r/AlternateHistory

The island nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines looks strikingly similar to Palau. My question is how different would our world look today if these island groups had swapped places as they emerged from their respective seas? How would this affect the austronesians in the pacific, the natives as well as the colonizers of the Caribbean, and the geopolitical state of our world as a whole?

The main point of divergence here is the partial win during the Revolt of 1173–1174, where France could weaken England (in part by giving some English land to allied vassals, such as Kent to Flanders, making it a little powerhouse)

Louis VIII, decades later could invade England during the first Barons war, and proclaim itself king with the help of his father, Philippe Augustus, who gave his name to the "empire"

After the death of his father, he took the throne of France, naming is heir ( the dauphin) as governor in England, tradition that still continues.

With the end of the Plantagenet, Louis VIII could even help is son, Charles the first to secure and protect the Latin Empire from the Nicaean, hence putting them on a leash.

The two brothers (Philippe III being the son of Louis VIII) rule a massive empire going from the Hadrian wall to the mighty city of Constantinople. Philippe III now look at the last rival of France, the Holy Roman Empire, while Charles Ier glance toward the holy lands and the balkans. But the Iberian powerhouse of Castille, Araégon and Portugal are starting to forge alliance against the French behemoth with the HRE, while the Turcs and the Nicean are looming in the east.

Will the Empire survive and become the sole legitimate successor to the Roman Empire, or, like Icarius, will it perish?

I had essentially finished creating this map long time ago, but work was interrupted for certain reasons; finally, I have completed the project!

This map belongs to a alt-history setting I previously created: a world where the Emperor of Japan successfully reigned over China in 17th century and established the "Yamato Dynasty" (provisional name). Like historical Manchus, Japanese rulers collaborated with Chinese elites while keeping certain "Japanese characteristics". They successfully transformed the "Yamato Dynasty" into a (partially) modernized country and subsequently established hegemony over Asia-Pacific region in next two centuries.

Under such ciscumstance, Chinese followed Makassar sea cucumber traders to establish colonial outposts in northern Australia, gradually occupying areas suitable for development. At the same time, Australia was renamed "坤州"(Kunzhou, also a provisional name) due to its location to the south of China. However, New Zealand or "Aotearoa" according to native Maori people, remained outside the purview of imperial colonial affairs, as it possessed neither resources urgently needed by the empire nor a location of strategic importance.

The situation changed in the 19th century. When noticing that European powers tended to establish colony and naval outposts in Aotearoa, the Empire eventually signed a treaty with Maori chiefs, a moderate version of Treaty of Waitangi, the Empire only took the territory necessary for establishing garrisons and essential administrative facilities, inter-tribal warfare among the Māori was prohibited, and the influx of colonists into Aotearoa was restricted. The name of new colony is Kumone (雲根), literally meaning "the origin of clouds", a partially literal translation of Māori name Aotearoa.

Doesn't that sound appealing? Yet, the motives were entirely economic and ideological. On one hand, the Empire sought to prevent an influx of immigrants into this remote region—fearing it might become a new hotbed for revolutionaries—while the bureaucrats overseeing colonization were a group of zealous Japanese nationalists. They held the stubborn conviction that "Māori" were a "lost branch" of Japanese people, embodying a "noble savagery" untainted by foreign civilization—a stark contrast to the "Japanese civilization" they believed had been corrupted by Chinese culture and Buddhism. Therefore, Māori must remain "primitive" in order to sustain their "noble savage" status (ironically, the Māori had long since acquired muskets through drifters and exiles, and had learned to use Japanese kana to record their language).

Following the outbreak of the Greater East Asian War, the most remote colony of Empire, Dominion of Kumone (Japanese: 雲根国/Kumone-kuni; Mōri: Te Whenua Aotearoa), was unable to escape the chaos.

