australia (or Terra Australis ITTL), there’s one thing I’d like to change. Quite frankly, I don’t think it’d be realistic for the Portuguese to colonize the east coast of Northern Australia. Their naval presence based out of their Indonesian colonies would be concentrated in the
Timor Sea,
Arafura Sea and the
Gulf of Carpentaria, but I don’t see it extending beyond the tip of
Cape York. Meanwhile, the British have already colonized the East Coast of Australia, and would probably seek to extend their control along the entire east coast. Thus, I’d give the eastern part of Portuguese Capricornia to the British, with the border being at the
141st meridian east and the
Norman River, or somewhere around the longitude of OTL’s
Normanton. As compensation to the Iberians, I’d give Patagonia north of the
Colorado River to La Plata.
On another topic, I feel like I’ve messed up parts of the history. For example, the Spanish colonies having little to no autonomy until the 20th Century is highly unlikely IMO, and yet that’s how it turned out in my timeline. For example, I could see the
Criollos (who led the Latin American Revolutions of OTL) gaining more autonomy and self-governance in the Early-Mid 19th Century, with it later being extended to Mestizos at some point (Black and Amerindian political rights would likely not happen by this point in the TL). The same is true of La Floride, which I don’t recall having some sort of colonial parliament (although I might’ve done it and I’m just too lazy to check), but it’d likely happen in the Mid 19th Century, due to Floridian population growth and to satiate the growing Floridian Nationalist movement. Latin America in general is a region I might need to rework in a significant way.
Finally, I don’t like the German
Mitteleuropa after the Second Global War. Sure, it was an OTL proposal, and sure, they did win, but Germany ITTL is split between Prussian domination of the north and an Austro-Bavarian union in the south. Without Bavaria, I don’t know if this Prussian-led North Germany would be strong enough to dominate Eastern Europe, and it would also lock Russia out of influence in Eastern Europe, which I don’t find realistic long term (I want Europe to stay interesting). New states that were split off from Russia like Baltia and Estonia could end up being German dominated, but Poland (which was never partitioned and survived throughout the entire 19th Century ITL) could hold some influence of its own, and Ukraine is too close to and too similar to Russia to not have some sort of Russian influence in the Country. I could either work with it for the rest of the timeline and change it in the Maps & Graphics TL (which is coming, likely sometime in 2022), or I could either retcon it and tell people to skip the Mitteleuropa update.
On the topic of OTL proposals, I feel like I’ve relied too much on parallelism at points in this TL. Sure, having a world war in the 1860s and 1870s and having a more limited Scramble For Africa was different, but I had a world war in the 1910s followed by an economic crash starting in the late 1920s and running through the 1930s (albeit without another world war in the late 1930s and early-mid 1940s). Obviously I need OTL as a point of reference, but I feel as though I’ve made some aspects of this TL to be too similar to our own world. Share your thoughts and tell me what you think, and have a good day.
(BTW, this is my 3000th post on alternatehistory.com, so that's something).