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Updated 2005-10-26

"How I Damned the World" Timeline

Pete's Timeline for Ben Breeck's Fanfic

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The "Damned" Timeline

This is a timeline for the really alternate history described in a Draka fanfic by Ben Breeck titled "How I Damned the World." I'll call the unnamed main character and chief conspirator "Stinky Whistletooth" — the first name given in the source text. For those that haven't read the original fanfic on which this is based (Anne Marie Talbott's site that hosted the source fanfic is gone, but it's available on this site}, it's basically "What If" the same timeline had both S.M. Stirling's Domination and L. Neil Smith's North American Confederacy. And in case you're not familiar with alternate history terminology, "point of divergence" (POD) and "our timeline" (OTL) should get you past those two abbreviations. Note that I'm working from two sources by the author that have some conflicts: the fanfic story and a timeline published later on a Web discussion group. I usually gave precedence to the timeline. And based on "yes you can" received from Ben, putting out this document based on his work is OK with him. [Material between brackets like this is my comments on Ben's work.]

To make it easier for repeat visitors to figure out what's been changed recently, I'm using CSS to produce red "change bars" in the left margin, as seen for this paragraph. These will stay until the next batch of changes to the timeline, usually just revisions of my comments.

And if you can read this paragraph, either CSS isn't working properly for you or you're seeing this page without my CSS styles loaded, so the change bar mentioned above won't be visible to your browser. You'll just have to take my word for it that something has changed on the page if the "What's New" page says so.

• 1763: The Conspirators time-travel from OTL Louisville Kentucky. They split up and head for Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) or New Orleans using inflatable boats. A home-built massively parallel computer is simultaneously transferred to the island of São Tomé. Conspirators keep in touch with solar-powered UHF two-way radios.
  [POD: 129 unnamed conspirators use a time machine to travel from OTL ~1995. They are provided immortality and anti-disease shots by the discoverer of the time machine. (Only 3 "gimmies" necessary for this story!) The computer and Mr. Smith (see 1794) are sent from the same moment in OTL using GPS synchronization, apparently so they don't end up in different alternates.]
• 1765: Stinky Whistletooth has changed identities 3 times by now. 5 conspirators make their way to São Tomé and begin the first computer project, to create an unbreakable mathematical cipher. Others are now near the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, and in the British Admiralty and Army.
  [I disagree with Stinky having to bother with doing some of these computer projects while in a new timeline. He can just buy OTL stuff before he leaves! For the first one, buy some DES chips embedded in a simple typewriter. If nobody else can duplicate them for 200 years, then you could move on to something else instead. And one-time pads are just as good, if you do them right; I recently read Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon". I'll leave the proof that there is no such thing as an unbreakable mathematical cipher to somebody else.]
• 1760s and 1770s: Stinky Whistletooth is elected a Member of Parliament in the Tory Party. He votes on the Post Act, the Sugar Act, the Proclamation of Pale of Settlement Act, the Endowment Act, and the infamous Tea Act.
• 1775: Continental Congress meets to protest the "unfair" policies of Parliament. House of Commons ignores their petition and declares them under arrest. The city of Wilmington, Delaware declares its independence. A winter skirmish between British troops and rebels.
  [I think entirely OTL.]
• 1776: Continental Congress writes and ratifies Declaration of Independence.
  [Also OTL. Although it won't be the timeline of the North American Confederacy unless the Declaration reads "unanimous consent of the governed."]
• 1776–1783: The Revolutionary War. Notable differences from OTL are:
  1777: Patrick Ferguson has a "guardian angel" watching out for him from the beginning, including the Battle of Saratoga. Benedict Arnold never turns traitor.
  1779: The Netherlands (Dutch Republic) declares war 2 years earlier than OTL.
  1780: Britain attacks the Dutch Cape Colony and seizes Walvisbaj (Walvis Bay), Kappe Staad (?) and Windhoek. The Battle of King's Mountain is a bloody stalemate.
  1781: Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown. Parliament passes Loyalty Acts: free land in the Cape Colony for Loyalists in America, and the Hessian troops. Stinky Whistletooth retires from Parliament and goes to the new Crown Colony of Drakia.
