MotF 102: The Last Straw

The Map Never Made For The Tale So Often Told

Some years ago, Max Sinister wrote the Chaos TL with the premise of Genghis Khan's premature death leading to a very different world. This map here shows the escalation of events during the timeline's last seven days in July 1993 starting with the 9/11-style attack on the Chinese Imperial Palace by Japanese terrorists and ending a week later with the hackers' coup that established a world state.

Japan has been a Chinese puppet ever since about 1930 and Ezo indeed doesn't belong to Japan ITTL, but rather used to be a part of Novorossiya and after Russia's loss of World War II, it's part of the nearest Russian splinter state and somehow avoided Chinese influence enough for the Germans to allow a military presence. OTL Sapporo is actually called Vladivostok ITTL. Germany is actually three Germanies in Europe and both American continents with colonies added and with its capital at OTL Philadelphia and Canada inherited the British Navy after a Russian-like two-step revolution in its former homeland. Better read the TL for yourself even if or rather because it's already seven years old.

I still got a full memo of the TL on a computer in my house as I wrote a fanfic thereof, though I eventually got effectively disowned by Max Sinister because it descended into kind of a low-brow diary.

For the course of events displayed in this map, read this and this.

Here's a small version of the map.

The actual map in its actual size. Note the pentagon on Ezo/Hokkaido.
The One and Zero make for the "bit flag" representing the new hacker world state that arose from these events.
It's explicitally been stated to be hacked by an AI during the Streich.

Just a quick one.

A longer lasting Umayyad Caliphate Colonises and is then destroyed by horsemen sacking the capital and executing the Caliph. The year is 1203 AD.

Quick Last Minute Entry

A young man from Scandinavia sets out in the mid-1400's to seek the lands described in legends left by his Viking ancestors. Europeans are led to the new land and do what they do best.

Map shows the five colonial empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Spain in the mid-1700's.

Jons Axelsson returned to Europe in 1458 to find a restored Kalmar Union under Christian I of Denmark. After meeting with the young explorer, Christian realizes that this is a chance to further unite the Union. By obtaining funds from companies in all three separate countries, as well as from his own personal treasury, another voyage was sent to explore and colonize this new land. This event is seen as a pivotal moment in history, as it led to the stabilization of the fragile Union.

France and the Netherlands were quick to follow, establishing several small enclaves that promoted trade with the natives. The most notable were Kebecstad and Nieuw Amsterdam by the Netherlands and St. Jean by France. These eventually grew to envelop most of the northeastern part of the region.

Spain quickly explored the southern parts of the New World, and focused their colonization there, in hopes of finding gold and other riches.

The Wars of the Roses hindered England's entry into the colonization race. However, at the conclusion of the war, Henry and Elizabeth sought to establish colonies immediately, in the hopes of improving the damaged economy. New England was established in 1485, followed by Avalon and Celtia a few years later. The success of England's colonies can be attributed to the diversity of their regions and specialties. Erie, Ohio, and northern Kanawha and New England were focused on manufacturing. Southern New England and Avalon produced cash crops such as cotton and tobacco. Celtica grew food crops, most notably rice.

<Viewpoint is from the 1700's>

English Colonies: Collectively known as the Ten Colonies. Loose confederation-style government, with a capital in New London, on the New Thames. New England was the first colony, and most things there are the 'new' versions of the ones across the sea in 'old' England. Avalon and Celtia are the two biggest agricultural producers. Avalon is home to wealthy planter families - 'old money'. Celtia was founded by a Scotsman and an Irishman, so naturally there was a large amount of Celtic immigration there. Misisibi and Albamo are generally less populated, but come from a hardy stock. Albamo actually started as a penal colony. Mostly woodsmen. Shawnee is just as sparsely populated, although there are sizable amounts of native tribes. Kanawha and Kent are mostly known for logging and small mining operations. Ohio and Erie are more modernized than their southern counterparts, where manufacturing is a big industry. Erie is especially important because of it's access to the St. Lawrence River (kept it the same for simplicity's sake). England's colonies are second in size only to Scandinavia's.

