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By Gary Oswald. The Gaels and the Norse battle for control of Ireland at the Battle of Clontarf, as imagined in 1905 by Eoghan Ó Neachtain. Public domain courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Ireland prior to 800 AD was almost entirely rural. There were settlements but these were normally either ringforts where in a clan would find shelter during wars or monasteries and religious schools for Catholic orders. Modern day towns, as we currently think of them, with a wide range of people d

By Gary Oswald. Mombaza (Mombasa) in the 1593 edition of Civitates Orbis Terrarum, not long before the Zimba assault. Art in public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Portugal arrived in East Africa (modern day Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia) in 1496 as part of their larger plan to take control of the Indian Ocean and so the spice trade. They quickly conquered the existing states of the Swahili coast, installed puppet rulers and built bases. From there they attacked

By Gary Oswald. Saint Patrick preaches to the kings, depicted in the stained glass window of Carlow Cathedral of the Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary. Photo by Andreas F. Borchert, who has allowed use under Creative Commons. Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire but nor it was ever entirely cut off from interaction with that Empire. After all, from 43 AD to 410 AD, Rome ruled England, Wales and parts of Scotland, which puts them very close to Ireland. Trade between Irel

By Gary Oswald. Leicester City celebrate winning the 2016 Premier League - a tournament that, handily for an article covering the money side of things, was sponsored by a bank! Photo by Peter Woodentop, made available as creative commons via Wikimedia Commons. In March 2026 Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing political party Reform UK, held a series of rallies in Eastern England, visiting Ipswich and Sunderland to lend support to his party’s effort in the upcoming local el

By Gary Oswald. The Normans sail their army into England, as seen in the Bayeux Tapestry; picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. If there is one thing that has defined the geopolitical situation of the British Isles over the last 500 years, it is the fact that they have a moat. The nature of British warfare has been that it happens in other people’s lands because foreign armies do not get past the Royal Navy. The British have many times been defeated on the continent, by Nazi Ge

By Gary Oswald. Members of the City Imperial Volunteers burn a farm at Frederickstrad. This left the guerillas unable to feed themselves, and starved civilians in their thousands. Picture out of copyright, held by the National Army Museum. As discussed in the previous article, the British armies in South Africa were firmly in the ascendancy during 1900. But as they advanced into the Boer Republics, capturing their capitals, they made only limited efforts to bring the Boer arm

By Gary Oswald. The European Cup at Le Parc des Princes stadium in 1956: the start of the UEFA tournaments. Creative Commons, courtesy the blog L'Equipe and Wikimedia Commons. In a previous article, I discussed how National Leagues for Association Football emerged in England, Scotland, Ireland and other European countries in the late 19th century. And as soon as that happened, there was debate over which of the winners of those leagues were better. From 1876 to 1905, there wa

By Gary Oswald. Boer commandos posing for the camera, ready to fight the British invasion. They had sympathy in Europe, which similarly posed and motivated black soldiers never did. Picture public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. In October of 1899, after a long crisis, the two Boer states of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic declared war on the British Empire and sent their armies to invade British Natal and the Cape Colony. There is a great irony of the Se

By Gary Oswald. T.L. Morganfield is an American writer of Aztec themed alternate history, fantasy, and AH romance. Her short story Night Bird Soaring was a finalist for the 2009 Sidewise Awards. Hello and thanks so much for talking to us. First of all, how did you get into Aztec history and mythology and what do you think appeals to you about writing about that culture? I can trace it all to one class with one specific professor in college, and that was Introduction to the Hi

By Gary Oswald. Cover courtesy Amazon Meljean Brooks’ The Iron Duke , the first book in the popular Iron Seas series, follows Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth as she investigates a dead body found in the Isle of Dogs, on the property of the Duke of Anglesey, the titular Iron Duke. This is not however, the book you might think it is from that description. This is not a detective novel or a crime novel. Who killed the dead man (who turns out to be one of the Duke’s friends)