  1782: Over 200,000 Loyalists leave out of Boston, New York, Havre D'Grace (?), Charleston and Savannah.
  1783: At the Treaty of Paris, Saint Kitts and Nevis given to the Dutch in exchange for the Cape Colony. Crown Colony of Drakia Act. Benjamin Franklin (with some help from "a friend") drinks his British counterpart under the table, and the United States gets all British possessions in continental North America except Belize.
  [While I postulated a bloody stalemate for my King's Mountain battle too, I admit to using the "drank him under the table" Ben Franklin too, to help get the Loyalists out of Upper Canada. Thanks, Ben!]
• 1784–85: Several well-known cities founded in Drakia. 20,000 Icelanders fleeing volcanic eruptions on their island immigrate to Drakia.
  [I'll let the number pass, but that's over 1/2 the population of the island. Guess those conspirators were handing out free beer…]
• 1789: A major slave uprising in Drakia. Constitution ratified in America. French Revolution begins.
• 1790s: Drakian ships increase activity in the slave trade.
• 1793: Drakia has taken over territories of OTL South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. Almost all the native populace has been enslaved through system of debt peonage. Gold was discovered on Whiteridge, provoking a gold rush and financing an immense slave trading operation. Coastal enclaves of Zanzibar, Dar-es-Salaam and Aden have been seized as trading outposts. Among the immigrants to Drakia are Haitian Creoles fleeing Toussaint L'Ouverture and Guillaume Sam, Royalists fleeing the French Revolution, and nobles displaced from Italy after Napoleon's invasion. Immigrants must recite a loyalty oath and eat a strange meal designed to keep out Muslims and kosher Jews. Another massive slave uprising in Drakia.
  [The names used in the fanfic are Toussant L'avourre and Guillame Sam, but I corrected them to the OTL names. But Sam's is actually the name of the President of Haiti in 1915 who was killed by a mob. Could be the conspirators inserted an "advisor" to help the revolt in Haiti along.]
• 1793–94: The "Reign of Terror" in France. Displaced nobles flee to Drakia.
• 1794: L. Neil Smith (OTL libertarian science fiction author) time-travels to Pittsburgh with $100 of period currency and a prototype Minié ball [an improved rifle bullet not invented in OTL until 1848], using a third time machine that was synchronized with the first two (Louisville and São Tomé). He appears as Albert Gallatin and quickly joins the Whiskey Rebellion. With his foreknowledge of the American army's movements and improved bullet, he quickly becomes the rebel leader. After they march on Philadelphia, George Washington is shot, and the Constitution and "stars and stripes" are repudiated in favor of "New Articles" and the "don't tread on me" flag. Angus McGregor independently introduces the Minié ball in Drakia.
  [Stirling and I didn't go as far as the Minié ball this early, just a step or two away from the round ball.]
• 1795: "Gallatin" occupies the Bronx. Federalist members of Congress commit suicide. Founding of Shanahpur. "Gallatin" forms caretaker government. Submission of the New Articles. Conquest of Northmark.
• 1796: Prussia receives territory from the partition of Poland.
• 1796–97: Another massive slave uprising in Drakia. "Master and Servant Act" passed, giving citizens the power of life and death over "slaves and other bond-servants."
• 1797: Last state necessary (Kentucky) ratifies the New Articles.
• 1798: Napoleon leads invasion of Egypt. Drakian troops mobilize. Sierra Leone founded.
• 1799: Slave uprising in Haiti. 50,000 displaced planters flee to Drakia.
• 1800: Napoleon is First Consul. Albert Gallatin steps down as President in favor of Thomas Jefferson (third and last). After Napoleon leaves Egypt, the Drakians beat the remaining French at the Battle of the Nile Delta. Dick Trevithick arrives from Wales, begins developing bigger and better steam engines.
• 1802: Suez Canal construction begun.
• 1803: Battle of Vertieres lost by French on Haiti, leading to abandonment of plans to increase French presence in Louisiana. Black Republic of Haiti founded. Louisiana Purchase from France privately financed by several banks against the value of the resources to be found on the land.
