The Alternative History Thread

Hello again Lizards!

I remember from a thread a while back (I think it was one of @Hyperborean’s) that asked everyone about what their favourite historical period was, and there were quite a few replies, which means that it is evident that quite a few of us are history buffs here. With this in mind, I’ve put this thread forward to discuss everyone’s favourite alternative history theories.

Alternative history is, I find, a fascinating subject to speculate over - every event in history is the result of a choice, and each of these choices, whether minor or major, creates its own separate timeline. As a result, in this day and age there are many thousands, if not millions, of alternative universes where different choices were made, whether in the recent or distant past. Some of these alternative realities are actually very similar to our own, as the choices that differed in those timelines were minor and had little effect on the course of the future, while others are almost entirely different due to an entirely different course of history. Alternative history is without a doubt fascinating.

I ask you all then, what is your favourite alternative history, and why? Feel free to speculate all you like, and I look forward to hearing all the fascinating ‘what if’ scenarios you come up with!

 

In recent years, Robert Conroy has written a number of pretty good alternate histories. Off the top of my head, they include:
-Custer wins Little Big Horn and becomes president.
-Himmler continues on with WW2.
-America loses at Yorktown.
-WW1 with a German invasion of CA from Mexico.
I've skimmed them and they are pretty entertaining. If you enjoy the genre, check them out.

 

I never got into it, but i was thinking what if Neanderthals never went extinct

 

An idea I just thought up was what if the Romans had not spread as far. The would have had less areas to defend and may not have fallen. Rome’s could still be the most powerful nation today.

 

That one is a classic - I’ve been thinking a lot about that one myself. An additional component to this particular reality would be that Queen Victoria had intended to send British troops to assist the Confederates - in our reality Prince Albert stopped this from happening saying that ‘it is their civil war, leave it to them’, which is of course an understandable response, but there would be alternative universes where that didn’t happen and the British Empire and the French (who agreed to go in with us if we went over) helped the South to split from the North.

Regardless of whether the South split from the North by itself or with help, it would have found itself in need of industrialisation as most of the factories were in the North, but as the South always had better ties with Britain than the North, we could have sent some engineers and supplies over to help them get back on their feet. Conversely the North would have suddenly found the need for more agriculture because most of the farms were in the South, and because they would now be bordered by both British-occupied Canada to the North and the British-friendly Confederacy to the South, they would have had no choice but to attempt to be friendlier to us earlier.

Let us now fast forward to the two World Wars - with the South being a separate nation now they are able to make their own decisions, which means that because they were friendlier with us and the French they may well have joined the wars considerably earlier, if not from the beginning onwards, to assist their allies, even if the North still tries to stay out of it for as long as possible as the whole of America did in the prime timeline. This means that the First World War could have ended earlier which may have meant that Britain and France both suffered fewer casualties, which would have led to stronger British and French armies in the Second World War. This could have then meant that Britain and France (and the Confederacy if they joined early again) were able to hold the line against the Germans rather than being pushed back to Dunkirk, thereby allowing both countries to establish a strong base in Europe to attempt to push the Germans back again. Again this could have meant that the Second World War ended earlier, meaning fewer casualties were lost on the Allied side and would have resulted in a more powerful Britain and France afterwards. Conversely the US would be weaker due to having a considerably smaller population thanks to the separation of the Confederacy.

 

Conversely this would also have meant that fewer nations ended up being under Roman influence. Indeed I have been thinking a lot about what would have happened if Britain was never Romanised - a scenario I had thought of was that if the Gallic chieftain Brennus, whose forces defeated the Romans around 390-387 BC, had annexed Rome for his tribe, the Senones, rather than being bought off as he had in the prime timeline. This would have extinguished Rome’s chances to rise not long after its formation, and would have resulted in Celtic Europe lasting a lot longer.

