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Description
A little something for the old-timers in the AH community. It's a world themed around Confederate victory, complete with airships, surviving colonial empires and the other tropes people recognize from the 682 other maps featuring a world like this.

The title is of course a snarky reference to the 'nostalgia' displayed by more obsessive steampunk fans, British empire fanboys and of course lost cause fans that one of my friends came up with.

The divergences of this world began in the 1840s, with the visible changes beginning with King Wilhelm accepting the crown from the gutter, along with the Confederacy's leaving following the narrow 1856 election of Fremont to the presidency. With Republicanism discredited, by the Confederate secession, Napoleon III was able to stay in power after the end of the Franco-German war of 1864-65. Another side effect of discredited Republicanism was Britain's creating Kingdoms instead of Dominions. There was a Spanish succession crisis in the late 1880s, which nearly went to war when an overconfident Japan grabbed micronesia and the Philippines before Germany could. This was smoothed over by Britain letting Germany have Morocco, along with pressuring Japan to allow German temporary economic rights in the philippines. The changes that followed it, led to the late 19th century becoming a period where the imperial system rose to greater heights than OTL.

The closest this world came to a conflageration was the second Crimean War of 1901-1903, which saw a triple alliance of Britain, Japan and Germany against France and Russia. The war was unpleasant enough, but not a civilization-cracker like either of our world wars. The war ended with an Anglo-German victory which saw the Belgian partition, Germany's annexing the baltic dutchy, Manchuria *and* Korea ending up in the Japanese sphere of influence. France lost the perpetually troublesome Indochina to Germany along with ceding border areas in Africa to Britain.

After the war, a Russia faced with an even worse humiliation than OTL's 1904-5 Russo-Japanese war collapsed into civil war following a bad harvest in 1912. This resulted in a messy civil war, with massive overseas intervention. Japan took this as an opportunity to grab the Siberian Far East along with officially annexing it's gains in Korea and Manchuria along with setting up protectorates in Mongolia and Tuba. Germany relieved Russia of the burden of Poland, while setting up hohozellern princes to rule over the kingdoms spawned in the wake of Russia's implosion. Once he ran out of Hohozellerns to ship to rule over impoverished kingdoms, Kaiser Friedrich sent members of Prussian Junker families looking for a chance to achieve promotion into the higher ranks of the aristocracy.This led to mixed results over the next century or so: King Johann of Finland is popular and beloved, while King Wilhelm V of Turkestan is to put it mildly rather unpopular among the 40% of Turkestan's population that is muslim.

The twin factors of Europe's near dive into the civilizational abyss during the Second Crimean War and decades of anglo-german intellectual exchange bore fruit in the form of the Cameralist movement of the 1910s and 1920s. This movement, which stressed hierarchy, ruthlessness for it's own sake and the will to power being all was able to influence the parties. Of course, in both Britain and Germany a certain amount of smug cultural elitism for Britain and volkish mysticism in Germany's case were needed to really make it sell. This wasn't a totalitarian political shift, it was merely altering the terms of the politicial dialogue by introducing a new aryanist and racist focus. Elections and party systems largely remained as before, with the notable exception of the exclusion of Labor in britain and the Socialists in Germany from mainstream political discourse -- no formal proscriptions or even media censorship, but lots of guys with baseball bats to visit party HQs. Even now, decades later much of this policy mix holds, even if certain aspects like the biological racism have been dropped in favor of linguistic discriminaiton and anti-semitism is downplayed.

France made a third attempt at a war of revenge in 1930. Like the other two wars with Germany, France lost. This time, the humiliation was total as France was stripped of every single colony by Germany and Britain along with getting to see all of it's national treasures being taken to German or British museums. Yes, even down to the eiffel tower which now sits in a park in Berlin.

Once again, change appears to be in the air. The long afternoon of the age of empires appears to be slowly drawing to it's close. Britain has granted a few areas in India dominion status in recent years, along with extending full Kingdom status to Ceylon, the West Indies, Malaya and a quite industrialized Bengal. In fact, both Germany and Britain have cooperatively set up experimental 'mandates' consisting of East Africa and both halves of Angola. This has worked out well enough for Britain to work with the Italians on a similar arrangement for Somalia.

Besides the question of how much of the world is British pink or German grey, there are certain environmental troubles that concern the great powers. No resources have run out yet, but prices are rising to worrisome levels. Also, the weather has started to get "funny" the last couple of decades. No hurricanes in the Mediterranean yet, but tropical storm Ivo formed there last year. right now, the big powers are all trying technical fixes like massive usage of nuclear power, carpeting Australia and Italian libya with solar panels, etc.