Dutch Colonies: These colonies are all part of Nieuw Netherland. They are considerably modern and wealthy due to their strategic position for shipping. Controlling one side of the St. Lawrence in the north and large port cities in the east makes the society very dependent on industry and shipping. Zeeland Eilanden and Lange Eilandt benefit the most from the shipping industry, as well as parts of Bergen and Zuid Holland. Farming can be found in western Noord and Zuid Holland. Most of the population of Kebec can be found near Kebecstad, which controls river traffic on the St. Lawrence.

French Colonies: Nouvelle-France, like Nieuw Netherland, is very dependent on shipping and industry. One of the biggest industries is fishing, especially off of the Grand Banks. French Protestants migrated here en masse, and generally populate the northern and western parts of the colony. The Dutch territory of Zeeland Eilanden once belonged to Nouvelle-France, but was lost after a breif skirmish between the two countries. Francias Messipi sits at the mouth of the Messipi (Misisibi) River, and thus controls river traffic, much like Kebecstad. The claims attached to Francias Messipi are much larger, but the mouth of the river is the only undisputed claim. France, Scandinavia, and England all claim land across the river.

Scandinavian Colonies: Much of these colonies are very sparsely populated and undeveloped. This allows more peaceful relations with the local native tribes. Most cities are only around strategic shipping areas, such as Tkaronto and Adawe. It has been noted that some of these areas, usually Ouiskonsing and Neshnabe, bear a striking resemblance to the native homeland of the colonists, and are very popular for those in debt to relocate to. Fur trade is very prevalent, and has even sparked a new fashion trend in Europe. Vinland, along with Nouvelle-France, focuses on the fishing industry.

Spanish Colonies: Most Spanish colonies are located in the south of the New World, while Florida is the high-water mark. Florida is highly undeveloped, and remains for the most part untouched swampland and marshland. Just to the south is Spanish Cuba, which occupies the west side of the island. It's neighbor is Scandinavian Cuba on the east side of the island. To the east is English Hispaniola, with the Netherlands Antilles beginning at Puerto Rico, and French Jamacia to the south (place names have again remained the same to avoid confusion).


Political situation: All five nations remain tentatively at peace with one another (at least in the New World). Historically, the English and the Dutch have had a positive relationship since the Glorious Revolution, cooperating against France in many conflicts. Scandinavia or Spain would usually side with France.

There has been some bitterness between the colonies and their European counterparts in the latter half of the century, more noticeably in Nieuw Netherland and the Ten Colonies. In Nieuw Netherland, increased shipping and trade regulations from Amsterdam have been the big controversy, while in the Ten Colonies, exporting has been the issue. In the latter, Avalon and Celtia are leading the charge for more autonomy (and even independence in the case of some radicals). They generally receive support from the western colonies of Kent, Shawnee, Albamo, and Misisibi, while there is some resistance to this thinking in the northern colonies of Erie, Ohio, New England, and parts of Kanawha.


Rivers: The St. Lawrence is shared equally by Scandinavia and the Netherlands, though the Netherlands controls the entrance to the river.

The Mississippi River marks the end of undisputed territorial claims. West of the river is the frontier waiting to be claimed. The river is mainly used by farmers from the western parts of the colonies to ship their goods south.

The Susquehanna river has become much more open with the improving of Anglo-Dutch relations. Since each side controls one side of the river, there is almost no conflict over territory or shipping rights.

Another entry from my timeline. At this rate maybe I'll actually manage to finish the thing within a couple of years with Map of the Fortnight entries and descriptions only.

It began with pro-German riots in the Free City of Danzig sometime in the early 1940s. The crisis was contained, but a state of heightened alert was introduced in Poland for a while. It happened to be enough to co-incidentally reveal a low-level Soviet agent in Poland's ministry of foreign affairs. The subsequent investigation revealed a very considerable level of Soviet infiltration reaching to the highest levels [1], and that the USSR's true intentions were much less peaceful then it had been believed.

