"If the Americans had not won at Gettysburg."

I'm on a roll, so I just finished an article based on alternate history. This is taken after my hero, Winston Churchill's imaginery essay, "If Lee had not won at Gettysburg". Instead, I pretend to write as Churchill in a similar essay, "If the Americans had not won at Philadelphia".
Churchill's essay speculated on what would have happened if General Lee had won at Gettysburg. I, writing as Churchill, speculate would have happened if the Americans had won in Philadelphia in 1777 against the British. This is supposed to be the background to my alternate history novel, though I haven't had the time to do the research.

I enclose the link to Churchill's original essay

Is there a way to put my essay into film?


In September 17, 1777, the American patriots won their victory in their capital of Philadelphia, where, ever since, they celebrate that day with bells ringing from the Tower of Freedom Square.

If that had not happened, the news would not have aroused nationalist feelings among the colonies, and the inhabitants would not have arisen, as a whole, to fight for their new country. The British redcoats, spread thinly across the eastern seaboard of the continent, would not have been overwhelmed, driven all the way to the northern part of the continent and New France.

This would not have led to the French monarchy, itching for revenge after the Seven Years’ War, to support the Americans. And that would not have led the Spanish monarchy to follow suit. And the ensuing campaign, which would become a true global war, fought in India, southern Americas, Africa, and parts of Asia, would not have happened, further draining British resources.

And this would not have led the Americans to conquer the remainder of the British possessions in North America. And the Americans, after their victory at York and Montreal, would not have come to terms with the French monarchy to preserve the French language and culture in New France, leading to the creation to the first American state that did not speak English.

And the ripples would continue, as the idea of freedom would incite the mainland Europeans to revolt, in the Republican Revolutions in France, leading to the downfall of the aristocracy. The French Royalists would not have fled to America, seeking refuge with their former allies, and, in the ensuing Bonapartistes war, they would not have convinced their new country to take revenge against their former country, and, politics making for strange friendships, allying with their former enemy, Britain, to initiate the Louisiana Campaign, thus taking the territory from France. And that would not have led to the creation of the second American state to speak French.

Britain would then not have gotten an important ally in its fight to bring down Napoleon, and so the Treaty of Vienna would never have happened, and the modern European state system comprising of Imperial Germany, Republican France, and the Imperial Ottoman would never have come into place.

The British would then not have used the Horn of Africa as a settlement for British and other Europeans, thus making southern Africa the only place on the continent where Europeans would outnumber the natives and eventually becoming the Dominion of British Africa. The gold and diamond mines would then never have been developed, and so the British Empire would not have had the wealth to help the northern American states abolish slavery by buying and freeing the slaves from the southern American states. This would then not have led to the Great Reconciliation, where the English-speaking nations, formerly enemies, would become allies and, in every sense of the word, friends.

The ripples would continue to radiate outwards. Without this new friendship between the two most powerful nations on Earth, America would not have been able to pronounce the Wilson Doctrine, stating that the hemisphere would be free of European imperialism, thus allowing Panama to join the United States, along with the rest of Central America. Mexico, after its Revolution at the turn of the century, would not have seen its provinces break away and also eventually joining their continental brethren to conclude the first phase of Manifest Destiny, namely, where the North America would become entirely American.

And this would not have led to the second phase of Manifest Destiny, where the Spanish would not have continued the Republican Revolutions, leading to the Spanish American War, where the Philippines and Cuba would join the United States and become the two states which would eventually speak English but use the Spanish civil code.

And so our Twentieth Century would never have come about, when the Kaiser Wilhelm I would be convinced not to engage in imperialism against the other European powers, and so averting a potential war with the Anglo-American alliance. And, in our modern world, it is everyone’s hope that his son, Wilhelm II, would see the logic of the balance of power against him, despite his recent pronouncements and his overtures to his fellow emperor in Japan and so continue with the idealism of the Congress of Nations.

And all of this would never have happened if the Americans had not won in the Battle of Philadelphia.


September 1938

Winston Churchill
 
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Is there a way to put my essay into film?

I don't know, but I imagine, if you don't want an actual dramatization of the incidents, but rather, a narrator, it would be a pretty easy job for Nate, his pipeline, and one of his robots. It could be a simulacra of Churchill, of a Churchill-inspired android, or, probably of anything-- a talking cat, or frog, or, I guess, anything.
 
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Thanks, @Spike. I'm thinking of hiring an actor who can be made up to look like Churchill to narrate it, perhaps in front of a mike or in a library setting.

In a similar vein, being a pantser, I'm also writing bits and pieces of WW2, which I've been a lifelong student of, and my prose is taken from Churchill's best-selling series on the war. I'm also thinking either of me narrating it in front of a mike or getting an actor to pose as Churchill and narrating - how about both?

@directorik how much to ...... never mind. :wait:
 
People talking about a war, sounds familiar.
Interstellar 😁
 
I, writing as Churchill, speculate would have happened if the Americans had won in Philadelphia in 1777 against the British.

