New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Wind power, eh?

Do the Dutch use the windmills to generate electricity?

Not yet. But the Netherlands did come very close to an industrial revolution using wind power. The fact the Dutch came so close useing TL4 wind power suggests to me that an industrial revolution was going to happen somewhere.

Hey picture a world where India's culture was slightly different in the 16th and 17th centuries and both India and England are having industrial revolutions in the 18th century. Or move it forward fo a Napoleonic period with two industrial powers and Napoleon needing to play India and Britain off each other.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Not yet. But the Netherlands did come very close to an industrial revolution using wind power. The fact the Dutch came so close useing TL4 wind power suggests to me that an industrial revolution was going to happen somewhere.

Hey picture a world where India's culture was slightly different in the 16th and 17th centuries and both India and England are having industrial revolutions in the 18th century. Or move it forward fo a Napoleonic period with two industrial powers and Napoleon needing to play India and Britain off each other.

Sounds like you need a different history of the of the Mughal Empire.

I'm not sure it's plausible, but maybe extend Akbar's reign and bolster his new religious dispensation/policy of tolerance? That might stabilize the empire. (It could have a very bad effect, instead...but I'm assuming that you'll go with a better outcome for a stronger Indian power bloc to resist French and British commercial imperialism).

Maybe a few Europeans even make it to India as religious refugees. bringing technical skills and scientific knowledge with them?

Maybe somebody in India invents a more advanced cotton gin, equivalent to Eli Whitney's improved model? They already had a simpler form of the technology, so this may not be a hard sell. The sort of cotton grown may be an important factor. The Indians grow our sort of cotton today, of hybrids derived from our American species, LOTS of it. How feasible is an earlier importation and cultivation?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Maybe somebody in India invents a more advanced cotton gin, equivalent to Eli Whitney's improved model? They already had a simpler form of the technology, so this may not be a hard sell. The sort of cotton grown may be an important factor. The Indians grow our sort of cotton today, of hybrids derived from our American species, LOTS of it. How feasible is an earlier importation and cultivation?

As late as the 1820's Britain sent scholars to India to examine the local technology and to bring back the best tech to England. Agricultural journals of the period describe certain Indian techniques which became standard practice on British farms. So an Indian Eli Whitney isn't really impossible.

India would need to put a value on technology and innovation. That would have been a major change.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

As late as the 1820's Britain sent scholars to India to examine the local technology and to bring back the best tech to England. Agricultural journals of the period describe certain Indian techniques which became standard practice on British farms. So an Indian Eli Whitney isn't really impossible.

India would need to put a value on technology and innovation. That would have been a major change.

Well, does it really have to be a profound culture shift across the whole of the subcontinent?

What if it's a regional phenomenon?

How small a change can you make and still get the improved cotton gin and spin off technology?

What role might the Mughal court play in all this?

I'm playing devil's advocate to some extent. I have my own notions as to why the Industrial Acceleration (I prefer that name and that associated way of looking at it to the ''Revolution") developed as it did in Britain, the Low Countries, etc.

But allowing that Indian civilization had sophisticated technology, a large labor pool, resources, markets, and access to trade routes, it does seem like another possible candidate outside Western Europe.

China and India could both be near misses on some of these things, perhaps.

[combatmedic]

Collier’s Magazine did a speculative piece in 1951 about a war with the USSR.
http://www.conelrad.com/books/print.php?id=321_0_1_0

This, or something like it, might make a good ATL.

Astro, I recall that up-thread you mentioned a 1950s war gone nuclear, with the USSR defeated.

[Astromancer]

Does anybody know enough of the history of the Iroquois to come up with an alternate history where the Iroquois establish an independent nation or become a US state. If any of the native Americans of Eastern North America could have done such things, the Iroquois are the most likely.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Collier’s Magazine did a speculative piece in 1951 about a war with the USSR.
http://www.conelrad.com/books/print.php?id=321_0_1_0

This, or something like it, might make a good ATL.

Astro, I recall that up-thread you mentioned a 1950s war gone nuclear, with the USSR defeated.

Until late in the 1960's the USA had a huge lead in Atomic weapons. If a war had broken out, the US would have had the lead in A-bombs. The Soviet ecconomy was vastly smaller than the USA's, let alone the Western allience's. An early 1950's nuclear war would have cost millions of lives, it would be a Western victory, and anti-USA propoganda would be much louder and nastier in the following decades.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Until late in the 1960's the USA had a huge lead in Atomic weapons. If a war had broken out, the US would have had the lead in A-bombs. The Soviet ecconomy was vastly smaller than the USA's, let alone the Western allience's. An early 1950's nuclear war would have cost millions of lives, it would be a Western victory, and anti-USA propoganda would be much louder and nastier in the following decades.

Yes, I agree that we'd likely have won.

Too bad about the civilian casualties, and all the dead conscripts who weren't ideological. And the environmental damage.


But what anti-USA propaganda? From whom? There's be no Soviet Union left to fund agitation or provide leadership to the global internationalist left.
Or are you envisioning a Soviet survival despite the defeat?


I suppose that role could shift to Red China, but I'm not sure they'd have the same success the Soviets enjoyed.

I'm not entirely sure that some of the former Soviet states wouldn't turn out to be US allies. After all, several of them are friendly with the US today, and none of them are enemies. True, we didn't go head to head to war with them and drop any nukes on them, military targets or otherwise.
But we did nuke Japan and we are friends with the Japanese. We smashed Germany up pretty good and we get on fine with them.

We never had the chance to punish the Bolshevik leadership and the security men after Nuremberg type trials, as they so richly deserved. Nor did we get to compel ex-Soviet citizens to watch films about the genocide carried out by the Reds, the gulags, the forced famines, the torture chambers, and all that.
Communist symbols weren't banned the way the Germans banned Nazi symbols. If de-Nazification of Germany was incomplete, then de-Communization of the former Soviet Union states leaves even more to be desired.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Does anybody know enough of the history of the Iroquois to come up with an alternate history where the Iroquois establish an independent nation or become a US state. If any of the native Americans of Eastern North America could have done such things, the Iroquois are the most likely.

I think their biggest problem is location.

They were too close to too many white people who want land.

If you want to strengthen the Iroquois, I'd suggest having the British defeat the rebellious faction of colonists and place harsh controls on the defeated people. Restrictions on settlement in recognized Indian lands (taking an existing policy and making it more effective) give the Iroquois and some other nations a little breathing room.

That won't stop western expansion, but it might slow it.



Maybe there's a second American Revolution in the 1830s (which really happened in Canada) and that time the colonists win.

But the Iroquois state has fallen into bad relations with the Crown somehow, and it joins the rebellion? That seems like a stretch.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Maybe there's a second American Revolution in the 1830s (which really happened in Canada) and that time the colonists win.

Without a USA in this timeline to fan the flames, the matter in 1837 wouldn't be as bad - or result in as many reforms that lead toward full democracy throughout the Commonwealth.