MOgreland

Here is the revised backstory for the series of Sci Fi stories I want to write. Let me know what you think!

The Fall of the French Empire and the Rise of the Anglo-American Empires

The setting in this alternate-history is the early 1970s in a run-down, worn-out, morally and economically bankrupted, discouraged, almost-ready-for-a-Cultural Revolution, Post-Steampunk'd, Imperialized Nostalgia-fied Americanaland. The Land of the Chrome-crusted and Rust-busted, and the Home of the Not-So-Damned-Free and Neverwas.

I was looking for the political and social landscape to be considerably behind our time in many ways, with European and American Empires extant, racial and gender discrimination intact and in business, and the oppressions of Mercantilism and Colonialism still in existence. I also wanted to see science and technology to be in some ways far ahead of our own time, with robots, androids, giant mechs, space travel, and all that Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, 1930s to 1950s Rocketships and Atomics and Chrome and Tailfins stuff mingled together with something a lot like our Video Games, The Internet and Cell Phones added in for good measure. For all that to happen I needed to have technology considerably advanced compared to what it really was in our 1970s. Basically, one way of looking at it was that I wanted to see Anime/Manga-style giant Mechs used in World War II.

But how to make that happen? I decided to have working computers invented in what is the commonest Steampunk era, the late Victorian Age, approximately the 1880s-1890s. So a lot of things had to happen to make that occur, and I did not want to just do conventional Steampunk themes and settings. After all, my stories are not Steampunk stories, they are sorta post-Steampunk, in the same way that post-Apocalyptic stories are, well, after the Apocalypse.

The Story of Napoleon and the Horse

Anyone who knows their computer science or Steampunk-oriented history ought to know about Charles Babbage, who invented a working computer, greatly made of wood, which he called a Difference Engine, by 1889–91; he had actually designed one that would have worked, had it been completed, in 1822! In our fictional world, the invention of a working computer no later than the beginning of the 20th Century revolutionized the world, bringing the information age and artificial intelligence to the world by the 1940s, if not earlier.

One of the Divergence Points that preceded and set the stage for this invention was the Napoleonic Wars. In our reality, American inventor Robert Fulton was looking for a way to profit from his version of the steam engine as applied to ships on rivers or at sea, and was in fact in France at the time Napoleon was planning his invasion of England, between 1803 and 1804. Napoleon famously poo-pooed Fulton's steam engines, and in our reality Fulton changed allegiances to England and went there to invent all sorts of tools of war to oppose the threatened French invasion.

Meanwhile, Napoleon, against the advice of his commanders setting up and operating the invasion, ordered a large-scale test of the invasion craft in choppy weather, which killed a large number of men and horses. In our reality, of course, the invasion never happened. In this alternate-history, it does happen, and it happens because of a horse.

In our alternate-history, we have Napoleon fall from his horse and become injured before he ever drives Fulton into the arms of his enemies. When Napoleon's invasion force commanders are forced to fall back upon their own devices, one of them decides to endorse Fulton's steam engines in the vessels of the invasion fleet.

Now, the invasion fleet alone was not sufficient to cross The Channel and breach the English defenses, but that is separate point. In the alternative-history we find that France has a stronger navy and is capable of meeting the British on more even terms than was the case in our reality. There are reasons for that, too, that cause some of our historical revisionism of the worldwide power of France to be different than in our world, and that reaches back into the time of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and even back further to the period of the Hundred Years' War, but I'm not going to go into that now. That is almost ancient history to the people of our alternative-history in the 1970s.

Suffice to say that the outcome of the Protestant Revolution was much more in favor of the Protestants in the alternate history than was the case in our own, and some of the factors that made France weaker and Britain stronger - especially on the seas - turned out quite differently.

But that is a different story for a different time.

What matters to the people of our alternate-history 1970 is that Napoleon's invasion fleet made it across The Channel, invaded southern England and when Napoleon himself later joined his army in London, it looked like it was all over for Britain and for Europe. Today Britain, tomorrow the world, it seemed. It was only a matter of mopping up the remnants of the British Royal Household, who were gathering with the survivors of the British aristocracy and landed gentry, and regrouping in the North.

The French looked dominant and it seemed a done deal until That Fateful Day: The Battle of Nottingham, September 26-28, 1804. After destroying the British morale with almost half a day of constant bombardment with their infamous artillery, the French routed the British left and looked ready to smash the unprotected flank of their center and sweep their forces off the field. Napoleon, exhultant and glorious on his white charger, waved his sword in the air and prepared to order the final charge himself when a Scottish marksman, unnoticed in a tree, put a round through the Emperor's temple. Down went Napoleon I, and down went the French army in dismay and defeat.

The victorious British seized the French steam-barges and, creating ironclad steamships by 1806, had swept the worlds' seas and oceans and began their rule of the seas, which helped them to cement the creation of the largest empire the world had ever seen.

The Anglo-American Empires

The British would, however, suffer an embarrassing defeat in the War of 1812 with the upstart United States of America.

Quite full of their global successes by 1812, the British Empire was expanding globally at a rapid pace when it was confronted by the militarily weak United States of America over the impressment of American citizens upon British warships, among other things. Seeing an opportunity to reassert British rule over its former colonies in North America, Britain eagerly enough joined in war against the U.S. and achieved some astounding successes on land. To secure their southern flank the British conquered Mexico in 1813, and in 1814 even managed to take and burn the American capitol.

Things turned disastrous, however, when the British command were convinced by the Royal Navy to split the American continent in two by driving a fleet of oceangoing ironclads up the Mississippi River and crushing the United States between the arms of two pincers: one from an amphibious assault from the secured river, deep in the heart of the continent, and the other from a returning force of British and allied Indians descending from Canada and approaching from the blockaded coastline, crushing the Atlantic coast cities.  

Unfortunately, a slightly outrageous American General by the name of Jackson took measures into his own hands and, without orders, marched his small army up the Missouri River and diverted it, drying up a good portion of the Mississippi River downstream from St. Louis, Missouri and leaving the British Combined Mediterranean and Atlantic Fleets stranded high and dry near West Memphis, Arkansas.

The humiliating capture of Nelson's Lost Fleet led to the end of the war, and following the Treaty of Moscow, 1815, the Empire of the United States found itself on a theoretically equal technological footing with the British Empire, at least on paper.

This relationship continued to be strained for a number of years after that. During the War of 1812 the British had conquered Mexico but had lost the territories of Texas and California to rebellions since. Seeing an opportunity to weaken the United States and strengthen their position in the Western Hemisphere, the British supported the Confederate States in their war of independence from Washington, D.C., which ran from 1864-1878.

The American Civil War ended with the defeat of the South in 1878, and the conquest of Mexico by Russian and French armies landing on the Pacific side, crossing on Russian steam ironclads. Britain briefly allied with the weak Spanish crown during the Spanish-American War of 1898, but was unable to prevent American and French landings on Cuba, while the Spanish navy's ships were blown out of the water by American warships in the Philippines.

Charles Babbage, by this time reduced to making a living as a poor jeweler and metallurgist, was captured in Cuba and placed in an American prison in Georgia. In his last days Babbage, in poor health and going mad, built his Difference Engine. Upon his death, the Difference Engine was stolen by a mysterious worldwide criminal organization known only as the Black Gang, and was used to rig gambling operations, stock markets and elections until it was captured by U.S. Imperial Agents in an organized crime raid in 1927. But by that time it had been copied and improved upon by geniuses employed by the Black Gang, and they made new fortunes selling illegal copies of the machines' plans on the black markets of the world.

Then came the Great Depression and the Great War of the 1930s.

But that, as they say, is a whole 'nother story.