SCENARIO: Columbus’ voyage was lost.

1492, October 17 – The Sea seems endless. The men are exhausted. After seven weeks sailing we feel we may never find land. The lookout, Rodrigo, thought he sighted land, but we were at that moment taken by a strong southerly current such that we could not verify his claim. I myself thought I saw a light earlier that evening, but could not have been sure. The night was so thick that no one else claimed to have seen it.

October 25 – I think now that God never meant for us to sail west. Perhaps there is only ocean to the end of the earth. Or forever. I would never admit it in front of my men of course but…

November 2 – Land! A large mass was sighted just after dawn today, and we have stepped tepidly ashore. We have made camp on the shoreline and sent a party inland to get the lay of the land.

November 3 – The party led by Juan never returned, though they were to return within the hour. The men, spent in jubilation at the sight of land, now begin to worry. The captain of the marines has told me his sentries reported shadows moving in the jungle. I dismiss this as mere paranoia.


In 1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain sent one Christopher Columbus westward across the Atlantic in search of Asia. His return, expected within a few years at most, never came. Columbus died in November of 1492 on the island of Hispaniola.

Meanwhile Portugal was busy exploring a route to India around the Cape of Good Hope, having discovered the cape in 1488. Seven years after the ill-fated Columbus expedition, Vasco da Gama of Portugal returned, having successfully travelled to India.

With Portugal in the lead, a race was on to get around the Cape of Good Hope and colonize the coasts of India and Africa.

The year after da Gama returned from India, 1500, Portugal organized another expedition to establish trade with India, led by a noble named Pedro Alvares Cabral. In order to catch the trade winds, which would bring him around the Cape of Good Hope however, Cabral had to sail west, out into the Atlantic. Not having much nautical experience, however, Cabral went somewhat too far. Before long, his men spotted seaweed in the water. They knew they were nearing land in the west, and sure enough land was sighted on the 23rd of April 1500, what we know as the eastern coast of Brazil.

RESULT:

Portugal gets the jump on Spain in colonizing the New World, in addition to its gains in Africa and India.

Tension between Spain and Portugal escalates in the 1580s, and results in a war, with Portugal as the decisive victor thanks to vast reserves of bullion mined from South America. During the war Queen Elizabeth breaks the Anglo-Portuguese alliance and attacks Portugal, but France intervenes on Portugal’s side. The Netherlands is ceded to Portugal at the end of this war.

The burgeoning Ottomans, seeing a weakened Spain, aided the Morisco revolt of conquered Muslims in south Spain.

Spain subsequently lost southern Italy, Andalusia (to Moors), and Holland to Portugal. The Hapsburg dynasty never materialized, and, when King Philip II died in battle with the Ottomans, Spain was brought into an Iberian Union with Portugal under Portuguese King Sebastian.

By 1600 Portugal was the preeminent world power, with Latin America and the Caribbean under its control. France would land on the east coast of North America a few years later, while England pursued a more slothful colonization policy based in Newfoundland. Andalusia was reconquered by King Sebastian, and in 1675 the Iberian Union was politically formalized, the two merging into one state, with the Spanish language largely discouraged.

Competition between the navies of England and Portugal ensured that Portugal’s ally France could develop its North American colonies freely.

Meanwhile wars in Italy and North Africa, along with the occasional spat with England gradually bankrupted the Iberian Union, which declined somewhat in power during the 1600s. France became preeminent during this time, having developed colonies and expanded along America’s east and Gulf coasts.

The formation of the Iberian India Company in 1715 based in Goa changed Portugal’s fortunes on the world stage. India was conquered by Iberia by 1800.

England gained influence in East Asia at Malacca and Singapore over Portugal, and discovered Australia soon after.

By the time Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica in 1769, France and Iberia were rivals.

So when revolution broke out in Spain with an attempt to establish a Republic founded on Enlightenment ideals of democracy, France assisted, with Napoleon commanding. A long war broke out in which Portugal recaptured Spain but lost Central America to France. England sided with France against Iberia. At war’s end in 1809, the Portuguese speaking territory of Azteca revolted against its new French masters, established a copycat republic of the ill-fated Republic of Spain.

This marked the world’s first democracy.

A few years later in France a republican revolution broke out, as in the Low Countries. Holland (and what is now Belgium) seceded from Iberia successfully, forming the Union of the Low Countries, another republic.

Meanwhile, in France, Napoleon successfully positioned himself as the Emperor after the fall of the king, and proceeded to invade Iberia. He was so successful in invading and occupying Iberia that the king had to flee to South America, which became independent as a result. By this time England and Prussia felt France was a significantly greater threat than Portugal, especially now with a friendly Union of the Low Countries near them, so they joined the battle against Portugal.

Azteca was allied to Iberia during this war and as a result fought several successful battles in the American southwest, gaining control of New Orleans.

Eventually, Napoleon died (1820), and a true Republic took root, as did one in liberated Iberia.

South America, called Henrica, (after Henry the Navigator), was ruled by a king until 1880, when a revolution ousted him in favor of a republic. The Inca nation (never fully conquered) broke off during this revolt.

The first of the European nations to industrialize, in the 1830s, was Iberia. England and France followed quickly, however. By 1850, the newly industrialized nations were “scrambling for Africa” and Asia.

France took the Sahara region and West Africa, England South and Central Africa, Portugal North and Central-Southern, and much of East Africa and the Levant.

The Low Countries took parts of East Africa in a bid to compete with their larger neighbors.

In Asia, England consolidated holdings in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, while Henrica took the Philippines and New Guinea by force.

The Qing dynasty by the end of the 19th century was faltering, in favor of a republican revolution. This gave previously reclusive Japan a chance at expansion, and subsequently contact with the world. Russia expanded southward and across the Bering Strait.

Louisiana and Newfoundland became independent states peacefully, and expanded into the interior. Germany and Italy unified around 1900.

In 1900 war erupted between the powers of Europe once more, ignited by a naval skirmish in the Strait of Madagascar between England and Iberia. In this First Global War, France, Italy, Henrica, and Germany fought alongside Iberia. The Low Countries, the Ottomans, Russia, Inca, and Azteca fought with England.

The first “modern” war, there were extensive casualties.

Fought to a stalemate, an international body called the United States was formed afterward in an attempt to prevent another war.

Independence movements in Africa and Asia were put down brutally. These quellings had racist motivations, but the Europeans powers were also afraid of powerful new states like Azteca or Henrica coming onto the world stage. Azteca, Louisiana and Newfoundland considered part of “the West” helped put these rebellions down.

Assimilation programs were undertaken such that the primary languages of the world became Portuguese, English, French, Arabic, Chinese and Russian.

In modern times the independence movements of the New World are seen as historical anomalies, and colonies no longer feel as though they are separate from the nation. Citizenship is extended to all. A pact between Iberia, France, England and Henrica, the world’s most powerful nations, has ensured continued integration via globalization and the United States, and lasting world peace.