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The Triumvirate are the three most powerful nations in the world: Britain, Germany and Japan. All three are very capitalistic, corporate-dominated constitutional monarchies. While individual nations like the United States may have more wealth or a higher standard of living, they clearly don't outmatch the three empires combined.

The first portion of the Triumvirate which dominates global politics, is a still globe-spanning British Empire. While what would be the white dominions have been spun off as "Kingdoms" and say South India has dominion status, the mentioned areas all remain within the British economic sphere and contribute to the empire's wealth. London remains the biggest center of world finance, and also enjoys a status as the center of world culture. British culture of course is more aristocratic and elitist in a world where the old aristocracy didn't lose their sons in two major wars and their wealth by inheritance taxes.

The Kingdoms within the empire have gone from being colonies to becoming equal partners. This began with the white dominions in the late 19th century with Canada, South Africa and Australia. South Africa is larger than OTL, due to butterflies involving certain gold discoveries happening earlier. As a result, the boers were swamped by English settlers. That said, there aren't really any black voters but at least there's less petty humiliations than under apartheid. Since the 1990s, there even a couple of nonwhite Kingdoms: Ceylon, Malaya, The West Indies and a Very Capitalist Bengal have all been granted Kingdom status as a sort of an experiment. Both Ireland and Scotland have this status too -- in fact, it was the successful precedent of both becoming Kingdoms that led to the experiments with granting nonwhite regions Kingdom status.

Below the kingdoms are semi-autonomous "Dominions" and other protected states like Oman. Egypt, South India, Rajahstan, Marathastan, Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal. The difference, is that these areas still tend to be run for the benefit of the empire and kingdoms and as a result are exploited. Just like in the colonies, the bulk of the local population works in local branches of British factories or on industrial farms and if they're both compliant and lucky get paid at all. The difference between these and colonies is the policemen who brutally put down labor unrest are locals and not redcoat MPs.

The colonies remain run for the benefit of the metropole. Decades of alliance with a prussia-led Germany have altered British colonial policies in certain ways. Paying workers is optional and massacre is a standard policy option for unrest, but at least there is the germanic legalism. The law may be tough, but it is fair in theory. Oddly enough, legal fairness doesn't mollify the anger of those who are outraged at the fact their village got burned to the ground because of protestors or that they're working in Apple factories without hope of ever seeing pay.

Portugal remains Britain's Little Buddy, but still resents having it's colonies stripped from it back in 1910.

Argentina has 92 million people and an averaged out standard of living like Italy's. it is even more Italian-influenced than our Argentina because of an even longer period of open immigration. The wealth and population are still centered around Buenos Aires but at least the gap is merely say France vs Sicily in terms of average income. As of late, Buenos Aires has become something of a fashion center -- it's not on par with Milan yet but it's getting there.

The Confederate States of America is one of Britain's older friends. It's a more elitist and less self-consciously "populist" nation than our south -- without overbearing yankee intellectuals to cause domestic problem it lacks much of OTL's anti-intellectualism. It's also a bit culturally different than our dixie due to extensive south european and latin american immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries aimed at "whitening" the population by reducing the portion of blacks. Without internal political disputes with yankees to contend with combined with earlier urbanization, the Confederacy is a bit more socially liberal than our southern US in certain ways despite being rather racist. Gays can get married in several states and marihuana remains legal as a rule. Slavery died 1900-35 in bits and pieces, although about half of the country still has debt peonage as an increasingly uncommon option. Segregation is harsh, enforced both by law and by custom. However, a few states like Virginia are starting to put more money into black schools and townships. The Confederacy's cities of Havana and New Orleans are both known for sleazy nightlife.

Japan is Britain's partner and closest ally as well as being the second member of the Triumvirate. Japan is still developed, but it is rather less modern and westernized than our world's Japan. Think the Japan of geisha and bushido rather than that of pokemon and pocky. A less westernized Japan's people can't see why people in other countries find lolicon hentai or 12 year old "video" stars creepy. The fact that Japan wasn't cheated out of it's gains from Russia in the wake of Second Crimea combined with an earlier and more expensive experience with running an empire prevented Japan from going off the authoritarian deep end. Japan remained an elitist semi-democracy, and over time moved to full democracy first for Japanese and later on for both taiwanese and assimilated Chinese. They have made Japanese out of much of the Korean and Manchurian population. The catholic Philippines remain more culturally distinct from the rest of the empire in part due to relgious reasons. In recent years, the problems of increasing unrest combined with higher expenses for security have made Japan grant the Philippines autonomy plus certain, more radical types argue for moving the Philippines to be a protectorate like Mongolia and no longer a colony. With a more conservative regime than OTL, combined with removing the megadeaths of the world wars Japan makes ours look almost rural in comparision. This means that projects like arcologies and even building a floating tower in Tokyo bay have been tried to enhance the value and usage of real estate. There are of course occasional disasters leading to the deaths of hundreds or thousands, but in a world with attitudes towards risk more like the early 20th century this is not enough to discourage Japan.