This came at a most inopportune moment. Superficially it might have seemed that although the "Grand Alliance" (see my entry for MoTF 86 ) did not actually involve any joint military planning, it was not required - the threat of war on all its borders was enough to prevent Germany from acting up. Unfortunately the sense of increased security caused France to almost completely lose interest in the actual military alliance with Poland [2]. To make matters worse, Britain and France (in that period Mussolini still valued fascist ideology over explicit co-operation with the USSR, and ignored the matter) were very intent to keep the USSR associated with the Alliance, which allowed Stalin to quietly extract promises that they would tolerate a Soviet occupation of Poland in the event of war with Germany [3]. This particular promise was not known in Warsaw at the time, but the awareness that it might not receive western assistance in a conflict with the USSR nevertheless existed. Under such strained conditions, with serious threats both in the east and in the west, the revelation of hostile Soviet intentions was

(ominous music)

the Last Straw.

(ominous music)

Although it initially caused massive public discontent, the Treaty of Budapest is now regarded as a diplomatic masterstroke on Poland's part. By exploiting Germany's isolation it managed to secure a nonaggression pact with Germany and the recognition of its borders for an acceptable price, turn the focus of German irredentism towards Czechoslovakia, set the stage for the future improvement of relations with Berlin and, by eliminating Poland's prior dependence on French protection, allowed it to begin to pursue a truly independent policy. Of course, Germany also benefitted greatly. With the effective encirclement of Germany ended, the Grand Alliance's sole weapon - the threat of a rapid attack all along Germany's borders - disappeared. The "Siege of Germany", as the policy of containment was called at the time, was broken at last, and the painstakingly constructed European order was completely overturned...

[1] it is suspected to have been the case in OTL.
[2] as in OTL, except that the process continues even farther
[3] as in OTL during the negotiations with Voroshilov in August 1939

Mappity map

To start with, some background. During the course of research for Boers, our MOTM2 entry, myself and Reagent found ourselves fascinated by the possibilities of another PoD for the region, and one that, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to be examined on the forum- averting the Mfecane.

Thus we follow a South African collaboration, with a South African collaboration. Once again the map itself is based on a fusion of our ideas with Reagent taking charge of most of the technical process, while I've taken charge of write up. As a brief note, most of the African names are quite speculative- this is a PoD which not just changes the political borders but the fundamental ethnic makeup of a large chunk of Southern Africa after all.

It is summer of 1819. The Mthethwa Confederacy lies broken and scattered, defeated abjectly by her northern neighbours the Ndandwe. After years of struggle, the great nation has suffered a string of catastrophes. First, the assassination of the aspiring young general Shaka of the Zulu tribe in the midst of an internecine power struggle following the death of his father Senzangakhona. Then the defeat in battle and subsequent execution of Dingiswayo, chief of the Mthethwa, at the hands of Zwide and the Ndandwe. Now the last hope for the battered confederacy, Mzilikazi of the Khumalo tribe, lies dead on the battlefield at the Mhlatuze River. The supremacy of the Ndandwe is complete, and the weak and disorganised tribes of the Mthethwa are scattered, some assimilating into the nation of their conquerors, others mingling with the tribes of the southern Natal region to form minor kingdoms, still others crossing the Drakensburg to become assimilated into the wider populace of the Highveld. The history of the whole of southern Africa sits balanced upon a knife-edge, and when the pieces fall it is to reveal a future radically different to that we are familiar with.

Having triumphed over their great rivals, the Ndandwe are content to slowly expand and consolidate, assimilating the smaller tribes of the northern Natal and occasionally extracting tribute from their divided neighbours to the southwest. Beyond, the three states of the Wild Coast- Xhosaland, Thembuland and Pondoland, prosper in relative isolation, though the former lies divided internally between the Rharhabe and Gcaleka. It is in the interior however that the great changes are brewing. From their capital at Dithakong, a city that rivals contemporary Cape Town, the Rolong tribe build a somewhat sparsely populated but prosperous kingdom. They are hindered in their attempts to gain control of the densely populated lands of what IOTL would be the eastern Free State by the machinations of the emerging power that is the Kingdom founded by Moshoeshoe and which will come to be named for the Royal house he founds, the Mosesh. By the 1830s, a new power is emerging on the Highveld of the Transvaal, as one of the many disparate families of the Tlokwa clan form the nucleus of their own Kingdom, small as yet, but soon growing rapidly under a series of capable monarchs. Within a generation they have founded a new Empire in the fertile, populous lands of the Transvaal, picking up military ideas from the refugees of the Mthethwa some of whom have spread widely through the Sotho and Tswana speaking lands across the Drakensburg, taking their European-inspired ideas with them.

