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Description
My cover of Mattystereo 's Up From the Fields . I really enjoyed working on this one, as Mattystereo has some really good ideas. This certainly isn't your grandpa's Confederate victory! He was great to work with, and he provided not only the North America portions of the map, but also the African continent, all of the points of interest, and all of the text below. Enjoy!

---

Excerpt from N. T. Herst's "Directory of Worlds", Fifth Edition:

"Although the Confederate victory in the First American War is often cited by Americans as the turning point of this world's 19th century, this is in reality an inaccurate position. To be sure it marks the first clear divergence between this timeline and ours, but Confederate Victory Worlds are not exceedingly uncommon in the multiverse and themselves often result in the Confederacy's swift destruction decades later with much of the world continuing on roughly the same path into the Later Imperial Period, the Antebellum European Era, and onward into something like our Modern Era. This however would not be the case in this world, as the Confederate Victory was merely the beginning of a number of role reversals that would set this world on a vastly different path.

In 1864, in the middle of the First American War, and ignored by much of the world at the time, the Second Ashanti-Fante War, or the "War of the Red Stool" would see the death of the 300 year Fante Confederacy, and their Denkyiran comrades at the hands of the Ashanti Kingdom. The death of the Fante would have a twofold effect, the first would be that it would signal the unraveling of Britain and France's delicate system of native alliances in West Africa, and the second was that it would come to bolster the Dutch and Portuguese interests in filibustering British interests on the African Continent. There would be no Berlin Conference, no Gentlemen's Agreement between the European Nations, and as European promises to protect their allies rang ever more hollow (typified by the fall of Anziku to the Kongo in 1871) the unraveling of the imperial system began.

In 1892, the Second Indian War of Liberation (The Sepoy Rebellion in this world being known as the First Liberation War) would signal the beginning of European de-encroachment from Asia, as the Anti-Imperial Tripartie of the United States, the Ottoman Empire and the nascent Indian Empire routed the British. The Tripartie's rise, continuing into the 20th century would itself have knock on effects in the form of the Chinese Revolution and the Sian Restoration that followed, and the division in Europe between the Imperialists and Reconciliationists. The Reconciliationists, headed by Portugal and later on France, would come to advocate a reevaluation on the former colonial world, and Europe's current peppering of subjects around Africa, with Portugal taking the lead in finalizing a long developing union between it and the Kongo. The Imperialists, composed largely of Britain, Spain, and Germany would reject "capitulation" to the Tripartie and other Anti-Imperialists and would themselves begin to descend into nationalism and militarism. The Imperialists would embark on some of the first genocidal campaigns in southern and central Africa, which would call bring the growing African Alliance Systems and the Reconciliationists in to intervene, culminating in The Great War. The War itself would end in an Afro-Reconciliation Victory as Germany fell to a Communist Revolution that would ripple across Central and Eastern Europe and come to consume Russia as well. Britain itself would be brought low, and be briefly occupied by France, before eventually falling under American and later Indian Influence.

The 20th century would be dominated by a standoff between the Communist Internationale and the Four Corners Pact between the USA, the Ottomans, India, and China. France would collect non-communist Europe around itself, and establish a Special Relationship with the Ottomans, while the Reconciliationists as a whole soon found themselves used as the Four Corners' face in their conflict against Communism in Africa. By the end of the 20th century the Internationale would fall, and the Four Corners, which had diverged in their national policies decades before, finally dissolved in the absence of a unifying enemy, bringing mankind into an uncertain and uncharted 21st century.

THE WORLD IN 2017

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THEORY

The world, on the surface is a weak monopole or semi-multipole world, with India and its sphere taking the place as "first among equals" among the nations of the world. Beneath the surface though it is a world very alien to our own. Owing partly to Indian preeminence and continuity of various autarkic principles among the surviving empires of this world, national sovereignty and localization of economies are seen as far more the norm as opposed to our globalization. The major exception to this being on this world's internet, entertainment services, and science and education, which are far more internationalized and seamless than our own. There is no international peacekeeping force, or UN as we would understand it, but instead a series of International Trusts that invest in and ensure standards and practices amongst the national guards, engineering corps, and social services of the world's nations, as well as oversee FDI.

