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A culture test for an alternate history project

Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2022 6:19 pm
by ekesleight
I originally posted this in the wrong forum. :oops: Let's try this again.

The "culture test" format is one of my favorite things Mark did. I've always wanted to produce one. Over the past few years, I've generated an alternate history project called Palmera, a setting for a novel. The novel will ultimately take place in an alternate 1983, so I figured, why not do a culture test focused on the period?.

Here it is. I'd be delighted by any feedback; been wanting to share this here for a long time.

Re: A culture test for an alternate history project

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2022 12:02 am
by zompist
Neat! Thanks for the hat tip. :)

It looks like a fun alternate history, and I'd love to hear more about Chatta too.

Oh, something I'd like to see more: what do Palmeys think of Americans, of Brits, of Jamaicans, of Latin Americans?

In a few places I think you slip into exposition mode rather than culture test mode. The point I really noticed this was "Guns are only legal for the purpose of sport hunting." That's more a Wikipedia fact. Make it personal: "You've never seen a gun, unless you're a hunter. You don't understand why Americans are so obsessed with the things." (Or whatever fits.)

A few world-building nits:

Our Florida in 1983 had nearly 11 million people. Why the lower figure for Palmera? For the cultural vibrancy I think you want, I think you'd want it higher, not lower.

People don't know Spanish? That seems weird.

You have some flaws in Palmera, but it seems definitely on the Utopian side. Sometimes it feels like you're trying very hard not to make it like any of our Caribbean or Latin American nations. That's OK-- it's kind of a Black Canada-- but even Canada has a lot more regressiveness and divisions than Palmera seems to.

Re: A culture test for an alternate history project

Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2022 12:15 pm
by ekesleight
Many thanks for the comments!
zompist wrote: Thu Nov 03, 2022 12:02 amOh, something I'd like to see more: what do Palmeys think of Americans, of Brits, of Jamaicans, of Latin Americans?
That's a really good idea. I'll incorporate that, I think.
In a few places I think you slip into exposition mode rather than culture test mode. The point I really noticed this was "Guns are only legal for the purpose of sport hunting." That's more a Wikipedia fact. Make it personal: "You've never seen a gun, unless you're a hunter. You don't understand why Americans are so obsessed with the things." (Or whatever fits.)
Ah-ha! That's why parts of it felt a little off. Thank you!
Our Florida in 1983 had nearly 11 million people. Why the lower figure for Palmera?
Palmera's demographics are heavily shaped by two factors: firstly that it is not part of the United States; and second, it acquires a Black voting majority by midcentury, which is determined to remain a voting majority.

So, for example, OTL Florida's demographics were very much shaped by the Cuban exodus in the years after Castro's revolution (to the tune of half a million people by the early Eighties). Palmera's world sees a roughly similar Cuban revolution, sort of, but a much lower percentage of "white" Cubans will see a Black-majority country as a desirable destination for permanent residence, and a much lower percentage of Palmeys will be on board with encouraging them to stay. I figure that many of those Cubans will see Palmera as a transit point and will ultimately hope to strike out for Texas, though a minority will choose to stay or wind up "stranded," and there's a number of Afro-Caribbeans making whyrah... but they can only make up a fraction of the difference.

Florida in OTL also started to become a major destination for American retirees around midway through the 20th century due to state and federal tax incentives and heavy marketing pushes. That phenomenon kicked off around 1940 and just kept accelerating in subsequent decades, and it is comparatively just not a thing in Palmera for both structural and political reasons.

(There's a lot of other maths going on in the background. For example, the rate of whyrah from the United States also slows somewhat as hope of change rises north of the border with the Civil Rights Movement. But those are the two biggest differences.)
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People don't know Spanish? That seems weird.
Just a lot less Cuban influence come 1983, unfortunately. (This might change as Latinx immigration in general is going to pick up in the coming decades.)
You have some flaws in Palmera, but it seems definitely on the Utopian side. Sometimes it feels like you're trying very hard not to make it like any of our Caribbean or Latin American nations. That's OK-- it's kind of a Black Canada-- but even Canada has a lot more regressiveness and divisions than Palmera seems to.
I definitely make a point of steering clear of some of the likelier worst-case scenarios. Aside from those parameters, Palmera is politically shaped by the fact that its major source population is well leftward, on average, from the political mainstream in the States or even Canada. I think that's probably where a lot of the seemingly "utopian" touches come from.

In terms of ethnic and other divisions, I've mostly alluded to what the average Palmey would know about or willingly admit to (especially as regards colorism, reflecting that this is a problem that very few people will even have language for in 1983, much less be prepared to discuss or acknowledge). It might be a good idea to lean a bit more into showing some of the crackpots, crazies and confidence men more explicitly; they're most certainly there and they would spice things up a bit.

Re: A culture test for an alternate history project

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2022 12:47 am
by zompist
ekesleight wrote: Thu Nov 03, 2022 12:15 pm
People don't know Spanish? That seems weird.
Just a lot less Cuban influence come 1983, unfortunately. (This might change as Latinx immigration in general is going to pick up in the coming decades.)
OK, but Cuban origin only accounts about 26% of Florida's Latines.

If Palmera's as prosperous as the US, I think it'd attract a lot of Latin Americans (and probably give you a number of headaches).
I definitely make a point of steering clear of some of the likelier worst-case scenarios. Aside from those parameters, Palmera is politically shaped by the fact that its major source population is well leftward, on average, from the political mainstream in the States or even Canada. I think that's probably where a lot of the seemingly "utopian" touches come from.
That's fine, though I'd note that most of your political arrangements wouldn't be out of place in Europe. At the same time, almost every European country has some serious problems or fractious politics. Plus, even on the leftward side, there can be some serious fights between center left, socialists, and communists.