Third but not least is the German Reich of more than 200 million strong, extending from Alsace to the Baltics. The population is mostly german but includes visible polish and baltic minorities, which retain their linguistic distinctiveness despite decades of pro-germanization campaigns. Nowadays, there is extensive immigration from former russia and other portions of Eastern Europe. The government is actually _less_ democratic and open in practice than it was in 1914 in OTL. Yes, it's more open for those with talent to rise but unlike in our world where Germany became a middle-class society after two world wars, it was more of a switch from aristocracy of blood to aristocracy of talent in practice. A Germany that was founded in the wake of accepting the "crown from the gutter" turned out to be a more liberal Germany on economic matters. This meant a more dynamic economy than our Wilhemine Germany, but also the lack of the prussian welfare state that people would recognize from our history. What social services that emerged both in Germany and other nations tended to resemble workhouse or charity operations. Also, the notion of treating labor unions as something governments can coopt or live with instead of something to be repressed hasn't really taken off as it did in our world. This is part of why worker's rights lag OTL and why disciplinary practices like flogging workers persisted longer, and in certain cases like prisons or for natives in colonies persist even to now. Government-provided or even just subsidized healthcare along with many other benefits remain unthinkable.

Germany's status as the dominant power ensures that students learn several years of german in schools from Amsterdam to Moscow to Sofia. On a global level, German remains the prestige language of certain hard sciences such as chemistry and physics.

The Austrian Empire's political system is petty and sclerotic but without major tests it's been able to muddle along. The government is less active for both good and ill, which translates into even less social services in germany but on the other hand, there's less policemen with assault rifles to break labor disputes. It's even become a semi-democracy, with the remaining limitations being to protect the government from secessionism. With the emigration of millions of people either to Germany, the new world or settler colonies this is less of a pressing issue. This has allowed a certain degree of reform and genuine federalization. With a freer intellectual environment combined with a less corporatized economy, Austria has become one of the most technologically dynamic parts of the world.

Scandanavia is an unusual place; It's not quite a single federal state, but it's also not quite three different states. This close confederation of kingdoms emerged over decades of ad-hoc cooperation. This isn't a radical development, but merely the intensification of certain OTL trends in favor of Scandanavian cooperation.

The rest of Germany's eastern european allies all have Hohozellern princes on their thrones and are at varying levels of social cohesion and development. Ukraine and White Russia are on par with Germany in developmen while Turkestan is merely as well off as OTL Kazachstan. In some areas such as Siberia, Turkestan and Transcaucasia there has been extensive German immigration. Usually, the immigration tends to be _to_ Germany and by now there are Ukrainian, White Russian and finnish quarters in many German cities.

Italy retains it's colonial empire and is one of Germany's closer allies. The government is run like a more competent version of Mussolini's italy, but with more style. Also, an obsession with renaissance culture as opposed to The Glory of Rome.

The dutch are independent and retain a little empire but are otherwise unremarkable.

China avoided slipping into the warlord period because the Qing fell apart a decade early and ended up being replaced by a new dynasty led by a military strongman. This led China to a golden age of prosperity, which fell apart in a long period of unrest from 1955-70. The reason for this was that an increasingly modern China's middle classes judged the corrupt new dynasty by the standards of the past and found it to be wanting. After all, Confucianism proved just as adept at creating a critique of modernity as Shia Islam in Iran was in OTL. China's economy is around 20 years behind OTL in terms of development due to the rather xenophobic nature of the current rulers of China.

The United States is a corrupt oligarchy, much like our world. It's a more urban, capitalist and (more openly) corporatized nation than ours -- the economy is no more dynamic or prosperous than ours, though. The biggest visible differences are that the United States isn't a superpower and that the inner city 'hoods are irish or sicilian and not black -- This world's *13th amendment excluded the descendents of slaves from citizenship and included a deportation clause -- The border patrol was created in the 1870s to prevent slaves from sneaking in. The fact that the progressive-minded types were able to have stronger influence than OTL during the golden age of racism helps explain how these trends were taken to the point of making US citizenship explicitly limited to europeans.

