For your consideration (This is actually something I'm writing for an AP credit class. That's why it doesn't follow the format of my other timelines, and also why I didn't draw up a map. Tell me what you think):
The setting is 646 CE, Imperial Japan.
Japan had been under the rule of the Emperors for some time now, a powerful entity in and of itself. However, this edifice was ever fragile, due to the tenuous nature of the Emperors power, and the fact that the aristocrats could oppose his rulings so easily. The Emperor Kotoku decided upon a way to combat this, and in this year, he set forth the Taika ReformsGreat Reforms.
These edicts were, in sum:
Article I abolished private ownership of land & workers, deriving from "namesake", succession, or other means of appropriation.
Article II established a central capital metropolitan region, called the Kinai, or Inner Provinces. A capital city was to be built there, and governors would be appointed.
Article III established population registers, as well as the redistribution of rice-cultivating land equitably. It also provided for the appointment of rural village heads.
Article IV abolished the old forms of taxes, and established a new system.
All in all, the edicts sought to reform Japanese society into something new and wondrous, that had only once been seen beforein Imperial China. They sought to establish a Confucian-style bureaucracy, a united, centralized Japanese state. There would have been no samurai warlords, but no Japan sinking into isolation, either. In reality, Japan didnt open up until the 1800s. What if they had never closed?
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With some resistance from the nobility, then, the Taika reforms go forward as planned by the Emperor (who takes the name TaikaGreat Reform. As usual, the Japanese are creative with their naming). The centralized Japanese government develops something of a court bureaucracy, but even more importantly, they conscript a standing army from the peasantry, creating a united force to fight for the Emperor.
Thus, through the 640s and the 650s CE, the Japanese absorb the entirety of Honshu into their island empire, while securing their hold on Shikoku and Kyushu. Only Hokkaido remains outside of their grasp. Meanwhile, the Chinese are flourishing under the Tang dynasty, and Japan continues to import much in the way of goods and culture from their highly refined neighbors.
Through the rest of the 7th century, rebellions are put down by the strengthening Japanese government, and Hokkaido begins to be slowly absorbed into the empire, the Ainu natives being pushed further and further north, while the Ryukyu Islands to the south of Japan (including Okinawa) are claimed for the Emperor.
The 8th century opens with the Japanese beginning to look towards the Korean Peninsula (this is a natural enough trend; only a few dozens of miles separate them). They conquer the small islands of Chubu and Tsushima without too much trouble, and without arousing the suspicion of the Silla government.
Back at home, the Japanese devise their own written language, based more upon the Japanese language, and thus far better adapted for it. This leads to something of a flowering of Japanese court literature, and poetry, too grows, including the famous haiku style.
A new, bolder Japanese emperor declares war on the kingdom of Silla. He believes that expansion into the Korean Peninsula would be quite excellent and easy. Indeed, the Japanese troops make significant advances at first. But later on, they falter, and fail, as Chinese Tang Dynasty troops come in to reinforce their allies. In the end, Japanese forces were defeated and driven back to their island kingdom.
In the 750s, however, the Tang grew weaker. Their expansion into Central Asia had been turned around by Arabs at the River Talas, and peasant rebellions increased against the lavish and extravagant administration. Japan moved again and attacked the weakened Silla, finally bringing it to its knees after a decade of hard fighting. They then started to pressure the Tang by supporting pirate groups and participating in such raids themselves.
In 780, the Tang finally fully collapsed by a peasant rebellion, but that was not the end of it. The skillful and influential Japanese emperors carefully intervened only where necessary, to stop any one rebel group or noble from getting too powerful, to set them all at odds. When the dust settled, China was divided into fairly strong states which maintained a firm independence from each other: Wei in the north, Wu in the heartlands, and Tong in the south.
Japan managed to gain the Shangdong Peninsula and the isles of Hainan and Taiwan out of the deal, and was universally recognized as the preeminent regional power. With the Japanese carefully intervening where necessary, the Song Dynasty never rose, of course, so China stayed disunited. Japan was free to expand, which they did, through the Philippines and Vietnam.
