I'm sure France would want their former hinterland in Algeria back, but I doubt the Germans would be very happy about it (perhaps the Germans have agreed to defend Algeria). As for Wallonia, I'm sure a lot of Walloons view their new independent state as just a puppet of the Germans and would like to rejoin France.
English Canada/French Carolina: A Timeline
- Thread starter Gabingston
- Start date
This wasn't my first TL. I had an old timeline on a French-colonized Australia and a TL where France keeps Canada (I'm a bit of a Francophile due to me taking French in high school).
I know this isn't your TL. I am asking what made you want to write your first TL.
Just a general interest in Alternate History going back years, and discovering this website.
Part 103: Radicals In Russia
Part 103: Radicals In Russia
With the victory of the Radical faction in the 1928 Russian elections, Russia was now in uncharted territory. While there’d been Radical rebellions that had taken over entire cities in other countries, Russia was the first country to come under the control of committed Radicals. Now that they had a democratically-elected mandate, the Radicals got to work.While originally gaining popularity in Russia’s growing urban centers, they’d expanded their appeal out into the sticks by promising land reform. Land owned by the former nobility (which as a class had been formally disestablished upon the creation of the Republic) was to be seized and redistributed to landless peasants without any sort of compensation for the former owners, even ones who’d reconciled with the Republic. From 1929 to 1932, huge amounts of land was expropriated by the state and either redistributed into smallholdings or kept as public land. This move was a mixed blessing, as while thousands of peasant families across Russia got to acquire land for the first time, the massive disruptions in agricultural production that resulted caused food shortages across parts of the country, increasing the price of grain substantially in the Early 1930s.
When it comes to the other economic policies of the Radicals, one of the main priorities was to rapidly industrialize the country. Russia, despite its massive manpower, had struggled mightily during the Second Global War against the much more industrialized Germans, and the new leadership sought to rectify that. While not full-on Commies like IOTL (although there was a small faction of utopians who held views similar to Communism), it would be fair to consider the Radicals in Russia Socialists of some sort, so the Radicals nationalized many major industries and launched new state-run enterprises to tap into Russia’s natural resources. As with the land redistribution, the results were quite mixed. On the one hand, Russian industrialization went into high gear, and new jobs were created left and right for the growing urban populations. On the other hand, many of the state-owned industries were quite inefficient and nepotistic, giving management positions to ideological cronies with no experience instead of to those who were skilled with running industries but may have held different viewpoints. The Radical government also built public housing on the outskirts of growing cities, which provided thousands with new homes (albeit cheap and shoddily constructed ones, but homes nonetheless).
When it came to the Radicals’ foreign policy, they were less focused on outward expansion than they were on defending what they had and on contacting and influencing similar movements abroad. For example, the Russian government made contact with Indian nationalists, who viewed Russia’s overthrow of their own oppressive, distant monarchy as inspiration to their own struggle against the Britishers (to use the proper Indian phrase). Meanwhile, they began to rebuild Russia’s military, growing and modernizing the Army of The Republic into a fighting force that could combat the Germans in the west and Japanese in the east.
However, their social and cultural policy was definitely the most… contentious. Needless to say, the Radicals weren’t exactly friendly towards former Czarists, banning any Czarist political parties and forbidding any praising of the former monarchy from being spoken in public. While most of Russia’s top nobility (including the Czar and his family) had fled after the fall of the monarchy (mainly to either other Orthodox countries or Russian allies from the Second Global War), there was a second wave of Russian emigration during the period of Radical rule. The unfriendliness of the Radicals towards the Nobility also carried over into a disdain for the Russian Orthodox Church, which they viewed as an institution inhibiting progress in the country. The religious views of the Radical higher-ups varied from Deist on one end to zealous Atheists on the other, and most weren’t big fans of the church. While the church was removed from its status as the state religion upon the declaration of the Republic, the Radicals wanted to basically remove religion from the public sphere (not just Christianity, but other religions like Islam and Buddhism, which made the Radicals unpopular with minorities like the Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens and Kalmyks). Religious schools were shut down, preachers of all faiths that were critical of the regime were at the very least censored (if not imprisoned) and the church was put on a tight leash as to what if could say and do. This alienated many peasants and rural folk who, while not necessarily fans of the pre-war Church, were usually quite religious and voted for the Radicals for economic reasons, not for the entirety of Russian society to be remade from the top down. Needless to say, when the 1932 elections came around, it was a complete toss-up as to who would win, and Russia’s future hung in the balance, and as for who will come out on top, well, that is yet to be seen...
A question: What's the official name of Floride now? A "Republic of Florida" or maybe a "Federal Republic of Florida" or something like that? Same thing for Mexico...
Another thing: without American revolution and USA as first modern major republic in the world as a role model for many countries, how would some things develop? For example, institution of the President of the Republic? Or Senate as second house of legislature etc.
I'd assume the name for La Floride would be the Republic of Florida, or "République de La Floride" in French. Mexico would be something similar.
I probably highballed the development on Mount Royal Island itself a bit. I'm guessing the far west end of the island, which at it's furthest is 20 miles from Downtown Montreal IOTL, would be undeveloped (albeit right on the edge of the urban sprawl), while there would've already been a lot of development in New Lambeth by this point, just by virtue of it being so close to Downtown (which I'm assuming would still be in the same location as OTL). Then again, I could be wrong on that and the entire island might be full just like I said in the update, I'm no expert on the historic growth of American cities IOTL, much less in this alternate TL.
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I don't think you overestimated the development of Mont Royal Island. Especially if suburbanisation happens here too, I would imagine that a 7 mil. MR would use whole island.
Yeah, I think you're probably right. I still think the far west end may be undeveloped (not for much longer), but the rest of the island at the very least is going to be densely urbanized. On another note, I'm guessing that the population of the Mount Royal metro area by the present will be around the size of the Los Angeles metro area, or 12-13 million.
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Does Mount Royal switch places with Toronto in terms of importance here? If so, the metro area of OTL Toronto is about 6.5 million and if you double that then it's about 13 million which is reasonable.
Mount Royal is the largest city in OTL's Canada, but is second place to New York nationally. Toronto is still going to be a large city, but it may be overshadowed by the metropolis around Niagara Falls ITTL.
Well, I think that OTL size of major cities is appropriate for TTL too. No need for very big changes. Especially on the east coast.
Considering that Montreal was Canada's largest city OTL until Toronto surpassed it in the '70s it makes sense that Mount Royal would be the second-largest city in TTL's America.
Hmm, Chicago, or some other similary positioned city ( around Great Lakes ) and a West Coast main port should also be somewhere close. TTL America will also probable build a big canal from Mississippi to Great Lakes, so I presume that such Chicago-like city will be there where it enters Michigan Lake ).
I just nominated this for a Turtledove. Congrats on my seal of approval for this TL.
Chicago is still huge ITTL, it's geography is too good not to be. The biggest metro area on the West Coast is going to be the San Francisco Bay Area, which will be even larger than IOTL. The Commonwealth is going to have a larger population than OTL's U.S., the Bay Area is probably the main Pacific Naval Base, the nice climate will be incredibly attractive to those from out east and it might become the center of TTL's entertainment industry.
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