The colonial garrison in Kumone staged a coup led by Navy Sergeant Nagahama Toyohiko (長浜豊彦), exiling the former Governor of Kumone, Kumazawa Hiromichi (熊沢寛道) to Mizutama Island on the south. Nagahama claimed descent from Emperor Antoku (安徳天皇), with the coup soldiers forming Seiōdō (正皇党), supporting his ascension as Emperor Kōbun (光文天皇). Meanwhile, Kumazawa as descendant of emperors of Southern Court (南朝), with the support of Nanchō Kokumin Hōdai Dōmei (南朝奉戴国民同盟), ascended the throne as Emperor Daien (大延天皇), establishing the "奇歌鳥国" (Teikoku o Kiwi, "Kiwi Empire").

Kumone split into two nations, a period historians refer to as “Northern and Southern dynasties.” For Japanese nationalists viewed the indigenous Maōri people as a kindred ethnic “uncorrupted by foreign culture,” military development in the region was neglected, and its level of development lagged behind that of other colonies for a long time.

The largest battle of the Kumone Civil War took place near the Kureha Strait (Japanese: 苦葉海峡 / Kureha Kaikyo; Māori: Te Moana-o-Rauna) between the two islands: the Northern and Southern armies deployed elite forces of 1,500 and 1,600 men, respectively, equipped with the most advanced weaponry available on the islands, including Winchester rifles.

During the civil war, a half-blood Moriori tribal chief Kiti Karaka Rīwai declared the establishment of an independent Moriori state, the Rēkohu Empire (日雾帝国, "Sun-Dusty Empire"), on the Rēkohu Islands (Māori: 诸島於屋杉 / Matu Matu o Wharekauri; Moriori: 诸島於日霧 / Whatu Whatu na Rēkohu). The nation received almost no international recognition and appears to have been destroyed by a tsunami during the civil war, resulting in the near-total loss of relevant records.

Edit: corrrect "cucumber" to "sea cucumber"

India (present day Pakistan) and Bangladesh are Hindu majority, and Hindustan (present day India) is Muslim majority.

Gustavoism Rises | Land reform in Brazil (1973–1975)

Brazilian reformers had called for land redistribution since Brazil became independent in 1822, but Gustavo Henrique's socialist regime was the one that actually carried out said land reform. It was one of his main promises during the Brazilian Civil War, and Gustavo could not break it.

One of Gustavo's first decrees after seizing power in March 1973 promoted the democratization of land ownership by declaring all unused land to be the property of the state. The Brazilian government then imposed limits on the amount of land each person could own, in order to break the land monopoly that had existed since the arrival of the Portuguese.

Gustavo's next step was to establish municipal and statewide federations of cooperative farms, all of whom were members of the Federação Cooperativa Nacional (FCN). Brazil did not create collective farms, but the cooperatives were under strict state control.

The unused land mentioned above became the property of farm cooperatives. By 1975, Brazilian society had been significantly transformed, with the members of the old Brazilian oligarchy, such as Ronaldo Caiado of Goiás, either being executed or leaving Brazil never to return.

Land reform was extremely popular among poor Brazilians, who saw it as eliminating the source of their oppression. Northeastern Brazil, traditionally the most conservative Brazilian region, became a strong supporter of the ruling PPN, because the drought problem was solved more effectively and people stopped dying of hunger.

Brazil later established state-owned collective farms in charge of producing crops such as coffee, soybeans, sugarcane, oranges, etc, for export. These farms soon became some of Brazil's largest employers, because agricultural exports remained a major part of Brazil's economy.

Environmental degradation was not ended by the land reform. Rather, it increased significantly as the PPN sought to economically integrate all regions of the country. Despite the regime being more friendly to indigenous people than its predecessors, conflict with the natives continued.

The genocide of indigenous peoples in Brazil escalated during the presidency of Aldo Rebelo, who strongly supports agribusiness and has described environmentalism as a conspiracy to seize the Amazon Rainforest's resources. Natural disasters have increased as a result of this policy, causing international concern and prompting even some Brazilians to criticize Aldo's productivism.

As of 2026, Brazilian agriculture is one of the most productive in the world, and Brazil is the world's largest producer of coffee, soybeans, oranges and sugarcane. Brazilian client states such as Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba and Nicaragua import a large amount of Brazilian crops, as do the USSR, China and India.

can anyone tell me anything about what’s sticking out the boys pocket or tell me anything that comes to mind about this photo?

