A list of differences in the timeline of A More Perfect Union that result from the 13 Colonies successfully organizing an alliance with the Iroquois Confederacy.
Immediate[]
- Canada would never be an independent nation and the Iroquois establish them as a sovereign State eventually joining the Union like Vermont did after the Revolution.
Americas[]
Map of the Continental United States in 1970
- During the Revolutionary War, the involvement of the Iroquois turned many of the tribes of the First Nations against the British, and shaped public opinion of the First Nations in a more positive light.
- Benedict Arnold was hailed as the Hero of Quebec after the decisive victory there in 1775. He is promoted to Major General, and eventually becomes the first Secretary of War of the United States, having never turned traitor as he did in OTL.
- The admission of Upper and Lower Canada to the Union and the involvement of the Iroquois leads to the abolition of slavery in 1791 after the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
- Emancipation is only passed after James Madison negotiates a compromise in which slavery shall be abolished, but slave holders shall be compensated with reparations. At first these are in the form of regular payments by the Government from taxes on whiskey and tariffs that largely hurt northern trade, but by Thomas Jefferson's administration to be almost entirely paid in the form of land grants.
- The Land Grant system is hilariously corrupt, especially during the administration of southern Presidents. As the value of the land is effectively determined by the government, many of the former slave owners who administered the pricing of the land essentially gifted themselves and their political supporters with larger and larger tracts by undervaluing the property.
- Native American tribes were treated more fairly in this timeline, though not always peacefully. The US still fought several wars with the Lakota before Lone Horn organized their peaceful transition to statehood.
- The abolition of slavery effectively eliminated the driving force behind the way states were drawn, leading to some major changes in the borders of what would have been the Lower 48 states in OTL.
- Texas was admitted to the union much earlier without the fear of creating an imbalance between Free states and Slave states as in OTL. The US directly intervened in what would become a much earlier, much shorter Mexican-American War where Mexico agreed to cede Texas to the US, however Alta California would remain a Mexican territory until 1910.
- California is an independent, Spanish speaking country founded by Poncho Villa during their Revolution in 1910. It consists of the territory of the former Mexican states of Alta and Baja California.
Europe[]
- King Edward VIII never met Wallace Simpson and the abdication crisis never occurred.
- Archduke Franz Ferdinand was never assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, preventing the outbreak of WWI as it did in OTL.
- Ferdinand became the next Austro-Hungarian Emperor after his father's death and attempted to create the United States of Greater Austria, leading to an uprising and coup by Hungarian nationalists and starting a much more chaotic war in Europe in 1916.
- Germany absorbed the Austrian portions of the former German Confederation after failing to restore the Hapsburg Monarchy, and the German Empire did not fall until 1946.
- With only a marginal involvement in the war in Europe before the 1920s, the Bolshevik uprising never spread beyond Moscow and Petrograd, and Russia became a military junta and eventually a fascist state.
- With the failure of the Bolshevik uprising, many revolutionaries such as Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky were exiled to Siberia. However, Trotsky, Stalin, and Lenin (initially along with three others) managed to escape Siberia against all odds and made their way to Mexico. Their fates are unknown but they were likely chased down and assassinated by the later fascist Russian government between the 1930s and 1940s if they did not die prior.
- With Europe in a prolonged state of conflict, Adolf Hitler never ascended to power and remained part of the German army, fighting in various fronts. He was ultimately killed in action in Russia in the early 1940s during the Great War in a winter offensive.
Asia[]
- China has been partitioned by Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and America.
- Taiwan (Formosa) was made an independent nation in the First Pacific War, with the US guaranteeing its independence with a naval base and several thousand troops. The hope was to serve as a buffer between the Anglo-French colonies in China and the German and Japanese colonies. After the War the US formally annexed it and it achieved statehood in 1991.
Africa[]
- British Tories from America fled to the Caribbean and eventually South Africa after Canada was lost in the War for Independence, and several British island territories were taken in the War of 1812.
- South Africa's Boer population were largely outnumbered by British colonists by the mid-19th Century, and they exist as a minority group with occasional separatist flareups.
- South Africa remained a Dominion of the British Empire until the 1980s when it became a member of the Commonwealth Realm.
Wars and Geopolitics[]
- Second American Revolution: Without slavery, the power of wealthy land-owners becomes the dominant issue of the first century after the war for independence, and leads to a Second Revolution with the nationalist rebels led by Ulysses S. Grant and the confederates in power led by Robert E. Lee.