  [I added the battle, as it's an interesting chain of events, although it has to occur earlier than OTL to fit in here.]
• 1804: Napoleon crowned Emperor. British ships begin impressment of American sailors.
• 1805: Gallatin assassinated by the conspirators. He made many anti-Irish speeches during his lifetime, so trade with and immigration from Ireland is practically non-existent for decades to come.
  [Sorry, while this is a nice break for the conspirators, it's not something "our" L. Neil Smith would do. I'll let the event stand, but enough has changed in the world that the Irish Potato Famine is not likely to occur as a result of a virus from the New World, at least not in the same manner as OTL.]
• 1806: George III dies of heart failure before his madness becomes known. His son George IV succeeds him on the British throne. Britain declares war on United States. First railroads, trains, and steam cars. First Drakian Janissary units, formed from selected central African tribesmen.
  [George's death also occurs before he retracts his claim on the throne of France as he did OTL.]
• 1807: British shipping sunk by the American ironclad steamer Eagle. Rebellion in Sierra Leone crushed by Drakian troops who burn Freetown. Ottoman Empire declares war on Britain for Drakian refusal to return Egypt.
• 1808: Drakia wars with the Ottoman Turks while Britain is distracted in Spain and elsewhere, and seizes Cyprus, Crete and Rhodes.
• 1809: Treaty of Oslo grants reparations to United States.
  [Timeline source says the US gets the rest of continental British North America now, instead of 1783.]
• 1810: Massive road building projects begin in Drakia.
• Napoleonic Wars: Drakia begins implementing industrial slave labor. House of Vasa emigrates from Sweden to Drakia and America when it becomes clear Napoleon will put Beradotte (Bernadotte?) on the throne instead of them.
• 1815: Wilberforce framed for treason, effectively decapitating the movement to abolish slavery in the colonies, flees to United States. Anti-slavery bill unanimously defeated in House of Lords. The Bourbon monarchs ousted from the throne of the Two Sicilies have immigrated to Drakia, and the only other legitimate noble house with claims to that throne had no legitimate claim to France.
  At the Congress of Vienna, Austria is awarded Northern Italy, Spain is awarded Andorra and the Pyrenees. The Netherlands is reorganized as a kingdom under the Royal House of Orange. Prussia keeps what it got in 1796, plus new possessions in Germany. With all other possible claimants to the French throne now British subjects, and George III not having withdrawn his claim, George IV becomes Georges I of France as well. Africa becomes a British–Drakian preserve. Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Rio de Oro purchased from Portugal. Drakian interests blackmail and bribe enough of Parliament to ensure that rule of Egypt is given to the Crown Colony of Drakia.
  [That kind of dirty tricks works here because the conspirators are still there making it happen. Otherwise, both Ian and I can't figure out how Stirling let Drakia run Egypt besides "I said so."]
• 1816: Drakia begins a massive campaign to conquer and settle North Africa. "Richard Harrington" (a.k.a. Stinky Whistletooth) invents the Harrington Mark One Rifle. This was a push-button actuated break down action using a special brass plunger in the back of the chamber. It fired a special metal-backed center-fired paper cartridge that looked like a black powder shotgun shell, in .45 caliber. The closest competition is Jacques Telliard's design for a caseless cartridge black powder bolt action rifle. Telliard later invents the world's first practical revolver, using Harrington ammunition.
  [Timeline source disagrees with these being in 1816.]
• 1820–40: Drakia elided to Draka in popular usage. Massive slave uprisings on Jamaica, Saint Kitts, the Bahamas and Caymans. 100,000 more slave owners immigrate to Drakia. The remaining British islands in the Caribbean (Barbados, Trinidad, the Leewards, and the Windwards) have failed uprisings that end in massacres of the slaves.
• 1823: Thomas Jefferson makes an impassioned speech to Congress that causes the U.S. to make its last piece of binding legislation: the abolition of slavery. This triggers a massive flood of immigration to the Crown Colony by planters and other slave owners, with their property if they can manage it.
• 1827: Mexican Emperor Iturbe dies, Santa Ana seizes power.
• 1828: First transcontinental railroad, between Walvis Bay and Shanahpur.
