Seems that's how the Greater Commonwealth became as big as it did. It got big because it worked, for everyone.
For the empire-builders, it only worked well for the rentiers and thieves who stole from everyone else.
Which is exactly what happened in our world: no Commonwealth to defend the world against the ravages and rip-offs of the empire-builders. We're still paying the price for that, everywhere.
If it was Cromwell that killed the real Commonwealth, in our timeline, then he has a lot to answer for... - everywhere around the world...
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If the Greater Commonwealth worked so well, why did the US split off from it? It seems to have done so at the same time as in our timeline - the later part of the eighteenth century - and via much the same means, a revolt backed up by military force. The Commonwealth did object, for a while, but seems to have again backed off and largely left them to it, for well over a century, until the infectiousness of its egalitarianism starts to have an impact again.
From what I've read so far, the key seems to be the term that's used within the Commonwealth for the skirmishes around that separation: it's not called 'The War of Independence', but 'The War of Dependence'.
Sounds a bit cynical, sure. But if it was about dependence, then dependence on what? And by whom?
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The Viner Dimension
Science FictionA simple-seeming bequest sends Alan on an exploration that turns steadily stranger at every turn: "Weird politics. Weird plant-things. Weird battles where nobody dies." --- Set in the recent past in rural England, this blog-like story provides a fir...