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Alt History ideas, rec and general discussion thread

It'd be interesting if Washington not being a presidential candidate results in the Articles of Confederation sticking around with relatively minor changes.
 
king of hybrids said:
Would the US not welching on its debts/trade promises to France be likely to delay Louis XVI shitting the bed and getting the chop?
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Hmm it likely would help, as I recall the there was a deal and attempt to pay its war debts to France in 1785 but that attempt got wreaked by the interference of a certain Minster to France Thomas Jefferson who managed to also crashed the tobacco market while he was at it.

Afterwords it wouldn't be until 1795 when a financial scheme by James Swan not only eliminated the debt owed to France but apparently all foreign states though debt to non-state actors remained.
 
I think that the Washington-less Constitution would lose a lot of the Hamiltonian characteristics, and be a lot more Madisonian - the House of Representatives dominating the whole thing, probably.
 
Alane1 said:
Hmm it likely would help, as I recall the there was a deal and attempt to pay its war debts to France in 1785 but that attempt got wreaked by the interference of a certain Minster to France Thomas Jefferson who managed to also crashed the tobacco market while he was at it.

Afterwords it wouldn't be until 1795 when a financial scheme by James Swan not only eliminated the debt owed to France but apparently all foreign states though debt to non-state actors remained.
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So does Jefferson count as the first case of America causing the overthrow of a government they don't like?
 
If Eisenhower never became president, what might a different president (OTL or ATL) post-Truman call Camp David instead? Or would it continue to be called "Shangri-La"?
 
Does anyone have ideas for what US politics circa 1920s might look like if Lincoln survives and Reconstruction is more successful?

Besides keeping Woodrow Wilson out of the White House, of course.
 
Freedom's Light: a Super-powered Alternate History
(Warnings: Slavery, Rape)​
Note: I am white and do not think I am in any position to do this idea in a tactful manner without oversight and commentary from black and mixed race people. That said, I hope that someone can give me the proper guidance to make an alternate history which is interesting and exciting while not ignoring the grim realities of slavery.

The year is 1682; it is an age of exploitation where men, women, and children are taken from their homes, brought across an ocean to a life of slavery in an unfamiliar land. They would be forced to work in plantations for brutal overseers, often to their death. Even worse, the plantation owners would often take advantage of young slave women and rape them, something that was allowed under this terrible practice. The children of these in nonconsensual unions, referred to as the children of the plantation, would be treated like any other slave by their wretched fathers, regarded with the same level of cruelty and condescension.

However, in this year, on a fateful New Year's Eve, a bright light would streak through the skies, and throughout the upcoming years children born from this horrific abuse would become gifted in some respect, possessing miraculous abilities that allowed them to avenge what had been done to their mothers and fight back against the oppressive force of slavery.

These abilities, powered by individual force of will, came in many forms, ranging from enhanced physical and mental attributes to flight and telekinesis, and possibly even further. With these powers, these children would grow into become the leaders of revolutions across the Americas, battling against the colonizing force which had kidnapped and raped their mothers.

Will these powers born from the light of Freedom be enough to grant freedom to their people, or will the course of history not be altered?
 
Guns by Diesel​
Imagine if Rudolf Diesel, the man who invented the Diesel engine, had been gifted one of the worlds first spring piston air guns, and he realized that the gun was getting a power boost from burning oil in compressed air, much like his engine produced power by burning oil in compressed air.

Suppose Diesel then pivoted from engine development to trying to design an artillery gun which used the same principle, and spent the rest of his life working on the problem, and either personally solved it, or he inspired others to (successfully) solve it.

If artillery guns used diesel fuel instead of gunpowder to launch projectiles, how many fewer ammo depot explosions would there have been throughout history, and what famous people wouldn't have died when they did?
 
Okay, here's something really silly:

What if there was a species of miniature mammoths (about the size of a cow) in Russia that managed to survive into the Middle Ages which was found by a shepard in the 9th century?
 
Hmm, there were several species of dwarf mammoths and elephants in north America and western Eurasia though they had resulted from isolation and evolution on islands.

You could run with the idea of some of those various species surviving into recorded history I suppose.
 
I've long thought about the possibility of plausible "Punk-progression" timeline. Where the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment period of the 18th century went a bit differently. Throwing the Industrial Revolution into overdrive with technology in certain areas being developed much faster. Going from steampunk where armored steam trucks, Gardner guns, airships and even poison gas is used in an alternate American Civil War to the final decades of the twentieth century being cyberpunk.


Just some general ideas for such a timeline

- A worse colonial thanks to the European Colonial Empires having an even bigger technological advantage than in OTL.

- Various nations had national intranet systems as early as the late Victorian Era. With the national interlinking of mechanical computers by telegraph lines.