Anyway, I believe that had the Romans not invaded Britain, the various tribes of Britain would have been assimilated by an especially large and aggressive tribe called the Catuvellauni, who inhabited the areas now known as London, Surrey, Essex and Oxfordshire - indeed where before most tribal wars in Britain had been minor raiding scuffles based on stealing animals, supplies and wealth, the Catuvellauni, by AD 43, had taken control of one tribe through a puppet king, had established a strong alliance with another and had defeated a third through military conquest and sent their king into exile. This was evidently just the start of an expansion that could have unified all the tribes in Britain had it been left to carry on without interference from foreign powers. Furthermore, if the Druids, based in Anglesey, had expressed particular support for this unification, the dominance of the Catuvellauni would be assured, as no tribe argued with the Druids’ judgement. If this had happened, a unified Celtic Britain would have stood much more of a chance of repelling the Saxons, Angles and Jutes than the weakened Britain left undefended by the Romans in our timeline, meaning that it would be highly likely that Britain would have remained a unified Celtic kingdom, possibly even to this day. Furthermore, the repelling of the Saxon invasion would have meant Britain would have stayed unified for a lot longer rather than being divided into the various Saxon kingdoms for another few hundred years as had occurred in this timeline.

 

So I have a proposal. What would have happened if the Polish had the winged hussar in the early medieval or medieval era. In case you guys don’t know who the winged hussar are the are the greatest mounted cavalry who have ever lived. I’m gonna post some links and more information once I refresh myself on them.
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hussars.html
Basically in 1683 the ottoman Turks had pushed back the holy Roman empire’s entire army to Vienna. The turks were sieging the city and were winning. The Polish king Jan Sobieski sent and army of around 18 thousand Polish (3000 were winged hussar). Against the Turkish army of over 200,000. The winged hussar routed the army and took their villages and killed a lot of their men. And this was after the invention of guns and cannons. So what would have happened if the winged hussar were used by Poland earlier. My guess is they could have conquered most of Europe.

 

Agreed. Even if the Winged Hussars were able to destroy any enemy force on an open battlefield, they would still need help to assault a fortified position, hence the stupidity of Denethor forcing Faramir’s knights to charge the Orcs entrenched in the ruins of Osgiliath in Lord of the Rings.

 

True the couldn’t have taken cities or fought in rough terrain with them but if they were able to lure armies out the Hussar could have destroyed them and then they could have taken the city with normal troops.

 

Rise from your grave, oh Alternate History thread!

Probably spurred by a passing interest in AlternateHistoryHub, there's more than a few timelines that have been brought up with quite the butterflies. Sadly don't have access to Youtube due to using a work potato out at sea, but the following scenarios come to mind:

Woodrow Wilson was never elected President. Prepare to rewrite the rest of the 20th Century onwards, because so much that happened, from the Russian Revolutions and the rise of the Nazis in Germany, to the foundation of America's current foreign policy (Wilsonian Interventionism), were all shaped by his legacy in office. In other words, he was to the 20th Century what Napoleon was to the 19th.

Carthage won the Punic Wars instead of Rome. Europe and especially the Mediterranean wouldn't see a military hegemony like it did IRL, due to Carthage's focus on being a mercantile power like Venice was IRL. The most profound change would be due to the lack of a unifying force that the Roman Empire provided in the long term.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert series. Gotta love a wacky "time travel gone wrong" plot involving the erasure of Hitler from history. As per every scenario that AltHistHub has gone into detail regarding the Eastern Front during WW2 (specifically regarding Operation Barbarossa), the Soviets under Stalin have consistently proven paranoid enough to launch an invasion into the rest of Europe, which is what follows in the Red Alert series (albeit with wacky tesla coil technology). The setting grows increasingly campy after that to the point of becoming stupidly awesome.

 

Nice to see one of my threads necromanced!

Carthage defeating Rome instead of the other way round would certainly be a game changer - not only was Carthage more of a sea power as you say, meaning it would be likely less of the world would have been brought under its rule than the Roman Empire, but also those peoples who would have been brought under Carthaginian rule would have been a lot less brutally treated as the Carthaginians were way more tolerant of other nations than the Romans were (you can see this in their army structures - a lot of the soldiers Carthage used were troops from other nations drafted in either for pay or due to common cause, yet the different ways of fighting of these men were tolerated rather than suppressed, while peoples of foreign nations defeated by Rome were shoved into the poor-quality auxiliary brigades and used to do all the dirty work for the Roman-born Legionaries). I imagine that as Carthage did not quarrel nearly as much with the Celts as the Romans did, northern Europe would have remained under Celtic rule in the same vein as in my Brennus-annexes-Rome scenario, while all of the west side of the Mediterranean coast would have been under Carthaginian rule, with the Greeks in charge of the eastern side.

 

Smallest change with the biggest consequences:

One pistol misfires and jams.

The pistol was wielded by J.W. Booth, the actor. Abraham Lincoln serves his full second term.