The History

I’m currently writing steampunk in an alternative 19th century. After the Little Ice Age intensified in the mid-1600s, it’s a different world:

Facing flooding, cold, and migration of fish stocks, Scandinavians migrate south, sparking revolts across the German principalities, and leaving Austria-Hungary undefended against the Ottomans in 1683, and prompting over a century of European wars.

Distracted in Europe, the Ottomans also face power-struggles with African and Italian forces in North Africa and the Balkans.

Sub-Saharan Africa‘s now-temperate climate prompts development, social change, land reform and large-scale agriculture. The new nations also face Europeans who are ready to risk slavery by fighting for land and food.

In southern Europe, the cascade of cheap Scandinavian labour and mercenaries create pressure for land and social reform, staving off famine and revolution.

Scandinavia’s remaining princes, war-leaders preferring invasion to migration, occupy North Britain, forcing the rump kingdom of England and her Dutch allies to “pay the Danegeld”. Abandoning their colonies, the Anglo-Dutch live by piracy, banditry, fishery and farming, before turning to steam power and machines, to supply themselves and the Danelaw.

Expelled from Iberia by the Spanish (thanks to those Scandinavian mercenaries), the Portuguese Empire retreats to arable, silver-rich South America, while Spain holds sway around the Gulf of Mexico and the southern coastlines of North America.

Abandoned British colonists ally with Native Americans to drive France out of North America, but with the First Nations unwilling to commit to maritime war, France holds onto the Sugar Islands.

In Russia, the airship-equipped Stroganov Company pushes east, throwing aerial bridges across vast spaces and impenetrable geography, into India and North America, seeking fur, game and food.

On the edges of Russian claims, China and Japan are fierce rivals for arable land and fisheries.