- Certain technologies like barbwire actually see their invention getting delayed by a decade or two to justify a Wild, Wild West.

- Nuclear Energy developed differently here. Starting out as a civilian energy source before being weaponized. With the technology being more developed and widespread thanks to there being ni analogue to Hiroshima.

- Computer technology went from the vacuum tube to vacuum channel transistors before going to the transistors and computer chips we are familiar with. Mainly to justify a Fallout esque Atompunk era.

- The Space Race here was much more like the For All Mankind series with lunar bases, man missions to Mars and even asteroid mining all before 2000.


- CRISPR being discovered far earlier with things starting to become progressively more biopunk by the 1990's.


Thoughts?
 
Muhkat Lomorki said:
Okay, here's something really silly:

What if there was a species of miniature mammoths (about the size of a cow) in Russia that managed to survive into the Middle Ages which was found by a shepard in the 9th century?
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Much depends on how domesticable and useful they are. They are exotic enough perhaps for the Emperors at Constantinople to want a few for the menagerie, but if the population is too small and the habitat too useful it would not even take overhunting to drive the things to extinction.

This came up during discussion on a rather deranged meme equating the Obama Administration to Apartheid South Africa on the basis of "If people were upset because whites ran SA when they were 20% of the population why do they cheer about Obama running things when Blacks are 13%?"
me said:
The whole "Universal Suffrage" aspect of the comparison really flies over this poster's head, does it not?
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But that does raise the question (yes, the scenario borders on ASB): If the Union of South Africa enforced the Cape Qualified Franchise across the whole thing in ~1910, ditched the property/educational limits by ~1950, and had a white-or-mostly-white head of government with a noticeably bigger percentage of such on the cabinet than in the general populace by ~1990... would half as many people be complaining nearly as hard as they were over OTL's Apartheid deal?
 
 
Muhkat Lomorki said:
Freedom's Light: a Super-powered Alternate History
(Warnings: Slavery, Rape)​
Note: I am white and do not think I am in any position to do this idea in a tactful manner without oversight and commentary from black and mixed race people. That said, I hope that someone can give me the proper guidance to make an alternate history which is interesting and exciting while not ignoring the grim realities of slavery.

The year is 1682; it is an age of exploitation where men, women, and children are taken from their homes, brought across an ocean to a life of slavery in an unfamiliar land. They would be forced to work in plantations for brutal overseers, often to their death. Even worse, the plantation owners would often take advantage of young slave women and rape them, something that was allowed under this terrible practice. The children of these in nonconsensual unions, referred to as the children of the plantation, would be treated like any other slave by their wretched fathers, regarded with the same level of cruelty and condescension.

However, in this year, on a fateful New Year's Eve, a bright light would streak through the skies, and throughout the upcoming years children born from this horrific abuse would become gifted in some respect, possessing miraculous abilities that allowed them to avenge what had been done to their mothers and fight back against the oppressive force of slavery.

These abilities, powered by individual force of will, came in many forms, ranging from enhanced physical and mental attributes to flight and telekinesis, and possibly even further. With these powers, these children would grow into become the leaders of revolutions across the Americas, battling against the colonizing force which had kidnapped and raped their mothers.

Will these powers born from the light of Freedom be enough to grant freedom to their people, or will the course of history not be altered?
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I'm White too, so I have no idea if this helps. There's a whole shit-ton of things you need to take into account with this premise. Slavery is not going to be a universal experience for any of these people.

1: First and foremost where these slaves are is going to be radically different in how it shapes their experiences. Even in just the American system (ie Thirteen Colonies) there were vast differences in how life as an enslaved person could be for someone. Not all slave owners are going to be owning large plantations with maybe fifty or more slaves but possibly five or ten with their master perhaps working in the same field as them. Also, not all slaves are going to be working in fields or plantations, some might just be working in mines or elsewhere. And this not even getting into is there even a rough family structure for some slaves or not. This kind of gets compounded once you get outside of the Thirteen Colonies proper

Sub point: Slavery in the 1680's if you mean it to be the 1680s, and not the 1860s are different from each other in scale, focus, and even practice. Hell even slavery from 1790 in the U.S. was different from the 1860s.

2: Slavery included more than just enslaved Africans but included the indigenous population of the Americas too, the context of their plight is going to be much different if your only understanding of slavery is some elements of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Also, does this ASB factor in any abuses that could happen to indentured servants by this time or is it strictly enslaved people?