France is still under a Napoleon and sulks over the loss of it's empire. It's politics are lurid and involve occasional assasinations combined with constant rioting. A more repressive government isn't enough to stop the French from doing their national sport of protests and strikes.

Liberia is at a low-end latin american level due to extensive Confederate and Union investment, combined with a bigger (if still minor) back to Africa movement.

The Swiss wish they weren't on this planet.

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Having a larger capitalist world and anglo-german scientific cross-fertilization has more than made up for the lag caused by relative geopolitical quiet of this century. Military technology and aerospace are a bit behind and the internet is still largely text with small pictures but other technological areas such as medicine, biotechnology, materials science are all on par or ahead of OTL. Due to the ongoing energy and environmental crises, "alternate energy" is about a decade ahead of OTL.

Airships lasted longer as the main form of civilian air travel, but since the 60s and 70s have mostly been displaced by jets. No world wars on OTL's scale gave them more time to work out the bugs in the technology but people simply wanted speedy travel. They're still around for the aerial equivelant of luxury cruises, though. Absurd energy costs have given airships a new lease on life in recent years, though.

The once-stalled space program is starting to get new life. Peak oil hit a while back, and that combined with other resources running scarce means there is renewed interest in the prospects of asteroid mining and orbital solar power. Of course, since it means usage of unmanned mining robots, this means that the manned lunar landing that was planned for 2012 was scrapped and the resources put into the orbital solar program.

As a whole, the world is richer, more prosperous and more educated. It may be a prosperous world, but it's one clearly under the economic and cultural domination of a few big players --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 and Tokyo in that specific order. There is a major push for both assimilation and oppression(inhibiting nationalism, national languages, national feelings) in the imperial protectorates and colonies. Modern science shows that yes, the people in the colonies are fully human but in a world without world wars this doesn't translate into cultural tolerance. Instead, the feeling is that local cultures are "counter-adapted" to modernity and that Europe's civilizing mission is their only hope for prosperity.

Non-western languages, aren't doing as well as OTL. The educational systems in colonies tend to teach the languages of the colonizing great power and ignore local tongues. This has led to the extinction of several african languages with other languages in africa and Asia doing less well. Many languages in africa and asia even have western loan words.

The fashion and architecture in this world would be quite 'retro' to a visitor from OTL. However, this isn't conservatism per se, it's just that the current style of the last two decades has been consciously inspired by late victorian/edwardian styles. There are differences -- the outfits tend to be sleek and tighter. Also, men's facial hair is neat with mutton-chops *not* being revived. Very neatly trimmed goatees are of course de rigeur for politicians. The population of non-western regions with the exception of Japan all usually dress in a more westernized manner than OTL.

Eugenics is of course alive and well. However, the fact that the world's computer tech lags our world by a decade means that applications are more limited than one might expect at this point. Mostly, it's sterilizing people with "bad" genes".

Architecture is less modernist and avoided our world's "brutalist"/minimalist phases. Instead, the mid 20th century saw austere neo-classicism, which has been replaced by a neo-victorian revival that uses modern building materials.

Economic theory in this world has less socialist influence, and more classical liberal influence. On one hand, this means this world's under-deveoped nations avoid the pitfalls of radically socialist policies and are richer. However, this has it's downsides in the form of the boom and bust cycle, along with visibly greater levels of inequality being the norm in western nations; this is a world where the "great compression" of the 30s to the 70s simply never happened. An additional side effect of both stronger capitalist economic theory combined with a more globalized economy is there being longer work hours and less worker's rights in western nations. This is a world where the range tends to be 48 hour work weeks in Scandanavia to 72 hour work weeks in The United States. Pay and benefits are scaled down accordingly, unless you're in the higher echelons of the corporation.

There are powerful megacorporations which enjoy a greater degree of autonomy and economic dominance than any in our world. Anti-trust laws along with legislation prohibiting the formation of cartels and price-fixing tends to either be nonexistent or theoretical. This is part of what gives corporation greater control over their work force -- in some areas like Brazil or the United States or even in the colonies where crime and or visible signs of massive inequality are present, workers might live in special corporate-owned neighborhoods or apartment blocks. In some cases, worker's rights have actually gone in reverse since 1900 and 12-hour workdays are still common in the US and Japan.

The environment is even worse than in OTL thanks to capitalism remaining significantly stronger. There are brown clouds of Europe and North America to go with the one over East Asia.

