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Empires of Liberty is a timeline wherein the United States gained Canada as part of the Revolution, the British Empire still thrives, and Germany fell from power but renewed itself in the form of a Republic.

Today, there is a multipolar world, with the United States, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Republic of Germany being the major powers, and with Russia, France, Japan, China, India, and several other nations vying for power.

Timeline[]

16th Century[]

1528 - Bartholemeus Welser is granted a proprietary colony in what is called the Province of Venezuela, or Klein Venedig, today "Neu Venedig." 

1529 - September 8th, Neu Nürnberg (OTL: Maracaibo) is founded by Governor Welser.

1534-1542 - Georg von Speyer becomes Governor of Klein Venedig, focusing on settling the territory, rather than searching for gold, and successfully brought in over 1300 German settlers from the Rhineland and Hanover. About 340 died due to various tropical diseases and heat within three years, but by 1550, Neu-Nürnberg had a population of 1500 men and women. Philipp von Hutten becomes the governor of the colony.

1543 - Neu Augsburg (OTL Santa Ana de Coro) receives 450 Rhinelanders, men and women, and troops. Regular German settlement begins in Klein Venedig, with 800 additional Germans from various towns in the west and south coming into the province just this year.

1546 - Governor von Hutten successfully gains two dozen ships of settlers from cities on the Rhine, allowing him to start coastal settlements in what has become Neu Venedig.

1567 - Von Hutten founds New Breslau (OTL: Caracas) with the hope of creating a settlement for plantations and farmers. It was named after the European city to honor the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I, to encourage further settlement. A mild response came with eight ships and 722 men and women, of which 300 knew how to farm, and others being craftsmen from Breslau, Cologne, Munich, Prague, Buda, Pest, and several other cities in the southern part of the HRE.

1569 - Karlstadt, Klein Venedig (OTL Cumaná) is founded by Martin Karlstadt, son of Andreas, a Lutheran preacher. Though the city would be destroyed by earthquakes a few times, the city has preserved the old street plan of the old German town, and most of its older buildings preserved most of the architectural styles of the early colonial buildings.

1570 - Neu Nürnberg boasts 14,245 settlers, a number of them farmers, with many craftsmen, blacksmiths, builders, etc. Neu Augsburg has 9818 settlers. Karlstadt 581, New Breslau 1840 people. Coinage in the colony is a disorganized mish-mash of Spanish coins and coins from the Holy Roman Empire itself, leading colonists to petition for a new coin just for this colony. It would take another 20 years for it to be realized, and be a bilingual Spanish/German coin.

1586 - Sir Francis Drake takes Cartagenas, and negotiates a hefty ransom: 107,000 pesos (pieces of eight) for the city. On the way out, he finds rest at Karlstadt for his men, and favorably mentions the people as willing to trade, as the Spanish monopoly on their output is starting to cause some discontent.

1588-89 - The Spanish Armada is defeated in a decisive victory, and the Counter Armada under Sir Francis Drake yielded a decisive victory that left Spain in a weakened state long enough that England would be able to safely colonize the New World, though not after some time. The Anglo-Spanish war was a costly drain on the royal treasury.

1590 - Heinrich Welser introduces Wisent to the peninsula north of Neu Augsburg, with a herd of 50 animals to provide meat for the colony. Some escape and make it to the grasslands of Patagonia over the next several decades. By 1700, there are herds of several thousand roaming the Mato Grosso area and farther south.

Kleinvenedig

Klein Venedig, with the four main settlements marked.

1591 - Queen Elizabeth offers the Spanish amicable peace terms, and they sign the Treaty of London, ending the Anglo-Spanish War. It transfers Hispaniola to the English, guarantees freedom of worship for Catholics in Ireland in exchange for Spain not attempting to restore Catholicism in England, and Spain giving up any support of Irish rebellion. With Spain-Portugal (in a union at this point) in a difficult place, the English make claim to the sparse River Plate region, and any tributary thereof, which flows into the ocean at Buenos Aires.

1596 - Ireland's rebellion falls apart after scarcely two years, and the Treaty of Mellifont is signed. The Irish rebels are bought with titles of nobility, oaths of allegiance to the crown, freedom of worship, and freedom of language, such that they must speak English in dealings with the court, but within Ireland, can continue speaking Irish. Queen Elizabeth even had an Irish primer prepared for her, since she expressed a desire to learn Irish.

