GURPS Gallatin

Inspired by the world “Gallatin” in “GURPS Infinite Worlds” ( [link] ) and the rather nice map Diamond on alternatehistory.com made for it a whiles back.

This is a world in which the US breaks up early and various Bad Things happen: personally I always suspected it was the author’s snide poke at L. Neil Smith’s “North American Confederation” series, which involves a “Gallatin Divergence.”

Butterflies from a different US historical path meant that German unification took a different path from OTL, and the Greater Germans and their Italian and Romanian allies won their equivalent of WWI: Germany went on to incorporate other chunks of the former Holy Roman Empire into a looser federal union, while bringing most of the rest of Europe into a close economic-political union. (The Italians have managed to avoid falling under the German thumb to the extent the other states between the Russians and the Castilians have, and is not a participant in many of the _political_ functions of the union).

In the Trans-Hemispheric Conflict, Japan and the communistic "Union of Eurasian Worker’s Republics" joined forces, Japan overrunning European colonies in the east, while the UEWR attempted to regain the Ukraine and expand into the Middle East. Thanks to the Japanese being the first to develop the atom bomb, the Germans and British were forced to accept the losses of all of Asia east of India: the Worker’s Republics were less successful, their Japanese allies proving niggardly in providing them with nuclear weapons of their own, although happy to sell them war surplus weaponry no longer needed after the nuking of Calcutta. Only thanks to tremendous human sacrifices and revolts in France and Poland were they able to pull off an armistice leaving them with some limited gains in Iran and the west.

Today, the world is divided into several major power blocks, all nuclear armed. A rough sort of cordiality exists between the British Commonwealth, the free trade block and military alliance known as the North American Defense Alliance and the weak Lusophone alliance of the Belem Pact states, but they all have their own interests and concerns, and none of the three are likely to get into a nuclear shitting match with the Japanese, the UEWR, or the Germans for the sake of the other two.

The North American Defense Alliance consists of California, a conservative nation dominated by huge corporate combines, Mormon (more or less: the Golden Plates had a somewhat different take on events) Deseret, the United States, a prosperous liberal-left nation somewhat similar to OTLs Scandinavia writ large (and with nukes), the Confederacy (now down to the states of Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland), a loose union which has slowly and painfully adjusting to the fact that 1/3 of its population is black over the past few decades (S. Carolina failed to adjust-see below), corrupt but colorful Louisiana (along with Imperial Germany and Bulgaria-Romania, one of the only three states where dueling is still legal), and Texas, the most powerful of the states of North America, a pushy, aggressive nation with a large nuclear arsenal and ambitions to lead a unified North America, which has managed to successfully integrate the Hispanic ¼ of its population, but still has some issues with black people, which it wishes would stop immigrating westward past Lousiana.

The states of the Confederacy slowly and painfully moved towards granting rights to their blacks, starting in the 80’s, which led to the (white) leadership of black-majority South Carolina to secede in a snit: after 15 years of bloody internal revolt and repression, Carolina was broken up in 2002, with the whiter inland areas being divided between N. Carolina and Georgia, while the coastal lowlands being broken off to form the struggling new black republic of Liberia.

Free-riding on the Texan-US (mostly Texan) nuclear umbrella is the Ohio Association, an anarcho-capitalistic state whose role as North America’s principal center of smuggling leads to frequent protests by its neighbors: the feeble government apologizes profusely, and things go on as before. Given the reputation of Ohioans as armed-to-the-teeth fruitcakes, so far more serious measures have not been taken.

Texas has a long and complex history with Mexico: at risk of its very survival from Mexico in its early years, Texas by the late 19th century became its principal bully, and nowadays Texas and the left-wing, UEWR-aligned Mexico are bitter enemies: yet much of Texas’s population is of Mexican descent, and cultural ties remain.

The British Commonwealth is the most extensive political union in the world, and nowadays is mostly self-governing states outside of tropical Africa, which has led to a serious weakening of the central government. It manages to maintain a common foreign policy mostly through fear of the Germans, Japanese and the UEWR, and suffers from an increasing leadership conflict between Bombay (the new capital of the Indian Federation: Delhi never got the nod in this world) and London.