A result of this different order is a different conception of politics and economics than in most "modern era" worlds, with distinctions between democracies, stateocracies, and even corporate states being seen as far less of an important point, alongside the absence of the First-Fourth World model of economic levels that most worlds have. In this world the primary dividing line between states is that of centralized and decentralized, federal and confederal, owing very much to a much stronger African System. Most states do not fall neatly into either of these camps, and instead much of the world is dominated by a massive band of ideologies roughly known as "Arbitrationism" or "Nyemism", in which a rotating council composed of a mixture of elected, hereditary, and meritocratically picked (mainly from companies, colleges, and the military) representatives establish the degree to which federal or local power will be used to address and forward policy. As such much of the world constantly shifts between various forms of state and federal dominance at any given time, with the Americans and the Citizens' Republics (Hard Military-Libertarian States: Think Heinlein) being notable exceptions.

Similarly, the economic conception of this world does not revolve around a standard of development set by a "first" or "developed" world, as the American Wars and the abortion of the Imperial Era prevented such a clear distinction from arising. Much of the world adheres to an Indian "Transitional Model" which bases itself around the degree to which any locality can provide social services and employment, and the quality of that compared to the demands of the populace. In this model the world is largely divided amongst the Devic, Asuric, Manusyic, Tiryagyonic, Pretic, and Narakic "worlds", each representing a different type of service-populace relationship. The Devic implies a state or sub-polity that meets the social and individual needs of its citizens in terms of livelihood and employment, and may even exceed them. Asuric refers to a state or sub-polity that provides enough services and employment to not fall into poverty, but which engenders competition and potential sabotage between its peoples. Manusyic refers to those states that cannot properly meet the desires and needs of their people, but which have a robust enough economy and civil service the allow individuals to rise through the ranks and better themselves. Tiryagyonic refers to those states which can, but refuse to, fully support their people, often for ideological reasons. Pretic refers to those states which have become unable to support themselves, what we would know of as failed states and polities. The last, Narakic, refers to those states which have ongoing conflict between the state and the people in part or full. The conception of the transitional model is that it does not form a hard delineation between states, as one can be in transition between two states, and indeed a state can contain multiple sub polities all falling into different worlds. It, also owing to Indian Culture and a world whose march to the modern era was typified by the repeated rise and decline of various new and old empires, is far more "impermanent", expecting the rise and descent between all these worlds to be repeated throughout history.

The conception of the world is far more fluid to the people of this universe, in spite of, or perhaps partly because of, the lack of a hard global system under one power.

Related, with the greater proliferation of a clearer net, the wider diffusion of global entertainment, the absence of a clear lingua franca, and thus the far more vigorous dedication of the world towards works such as seamless translation and a growing global slang-tech creole, much of how this world even conceptualizes or speaks about its politics and economics is alien, rough, and littered with constant intersecting references that confuse analysts.

This has understandably made contact with the people of this world exceedingly difficult, and so attempts to do so have been shelved indefinitely.

RACE/GENDER/MINSEX THEORY AND RELATIONS

From what has been gleaned this world offers great insights into the way relations between different "classes" of people can evolve differently from our world. Firstly, in the absence of a clear European/American Era the genetic theory of racial hierarchy did not emerge coherently. Although some prototypical examples were found in Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries, they were quickly pushed out in favor of a racial and ethnic model dominated by tribalism and "merit". Owing to the dominance of empires and republics that were diverse compared to each other and multiethnic in their own right, the focus of racial and ethnic identity/conflict remained focused on "culture" and ancestry. Ancestral lineage, education, and work history are used as gauges of one's worth ethnically, bolstered by an admixture of Chinese "meritocratic" compunctions and the Indian idea of a more or less justly ordered universe. Put simply, if your people struggle, or suffer oppression, or economic destitution, it is your fault as an individual and a culture, your people "chose" to be in the position they were in and your choice makes further ill treatment and racism morally justified, although this latter point is often obfuscated and said in different ways. It is acknowledged that as a culture/race can change their standing/worth and cultivate a "good" culture worthy of better treatment, but systemic obstacles prevent this for many people.

Currently the global dissent against this kind of racial theory is something akin to OTL's intersectionalism mixed in with Buddhist ethics, pointing out the self-justifying nature of such a mindset and the tendency of people to keep others from "cultivating" a better standing. Pushback is significant though, especially due to the more paternalistic and condescending manner of this world's racism, as opposed to the outright violent and genocidal forms seen in worlds like OTL.