• 1832: Reform Act dies a horrible death in a Parliament committee. Scandals rock the House of Commons, causing the House of Lords to grab some of its powers. Dominion of Draka Act grants the Crown Colony "responsible government" and control over its own currency. The first Draka Constitution proclaims fealty to the "Ruling and Reigning Monarch of Great Britain."
• 1834: First Paris Air Show. "Rugby ball" balloons capture the imaginations of Draka and Americans.
• 1836–40: Texas–Mexican War
• 1840: Draka conquest of the Sahara complete. Start of the conquest of southern west Africa and the eastern savanna. Michael Faraday immigrates to the Dominion. Mexican–American War. Santa Ana lynched after Sequoyah reads Gallatin to the troops. Provisional Mexican government petitions for entrance into the United States, and is accepted. The Opium War.
  [The disease problem in Africa is addressed with quinine, sanitation, and use of steam vehicles instead of animals.]
• 1846: Draka Harrington Mark II rifle introduced, a straight pull bolt action black powder repeater. It was a brass cartridge repeater using a detachable box magazine and a special action. Similar to a Straight-Pull, one grasped the bolt handle, pulled it a quarter turn down and forward to eject a spent cartridge and cause the controlled round feeder to grip the next cartridge, then pulled it back up to chamber the new round. Colt and S&W brass cartridge revolvers, after Telliard's initial design.
• Before 1848: Because there is still bigotry although nothing official, the Mormons still set out for "New Zion". No Potato Blight in Ireland due to reduced trade with America. Victoria Hanover (Queen Victoria) has been systematically malnourished by cooks planted by the conspirators, so her hereditary madness manifests early. This included only eating vegetables if they had first been boiled with baking soda. Upon being crowned, she insists on bathing in the blood of young girls, among other bizarre and evil practices usually ascribed to vampires or devil worshippers.
• 1848: Revolutions break out nearly everywhere. The House of Lords has become increasingly oligarchic, and Commons representation is worth little, so the common man turns to revolt. Queen Victoria flees to France (where she is Reine Victoire), but the population revolts there as well and she is beheaded. English and French rebels execute Palmerston and other members of the Royal Family. The last member of the House of Hanover dies when Australian rebels sink his ship in Sydney Harbour.
  There is a "stock run" on the British East India Company in London, and most of the Tea Fleet is bought by the Dominion of Draka. Unfortunately, this means the British leaders of the Sepoys aren't supplied on time, so they begin bickering, and the Maratha takes the opportunity to overthrow the Mogul Empire and execute the Sepoys.
  In Germany, the various rebellions rally around Karl Marx, resulting in the Federalsozialist Republik von Deutschland (Federal Socialist Republic of Germany), with its capital at Frankfurt.
  France executes the English monarch and all the French nobles who supported her (which was all of them.) This second revolution occurred sans Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. As the Napoleonic institutions had been abolished wholesale by Georges I and II, and Victoire, France is now on much shakier ground, but a Second Republic is established.
  The Hapsburg Empire is ripped to shreds by the revolutions. Metternich is shot, Franz Joseph flees to the Dominion, and everything falls apart at the seams. The Venetian Republic is reborn. Austria becomes a small republic that is eventually absorbed into the FSR of Germany. The Esterhazies continue to rule Hungary and Transylvania, and seize Croatia as well. The Ottoman Empire fails to get anything significant.
  In Sweden, King Gustav V dies without heirs. As the House of Vasa had already immigrated either to the Dominion or the United States, it becomes a free-for-all for the throne. Norway declares independence and quickly sets up a republic under President Haakon Magnusson. King Christian XVI of Denmark becomes involved in the Swedish Civil War. Marx forcibly spreads revolutionary socialism to the entire Jutland peninsula, joining Denmark to the FSR of Germany. Throughout Europe, nobles flee south, mostly to the Draka.
  The second Draka Constitution guarantees slavery. It also proclaims the Dominion to be the Domination of the Draka, and with no ruling or reigning monarch in Great Britain, declares itself outside English rule or law — "a sovereign nation answerable to none until the true political and social order is restored." For a national anthem, one of the conspirators suggests the "Imperial March" from Star Wars. Jefferson Davis elected first Archon. The Harrington Mark II rifle adopted as general issue to Domination troops. The Domination has finished conquering the northeastern Sahara and now begins on east central Africa.
