Straha
Banned
What would have happened if, in 1861, the Yankees, led by Lincoln, had decided, without being forced to do so, merely to let the South secede without conditions? What would the world thus look like today?
If Lincoln does not have to resort to force, he can probably hold more of the border in the Union. So Kentucky stays. Missouri stays except for the small section of little Dixie on the Mississippi near New Madrid and Belmont. Arkansas splits with the bulk of the state remaining in the Union while the most developed piece along the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers goes south. A few skirmishes suffice to force a split of Texas and Oklahoma / the Indian Territories so that the area West of the line Laredo - San Antonio - Ft Worth - Tulsa stays with the Union, with Germans and Unionists moving west and diehard Dixiecrats moving East ( note this is the line past which slavery in the plantation sense becomes a climatic and thus economic joke ). The bulk of Tennessee goes with the South but East Tennessee under Andy Johnson countersecedes taking Winston County Alabama and the far West of North Carolina and far north of Georgia with him in a new Unionist state of Franklin with its capital at Knoxville.
Virginia teeters before it is pushed but Lincoln holds onto the ships out of Norfolk ( redeployed to New York along with as much navy yard supplies as can be carried ), Fortress Monoroe, the Potomac counties, Harper's Ferry
and SW Virginia. In effect Virginia is partitioned as the secessionists in Richmond prefer compromise to an honest vote on secession. Virginia's brokered secession takes North Carolina reluctantly with it.
The one real case of armed surpression of secession is in Baltimore and Eastern Maryland where 50,000 Pennsylvania and mid Western militia are needed to keep the State and the District in the Union. By not using New England or abolitionist units the more neutral opinion on the border is brought back to allegience and the secessionist isolated. The classic example is Baltimore where the street mob was Dixiecat but the economic interests of the bulk of the people were national owing to trade via the Baltimore and Ohio RR, the national road and the Chesapeake and Ohio canal.
So you now have a South with 12 states instead of the historic 13 ( no Missouri or Kentucky but a state of Oklahoma ). It is some 15% smaller by area and 20% smaller by population. It is the plantation slave states plus their most congenial southern cousins. It has economic borders but no good military ones. It has no political reason to disown their northern debts, but now being a foreign country it finds it easier to pay slowly and not exactly in full. This triggers much northern illwill and in those circles most likely to be pro Southern otherwise. Northern capital is partly replaced by British. The central government stays weak. The southern regular military is mostly focused on protecting the borders against fugitive slaves and the interior against new Nat Turners. The several states keep strong militaries.
As a free trade region, it finds it no problem allowing free trade with the North. The North reciprocates for southern goods but fights a losing battle against Brit and Euro imports brought in through Dixie ports and transshipped north.
Politically / constitutionally, Lincoln gives the Union slave states amendments requiring state consent for abolition and guaranteeing compensation at generous rates for any state that chooses to abolish slavery within its borders. The fugitive slave issue is settled by offering Federal compensation for runaways. The transcontinetal RR is made a national priority ( the golden spike in this TL is 1863 at roughly the same place in Utah) but the Southern Pacific comes a year later on the route SD - LA - LV - Phoenix - Santa Fe - Denver. Northern Pacific is done before the turn of the 70's. Republican party splits - Jacobins secede to form the Liberty party. Lincoln keeps the rest and adds many loyal Unionists in the historic post CW Republican coalition. Demovcrats keep rump of the Douglas wing plus the confirmed appeasers. National government is strengthened but to a lesser extent than in OTL from the war. Much stronger army kept to protect the RR's and try to enforce tarrifs on the Dixie border. Colorado, Nebrska, and Nevada immediately join the Union (1861). Utah admitted in 1862. Hawaiian protectorate in 1862 as a way of upraising middle finger to British lion.
Final slavery compromise. Slave owners are allowed passports to 'transit' with their property through the bulk of the Union ( unenforceable in areas controlled by Liberty Party so to some extent local option ) for specific time periods. In return slavery is abolished in DC with very generous compensation.
Overall, at the cost of a few thousand dead in riots, skirmishes and petty local fighting ( over half in Eastern Maryland) two nations are peacefully formed. Lincoln is seen as the genius who avoided a brothger's war trying to keep the Gulf states in. Three parties break as 45% Unionist, 37%
Democrats, 18% Liberty.
