MotF 69: ALL ABOARD! 2

"Never a Pawn in Someone Else's Game"

(Someone had set a challenge (or rather, a dare) to make an Afghanistan-wank for a previous MotF, which I accepted but never completed, mainly because I wanted to put too much detail on the map and gave up. Thankfully, this meant that I had most of the legwork done when I returned to the idea for this round. )


The history behind this map involves Amanullah Khan - the first king of the modern and independent Kingdom of Afghanistan - breaking with the Soviets earlier, thereby preventing British agents from attempting to undermine his "pro-Soviet" regime. Instead, Amanullah plays the Soviets and Britain off each other. He antagonises them both for their oppression of Muslims, but never outright denounces either side in favour of the other. His vocal support for his fellow Muslims in Central Asia and India keeps the more conservative and radical members of his realm on his side.

Under Amanullah Afghanistan gradually shifts to be more democratic and free, with many Islamic rules being removed from the lawbooks (though people remained free to follow these rules). Afghanistan is seen as a shining example of what an independent Islamic state might be, and as the Indian independence movement gains more momentum many Pashtuns believe that joining with Afghanistan would be the best choice, rather than joining a newly independent India or Pakistan.

The Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre (link) happens similarly to our timeline, with the Indian National Congress and Amanullah Khan denouncing the actions of the British. The Pakistan Movement, however, denounces the protesters for attempting to split the Muslims of India into several nations. This heartlessness in the face of tragedy causes support for the Pakistan Movement to melt away, eventually becoming no more than a forgotten dream.

When Indian independence does come about, Pashtun regions on the border of Afghanistan are given the option to join with the kingdom, which they do willingly. A number of Muslim regions around the borders of India choose independence, whilst most of the country opts for union.

With the Second World War over and British India free, Afghanistan starts to shift towards the West. The aging Amanullah spends his last years touring Europe and America, portraying the kingdom as "The Eastern edge of the West" and therefore a vital area for any global anti-Soviet strategy.

Afghanistan's vast untapped natural resources are quickly developed, with national agencies providing subsidies and the appropriate infrastructure. The Afghanistani Rail Administration is one such national agency, and played a vital role in developing Afghanistan into the rich, free country it is at the start of the new millennium.





Trivia:

- The map title comes from the quote "We will never be a pawn in someone else's game. We will always be Afghanistan." by Ahmad Shah Massoud in Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda by Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo.

- The text in the box in the upper-left reads "The railroad administrator for Afghanistan is the Afghanistani Rail Adminitration (ARA). Indian gauge (1,676 mm) is the national standard, with areas of dual Indian/Russian (1,520 mm) gauge where the rail network connects with Turkestan. Standard gauge (1,435 mm) is often used in mining, but is becoming less common.".

-Indian gauge was chosen as the national standard in order to ease trade between Afghanistan and Indian countries, so that Afghanistani goods could easily reach a port (and, conversely, foreign goods could easily reach Afghanistan).

-Iran uses Standard gauge, but has some extensive Indian gauge railways in the east where it connects up with Afghanistan's rail network.

-The text in the bottom right corner reads "DNI International Almanac - 2000". The DNI is the Directorate of National Intelligence, which is this timeline's CIA equivalent, and the International Almanac is their version of the World Factbook. For this reason the map uses the term "railroads" (which is usually American) rather than "railways" (which is usually British").

-The capital of the Kingdom of Afghanistan is Darulaman. Amanullah Khan started plans to build Darulaman in our timeline, but this plan was cut short by pesky radical conservatives (in this timeline Amanullah's earlier break with the Soviet Union prevents the British from provoking these radicals into rebellion).

-Iran, Balochistan, India, and Turkestan are republics, with Jammu and Kashmir remaining an isolated, monarchical state (they're not particularly oppressive, though, just underdeveloped). Though neither Turkestan or Iran are Islamic Republics, they are becoming increasingly radical - and not in the "doing a kickflip through a burning hoop" way.