  [The story put the Mark II in 1848, so I drew a distinction between "introduced" and "adopted". The revolt in Britain is called a Chartist Revolution by some. Those "some" also doubt the Ottomans could do anything right now, particularly against the Crown Lands of St. Stephan, so I gave Croatia to the Hungarians.]
• 1848–1870: In the rest of the Caribbean, Gallatinist forces begin rebellions that ultimately cause slave owners to flee to the Domination. These people would later settle in the Indian Ocean islands. The King of Sardinia tries repeatedly to press his claim to the throne of France, but the Second Republic rebuffs every attempt. Italy is never united, and Italian Nationalism eventually fizzles out.
• 1850: The United States changes its name to the North American Confederacy. Due to cutthroat capitalism, cutting-edge medicine now comes from tribal medicine men, medicine show quacks, and the odd herb granny. Whenever someone with a real medical solution comes along, the fakes quickly firebomb his or her place. Everything is slipshod, and corporations cut corners any way they can. Black Republic of Haiti petitions for and joins the NAC. R.J. Gatling can't find a market for his Machine Gun in the NAC (it isn't a personal weapon), so he takes it to Europe but is sidetracked to the Domination. There, he develops the first practical machine gun.
  [I added Haiti to the NAC now, "to encourage the others," otherwise it just hangs out there. Ben states that his vision of the NAC is a "steampunk Bakunin" akin to some published dystopian SF — I'll have to find the title again.]
• 1853: Czar Alexander IV dies in "a hunting accident." As his son has not yet been born, a Romanov cousin named Mikhail II ascends to the Russian throne.
• 1854: The Mormon Patriarchy of Deseret is declared, Brigham Young is First Patriarch. Russia "opens" Japan.
  [1856 for Deseret in the story.]
• 1855: Hung Hsiu Chuan throws the Manchus out of China and begins the Taiping Dynasty.
• 1856: Austria petitions for, and is annexed to the Federal Socialist Republic of Germany.
• 1859: First prototype airships flown, over Namibia. Elijah McCoy invents the telephone.
• 1860: Michael Faraday begins testing an electric light. Faraday Electromagnetic Combine created. Capetown–Alexandria Railroad completed. All of Africa is "broken to the yoke."
• 1864: Domination adopts a new combat rifle. The Mark II 1/2 got its name from the fact that other than the magazine well, the barrel, the bolt and the chamber, it was exactly the same as the Mark II. It fired a new round; a copper jacketed 170 grain pointed "slim tail" bullet propelled by fifty-five grains of nitrocellulose powder using a center-fire primer, known as 7.5 x 60 millimeter Draka Service. It would remain in active service, even if only for the last twenty years as an open field sniper rifle, until 1935.
  [After 1865 in the story.]
• 1865: Nearly all of the Domination is linked by rail, road and wire. The typical steam car has a fully independent hydraulic front and rear suspension, recirculating ball steering, a hydraulic transmission, and a top speed of about 100 kph. The usual price is A5,000 give or take a few Aurics, equivalent to OTL about $200,000. They were used to devastating effect in the final conquests of Africa.
• After 1865: A rifle using a copper jacketed version of the original .45 round, with a steel core bullet and a steel penetrator is tested and then put into production. This weapon came as a result of espionage reports that the Ottoman Turks were secretly building ironclad steam powered war cars.
  [This is the Anti-Material sniper rifle mentioned later.]
• 1866: Brazilian emperor, his court, and all slaveholders driven out by Gallatinist guerillas.
  [1861 in the story.]
• 1868: Alexander Stephens is the second Archon.
  [Proposal of "Old Pete" Longstreet rejected by that critical "some".]
• 1869: Communists overthrow the Esterhazy monarchy of Hungary and Transylvania.
• 1870–77: Pan-Asian War.
