Web Original / Our Fair Country

"Kanan doesn't come up with anything. She actually lives in the world of OFC, and her computer is a link between worlds."

Our Fair Country: The Commonwealth of New England is an Alternate History timeline and worldbuilding project by Kanan on AlternateHistory.com. Unlike most timelines on the site, this one is not told through conventional text formats like chronologies or narrative chapters, but rather through visuals and graphics such as maps, charts, webpages, and infoboxes akin to those on Wikipedia.

Our Fair Country envisions a world in which the British colonies in New England remained strongholds of Loyalism during the American War of Independence, and as such did not join the other colonies in breaking away. Instead, New England follows a trajectory similar to that which Canada did, taking in thousands of Loyalist refugees from the newly independent United States before receiving responsible government under a federal authority in 1841. The timeline chronicles the rise of this new Dominion and its repercussions on the world stage through the lens of the present day, including relations between the British Empire and the United States, as well as current affairs in the alternate present of OFC, including a major transformation of New England's political sphere.

Our Fair Country is a mostly soft alternate history, as it by and large places current and historical figures into settings that can be both strikingly familiar and different depending on the period and region. Originally mostly contained to New England, the United States, and to a lesser extent Canada and the United Kingdom, its scope has begun to encompass most of the rest of the world, following developments in continental Europe, a surviving Soviet Union, and a dramatically altered Sub-Saharan Africa where decolonisation took a different route.

The thread can be found here.

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Our Fair Country provides examples of:

