Imperium Britannicum - Anonkun

The year is 2011, Anno Domini.

Currently ruled by King-Emperor Victor II, the British Empire has stood for more than half a millennium. Stretching across the entire globe, straddling every continent, its capital in London, the British Empire, formally the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland and Hanover, the British Empire rules over 3.6 billion subjects. The greatest bastion of freedom and democracy in the world, it stands as a beacon of light in a world far more dimmer than ours.

For in this world, the twin revolutions sparked by the Enlightenment did not occur - neither the American Revolution nor the French Revolution happened in this world.

Without the spread of the values espoused by them - "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and "liberté, égalité, fraternité" - the history of the world henceforth continued much like ours, with the exception that the merciless history of imperialism, exploitation, subjugation, political violence and war that both worlds shared, was pure and naked in this one, occurring without a need for moral justification. That small difference has in turn, led to a major divergence between these two worlds.

The lack of an American revolution did not deny the existence of an American War of Independence. What it did deny was the existence of principles and aspirations for the liberty of all human beings in that war. This world's American War for Independence did not occur in the name of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". It was simply a reactionary landowner's war. Using the language of "ancient rights" and "rights of the gentry", it was a rebellion precipitated by economic reasons, to preserve institutions that were being superseded by the birth of capitalism - it was a rebellion to entrench the a new feudalism in the virgin soil of the Americas.

In particular, these included the Tea Act which caused the good old Boston Tea Party, but in this world, it was the judgement of Somerset v Stewart which particularly drew the ire of the American separatists.

This American War of Independence was accompanied by the American Counter-Revolution, as it is known in today's histories.

In this war, Thomas Paine was a British Loyalist, so odious were the beliefs of the Patriots.

With the lack of an American Revolution, the history of the European continent begins to differ slightly.

Despite the lack of a clear source of inspiration for the French Revolution, discontent in France, saddled with debt from the American War of Secession and the Seven Years War, still bursts. However, where it does, it manifests itself as nothing more than a couple of of particularist and lower-class rebellions. Crushed only after a painful, bloody campaign, it indicated to Louise XVI the urgency of political and social reform in the Kingdom of France. The Kingdom of France sets aside its rivalry with the United Kingdom, embarking on a path of constitutionalist reform that sees the Kingdom salvage itself from the path of disaster it had embarked on ever since the two previous wars.

Prince Victor, future King-Emperor of the British Empire, is born. The long standing question of the British monarch's personal union with Hanover is brought up - marking a reversal of British attitudes towards continental involvement, Parliament proposes to officially incorporate Hanover as a constituent country of the United Kingdom.

Without the conflagration of revolutionary and liberalist ideals spread by Napoleon, who was now but a minor artillery officer in the footnotes of history, a long period of stability rises over the European continent. However, stability does not mean the inequalities and injustices suffered by the lower classes have disappeared. Underneath this peace, political and social tensions simmer as the European working class suffers the stresses of industrialisation and government centralisation.

Just like the previous French experience with avoiding revolution, a couple of rebellions here and there rise - but without a citizenry conscious of their position, what could've been the revolutionary wave of 1848 dies with a whimper considerably more quieter than the one in our own world.

The 1850s see the final death of Orthodox Christianity in Greece and the Balkans. Blaming its stagnation and defeats at the hand of the Russian and Austrian Empires on its allegedly disloyal and treacherous dhimmi subjects, the Ottoman Empire reverses its long held tradition of benignly ignoring its religious minorities. The new policy, "Conversion or Death", threatens the Greek and Serbian minorities. Hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christian refugees drown in the Mediterranean as they struggle to escape this new violent era of persecution. The Habsburgs close their borders, citing security concerns. The Russian Empire is outraged at this naked, open persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire and threatens to invade and take Constaninoppe - but citing grave concern for the European balance of power, a coalition of states led by Great Britain, consisting of the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of Prussia, thwart the Russian attempt to save their Orthodox brethren. An irreparable abyss of hatred between the United Kingdom and the Empire of Russia develops. Alongside the Great Game, hatred between East and West has never been greater.