The concept of a gender binary does not seem to exist in this world, a marked difference from other "modern" worlds wherein two-gendered systems are still dominant or only just in the process of fading. This is owed largely to the survival and popularization of genderqueer, third gender, and transitioning identities from an Africa and South-Southwest Asia that maintained largely continuous governance and cultures. The same holds true for same-sex relations and relations across this world's gender spectrum. Notably, due to the dominance of ethics of national sovereignty and a general agreement to respect and protect the national rights of people abroad, almost every country has a system not unlike OTL Mexico's which accepts all the relationship types and gender forms of a foreign national accepted by that national's nation, even if it is not accepted under local law. This mixture of nationalism and gender identity has led to nations often lobbying global trusts to invest in the protection of and support of their minority populations abroad, and so many states, especially those seeking investment in their police forces and medical sectors, have very stringent laws in place for the protection of gender and sexual minorities.

This has also in some cases placed blockades on the ability to identify as specific genders outside of one's nation/culture. In the United States for instance, only people within the Dineh Culture or who married in are able to be legally recognized as one of the Four Dineh Genders. Likewise, the Indian Sphere places many roadblocks on people outside of Greater India who wish to be recognized as Hijras, although the paperwork is not impossible. As a result much of the world that accepts multifaceted genders has a catchall category roughly equivalent to our world's genderqueer that carries blanket, but non-specific, recognition.

Currently one of the big debates RE gender and nationhood is on the identities of diasporic and mixed culture people far removed from their "ancestral state". In the TSR for instance the Southon Gender Lobby grapples with global trusts and both the European Community and Ethiopia over whether they should have the right to register Wobo and Mbodic genders amongst certain members of the African Diaspora in the South. Portugal-Kongo has filibustered them for the past 5 years.

Most cultures accept what we would know of as same-sex adoption or adoption by relations between minority genders. However, this is tends to be far less of a question in general as the world is dominated far more by extended families and village mentalities when it comes to raising children. In a linguistic quirk, in this world the equivalents for aunt and uncle are used far more to refer to non-biological guardians and co-raisers than to what we would know of as aunts and uncles. Differences like this confused translators for years even after a rough understanding of global creoles and accents was worked out.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

This world's scientific understanding is very eclectic and heavily slanted towards engineering applications rather than critical theory. Chemistry and biochemistry are far more refined in this world and so the world is overall cleaner and less prone to disease. The mass application of nuclear technology and the earlier harnessing of solid methane sources has gone hand in hand with a more vigorous fight against climate change (which is marginally more pronounced in this world due to a larger and more distributed industrial period). Already nuclear powered desalination units are used to combat drying water tables and methane burning public transport has become a multibillion dollar enterprise.

Fundamental theory of science though lags behind our world however, as mankind has employed a brute force policy of simply engineering its way out its problems, a policy pushed heavily by India. A number of scientific errors still exist in this world, such as a modified form of the quasi-steady state model that competes with the big bang. A number of bosons well known by other "modern era worlds" have yet to even be discovered and computer theory, although not obvious at first, is actually behind most worlds. The massive size and scope of this world's net is due to massive engineering and physical and laser networking that would make a cyberpunk novelist blush.

This approach however has also led to discoveries that have propelled this world ahead in many respects. Metallic Hydrogen was first synthesized 12 years ago and currently forms the backbone of mankind's launch system to colonize and prospect the moon. The engineering of tubers and brush that can leach chemicals from the soil has allowed for the revitalization of land destroyed by industrialization, and the discovery of a method to synthesize potassium and phosphorous has expanded crop yields far beyond even what our world's Green Revolution did... and has resulted in a larger global population as a result.

SUGGESTION

This world, as a result of the slant of its scientific establishment, and general culture, is unaware of worlds beyond its own and so passive observation has continued unabated. It is not known how long this will last however, and in the meantime this world remains a veritable treasure trove of divergent thoughts, social systems, and ideologies for a world without an extremely distant POD. With this in mind it is suggested that observation and "cracking" of this world's mindset continue due to the possible boons it may provide in understanding the potential of human societies."

