BlamedThande on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/blamedthande/art/Analogous-America-183252683BlamedThande

Deviation Actions

BlamedThande's avatar

Analogous America

By
Published:
8.7K Views

Description

This map is the result of an "Analogous History" challenge to myself. The Draka series is largely about drawing parallels between South Africa and the USA. Well, how about we make North America into an analogue of southern Africa?

POD: England sends more aid to the Dutch revolt against Spain. The Dutch rebels manage to free the whole of the Low Countries. A few years later the alt-Thirty Years' War breaks out in Germany and the Dutch, as a Protestant revolutionary power, ally with the Swedes. The war ends up breaking Sweden eventually much like OTL but the Dutch come out of it with parts of the Rhineland added to their Republic. The alt-Peace of Westphalia separates these lands from the Holy Roman Empire and they become partially acculturated, though also having an effect on the Dutch relative to OTL. The upshot of all this is that the Dutch have much more population and industry to call on than OTL.

Although she was instrumental in Dutch independence, England soon falls out with the Netherlands due to an alt-English Civil War. The Anglo-Scottish union of the crowns comes about like OTL but doesn't last very long due to the Anglo-Dutch Wars and French involvement. England settles the eastern seaboard of America like OTL, but in a series of wars concluding in the 18th century, the Dutch manage to completely conquer the English colonies from their own colonial base of New Amsterdam. England however does better in the Far East, successfully ejecting both the Dutch and Portuguese from the East Indies and colonising Java and the large new island continent found to the south. The Dutch and Portuguese, along with the French, mostly go for India as second prize.

The English colonists in the Americas are upset with Dutch rule and many of them, especially rural farmers, flee westwards and establish their own states, many of them inspired by the short-lived English Republic during the alt-Civil War. Over the years the Dutch have expanded westward, fighting both English Farmers' States and native Indian peoples (the English and Indians also both fight each other). The English States include a large number of people displaced from New England after it was conquered by the French and Dutch, and brought their radical Puritan ideals with them, giving the English States a religious aspect to them - finding the promised land etc.

The French are very successful in the Americas, expanding their colony of New France as well as establishing Huguenot colonies in Florida and France Antarctique (Brazil). The French want to push Florida and New France to meet each other in a corridor going across the whole of North America, but are prevented by the Dutch holding Kanzeland (i.e. the land inhabited by the Kansa Indians, who named Kansas in OTL). The Spanish Empire has fallen apart due to revolutions at home, with Mexico being one of the first independent republics in the Americas but soon falling victim to its own political strife. Into this power vacuum has stepped the Empire of Nordland. A royal marriage led to England joining a Union of the Crowns with the Union of Kalmar - Denmark having successfully recovered Sweden after the latter wore itself out in the alt-Thirty Years' War. This personal union gradually grew into a full political union, with English parliamentarianism admired by the Scandinavians while the English have had a cultural revival, rejecting Latin and Celtic influences and embracing their Anglo-Saxon past, including connections with Scandinavia. The resulting state, known as Nordland and driven to gain its place in the sun after defeating a joint Franco-Netherlando-Irish force aimed at preventing its union, has taken advantage of Mexico's infighting to conquer much of it and turn it into a colony known as Nordish Americka (England is ideologically purging French influence from its spelling and language, and the names seen in Nordish Americka are a testbed for it).

Scotland also has colonies in America, with her Darien project only a mild success at first but then putting her in place to take advantage of the strife in Spanish America by expanding across Central America and New Granada. Scotland is an ally of Nordland, mostly out of convenience rather than any shared ideology. The Kingdom of Naples, having attempted to unite Italy and failed but still considerably increasing its territory and power and gaining a blue-seas fleet, has decided to get a colonial empire for the prestige of having one and is putting down small colonies wherever it can find anywhere unclaimed, such as Oregon.

Nordish Americka serves as a barrier to prevent the Dutch linking up their East and West coast possessions, stopping them from building their 'Sea to Shining Sea Railway'. The Dutch also accuse the Nordlanders of sending weapons and other help to their cousins in the English States. Because of this, it seems likely that tensions in the American colonies may bring the two to war.

(And in case it isn't obvious, the Dutch=OTL British, the French=OTL Portuguese, the English States=OTL Boers, the Indian States=OTL Zulus etc., and Nordish Americka=German East Africa)
Image size
879x1036px 259.12 KB
© 2010 - 2024 BlamedThande
Comments8
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Hunadin's avatar
interesting!