The Indian Mutiny occurs much like our one, suppressed as brutally, having been perpetrated by the rebels as brutally.

A terrible second Year Without a Summer attacks not only Europe, but also the rest of the world. Egyptian and Indian cotton especially suffer. The Lancashire Cotton Famine sees prostitutes and the other scum of society to freeze naked in the slums of London, while the middle classes are forced to wear shredded rags.

Japan is opened by Commodore Matthew Perry, setting it on the same path we know.

Despite the unenlightened formation of the United States of America, the inexorable economic forces that industrialised Europe push a new question to the American political forefront - the question of the expansion of slavery into new territories. Irreconcilable economic differences between the Northern and Southern United States and a much bloodier Bleeding Kansas - thousands dead - result in an unstoppable path to civil war.

The American Civil War breaks out and occurs much as it does in our world - a constant stream of bumbling defeats and meagre victories by both sides causing the upstart Otto von Bismarck to ridicule both American armies, concurring with the sentiment that it was "two armed mobs chasing each other through the country, from which nothing can be learned".

However, on July 1st 1863, it seemed that this farcical state of affairs was about to end. The Battle of Gettysburg almost ended in a Union victory. Yet on the cusp of Victory, perfidy occurred. The United Kingdom intervenes to support the Confederate States of America, having been swayed by King Cotton to act. British troops invade from Canada and quickly overrun the Union, eventually capturing Washington D.C. itself. The Union is annexed - or those those of more insistent terminology, "reconquered" - into the United Kingdom.

Reveling in the victory and becoming conscious of their own desires in prosecuting the war, the Confederate leadership begin a constitutional convention - resulting the First Amendment of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America being "No State shall abolish the Institution of Slavery it being a great physical, philosophical, and moral Truth." Abraham Lincoln commits suicide by shooting himself in the head, in despair at the destruction of the United States of America.

The Meiji Restoration is in full swing, as the Empire of Japan continues successfully modernising.

Back on the European continent, the Kingdom of Prussia finishes off the remnants of the minor states of the Holy Roman Empire - which still stands, never having been abolished by Francis II - culminating in the sacking of Frankfurt. French, Habsburg and Russian outrage are of little use in face of continued warm British and Prussian relations. Given the reconquest of some of its North American colonies, war with a greatly bolstered British Empire is a possibility the peace-loving peoples of Europe would seek to avoid.

The British Empire continues to undermine Ottoman power in Egypt, the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882 ending in a decisive British victory, allowing the British Empire to connect to its subcontinental territories through the Mediterranean.

In 1898, seeking to realize its ambition of the Golden Circle and to expand into the Pacific, the Confederate States of America declares war on the Kingdom of Spain. Manila, Caracas and Havana are captured, but only in a bloody campaign that bleeds half of both countries reserves away. The Kingdom of Spain, reeling from war debts, sells the Rio de la Plata to the Kingdom of Portugal in an attempt to get more finance for the war - a futile move that the Kingdom regretted immensely. They attempt to appeal to their Bourbon co-dynastics back in France to intervene in the war, an attempt that fails due to France's preoccupation with suppressing the Cần Vương movement in Indochina.

Nonetheless, the sudden expansion of the Confederate States of America in the Pacific and Caribbean proves alarming to the other Great Powers. The Confederacy, which has transitioned from a policy of enslaving blacks to one of outright enslaving anyone who isn't white - with poor whites gradually being reduced into a new serfdom - manages to ruin its relations with the United Kingdom completely. The Confederate-UK border closes, shutting down British-Confederate trade, becoming a DMZ straddling the North American continent.

The Kingdom of Hawaii, alarmed by the threat of the CSA, seeks protection from the Empire of Japan, becomes a protectorate, and is eventually annexed into Japan proper.

The dawn of the 20st century sees rivalries and animosity created in the 19th one become further entrenched.