I believe the boy was my grandfather who was born in 1940. I’m not certain of the location of this photo, possibly weed California or somewhere else

Okay, so I had an idea for a timeline where Operation Barbarossa never happens and Hitler dies in 1941. Let me explain.

We all know about Operation Barbarossa and its buildup, so I don't have to give you a massive recap. Let's just get straight into the scenario.

It all starts in early 1941 with a massive change of heart in Moscow. Instead of leaving the Red Army spread out thin and completely exposed on the Polish border, Joseph Stalin gets incredibly paranoid about how unready his military actually is. He orders a radical, 50-mile tactical retreat of all his frontline troops, completely blowing up the roads, bridges, and train lines behind them as they leave. This leaves a huge, cratered, heavily mined No-Man's Land right through the middle of Poland. When German scouts look across the border, they realize trying to cross this mess would be a total logistical nightmare. Even with all his anti-communist paranoia, Hitler looks at this defensive wall, realizes an invasion would be an absolute disaster, and calls the whole thing off.

With the eastern front frozen in a stalemate, Hitler goes back to Berlin, but his health is completely shot. His personal doctor, Theodor Morell, keeps pumping him full of experimental amphetamines, barbiturates, and animal hormones. This lethal cocktail triggers a rapid, horrific medical spiral, accelerating suspected late-stage neurosyphilis and causing advanced amphetamine psychosis. In May 1941, Hitler suffers a catastrophic, fatal hemorrhagic stroke in his private quarters. His sudden death causes absolute, immediate panic in the Nazi party. While they set up a massive, somber state funeral for the public, a brutal backroom power struggle breaks out. By Hitler's previously signed political testament, Hermann Göring officially takes over the government. Out of deep respect for Hitler, the unique title of "Führer" is permanently retired; nobody else is allowed to use it. Göring takes power under a new administrative title, but his reign is basically dead on arrival. Hardline party members and the SS absolutely despise Göring, viewing him as a lazy, corrupt, and overly indulgent plutocrat who cares more about his luxury estates than National Socialist ideology.

On top of that, Hitler's sudden death leaves Germany facing massive, immediate domestic problems that Göring completely fails to solve. The Reich is hit with severe raw resource shortages, critical logistical bottlenecks, and an economy on the brink of inflation, all left over from the total-war mobilization. Instead of fixing these crises, Göring panics about his sliding authority and decides he needs a massive diplomatic win. He secretly flies out to neutral Sweden to try and cut a backroom peace deal with Winston Churchill to end the war. But Churchill plays hardball, flatly rejects the terms, and the secret talks fail miserably.

The second the secret Swedish talks leak, Heinrich Himmler pounces. He publicly calls Göring a traitor who is insulting the memory of the dead Führer and demands his resignation. Göring panics and places Himmler under house arrest inside his own ministerial office. But Himmler isn't stuck. Using a secure phone line in his room, he secretly coordinates a massive coup, getting Joseph Goebbels and the top army generals on his side. Himmler makes a direct call to the Chief Counsel of the Reich and leaks a mountain of evidence exposing Göring's massive, illegal art fraud and his secret warehouses full of plundered European masterworks. The Chief Counsel immediately orders Göring locked up, because under Reich law, a jailed person cannot hold supreme power. Göring is stripped of everything and scheduled for execution. To lock down his authority and make sure nobody ever tries a phone-call coup on him, Himmler unleashes the SS in a massive internal purge officially called The Second Night of the Long Knives. He takes the throne under a strict, bureaucratic title.