Description
My cover of Mattystereo 's Up From the Fields . I really enjoyed working on this one, as Mattystereo has some really good ideas. This certainly isn't your grandpa's Confederate victory! He was great to work with, and he provided not only the North America portions of the map, but also the African continent, all of the points of interest, and all of the text below. Enjoy!

---

Excerpt from N. T. Herst's "Directory of Worlds", Fifth Edition:

"Although the Confederate victory in the First American War is often cited by Americans as the turning point of this world's 19th century, this is in reality an inaccurate position. To be sure it marks the first clear divergence between this timeline and ours, but Confederate Victory Worlds are not exceedingly uncommon in the multiverse and themselves often result in the Confederacy's swift destruction decades later with much of the world continuing on roughly the same path into the Later Imperial Period, the Antebellum European Era, and onward into something like our Modern Era. This however would not be the case in this world, as the Confederate Victory was merely the beginning of a number of role reversals that would set this world on a vastly different path.

In 1864, in the middle of the First American War, and ignored by much of the world at the time, the Second Ashanti-Fante War, or the "War of the Red Stool" would see the death of the 300 year Fante Confederacy, and their Denkyiran comrades at the hands of the Ashanti Kingdom. The death of the Fante would have a twofold effect, the first would be that it would signal the unraveling of Britain and France's delicate system of native alliances in West Africa, and the second was that it would come to bolster the Dutch and Portuguese interests in filibustering British interests on the African Continent. There would be no Berlin Conference, no Gentlemen's Agreement between the European Nations, and as European promises to protect their allies rang ever more hollow (typified by the fall of Anziku to the Kongo in 1871) the unraveling of the imperial system began.

In 1892, the Second Indian War of Liberation (The Sepoy Rebellion in this world being known as the First Liberation War) would signal the beginning of European de-encroachment from Asia, as the Anti-Imperial Tripartie of the United States, the Ottoman Empire and the nascent Indian Empire routed the British. The Tripartie's rise, continuing into the 20th century would itself have knock on effects in the form of the Chinese Revolution and the Sian Restoration that followed, and the division in Europe between the Imperialists and Reconciliationists. The Reconciliationists, headed by Portugal and later on France, would come to advocate a reevaluation on the former colonial world, and Europe's current peppering of subjects around Africa, with Portugal taking the lead in finalizing a long developing union between it and the Kongo. The Imperialists, composed largely of Britain, Spain, and Germany would reject "capitulation" to the Tripartie and other Anti-Imperialists and would themselves begin to descend into nationalism and militarism. The Imperialists would embark on some of the first genocidal campaigns in southern and central Africa, which would call bring the growing African Alliance Systems and the Reconciliationists in to intervene, culminating in The Great War. The War itself would end in an Afro-Reconciliation Victory as Germany fell to a Communist Revolution that would ripple across Central and Eastern Europe and come to consume Russia as well. Britain itself would be brought low, and be briefly occupied by France, before eventually falling under American and later Indian Influence.

The 20th century would be dominated by a standoff between the Communist Internationale and the Four Corners Pact between the USA, the Ottomans, India, and China. France would collect non-communist Europe around itself, and establish a Special Relationship with the Ottomans, while the Reconciliationists as a whole soon found themselves used as the Four Corners' face in their conflict against Communism in Africa. By the end of the 20th century the Internationale would fall, and the Four Corners, which had diverged in their national policies decades before, finally dissolved in the absence of a unifying enemy, bringing mankind into an uncertain and uncharted 21st century.

THE WORLD IN 2017

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THEORY

The world, on the surface is a weak monopole or semi-multipole world, with India and its sphere taking the place as "first among equals" among the nations of the world. Beneath the surface though it is a world very alien to our own. Owing partly to Indian preeminence and continuity of various autarkic principles among the surviving empires of this world, national sovereignty and localization of economies are seen as far more the norm as opposed to our globalization. The major exception to this being on this world's internet, entertainment services, and science and education, which are far more internationalized and seamless than our own. There is no international peacekeeping force, or UN as we would understand it, but instead a series of International Trusts that invest in and ensure standards and practices amongst the national guards, engineering corps, and social services of the world's nations, as well as oversee FDI.

