Guest Post: Exundation of 1919

This article first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

Even with the grand instruments of their day, scientists could not explain the turning point of so-called Western Civilization.

During the final stages of the Great War, the world mean sea level fell by a total of four hundred feet from where it had existed for the prior two millennia. Needless to say, this inexplicable historic event, subsequently known as the Exundation, would dictate the nature of the peace settlement. Pope Benedict XV was vindicated; he had issued an early warning that had been largely ignored like his many calls for a ceasefire. Inevitably, his view was based on Genesis, that God as a loving Father had divinely formed a new world of peace. "The war to end wars" would prove to be exactly that.

Three of the victor powers were most directly affected because of the disappearance of the English Channel and the shrinkage of the Mediterranean Sea. Great Britain, France, and Italy had enjoyed maritime dominance throughout the recent conflict. Ironically, the principal defeated Great Power, Germany, which had been starved into submission by their respective navies, was now landlocked into a permanent state of encirclement.

The victor powers' representatives at Versailles had the task of redefining borders due to the collapse of the Central Powers' sprawling empires. What might otherwise have turned into a Scramble for Africa closer to home took a very different direction. The overriding principle of contiguity prevailed, resulting in the creation of a Franco-British Union and a Scandinavian Confederation. This meant that Germany, previously a colossus of central Europe, was surrounded - some would say crowded out - by super-sized neighbouring countries. The populations of contested territories in Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-Lorraine and Limburg had a ring-fenced guarantee of security. It would be hard to imagine a more dramatic reversal of fortune over the course of five short years.

The British and French shared foundational interests in North Africa and without the Exundation likely excluded the Kingdom of Italy from a share of the main spoils. However, her much closer proximity to their imperial possessions forced a major rethink of colonial policies. The Roman Empire had once used the region as a grain basket. What would now emerge was an innovative long-term strategy to merge these developing nations into metropolitan Europe.

The biggest irony of all was that the Second German Empire had itself been proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors, which now had Germany as part of the new federation. This much bigger project was now begun in the very same location where Otto von Bismarck had once stood triumphant. The rebuilding of the new Europe was a long century's work. However, there was great hope for the future, in less than twenty years, the former warring parties were planning an English Channel Canal that would provide the new Netherlands with seagoing access to the Atlantic. Other irrigation projects in the Mediterranean were pursued by the Suez Canal Company. As the former British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey famously observed, "The lamps are coming back on all over Europe."

Provine's Addendum

While Europe rebuilt itself, formerly seaside nations across the world also faced challenges that required major public action. In the Western Hemisphere, cities focused on cutting channels to reopen harbors fed by rivers. On the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, major ports such as Boston, New York, and Virginia Beach were now fifty to 120 miles inland. Some cities like San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro were near enough to the new coast to found new harbors, but ultimately many populations would migrate to the newly founded cities, such as New Boston and New New York. The inland prairies turned from the Great Plains to the Great American Desert, and the Dust Bowl drove farmers away by the hundreds of thousands.

"Migrating populations" served as the major summary of world events for the century. While Europe added much arable land, other areas dried out profusely from the smaller oceans feeding a weaker hydrosphere. Some populations simply had to move toward the sea, such as the migration from inland Argentina to the new sprawling plains. Violence broke out among migrating Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East competing for arable land along the long river valley that was once the Persian Gulf while highlands became unlivable. Prolonged violence grew in East Asia as Japan became part of the mainland by a narrow isthmus west of what had been Tsushima Island in the Korea Strait. A canal project reestablished the straight, and the cross-traffic of land and sea made Tsushima most of the most valuable economic regions in the country. Japan expanded westward in the prolonged Second and Third Sino-Japanese Wars as Chinese people migrated eastward while desertification struck Central Asia. In Southeast Asia, the vast new lands connecting the continent and Indonesia became a "wild west" of lawless territory as nations and colonizers scrambled to determine who owned what.

Sea navigation also of course changed with the Exundation, most notably in the Arctic. The Northwest Passage, which had only at last been successfully navigated in 1906, became truly un-navigable as the the Canadian Arctic Archipelago merged into a complicated series of peninsulas and isthmuses. Traversing the past North America was a moot point anyhow as the shallow Bering Strait drained, connecting Alaska and Russia by a 1,400-mile-wide land bridge. Currents warmed the southern side, which attracted immigrants from across the world seeking livable space, while the northern side continued as a frozen wasteland devoid even of the migratory marine life that once traversed from Pacific to Arctic and back.

Shorelines estimates from https://www.floodmap.net/