17th Century[]

1604 - The first major expedition to Hispaniola occurs under King James I. It becomes renamed Queen Anne's Island, after King James' wife, Queen Anne of Denmark. Santo Domingo is renamed Port Margaret after the King's first daughter, and a settlement founded at Cape Mary (OTL Cape Hatien) and Jamestown (OTL Port-au-Prince).

1607 - Port Mary, Queen Anne's Island (Gonaives) founded, named for the Princess Mary, who died at age 2. Port Sophia (OTL Puerto Plata) is founded the same year.

1624 - The Dutch capture Formosa from the Iberian Union.

1630 - Dutch conquer a portion of Brazil up to Belem. A large number of settlers come from Limburg, whose dialect retains the use of du, dij, dijns in everyday speech, which preserves the pronoun in Brazilian Dutch. Following these settlers are a number of Plautdietsch (Low German) speakers, who mix in with the population well due to the similarities of their languages.

1631 - Fort Oranje constructed and garrisoned by 366 men.

1633 - The Dutch, having lost the island of St. Maarten to the Spanish, retaliated by attacking Curaçao, Bonaire, and Aruba. Bonaire was conquered in March 1636. The Dutch built Fort Oranje in 1639.

1634 - Cabedelo is renamed Margaretha by the Dutch; João Pessoa is renamed Frederikstadt.

1636 - Aruba claimed by the Dutch.

1637-1654 - English and Dutch ships attempt to take Amapa, but are repelled.

1637 - Frans Post, a Dutch artist, moves to Brazil, becoming the first European to paint the landscapes of America. He married Helena de Vries, in 1640.

1641 - Dutch invade Sao Luis in Brazil, naming it Dillenburg. Angola is captured from the Portuguese, becoming Dutch Angola.

1642 - Frans Post founds the New Holland Gallery, showing his paintings and those of Albert Eckhout. Dutch authorities in Formosa send word to bring additional settlers to the island to bring it under control. The locals worry about the Chinese traders eventually outnumbering the Dutch, and instead decide to bring in more settlers from Europe.

1643 - Albert Eckhout, a Dutch painter, married Christina Söderberg, one of 250 Swedish settlers who gained permission from Christina of Sweden to settle in New Holland, amongst a group of scientists, authors, and musicians, with a number of women to accompany them. The Dutch ship Rotterdam arrives in May with a fleet carrying 1200 Dutch - farmers, tradesmen, women, and others to build the defenses of Formosa from the Spanish, should they try to retake it.

1648 - Portuguese try to retake Dutch Angola, from the capital at Luanda. Kongo's King Garcia II, and Njinga pressed the Dutch to assist in driving the Portuguese from the colony. The Dutch are looking at the long view to try to monopolize the Angolan slave trade, and since Brazil is unable to send any reinforcements, Njinga and Garcia II's armies are able to crush the  Portuguese decisively at the Battle of Kombi.

1648 - Tapir are rounded up into the first ranch at Fort Schoonenborch (OTL Fortaleza), a settlem

Dutch Brazil 2

Nieuw Holland, or Dutch Brazil, after the treaty with Portugal, ceding territory south of the San Francisco River.

ent founded by the WIC. The Treaty of the Hague is signed, recognizing Dutch sovereignty over Angola and New Holland. The Dutch agree to keep to the northern side of the San Francisco River, and to continue to provide Africans for Portuguese Brazil's sugarcane plantations.

1654 - Jan Harkes, a farmer in Mauritsstad, finds an African baby boy crying, seemingly abandoned. He and his wife take the child in, and name him Willem, and raised him as their own. They would go on to have eight children naturally, who consider Willem as a brother.

1654 - May-September: Courish and Dutch colonies are established on Trinidad and Tobago. The Courish colony of Jauna Kurzeme ("New Courland") was centered at Fort Jacob on Great Courland Bay. The Dutch colony on the other side of the island had three forts: Lampsinsberg, Beveren, and Bellavista. In 1658, 500 Frenchmen joined the Dutch colony but formed their own settlement called Three Rivers (Le Quartier des trois Rivières). On 11 December 1659, the Courlanders peaceably surrendered their colony to the Dutch. At the time, the island held about 1500 Europeans and around 7000 African slaves working on 120 plantations, supporting six or seven sugar mills and two rum distilleries.

