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Indian Co-Prosperity

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RvBOMally
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Another QuantumBranching  cover, this time of one of his old map contest entries. Bruce gave me some more details than were present on the original entry, but left me enough room to be a bit more creative about how the rest of the world is going.

  • The PoD is Timur not dying in 1405, and his successor eventually conquering India and establishing the Khanate of Ind. Of course, butterflies fluttered from there.
  • The Technocracy Wars are the big thing in the early 20th century. The conflict is fought with WWII tactics and technology. The main belligerent is the European Technocracy, which arose from France and has more of a resemblance to OTL French Revolutionary ideology than to, say, Nazism. The entire idea of Technocracy is that a group of "rationalists" could better manage mankind than the kings of the still monarchy-dominated Europe, and that things like national, ethnic, linguistic and religious divisions are fundamentally irrational and could be destroyed. They plan on uniting all of Europe, and then the rest of the world, by pen or by sword, and they have enough popular support in Europe to do it. However, their whole "force dissidents to dig their own mass graves, then shoot them" and "the only good priest is one strangled by his own entrails" is causing considerable controversy.
  • Sweden is an absolute monarchy, on the Technocracy's side because of realpolitik. The Technocracy Wars are just as much about national interest as they are about ideology.
  • The Latin Union is a union of various Catholic kings, princes, dukes and other guys with big rings and fancy hats. The Papal States are a member, although the Pope is more content to complain about modern secularism between sessions of fucking his way through every prostitute in Rome. They aren't as fanatic and "burn the heretic" as they may first appear, and they despise the Technocracy. They just know they can't win a war against them, at least at the moment. The Technocracy, for its part, doesn't want to bite off more than it can chew. [1]
  • The English Empire is the most powerful empire on Earth, with a fleet that could defeat the two next largest fleets combined. Too bad they're split between the Atlantic, Indian and Serenic [2] Oceans. England lost their continental holdings early on in the war, and are currently being bombed by the Technocracy Aerial Army. They are also losing the war against the Serpent Empire. England is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy, and currently have a High Chancellor who likes to make speeches about fighting from the beaches and what not.
  • Burgundy didn't fall in the 1470s, but broke into northern and southern kingdoms as result of this world's equivalent of the Wars of Religion, with the North going on as a sort of "greater Netherlands." Burgundy was a major colonial power and the big guy in Europe until the resurgence of France in the 19th century after TTL's Wars of Religion destroyed it utterly. It fell rather quickly to Technocracy forces, which surprised everybody and will undoubtedly lead to dumb jokes for the next century. 
  • The Ottoman Empire was once the head honcho in Europe, but their backward empire was defeated again and again when facing off against the iron horses[3] of the Technocracy. The Sultan is pissed at the Serpent Empire's treatment of his fellow Muslims, but given that Istanbul may be razed by the Technocracy soon, he's tabling that issue.
  • North America is still dominated by former English colonies. The Federation of Alvaria is more or less an ersatz-United States, only more Swedish than German and with a parliamentary system. They also don't have the population of the United States; that's the Holy Santiagan Empire, a Mexico-centered empire established by some Spanish conquistadors. The Santiagans take absolutism to an extreme degree, with an imperial family descended from the original conquistadors. Large numbers of the mostly Native and African-descended population are serfs working the land for the nobility, and they are the ones being conscripted in mass numbers to fight the Alvarians. The Santiagans are also rather theocratic, with nice things like public hanging of homosexuals.
  • New France, New Burgundy and Nova Lusitania are what we'd consider second-world countries, and are tinpot dictators that enjoy big hats, oversized military budgets and death squads.
  • The remaining khanates are mostly Muslim areas that are some of the poorest in the world outside of Africa. Persia is the most urbanized of them all, yet the least important, as Samarkand and Mongolia still maintain larger armies. Of course, most of these soldiers are horse archers, and are maintained mostly so they can parade around and impress the occasional Western intellectual traveling the Orient for "spiritual enlightenment" and "cultural exchange."[4]
  • China is still backwards, and don't really worry about the dumb wars between the barbarians.

[1] Yeah, the guys who are forcibly annexing European states left and right have a sense of restraint.
[2] TTL's name for the Pacific Ocean.
[3] TTL's name for the tank.
[4] Trying drugs he thinks are somehow better because the guy selling them isn't white.
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Whiteshore1
How are the Vietnamese and Khmers faring under the Ayutthaya?