The Imperial Federation often gets wanked to high hell and back in particular.
What is a common thing or trope that always seem to happen?
- Thread starter Viking25
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Which are usually reformed so aggressively that they end up being "America with a German accent and a Kaiser" and "Britain with a Russian accent and a King labelled as Tzar."
Because as we all know, the only way to survive and succeed is through being a liberal democracy and any other systems are bound to fail, why? Because the author wants to, that's why
Something interesting about your timeline is the fact that Portugal achieved its dream: an empire in Asia. Portugal's hyperfocus on Asia during the Age of Exploration has several reasons. But the biggest factor for Asia is the long-term strategic and economic importance of Asia, particularly in terms of controlling trade routes, accessing high-value commodities, and establishing dominance in global trade networks, especially in the spice trade. At the same time, the absence of sugar, gold, diamonds, and later, coffee would lead to a lack of economic booms, weakening Portugal's position in European trade networks. In our timeline (OTL), the Asian trade routes, particularly those in the Indian Ocean, contributed approximately 20% to 30% of Portugal's total colonial trade income. Now, the country heavily depends on Africa and Asia. However, without the demand for slaves, Portugal may find itself in a position to fully ignore the New World. So this balance is something difficult to do.
Of course, this partly comes from how Portugal and France operate in their colonies. With Portugal in OTL not wanting to invest in the american colony. While France appears to be investing in several sectors such as infrastructure in addition to having a more dynamic economy than Portugal.
yes haiti is going to have a big cash cow to the uk.
Should also be mentioned that the Dutch suffered from being too reliant on Asian trade, especially as India eclipsed everything and the prices of spices never were the same, especially after many of them started being grown in the new world(in places like Brazil for instance which could be seen as form of revenge from the Portuguese from having Indonesia snatched from them) and the trade routes towards China and Japan while still profitable also declined due to the more restrictive trading nature of the major east Asian powers such as China and Japan(something that will be avoided in Japan's case and China will have their own thing in my TL), so the real prize became India and expanding upon it.
in the TL, Portugal controls Ceylon as their true major possession in India as well as several forts there, not to mention them doing (brutal) plantations of spices and sugar on Indonesia and their trade with China and Japan, but it won't last forever as other European powers will start to also flex their muscles in the East, not only France but also England, Spain, the Dutch and even the Danes and Swedes, so they'll have to deal with that.
Indeed, in fact the reason they still keep their other colonies in Africa is specifically to supply Brazil who they see as their major jewel in the Americas, not to mention a useful dumping ground for unwanted groups and a good source of revenue from the state, so they're eager to invest on it as much as possible, combine that with not having their attention divided on Asia like Portugal was, their massive population and wealth, the many resources in Brazil and the prestige it brings certainly makes the crown look favorably to the endeavor.
Is it wrong to want for something better and make it so in your own written works? Sometimes it's a case of the author having the ending goal in mind but not having reconciled their history knowledge enough to put the pieces into the puzzle of yhe plot so they don't elegantly get their meaning across and countries that've evolved over the course of a story appear as Frankenstein monsters to the observer but it isn't the goal per se.
I know from experience.
It is wrong when the author insists on projecting political and social problems of OTL onto environments where such things are not relevant yet (because they are at least 200 years away from being a concern), they are not going to be because of cultural context (the classic example is project American problems onto other countries) or they will never be a concern because the actions of the SI or the country itself will make sure to make butterflies out of those problems.
It is one thing for writing a country to make better decisions and quite another (and quite frequent) for it to appear that the ASB gave the leaders full access to the updated Wikipedia until 2024 and the leadership decided to try to implement the necessary steps to become the United States.
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Not at all, I very much prefer "better worlds" as a story concept
It does get stale however when the definition of better is just "well I taught them english and everyone follows the Westminster System now" because in the author's mind that is the culmination of all the human systems, the "end of history" for a state so to speak
"Or alternatively they are good republics that exactly model the system of the United States of America except for the parts I don't like." It's even worse because the only alternatives that seem to get any kind of attention are worthless meme ideologies like "Kaiserreich's Syndie but this time it actually works."
