Alt-History Thread

>point of divergence*

Surely this is like alternate history vs alternative history, a matter of preference?

>surviving Carthage

Tbh I don't think history would have been very different, unless you mean something like Carthage conquering and razing Rome.

>non-communist China

Now this would be interesting, a China 50 to 60 years more developed than in irl.

I dunno, the common term is point of divergence. You're not wrong, though, it's basically the same thing.

>Tbh I don't think history would have been very different
Carthage was a major player in the Mediterranean and were for a while dominating over Rome. A surviving Carthage could change history in a major way (let's not forget that any change of events that far back is going to have a huge influence on the way history is written) - let's not forget they were already exploring the west coast of Africa and may have reached all the way south to Gabon. You could even be looking at the early colonisation of the Americas.

more like
>the celts wouldn't have died out and gaul wouldn't be romanized
>the romans would be among several other italic tribes that were loose client states of carthage
>the hellenistic east never falls
>the sillykids don't die out.
>egypt doesn't get romanized
>no spread of abrahamic religions.

> non-communist China
> 50 to 60 years more developed than in irl.

Yeah, the communists did nothing toindustrialize the country. No-thing I say!

>Carthage was a major player in the Mediterranean and were for a while dominating over Rome

Yes, but as the subsequent history of that region shows, it was never likely to be more than that. Even the most powerful of the Berber and Arab states based in Tunisia did little more than raid southern Europe for slaves, something a surviving Carthage would almost certainly also do.

> let's not forget they were already exploring the west coast of Africa and may have reached all the way south to Gabon.

Given their technology that was way beyond the distance you can do trading at. Carthage already had access to West Africa via the Saharan routes so barring an ASB intervention leading them to discover America they had little use for sea routes along the dangerous Atlantic coast just to trade with some niggers. What does Gabon even export?

Are you simple? Have you heard of the Great Leap Forward? What about the Cultural Revolution? You think decades of anarchy and brutal tyrannism didn't hold China back? You don't think current meddling in the economy by unelected technocrats continues to harms China's prosperity?

If Rome were razed to the ground then sure, Celtic might still be a major language group. I don't see how the rest follows tho, Germanics abandoned their paganism for Christianity despite not being conquered by Rome.

The various Berber tribes were never on the level of Carthage which was established by the Phoenicians and was on par with the Romans - don't forget the Punic wars started with Roman defeats and great losses. Had this continued (had Hannibal not been foolish enough to go on his journey), Carthage would dominate over the Mediterranean.

>Given their technology that was way beyond the distance you can do trading at.
They were pioneers. I'm not saying they would achieve all that in the first few decades - but they would surely be far more successful by the 15th century than the European powers in OTL were.

>What does Gabon even export?
I mentioned modern-day Gabon as the extent Hanno went during his exploration. They could've established settlements along the African coast and traded with the various tribes along the Gulf of Guinea (metals, slaves,...).

It's questionable whether Christianity (and later Islam) would be created in the first place.

>Carthage which was established by the Phoenicians and was on par with the Romans

Yeah, no. Before the first Punic war, maybe, but the second showed just how strong Rome had become by then.

>Carthage would dominate over the Mediterranean.

And? The Barbary corsairs ruled the Med, much good it did them in the long run. There's a reason the New World wasn't discovered by a Med-based civilisation, the Venetians were still using literal galleys while the Spanish were building galleons.

>I mentioned modern-day Gabon as the extent Hanno went during his exploration.

Which was roughly half way to anywhere useful, such as the gold coast. And Carthage already had access to West Africa via the Sahara. Where do you think coast-bound galleys will discover, if they keep going south? The Cape? Good luck getting past that. Then what? Thousands more miles of nigger-infested jungles before you reach... Egypt. Which is right across from you in the Med. Literally pointless. You need good ocean-going ships to reach anywhere interesting, like the New World or India or China. And you don't build ocean-going ships when you live on the Med because it's pointless and galleys are superior in every way there.