The two greatest obstacles to German dominance in Central Europe were Czechoslovakia and Poland. Poland was initially the most vulnerable, and Germany began with her machinations almost immediately after the Great War. While it did cause serious inconvenience, in the end Berlin’s ploy did not only fail, but even backfired to some extent. Instead of bringing Poland to its knees, it caused it to find suitable markets abroad and funnel virtually all imports and exports through its ‘corridor’ to Danzig and, increasingly, the newly-constructed seaport of Gdynia. After several years this early attempt at economical imperialism was quietly abandoned. In order too succeed, it was decided, Germany would need to control its enemies’ trade routes. And as German power increased, it would set itself precisely this goal for the second round of the conflict. This time Czechoslovakia was also threatened. Although some of its exports were bound for Germany and crossed it to the port of Hamburg where Czechoslovakia had received certain rights, it was only a part of the total. In itself the loss of German trade and access to Hamburg would have been at most an annoyance: nearly all of the rest passed through the territories of the former Austria-Hungary to ports on the Adriatic. But as German power increased, even these routes became threatened. The annexation of Austria in 1940, followed by the de facto vassalization of Hungary, made it possible for Germany to cut Czechoslovakia off from all convenient railways, which would in theory inflict grievous damage on its economy and force it to make concessions. But the Czechs, not being idiots, had anticipated this, their initial reaction being to expand the transport networks linking it with Poland, in the hope of rerouting Czechoslovak trade through Teschen to Gdynia if necessary. However, even that was not necessarily safe: Germany’s annexation of Danzig in 1942 and gaining of rights of exterritorial transit accross the Polish Corridor in 1946 led to the widespread expectation that the Corridor would be next. No ways of bypassing it to the Baltic Sea existed: as Germany once again approached the brink of war with Poland, Czechoslovakia and France, Stalin had taken the opportunity of signing a pact of ‘mutual friendship and co-operation’ with Latvia. Thanks to this co-operation it was soon revealed that the Latvian proletariat in fact desired nothing more then union with the other Soviet Republics, and the grievous error of their separation was speedily put right. Lithuania was virulently hostile to Poland, had absolutely nothing which could be turned into a significant port within several decades and, like Hungary, had found itself in an increasingly unequal relationship with Germany [1]. But Czechoslovakia and Poland nevertheless prepared contingency plans even for this desperate situation. For they both had one remaining neighbor which was friendly to both of them: Romania, which posessed a fairly large port in Constanta. As German influence in the Baltic and Balkans increased, railways linking Prague and Warsaw with the Black Sea were expanded, financed not only by Poland and Czechoslovakia but also in part by France which anticipated the threat to her allies. But wether those preparations would suffice remained to be seen…

[1] These ties would become so strong that, despite several close calls, neither of them has managed to escape Germany’s orbit to date (2012).

Spoilers for SoaP ahead (but not that many, outside of railroads). You have been warned.

***

From "The Great Pathfinder" by Abraham Richardson
Yale University Press, 1954

"After the Battle of Panthersville, the mood in the capital was a victorious one, and even then it was recognised that this was the perfect time to make the war political. To this end, Fremont issued a series of Presidential Proclamations, intended to bring forth the idea that the war was not only fought for the restoration of the Union, but also to bring freedom to the Union. The most famous one is the Emancipation Proclamation, which was released on July 15, and promised freedom to all "persons held in bondage and being residents of the ten states that are currently in rebellion against our Union". There was also, among others, the Fugitive Proclamation, which called for a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, and the introduction of measures to help refugees "of all races and colours" fleeing from life in the Confederacy.

These proclamations soon found their way into the legislation of Congress, which did indeed vote in favour of repealing the Fugitive Slave Act on the 21st. The now-Northern-dominated Congress also took its chance to pass some legislation that had previously been stalled due to Northern-Southern divisiveness. Most prominent among there was the Transcontinental Railroad Act, which promised generous financial aid, in the form of government bonds, to any company willing and able to scout and build a railroad connecting the existing rail network with the Pacific Coast. The commission was accepted by the St. Joseph & Topeka Railroad Company in 1864, leading them to rename themselves the Union Pacific Railroad Company the year after…"

***

From "A Brief History of Transport in America" by Seamus Collins
Harper & Sons Publishing Company, New York City, 2001

"After the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, the West Coast boomed, as did the Union Pacific; they built several important branch lines during the 1870s, one going to Las Vegas, one to San Diego and, perhaps most auspiciously, work was started on a line to Kern Island [1] across the Tehachapis. The states of California and Colorado were finally to be connected by a transport network [2]...

... The Central Pacific was founded in 1867 by industrialists Leland Stanford, Thomas C. Durant and Collis P. Huntington, who later came to be known as the "Big Three" [3]. Funded almost entirely by the sale of shares and bonds (unlike the Union Pacific, which had significant government subsidies on its line), the company was the only successful attempt at building a transcontinental railroad without government aid. Beginning from both Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento, California, the Central Pacific made it across the Rockies and the Great Basin in six years, opening the first transcontinental services in 1873...

