Your favourite Alternate History

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ironside100

Junior Member
Your favourite Alternate History

With the new layout of the forum I thought I should start up a new topic.

What is your favourite alternate history idea and why? What do you think would have happened if your idea really happened?
 
Re: Your favourite Alternate History

My favorite is an historical one.
When Columbus had the theory of sailing West to discover India by sea,instead of sailing East, he went to speak to the Portuguese king. Portuguese had been trying for many years to East, going around the African continent, and they knew they were almost there, so the King said no. Columbus moved to Spain and gave a big headache to the Spanish Queen :).
Well, the rest we all know...
The world would be a lot different if the king had said yes! Probably half of it would be speaking Portuguese.
Also, I'm really sorry for being us the inventors of the idea of traffic of slaves from Africa to South America :(.
I really believe if the first had happened and the second not, the west world would be a nicer one.
 

Re: Your favourite Alternate History

That is very interesting, I wonder what S.America would look like today if the portuguese ruled all of it. Did portugal rule their empire in a different way to Spains or are they both quite similar?
 

Re: Your favourite Alternate History

They ruled South America in a similar way. Brasil was ruled by the portuguese and it has today lot's of problems.
In places were we ruled are today very messy countries, with lot's of problems.
Places where we traded goods, are the places where we left a good story behind. Good relations, marriages, like India, China and other places.
To invade was never a good policy, and that still could be aplied in the days of today. :flirt:
 
Re: Your favourite Alternate History

I always thought it would of been interesting if Henry VIII didnt change England to a protestant country. We probably probably wouldnt have such a class ruled society as we have done and still do, because the monestries Henry Pillaged would have remained the main source of education in the country creating a better educated and wealthier middleclass rather than a hugely powerful upper class. Has portugal always remained catholic? I wonder this because Portugal is one of Britains oldest allies and I thought it might be strange for England to be so close to a catholic nation during the early years.
 
Re: Your favourite Alternate History

One that I often wonder about is what if Muslims had conquered Europe in the middle ages.

Would Muslim explorers have sailed west to find a passage to the east? Muslim navigators were some of the most advanced of the time, so my guess is that they would have.

Would Muslims have conquered the Americas? Given their track record, I believe that they would have.

So we could've had a world were Islam controlled all of North and South America, along with Europe, Africa, and Much of Asia. Probably only India and the far East would remain non-Muslim.

Interesting to think that in some alternate universe we may be typing in Arabic wondering what would have happened if Christians had stoped the spread of Islam into Europe.
 
Re: Your favourite Alternate History

I once read a interesting alternate short story on the subject. It was based around the slavic tribes of eastern Europe who in reality where the van guard of western religion and culture against the advance of Islam. The story involved the argument between a catholic priest and a muslim cleric who where trying to convince a slavic prince to convert to their religion. In the end the muslim won and Islam spread from the Indian Ocean to the North sea because there was no barrier between the west and Islam.
 
Re: Your favourite Alternate History

Another interesting idea i heard about was the invasion of eastern europe of the Huns (It may of been the golden horde im not sure) . No one in eastern europe could defeat them because of the fast attacks they used with mounted archers so they looked like they where going to rampage all the way across Europe, destroying cities and villages because of their distaste of civilisation. Luckily however their leader died and they all went back across the steppe to choose a new leader as was their tradition (which they never got round to doing because of internal fueds). So once again the west was saved by a stroke of luck.

Like I say im not too up on the subject I think I read it in one of those "what if" books

http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/whatif2.html

But what if he didnt die? They probably would of went all the way through to france and that would be goodnight to western civilisation. Probably would have extended the dark ages for a long time.
 
Re: Your favourite Alternate History

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"lucidus\")</div>
One that I often wonder about is what if Muslims had conquered Europe in the middle ages.

Would Muslim explorers have sailed west to find a passage to the east? Muslim navigators were some of the most advanced of the time, so my guess is that they would have.

Would Muslims have conquered the Americas? ?Given their track record, I believe that they would have.

So we could've had a world were Islam controlled all of North and South America, along with Europe, Africa, and Much of Asia. Probably only India and the far East would remain non-Muslim.

Interesting to think that in some alternate universe we may be typing in Arabic wondering what would have happened if Christians had stoped the spread of Islam into Europe.[/b]
Click to expand...

This is intresting...
This world would seem to be really great then in my view..
If all of the world was true Islam then there would be few problems...

My fav one is what would happend if the goverment did not keep any secrets and what if kerry would have won... Would if mean such a big change if karry would have won.. It must have to the people atleast...
And what it goverments did not keep secrets.. ouch! ti Hot :-P
 

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