What alternate history ideas you wish they were used more often?

Gar48

So after seeing the various posts criticising the various cliches used in alternate history, i was curious to see the exact opposite, namely what ideas people find original but are rarely used for a timeline.

While i posted this in the pre-1900 forum, your opinion can be also about ideas set after the start of the 20th century.

Persoanlly i would love to see more of:

- Israel allied with the USSR and the US supporting the Arab states in retiliation

- The republic of Spain winning the Civil War

- Qing China being able to modernise and becoming a superpower

- More African States managing to avoid being colonised like Ethiopia
 

Beatriz

Here are some pre-1900 ideas:
1. Earlier independent Arab states in. N. Africa and W, Asia
2. More autonomy for european minorities (Bretons, Sardinians)
3. Earlier and stronger international institutions
 
Marc Anthony

Marc Anthony

raffaele gaggioli said:
So after seeing the various posts criticising the various cliches used in alternate history, i was curious to see the exact opposite, namely what ideas people find original but are rarely used for a timeline.

While i posted this in the pre-1900 forum, your opinion can be also about ideas set after the start of the 20th century.

Persoanlly i would love to see more of:

- Israel allied with the USSR and the US supporting the Arab states in retiliation

- The republic of Spain winning the Civil War

- Qing China being able to modernise and becoming a superpower

- More African States managing to avoid being colonised like Ethiopia
Click to expand...
this
TLs were Scotland remains independent, doesn't unite in personal union with England or seperates shortly after James VI ascends the throne of England.
more Ottoman TLs were they survive (they can stey intact or lose\gain land).
more Hundred years wars TLs
more new cold war begins in the 90s
90s eastern Europe and Balkans TLs
more ancient near east
migration era\Germanic Iron age TLs
speaking of Israel, i had two TL ideas:
one were Rabin listens to his guards and wears a bullet proof vest, thus surviving the assassination attempt and goes through with the peace process.
the second were Yoni Netanyahu isn't killed, thus Bibi never enters politics.
in the end i didn't make any because understandably it isn't allowed to make Israel centered TLs here due to possible flamebait. and the Netanyahu one could easily slide into current politics.
 
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AsukaEMP

AsukaEMP

-No union between Scotland and England
-No Qing dynasty (instead the Ming are followed by a new Han Chinese dynasty)
-Unified Netherlands early on (I began a tl about it but it's currently on hold because I'm too busy)
-India never fully colonized by a European power
-No Meiji restoration, or the Kōbu gattai succeeds
-Liberum veto in the PLC never gets out of hand
-Ottoman Empire never rises as a great power, or manages to reform more successfully in its later period
 

Yuhaoyang

Monarchist France，independent Scotland and Republican Anglo-Irish Union.
More dual monarchies ，similar to Austro-Hungary or Denmark - Norway.
 

TRH

Despite our reputation for focusing on the Anglosphere and Germany, there are some weird blind spots in terms of timelines focusing on those places. For example, we've had several monarchical US timelines, but I've never seen one on the Newburgh Conspiracy, which seems like a gold mine of a POD.
 
WilliamOfOckham

WilliamOfOckham

TLs less about the grand (i.e. military) sweep of history, and more about cultural phenomena - like so many OTL history books really are. It’s way more common in >XX than here, but self-limited TLs are always cool.
 

Harshavardhana

-A timeline dedicated to India post independence (it can even start pre-independence).
-An Indian kingdom surviving colonisation (the best would be Bengal or Mysore).
-An SI inside a ruler of the PLC (would love to see someone actually trying to make sure their kingdom don't get partitioned).
 
Kalga

Kalga

Everybody gets industrialized (instead of just the west or the east): because massive steampunk wars are underrated as is already.
 

Booster Gold

I've always found Manichaean timelines to be rare

Also I don't see a lot of United Netherlands before Napoleon

And nobody seems to think segregation had a chance to survive any longer than it did, but considering what Johnson had to do to end it, how extreme southerners were in their opposition to ending it, and the state of America today, I rather strongly disagree.
 
ZeroFrame

ZeroFrame

  • What if the Iranian Hostage Crisis led to war. If something went terribly wrong in the Embassy the whole thing would blow up the Middle East.
  • TLs focused on state politics. Smaller in scope but it can give an insight into a states politics.
  • Nixon winning in 1960 and seeing how that effects the political system.
  • A TL focused on LGBT+ rights. Maybe Harvey Milk surviving his assassinati.
  • A TL focused on an earlier fall of the PRI Dictatorship in Mexico. Maybe Cardenas by some miracle wins the 1988 Presidential Election.
  • Hugo Chavez never becomes the President of Venezuela and it explores how US-Venezuelan relations develop
  • I know this one isn’t that plausible but it would be really fun, Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley battling it out in either a presidential election or a New York Election. It’s be really entertaining to see how their hatred of each other translates into a state or federal election
  • Peter Shore becomes Prime Minister of the UK.
 
hanoverians

hanoverians

Blue Sky said:
  • What if the Iranian Hostage Crisis led to war. If something went terribly wrong in the Embassy the whole thing would blow up the Middle East.
  • TLs focused on state politics. Smaller in scope but it can give an insight into a states politics.
  • Nixon winning in 1960 and seeing how that effects the political system.
  • A TL focused on LGBT+ rights. Maybe Harvey Milk surviving his assassinati.
  • A TL focused on an earlier fall of the PRI Dictatorship in Mexico. Maybe Cardenas by some miracle wins the 1988 Presidential Election.
  • Hugo Chavez never becomes the President of Venezuela and it explores how US-Venezuelan relations develop
  • I know this one isn’t that plausible but it would be really fun, Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley battling it out in either a presidential election or a New York Election. It’s be really entertaining to see how their hatred of each other translates into a state or federal election
  • Peter Shore becomes Prime Minister of the UK.
Click to expand...
I would give anything to be a fly on the wall during a Vidal-Buckley Presidential debate.
 

Gar48

Carolus said:
Any non-European country that westernized itself instead of being literally conquered and colonized by European Powers. Just ask Imperial Japan, it knew how to do it correctly.😏
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Male rising has a lot of African nations doing exactly this
 
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material_boy

I'm not not sure this counts as it quite a bit broader than several of the other ideas in this thread, but I'd love to see more timelines with realistic departures around technology, religion and culture/society rather than geopolitics. For instance, no Black Death would relieve various societal pressures in the late-14th century, which butterflies inflation, the weakening of class structures, exploration, colonialism and various other things that led to the birth of modern Europe.

Marc Anthony said:
more Hundred years wars TLs
Click to expand...
Well, have I got a lot of ideas here 🤣 cc: @CaptainShadow
 

The Undead Martyr

I would say that the ancient world is very underutilized.

More generally, timelines that are not simply wanks but revel in exploring second-order impacts of the initial PoD. So for instance, a timeline focused on tracking the history of a hypothetical Diadochi state in Carthage as opposed to an Alexander-wank with a persisting Argaed Empire, or a divergent, Conciliarist Magisterial Reformation which doesn't completely break with the Catholic Church and its impacts on the Radical Reformation.
 
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