Description
A little something for the old-timers in the AH community. It's a world themed around Confederate victory, complete with airships, surviving colonial empires and the other tropes people recognize from the 682 other maps featuring a world like this.

The title is of course a snarky reference to the 'nostalgia' displayed by more obsessive steampunk fans, British empire fanboys and of course lost cause fans that one of my friends came up with.

The divergences of this world began in the 1840s, with the visible changes beginning with King Wilhelm accepting the crown from the gutter, along with the Confederacy's leaving following the narrow 1856 election of Fremont to the presidency. With Republicanism discredited, by the Confederate secession, Napoleon III was able to stay in power after the end of the Franco-German war of 1864-65. Another side effect of discredited Republicanism was Britain's creating Kingdoms instead of Dominions. There was a Spanish succession crisis in the late 1880s, which nearly went to war when an overconfident Japan grabbed micronesia and the Philippines before Germany could. This was smoothed over by Britain letting Germany have Morocco, along with pressuring Japan to allow German temporary economic rights in the philippines. The changes that followed it, led to the late 19th century becoming a period where the imperial system rose to greater heights than OTL.

The closest this world came to a conflageration was the second Crimean War of 1901-1903, which saw a triple alliance of Britain, Japan and Germany against France and Russia. The war was unpleasant enough, but not a civilization-cracker like either of our world wars. The war ended with an Anglo-German victory which saw the Belgian partition, Germany's annexing the baltic dutchy, Manchuria *and* Korea ending up in the Japanese sphere of influence. France lost the perpetually troublesome Indochina to Germany along with ceding border areas in Africa to Britain.

After the war, a Russia faced with an even worse humiliation than OTL's 1904-5 Russo-Japanese war collapsed into civil war following a bad harvest in 1912. This resulted in a messy civil war, with massive overseas intervention. Japan took this as an opportunity to grab the Siberian Far East along with officially annexing it's gains in Korea and Manchuria along with setting up protectorates in Mongolia and Tuba. Germany relieved Russia of the burden of Poland, while setting up hohozellern princes to rule over the kingdoms spawned in the wake of Russia's implosion. Once he ran out of Hohozellerns to ship to rule over impoverished kingdoms, Kaiser Friedrich sent members of Prussian Junker families looking for a chance to achieve promotion into the higher ranks of the aristocracy.This led to mixed results over the next century or so: King Johann of Finland is popular and beloved, while King Wilhelm V of Turkestan is to put it mildly rather unpopular among the 40% of Turkestan's population that is muslim.

The twin factors of Europe's near dive into the civilizational abyss during the Second Crimean War and decades of anglo-german intellectual exchange bore fruit in the form of the Cameralist movement of the 1910s and 1920s. This movement, which stressed hierarchy, ruthlessness for it's own sake and the will to power being all was able to influence the parties. Of course, in both Britain and Germany a certain amount of smug cultural elitism for Britain and volkish mysticism in Germany's case were needed to really make it sell. This wasn't a totalitarian political shift, it was merely altering the terms of the politicial dialogue by introducing a new aryanist and racist focus. Elections and party systems largely remained as before, with the notable exception of the exclusion of Labor in britain and the Socialists in Germany from mainstream political discourse -- no formal proscriptions or even media censorship, but lots of guys with baseball bats to visit party HQs. Even now, decades later much of this policy mix holds, even if certain aspects like the biological racism have been dropped in favor of linguistic discriminaiton and anti-semitism is downplayed.

France made a third attempt at a war of revenge in 1930. Like the other two wars with Germany, France lost. This time, the humiliation was total as France was stripped of every single colony by Germany and Britain along with getting to see all of it's national treasures being taken to German or British museums. Yes, even down to the eiffel tower which now sits in a park in Berlin.

Once again, change appears to be in the air. The long afternoon of the age of empires appears to be slowly drawing to it's close. Britain has granted a few areas in India dominion status in recent years, along with extending full Kingdom status to Ceylon, the West Indies, Malaya and a quite industrialized Bengal. In fact, both Germany and Britain have cooperatively set up experimental 'mandates' consisting of East Africa and both halves of Angola. This has worked out well enough for Britain to work with the Italians on a similar arrangement for Somalia.

Besides the question of how much of the world is British pink or German grey, there are certain environmental troubles that concern the great powers. No resources have run out yet, but prices are rising to worrisome levels. Also, the weather has started to get "funny" the last couple of decades. No hurricanes in the Mediterranean yet, but tropical storm Ivo formed there last year. right now, the big powers are all trying technical fixes like massive usage of nuclear power, carpeting Australia and Italian libya with solar panels, etc.

