Partitions of Asia and Australia That Almost Happened

Vote to decide the fate of the Partition of India! Results will be posted on a video on August 23rd! forms.gle/LD7ZLEXs9Zf9qyk4A

Man if I had a nickel for every former British Dominion where the sparsely populated western half of the country feels alienated by the wealthy and densely populated east, I’d have exactly 2 nickels

I still couldn’t get over the fact that the Northern Territory was part of the southern Australia territory.

I expect the 'upside-down Iberia' is because Iberia's antipode is there - or rather, near there. Might have been a 'best guess' case, or perhaps they just didn't have an entirely accurate answer back then.

I think it would've been neat to talk about the USSR's (failed) pressuring of the USA to let it occupy Hokkaido.

Australia also could have very easily ended up split between the UK and the Netherlands. The Netherlands discovered it first and claimed the whole thing as 'New Holland', but it was a paper colony just like 'New Zealand' with no settlers. When the UK started setting up colonies on the East Side, they initially only claimed the Eastern half of Australia, as they wanted to respect the Dutch claim and didn't have a strong influence on the Western Half(whilst the Western half was where the Dutch had done the bulk of their exploring as well as the few landings). However after several decades without the Dutch doing anything with their part(largely due to the Napoleonic Wars distracting them and then Britain seizing all their colonies for a while and never giving back Ceylon) they adjusted the border and took most of the middle of the continent, and after nearly another decade by 1830 the UK officially claimed the whole thing. Had the Netherlands not been ravaged by the Napoleonic Wars they could have settled Western Australia. They were never going to be able to keep the whole continent, let alone New Zealand too, but Britain held quite a bit of restraint and hesitation for fully taking the island and gave opportunity for the Dutch to keep the west.

Dont forget that there was a proposed partition of the Qing Dynasty. The dynasty gave concessions but wasnt divided up by the Europeans. In the end a revolution did bring the Qing Dynasty down and the Republic of China would disintegrate into a number of warlordships.

Partitions? Finally. Next are Partitions of Mars that almost happened, right?

Interestingly enough, I once heard that during the forming of Australia there was also the discussion of New Zealand, since both had mixed feelings on whether New Zealand should join the Commonwealth (which was eventually settled by Australia leaving a clause saying that New Zealand was free to join Australia if they so wished and is also why New Zealand has an uncodified constitution since they were in two minds about joining Australia) so you might even have an alternate timeline where Western Australia (with or without Goldfields) is its own colony then country but New Zealand is part of Australia.

2:55 Seeing Perth being in a state called Victoria makes me violently ill.

In the India partition questionnaire I wish question 6 had been two separate questions or had additional options. I would have preferred to keep Bengal intact and let Burma gain southern Assam.

Part of the problem with the British partition of India is that it was rushed deliberately - Britain discouraged institutional development, and then suddenly rushed to full independence. Of course the result was chaotic. A guy named Cyril Radcliffe was given just FIVE WEEKS to determine the borders of the entire subcontinent, and was provided with minimal staff, out of date census records and incomplete maps. The result was not just messy borders, but people suddenly finding out which country they were in. I'm not sure that Independence and/or partition could ever have been totally peaceful, but at the very least it could have been smoother and calmer.

You could also mentioned the proposed partition of China along the Yangtze

I had never heard of Hideyoshi's plan to partition Korea with Ming before so I did some digging, and I think Seth may have misinterpreted the original text. The proposal was called 大明日本和平条件 (Conditions for Peace Between Great Ming and Japan), and most Chinese sources I could find concur that this was the provision in question: 京城及四道歸還朝鮮，另外四道割讓於日本 ("Return Seoul and four provinces to Korea, separate the other four provinces to be attached to Japan.") So Japan actually demanded four provinces (probably Kyongsang, Cholla, Chungchong, and Kangwon, since Seoul was to remain with Korea), not five. The other four would have comprised a vastly reduced Korea, but not been annexed to Ming.

so glad this series came back! :)

Love these videos but the background music is so loud, might just be my earphones lol. Will try on desktop.

as someone who lived in the goldfields for most of their life, it is 100% more natural to say "the goldfields" than "goldfields" 4:01

I'm so happy we get to vote on this. I hope we get an alternative history video to accompany our results.

Spain and Portugal are upside down because that's the position they would be if you superimposed the Northern Hemisphere over the southern hemisphere.

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