  The Ottoman Empire was bitter over the slow losses of its territory, and wanted to reclaim its lands from Russia and the Domination. Persia had been fighting a slow, losing battle of attrition against Russia, and has been supporting the Uigur rebels. The Maratha were rabidly pro-Hindu and pro-caste system. They razed mosques and killed any Muslim clerics who dared claim equality between untouchable and Brahmin. In China, the Emperor claimed Turkestan as part of "The Heavenly Kingdom." Also the religious claims made by this "Mahdi" were in direct conflict with those of Emperor Hung Hsiu Chuan, and there are border clashes in Manchuria with Russia. The three sides thus became Russia and Domination vs. Ottoman Empire and Persia vs. Taiping China and Maratha India and Satsuma Japan.
  The war began as a series of border clashes between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, but quickly grew into a miniature world war. The Domination invaded Turkey. In Japan, the Satsuma bowmen defeat the Choshu musketeers, and the Satsuma Rebellion is successful. The Japanese (mostly Samurai) then proceeded to invade Sakhalin Island and attack Vladivostok. The Domination quickly learned that firing line tactics were obsolete with repeating weapons. Domination introduces land mines and poison gas. The Anti-Material rifles proved to be extremely valuable against Turkish armor. Turkish war cars used inferior armor, but mounted six-inch smoothbore muzzle loading guns. Draka war cars much had better armor and better engines, but mounted puny 7.5 mm (infantry rifle version) anti-personnel Gatling guns. It took nearly five years to completely conquer the Ottoman Empire, including the Thousand Dirigible Raids on Constantinople, Baghdad, and Teheran, but the momentum made the conquest of Persia relatively easy after that.
  The Machine Gun Mark II was belt-fed for easier loading and fewer jamming problems, but 7.5 was still strictly an anti-personnel round. Russian troops with imported (surplus) Mark II rifles savaged the Japanese samurai and archers. Treaty of Moscow grants Russia all of Turkish Europe except Bulgaria and the territory around Constantinople, as well as Armenia, Chinese Turkestan, Tibet, Afghanistan, Outer Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin Island, Hokkaido, and a Protectorate over Japan. The Domination got the rest of the Ottoman Empire, Arabia, Persia, Ceylon, uncontested mastery over most of the Indian Ocean islands, and the right to build railroads in India. In addition, the "Social Alliance" was signed between India, Russia, and the Domination. It states that each nation would uphold the "Proper Social Order" and each nation pledged to aid the other in the effort to put down challenges to said order.
  [I think there's an unprosecuted war between India and China here, and no mention of how China loses to Russia including that there are apparently no Europeans propping them up.]
• 1877–1906: Conspirators prop up Deseret, maintain a delicate balance of diplomatic hostility between Russia and the Federal Socialist Republic, and subtly frustrate an economic miracle in Taiping China. Second computer project completed (design dams and locks for several African rivers), and third begun (ballistics simulations for some rifle designs).
  [The second one is a worthy project indeed, but it could have been done earlier, to help out with the Suez Canal and the railroads. And it sounds like the third has been underway for a while too, although maybe what was introduced was just improved versions of OTL weapons without the false starts. The fourth and fifth projects are supposedly basic draft design for some primitive tanks, and simulation work in support of atomic bomb projects. But I'm thinking that Ben Breeck got the timing slightly wrong after the first project, as his first tank already showed up several years ago. The atomic bomb stuff can wait until the 1920s, but again a bit of money spread around in OTL would have made this a lot easier! Or just get everything you can about the WWII bombs from the year 2020 or so. Either way, it would be a good idea to grab some OTL engineering texts before you jump in the time machine. Because unless you've got the trained manpower to program that massively parallel computer, it just sits there and does nothing but eat power. So, a good use of money (time machine + lottery) before you leave OTL is to hire people to do design and/or programming work for you ahead of time. After you leave OTL, you either have to do it within the small circle of conspirators, or educate your chosen society up to the necessary level before they can do it themselves. But this is all fantasy anyway…]
• 1880: Alexandria Tolgren begins experimenting with high-capacity, recoil action pistols using the standard smokeless powder 10x25 millimeter load. Accuracy is found to be unsatisfactory.
  The King of Sardinia and Piedmont finally renounces his claim to the French throne. Porfirio Diaz elected president of North American Confederacy.