By Gary Oswald. The London Illustrated News depicting "General Sir George Colley at the Battle of Majuba Mountain Just Before He Was Killed". Defeat portrayed as a heroic stand - something the establishment would to want to rectify. Public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. William Ewart Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister of the UK, was an imperialist. He oversaw the largest empire to ever exist and that empire expanded during his time in charge. In particular he made the c

By Gary Oswald. Paul Dickov nine years after the inciting event. Photo copyright Wikipedia editor 'hst43077' but allowed for any purpose. On the 30th of May 1999 in Wembley Stadium, one of the most important moments in British sport happened. It was the 94th minute of a 90-minute Association Football game, with the score at 2-1. Five minutes had been awarded for stoppage time and so in desperation, with only a minute of the game left, the trailing team played a long ball forw

By Gary Oswald. Jessie wouldn't be so happy if Galyn Susman hadn't saved her characters models! Image courtesy Amazon marketplace. Toy Story 2 was the third feature film made by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, a sequel to their first film Toy Story . It was an even bigger commercial and critical hit, one of the best selling and most praised animated films ever made and probably the film that truly made Pixar. Their ability to make not only multiple original

By Gary Oswald. Paperback cover, courtesy Amazon. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is the editor of the What Ifs of Jewish History AH book and owner of the Counterfactual History Review , a blog that has been running for twelve years and covers the way counter-factual thinking has been used and viewed in the mainstream, in both fiction and analysis of the real world. He is also a prominent academic, who serves as President of the Center for Jewish History in New York City and Professor

By Gary Oswald. The 2020 hardcover edition; image courtesy Amazon. Literary genres are a funny thing. On the one hand they are essentially advertising, 'did you like this book? Well, it's a fantasy book and here are 200 more fantasy books, you'll like them too, please buy them'. On the other hand, it's kind of a reader's guide, telling you, the consumer, what to expect and how to engage with the text. I will react differently to the introduction of a dark handsome neighbour i

By Gary Oswald. One of the New Villages created by the British in Malaysia, where civilians were forcibly relocated to disrupt the communist insurgency. This was publicly known in 1950s Britain - how many civilians were treated by soldiers and police was known & recorded by the government. Photograph in public domain, courtesy wikimedia commons. If you spend any time at all online looking for people talking about the British Empire (and honestly if you're reading this, you pr

By Gary Oswald. So AH you can see an alternate version of it! Picture courtesy Amazon. Being enthusiasts of alternate history, everyone reading this is probably able to name an iconic piece of AH fiction in most formats. A book, a comic, a tv show, a video game etc. But it's maybe a little harder when it comes to motion pictures. There have obviously been a bunch of AH feature films but none have really been advertised as the big new AH media in the way TV shows like The Man

By Gary Oswald. Secretly a AH film? The Woman King's bluray, courtesy Amazon. Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 Quentin Tarantino war film about allied agents operating in occupied France during 1944. Those agents are planning an assassination of Adolf Hitler and, to spoil a 16-year-old film, they shockingly actually succeed. Hitler is killed by the French resistance in 1944 rather killing himself in 1945. That obviously has huge political and military implications. But the f

By Gary Oswald. "Oriental Warrior" by Pier Francesco Mola (1650), a painting of a contemporary Barbary pirate. Could they have dominated the Caribbean coasts? Art in public domain, provided by wikimedia commons. The European colonisation of the Americas was done by numerous countries. England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Belgium, Netherlands, Prussia, Tuscany, Spain, France, Portugal, Norway, Malta, and Courland in modern day Latvia all made attempts to settle in vario

By Gary Oswald. Cover of the current UK e-book version, picture courtesy Amazon. The exact effect the smallpox epidemics had on the native populations of the New World is a deeply contentious historical argument. This is because there are no agreed upon population counts of how many Native Americans lived in the Americas prior to European contact in 1491. Alfred Kroeber suggested a number of around eight million people, Henry Dobyns however argued the number was above one hun