100 Alternate Histories

I love alternate history. It’s not even entirely a writer thing — just a really fun hobby. Nothing beats getting together with a bunch of history-buff friends and wiling away a dinner or a road trip trying to figure out what would have happened if Genghis Khan was a woman or France won the space race.

Alternate history is simple. You pick an inflection point, either a discrete event or a larger trend, and imagine it going a different way than it really did. Since a great deal of history comes down to happenstance and chaos theory, there’s a lot of fodder for believable new worlds here.

With that said, I’m going to get fired from my own blog if I don’t start complaining by the third paragraph, so here’s what bothers me. In popular culture, “alternate history” is far too identified with two specific hinge points: the South winning the American Civil War, and the Axis Powers winning World War II. I’m sick to death of both of these. They’re overdone, and worse, the only possible outcomes involve horrific suffering for ethnic minorities.

I’m not opposed to imagining how things could have gone worse — it’s always nice to remember that we don’t actually live in the Darkest Timeline — but those two alternate histories are played out to the point where they’ve become a common shelter for actual racists.

But good news! There’s a fractally infinite amount of history out there. So, whether you’re writing a story or just looking for a conversation starter, I thought I’d share 100 of my favorite pivot points to kickstart your alt-history imaginings. Here goes (arranged in roughly chronological order).