Himmler completely drops Hitler's aggressive war style and treats the conflict like a corporate spreadsheet. He switches to a purely defensive strategy, slowly reducing the bombing raids on the British Isles, and announces that Germany has achieved its Lebensraum and is done expanding. He doesn't even ask the British for peace; he basically says they can come to him when they are tired of starving. While the skies over London go quiet, Japan hits Pearl Harbor. Tokyo begs Germany to join the war against America, but Himmler checks the fine print of the Tripartite Pact, points out that Japan did the attacking, and completely ghosts them to keep the US out of Europe. This turns things into an isolated Pacific War—not a theater, but a direct, focused deathmatch. Because America isn't spending billions on Lend-Lease for Europe, the U.S. treasury hoards all its industrial wealth. Franklin D. Roosevelt leads America through a much quicker and devastating campaign against Japan. Since the entire weight of the U.S. military, navy, and industrial output is directed strictly at one target, American forces smash through the Pacific island chains at twice the historical speed. By 1944, Tokyo is pulverized by conventional bombing and Japan is turned into a major American democratic foothold, all without the U.S. ever needing to finish the atomic bomb yet.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, Churchill continues to go on the radio screaming that Himmler's defensive freeze is a trap and demanding an invasion of Europe. But to a bankrupt, exhausted British public that can see the bombs have stopped, Churchill just sounds completely unhinged. A massive, bitter argument breaks out in Parliament, and Churchill gets forcefully kicked out in a vote of no confidence. The old-guard appeaser Lord Halifax takes over as Prime Minister and immediately goes crawling to Berlin to sign the Treaty of London. Under the terms of the treaty, Britain formally recognizes Germany’s conquests over France, Poland, and the Low Countries, and hands over significant economic concessions, which severely humiliates the British Empire long-term. While British POWs are sent home and Halifax is popular at first for ending the draft, the bad stuff quickly sets in.

Shortly after the European peace is signed, the geopolitical landscape shifts permanently as both the United States and Nazi Germany successfully develop atomic weapons. The United States hits nuclear capability first through the massive, uninterrupted funding of the Manhattan Project, left completely unbothered by a European war. However, Himmler's consolidated Europe quickly achieves parity. By enslaving the continent's top scientific minds, seizing uranium deposits in Norway and the Congo, and pouring unmatched state resources into the Uranprojekt, the Reich successfully detonates its own device. This sudden nuclear parity creates an immediate state of Mutually Assured Destruction. Both Washington and Berlin realize that a direct land war in Europe is now completely impossible, as any conventional invasion will result in the total atomic vaporization of the globe. Because a hot war cannot happen, the conflict is forced into the shadows, officially triggering the birth of a new Cold War.

With both sides holding the bomb, a direct invasion of Europe is officially off the table. The U.S. President looks at Himmler's growing, locked-down empire and realizes America needs a massive fallback containment strategy. Washington quickly reaches out to Moscow and signs a secret backroom alliance with Joseph Stalin’s hyper-industrialized Soviet Union, agreeing to team up the second Germany tries to step out of its box. Meanwhile, back in London, the British public completely sours on Halifax as Berlin uses the humiliating economic terms of the treaty to actively subvert British colonies in Africa and Asia. By 1945, the stage is officially set for a massive, global Cold War. The factions are locked in: on one side, you have the Axis Bloc of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, alongside the anti-colonial, regional ethnic nationalists Himmler is secretly funding from the shadows. On the opposing side stands the Allied Containment Bloc, uniting the corporate industrial might of the United States, a heavily militarized Great Britain, and the colossal weight of Stalin's Soviet Union. How is the scenario? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

The Kingdom of Hanover was created after WW2 as one of 5 new Independent german states. Hanover being occupied by the United Kingdom. In 1947, one year after the end of the war, the United Kingdom instated Albert, Duke of York as King of a renewed Hanoverian Kingdom.

Context

The image above is a map of China in the universe of my alternate history project, which I call "Project Vigilant" or P.V for short.

As to how China got these borders?

Here's what I came up with:

In the PVU, the USA is more progressive than it is in reality. It wins the War of 1812 and annexes all of what would be Canada. The acquisition of this territory empowers the Northern States and cripples the political power of the Southern States. This leads to an earlier and relatively non-violent end to slavery and a lack of Segregation/Jim Crow.

The USA does still go to war with Mexico but in the PVU, the Mexican-American War was motivated by the USA's desire to have the Pacific Coast rather than Texas, which remains independent for a few more decades.