Dixie evolves into an economically strong ( in this TL there is no reactionary agrarian tradition to hold progress back and no Republican primacy in the nation at large to treat it as an exploitable colony ) but politically weak nation ( national government MUCH weaker than OTL although states MUCH stronger). Say by 1900 it has a per capita GNP equal to the North or the UK or Germany. Continual British pressure ultimately forces the bulk of the Southern States to emancipate ( South Carolina is the lone exception ) but the Black Codes that follow make that emancipation a formalistic point. Race relations are less publically savage (there is no need for the poor Southern white to prove his victory and manhood by rubbing the black man's nose in the dust as was true in OTL) but essentially as bleak as Jim Crow at its worst. There is no Klan because essentially what would have been the Klan is now the local sherrif's posse. Again, with no danger of political or social emancipation, there is much better black education - idiot labor doesn't produce as well - at least through vocational level but MUCH less of a black professional class ( emmigration is used a s a safety valve for those who will not kowtow). Southern industrialization is more like post WWII than preWWI.
Economically the two countries are VERY closely linked. Seperate currencies not kept at any good linkeage. National trade via specie. Local trade via borderers who do keep track of exchange rates. Continual intermigration and intermarriage among the pre1860's white ethnics. South has more migrants than in OTL but a version of the post1920 national quotas to keep it as an AngloSaxon country with only Nordic Celtic minorities.
Northern industrialization is much greater without an Agrarian South
to hold it back and fight it at every turn. Western settlement was faster.
The Indian problem was mostly solved by the early 1870's through a mixture of a much more massive military presence and reservations administered honestly by that largely Army to the point that settlers are kept off at gunpoint. Indian lands shrink by Congressional forced purchase not settler selfhelp. Tribes become solvent through mineral royalties and land rentals. Indian scout units become permanent part of Army force structure. Alaska still purchased but settled quite fast and developed even faster.
Politically the Populist, Socialist and Progressive waves are MUCH
stronger without the race issue to get in the way. Civil liberties are
weaker without the XIVth and XVth Ammendments to inhibit the states and the feds. The federal courts are much weaker stopping the left waves without the XIVth Ammendment to use as an excuse for staying government action. Make the political structure in the US more like Wilhelm's Germany but without the extreme militarists. Southern politics are less extreme on class than the North because of race but much more extreme than in OTL because race is a mostly settled issue.
Both powers are more 'imperial' than in OTL where each impede each
other's wars. Lincoln solidifies his Union majority by answering the 4
power occupation of Vera Cruz with an ultimatum. The Brits and Dutch
wisely drop out at this point. Lincoln declares war on France and Spain. Buys the Indian South/ Yucutan ( as a place of settlement for Freedmen) and
the uninhabited North+Baja ( as a sop to his capitalist / industrialist wing
for exploitation) from Juarez for guns and gold plus enough military
strength to put over his Liberal secular revolution. There was a window
of opportunity between the original VC intervention and when Juarez felt strong enough v. Maximillian to protect Mexico against other national threats. In this TL Lincoln jumps through that window.
Davis faces an immediate problem. Does he let Lincoln liberate the
slaves of the Spanish Empire? Wade Hampton preempts for him - leads an expedition to Havana. Net effect is to force the South to enter the war on Lincoln's side as a cobeligerent ( note : NOT AS ALLY ). South takes SD, Cuba, PR. Mass flight of colored population on island of SD to Hatian side, which is seized by US as protectorate. US also takes French Ant, Cayanne, and Central America. Naval war interferes with European commerce. British force armistace but not before US takes bulk of African bulge ( basically everything from Ivory Coast to Senegal except British protectorate around Freetown, Britsh Gambia and Portuguese Guinea) as a larger Liberia for freedmen, Samoa and the Spanish Pacific Islands ( but before US can mount a major expedition from San Francisco to seize Manila). Note Armistace, not peace. Neither side is willing to risk the RN against them.
The post War (1864) alliance structure is CSA - Portuguese - Brazil coalition of slaveholders v USA - Mexico liberal alliance with the UK as the balance wheel. Both alliances rely on British capital. The Tory aristocracy leans towards the slave holders and the Unionist industrial class from Liverpool and the Midlands lean towards Washington, New York and Mexico City. The Unionist south, Deleware opt for compensated abolition to help attract British capital. Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky go to county option. Large numbers of Freedmen emmigrate to the new sanctuaries in greater central America, Hati and the African Bulge. Developement of the territories seized by both alliances commences at a rapid pace including Confederate investment in Brazil and Portuguese Afrika. Disguised slave trade continues from Portuguese Africa.