This, basically (Western)Europe and the USA during the nearly ten year period of the fall of the USSR and 9/11, a time where it seemed humanity had truly evolved and we were in a slow race, taking our sweet time where liberal democracy, neoliberal free trade and international cooperation would make the remaining authoritarian regimes collapse and everyone would enjoy free rights and free trades, "The pinnacle of your civilization" as Agent Smith said it best and in derision.
Of course we know this wasn't the case, even during the "good times" the world outside of Western Europe and USA weren't exactly having it as good and the gears of history were slowly turning that would culminate into things like the War on Terror, the 2009 crisis and so on, "the end of history" proved to be a myth as history never really stops. The problem comes that in those worlds it really does seems like history stops once the author thinks they've reached the zenith of their favorite political system and there are no challenges, internal and external, that can actually force to reform and expose it's flaws, it instead becomes a ossified thing where there's no changes because any disruption to the status quo is inherently bad because it defies the current power, except it's portrayed as something good instead of a natural part of the world and indeed human history and development. No changes, no reforms, just the same thing with increasingly better tech and pop culture until the fucking sun explodes.
And the few times when the author decides to introduce a change, it is because he believes he needs to address an OTL problem by showing how his idealized world CAN solve it without political or social problems of the type we have in OTL.
In particularly bad cases, moreover, he doesn't even take the time to introduce the problem as a plot element, but rather pulls a Martin.
That is, the Big Problem suddenly arises, overshadows all the other problems that were happening at the time, and leads to extremes such as literally EVERYONE collectively agreeing that they are going to stop murdering each other in World War III and focus on cooperating. in every possible way to solve this problem.
(WW3 whose fundamental causes can be summarized in "the protagonist country decided that hey, having neutral countries makes no sense, so they decided to start attacking and destroying neutral countries... taking advantage of the fact that their enemies suddenly began to implode on themselves and attack each other out of nowhere")
Yep, I read a study that suggested that Asian trade could have represented approximately 50% to 70% of the Dutch Republic's total trade income (which seems like a lot). I don't doubt that the same could happen with Portugal. However, Portugal's biggest challenge concerning Asia is the lack of innovation in its economy compared to what the Dutch had. Therefore, Portugal will have to make considerable efforts to achieve the same level of dominance over Asia that the Dutch enjoyed.
In relation to China, Portugal will probably maintain its monopoly with Macau, considering that in OTL they received help from China against the Dutch in controlling the city. Now, Japan is more complicated. First, due to the Shimabara Rebellion, the Portuguese will not support the government against the Catholics, not by a long shot. This indicates several possibilities, such as Kyushu becoming independent from the shogunate (the most interesting option in my opinion, because I have read TLs where Japan becomes Christian and have seen them winning against the rebellion, but a partial victory never). Not to mention securing an excellent base in Asia. Probably with the island becoming an ally/vassal, but I wouldn't doubt Portugal wanting to annex the island.
They changed the capital from the Governor of Goa to Ceylon, so it makes sense; the island is better located and safer, with Goa taking a back seat. At the same time, the Portuguese are likely to initiate a strong conversion effort in Ceylon. The island has roughly the same population as Portugal, plus the rest of the Portuguese empire, and the Portuguese themselves probably have a population equal to or smaller than the subjects in Asia. This will require significant attention from Portugal, along with immigration of settlers to secure the Ceylon empire in particular. With the island serving as a barrier to the rest of Asia.
So, this is interesting because France controls Cape Verde, England Haiti, and the rest are going okay, with the best of these last three currently being Denmark with the colony in Canada. But the Danes and Swedes will have to work hard to compete with Portugal, especially if Portugal has moved its capital from the Indies to Ceylon.
In this TL, I would say that England and France will be the two states that will interact the most with African kingdoms for slaves.
Well if something is written as ridiculously contrived in as blatant a manner you're entailing, then duh >_>
How would you write it?
Dont take this as a accusatory response, Im genuinely interested