A result of this different order is a different conception of politics and economics than in most "modern era" worlds, with distinctions between democracies, stateocracies, and even corporate states being seen as far less of an important point, alongside the absence of the First-Fourth World model of economic levels that most worlds have. In this world the primary dividing line between states is that of centralized and decentralized, federal and confederal, owing very much to a much stronger African System. Most states do not fall neatly into either of these camps, and instead much of the world is dominated by a massive band of ideologies roughly known as "Arbitrationism" or "Nyemism", in which a rotating council composed of a mixture of elected, hereditary, and meritocratically picked (mainly from companies, colleges, and the military) representatives establish the degree to which federal or local power will be used to address and forward policy. As such much of the world constantly shifts between various forms of state and federal dominance at any given time, with the Americans and the Citizens' Republics (Hard Military-Libertarian States: Think Heinlein) being notable exceptions.

Similarly, the economic conception of this world does not revolve around a standard of development set by a "first" or "developed" world, as the American Wars and the abortion of the Imperial Era prevented such a clear distinction from arising. Much of the world adheres to an Indian "Transitional Model" which bases itself around the degree to which any locality can provide social services and employment, and the quality of that compared to the demands of the populace. In this model the world is largely divided amongst the Devic, Asuric, Manusyic, Tiryagyonic, Pretic, and Narakic "worlds", each representing a different type of service-populace relationship. The Devic implies a state or sub-polity that meets the social and individual needs of its citizens in terms of livelihood and employment, and may even exceed them. Asuric refers to a state or sub-polity that provides enough services and employment to not fall into poverty, but which engenders competition and potential sabotage between its peoples. Manusyic refers to those states that cannot properly meet the desires and needs of their people, but which have a robust enough economy and civil service the allow individuals to rise through the ranks and better themselves. Tiryagyonic refers to those states which can, but refuse to, fully support their people, often for ideological reasons. Pretic refers to those states which have become unable to support themselves, what we would know of as failed states and polities. The last, Narakic, refers to those states which have ongoing conflict between the state and the people in part or full. The conception of the transitional model is that it does not form a hard delineation between states, as one can be in transition between two states, and indeed a state can contain multiple sub polities all falling into different worlds. It, also owing to Indian Culture and a world whose march to the modern era was typified by the repeated rise and decline of various new and old empires, is far more "impermanent", expecting the rise and descent between all these worlds to be repeated throughout history.

The conception of the world is far more fluid to the people of this universe, in spite of, or perhaps partly because of, the lack of a hard global system under one power.

Related, with the greater proliferation of a clearer net, the wider diffusion of global entertainment, the absence of a clear lingua franca, and thus the far more vigorous dedication of the world towards works such as seamless translation and a growing global slang-tech creole, much of how this world even conceptualizes or speaks about its politics and economics is alien, rough, and littered with constant intersecting references that confuse analysts.

This has understandably made contact with the people of this world exceedingly difficult, and so attempts to do so have been shelved indefinitely.

RACE/GENDER/MINSEX THEORY AND RELATIONS

From what has been gleaned this world offers great insights into the way relations between different "classes" of people can evolve differently from our world. Firstly, in the absence of a clear European/American Era the genetic theory of racial hierarchy did not emerge coherently. Although some prototypical examples were found in Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries, they were quickly pushed out in favor of a racial and ethnic model dominated by tribalism and "merit". Owing to the dominance of empires and republics that were diverse compared to each other and multiethnic in their own right, the focus of racial and ethnic identity/conflict remained focused on "culture" and ancestry. Ancestral lineage, education, and work history are used as gauges of one's worth ethnically, bolstered by an admixture of Chinese "meritocratic" compunctions and the Indian idea of a more or less justly ordered universe. Put simply, if your people struggle, or suffer oppression, or economic destitution, it is your fault as an individual and a culture, your people "chose" to be in the position they were in and your choice makes further ill treatment and racism morally justified, although this latter point is often obfuscated and said in different ways. It is acknowledged that as a culture/race can change their standing/worth and cultivate a "good" culture worthy of better treatment, but systemic obstacles prevent this for many people.

Currently the global dissent against this kind of racial theory is something akin to OTL's intersectionalism mixed in with Buddhist ethics, pointing out the self-justifying nature of such a mindset and the tendency of people to keep others from "cultivating" a better standing. Pushback is significant though, especially due to the more paternalistic and condescending manner of this world's racism, as opposed to the outright violent and genocidal forms seen in worlds like OTL.