1655 - Dutch printing press brought to Mauritsstad, beginning the long history of printing in South America by the Dutch. The Bible and other works of Dutch literature are printed and sold in South America.

1655-60 - The "Swedish Deluge" leaves Warsaw with a post-war population of about 2000 people.  The Treaty of Olivia gives the Duchy of Prussia to Brandenburg, and Swedes invite Pomeranians to refill the cities they razed.  Within a decade, Warsaw becomes majority ethnic German.

1660 - 23,892 Dutch are recorded as living on Formosa, which include a garrison of over 8,000 officers manning a series of coastal forts and ships built from the forests of Taiwan. Over the twenty or so years of Dutch rule, the number of Han Chinese on the island had dwindled to around 350 or so.

1662 - An invasion force led by Koxinga attempts to land at Lu'ermen to take the island for China, but is rebuffed by the superior Dutch forces. The massacre that follows leads to a loss of over 24,000 Chinese aboard Koxinga's junks, most from drowning.

1669 - Geheimrat Johann Joachim Becher conducts a plan to lease the Guianas from the Dutch for Hanau, calling his plan the Hanauish Indies. The Dutch give him lease to settle, if he brought with him at least 1000 people, including families and troops. It took Becher two years to find enough settlers, who left through the port at Hamburg.

1670 - Warschau (Warsaw) has a population of around 31,000, of which only 4200 are Polish.  Over the next 30 years, German "Ostsiedlung" will bring thousands of Germans to the Vistula rivershed, including Plotzk (Płock), Graudenz (Grudziądz), Elbing (Elbląg), Leslau (Włocławek), Weißbergen (Białystok), and many new towns founded by Germans.

1671 - 1105 German settlers reach South America, founding New Hanau, later called New Coblenz (Macapa). Their first act would be to pray for safety, and once they disembarked, they built Fort Hanau.

1673 - Willem Harkes, raised as a Dutchman, travels to the Netherlands with his family, the Harkes, showing the European Dutch that the Africans can be civilized and can speak Dutch. Willem's accent is much like the Limburgisch accent of his parents, explaining his use of 'du' and other peculiarities of speech.

1675 - On a convoy from Sweden, there are 140 Finns, 40 Livonians, and 22 Estonians, aside from 96 Swedes.

1682 - Brandenburg South America colony "Großfriedrichsburg" is founded (OTL: Montevideo) by the Brandenburg American Company (Kurfürstliche Brandenburgisch-Afrikanische Compagnie), with 1200 settlers. Its first governor is Philip Peterson Blonck.

1683 - Dutch settlers found Nieuw Culemborg (OTL: Cururupu, Brazil). Brandenburg's Navy sends a convoy of five ships with another 1400 settlers. They land at Großfriedrichsburg, with three ships sending 200 each to sites up the coast they sighted coming down, settling at Magdeburg (Maldonado), Lauenburg (Rio Grande), Neu Potsdam (Pelotas), and Marienhafen is built in honor of Maria of Austria (at OTL: Florianopolis)

New brandenburg

Brandenburg-Prussia colony showing claimed territory vs controlled territory by 1699.

1696-99 - Dutch-Portuguese-Brandenburg War - small-scale war between Portuguese, Dutch and Brandenburgish settlers, backed by a few naval battles off the coasts. In the final Treaty of Mauritsstad, the Brandenburg colony is recognized as being bound by the river Uruguay and the Iguazu to its south branch, leading into the Atlantic. Brandenburg sends 150 troops to found a city at the new border, calling it Neu Köslin (Joinville) after the Pommern city. The Portuguese sent a detachment to harass New Hanau, but were repulsed by the settlers taking refuge in the fort there. Portuguese cede Colonia del Sacramento to the Brandenburg Indies Company settlers at Großfriedrichsburg, who rename it Cöln, later Köln (1786).

