Brittania rules the stars

by Southeren Legion

This is a story wherein the United Kingdom finds the Stargate in 1905 and makes it public. Written in the style of a historical text and goes in detail so that to quote one review "WHY any of this is important to anyone not at least in college studying world political history".

108. E pluribus Unum

With the re-election of President Wallace and the mid-terms securing congress for his administration he was able to commence work on his policy reforms under the banner of the Great Society. The first major focus was his foreign policy reforms. The United States of America had been in central America and large swathes of the Caribbean for decades to protect American business interests while Franklin Roosevelt had tried to withdraw from the region worry over instability and the damages of the Mexican War forced him to remain. President Wallace did not have to deal with that issue having invested strongly in stabilising the region. The first nation that he ordered a withdrawal from was the Republic of Panama established with American backing in 1903 to build the Panama Canal the state had been an effective puppet state of the United States since impendence. President Wallace refused to have that and ordered the withdrawal from the state following the end of the South American Inferno. As the American forces withdrew he also called up President Arnulfo Arias to sign the Treaty of Washington establishing joint custody over the Panama Canal until 1979 when it would be directly annexed by Panama. The next nation he withdrew from was the was the island of Cuba where he forced the government to hold an election which resulted in a decisive victory for the Communist Party. The immediate nationalizations and the Proclamation of the People's Republic of Cuba in 1954 proved to nearly be a death blow for the withdrawal polices of Wallace but his victory the year before allowed him to continue on. The American withdrawal from the Central American nations of Nicaragua, and Honduras was the bloodiest as when the American troops left the regions a pair of coups broke out. The coups purged everyone who had ever associated with the Americans forcing the United States to intervene one again deposing the brief regimes and establishing a democratic regime once more. The brief interventions took a drain on President Wallace and when the 22nd Amendment passed establishing the office of High Speaker of the United States he knew his work was done. On the 26th of December 1959 President Henry Wallace died in his sleep knowing that the United States was truly the second greatest nation on earth.

-Extract from an ABS documentary on Henry Wallace

To truly understand the differences in transport between Eurasia and the rest of the world you need to go back to the discovery of the Stargate and the discovery of the first Death Glider by Winston Churchill. The ease of rebuilding the engine led to being mass produced for use on trains which can be seen on the Cape to Cairo and the continuous expansions of said railway. While it too until the end of the Russian Civil War for the railways to be expanded across Europe the ability to get onto a train in Dublin and get off later the same day at Moscow led to the European powers investing heavily in rail. The ease of transport and speed led to the seemingly rising star of cars to fall and instead it became far more socially acceptable and in fact expected for a true gentleman to catch the train and then walk the remaining few meters. Thus, cars were effectively forgotten about in Europe after all a train was quicker, quieter, and cheaper why would you want to get into such a noisy machine. The Americas did not take this view though train systems were expanded cars were seen as more useful and able to go to the areas to small to justify a train station or to isolated. There also was a touch of patriotism since if the Europeans abandoned cars they should adopt it to be different. But the largest divide came when the American Worker's Party proposed a tax on cars to incentive public use that led to many American Union Party members buying cars to spite their opposition and cars bizarrely became a political issue for most of the later 1940's and early 50's. In Asia trains dominated as they kept the nature of the cities without polluting them with cars as some saw it in fact across most of Asia cars are actually illegal due to cultural reasons or in Tibet and Japan's cases being unable to cope with the mountainous nature of their nations. Africa proved to be the frontline between the two as the native peoples tried to secure their cultural independence from their European overlords, so they turned to cars as much as possible. Though the settlers across the continent used trains as well which is why in Algeria, Rhodesia, German Africa, the Gold Coast, and parts of Kenya all mostly use trains for transport because of the settlers refusing to use cars.

-Extract from a history of transport by the Imperial Transport Union

The discovery of the second Stargate in Antarctica by IIET-49 led to the second largest diplomatic divide within humanity during the Goa'uld War. The reason that this happened was because the British who had discovered the Stargate within their claims in Antarctica openly announced that they were not going to use the Stargate and were willing to give it to an ally that offered enough money to get it. This probably was not that smartest method as every nation with a large economy immediately tried to secure the lease for it save for China, the Kingdom of the Arabs, and Brazil. But that still left quite a few nations as potential options after several months of negotiations the British had reduced their option to the United States of America, the German Empire, the French Federation, the Russian Empire, and the Empire of Japan. When it was announced the negotiations drew even tenser as everyone knew that if the Stargate were secured that the nation that managed to lease would become the world's second power. The Russians were the first to withdraw as their economy would be unable to deal with the British prices for such a long time, the next was France as the President choose to veto the bills, followed by the Empire of Japan who withdrew since Amaterasu had just designed one of the best interstellar warships classes yet. with that there were only two left the German Empire and the United States of America the debate was tense, but the greater American economy and the desires of President Wallace too rebuild the United States international image won out. With that done the United States of America was entrenched as humanities second power.

-Extract from Christopher Bowes's book The Bloody Wolves of the Stars: A history of Imperial Stargate Command. (Authors Note; For my readers on Fanfiction this is not to create parallels but because a poll I put up in Alternate History chose the United States.)