The USA of P.V never adopts the Chinese Exclusion Act or any other racially motivated anti-immigration laws for that matter. This, combined with a lack of segregation allows Chinese immigrants to flock to the states in large numbers and amass wealth which ultimately provides Sun Yat-Sen's revolution with greater financial support.

-

Via the increased monetary support, eventually being provided by the more progressive USA itself, the Republic of China is able to better stabilize itself following the Xinhai Revolution and the Warlords, although existent, are less of an issue.

When the Russian Civil War breaks out in 1917, the stronger R.O.C decides to take advantage of the situation by mobilizing it's army to reclaim Outer Manchuria and after this, it China decides to treat itself further by seizing the territory of what would by Altai, Tuva, Buryatia and Trans-Baikal which are integrated into Mongolia. Japan also joins in on the fun by annexing the whole of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

-

I need the Bolshevik's to win the Russian Civil War and the USSR to come into existence however I am unsure as to how this could or would happen with China and Japan's territorial gains.

Getting opinions from real people on every little thing in my projects is exhausting so I tried using A.I and more specifically, Gemini to help me out and it wasn't very helpful.

According to Gemini, the Bolshevik's would still win the Russian Civil War because 1. Most of the Red Army's manpower came from Western Russia and 2. The territory seized by China was a stronghold for the White's. However, Gemini keeps identifying the Russian-Chinese border in my map as being the Irtysh River which it isn't and this makes the answers inaccurate because Gemini is assuming that Russia in my timeline loses access to most of Siberia.

I have come here for some human opinions on this situation.

-

First Question

Do you think the USSR could still come about in this situation? If so, is it also realistic to assume that they'd agree to cede the territory seized by China and Japan?

I feel like this is realistic since the R.O.C is friends with the USA so any attempt by the USSR to invade claimed Chinese territory would end in disaster and starting a war with Japan over Sakhalin and Kuril might be viewed as a waste of resources.

-

Second Question

Also, according to Gemini, the USA winning the War of 1812 would cause the USA and Britain to be hostile with each-other well into the 1900s, thus preventing U.S support to Britain in WWI. This does not work for my project as I need the USA to be on Britain and France's side during WWI.

I feel like Gemini tends to lean towards extremes in alternate history prompts so I'd like a second opinion as to whether or not it is at all possible that U.S and British relations could be warm by 1910 in a timeline wherein the U.S won the War of 1812?

Inspired by the excellent work Hungarians, in CHINA?!?! - Turul Dynasty in 1700 AD, sharing the same setting with my creation what if Finnish people stayed in East Asia. In this timeline, the ancestor of Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and other Finnic-Ugric people never left tmoved westwards; on the contrary, they stayed in their Urheimat ("homeland") in Northeast China/Manchuria (according to a hypothesis) and created quite different history from our timeline.

Different from their lucky neighbors Finns who settled in Korean Peninsula, the ancient Hungarian lived in Manchuria as fishing and hunting people like Samoyed, Mansi or Sapmi in our timeline for thousands of years, only attested in Chinese history as barbarian and "tributary states"; to a large extent, they have taken the place of the Tungusic peoples (including the Manchus) in the history of our own timeline.

In 17th century, the opportunity arose; capitalizing on the decline of the Ming Dynasty, the Magyars moved south and became the masters of all China. The ruler of Magyar people descided to change their ethnic name to Mansju (Chinese: 滿洲/mǎn zhōu, Magyar: ᠮᠠᠨ ᡧᠶᡠ/mansyu). Some believe it derives from Mansi people, kin to the Magyars in the north, implying that Magyar royal family 額爾巴達 (ᠠᡃ‍ᡵᡦᠠᡃ‍᠊ᡨ/Árpád) as not of Magyar blood; others (including the Qing imperial family) maintain that it is merely a dialectal sound shift within the Magyar language.

