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What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?

king of hybrids said:
Do premises that are pretty inherently unlikely/wildly optimistic TLs automatically count as cringe
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It depends on the presentation. I would say that a TL with an unrealistic premise can still be good and not cringe so long as it puts in the legwork to fairly explore the repercussions that result, rather than just being a vehicle for the authors biases.
 
Mali historically sent out expeditions that could have discovered the new world, but failed. I see no reason why a surviving/revived Al-Andalus couldn't. For that matter I don't think it's even that unlikely such a state could survive to the Renaissance, although you'd need a number of different PODs in both internal and external events.

As for how an Imperial Al-Andalus would handle overseas colonization that's a wide open question imo. Even their goals would vary depending on their diplomatic relations with the rising Turkish empires that they could easily see as an ally or as a rival claimant to their historical Caliphal claims, which would vary whether they wanted to go around Africa as Portugal did or end up finding the Americas as Spain did. Their actual implementation...I'm not super educated on this, but I don't think it'd be too different from the early Spanish model.
 
Nerdorama said:
Mali historically sent out expeditions that could have discovered the new world, but failed. I see no reason why a surviving/revived Al-Andalus couldn't. For that matter I don't think it's even that unlikely such a state could survive to the Renaissance, although you'd need a number of different PODs in both internal and external events.
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There was a standalone graphic novel with such a premise that unfortunately went off the rails: a more successful Al-Andalus manages to hold on against the reconquista, and Christopher Columbus converts to Islam in order to get it to fund his expedition. But then the story, out of nowhere, brings up surviving Vinland Norse settlers as the villains.

 
Hendryk said:
There was a standalone graphic novel with such a premise that unfortunately went off the rails: a more successful Al-Andalus manages to hold on against the reconquista, and Christopher Columbus converts to Islam in order to get it to fund his expedition. But then the story, out of nowhere, brings up surviving Vinland Norse settlers as the villains.

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Jour J isn't "serious" ah, it's more ah-flavored fiction ( although I did enjoy some of the more grounded ones, like "L'imagination au Pouvoir")
 
Nerdorama said:
Mali historically sent out expeditions that could have discovered the new world, but failed. I see no reason why a surviving/revived Al-Andalus couldn't. For that matter I don't think it's even that unlikely such a state could survive to the Renaissance, although you'd need a number of different PODs in both internal and external events.

As for how an Imperial Al-Andalus would handle overseas colonization that's a wide open question imo. Even their goals would vary depending on their diplomatic relations with the rising Turkish empires that they could easily see as an ally or as a rival claimant to their historical Caliphal claims, which would vary whether they wanted to go around Africa as Portugal did or end up finding the Americas as Spain did. Their actual implementation...I'm not super educated on this, but I don't think it'd be too different from the early Spanish model.
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I was under the impression that the Malian expeditions were extremely dubious historically but I may have simply not seen any beyond Abu Bakari's hypothesised expedition.

I think a key point to stress when thinking about how a surviving Al-Andalus would colonize the New World versus the OTL Spanish Empire is that in OTL, the Spanish colonization was an outgrowth of the Spanish colonization of the Canaries and the Castilian defeat in the War of Castilian Succession. The former meant that there were Castilian/Spanish sailors such as Columbus with increasingly developed knowledge of the Atlantic currents and the latter meant that the southern route around Africa was more or less sealed off. Without knowing the precise circumstances of this surviving Al-Andalus, its unknown whether they would conquer the Canaries but I think trying to circumvent Christian strength in the middle Mediterranean and wanting more access to eastern goods would provide a pretty plausible motive for wanting to sail south.

I actually think in most universes, the most likely way that Europeans encounter the Americas is an accidental crossing to Brazil while swinging out to sea to return home rather than the route that Columbus took.
 
TGUT said:
I actually think in most universes, the most likely way that Europeans encounter the Americas is an accidental crossing to Brazil while swinging out to sea to return home rather than the route that Columbus took.
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That IS how the Portugese did it, approximately, so without the highly specific confluence of Castilian motives and Columbus's terrible math, it'd make sense.
 
the name escapes me, but I've seen at least one TL where St Brendan did find and start a settlement in Newfoundland; primarily (for the writer) for the purposes of introducing all the then extant European diseases to the First Nations to give them an 800+ year 'head start' in adapting.