I face the same problem in my Almea+400 project, by the way. I purposely include some "nicer" countries, because I don't think fiction needs to be relentlessly nasty. But some of them only get nicer after a bad spell and a revolution. Plus... if you want to tell stories, you may find you need some strong villains!

BTW, in this timeline is the US just as interventionist in Latin America? If so, how do the Palmeys deal with that?

Re: A culture test for an alternate history project

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2022 4:23 am
by ekesleight
zompist wrote: Fri Nov 04, 2022 12:47 amOK, but Cuban origin only accounts about 26% of Florida's Latines.

If Palmera's as prosperous as the US, I think it'd attract a lot of Latin Americans (and probably give you a number of headaches).
It's a fair question. The Latinx population in 1983 is about 4.5% of the national total and most of it derives from people extant long before the 20th century. Latinx immigration at this point only accounts for about fifty thousand people.

Many of the assumptions I built into that model involved a more restricted "hinterland" comprised primarily of Afro-Latinx immigrants, for the same reasons cited viz. Cuba. This was rather broadly done and it's certainly possible that it's too restrictive; OTOH I did want immigration history to reflect a certain global anxiety about "Black-majority" countries, even a prosperous one. (There's also red tape from the Palmey side of things, to be clear; it's not all just about the Latines conveniently "choosing" to go elsewhere.)
That's fine, though I'd note that most of your political arrangements wouldn't be out of place in Europe. At the same time, almost every European country has some serious problems or fractious politics.
Oh, I certainly wouldn't say Palmera is without serious problems or fractious politics. That's honestly most of what the TL consists of. Hard to have much drama without it. :mrgreen:

That's easier to see outside the culture test as it presently exists, though. A lot of what's involved isn't top of mind from the "man in the street" perspective unless you're an investigative journo, a political operator or a student activist.

For example:
BTW, in this timeline is the US just as interventionist in Latin America? If so, how do the Palmeys deal with that?
Yes; and there's nothing much they can do about it, really. Palmera's main latitude for operation is in the former British sphere in the Caribbean and (to some extent, later on) the African continent. There's no percentage in poking the bear, although Palmeys go out in the street and protest the latest outrage in Latin America or other places much as people do elsewhere.

The only time Palmera has ever flirted with defying the Monroe Doctrine has been Haiti, and that in a very limited sense and decades in the past.

This actually fuels one of the deeper tensions in Palmera: there's always a certain fraction of the political landscape that's either uncomfortable with, or notably defensive about, the extent to which Palmera is an adjunct to a wider and noticeably White-dominated Western order. That's something that probably could be more visible in the culture test, even as an aside. It wouldn't be an uncommon thing after the Sixties in particular to have kids come home from university suddenly full of interest in (or alternatively, outraged about) subjects like "secondary empire" and "post-hegemony."

The other major tension (which encapsulates simmering macro-political and macro-economic issues) is that the "Rainbow Nation" and "Black Zion" visions of Palmera are coming into conflict as the latter Twentieth Century progresses (see items 52 and 57 at that link):
  • "Rainbow Nation" advocates thought "whyrah" was relatively harmless so long as it didn't put Black voters in charge of the whole country, but now think the concept of "whyrah" is ill-defined and outdated and that the nation's growth and prosperity would be better served by embracing diversity as a mission.
  • "Black Zion" advocates think maintaining a Black voting majority in the country is key to ensuring its position of leadership in (and alliance to) the Black world in a global sense, that maintaining "whyrah" and restricting other forms of immigration is perfectly defensible in pursuit of this goal, and that the "Rainbow Nation" slogan has become a stalking horse for undermining that majority and the trade unionism and progressive economic policies it tends (on balance) to favor.
The mutual incompatibility of those views--both of which hold elements of truth but mask deeper disagreements and power plays that tend not to get much public exposure--is about to become a problem. They might seem like disagreements over mere details of trade or immigration policy, but to the parties driving them, they're existential, a new version of a kind of conflict that has played itself out several times before. Nobody involved, however, wants to admit this in public (and in some cases, even to themselves). They're still supposed to be related and complementary versions of the national mission.

[The central public fiction of Palmey life in the early Eighties is that everything is basically cool and the advent of a true Black majority a few decades back is not about to culminate in a backlash fueled by an affluent and fearful White minority. That backlash can't take the brazenly supremacist form in Palmera that it might take elsewhere, but it can certainly fuck up a generally prosperous and relatively peaceful status quo. As fractious politics go, the possibility of such an event in some form is the constant backdrop of Palmey life and what fuels the ambient background paranoia seen even when times seem relatively good. The meta-textual reason for choosing 1983 as a snapshot point and a book setting is that it's an inflection point for this conflict really coming into the open.]

Re: A culture test for an alternate history project

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2022 8:07 pm
by ekesleight
Incidentally, the topic of Latinx immigration really caught my interest out of this. It led me to this site.

I'm going to digest it a bit before I really comment, but thanks to Mark for raising the question. It will be important to the overall flavor of the setting, especially since the crucial timespan from the late Fifties to the early Eighties is underdeveloped apart from my source spreadsheet (which is years old now). I will check back in once I've had a chance to review the data in more detail and compare it to my model's assumptions.

Re: A culture test for an alternate history project

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2022 12:10 am
by ekesleight
The second version of the Culture Test appears here.

I've tried to make the society's internal conflicts a bit more evident from the "man in the street" perspective. As Spanish goes: its profile remains constant, though details of the demographics may adjust (aside from Cuba's adjusted status, the fact that Palmera is not integrated into infrastructure of the United States looms a lot larger at this point). Thanks to Mark for the very useful feedback.