Without The Wars

This is a world where Archduke Ferdinant was never assasinated, and Without World War I never happend. Without the World Wars, their 20th century would turn out vastly different from ours...

Point of Divergence (1914-1935)
The history of this world is exactly the same as ours, up until June 28, 1914. On this day in our world, Gavrilo Princip assasinated the Archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand. But in this world, The Archduke's limousine took a different route, and never encountered Princip, who died in a conflict with police one month later.

Thus the Victorian-era balance of Europe held all through the 1910s without any incident.

However, in October 1924, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) set off a series of bombs in Dublin, Belfast, London, and York, thus sparked a war for Irish independence. The war finally ended in 1927 with the whole of Ireland being granted independence. This inspired ethnic nationalists across Europe to fight for their own freedom.

In Spain, the Basques, Galicians, Valencians and Catalonians all fought the Spanish government viciously. The war was bloody and violent, and lasted from 1928 until 1932, ending in the ultimate collapse of Spain as a country, with five new nations rising from the ashes: the Kingdom of Castille-y-Leon, the Republic of Galicia, the Republic of Valencia, the Republic of Catalonia, and Euskal Herria (the Basque Country).

Austria-Hungary also suffered a crippling civil war starting in 1932; though not as long or destructive as the Spanish War, surrendering and helping the Yugoslavs to create the Republic of Yugoslavia in 1934 and granting Hungary significantly higher autonomy.

An odd civil war fought in both Germany and Russia finally resulted in the recreation of Poland in 1932.

Communism (1935-1950)
Starting in 1930, the Russian Revolution, pushed back by Czar Nicholas II implimenting a few reforms to placate the common people and no World War I in Europe, began, but was ultimately beaten back by the Czar's forces, which, without WWI, were still strong. The whole affair ended in 1934, when Czar Nicholas's forces rounded up Trotskey, Stalin, and all the other Bolsheviks (Lennin having died years earlier), and executed them by firing squad. This move was heavily frowned upon in the West.

Instead, Marxism would find a new home. In the Great Lakes region, an irredentist movemet led by a man named George Templin would unite the polities of the Manitoulin Archepelego together, resulting in an entity called the Confederation of Orbin Isles, or COI ("Orbin" being a corruption of a native word meanin "People of white skin who come across great water in large canoes"). The COI was built on Marxist ideals, with the notable exception that unlike Marx, an atheist, Templin was a devout Christian. Templin also believed that Communism must be the result of a peaceful transition, not a bloody conflict.

The COI finally unified everyone from Lonely Island in the Georgean Bay to Drummond Island, from Great Duck Island in Lake Huron to Clapperton Island in the North Channel, in 1936. Templin was Premier of the Confederation from then until 1948.

Because of Templin's work, Marxism never earned the negative association with Russian despotism and Chinese human rights atrocities; but instead earned an association in the mind of the world with the peaceful, egalitarian Orbins of Manitoulin and the Isles, colliqually called Orb.

Pax Mundi (1950-1970)
In the 1950s, after witnessing the success of the Orbins under Templin, United States President Adalai Stevenson, as well as the leaders of Canada and various European nations, began a program to impliment various aspects of what was termed "Templinite Marxism."

Templinite ideas such as universal healthcare, equal rights for women, and racial integration spread throughout the Occident. However, they were met with resistance in various regions, such as parts of the Southerm United States, the Empires of Europe (Germany and Austria), and elsewhere.