• 1883: Harrington Arsenal introduces a gas action pistol design scaled down from the OTL Desert Eagle (ironic, isn't it!), with unmatched accuracy within 50 yards, if it is stripped and cleaned regularly. This design becomes the rage of Europe, but many militaries are slow to embrace the new technology.
• 1885: Japanese rebel against Russia. Armed with new Maxim-style machine guns, the Russians quickly overwhelm the rebellion. Czar Ivan VI formally annexes Japan and reorganizes the eastern part of the Russian Empire. This creates the Grand Duchies of the Far East (Manchuria, Korea, Kamchatka and lands between, capital at Vladivostok), Japan (capital at Nagoya), and Alaska (capital at OTL Anchorage).
• 1893: Submachine gun invented simultaneously by Domination, Deseret, and North American Confederacy. In Deseret, the weapon resembles the Ingram copy of the Thompson, though it used fifty-round drums, seventy-five round snails, or 100 round double drums like the original Thompson. In the NAC, Remington and Marlin come up with select-fire versions of their garden-variety automatic pistols. Except for the magazines, they weigh the same as their normal pistols. The only parts not interchangeable between machine pistol and conventional automatic are the magazine slot, the bolt, and the selector switch. The Domination's submachine gun resembles German copies of the Sten gun.
  A young Swiss patent clerk named Albert Einstein falls down a flight of stairs and dies, apparently another assassination by the conspirators.
• 1894: Domination submachine gun used to devastating effect during serf rebellions in Alexandria.
• 1896: First semi-automatic rifles introduced. Deseret adopted the Browning Rifle in 7.62x55. The rifle basically resembled an M1 Garand, except that it used a longer stroke piston and loaded from Mauser style clips rather than Mannlicher style ones. The Domination adopted the Mark III, which used an inertia recoil action similar to that used in Binelli and Franchi shotguns and the same detachable box magazine as the Mark II and Mark II 1/2. This design required the least amount of field stripping and cleaning and had the greatest amount of reliability. Later, the Danish would adopt the Madsen (with a magazine housing that stuck out above the sights) and the Venetian Republic would adopt the Barretta (a design that would prove to be harder to keep clean than the pre-WWII Simonov rifle).
  The two machine gun series designations in the Domination permanently diverge now. Light, anti-personnel weapons would be developed under the SAW series designation, while large-caliber machine guns would go under the HMG designation. SAW Mark I was a single barrel weapon based on the German MG42 of World War II, though the Technical Section bosses didn't know that. It came in heavy tripod and folding bipod versions. HMG Mark I was apparently not successful.
• 1903: Domination of the Draka adopts the Mark III submachine gun. It superficially resembles an Uzi, but with an angled pistol grip/magazine housing, a slightly revised lock, an adjustable cyclic rate, and it fires from a closed bolt for lower recoil and less likelihood of jamming.
• 1906: Russia is stronger than in OTL, but still the worms of corruption and discontent gnaw at the country. Germany has the second most advanced army in the world, but military leadership was worse than Communist China's just after the Cultural Revolution. France has better generals, especially from battling the Spanish and Sardinians who kept pressing claims to the throne. However the populace was getting intolerant of the exploitative, monopolistic variety of French capitalism that this timeline produced in reaction to the Federal Socialistic Republic. Italy was divided. Spain had fallen behind the pack in many areas, as the Royal bureaucracy was running out of steam. Switzerland remained neutral, but the Schmidt–Ruben was as poor a design for a rifle as the Canadian Ross was in OTL.
• 1907: The Great War begins, a war to end all credulity to war. The proximate cause of the war was the assassination of the Grand Duke of Yugoslavia by a Croatian terrorist supported by Germany. Russia then delivered an ultimatum to the President, Chancellor, and Parliament demanding various reparations, upon threat of instant war. In so many words, the Federal Socialist Republic told the Czar to shove it. Russia declared war. It seemed that it would only be a regional dispute, until France guaranteed Russia all aid and assistance (the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that) and declared war on Germany. Unfortunately, while it didn't quite call for cavalry charges against machine gun emplacements, Plan IX (designed by the conspirators) did require an invasion through Belgium to strike at the Rhine Valley and a quick seizure of Frankfurt. Belgium refused to cooperate, quite naturally. What should have been a quick, easy conquest and partition (in the minds of French and Russian military planners) quickly turned into a nightmare when Britain and the Venetian Republic sided with Germany (with friends like these, who needs enemies?) and Spain, nobody's friend, crossed the Pyrenees one more time.