Second round of the war comes when France intervenes to prevent an Autrrian loss in the Six Weeks War (1866). Slaveholders alliance sits this
one out. War is US - Prussia - Italy v Austria - Belgium - France - Spain - Denmark . Ends 1868 as follows : Germany now includes historic + Lux, Leige, Alsace, all of Lorraine (including the Brey - Longway iron ore fields), Bohemia, Morravia, Tyrolia, Denmark, Upper + Lower Austria including alpine Slovene regions. US gets Greenland, Iceland, Congo basin, Philippines, Paupa - New Guinea - W Irian, Chochin China ( lower South Vietnam including Saigon), Cambodia, Canaries, Maderias, Fernando Poo, and Equitorial Guinea. The Catholic League crushes Italy. French take Piedmont and Sardinia. Spain takes Sicily and Naples. Hapsburgs take rump of Italy including Papal States but Pope left with a full Roman citystate instead of vatican ministate. Different branches of Hapsburgs on Hungarian throne ( Franz Joseph) and Italian throne ( Maximillian). Very large Italian emmigration to New World - 25-30% of countrry leaves in next 10 years. Antwerp and Faeroes occuppiued by UK. Rump of Belgium goes to France.
In the meantime Confederate help gives Brazil all of Paraguay and protectorate over Uruguay in Paraguayan War. Argentina becomes de facto Brit protectorate. Great War of the Pacific sees US, Mexico and germany back Chile, who joins their bloc. Brazil takes protectorate over Bolivia. British take protectorate over Peru, mediate demarkation of Chilean - Argentine border and Tierra Del Fuego question. Ecudor, Columbia and Venezuela play the four blocks off against each other. Brits push Irish to emmigrate more quickly so as to create Unionist majority ( stronger and more bloody handed Ulsterism than OTL).
By 1900 Africa has been divided between the four blocks. Brits have Egypt, Sudan, the Horn other than Djbouti, Zanzibar + Pemba, Tanganyka, Kenya, and a smaller South Africa - Cape and Natal. CSA - Brazil have advanced from Angola across the Rhodesias and Malawi to Mozambique. the Boer Republics have joined the de facto slavers block. The Americans have the greater Congo Basin - Bel Congo, French Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Ubangi - Shari, Uganda. The catholic Block has Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauretania, Chad, Mali, Upper Volta and northern Nigeria. The Brits have the rest of West Africa.
The Balkans have been partitioned between Hungary and Russia. A small Greece ending in Boetia is a Brit protectorate and a smaller European Turkey clings to Thrace under British protection. The Moslems have been expelled to Turkey. Turkey in Asia is a Brit protectorate with Brit, German and US capital developing it. Turkey, Britain and Russia have partitioned Iran andAfghanistan. Tibet and Siam are British protectorates. Sinkiang, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Manchuria and Korean north of the waist are Russian provinces. China north of the Great Wall is a group of Russian protectorates. The remaining 2/3rds of Korea, Sakhalin, Hokkaido, the Kuriles, the Pescadores, the Rykyus,and Taiwan are Japanese provinces. Annam, Tonkin, Laos, Yunnan, Shantung and Fukien are Japanese protectorates. Kwangtung is a British Protectorate. Japan is allied to the UK but a very independent player. The Yangtse Valley is jointly exploited from the treaty ports, especially Shanghai and Nanking. The remainder of China is in a permanent state of lawlessness.
As a whole the world is richer, better developed, better educated and has more people than OTL. The blocks hold without the giant military races of our preWWI. All are at this point basically defensive and accept the unlikeliness of major changes in the territorial status quo. So we have dreadnaughts but no naval races. Capital and labor are more mobile within the blocks but less mobile outside of them. Take it more like the military situation of permanent Cold War of the post 1962 world here. The color bar is still there but much less extreme outside of North America as the test is becoming assimilation in what is now the 3rd world. Major effort directed at simultaneously assimilating and oppressing ( inhibiting natiuonalism, national languages, national feelings) the various protectorates and colonies. World capital has as its HQ's London, New York, Berlin and Tokyo in that order. For culture it is London, Paris, Berlin, New York. Many international organizations for secondary purposes - postal, health, etc.