3: More to the setting, your affected people could have radically different outcomes and backgrounds than just being leaders of rebellions. You could have all sorts of things happen if you are willing to explore them some of which can be interesting or awful, to undersell it. Basically, you could have people believe they are blessed by God, Gods, and possibly even spirits depending on their exact upbringing. They could outcast as monsters or witches. Some might gladly step into a role with their powers as liberators, while others might want to lie low assuming they even have a place to fit in because of their powers.

Some of these slaves could actually be treated better, or perhaps in the worst-case scenario, you even get superpowered versions of William Elison. Although William Elison had some room to move because he was a slave apprenticed to a blacksmith. Even if this kind of goes against the assumption of the premise, just because slaves were too valuable for slave owners to go recklessly kill, (not that value prevents grievous abuses), especially if they could learn a trade.

Subpoint: Race, Culture, and identity are very complicated in pre-nationalistic periods. Namely, most if not all modern senses of identity are basically based on groups of peoples compressed into an xyz people. So your not even going to have British people, in a thirteen colonies-centric story, before you get into any manner of culture hodgepodge these superpower individuals could come from. Where did a certain character's mother come from what parts of her culture got passed down if any? These children might find themselves unable to really fit in some places, or at the very least have to carve out their own identities even without the issue of superpowers

4: Is anyone going to find out how this ASB works, and what is the limitation on it? I really don't want to elaborate too much on this considering the nasty implications. Does the existence of these superpowers cause anything from people trying to replicate them, and is this strictly from men initiating with women, or can it be done vice-versa? With such actions gradually being known how does everyone from families of slaves and slave owners react to communities, colonial authorities, and even the wider world? Also, can these powers get passed on?

5: What's the end goal here? By 1682 the U.S slave population might be in the upper 6000s, and how much of that is going to be super-powered slaves, and how many of those slaves are going to be leaders? Because by the 1680s settlement of the Northern half of the Americas is still largely concentrated along the coasts and riverways. Boundaries and borders are vague theoretical constructs. So any talk of a nation is going to need some details. To say nothing of the rest of the Americas.

That and you are talking of a time when the idea of independence was unimaginable, and even then the independence that came was built from states still awkwardly clinging to the old colonial administration and usually from a last resort of failed communication between the mother country and its colonies usually caused by some calamity or the aftermath of it namely war between mother countries.

6: Don't be afraid to make your slave owners and possibly related family or communities more than one-dimensional characters, same with everyone else. Relating to points 3 and 4, you could have plenty of interesting dynamics. One slave owner could favor an empowered child as an actual legal child. Another slave owner could hear from the grapevine about the practice and think it's disgusting for genuinely moral or even racial reasons, possibly both.

Hell one plot could see a slaver conceiving a child with a dangerous power that sees him cast out and swear 'vengeance' on said child. Another could see perhaps a son of a slave owner pressured into doing said actions, and perhaps coming off that experience really messed up. Slavery is a screwed system to put it lightly, but you miss out by making its perpetrators and associated figures just purely evil bastards even if they represent and in some cases perpetuate an evil system.

7: Don't overdo the darkness in the premise, and racism in some parts of the setting. Yes, you're dealing with a dark subject, but don't use it as an excuse to show or describe graphic things if you don't want to or really have to. Have to, in this case, means you need don't need to go for the most brutal or graphic way to show how bad slavery can be, or at least you don't need to do it all the time. An overuse of atrocity makes the atrocity arbitrary and loses its impact.

On the racism front, again the idea of race as we know it doesn't really exist, the exact bigotries of your slave owners could vary from owner to owner some perhaps being more religious than others in their bigotry than 'racial'. That also the same might be the same with people as a whole, depending on where these ex-slaves end up, they might be tolerated even if perhaps seen as strange to certain communities. This isn't to say these former slaves, can't end up in some truly awful places and meet truly awful communities. Basically, if and when you show bad things don't overplay them, because they should have proper weight.

I could probably look for more, but in general, it's a premise you want to possibly check twice or three times before starting.
 
So over in AH a new tl popped up which so far has been pretty great, it's a What If Robespierre doesn't die in Thermidor and the aftermath, it's just started and it has so far been pretty well researched and written which is pretty interesting taking into account is the authors first TL, so if anybody is interested they should take a look:

La Guillotine Permanente: A French Revolutionary Timeline

What if Maximilien Robespierre was never overthrown?
www.alternatehistory.com
 
Neal Caffrey said:
So over in AH a new tl popped up which so far has been pretty great, it's a What If Robespierre doesn't die in Thermidor and the aftermath, it's just started and it has so far been pretty well researched and written which is pretty interesting taking into account is the authors first TL, so if anybody is interested they should take a look:

La Guillotine Permanente: A French Revolutionary Timeline

What if Maximilien Robespierre was never overthrown?
www.alternatehistory.com
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Are they pro or anti Robespierre?
 
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