All this forms the backdrop to the arrival of Britain in the Cape. Seizing the small Dutch colony during the Napoleonic Wars, it quickly becomes a settler colony of some significance, and the growing spread of Anglicisation, along with the abolition of slavery in 1833, leads many of the outlying farmers, or Boers, to decided to leave British territory. Initially, they join the generations of Griqua settlers living in Adam Kok's Land on the far bank of the Orange River, but finding this to be too close to the approaching frontier of strong British influence, the decision is made to depart once more. Finding the route to the north east too densely settled[1] to conquer, they instead turned north into the more arid, but more sparsely populated, area of Namarqualand. Britain meanwhile made probing investigations into extending her influence in the area, fighting the Xhosa for the land west of the Big Fish River and attempting, without success, to install a resident in the court of Moshoeshoe. The slow growth of Portuguese contacts with the Rozwi Empire and the establishment of the French Natal colony in 1845 meant that this was, nevertheless, a period of increased European influence in the area.

The middle of the century thus saw the acceleration of state development in the interior, and in the expansion of British, French and Portuguese influence over the area. While the Rolong and Mosesh Kingdoms pushed to improve their armies and secure control of outlying territories, and the Tlokwa secured their control over the Transvaal with the coopting of leading tribes and the crushing of rebellions, France slowly established protectorates over the small states of the southern Natal, while Portuguese trading missions spread deep into the interior and Britain saw her first clashes with the Boers to the North of the Orange river. By the 1870s, the greater strength of the Tlokwa Empire, combined with the threat from Britain, had led to an alliance forming between the Mosesh and Rolong Kingdoms, which would form the foundation for native defence of the interior during the Scramble.

Thus while the Ndandwe Kingdom, the states of the Wild Coast and the Boers found themselves subjugated by Britain during the 1880s and 90s, and the Rozwi Empire was forced to sign a treaty of protection with Portugal in 1895, the three great kingdoms of southern Africa found themselves fighting against the Europeans. Portugal, treating the Tlokwa Empire with its newly discovered gold reserves as being in their sphere of influence launched an expedition into the Highveld in 1897, and a second in 1904, both of which were abject failures and which resulted in Lisbon recognising the independence of the Tlokwa Empire, and its protection of several of the neighbouring kingdoms. Britain's attempts to secure the interior meanwhile were hamstrung both by strong native opposition and the preference of the Cape colony, especially after attaining Dominion status in 1891, for peaceful relations which would guarantee the security of the gold fields on the borders with the Rolong Kingdom over enacting a subjugation which would largely fall on the heads of the authorities in Cape Town to finance and supply the troops for. This left the Mosesh Kingdom free to provide a strong defence against French expansion from the Natal.

Thus by 1911, the three Kingdoms lay in a guarded peace in the interior of the continent, surrounded by a ring of, if not hostile, than at least potentially unfriendly states. European efforts, meanwhile, had switched from attempts at outright conquest to merely seeking to use subterfuge and bribery to destabilise the Kingdoms and bring them to fight eachother until weak enough to be absorbed. Affairs in Europe, however, were brewing with the potential to distract the attentions of the colonial powers, potentially for long enough to bring permanent security for the native states of southern Africa. The population of Africa south of the Portuguese domains nears 8 million, with 1.2 million in the Mosesh Kingdom, 1.5 million in the Rolong Kingdom and 2.5 million in the Tlokwa Empire. The Union of the Cape is home to 2 million, of which those of European descent make up 70% of the population, and the coloureds a further 25%, while French Natalia is home to around 700,000 of which the blacks make up the vast majority.

[1] The Mfecane OTL dropped the settlement area in the East Free State from 204 hectares in settlement to 13, and the eastern Transvaal dropped from 214 to 80. The western Transvaal was much less settled and only dropped from 17 to 13 hectares in settlement. This obviously had a huge effect on how easy it was for the Boers to take over the area.

Map of Southern Africa (see above post):