It is perhaps worth noting at this point that apologists of the British Empire often tend to point to Belgian atrocities as a way of making British rule look good in comparison.
It's a classic way of justifying imperialism, where you make colonial atrocities down to having bad people with bad intentions in charge, rather than being backed into the basis injustice of conquering other people's homes.
“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”
Edward Said,
Orientalism
Fanboyism is one of the major problems in AH but as I think was alluded to by Gary, history is problematic because human civilisation is problematic.
I don't have a problem with a TL which is foundationally about a longer lasting polity, but I want it to be both balanced/rooted and have an awareness and treatment of how society, religion, technology, trade etc are impacted.
Quite. My objection is not to alternate history about empires: they are an extremely common method of organising complex societies. It is about alternate history that ignores the fact that injustice is a fundamental part of empire; the tyranny is baked in.
This does not mean that we should engage in the kind of moral relativism that says that the USA is the same as the USSR is the same as the Third Riech is the same as the VOC. But we have to acknowledge that the points of distinction will be lost on the victims, and there are always victims.
Reagan's America may have been more benevolent than Brezhnev's USSR, but that's not the natural viewpoint of someone being thrown out of an Argentinian helicopter.
Moreover, the focus on empire too often just stays at the level of the people running it. Empires mixed things up- how about alternate history that focuses on the border lands between empires? You could do a fantastic alternate history story based entirely around a set of 'regional recipes,' each one showing how a different governing regime has led to changes in the way people lived their lives, the food they ate, the people they fell in love with...
That's actually a major problem with the field, I think. For all we mock Turtledove's sex scenes, he at least understands that history is tactile. I enjoy writing in the Lists of Head of State thread as much as the next poster, but history wasn't just a story of governance- it's about people eating, dancing, laughing, singing, fighting, fucking.
@SpanishSpy's swing dance article was so good for that reason: the very way people move is culturally constructed.
Actually, you know what? This post has made me want to see three things:
1. An alternate history told through a set of fashion ads. I have no idea who would be gifted enough to do that, but think of the possibilities...
2. The recipe book idea.
3. Here's one that could be a collaborative project- alternate history told through the program of an arts festival! Everyone writes an abstract, no more than two hundred words describing the dancers or actors or artists and their background, and thus the world is described...