• 0% Approval Rating: Prime Minister Elinor Carbone faces a rejuvenated Labour opposition from the left and disgruntled Tory MPs from the right.
• All Elections Are Serious Business: Both the Canadian and New England federal elections of 2018 were conducted as live events through input of and polling from the timeline's followers, as is the ongoing Commonwealth Parliament election.
• Alternate History: Of course.
• Amoral Afrikaner: The Republic of South Africa. See A Nazi by Any Other Name.
  • Averted by the South African overseas diaspora, which continues to advocate the fall of the Apartheid government. Its main face is New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Zille, who has made the country a leader in resettling refugees and escapees from South Africa, taking blacks, whites, and coloureds alike with no discrimination.
• Balkanize Me: Bulgaria is divided after the Soviets occupy the east and install a Communist regime during the Eastern European War.
• Big Applesauce: Being right on the U.S.-New England border, New York City proper only comprises the island of Manhattan, and the other boroughs, Brooklyn in particular, are divided into their own cities and town. Instead, a bilateral regional government known as the Tri-City Region acts as the governing authority over the entire metropolitan area, consolidating zoning policy, transit, and utilities, while still maintaining the independence and national allegiance of each municipality.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: South Africa is the worst of the real-life Apartheid regime mixed with elements of Nazi Germany and North Korea. The Commonwealth of Rhodesia, a pro-British democratic government comprising modern Zambia and Zimbabwe, is a legacy of South Africa's meddling in that region - its political and economic interests were practically monopolised by the white settlers in Southern Rhodesia, many of whom were complicit in leading a short-lived South African puppet regime there, and for a decade after it restored democratic government and universal suffrage, its electoral system had a "white list" that effectively gave the white population two votes in its legislature. Even today, despite full political equity between whites and blacks and being on the frontline of the Commonwealth's watch over South Africa, Rhodesia still suffers from chronic social and economic inequality exacerbated by its regional differences.
• Cool Train: Central Europe is connected by the Zollverein's high-speed rail network.
• Chummy Commies: The Soviet Union still exists to the present day, but has successfully undergone liberalising reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev, up to and including having a fair presidential election in 2018, albeit one still under the auspices of the Communist Party.
  • Communist participation in Western electoral politics remains strong owing to the lack of as severe a Red Scare as OTL. This has led to such scenarios as the Communists forming the provincial government of East Prussia, and a Communist-aligned independent being elected Governor of Chihuahua.
• Defeat Means Friendship: The Commonwealth occupation of Germany from 1949 to 1952 cemented Anglo-German friendship, as the British helped Germany to get back on its feet and restored democratic government under a Westminster-style parliamentary system.
• Dirty Communists: In addition to the Soviet Union, brutal Communist regimes are installed by Soviet proxies across Central Europe and the Balkans following the armistice that ends the Eastern European War.
• Enemy Civil War: A mutual one in both Germany and the Soviet Union at the height of their war in the 1940s. The former experiences a Communist revolution in the Ruhr that topples the conservative militarist government until the British Commonwealth intervenes and occupies Germany, while the latter sees an ouster of Stalin by Lev Kamenev that devolves into a civil war between pro- and anti-Stalinist elements of the USSR after consolidating Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe.
• Expanded States of America: The United States compensates for the lack of New England, the Oregon Territory, and Alaska through further expansion into Mexico and the West Indies. Following the Mexican-American War, it annexes and integrates the Baja California Peninsula, the Mexican states of Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas (the latter three of which are reconstituted as the states of Jefferson and Salado), and also later gives Cuba and Puerto Rico statehood.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: The South African economy is a basket case as a result of the apartheid state's policies of ethnic cleansing and reliance on slave labour, as well as the deportation of the Anglo and coloured populations to Natal in its early years.
• The Federation: The Commonwealth of Nations has moved towards this. It is more tightly bound than the OTL Commonwealth, and features a Commonwealth Parliament and a tightly-knit military command across its member states.
• Fictional Political Party: The New England party system follows a largely British alignment with the Conservative Party on the right and the Labour Party on the left. The latter has been mostly rendered moribund by the Social Democratic Party, which Bernie Sanders established after his defeat in the 2018 leadership spill and led to become the Official Opposition in the general election later that year. Meanwhile, the United States dual-party system is defined by the Social Labor and National parties, which were consolidated following an alternate Progressive Era.
  • The 2018 Canadian federal election saw the Progressive Conservative Party disintegrate along ideological and regional lines, culminating in the formation of the Progressive National Party by the bulk of its MPs east of Manitoba. Helmed by Michael Chong, this party, which follows a strand of moderate, statist conservatism known as Red Toryism, has since formed a coalition government with the Liberal Party under Chrystia Freeland.
• Point of Divergence: The initial points of divergence occur during the colonial period, including the Plymouth Colony not being dissolved into a union with Massachusetts Bay, earlier English/British annexations of French colonial territory, and a much less total deportation of the Acadians from New France. These add up to the main one, the alternate American War of Independence. It is from here that New England truly takes its own separate trajectory towards becoming its own country, though all of these points all play a role in deciding where different figures end up residing and/or taking up office.
• In Spite of a Nail: Practically all of the contemporary figures from (at the very least) the Anglosphere exist in our timeline in spite of the many changes to history, though many do take up fairly different roles.
  • The Russo-Japanese War ends in a Russian victory. Despite this, its outcome averts neither the eventual downfall of Tsarist Russia nor the surge of Japanese militarism that would lead to the Pacific War.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Numerous examples owing to the differing history in North America and messier decolonisation.
  • Portland, Oregon is located in the Canadian province of Columbia and is known as Beaconsfield.
  • Zambia and Zimbabwe are still unified as the Commonwealth of Rhodesia. Much of the African majority's left wing would like to see the country renamed to Monomotapa as a move towards full decolonisation.
• Landslide Election: The fracturing of the Labour Party allowed Elinor Carbone's Conservatives to win a decisive majority in the 2018 New England federal election.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Israel. Originally formed from a war of independence against British control with the backing of the Soviet Union, Israel remains the only ally of South Africa and still engages in ethnic cleansing and expansionary conflict against its neighbours, including establishing Arab Bantustans, which an overwhelming majority of Jews outside the country disapprove of. Unlike South Africa, however, the Israeli regime is not outright insane and is somewhat more open to the outside world, and does better economically compared to the shambolic autarkic slave economy of its South African ally.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Several examples.
  • Hans Krebs and his fascist rule over the Republic of German-Austria from 1934 to 1958. Under his regime, Austria waged a devastating war of attrition against Hungary and Slovakia, and launched a genocide against Czechs and Slovenes within Austria. Even today, nearly all major cities in Slovenia, including Ljubljana (Laibach), still possess German-majority populations.
  • Beginning in the 1940s, South Africa came under the control of the far-right wing of the Afrikaner National Party, which proceeded to expel English speakers en masse from most of the country to Natal. After a protracted war with the British armed forces ended in a stalemate, South Africa is this timeline's version of North Korea - an isolated and ostracised, highly nationalistic, avowedly segregationist totalitarian state that has developed a nuclear program and which still sees thousands of refugees escaping its borders even as it threatens its neighbours and enemies. This is made worse considering that such elements did exist in OTL, and not only came dangerously close to enacting these plans, but also continue to live on in groups like the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging.
• Odd Friendship: The "Peculiar Relationship" between the United States and Soviet Union.
• Overly Long Name: The full name of the German/Zollverein state railway system: while commonly simply referred to as the Zollverein Railways or Deutsche Reichsbahn (among other names), its full official name is the Niederländisch-Belgisch-Luxembourgisch-Deutsch-Österreichisch-Tschechisch-Polnisch-Litauisch-Lettlandisch-Estlandisch-Ungarische Eisenbahnbund ^note abbreviated as NiBLDÖTPoLLEU.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: Elinor Carbone, the Mayor of Torrington, Connecticut in our timeline, is the Conservative Prime Minister of New England. On the flipside, Bernie Sanders is the Leader of the Official Opposition, heading the staunchly left-wing Social Democratic Party.
  • Real-life U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster becomes the first Prime Minister of the Dominion of New England, with his place in New England history enshrined much the same as Sir John A. Macdonald is in Canada or Sir Edmund Barton in Australia.
  • Barack Obama is a Columbian politician serving as the Liberal Party parliamentary whip and, following the 2018 election, the Government Leader in the House of Commons.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Canada quits the Commonwealth of Nations in 2003 when the British demand a troop surge to sustain the unpopular War in Burma, and Nigeria follows suit in 2008. Canada does eventually rejoin at the beginning of 2019.
• Soviet Superscience: Although the Commonwealth were the first to make it to the Moon, the Soviets have shored up their position by maintaining a permanent lunar presence since the 1990s. It's generally considered that the Soviets have won or are leading the Space Race by playing the long game, though the U.S. has been catching up with a manned Mars mission and establishing its own lunar base.
• United Europe: Subverted. Central and Western Europe are divided into two political and economic blocs, the German-led Zollverein and the French-led Latin Monetary Union.
• Velvet Revolution: Massive demonstrations in Hong Kong led to its full democratisation and granting of responsible government in 2002.
• Vestigial Empire: Great Britain downplays this even more than in OTL. It is still a leading force in world affairs through the Commonwealth, has a leading role in containing South Africa through its sphere of influence in Natal and Rhodesia, and most importantly still maintains overseas territories, including the Suez Canal and Hong Kong.
• Western Terrorists: The Irish Republican Army remains as active and destructive as ever, with one of its most recent acts being the bombing of a British commercial airliner and Heathrow Airport - the timeline's closest equivalent to a 9/11 scale attack.
  • A terrorist attack by white supremacists at the University of Wisconsin in 2015 led to the repeal of the Second Amendment in the United States.