Wary of boldly and openly stated Confederate ambitions on the Japanese Home Islands and Russian designs in Manchuria, the Empire of Japan seeks closer ties with the British Empire against their common enemies in Asia and the Pacific, culminating in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

1904 sees the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, which ends in a strong Japanese victory that stymies further Russian machinations in the Far East. Korea is eventually fully annexed.

The world economy in the 1920s and 1930s prospered, allowing the Great Powers to consolidate their rule over their subject peoples.

The Qing Dynasty limps on, modernising somewhat successfully under Puyi. With the Russian Empire experiencing two decades of turmoil in which a failed assassination attempt on the Tsar occured - which seriously wounded the Grand Duchess Anastasia, who miraculously recovered -, the British and Japanese Empires exploit the opportunity to carve up and divvy China, with the British gaining Tibet, Sichuan, Guangdong and Fujian and the Japanese seizing the rest.

The notorious Taizhou Mass Rape Competition - in which the celebrating British and Japanese rendezvoused with each other and started a race to see who could sexually violate and impregnate the most Chinese women - is widely reported by the liberal British press, resulting in the execution of at least a hundred officers by an embarrassed and fuming British Army, while the Japanese media quietly censors the incident, throwing it under a rug.

The 1940s see a second wave of violent anti-Semitic pogroms break out in Russia, while the Tsarist authorities stand by and ignore the perpetrators. It also sees the formalisation of poor white serfdom in the Confederate States of America - in the less depraved parts of the Confederate States, uniformed black corporate slaves and white corporate serfs reportedly eat in the same canteen - apparently because to the established Southern elite, they were all the same rabble.

In the 1950s, as a barely independent Persia, headed by Mohammad Mossadegh attempts to take control of its foreign-dominated industries, a secret gentlemen's agreement between the United Kingdom and the Empire of Russia is formed to destroy the Imperial State of Iran, resulting in the partition of north to Russia and the South to the United Kingdom. A vigorous Iranian insurgency simmers to the present.

With the development of a atomic bomb and an arms race stopped at the Non-Proliferation Treaty at Berlin, the world further enters a state of relative peace. However, longstanding underlying territorial conflicts between the imperial powers of the world stay standing, in particular, the status of Kashmir between the Russian and British Empires.

Furthermore, given the enlarged state of the British Empire, it was under great administrative strain, only made worse by the widespread existence of separatist sentiments throughout the Empire.

Seeing the tensions in the Empire and alarmed by the newly born and almost immediately outlawed British Social Democratic Labour Party - a far-left movement feeding off resentment created by the abuses of the British Empire, especially in the Subcontinent and China - it decides to embark on a series of social and economic reforms, to bring the great majority of its subject population out of its imperialism-caused poverty and to attempt to weaken the BSDLP. To facilitate this, taking advantage of the nuclear peace it had created, the Empire drastically reduced defence budgets across the board, empowering its Dominions and creating new ones to administer its conquests. The Russian Empire, also feeling the need for reforms, matched British demilitarization.

A long peace resulted. However, history does not stand still.

Underlying strategic tensions still simmered beneath the surface of this relative peace and the social welfare measures - limited by the reluctance of the British upper class to pay taxes with resorting to avoidance and loopholes - are only partially successful in limiting the growth of the underground BSDLP which continues to grow daily as widespread literacy helps spreads its message to the Empire's masses.

In 1996, British and Japanese defence military cooperation results in the production of the first mecha, touted as a means to defend space colonies under construction. Sparking an arms race with the Confederates and the Russians, the long nuclear peace created in the 1960s weakened.

In 2008, the British Navy commissioned the twin-decked aircraft carrier, the HMS Thalassocracy, in response to Russian improvements in land weaponry. This only intensified the arms race.

The year is 2011 - and the British Empire is at war with the Russian Empire, with a vulture on the sidelines waiting for it to fall, to become the scourge of the Empire's sins.