>Yeah, no. Before the first Punic war, maybe, but the second showed just how strong Rome had become by then.
Well the question was what if Carthage won over Rome.

Again, I'm not claiming they would go full Columbus and Scramble for Africa in a few years but they would be in the best positions for ventures in those areas earlier.
Let's not forget that without Rome in the way, they'd be able to expand their influence over the Appenine peninsula and further to the north. Archeologists have discovered Numidian coins in Great Britain so who's to say Carthage wouldn't expand their trade routes that far to the north?

>Even the most powerful of the Berber and Arab states based in Tunisia did little more than raid southern Europe for slaves, something a surviving Carthage would almost certainly also do.
Carthage was neither Arab nor Berber.

>the Spanish
>implying they """"discovered"""" the new world

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There is a reason the KMT lost. China was riddled with corruption,ineffiecency and all the other nasty things. You could make the same case for russia. I seriously doubt China would be more than a huge banana republic without the commies. I mean i despise them but especially in regards to modernization they were very efficient.

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Are there any good alt-his scenarios featuring Japan? Decisive darkness is my favorite, but what about ones with christianized/fully Buddhist/Ainu dominated/not Chinese influenced stuff?

Anything weird, like the fascists coup in the us succeeding or helter skelter actually happening in the sixties.

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This whole thread sort of sinthetizes everything that is wrong with Veeky Forums.
For the last 60 years or so, there is a concensus that history should be more than muh clay. Yet this board endlessly jerks of to this concept, along with genetics, WEWUZ and "in a battle between X and Y who would have won". I would invite you to consider, that the concept of exploring the idiosyncracys of the economic, religious, social and cosmological composture of past societies in much more fructuose than imagineing who could have conquered what.

tl;dr instead of imagineing what clay china could have conquered in the americas, try to picture how a sino-american culture would have been like.

>tl;dr instead of imagineing what clay china could have conquered in the americas, try to picture how a sino-american culture would have been like.

Veeky Forums is geared towards shitposting, if you’re looking for actual alt-history discussion, you want the Usenet newsgroup soc.history.what-if that you can easily access via Google.

Of course the issue I’ve found there, is that most of the posters automatically come at a suggested what if from the position of “that couldn’t happen because!” instead of trying to expand on the timeline.

Thank´s for the tip, I am growing increasingly tired of this page, and have not found an alternative. I´ll go check it out.

>Italy draining the Mediterranean

read the book. The awesome thing about Phillip K.Dick, is that he does not spoonfeed you the realities of his universes, buit rather mentions them en passant.

It's still fucking retarded.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa

>it's a German who wants to destroy Europe, again
Italy without the Mediterranean is nothing.

The point of alt history is trying to imagine radically different conditions of the world. The fact that these might be ludicrous is not deterential imho. I would still recoment reading the book. It is atually a grat example of what proposed, since a central theme how the mentalities of americans that have been colonized by the japanese are coping with that fact. The whole dry mediteranean thing is literally one sentence.

I just fixed America.

>that south carolina

Google Transnistria for me real quick.

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This idea goes all over the place, including the entire spectrum of autism.

Most of the maps I posted have the title and the author in the filename so you can look up the actual background to the map. I'm just posting the visuals here but the write-up exists.

ISOT scenarios are fun, though. Here's one where the Jefferson territory are transported back in time several million years.

is transported*, of course.

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Yes but they came into contact with it via the Empire

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How does that one work? I really wanna chart it onto a globe.

I suppose it's a rather fucked up projection.

>MFW I want lebensraum for all cultures no matter how bad
>MFW I also want Sweden and Germany as big as possible

Make multiple timelines, or alien space bats.

Also forgot to ask- is there a written out timeline for this one or just the map?

There is, but I hope you have an AH Forum account because it's five times too long to fit in a single post.
>alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/oneshot-scenarios-2.380935/page-21#post-12182937