1. Homo sapiens evolves on Pangaea.
2. Due to a paleolithic mutation, human fatty tissue stops accumulating heavy metals, so lead and mercury are no longer toxic.
3. Agriculture does not become widespread after the end of the Younger Dryas.
4. Humans never domesticate dogs.
5. Humans never domesticate horses.
6. Humans domesticate bears.
7. The land bridge to North America is never discovered.
8. Minoan civilization survives to interact with classical Greece.
9. Siddhartha Gautama lives and dies as a minor noble functionary.
10. The teachings of Confucius never receive official sanction in China.
11. Xerxes conquers Greece.
12. Socrates escapes from prison and writes several books of philosophy from exile.
13. Phoenician sailors reach the Americas in 350 BCE.
14. Researchers at the Library of Alexandria develop the printing press.
15. Alexander the Great’s empire does not disintegrate.
16. Hannibal sacks and destroys Rome.
17. Germanicus Caesar survives to become emperor.
18. Saul of Tarsus never converts to Christianity.
19. Qin Shi Huang succeeds in establishing a long-term dynasty.
20. China establishes diplomatic and trade relations with the Roman Empire.
21. Julian the Apostate successfully re-establishes Roman paganism.
22. Instead of Christianity, the Cult of Antinous becomes the Roman state religion.
23. Emperor Aurelian ends the Crisis of the Third Century.
24. Stilicho reunites the Eastern and Western Empires.
25. The Council of Nicea never occurs, leaving the Church as a loose network of several competing creeds.
26. The Roman recipe for mixing concrete is never lost.
27. Al-Rahman defeats Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours and annexes France for the Umayyads.
28. Scandinavians colonize Vinland in large numbers.
29. Pope Leo IX resolves the Great Schism instead of aggravating it.
30. Rebels unseat William the Conqueror and return England to Saxon rule.
31. The White Ship returns to land safely.
32. The Crusader States are entrenched by repeated battlefield victories in the Holy Land.
33. Young Henry overthrows his father, Henry II, becoming king in place of Richard I.
34. The Vivaldi Brothers arrive in North America.
35. The Mongols invade and conquer Japan.
36. Ogodei Khan survives, allowing the Mongols to continue invading Europe in 1223.
37. The Bubonic Plague mutates into a more harmless strain soon after first appearing in Europe.
38. Urban VI wins over the cardinals and prevents the Avignon schism.
39. The Malians are the first to reach North America.
40. First contact is made by Haudenosaunee sailing east.
41. Before 1492, the population of the Americas is inoculated against Eurasian diseases by prior plagues.
42. North America is settled from west to east by colonists from Asia.
43. Henry VI refuses to marry Margaret of Anjou.
44. Martin Luther’s protests lead to reform instead of a split between Catholics and Protestants.
45. The Ottomans win the Battle of Lepanto.
46. Atahualpa evades capture by Pizarro at the Battle of Cajamarca thanks to the Inca developing gunpowder from guano deposits.
47. The Northwest Passage exists, and is discovered by John Cabot.
48. Ivan the Terrible resists killing his son, leading to a much stronger succession.
49. Cheap, effective birth control becomes widely available in 16th-century Europe.
50. Yi Sun-Sin falls in battle, allowing the Japanese to conquer Joseon Korea.
51. Martin Frobisher discovers rich gold mines in Greenland.
52. The Spanish mount a ground invasion of England in 1588.
53. William Shakespeare’s contemporaries do not save copies of his plays.
54. The Dutch refuse to sell New Amsterdam to England.
55. The English Commonwealth establishes a stable succession plan, making Charles the last king of England.
56. Metacomet defeats the New England Confederation in 1675.
57. The Ottomans capture Vienna in 1683.
58. Enlightenment philosophers become obsessed with Arabic thought instead of Greek and Roman.
59. Instead of tea, cannabis becomes the British Empire’s import of choice from India.
60. Catherine the Great’s coup against her husband Peter III fails.
61. Revolutionary France does not declare war on Austria.
62. The Thirteen Colonies win independence from Britain without ever uniting into one political body.
63. George Washington is killed by a stray bullet while leading troops during the Whiskey Rebellion.
64. Napoleon decides not to invade Russia.
65. Fear of the Haitian Revolution leads the United States to pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments in 1804.
66. The United States surrenders to Britain in the War of 1812 and becomes a Crown colony again.
67. Simon Bolivar succeeds in establishing the state of Gran Colombia.
68. The cotton gin is never invented.
69. The sewing machine is never invented.
70. The June Rebellion of 1832 overthrows King Louis Philippe.
71. The Great Famine leads to an Irish revolt that shakes confidence in Queen Victoria’s government, causing Britain to revolt in 1848.
72. Russia revolts against the Tsar in 1848.
73. Hong Xiuquan does not assassinate Yang Xiuqing; maintaining unity, the Taiping Rebellion overthrows the Qing Dynasty.
74. France defeats Mexico at the Battle of Puebla.
75. Abraham Lincoln survives and presides over a much stronger Reconstruction effort that withstands the Southern backlash.
76. Chester Arthur works against the Civil Service act, keeping the U.S. patronage system in place.
77. Thomas Edison consolidates power over the film industry and keeps it in New Jersey.
78. Nikola Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower project is a success.
79. The American government does not break up Standard Oil.
80. Anastasia Romanov survives and becomes a rallying point for the White Army.
81. Woodrow Wilson suffers his stroke two years earlier, preventing the United States from joining World War I.
82. J.R.R. Tolkien dies at the Battle of the Somme.
83. The Treaty of Versailles does not hold Germany responsible for the war, and demands no reparation payments.
84. The anti-treaty faction wins the Irish Civil War and continues fighting the Crown.
85. Lenin has Stalin killed shortly before his own death in 1923.
86. Charles Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic in a dirigible, reigniting interest in lighter-than-air flight.
87. The 1933 attempt on Franklin Roosevelt’s life is successful.
88. Instead of a nonviolent independence movement, the British Raj in India is overthrown by a violent revolution.
89. Instead of attacking Pearl Harbor, Imperial Japan signs a peace agreement with the United States.
90. The 1944 attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life is successful.
91. In 1945, a spy network distributes the secrets of nuclear weapons to dozens of nations worldwide.
92. Britain, France, and the U.S. do not merge their zones of control in Germany.
93. The postwar Jewish homeland is established in Suriname.
94. The Soviet Union is the first to put a man on the moon in 1968.
95. Instead of space, the US and USSR become embroiled in a race to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
96. Martin Luther King Jr. is not assassinated and continues working as a labor organizer.
97. Richard Nixon escapes consequences for the Watergate scandal.
98. Jimmy Carter defeats Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.
99. The US government locks down the internet as a military secret, preventing any civilian access.
100. Acting on allied intelligence, the Bush administration intercepts al-Qaeda and prevents the 9/11 attacks.

I hope those jumpstart some interesting thoughts! If you liked this list, please share a few of your own — especially in areas outside of Europe and North America where my knowledge is less strong.