- Xinhai Revolution: The Republicans in China are Modern Republicans (Democratic Socialists), and far less willing to accommodate the Qing dynasty than in OTL and after threatening European and Japanese interests the Great Powers directly intervened, eventually partitioning China.
- Second Thirty Years War: World War I and World War II are seen as one continuous conflict in Europe, and two separate conflicts in Asia.
- First Pacific War: The First Sino-Japanese war took place in 1918, and was instead called the Second Chinese War by the Europeans or the First Pacific War by the Americans. The war ended in 1923 and was considered a humiliation to the Japanese who were forced to adopt an Americanized constitution and cede much of their imperial holdings.
- Second Pacific War: Tojo comes to power in Japan after a military coup installs him as the first Shogun since the end of the Edo period. Japan retakes its lost holdings in China and conquers the Pacific as they do in OTL. The United States stages an invasion of the Home islands in October 1944 with the help of the Russians, leading to the eventual partition of the Island.
Culture and Demographics[]
- What would become the Southwestern United States (California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona) are much less populated than in OTL. Without American colonization, gold would not be discovered in California until the end of the 19th Century. Consequently, the Southwest of OTL is only about as populated as Canada in OTL.
- The states of Washington and Oregon have much larger populations than in OTL. The Fraser and Klondike gold rushes took people through Portland and Seattle when they would have been going to San Francisco and LA in OTL. When the Dust Bowl drove waves of Oakies west, they settled in Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland. Thus, the 18 million people who would have moved to So-Cal now live in Washington and Yakima while the eight million people who would have called San Francisco home live in the Willamette Valley.
- The immigration of North American Tories to South Africa makes minorities of the Boers, and leads to a similar genocide of the natives as was seen in Canada in OTL. By the 20th Century South Africa is the only country with "Reservations" for the surviving members of its native tribes.
- America does not have nearly as large a Hispanic population as in OTL, with only Texas and Florida having any significant population at all. African Americans are far less concentrated to major coastal cities and the narrow corridor of the South without the fear of racist lost-cause organizations like the KKK. The second largest demographic in the US by 2018 are Asian-Americans, mostly mainland Chinese immigrants who first fled to Taiwan and then the West Coast (OTL Pacific Northwest).
- Taiwan is far less populated than in OTL. The island served as a way station for people traveling to the United States.
Politics[]
- Socialism and Communism aren't the preferred terms for those ideologies in this timeline. Democratic-Socialists are called Republicans in most countries, and Communists are called Radicals. This is a consequence of earlier (actually less radical) versions of these political philosophies gaining ground in the mid-19th Century in the United States.
- Fascism has survived into the modern day thanks to its spread into Russia during the 1930s. The only surviving fascist states are China, Canton and Manchuria.
- Agriculture is partly state-owned in most developed countries with the largest farms being collectivized in the 1930s. A degree of privatization has taken place since the 1980s.
- Many Canadian politicians in OTL become important political leaders of the United States, including Mackenzie King, Tommy Douglas, Wilfrid Laurier and others who go on to serve as President.
- Theodore Roosevelt never becomes President. He's Vice President under Wilfred Laurier whom he challenges for the Republican party nomination when Laurier seeks a third term. Both lose to William Randolph Hearst.
- Quentin Roosevelt is the only Roosevelt to become President. He serves in the First Pacific War and returns home a war hero, eventually becoming Governor of New York and Vice President to Mackenzie King. King (the New Dealer of this TL) can't run for a third term thanks to an amendment passed after Wilfrid Laurier's attempted third run for the Presidency, and thus Roosevelt goes on to be the War President during the final phase of the Second Thirty Years War.
- Martin Luther King Becomes the first, and thus far only African American to ascend to the Presidency. He's elected in 1972 and is responsible for opening China in 1975. He's assassinated in 1976 by a Radical, largely due to his willingness to deal with the Russian-backed fascist government in China.
- Winston Churchill is even more prominent in 20th century politics than in OTL. He served most of the first phase of the Second Thirty Years War in China (where he met and became lifelong friends with Quentin Roosevelt). He returned home to eventually become Prime Minister in 1922, leading the British into the war. He resigned after his son Randolf died fighting the Germans. He returns for a second term in 1940 when the Germans achieve a truce with the Russians and finally break through into France, leading the British through to the end of the War. He was made Lord of Westerham by King Edward VIII after the war.
| |||||||||||||||||
