“Though I guess the TL went off the rails when that one Hittie Colony in Italy managed to conquer the entire meditarnnen and completely butterfly the Great Empire of Phoenicia.....because casualties are apparently just a number?"
What alternate history ideas you wish they were used more often?
- Thread starter Gar48
- Start date
"Its kinda weird how the TL hypes up yahwism too and brings Israel back later when they kind of screwed the israelites are every stance like David finally brought all the canaanites kingdom together and in any proper TL that would have meant they'd gone on a conqueror path but instead his son randomly fumbled it as soon as he died and turned his back to the one deity his father dedicated all his life to and who granted him all those buffs in the first place"
On the topic of the thread itself
I think people are too reluctant to write hybrid and original cultures, which is quite sad because they're some of the best things that can come out of the genre
The way I see it even during wanks where there's alt colonization or alt conquest going on the focus will be on the same nationality/ethnicity getting the benefits
I dont think thats due to some sort of x-centrism, though our idea that x people = y culture has a part in this, but its more so overly relying too much on the OTL paradign and what countries "do exist" as well as wanting to avoid their works getting called ASB for having a non-OTL polity or for mixing two groups that "would never work together"
Like let's be real for a moment, while the concept of a english colonization of the Americas may not be strange to a world that diverges from ours during say the Middle Ages, could something like the country of the United States of America ever have been written about if it didnt exist today?
Could an ATL author had taken their pen and thought "today I am going to write about this China-sized english rogue state that became a Constitutional Republic following the model of Ancient Rome while keeping the mercantile prowess of the phoenicians in the 1700s and name it my favorite italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci" ?
Perhaps, but hardly with this mindset
And Im not saying you have to make it as "weird" to us as the US might be to another timeline, but creative names and new nation-states have so much untapped potential
Like if for example you have the Dutch get the Philippines, why cant that be it's own unique nation?
Its always spanish this or english that, some old world conqueror got this and not that, but not what kind of place these new nations that would sprung from that would be
I think people are too reluctant to write hybrid and original cultures, which is quite sad because they're some of the best things that can come out of the genre
The way I see it even during wanks where there's alt colonization or alt conquest going on the focus will be on the same nationality/ethnicity getting the benefits
I dont think thats due to some sort of x-centrism, though our idea that x people = y culture has a part in this, but its more so overly relying too much on the OTL paradign and what countries "do exist" as well as wanting to avoid their works getting called ASB for having a non-OTL polity or for mixing two groups that "would never work together"
Like let's be real for a moment, while the concept of a english colonization of the Americas may not be strange to a world that diverges from ours during say the Middle Ages, could something like the country of the United States of America ever have been written about if it didnt exist today?
Could an ATL author had taken their pen and thought "today I am going to write about this China-sized english rogue state that became a Constitutional Republic following the model of Ancient Rome while keeping the mercantile prowess of the phoenicians in the 1700s and name it my favorite italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci" ?
Perhaps, but hardly with this mindset
And Im not saying you have to make it as "weird" to us as the US might be to another timeline, but creative names and new nation-states have so much untapped potential
Like if for example you have the Dutch get the Philippines, why cant that be it's own unique nation?
Its always spanish this or english that, some old world conqueror got this and not that, but not what kind of place these new nations that would sprung from that would be
Shakes in Continent Spanning Australia thats actually in North America and is basically modern China but speaking Latin and without the communism.
I agree wholeheartedly with the parts I quoted and I enjoyed making unique political entities (and cultural evolution as a side effect thereof) when in my mapmaking heyday lol
*Me with a magnifying lens trying to catch the ones you dont*
Wish I could see more of your maps tbh, I really enjoy your ideas and your comments are always a fun read
It will turn out to be another Indonesia (possibly less developed). Well, by the way, it’s interesting here - if the Portuguese and Spaniards gain a foothold in India, then how widespread will Catholicism be in India? Considering that, unlike the Dutch and the British, they strongly emphasized religious proselytism. Although I personally am not a supporter of the Christianization of India.
Might get some of the more costal areas to convert but considering how durable Hinduism proved to be across the Subcontinent I still the country would be majority Hindu but with a significantly enlarged Catholic minority
Dont necessarily agree
It depends on which administration takes over, their rule of Dutch Brazil was excellent(for colonial times anyway) and I've brainstormed before about if it got swapped up with the one that took hold of Indonesia for this very reason
The former already did that, they just gave their foothold to England
I think conversion is actually possible, see Pakistan, but I doubt a colonial power would pull that off seeing that the British Raj didnt and their catholic counterpart(the portuguese) if anything made the indians even more fervently hindu with how they treated the population
You'd need a native christian dynasty(equivalent to Delhi or the Mughals) to take charge instead, and for that you need a much earlier POD
Yeah I could see IDK Kerala or maybe even Maharashtra being Christianised and other areas around the west coast but not the whole thing. I don’t think even a native dynasty is needed just one with its main power base and support in India, like the Mughals and Delhi Sultanate had Persian as their court language and imported foreigners from back home in the middle east to rule the country so a similar set up could be used in India, maybe some rogue Portuguese commander setting up his own private Kingdom in Goa and the Bijapuri coast?
Calm down Cortez :v next thing you're gonna suggest that commander taking over the Vijayanagara Empire through sheer dumb luck and their vassals being just that pissed off with them
Oh and then his idiot pig farmer cousin pulls the same thing off in Delhi like a decade later!
More like the christian Vij Empire now takes control of the rest of the continent while his pig farmin' cousin becomes the Emperor of China or smth
And then the Portuguese Empire collapses and the Dutch Colony in Siberia randomly becomes the worlds strongest superpower in less than 2000 power sand completely dominate both India and China by barely even trying.