Setting aside the above by itself; there's the issue that the territorial dispositions when Europeans rock up on the North American eastern coast as per OTL are identical to where they'd have been without the fairly massive butterflies that should have occurred.
 
Even excluding the actions of Iberian countries, I am inclined to think it was only matter of time the Americas or at least the northeastern coast of North America became more wildly known outside of the Nordic countries as well as fishermen from the Basque country and England.

I am reminded that in England in the renaissance there were people who were concerned about more unitarian materials like wood and there was apparently a perception among some that there wasn't enough old growth forest wood to meet economic and military interests.
 
I'd read a TL where the primary colonizers of the New World are, say, Mali, a surviving Al-Andalus, and potentially even Japan following a chain of events like this. The domination of Christian Europe just never happens and we get a much more culturally alien, multipolar world.
 
Maybe something building off something like this (I don't think the proposal itself is cringe, but perhaps something based off it might be?)

the POD was the Black Death wiping out a much, much higher proportion of Europe's population
 
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King Washington said:
I'd read a TL where the primary colonizers of the New World are, say, Mali, a surviving Al-Andalus, and potentially even Japan following a chain of events like this. The domination of Christian Europe just never happens and we get a much more culturally alien, multipolar world.
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I mean I'm doing with something with the Sengoku era, and the problem with non-European colonial empires is it's really easy, and really lazy to write them as off-brand European colonizers with the serial numbers filed off. You'd have to give a reason for them to come up, you'd need to be both in depth with how they evolve and they what they would look like socially and that isn't easy to go predict for what future post-colonial polity comes out of that.

For my SOO continuation, yeah you might get Japanese territories in an ATL Philippines without the Spanish and the parts of the western coast of the U.S, but internal divisions might be based smaller community and real power might be held by local leaders be it Japanese or native and any kind of direction from 'home' becomes non-existent. However I do want to keep plenty of native polities and societies around, and not as playing a second fiddle to dominant colonial powers. Especially since I want to scale that idea back and have native polities aren't pushed to the curb but manage to survive, instead of just making them fodder for whoever is coming to colonize.

However an issue with alt-colonial Empires, is people all to often take OTL colonization for granted (among a lot of things for a bunch of different topics) as oh non-American powers are going to dominate in a similar fashion to OTL, when even factoring out the Spanish luck, the European never steamrolled over the area, and pretty much need native aid to even survive those first decades, so I would find just remaking rough analogues to OTL's colonial nations just too easy and too lazy to do.
 
While it goes without saying that a WWI style conflict was inevitable, and arguably would have gotten worse the longer it was postponed due to the speed at which military technology was outstripping military theory and the practical experience of officers used to colonial wars; a lot of timelines stick to the stations of the WWI cross a tad too closely.

Eg is a Russia where 1905 results in an unstable regency where Alexei is almost certain to die before reaching majority, Olga and her sisters can't inherit, Mikhail has little/no support to go from regent to the top job and the Duma, nobles, revolutionaries/counter-revolutionaries of every stripe and the Grand Dukes with brains/popularity are likely to openly tear each other and the ruling branch apart any day now; the chances of St. Petersburg not leaving Belgrade twisting in the wind in a July Crisis-style scenario are very low

Or a verse where a series of calamities among Victoria's children leaves her eldest daughter and namesake as the heir to the throne etc etc
 
Something I don't consider to be necessarily cringe but I find kind of odd

Photos of the New Order

I see.
www.alternatehistory.com
A squad of PALF soldiers with Japanese helmets beat an innocent boy while documentary crews film.
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I don't know why attention is drawn to the maker of the helmets, but to me it reads like an in universe pro OFN outlet trying to demonize a country they lost against by associating them with the enemy. They're probably mad that it isn't them beating up young boys in Nestle cocoa plantations.
 
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Terra Allias said:
I don't know why attention is drawn to the maker of the helmets, but to me it reads like an in universe pro OFN outlet trying to demonize a country they lost against by associating them with the enemy. They're probably mad that it isn't them beating up young boys in Nestle cocoa plantations.
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TNO fans have this issue of whitewashing colonial powers so long as they aren't an Axis power
 
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