If Lincoln does not have to resort to force, he can probably hold more of the border in the Union. So Kentucky stays. Missouri stays except for the small section of little Dixie on the Mississippi near New Madrid and Belmont. Arkansas splits with the bulk of the state remaining in the Union while the most developed piece along the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers goes south. A few skirmishes suffice to force a split of Texas and Oklahoma / the Indian Territories so that the area West of the line Laredo - San Antonio - Ft Worth - Tulsa stays with the Union, with Germans and Unionists moving west and diehard Dixiecrats moving East ( note this is the line past which slavery in the plantation sense becomes a climatic and thus economic joke ). The bulk of Tennessee goes with the South but East Tennessee under Andy Johnson countersecedes taking Winston County Alabama and the far West of North Carolina and far north of Georgia with him in a new Unionist state of Franklin with its capital at Knoxville.
Virginia teeters before it is pushed but Lincoln holds onto the ships out of Norfolk ( redeployed to New York along with as much navy yard supplies as can be carried ), Fortress Monoroe, the Potomac counties, Harper's Ferry
and SW Virginia. In effect Virginia is partitioned as the secessionists in Richmond prefer compromise to an honest vote on secession. Virginia's brokered secession takes North Carolina reluctantly with it.
The one real case of armed surpression of secession is in Baltimore and Eastern Maryland where 50,000 Pennsylvania and mid Western militia are needed to keep the State and the District in the Union. By not using New England or abolitionist units the more neutral opinion on the border is brought back to allegience and the secessionist isolated. The classic example is Baltimore where the street mob was Dixiecat but the economic interests of the bulk of the people were national owing to trade via the Baltimore and Ohio RR, the national road and the Chesapeake and Ohio canal.
So you now have a South with 12 states instead of the historic 13 ( no Missouri or Kentucky but a state of Oklahoma ). It is some 15% smaller by area and 20% smaller by population. It is the plantation slave states plus their most congenial southern cousins. It has economic borders but no good military ones. It has no political reason to disown their northern debts, but now being a foreign country it finds it easier to pay slowly and not exactly in full. This triggers much northern illwill and in those circles most likely to be pro Southern otherwise. Northern capital is partly replaced by British. The central government stays weak. The southern regular military is mostly focused on protecting the borders against fugitive slaves and the interior against new Nat Turners. The several states keep strong militaries.
As a free trade region, it finds it no problem allowing free trade with the North. The North reciprocates for southern goods but fights a losing battle against Brit and Euro imports brought in through Dixie ports and transshipped north.
Politically / constitutionally, Lincoln gives the Union slave states amendments requiring state consent for abolition and guaranteeing compensation at generous rates for any state that chooses to abolish slavery within its borders. The fugitive slave issue is settled by offering Federal compensation for runaways. The transcontinetal RR is made a national priority ( the golden spike in this TL is 1863 at roughly the same place in Utah) but the Southern Pacific comes a year later on the route SD - LA - LV - Phoenix - Santa Fe - Denver. Northern Pacific is done before the turn of the 70's. Republican party splits - Jacobins secede to form the Liberty party. Lincoln keeps the rest and adds many loyal Unionists in the historic post CW Republican coalition. Demovcrats keep rump of the Douglas wing plus the confirmed appeasers. National government is strengthened but to a lesser extent than in OTL from the war. Much stronger army kept to protect the RR's and try to enforce tarrifs on the Dixie border. Colorado, Nebrska, and Nevada immediately join the Union (1861). Utah admitted in 1862. Hawaiian protectorate in 1862 as a way of upraising middle finger to British lion.
Final slavery compromise. Slave owners are allowed passports to 'transit' with their property through the bulk of the Union ( unenforceable in areas controlled by Liberty Party so to some extent local option ) for specific time periods. In return slavery is abolished in DC with very generous compensation.
Overall, at the cost of a few thousand dead in riots, skirmishes and petty local fighting ( over half in Eastern Maryland) two nations are peacefully formed. Lincoln is seen as the genius who avoided a brothger's war trying to keep the Gulf states in. Three parties break as 45% Unionist, 37%
Democrats, 18% Liberty.