  [The British Empire/Commonwealth (sans India and Draka) is not mentioned from 1848 to 1907, so it is apparently a bunch of independent weak democratic, socialist or Gallatinist states. I'm surprised there is still a Britain, but I guess the popular revolution in 1848 had enough military force to forcibly re-unify Scotland and Wales if they tried to break away from England.]
• 1908: Russia falters first. The combination of poor harvests, grain bins without elevators, ethnic troubles, and the side invasion of Hungary that bogged down all other campaigns for six months took them out of the war by 1909. Meanwhile, half the troops from Alaska were called back to join the fighting, and the North American Confederacy (or rather, the citizens thereof), began a massive invasion which resulted in the snake flag being raised in Anchorage. Just after that, Deseret declares war on the North American Confederacy, simply for being a nation of godless capitalists. They are fanatical, but militarily rather unorganized. Except in the small arms area, they had allowed their technological complex to fall behind.
• 1909: Czar Peter II activates the Social Alliance while he is fighting for his throne. The Domination invades up the Caucasus, and through its province of Bulgaria. By the time the Bolsheviks had captured Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Draka had Nizhni Novgorod, Kiev, and Odessa. Then the Draka made amphibious raids on Treiste and Dubrovnik/Ragusa (held by the Venetian Republic).
  [The Bolsheviks must be an internal rebellion in Russia, inspired and aided by the conspirators and/or Germans.]
• 1910: The Draka advance west, and get to East Prussia by winter.
• 1911: Airship paratroop tactics used to infiltrate enemy lines. Everyone but the Draka use firing line tactics preceded by a rolling barrage. Casualties are hideous, but they are much worse for the Germans. Frankfurt and Munich are reached by Oktoberfest. The FSR never formally surrenders, but organized resistance collapses except for small groups of Volksturm.
• 1912: The Domination sweeps through France, Spain, Norway and Italy. The North American Confederacy attempts to intervene, but their airships have canvas over wooden frames. Corporate wars there were for assets, not blood, and were conducted with minimum casualties in mind for both sides. Meanwhile, in Russia, the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, the anarchists, several noble factions and various miscellaneous brigand groups have been turning those parts of land not under Draka control into a wasteland not seen in Europe since the Thirty Years War.
• 1913: Mormon Patriarchy of Deseret loses its struggle against the "godlessness and selfishness" of the North American Confederacy. It took five years, but in the end the last patriarch was dead by his own hand. The only nation that still claims the earthly arm of the Kingdom of Heaven is Taiping China.
• By 1916: Switzerland surrenders without a shot fired, as it isn't self-sufficient in food. Sweden was tougher, requiring many reprisals before resistance is quelled. Finland is even worse, but is isolated from any help the NAC could provide.
• 1918: Gandhi re-remerges, organizing sit-down strikes that cripple the Maratha Empire.
• After 1918: Emperor Rojesh dies, naming the Domination his heir (most likely those conspirators again, or just dirty tricks). The Draka step in quickly. Although Mohandas Gandhi tries to organize passive resistance, reprisals against families of workers and a large bounty on his head lead to it collapsing in a few weeks.
  [Britain must go at some time too, probably after a pause to digest the rest of Europe.]
• 1935: Domination begins "Operation Sudden Death" to conquer the North American Confederacy. This involves Draka trading vessels moored in NAC ports suddenly unloading troops and deploying atomic bombs. These are followed by long-range fixed-wing paratroop drops and multiple amphibious landings. The Draka have also by now adopted the Mark IV rifle. This is a select fire inertia recoil design using a 6x42 mm cartridge, 32 grains to propel 100 grains to 2900 fps.
  [South America, China, Japan etc. are left as an exercise for the reader.]

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