Although somewhat a fan of alternate histories, I would have to contest a lot of these "if not ... then neither ..." statements. I would say that you have perfectly channelled Churchill's belief in the overwhelming exceptionalism of the British (still alive and well today in the Tory party) and how the whole history of the world depended on what Britain did and didn't do; but it doesn't really make for a good story because anyone who isn't indoctrinated into the cult can see straight away that the premise is flawed on multiple levels.

To make a tangential example: in Ireland, we had the revolution of 1798, notionally inspired by the events in America and in France ... but that was only one of a series of revolutions (all of which failed, until 1922) ; and in the grand scheme of things, the French Revolution was a failure too, as it took four more iterations of the Republic to get to where we are today.

For this to work as a concept, I think you'd need to confine yourself to one local aspect, e.g. the likely consequences for New France and Louisiana, and look at how other parties waiting in the wings might have taken advantage of the weakened French position. Perhaps the Dutch would have tried to reclaim New Amsterdam,? Perhaps the Scandinavians might have extended their influence across the north and north-western part of the continent?

What happened in North America back in those days was a proxy war between numerous European factions, of which Britain was just one (and not the most powerful either). They were all well used to experiencing setbacks and needing to quickly realign their alliances, regardless of what the Brits were doing (see also European History 2016-2023 :D ) so putting all your eggs in Churchill's basket of subjective logic is not a great recipe for success.
 
Needs a sci-fi element, perhaps time travel, something that actually changes history, like in Back to the Future. Otherwise, the whole "what if?" thing is just... boring. What if? So what? Turn the "what if?" into "what now?!" This could be a killer steampunk film.
 
@CelticRambler and @mlesemann, I'm from the British Commonwealth and I don't believe in British exceptionalism; I am, however, a neocon and believe in American exceptionalism. So this essay is my fantasy of what I would like Manifest Destiny really to be.

@indietalk, there are several works on time travel going back to changing history - Connie Willis wrote a couple of books on how time travel changed WW2. I have some notes on my version of that idea.
 
Needs a sci-fi element, perhaps time travel, something that actually changes history
Does it, though? Isn't AM's proposal pretty much along the same lines as The Man in the High Castle, only a couple of centuries earlier?

The "something" that changes history could be a single decision taken by a single soldier or politician on a single, unremarkable day in the thick of the war. There's no real need to sci-fi it into existence, or even make a drama out of that particular decision. The drama lies in the consequences.
 


Stupid butterflies :(


Anyway, one I have thought about is this: What if Sirhan Sirhan had been distracted for a moment, maybe something boiling over in the kitchen, and had entered that hall a moment later, and was, this time, off, by a fraction, by enough. And Bobby Kennedy survives.

Bobby almost certainly would have got the nomination, easily could have beat Nixon, and then: We're out of Viet Nam years before, no Watergate, no, or at least a different, counter-culture, one that might have survived past stuff like Hippies on the Beverly Hillbillies. And, I think critically, no counter counter-culture, the Regan gang, so sour, I've thought, because they missed out on all the fun--the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll.

Anyway, it gets very complicated very fast. But it's not hard to imagine a shift, at this point, the result of centimeters of difference, circumventing the now untenable situation of the richest 1% owning 40% of the nation's wealth; the richest 10%, around 70.

Just sayin :)
 
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Does it, though? Isn't AM's proposal pretty much along the same lines as The Man in the High Castle, only a couple of centuries earlier?

The "something" that changes history could be a single decision taken by a single soldier or politician on a single, unremarkable day in the thick of the war. There's no real need to sci-fi it into existence, or even make a drama out of that particular decision. The drama lies in the consequences.
Dude, I mentioned it because this past two years he has had a script about an interstellar war with talking heads. We all helped him fine tune it, and he seemed to abandon it, like this one. So my idea was to nudge him in the direction of combining them.
 
Here you go:
 
Does it, though? Isn't AM's proposal pretty much along the same lines as The Man in the High Castle, only a couple of centuries earlier?

One of great things about the book, Man in the High Castle (Philip K Dick) is that it doesn't bother with a reason why the Axis won the war. They just did.

And, in one of the stunning things in that book, there's a scene where a character considers an odd piece of jewelry, and then looks into his world, the world of the book, and then sees through it into ours. I was curious about how the amazon TV series would handle this. If I had written it, I would have considered having the character look into his world, and then see, behind it, for a moment, the dudes with the cameras.

Dick said somewhere, although I'm not sure how true it is, that he used the I Ching, that Chinese divinatory thing, to plot the book, and I've imagined, at this point, that the I Ching told him the truth. Anyway.

The TV series didn't just ignore this scene, which I thought they might, but instead took it literally--multiple realities, time traveling Nazis, etc. It was just, to me, junk, lol.
 
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