Dixie evolves into an economically strong ( in this TL there is no reactionary agrarian tradition to hold progress back and no Republican primacy in the nation at large to treat it as an exploitable colony ) but politically weak nation ( national government MUCH weaker than OTL although states MUCH stronger). Say by 1900 it has a per capita GNP equal to the North or the UK or Germany. Continual British pressure ultimately forces the bulk of the Southern States to emancipate ( South Carolina is the lone exception ) but the Black Codes that follow make that emancipation a formalistic point. Race relations are less publically savage (there is no need for the poor Southern white to prove his victory and manhood by rubbing the black man's nose in the dust as was true in OTL) but essentially as bleak as Jim Crow at its worst. There is no Klan because essentially what would have been the Klan is now the local sherrif's posse. Again, with no danger of political or social emancipation, there is much better black education - idiot labor doesn't produce as well - at least through vocational level but MUCH less of a black professional class ( emmigration is used a s a safety valve for those who will not kowtow). Southern industrialization is more like post WWII than preWWI.
Economically the two countries are VERY closely linked. Seperate currencies not kept at any good linkeage. National trade via specie. Local trade via borderers who do keep track of exchange rates. Continual intermigration and intermarriage among the pre1860's white ethnics. South has more migrants than in OTL but a version of the post1920 national quotas to keep it as an AngloSaxon country with only Nordic Celtic minorities.
Northern industrialization is much greater without an Agrarian South
to hold it back and fight it at every turn. Western settlement was faster.
The Indian problem was mostly solved by the early 1870's through a mixture of a much more massive military presence and reservations administered honestly by that largely Army to the point that settlers are kept off at gunpoint. Indian lands shrink by Congressional forced purchase not settler selfhelp. Tribes become solvent through mineral royalties and land rentals. Indian scout units become permanent part of Army force structure. Alaska still purchased but settled quite fast and developed even faster.
Politically the Populist, Socialist and Progressive waves are MUCH
stronger without the race issue to get in the way. Civil liberties are
weaker without the XIVth and XVth Ammendments to inhibit the states and the feds. The federal courts are much weaker stopping the left waves without the XIVth Ammendment to use as an excuse for staying government action. Make the political structure in the US more like Wilhelm's Germany but without the extreme militarists. Southern politics are less extreme on class than the North because of race but much more extreme than in OTL because race is a mostly settled issue.
Both powers are more 'imperial' than in OTL where each impede each
other's wars. Lincoln solidifies his Union majority by answering the 4
power occupation of Vera Cruz with an ultimatum. The Brits and Dutch
wisely drop out at this point. Lincoln declares war on France and Spain. Buys the Indian South/ Yucutan ( as a place of settlement for Freedmen) and
the uninhabited North+Baja ( as a sop to his capitalist / industrialist wing
for exploitation) from Juarez for guns and gold plus enough military
strength to put over his Liberal secular revolution. There was a window
of opportunity between the original VC intervention and when Juarez felt strong enough v. Maximillian to protect Mexico against other national threats. In this TL Lincoln jumps through that window.
Davis faces an immediate problem. Does he let Lincoln liberate the
slaves of the Spanish Empire? Wade Hampton preempts for him - leads an expedition to Havana. Net effect is to force the South to enter the war on Lincoln's side as a cobeligerent ( note : NOT AS ALLY ). South takes SD, Cuba, PR. Mass flight of colored population on island of SD to Hatian side, which is seized by US as protectorate. US also takes French Ant, Cayanne, and Central America. Naval war interferes with European commerce. British force armistace but not before US takes bulk of African bulge ( basically everything from Ivory Coast to Senegal except British protectorate around Freetown, Britsh Gambia and Portuguese Guinea) as a larger Liberia for freedmen, Samoa and the Spanish Pacific Islands ( but before US can mount a major expedition from San Francisco to seize Manila). Note Armistace, not peace. Neither side is willing to risk the RN against them.
The post War (1864) alliance structure is CSA - Portuguese - Brazil coalition of slaveholders v USA - Mexico liberal alliance with the UK as the balance wheel. Both alliances rely on British capital. The Tory aristocracy leans towards the slave holders and the Unionist industrial class from Liverpool and the Midlands lean towards Washington, New York and Mexico City. The Unionist south, Deleware opt for compensated abolition to help attract British capital. Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky go to county option. Large numbers of Freedmen emmigrate to the new sanctuaries in greater central America, Hati and the African Bulge. Developement of the territories seized by both alliances commences at a rapid pace including Confederate investment in Brazil and Portuguese Afrika. Disguised slave trade continues from Portuguese Africa.