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The Triumvirate are the three most powerful nations in the world: Britain, Germany and Japan. All three are very capitalistic, corporate-dominated constitutional monarchies. While individual nations like the United States may have more wealth or a higher standard of living, they clearly don't outmatch the three empires combined.

The first portion of the Triumvirate which dominates global politics, is a still globe-spanning British Empire. While what would be the white dominions have been spun off as "Kingdoms" and say South India has dominion status, the mentioned areas all remain within the British economic sphere and contribute to the empire's wealth. London remains the biggest center of world finance, and also enjoys a status as the center of world culture. British culture of course is more aristocratic and elitist in a world where the old aristocracy didn't lose their sons in two major wars and their wealth by inheritance taxes.

The Kingdoms within the empire have gone from being colonies to becoming equal partners. This began with the white dominions in the late 19th century with Canada, South Africa and Australia. South Africa is larger than OTL, due to butterflies involving certain gold discoveries happening earlier. As a result, the boers were swamped by English settlers. That said, there aren't really any black voters but at least there's less petty humiliations than under apartheid. Since the 1990s, there even a couple of nonwhite Kingdoms: Ceylon, Malaya, The West Indies and a Very Capitalist Bengal have all been granted Kingdom status as a sort of an experiment. Both Ireland and Scotland have this status too -- in fact, it was the successful precedent of both becoming Kingdoms that led to the experiments with granting nonwhite regions Kingdom status.

Below the kingdoms are semi-autonomous "Dominions" and other protected states like Oman. Egypt, South India, Rajahstan, Marathastan, Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal. The difference, is that these areas still tend to be run for the benefit of the empire and kingdoms and as a result are exploited. Just like in the colonies, the bulk of the local population works in local branches of British factories or on industrial farms and if they're both compliant and lucky get paid at all. The difference between these and colonies is the policemen who brutally put down labor unrest are locals and not redcoat MPs.

The colonies remain run for the benefit of the metropole. Decades of alliance with a prussia-led Germany have altered British colonial policies in certain ways. Paying workers is optional and massacre is a standard policy option for unrest, but at least there is the germanic legalism. The law may be tough, but it is fair in theory. Oddly enough, legal fairness doesn't mollify the anger of those who are outraged at the fact their village got burned to the ground because of protestors or that they're working in Apple factories without hope of ever seeing pay.

Portugal remains Britain's Little Buddy, but still resents having it's colonies stripped from it back in 1910.

Argentina has 92 million people and an averaged out standard of living like Italy's. it is even more Italian-influenced than our Argentina because of an even longer period of open immigration. The wealth and population are still centered around Buenos Aires but at least the gap is merely say France vs Sicily in terms of average income. As of late, Buenos Aires has become something of a fashion center -- it's not on par with Milan yet but it's getting there.

The Confederate States of America is one of Britain's older friends. It's a more elitist and less self-consciously "populist" nation than our south -- without overbearing yankee intellectuals to cause domestic problem it lacks much of OTL's anti-intellectualism. It's also a bit culturally different than our dixie due to extensive south european and latin american immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries aimed at "whitening" the population by reducing the portion of blacks. Without internal political disputes with yankees to contend with combined with earlier urbanization, the Confederacy is a bit more socially liberal than our southern US in certain ways despite being rather racist. Gays can get married in several states and marihuana remains legal as a rule. Slavery died 1900-35 in bits and pieces, although about half of the country still has debt peonage as an increasingly uncommon option. Segregation is harsh, enforced both by law and by custom. However, a few states like Virginia are starting to put more money into black schools and townships. The Confederacy's cities of Havana and New Orleans are both known for sleazy nightlife.

Japan is Britain's partner and closest ally as well as being the second member of the Triumvirate. Japan is still developed, but it is rather less modern and westernized than our world's Japan. Think the Japan of geisha and bushido rather than that of pokemon and pocky. A less westernized Japan's people can't see why people in other countries find lolicon hentai or 12 year old "video" stars creepy. The fact that Japan wasn't cheated out of it's gains from Russia in the wake of Second Crimea combined with an earlier and more expensive experience with running an empire prevented Japan from going off the authoritarian deep end. Japan remained an elitist semi-democracy, and over time moved to full democracy first for Japanese and later on for both taiwanese and assimilated Chinese. They have made Japanese out of much of the Korean and Manchurian population. The catholic Philippines remain more culturally distinct from the rest of the empire in part due to relgious reasons. In recent years, the problems of increasing unrest combined with higher expenses for security have made Japan grant the Philippines autonomy plus certain, more radical types argue for moving the Philippines to be a protectorate like Mongolia and no longer a colony. With a more conservative regime than OTL, combined with removing the megadeaths of the world wars Japan makes ours look almost rural in comparision. This means that projects like arcologies and even building a floating tower in Tokyo bay have been tried to enhance the value and usage of real estate. There are of course occasional disasters leading to the deaths of hundreds or thousands, but in a world with attitudes towards risk more like the early 20th century this is not enough to discourage Japan.

