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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1297 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'll be damned. I figured Napoleon III was too busy worrying about the Prussians to go after the colonies. That alone makes this more plausible.

Speaking of Prussia, what happened to Wilhelms I and II? Did Germany unify and end France's continental ambitions? Did we get any world wars?

I think those determine the fate of British and French colonies more than anything else. Depending on how the late 1800s go, you might even manage to dodge macro-scale communism, too.

I think German unification and something along the lines of WWI were bound to happen. I’d guess in this scenario, with a weak United States facing substantial backyard security commitments, means that the great-war-equivalent stays confined to Europe and doesn’t eradicate any of the major players. Some colonial retrenchment and a series of regional conflicts in the 30’s and 40’s are probably inevitable but a white peace turns Russia into a constitutional monarchy with democratic elements that are quickly subverted by the military and what oligarchs exist- the Russian revolution here is mostly nationalist revolts within the empire which are crushed after years of insurgency in some cases. In east Asia Japan picks off colonies held by minor powers, but the invasion of the Chinese interior is unsuccessful due to logistical distance, and the lack of American power in the pacific means imperial Japan faces mostly a commonwealth-Netherlands-France alliance which is not able to credibly threaten an invasion of the home islands- but can defend the colonies- and some major land defeats inside China by Russia and German-backed Chinese warlords successfully push Japan out of hegemonic domination of east Asia, but it’s unquestionably the biggest power in the pacific. In this world Mao is one of several unusually bad Chinese warlords in the rural interior; communism is more associated with ottoman and Austrian breakaway states. Germany, France, Russia, and Britain manage to retain their concessions in Chinese territory, but the minor powers like Portugal lose them to Japan. In Europe I think Austria and the Ottoman Empire were destined to lose territory, I’m guessing Bosnia at least and the ottomans being reduced to Turkey, Syria, parts of northern Iraq. Germany and France don’t go to war with each other- they’re actually loosely aligned in this period in support of European colonialism, with German backed Chinese being a major part of the Japan containment strategy for European empires and both attempting to prevent the declining Ottoman Empire from resulting in major land expansion by Russia.

This is a multipolar world with very high defense budgets, and the lesson from WWI for major powers was that complex alliance systems spiral into major wars. Countries, including major powers, regularly get into border kerfuffles, but mutual defense treaties are comparatively rare. I think a Russo-German war over the Baltics and Poland was inevitable, but there’s no invasion of Western Europe because there’s no Franco-German tensions and Britain is primarily concerned with its colonial empire in the pacific.

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