MotF 59: The Indomitables

After King Naresuan's death, the Burmese pushed the Thailand off their lands, with one exception: the Irrawaddy Delta. A group of Thai people had remained there, and they successfully fended off the Burmese invasions. The Thai people in the Irrawaddy Delta blended in with the Burmese people and became a unique Irrawaddy people. These people created a powerful kingdom that, before the arrival of the Europeans, stretched all the way from the Delta to the source of the Irrawaddy River.

After the arrival of the Europeans, the Burmese people, with the help of the Dutch and later the Portuguese pushed the Irrawaddy people back to the Delta. The British come on the scene as in OTL and, after capturing Burma, began a war against the Kingdom of Irrawaddy. The Kingdom is defeated, and their capital of Rangoon is taken by the British. The British start another war against the Kingdom, in hopes of gaining the remaining territory of the Kingdom. However, in this war the British loose, and with the Treaty of Calcutta they are forced to return some northern lands back to Irrawaddy, as well of the cession of the northern three Andaman Islands.

After the war, relations between Britain and the Kingdom of Irrawaddy become peaceful. The Kingdom is allowed to survive, surrounded by other British territories, with some British influence.

Ok. POD is that an Inca military genius independently invents the notion of pike squares as a way to deal with charging horses, and does some pretty damn innovative stuff with mountain warfare. This is not enough to kick the Spanish out of Peru, especially with plagues still screwing things up every few years, but he does manage to make it hot for them for a while. Finally, old and worn out, he makes his peace with the Spanish, converting to Catholicism and becoming a largely autonomous vassal of the Spanish monarchy. He is helped by the Spanish discovery of the mines of Potosi, which focuses their attention to the south of his territory.

Other Spanish allies did occasionally make such deals, only to be later betrayed and swallowed up, but his heirs manage to maintain a strong enough state to discourage such measures, and in any event the high mountains and the jungles beyond aren't all that appealing for settlers. More Spanish settle to the south and east, leading to a stronger future *Argentina. In the 1670s, with Spain in deep doodoo in Europe, a restive rural population is persuaded to rise by the Duke of Cuzco, and by the time the dust is settled, a new Empire of the Four Corners has been declared, and the new High Inca has a vitally important sea coast, allowing for trade and import of new ideas and technology from non-Spanish nations.

Tahuantinsuyu would enter the 20th century as the first non-European nation to successfully modernize: although Catholicized, they would retain their old language and much of their own culture, and a fine contempt for all European declarations of "missions to civilize" that would make them a gadfly in the global village for the century to come...

Bruce

And here is a map.

Bruce

Two battles a few years apart turned the tide of history against Christendom for a time. In 717, Caliph Suleiman's reinforcements reached the walls of Constantinople* and broke the stalemate, capturing the city and crippling the Eastern Roman Empire. Four years later, the Wali of Al-Andalus captured Toulouse, allowing the conquest of Aquitaine, an autonomous nominal possession of the Frankish King. The next year, the King of the Franks, Charles Martel, attempted to recapture Toulouse and was killed in battle. The fragile kingdom fell apart into bickering petty states, allowing the Muslims to piece by piece conquer Francia from the west while establishing dominance over the Balkans from the east. While the overstretched Umayyad Caliphate would soon fall and the Berbers of North Africa who made up the bulk of the Caliphate's armies revolt, Muslim successor states had taken root in Europe, and by the end of the 9th century the situation had stabilized and new polities were again leading the Muslim advance into Europe, despite their gains having been eroded somewhat in the meantime.

While it was often difficult to secure gains in Francia and Italy, the Sufi orders who traversed north found a more pliable audience in the Norse and Slavic peoples; still holding to their old pagan beliefs, in contrary to the south where the peasantry who made up most of the population clung doggedly to Christianity, they converted to the new faith wholesale. The stories of the great conquests of Muhammed and his successors in particular appealed to the Norse, and by the 10th and 11th centuries Islam was now being spread from the north as well; population pressures in Scandinavia drove them south and west in search of new lands. Heavily targeted were the British Isles, with Ireland being almost entirely overrun.