Third but not least is the German Reich of more than 200 million strong, extending from Alsace to the Baltics. The population is mostly german but includes visible polish and baltic minorities, which retain their linguistic distinctiveness despite decades of pro-germanization campaigns. Nowadays, there is extensive immigration from former russia and other portions of Eastern Europe. The government is actually _less_ democratic and open in practice than it was in 1914 in OTL. Yes, it's more open for those with talent to rise but unlike in our world where Germany became a middle-class society after two world wars, it was more of a switch from aristocracy of blood to aristocracy of talent in practice. A Germany that was founded in the wake of accepting the "crown from the gutter" turned out to be a more liberal Germany on economic matters. This meant a more dynamic economy than our Wilhemine Germany, but also the lack of the prussian welfare state that people would recognize from our history. What social services that emerged both in Germany and other nations tended to resemble workhouse or charity operations. Also, the notion of treating labor unions as something governments can coopt or live with instead of something to be repressed hasn't really taken off as it did in our world. This is part of why worker's rights lag OTL and why disciplinary practices like flogging workers persisted longer, and in certain cases like prisons or for natives in colonies persist even to now. Government-provided or even just subsidized healthcare along with many other benefits remain unthinkable.

Germany's status as the dominant power ensures that students learn several years of german in schools from Amsterdam to Moscow to Sofia. On a global level, German remains the prestige language of certain hard sciences such as chemistry and physics.

The Austrian Empire's political system is petty and sclerotic but without major tests it's been able to muddle along. The government is less active for both good and ill, which translates into even less social services in germany but on the other hand, there's less policemen with assault rifles to break labor disputes. It's even become a semi-democracy, with the remaining limitations being to protect the government from secessionism. With the emigration of millions of people either to Germany, the new world or settler colonies this is less of a pressing issue. This has allowed a certain degree of reform and genuine federalization. With a freer intellectual environment combined with a less corporatized economy, Austria has become one of the most technologically dynamic parts of the world.

Scandanavia is an unusual place; It's not quite a single federal state, but it's also not quite three different states. This close confederation of kingdoms emerged over decades of ad-hoc cooperation. This isn't a radical development, but merely the intensification of certain OTL trends in favor of Scandanavian cooperation.

The rest of Germany's eastern european allies all have Hohozellern princes on their thrones and are at varying levels of social cohesion and development. Ukraine and White Russia are on par with Germany in developmen while Turkestan is merely as well off as OTL Kazachstan. In some areas such as Siberia, Turkestan and Transcaucasia there has been extensive German immigration. Usually, the immigration tends to be _to_ Germany and by now there are Ukrainian, White Russian and finnish quarters in many German cities.

Italy retains it's colonial empire and is one of Germany's closer allies. The government is run like a more competent version of Mussolini's italy, but with more style. Also, an obsession with renaissance culture as opposed to The Glory of Rome.

The dutch are independent and retain a little empire but are otherwise unremarkable.

China avoided slipping into the warlord period because the Qing fell apart a decade early and ended up being replaced by a new dynasty led by a military strongman. This led China to a golden age of prosperity, which fell apart in a long period of unrest from 1955-70. The reason for this was that an increasingly modern China's middle classes judged the corrupt new dynasty by the standards of the past and found it to be wanting. After all, Confucianism proved just as adept at creating a critique of modernity as Shia Islam in Iran was in OTL. China's economy is around 20 years behind OTL in terms of development due to the rather xenophobic nature of the current rulers of China.

The United States is a corrupt oligarchy, much like our world. It's a more urban, capitalist and (more openly) corporatized nation than ours -- the economy is no more dynamic or prosperous than ours, though. The biggest visible differences are that the United States isn't a superpower and that the inner city 'hoods are irish or sicilian and not black -- This world's *13th amendment excluded the descendents of slaves from citizenship and included a deportation clause -- The border patrol was created in the 1870s to prevent slaves from sneaking in. The fact that the progressive-minded types were able to have stronger influence than OTL during the golden age of racism helps explain how these trends were taken to the point of making US citizenship explicitly limited to europeans.

