New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Well, a rotting potato would have made a better president than Jackson. His massive grab for executive power laid the foundation for the civil war, I believe.
Replacing him with anybody else would have reduced the "executive creep" and slowed the erosion of individual states' rights.

(I know my knowledge of history is shaky, to say the least. So if anything I say is laughably ignorant, I apologize.)

You got some facts right. Your comparison of Jackson's skills at goverence to those of a rotting tuber is apt. But Jackson's contribution to the Civil War was different. Jackson changed how US government land was bought in the West in such a way as to shut most people out of the chance of buying land at all. Jackson promoted a massive growth of the Planter class. The Planter class was the main force driving for secession in the 1850's. States Rights added and nurtured the Planter class so clearly Jackson, in spite of being willing to hang Calhoun and most of south Carolina, did little harm to States Rights. Jackson was as beloved of most of the CSA as Reagan is of the modern GOP.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea. Henry VIII outlawed several attempts at mechanical kniting and spining frames as a threat to guild monopolies. Picture the world were someone, Anne Boleyn perhaps, convinces him that such machines are good in the long run. Picture a world where England's industrial revolution has a far slower start but one 175 years or more earlier.

England would take a much stronger and socially wider and deeper influence from the dutch Golden Age. There's a chance that there might not be a restoration. Certainly Louis XIV would relise the importance of industrialisation and push it in France. The Turks might realise they need to industrialise in the 17th century. It would be a very different world.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

You got some facts right. Your comparison of Jackson's skills at goverence to those of a rotting tuber is apt. But Jackson's contribution to the Civil War was different. Jackson changed how US government land was bought in the West in such a way as to shut most people out of the chance of buying land at all. Jackson promoted a massive growth of the Planter class. The Planter class was the main force driving for secession in the 1850's. States Rights added and nurtured the Planter class so clearly Jackson, in spite of being willing to hang Calhoun and most of south Carolina, did little harm to States Rights. Jackson was as beloved of most of the CSA as Reagan is of the modern GOP.

That's extremely ironic since Jackson would've tried to burn the South down considering how ****** he was at Calhoun for hinting at seccession. Jackson was a strong supporter of keeping the Union teogether.

[Anders]

The Red side wins the Finnish civil war and is annexed by the Soviet Union and made into a "Republic". What will this change when it comes to later history, especially the Robbentrop-Molotov pact? Will Stalin attack Sweden in 1939? What will happen to Operation Barbarossa?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

England's industrial revolution has a far slower start but one 175 years or more earlier. ... England would take a much stronger and socially wider and deeper influence from the dutch Golden Age. There's a chance that there might not be a restoration.

Since this is clearly a low-inertia timeline, there might not be an English Civil War. It may well stay on-track as far as Elizabeth, but she might marry in a very different Europe. If not, James VI&I probably happens, but he might marry someone else and have different children, or his eldest son may not die young, which avoids Charles I being so foolish as to launch a coup.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Since this is clearly a low-inertia timeline, there might not be an English Civil War. It may well stay on-track as far as Elizabeth, but she might marry in a very different Europe. If not, James VI&I probably happens, but he might marry someone else and have different children, or his eldest son may not die young, which avoids Charles I being so foolish as to launch a coup.

Let's just get it out of the way and just say it: steampunk.

[Flyndaran]

I've recently gotten hooked on a Canadian TV show called, The Murdoch Mysteries or The Artful Detective.
It's "lightly" anachronistic and set around the time of 1895.
Any other fans like to write up this slightly alternate timeline?

[warellis]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Let's just get it out of the way and just say it: steampunk.

You sure it wouldn't be clockpunk possibly? Wouldn't water be the principle power source for machines here, like using waterwheels and such?

[patchwork]

Yes, clockpunk, at least until a couple of hundred years after the divergence. And I wouldn't count on France or the Ottomans embracing the new technology until they are already well behind; England's primary cloth market in the period - and a country that has not yet experienced its Time of Troubles and is pretty open to change - is Russia. The Scandinavians see some commercial benefits by being in the way, although they may or may not embrace the technologies themselves.

A couple of different ways to go with this depending on succession; does Edward live, giving us clockpunk Puritans? Ed and Mary die on schedule but Ferdinand Stanley lives, so that the Elizabethan age continues and Scotland remains separate? Britain goes as it did historically, shifting focus to Ivan the Terrible's clockpunk army - or did the boyars of Novgorod use all that extra money to get some more and better mercenaries, and keep Ivan from assuming his full historical power?

I would enjoy seeing hard-science clockpunk, since it usually involves Leonardo da Vinci with azoth or zombies or something.

And in case it wasn't obvious, slow and steady technical development with England a great power? Centrum is squealing with joy at this one.

[VulpesFulva]

A thought: Centrum Agents on "Loom-#Arbitrarynumber" are so giddy at a beautiful-to-them timeline.... they screw it up. One of those Inspector Clouseau farces of snowballing errors, mistakes, and just plain bad luck....