The PoD is Hamilton killing Burr, rather than the other way around. The death of a sitting Vice President at the hands of another political leader led to a major scandal, where Hamilton was forced to flee to British North America in order to evade arrest. The British harboring Hamilton led to a major political rift between America and Britain, and along with the British practice of impressment, the already anti-British Jefferson was pushed to become an unofficial co-belligerent with Napoleon’s France. An unofficial war was fought between Britain and America, becoming an outright war in 1810 when the British invaded. The British supported a northern secessionist, abolitionist, pro-industrial movement which believed that the Democratic-Republicans were establishing an agrarian slave power over the entire United States, and feared an American Napoleon rising to power.
The Napoleonic Wars end with Napoleon dominating Europe, but in the Americas, the northerners successfully secede with British support. The rump United States becomes dominated by the Democratic-Republicans, while the new Federated States become dominated by the Federalists. Both totally remodel their respective countries under their own visions. Napoleon’s empire gradually falls back to revolutionary ideas, namely that of political physiocracy. This leads to a counter-ideology of Urbanism, which gradually defines the world’s ideological divide. Britain became a slave of its industrial elites, and France courted physiocracy more and more. The unification of Germany in 1863 shifted the balance of power against France, leading to a major war which ended in a stalemate, but with French power broken.
Modern Britain is organized along technocratic, socialist lines. The major parties, the Liberals, Socialists and Conservatives, all agree on the major aspects, and campaign on issues of personal competence and minor policy changes. The great British bureaucracy governs unimpeded by elected officials or a monarchy that has retreated fully into becoming nothing more than entertainment for the masses. The British government serves the interests of the cities: the massive state-owned industries, the remaining privately-owned megacorporations so closely entwined with the state, the great masses of unemployed and underemployed which are given a pittance in benefits in exchange for their eternal loyalty and dependence of the state. Any who oppose the British government may find themselves ineligible for government benefits, for example.
While not Marxists – the man himself having never amounting to more than a rich socialite – the government of the German Federation operates under a similar model. The German government has control over all of the means of production, meaning the factories. Of course, there is no redistributionist window dressing on this: the government of the German Federation seized control of the factories during its nationalist revolution, taking it away from the nobility and noveau riche who dominated German industry in the name of the German people. Being Urbanists, the Germans are run by a technocratic urban elite, mostly from western Germany. There is no ruling ideology or party in Germany, just bureaucrats and other highly educated experts who are selected by their predecessors, who themselves were selected by other experts. Naturally, the technocrats have created an entrenched elite, giving their own the best education, and thus the best qualifications to take power afterwards. The Germans do not practice the same sort of heavy-handed dictatorial measures that their Russian neighbors might, preferring more covert means of suppressing dissent. A popular means of asserting control is by banning dissidents from buying certain goods, a possibility in a country where every store is owned or otherwise controlled by the government.
The same could not be said of Japan. The Japanese took the British attempts to open them up to foreign trade poorly, leading to a war which ended in the abolition of the imperial system and the establishment of a pro-British shogunate. The British established their own industrial, market system in Japan, which didn’t benefit many Japanese as the British dominated the financial classes. This eventually led to a revolution in the late 19th century, which saw the British colonial regime replaced with one ruled by the trade unions. The Japanese Syndicalist Republic is a bit of a reverse-physiocracy, believing that industrial workers need to be the rulers of society, as they are the only ones who produce. The syndicalist republic is theoretically ruled by a collective of trade unions, with farmers unrepresented and considered an untouchable class. In truth, the trade unions take their marching orders from the Syndicalist Party, which claims to be a meritocratic, technocratic organization that represents all industrial workers in Japan.  The Syndicalist Party, like the technocrats in Germany, have become an entrenched elite, although many of them had ties in the yakuza, which was instrumental to the success of the Japanese Revolution. Ironically, the Japanese have become allies with the British, on both ideological and realpolitik grounds.
The Federated States is one of the less ideological Urbanist powers. The Federalist Party may not be the only legal political party, but it has won every federal election since the Federated States’ independence. The Federalists believe that the cities, being the centers of commerce and industry, are the heart of the country, and so they should be the only ones to have any true political power. The Federal Congress has only one house, the Senate, which originally had two Senators for each state. However, as urban populations – the Federalists’ power base – increased, cities were eventually given Senate seats, and they were eventually allocated more Senate seats per their population. The Federal States maintains, and upholds, many of the constitutional protections it inherited from the United States, and abolished slavery in its constitution. The Federalist Party is deeply intertwined with major corporations, particularly those which control heavy industry in the Steel Belt, and the media and financial giants of New York. With control of the media, the Federalists ensure that their local opposition will always be branded as kooks, separatists, terrorists, or the like.
The French Empire, the main physiocratic power, is still an empire under the Bonapartes. Physiocracy is not an official ruling ideology, but rather an ideology that has become popular among the Bonapartes. The physiocrats believe that farmers and rural areas are the true source of a country’s strength, which appealed to the Bonapartes, as they had grown tired of Paris’ population occasionally revolting against them. The Bonapartes made a deal with various farmers’ unions and rural leaders, giving them beneficial treatment in exchange for assuring that they would serve the Bonapartes and provide – or withhold – food on a political basis. France has since enacted major land reform, sending many of their people to farms, while the only major city in the country is Paris. Here, the workers’ population is effectively held hostage, forced to work for a pittance by the combined power of the Bonapartes’ guns and the threat of starvation. The Bonapartes have moved away from Paris and to Versailles, where they hope they are distant enough from the urban population of Paris such that a revolt would not immediately hold them hostage.
Russia isn’t a physiocratic power, but it is a conservative, agrarian one. Still an absolute monarchy, Russia is part of the Bonapartist Continental System, and utterly reliant on the French because they need the French to supply them with manufactured goods. Much of Russia’s population remains serfs, living as they did a century or two centuries ago.
In China, madness has taken over. French-backed physiocrats took control after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, but the moderates who led the revolutionaries to victory have been replaced with radicals. Believing that cities themselves are corrupting influences, they have begun to force China’s population into the farms, shooting anyone who disagrees with them. Cities have been razed, but fortunately the revolutionaries are taking care to preserve historical artifacts and temples. Only Peking remains substantially populated, but it is solely populated and controlled by the revolutionary leadership, who grow fat off looting the country. Millions have already died from these purges, and with many urban Chinese having no farming skills, it is likely that starvation will follow soon.
The United States was remodeled in Jefferson’s image. A new constitution was adopted, one which gave more rights to the states. Slavery was gradually abolished – it was hurting much-needed trade with Britain and the Federated States – but the federal government had no power to abolish it, so some states only abolished the peculiar institution in the early 1900s. Like the Federated States, the United States consistently elects one party, in their case the Democratic-Republicans. Much of the population is rural, with large farm owners dominating politics, as they can pressure their sharecroppers to vote Democratic-Republican. The cities, apart from ports such as New Orleans, remain small. The United States retains a bicameral legislature, with the Senate having more power as it became clear that this was the way the Democratic-Republicans can retain power. Large farms have most of the political power in the United States, dominating the Democratic- Republican Party.
Two things prevent the Urbanists and Agrarianists from ever going to war. The first is how devastating such a war would be, particularly now that nuclear weapons exist. The second is that both sides are dependent on the other. The Urbanists need the Agrarianists to feed them, the Agrarianists need the Urbanists for manufactured goods. Neither bloc can survive long without the other, so the uneasy peace continues.