18th Century[]

1700 - New Holland has tripled from 40,000 to 120,000 in population. Großfriedrichsburg has a population of 4312, Marienhafen 1218. Dutch arrivals begin to notice a shift in how Dutch is pronounced here vs. in Europe: the 'g' at the beginnings of words is pronounced /g/ instead of /x/, and people are now using du, dij, dijns with friends and family, and within another twenty years, it becomes the standard 2nd person singular in Brazilian Dutch. The 'n' endings are more regularly pronounced than continental Europe.

1701 - Wilhelmshafen (Porto Alegre) is founded in New Brandenburg. This year, 7000 new settlers come to the Brandenburg colony from the Holy Roman Empire, most from Brandenburg-Prussia (3944), but also from Bavaria (830), Silesia, Austria, Styria, Hannover, Hamburg, Pommerania, Hesse, and a number of other states. From 1701-1705, several settlements are founded on the coast and inland: Lunenburg (OTL Rocha), Südwald (OTL Minas), Blumenau (OTL Blumenau, founded by Ferdinand Blumenau and 35 settlers), Josephshafen (OTL Itajai), and Neu Iglau (OTL Criciuma).

1706 - Governor Friedrich von Preußen orders construction of a royal highway from Neu Köslin to Cöln, passing through Großfriedrichsburg.

1707 - Act of Union occurs between Scotland and England.

1710 - Brandenburg's colony expands to nearly 79,600 people. New Holland has roughly 158,000 people, of which 65,000 are African. Dutch Angola, with 50+ years to it, now has 34,800 Dutch, and Formosa has 53,000.

1711 - Brandenburg Road is completed from Neu Köslin to Cöln, passing through all the coastal settlements, making transport faster, and improving trade and communication between settlements in the now Prussian colony.

1713 - Treaty of Utrecht yields Brandenburgish Guiana permanently (Amapa), and recognizes Belem down the Tocantins river as the west and southern borders of New Holland (effectively: Maranhao, Piaui and straight line to the San Francisco River, Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, Pernambuco). Stolpfurt (OTL: Oiapoque) is founded on the Stolp (OTL: Oiapoque) river to guard the northern side of the territory. Two hundred eighty-nine Prussians with families settle here. Uniquely, in now Prussian Guiana, typefaces had moved to the Dutch Roman style used in New Holland, as when the printing presses broke, they gradually started using the Dutch letters, and colonists began to like the Dutch Roman style used in Mauritsstad and the surrounding areas. Settlers coming from Europe began adopting the new styles in their printing, and this began limiting Fraktur and other similar typefaces to European audiences.

1735 - First Bible printed in German in Großfriedrichsburg in a Caslon-Dahlhaus typeset, with umlauts included for the language. The book, called the "Großfriedrichsburg Bibel" has a run of 250, and sells out its first run, even at its expensive price.

1740 - Siege of Cartagena - Admiral Vernon and his 26,000 men successfully capture Cartagena de Indias and Havana, Cuba, both of which are ceded to the United Kingdom

1776-1783 - Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel leased 22,000 Hessian troops to his nephew, King George III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, during the American Revolution for about £3,191,000 and recognition of his colony in South America, which was renamed Hessian Guiana, and the protection of the British Crown. Veterans of the war were granted free passage if they brought families to settle, bringing over 9200 new settlers to New Hanau.

1797 - Trinidad and Tobago are surrendered to the British.

19th Century[]

1812 - First Oktoberfest held in Großfriedrichsburg at a clearing that soon becomes named Süd-Theresienwiese, after the Theresienwiese in Munich. In 1814, Oktoberfest is held in Blumenau, then Neu Köslin. It becomes an annual event in 1854, with the importation of a large number of Munich natives to New Brandenburg and Prussian Guiana over the decade prior (1844-54, notably after 1848).

1815 - British capture and hold Essequibo, Berbice and Demerara from the Batavian republic, naming them British Guiana. Surinaam or Dutch Guiana to the English,


Major changes:

United States

-Bonin Islands

United Kingdom

-Providence Islands

Germany - start from the German Empire, subtract a little Schleswig, add Preßburg, German Austria, and a few overseas territories.

France - from our timeline's France, subtract Savoy, Corsica, Alsace-Lorraine, Nice, and Dunkirk, and all overseas islands and possessions.

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