While most of its member states are democracies, a few, such as Egypt, are pretty much one-party states, although the forms are always observed. Socialist insurrection is less of a problem than in previous decades: the decline in UEWR radicalism is enhanced by the policy of building a strong native middle class in the colonies, in place since the German victory of 1916 led to a policy of "stregnthen the empire".

There are a number of states in close association with the Commonwealth, if not full members. This group includes New England and the Russian “Taiwan”, Aleyaska, Chile (in response to Argentina’s chumminess with Germany and Italy), the Federation of Central America (fearful of further Texan filibustering), the Abyssinians and a rump Persian state plagued by Baluchi separatism. Also an associate state is Burma, emerging in recent years from Japanese domination.

Japan may have won the war but lost the peace, having swallowed more than it was able to digest, and its precocious development of atomic weapons forced it into an arms race with richer nations. The UEWR, still miffed at Japan’s unhelpful wartime attitude, once it had developed an atomic deterrent of its own set about busily providing weapons and advice to Chinese revolutionary groups.

After several decades of off-and-on struggle, and two military coups, the Japanese finally “rationalized” their empire starting in the late 70s, and have pulled out of China and much of Indonesia: the Japanese found enough right-wing collaborators and wealthy Chinese with something to lose to keep the Empire of Manchuria afloat, but actual contact between Japanese and the Manchurian-in-the-street is kept at a minimum to avoid aggravating nationalist impulses (fortunately, the rather radical regime holding the rest of China since ’92 is a good motivator for those who want to keep Manchuria independent). The Indochinese Emperor, although of Japanese royal blood, has largely “gone native” and although theoretically still a Japanese ally, Indochina is for all intents and purposes a neutral state: Burma has departed entirely. Although dropping off their more expensive commitments and kissing and making up with the Germans has been helpful to the Japanese economy, the considerable force still required for holding onto what is left (Korea in particular) means that Japan remains a fairly brutal police state.

Colonial left-wing unrest remains a problem in German Africa: although the Germans nowadays are talking about “development”, “guided evolution”, and “eventual autonomy”, privately they curse the ceremonies inaugurating the Nigerian Federation’s new Parliament – if the British and the Confederates hadn’t moved/weren’t moving to give their n*s ever more self-government, there wouldn’t be all this much trouble. And the German parliament is getting increasingly unhappy about Herero-type solutions to colonial unrest. (Never should have given women the vote, old-timers grumble).

Europe is quieter: although many Europeans aren’t happy with German dominance, Europe is prosperous and internally at peace, and in any event the Germans are preferable to the Eastern Menace. Everyone has at least three years of German in school: German is the international language of Europe, and the leading language of science: Germany is perhaps the world’s most advanced center of high technology, although the Commonwealth as a whole does has more scientists and engineers. Only the French (who are French) and the Poles (who are crazy) still occasionally riot and toss home-made explosives at German banks, industrial complexes, hotels, etc. (Not so much military bases: they may be protestors, but they’re usually not suicidal ones) and with the danger of atomic war seemingly receding, most Europeans of Nation X are willing to let Nation X do its Rising Again some other day.

The Baltic Alliance of Finland and Norway-Sweden is prosperous, peaceful, heavily armed, and very very neutral.

The Union of Eurasian Workers Republics is currently struggling economically as it moves from a socialistic economy which none the less allowed small-scale “non-exploitative” capitalism to a system more on the lines of state capitalism with guaranteed employment (if only digging roadbeds in Siberia for the slackers): it has scaled back substantially the world-revolutionary talk, and made major efforts to come to agreements with the Germans and the Commonwealth on nuclear arms reductions. This has led to some substantial friction with the Socialist States of China, a much newer, and after several decades of revolutionary struggle, substantially more radical nation: the close friendship observed in the wake of the Japanese withdrawal has cooled substantially over the last decade. Tibet and Northern Iran remain closely controlled UEWR puppets: the leadership is smart and cynical enough to realize it doesn’t want the Central Asian and Caucus populations getting any ideas.