Second round of the war comes when France intervenes to prevent an Autrrian loss in the Six Weeks War (1866). Slaveholders alliance sits this
one out. War is US - Prussia - Italy v Austria - Belgium - France - Spain - Denmark . Ends 1868 as follows : Germany now includes historic + Lux, Leige, Alsace, all of Lorraine (including the Brey - Longway iron ore fields), Bohemia, Morravia, Tyrolia, Denmark, Upper + Lower Austria including alpine Slovene regions. US gets Greenland, Iceland, Congo basin, Philippines, Paupa - New Guinea - W Irian, Chochin China ( lower South Vietnam including Saigon), Cambodia, Canaries, Maderias, Fernando Poo, and Equitorial Guinea. The Catholic League crushes Italy. French take Piedmont and Sardinia. Spain takes Sicily and Naples. Hapsburgs take rump of Italy including Papal States but Pope left with a full Roman citystate instead of vatican ministate. Different branches of Hapsburgs on Hungarian throne ( Franz Joseph) and Italian throne ( Maximillian). Very large Italian emmigration to New World - 25-30% of countrry leaves in next 10 years. Antwerp and Faeroes occuppiued by UK. Rump of Belgium goes to France.
In the meantime Confederate help gives Brazil all of Paraguay and protectorate over Uruguay in Paraguayan War. Argentina becomes de facto Brit protectorate. Great War of the Pacific sees US, Mexico and germany back Chile, who joins their bloc. Brazil takes protectorate over Bolivia. British take protectorate over Peru, mediate demarkation of Chilean - Argentine border and Tierra Del Fuego question. Ecudor, Columbia and Venezuela play the four blocks off against each other. Brits push Irish to emmigrate more quickly so as to create Unionist majority ( stronger and more bloody handed Ulsterism than OTL).
By 1900 Africa has been divided between the four blocks. Brits have Egypt, Sudan, the Horn other than Djbouti, Zanzibar + Pemba, Tanganyka, Kenya, and a smaller South Africa - Cape and Natal. CSA - Brazil have advanced from Angola across the Rhodesias and Malawi to Mozambique. the Boer Republics have joined the de facto slavers block. The Americans have the greater Congo Basin - Bel Congo, French Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Ubangi - Shari, Uganda. The catholic Block has Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauretania, Chad, Mali, Upper Volta and northern Nigeria. The Brits have the rest of West Africa.
The Balkans have been partitioned between Hungary and Russia. A small Greece ending in Boetia is a Brit protectorate and a smaller European Turkey clings to Thrace under British protection. The Moslems have been expelled to Turkey. Turkey in Asia is a Brit protectorate with Brit, German and US capital developing it. Turkey, Britain and Russia have partitioned Iran andAfghanistan. Tibet and Siam are British protectorates. Sinkiang, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Manchuria and Korean north of the waist are Russian provinces. China north of the Great Wall is a group of Russian protectorates. The remaining 2/3rds of Korea, Sakhalin, Hokkaido, the Kuriles, the Pescadores, the Rykyus,and Taiwan are Japanese provinces. Annam, Tonkin, Laos, Yunnan, Shantung and Fukien are Japanese protectorates. Kwangtung is a British Protectorate. Japan is allied to the UK but a very independent player. The Yangtse Valley is jointly exploited from the treaty ports, especially Shanghai and Nanking. The remainder of China is in a permanent state of lawlessness.
As a whole the world is richer, better developed, better educated and has more people than OTL. The blocks hold without the giant military races of our preWWI. All are at this point basically defensive and accept the unlikeliness of major changes in the territorial status quo. So we have dreadnaughts but no naval races. Capital and labor are more mobile within the blocks but less mobile outside of them. Take it more like the military situation of permanent Cold War of the post 1962 world here. The color bar is still there but much less extreme outside of North America as the test is becoming assimilation in what is now the 3rd world. Major effort directed at simultaneously assimilating and oppressing ( inhibiting natiuonalism, national languages, national feelings) the various protectorates and colonies. World capital has as its HQ's London, New York, Berlin and Tokyo in that order. For culture it is London, Paris, Berlin, New York. Many international organizations for secondary purposes - postal, health, etc.