Map Monday: The World Cromwell Made on December 25, 1955 by PlatoonSgt

This week's featured map is from PlatoonSgt of AlternateHistory.com, whose maps from "Where Hearts Were Entertaining June" I have featured in the past. Well he is quickly becoming one of my favorites with his "The World Cromwell Made on December 25, 1955":

According to PlatoonSgt, the map is inspired from Martin23230's "The Commonwealth" map. In this world Cromwell lives ten years longer and the Commonwealth solidifies its control over England, Scotland and Ireland. The Stuarts, however, are still around after establishing themselves in Maryland with the help of the local Catholics and the Dutch. I have always liked the idea of a Stuart kingdom in America so that was a big hook for me.

In PlatoonSgt's map, he jumps the timeline to the 1950s where the Stuarts have transformed Maryland into a Catholic empire stretching across most of OTL United States and Canada. His scenario focus on Christmas was a nice touch, giving a better insight into the culture of this world where Catholic nations are the most powerful, even if the Puritan Commonwealth still exists. A little wankish perhaps, but otherwise an interesting and imaginative map.

Honorable mentions this week go out to Sam McDonald's (of Flag Friday fame) map based on Twilight Histories' The Kaiser Assassin and Operation Wodan, 4chan's map of Europe (I thought what they did to Russia was a nice touch) and the "Natives of North America" map. If you want to submit a map for the next Map Monday, email me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com with your map attached and a brief description in the body of the email.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

Map Monday: The Partition of France by Xibalba

For all of those who get tired of seeing Poland partitioned again and again in every timeline, here is this week's map titled "The Partition of France" by Xibalba of AlternateHistory.com:

This is one of those situations where you have a really nice looking map, but a poor scenario. If you click on the link above you will see that this map comes from a timeline where the Commonwealth of England survived and allied itself with Germany against a France still ruled by a monarchy. A war later erupted after Franz Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo.

Considering that we are dealing with a point of divergence in the 17th century, truly a lot of things still had to happen to not only get a man named Franz to take a trip to Bosnia that ends in a major war, but also to have Belgium exist, which was an invention of the 19th century and could have easily been butterflied away. Still I can sort of forgive the poorly thought out scenario based one just the nice-looking map above. Perhaps someone else out there can come up with a better scenario?

No honorable mentions this week.  If you want to submit a map for the next Map Monday, email me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com with your map attached and a brief description in the body of the email.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.