The new dynasty was named "Nagy Csing"(Great Qing, Chinese: 大清/dà qīng); there are various explanations for the origin of this name. One theory suggests that Magyars considered blue (Chinese: 青/qīng) as noble color, therefore they chose "Qing" as the dynastic title, which shares a similar pronunciation. Additionally, the pronunciation of "Csing" is similar to Mongolian word ᠳᠠᠢᠴᠢᠨ (daicin, "martial, warrior"), which represented the political alliance between Magyar and Mongolian nobles. Prior to this, they created Magyar script based on the traditional Mongolian script, distinguishing vowel lengths and consonant by adding circles and dots alongside the letters.

Since the rule of Magyars was viewed with suspicion by the Han Chinese elite, the third emperor of Qing compiled a book on the origin of Mansju people, proposed that Magyar were kin to Suomi/Finnish people, also descendant of Xiongnu (匈奴), ultimately the children of "Yellow Emperor" (Chinese: 黄帝/huáng dì). Naturally, the Han nationalists dismissed their ideas: the Hungarians could not possibly be related to the Finns, nor did they have any connection to the historical Xiongnu. They even suspected that the Magyars were from Huns recorded in European history, a horde of barbarians who had destroyed the Roman Empire and were now destroying Chinese civilization!

Therefore, while the Qing Empire's armies suffered heavy loss on land, a young captain named 虎儿体 (Horthy) turned the tide by defeating the Nihonese Combined Fleet at sea. Although no cession territory as our timeline, defeated by "tiny country" Nibon and forced to recognize Korelian independence, it's a total humiliation which was even more heavily on Chinese people than the ceding of the Magyar homeland to Russia or partitioning of the Indochina Peninsula with Romània.

Horthy didn't know at that time, he would play a greater role after Qing's collapse in 1911...

Edit: add description of Huangdi and changed some represents error

Edit: fixed the spelling error of "cession"

A world I started building a while ago but never fully finished. It begins with an Aaron Burr presidency in 1796 and eventually spirals into a timeline where the Confederacy and the United Kingdom win the Civil War, only for the United States to launch the American Reconquest of the South and eventually retake the region.

The instability and political upheaval of this “Failed Century” reshape American politics. As the country struggles to recover, J.P. Morgan forms the Bismarckism style party, taking over the center-right from the Whigs. The party goes on to dominate the Gilded Age, overseeing an era of political consolidation, economic recovery, and explosive industrial growth.

Age of Friction, 1934. An alternate history scenario with three major points of divergance:

1798 — Radicalization of the Swiss Militia System: The concept of total decentralization and the universal citizen-defense model spread throughout Central Europe, proving that small, heavily armed populations could permanently deter massive empires.

1837 — The Loco-Foco Revolution: In North America, the radical equal-rights faction dismantled the federal standing army, banned centralized municipal police monopolies, and outlawed corporate security syndicates, shattering the United States into localized federations.

1871 — Triumph of the Paris Commune: The successful bottom-up defense of Paris sparked an international syndicalist wave across Europe, replacing monarchies and republics with an interconnected Federation of Communes running on collective labor and open-source technology.

The map is a work in progress, but feel free to ask about any region and I'll tell you about the faction in control of it!

Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts is a 2016 first person open world survival horror video game published by Activision in conjunction with Cabela's for XBox One, PS5 and PC. It is a reboot of the 2003 video game of the same name, also released by Activision in conjunction with Cabela's. It was made with Crye Engine.

The game focuses on a big game hunter who teams up with a biologist to investigate reports of unusually aggressive animals launching unprovoked attacks on human beings across the US and Mexico. As with the original games, the hunter has a limited amount of energy and can be injured, which results in failure. There are many weapons, including handguns, rifles, shotguns, knives and machetes. The game also includes many different animals including a final boss, the Chupacabra.

Unlike the original games, this game is open world. The player is tasked with uncovering the species of animal responsible for a series of fatal attacks on humans along the US-Mexico Border. 

The game received mixed reactions from critics, with many calling it “Grand Theft Auto as a hunting simulator" and others praising the reimagined premise, but criticized the choice of making a cryptid the final boss, with many believing the game to be a knockoff of the second game of the original series.