The concept of a gender binary does not seem to exist in this world, a marked difference from other "modern" worlds wherein two-gendered systems are still dominant or only just in the process of fading. This is owed largely to the survival and popularization of genderqueer, third gender, and transitioning identities from an Africa and South-Southwest Asia that maintained largely continuous governance and cultures. The same holds true for same-sex relations and relations across this world's gender spectrum. Notably, due to the dominance of ethics of national sovereignty and a general agreement to respect and protect the national rights of people abroad, almost every country has a system not unlike OTL Mexico's which accepts all the relationship types and gender forms of a foreign national accepted by that national's nation, even if it is not accepted under local law. This mixture of nationalism and gender identity has led to nations often lobbying global trusts to invest in the protection of and support of their minority populations abroad, and so many states, especially those seeking investment in their police forces and medical sectors, have very stringent laws in place for the protection of gender and sexual minorities.

This has also in some cases placed blockades on the ability to identify as specific genders outside of one's nation/culture. In the United States for instance, only people within the Dineh Culture or who married in are able to be legally recognized as one of the Four Dineh Genders. Likewise, the Indian Sphere places many roadblocks on people outside of Greater India who wish to be recognized as Hijras, although the paperwork is not impossible. As a result much of the world that accepts multifaceted genders has a catchall category roughly equivalent to our world's genderqueer that carries blanket, but non-specific, recognition.

Currently one of the big debates RE gender and nationhood is on the identities of diasporic and mixed culture people far removed from their "ancestral state". In the TSR for instance the Southon Gender Lobby grapples with global trusts and both the European Community and Ethiopia over whether they should have the right to register Wobo and Mbodic genders amongst certain members of the African Diaspora in the South. Portugal-Kongo has filibustered them for the past 5 years.

Most cultures accept what we would know of as same-sex adoption or adoption by relations between minority genders. However, this is tends to be far less of a question in general as the world is dominated far more by extended families and village mentalities when it comes to raising children. In a linguistic quirk, in this world the equivalents for aunt and uncle are used far more to refer to non-biological guardians and co-raisers than to what we would know of as aunts and uncles. Differences like this confused translators for years even after a rough understanding of global creoles and accents was worked out.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

This world's scientific understanding is very eclectic and heavily slanted towards engineering applications rather than critical theory. Chemistry and biochemistry are far more refined in this world and so the world is overall cleaner and less prone to disease. The mass application of nuclear technology and the earlier harnessing of solid methane sources has gone hand in hand with a more vigorous fight against climate change (which is marginally more pronounced in this world due to a larger and more distributed industrial period). Already nuclear powered desalination units are used to combat drying water tables and methane burning public transport has become a multibillion dollar enterprise.

Fundamental theory of science though lags behind our world however, as mankind has employed a brute force policy of simply engineering its way out its problems, a policy pushed heavily by India. A number of scientific errors still exist in this world, such as a modified form of the quasi-steady state model that competes with the big bang. A number of bosons well known by other "modern era worlds" have yet to even be discovered and computer theory, although not obvious at first, is actually behind most worlds. The massive size and scope of this world's net is due to massive engineering and physical and laser networking that would make a cyberpunk novelist blush.

This approach however has also led to discoveries that have propelled this world ahead in many respects. Metallic Hydrogen was first synthesized 12 years ago and currently forms the backbone of mankind's launch system to colonize and prospect the moon. The engineering of tubers and brush that can leach chemicals from the soil has allowed for the revitalization of land destroyed by industrialization, and the discovery of a method to synthesize potassium and phosphorous has expanded crop yields far beyond even what our world's Green Revolution did... and has resulted in a larger global population as a result.

SUGGESTION

This world, as a result of the slant of its scientific establishment, and general culture, is unaware of worlds beyond its own and so passive observation has continued unabated. It is not known how long this will last however, and in the meantime this world remains a veritable treasure trove of divergent thoughts, social systems, and ideologies for a world without an extremely distant POD. With this in mind it is suggested that observation and "cracking" of this world's mindset continue due to the possible boons it may provide in understanding the potential of human societies."