This however, would result in a reaction from the Christians. Ireland had been Christianized early and Ingland, while it had less of a Christian tradition, still strongly felt itself to be a lone outpost of Christendom in an ever more unfriendly world. In the 12th century, the Kings of the surviving Christian states of the British Isles banded together to form the Christianae Pacta — Christian Compact — an alliance against the "Infidels". Inglish troops in Ireland helped to beat back the Norse under the auspices of the pact, and at the Battle of Ferns soundly defeated them. That battle achieved almost a mythological quality, considered by the Inglish and Irish to have been the "Day that saved Christendom".

In the 13th century, the wealth and influence of the Muslim powers in Europe arguably reached it's zenith. Europe was dominated by three rival Caliphates; the Caliphate of Rum under the Perso-Turkic Begid Dynasty, stretching from the Alps to the Arabian Sea, the Caliphate of Francia under the Arab Hassanid Dynasty encompassing all of Western Europe, and the Caliphate of Maghreb under the Arab-Berber Zayanid Dynasty stretching from Hispania to Egypt. On the periphery, Scandinava had united into a handful of Emirates and a centralized Wendish Sultanate had arisen. Despite the strength of the Muslim powers, the Christianae Pacta remained undefeated, having established an uneasy truce with the Norse-Gaelic Muslim rulers of the Emirates of Alba and Ailech and the Southern Isles. Distrustful of the Pope in Rome, the the four Kings of the Pact elect their own Anti-Pope, who sits in Coventry and also serves as the closest thing the confederation has to a single secular authority; an inexorable relationship has developed between being Inglish or Irish and being Christian.

On the other hand, in some cities in Munster and Leinster the Kings of those states tolerate the populations of Norse Muslim traders there, as long as they remain inconspicuous. They also rely on the expert shipbuilding skills of the Norsemen; desperate to find another outpost of Christendom in the world and intrigued by the legends of Irish monks living on a great island across the sea and by the story of "Prester John", the Kings are increasingly occupied with the financing of new developments in the construction of ships and of great voyages, hoping to find the Lost Christians they believe reside across the horizon to the west...

Despite this, the Inglish fear the Norse more than all but the Devil himself — much more than they fear even the Caliphs or the "Cloaked Mohammedan" residing in Rome — the Norse took the romanticized tales of Arab military triumphs to heart and are fierce and unforgiving warriors and relentless sailors, and much to the consternation of the Caliphs have less compunction about respecting other "People of the Book" and less regard for the laws of war followed by the Arabs, and their theological deviations, particular their insistence that beer is a drink never forbidden by the Prophet and one which believers are free to imbibe as they wish; many a port town in Al-Firanja knows — and fears — the wrath of a drunken Norse trader.

With no Normans as such, there was no Norman invasion of Britain, and so the English language — "Ingelsk" as it it known to it's speakers ITTL — is much more Germanic in character; as evidenced by my use of West Frisian as a stand-in for it here.

* - The POD; IOTL he died fighting the Byzantines.

And the map.

In this world there was no Hong Xiuqan to lead the disasterous Taiping-Uprising. Instead the leader of a similar rebellion was a competent guy who managed to size control of southern China without too much destruction and gain the recognition of the wesetern powers who liked a non-isolationist regime. The newly formed feng dynasty embarked on a program of modernisation and tried to extend its controll. Although there were some gains, the Chinese Civil war allowed the European poweres to accelerate their colonisation efforts. Russia in particular vasalized both Mongolia and the remnants of the Qing Dynasty after they were evicted from China proper following a short war in 1887.

The colonial powers would continue to view China as a weak and despotic regime (although it was about as democratic as Imperial Germany) until the great eastern war between China the also modernizing Japan on one side and Russia on the other.

The Russian attempted (via their Qing puppets) to vasalise Korea, which neither the Chinese nor the Japanese were willing to tolerate.
The Russians had expected a quick victory further entrenching their position in the east, but found their armies and fleets rapidly destroyed by the Chinese and Japanese.
When the Americans arranged a ceasefire the Asians had regained all territories lost in the last hundred years. The devastating loss would lead to a revolution toppling the Monarchy and after a civil war establishing a republic in Russia. This collapse would have far reaching effects, as germany would no longer need to worry about an two front war.
In Europe this victory lead to a series of articles about the yellow peril, and both Britain and France would increase their troops in the asian colonies.


In China on the other hand the victory lead to the biggest celebrations for a liftime. Half a century of humuliation had finally ended, and China no longer had to bow to the foreign powers.