... Ironically, the Central Pacific never gained a large stake in Californian rail, the UP already being established there with the purchase of the Stockton, Modesto & Buena Vista. They did, however, attain a near-monopoly in Utah, running railroads to Fillmore and Carson before the end of the decade...

... By the turn of the century, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific continued to exist in competition, and as such it was one of few areas not to be targeted by the trustbusting campaigns of the coming years [4]..."

***

[1] Bakersfield. This was the city's original name, but it was renamed when it was incorporated in 1873, after Colonel Thomas Baker, whose ranch ("Baker's Field") was a prominent stopover for travellers heading south. Additionally, Kern County is known as Buena Vista County ITTL.
[2] Kern Island is technically in Colorado (it's south of the standard parallel), but as it was cut off from that state, it's sometimes considered culturally part of California. Indeed, there is a movement to countersecede the city back into California (similar to OTL's "Southport Back in Lancashire" movement).
[3] Stanford was, of course, the governor of California and the namesake of Stanford University (which he helped found); IOTL, he started the Central Pacific alongside Huntington, as well as Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins (the "Big Four"). Durant was the principal shareholder and vice president of the Union Pacific.
[4] This is unlike OTL, where the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific (whose line was further south than TTL's UP line, which is more equivalent to the ATSF line) were very interconnected, to the point where the Supreme Court had to drive a wedge between the two. This, of course, didn't stop them merging in the sixties to form the present-day UP behemoth, controlling half of all freight rail west of the Wabash (BNSF controlling the other half).

And the map. This is for 1900.

I finished in time!!!

On July 19th, 1870, France mobilised their army after declaring war on Prussia. After an initial Prussian incursion into Alsace, stiff French resistance forced the Prussian army to retreat back into Germany. The French troops, led by Marshal MacMahan (due to Napoleon III being ill and unable to lead the campaign*) pursued the Prussians to the Rhineland. Here they started their offensive and began moving towards Saarbrücken and Trier at first, with their ultimate goal being Koblenz, Mainz and Frankfurt. The French achieved victory after victory, though not as decisive as Napoleon III had hoped. Eventually, Denmark joined the war on the French side with the promise of regaining Schleswig from the Prussians. This event, along with separate treaties negotiated with the South German states allowing them a sort of status quo ante bellum peace, cemented the Prussian failure to win the war.
The peace treaty that was signed rearranged the political map of Europe. More specifically, Prussia was reduced in size while France and Denmark annexed some territory and set up buffer states.

This new rearrangement left France as the dominant power on the continent, and a few years after the war they hosted a conference to solve the “Belgian Crisis”. After months of tense negotiations a treaty was signed that allowed France to annex Wallonia. Flanders was reattached to the Netherlands and the Belgian king was put on the throne of the former Rhenish Republic, now Rhenish Kingdom.

To keep the pace with Britain the French departments were grouped into regions largely based on the historical provinces. Each region was responsible for the railway inside of its borders. This also made the French railway network more equalised regionally instead of being completely based on Paris. By the late 19th century the French had one of the densest railway networks in the world.


*POD.

map in next post since it'll break the page

Well, with Blomma's awesome entry, I just have unnessecarily lost my time but here it is, my entry. Had I have the time, I might have added more lines and made the whole thing look nicer so I would have been able to compete, but with my time budget - no way. Enjoy nevertheless.

___

This rather specific map of Berlin's mass transit network in 1975 shows a very different reality. The first diversion from reality happened when the decision to build a ring railway around the major termini stations never happened. Similar to London, Paris or Moscow, Berlin never replaced its terminus stations. People thus had to walk between interchanges, and sometimes even to cross the whole city. For a more comfortable interchange, an underground Y-network of the local rail (S-Bahn) was build in the 30s, similar to Hitler's Nord-Süd-Tunnel. The development of underground trains (U-Bahn) began as late as 1960 and resulted in two lines (I and II) so far. In this timeline, the division of Berlin and WW II never happened.

Here's my humble contribution: the rail lines of New England in the year 2012.

A note about the Dominion International High Speed Rail: it is the beginning of a high speed rail line that will one day connect all the major cities of British America with trains that travel in excess of 250 kph. The rest of the National Rail lines in New England run on average at 150 kph.