France is still under a Napoleon and sulks over the loss of it's empire. It's politics are lurid and involve occasional assasinations combined with constant rioting. A more repressive government isn't enough to stop the French from doing their national sport of protests and strikes.

Liberia is at a low-end latin american level due to extensive Confederate and Union investment, combined with a bigger (if still minor) back to Africa movement.

The Swiss wish they weren't on this planet.

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Having a larger capitalist world and anglo-german scientific cross-fertilization has more than made up for the lag caused by relative geopolitical quiet of this century. Military technology and aerospace are a bit behind and the internet is still largely text with small pictures but other technological areas such as medicine, biotechnology, materials science are all on par or ahead of OTL. Due to the ongoing energy and environmental crises, "alternate energy" is about a decade ahead of OTL.

Airships lasted longer as the main form of civilian air travel, but since the 60s and 70s have mostly been displaced by jets. No world wars on OTL's scale gave them more time to work out the bugs in the technology but people simply wanted speedy travel. They're still around for the aerial equivelant of luxury cruises, though. Absurd energy costs have given airships a new lease on life in recent years, though.

The once-stalled space program is starting to get new life. Peak oil hit a while back, and that combined with other resources running scarce means there is renewed interest in the prospects of asteroid mining and orbital solar power. Of course, since it means usage of unmanned mining robots, this means that the manned lunar landing that was planned for 2012 was scrapped and the resources put into the orbital solar program.

As a whole, the world is richer, more prosperous and more educated. It may be a prosperous world, but it's one clearly under the economic and cultural domination of a few big players --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 and Tokyo in that specific order. There is a major push for both assimilation and oppression(inhibiting nationalism, national languages, national feelings) in the imperial protectorates and colonies. Modern science shows that yes, the people in the colonies are fully human but in a world without world wars this doesn't translate into cultural tolerance. Instead, the feeling is that local cultures are "counter-adapted" to modernity and that Europe's civilizing mission is their only hope for prosperity.

Non-western languages, aren't doing as well as OTL. The educational systems in colonies tend to teach the languages of the colonizing great power and ignore local tongues. This has led to the extinction of several african languages with other languages in africa and Asia doing less well. Many languages in africa and asia even have western loan words.

The fashion and architecture in this world would be quite 'retro' to a visitor from OTL. However, this isn't conservatism per se, it's just that the current style of the last two decades has been consciously inspired by late victorian/edwardian styles. There are differences -- the outfits tend to be sleek and tighter. Also, men's facial hair is neat with mutton-chops *not* being revived. Very neatly trimmed goatees are of course de rigeur for politicians. The population of non-western regions with the exception of Japan all usually dress in a more westernized manner than OTL.

Eugenics is of course alive and well. However, the fact that the world's computer tech lags our world by a decade means that applications are more limited than one might expect at this point. Mostly, it's sterilizing people with "bad" genes".

Architecture is less modernist and avoided our world's "brutalist"/minimalist phases. Instead, the mid 20th century saw austere neo-classicism, which has been replaced by a neo-victorian revival that uses modern building materials.

Economic theory in this world has less socialist influence, and more classical liberal influence. On one hand, this means this world's under-deveoped nations avoid the pitfalls of radically socialist policies and are richer. However, this has it's downsides in the form of the boom and bust cycle, along with visibly greater levels of inequality being the norm in western nations; this is a world where the "great compression" of the 30s to the 70s simply never happened. An additional side effect of both stronger capitalist economic theory combined with a more globalized economy is there being longer work hours and less worker's rights in western nations. This is a world where the range tends to be 48 hour work weeks in Scandanavia to 72 hour work weeks in The United States. Pay and benefits are scaled down accordingly, unless you're in the higher echelons of the corporation.

There are powerful megacorporations which enjoy a greater degree of autonomy and economic dominance than any in our world. Anti-trust laws along with legislation prohibiting the formation of cartels and price-fixing tends to either be nonexistent or theoretical. This is part of what gives corporation greater control over their work force -- in some areas like Brazil or the United States or even in the colonies where crime and or visible signs of massive inequality are present, workers might live in special corporate-owned neighborhoods or apartment blocks. In some cases, worker's rights have actually gone in reverse since 1900 and 12-hour workdays are still common in the US and Japan.

The environment is even worse than in OTL thanks to capitalism remaining significantly stronger. There are brown clouds of Europe and North America to go with the one over East Asia.