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In an alternate universe, 150 years ago, a Mexican peasant happened to return home for dinner 15 minutes later than in our universe.
As a result of that, he had a chance meeting with a French expatriate with an interest in nationalist movements. Mutually incensed over the Americans' triumph in the recent Mexican-American War, the two charismatic men travelled from country to country, finally winding up in Canada, where they became associated with the nascent Quebecoi nationalist movement.
When the American Civil War broke out, they were contacted by a consortium of British and Confederate cotton interests and were offered a substantial bribe to manipulate Canadian involvement in the war. As a result of their considerable influence, Canada and Britain entered the American Civil War.
The opening of two new fronts - near Michigan and Maine - was decisive in the conflict. Not only was the United States obligated to accept the Confederate secession, the Louisiana Purchase was, at the urging of the Quebecoi nationalists, annexed by Canada. California, meanwhile, disgruntled over perceived federal mismanagement of the war and lack of federal attention, broke off from the US and asserted control over most of the Nevada territory. As a result of the changes, Canada shared a long border with all three nations.
In early 1898, a Quebecoi investor stopped at a diner in Austin en route to Mexico City, during a typhus epidemic the investor was unaware of until he had entered the city. He reacted badly to a meal of chili and malt he consumed. The details of the ensuing fracas remain hazy - it is generally accepted that the Quebecoi did not, in fact, contract typhus, and that his adverse reaction was due to both the strong and exotic taste of the chili as well as possibly due to a violent reaction to unfamiliar but nominally dangerous waterborne pathogens. Whatever the case, the Quebecoi and his travelling companions got into a gunfight with the natives and barely made it out of town with their lives; upon reaching Mexico, they immediately hired bandits to go back and inflict revenge on the people of Austin. Telegraphs further inflated and exaggerated the matter with conflicting and hyperbolic accounts and before long the Confederacy faced war with both Mexico and Canada. The Federal States of America and the California Republic sat the war out due to internal political and economic disarray.
The war ended with the Mexicans and Canadians dividing the former Confederacy between themselves. Texas itself was split near the middle between the two powers, with the most populated areas being taken by Canada. A violent rebellion was quickly quashed and the Canadians - by now strongly dominated by the overwhelming political clout of the Quebecoi Nationalist party - began efforts to "re-educate" the erstwhile Texans, banning the use of English in all official channels, and hunting down and killing every buffalo and steer in the state while subsidizing the production and consumption of goat cheese and horsemeat.
When the Great War broke out, the United States immediately sided with Germany due to the increased influence of their Irish, German and Russian Jewish populations. Canada, in turn, sided with France.
Characteristically, the Quebecois refused to send any direct military or economic aid to Europe, fearing German retribution, and instead focused their efforts on overwhelming the surrounded and vastly outnumbered Americans via an overly cautious strategy of encirclement and use of enormous masses of long-range artillery and landworks. This pusillanimous strategy proved largely successful except for a few incidents where Americans were able to, through strategy or guile, attack the static Quebecoi formations from behind and rout entire legions.
When it became clear that the French stood no chance of winning the war in Europe, the French begged the Mexicans for assistance, and when diplomatic entreaties proved unsuccessful, attempted to bribe several Mexican politicians. Due to severe failings in tact, the French were caught in the act by several news agencies. When the Canadians attempted to extract the French diplomats from the country, they were themselves embroiled in the war. The French plan backfired horribly - just as the Mexicans' self-righteous belligerence. Canada went on to conquer not only the United States and Mexico but all the South American states, which, disgruntled at Quebecoi interventionism and general arrogance, had followed Mexico into war.
When the dust cleared, Canada and Germany were each supreme in the Americas and Europe. Due to the profound smugness of the Prussians and the equally profound pusillanimity of the Quebecois, this arrangement proved stable and reasonably acceptable to both sides.
Quebec/German civilization proved quite different than that of the Americans. Refrigeration remained a niche technology, as did heavier-than-air craft, petrochemicals and organic chemistry. Lighter-than-air craft, nuclear technology and inorganic chemistry, however, developed far more rapidly for the Quebecoi than for the Americans.
In 1931, after many years of civil instability and growing pains, the Canadian democracy was overthrown and replaced with a Communist government. Canada stagnated under Communist rule as the Communists built up a huge police army and oppressive state apparatus to control their recalcitrant subjects. The army gained power over the People's Council, and in 1947, the Marshal of the Canadian People's Army disbanded the Council and crowned himself Emperor of the Canadians - much as Napoleon had nearly two centuries earlier.
With a combination of charisma, brutality, and shrewdness, the Emperor was successful in establishing some sort of order and further assimilating the former English, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese speaking populations into the Canadian polity, and directing internal dissent outward through a program of colonization and "summer wars" against former British and French colonies in Africa and the Far East. Canada's first Emperor adopted the Roman custom of choosing his successor by way of adoption, typically an older individual possessing the all-important quality of "sangfroid".
In 1952, a team of Prussian scientists developed a new weapon: the atomic bomb. Its power was soon demonstrated against the Icelanders who had held out against German power. A French spymistress, known to history only as Madame L, slept with many of the mostly Jewish team members that developed the weapon, and through a remarkable photographic memory, personal charisma, scientific acumen, and sticky fingers, provided enough information to Quebec that they were able to produce their own version of the weapon. After a tense decade, a brief but enormously deadly nuclear exchange restored the pre-existing status quo, although London, Berlin, Paris, and New York were decimated. Quebec City survived largely intact due to its position and a series of fortuitous technical malfunctions.
By 2010, eight Canadian emperors had reigned and died peacefully, and the Magnificent Canadian Empire covered nearly half the world's surface.
Aestu of Bleeding Hollow... Nihilism is a copout.
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