The period of the 900s through the 1200s was fairly uneventful. One of the Chinese states invented gunpowder, and all three adopted it. Their competition strengthened China in a way that the monolithic China we knew never could, and they began to replace Japan as the primary power, destroying some of the Japanese colonies. They also managed to completely destroy the Mongol invasions in the 1200s.
This led to a large amount of differences to our world. The Muslim states, unaffected by the Mongol Hordes that never came, were much stronger in this timeline. Yet at the same time, several positive effects never really happened; the Ottomans stayed a minor tribe around Samarkand, unmoved by attack. The nation that they would have replaced, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, took much longer to fell the state of Byzantium. On the other hand, Persian and Mesopotamian Muslims grew in prosperity under new states. Trade flourished, especially with the east.
Because of the rising Indian Ocean trade, the Peninsular Indian states such as Travancore and Calicut grew in wealth as well, acting as the middlemen, and becoming powerful merchant states. Islam, having not entered a period of decline, continued to infiltrate further into the African continent. Meanwhile, Europe remained a backwater, with Muslim intrusions impossible to drive out.
With the New World discovered by a Japanese explorer in the 1400s, these new lands were open to slow, gradual colonization by the Chinese and Japanese states, who competed for trade with these new native Empires. While the Incas survived the contact (albiet in shrunken form), the diseases of the Old World struck the Aztecs too hard, so that even without a nation bent on conquering them, they fell apart into smaller states, like the Tlaxcala and the Tarsacan.
The Hapsburgs, rulers of Austria, would never rise to prominence in Europe, so a Valois Dynasty France (not Bourbons) remained unchallenged for dominance, advancing into Italy and taking much of this region for themselves. Novgorod, at this point still the dominant Russian state (no Mongol yoke), united the Russias into one Empire, and as Constantinople fell, Alexander VI took the title of Czar of all the Russias, and declared Novgorod the Third Rome, as successor to the Byzantines.
England was the only European power who could partake in colonization. Spain was too busy fighting the French, the French too busy fighting the Germans, the Germans the Poles, the Poles the Russians. England alone had the body of water separating it from this turmoil, and they alone were able to colonize the Americas.
Their colonization of the Americas prompted the formation of the River League, a group of Native Americans to oppose them, such as the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Alabama, etc. Thus, the world as it stood in 1700:
China was split into several smaller nations, who were more technologically advanced than our China, and more outward looking. Japan was a powerful Pacific nation, but no longer did it dominate affairs on the mainland; only Korea and Kamchatka were under its rule now.
India was dominated by the trade states of the south, who had formed something of a league, with colonial ambitions in Africa, and Indonesia (which in our history were often colonized by the Indians in any case; here they just have more energy to focus on it).
The Arabs were much more powerful, with Seljuk sultanates dominating the Balkans, Anatolia, North Africa, Southern Spain, and even Sicily. Thus, Europe was reduced to a backwater. France was the most dominant European state, with Novgorod and Poland following close behind. England was the only real European colonial power, with some holdings in the Americas.
The Americas, as it happened, were fractured. England was mainly limited to the Northeast, the Japanese and the Chinese colonizers to the west. Mexico was fractured among several states, while a relatively reformed and advanced Inca state still existed. Brazil was slowly absorbed into the Portugese colonial empire.
Most significantly of all, Africa was split among several centralized, advanced Islamic states (like Songhai in our world). Hindu influences were felt from Indian colonization in the East, but overall, Africa was much less bloody and war-torn than in our world.
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From that little venture into the fantastical world of the unknown, we get a sense of how truly important East Asia was even in medieval European affairs. If Japan had been a more powerful, outward looking entity, would the Mongols have ever risen? And if the Mongols hadnt risen, then surely the Arab states would have grown more? Novgorod never fallen from prominence?
We see from this that what results from our little adventure into the unknown is a world quite different from ours. Something much more multi cultural, much more a world of trade and prosperity than ours of domination and imperialism. It is a whole different world than ours, and not a bad change at all... Now if only I had a time machine...
I just noticed that most of my timelines seem to turn out into a much better world than we have now. Either we're really just getting the crappy end of the shaft, or I'm just an idealist. I think I know which.
. Indochina, however... Possibly a very advanced civilization will appear in south Indochina, Malaysia and Indonesia as well. If we get a set-up similar to IT II ITNES I (Kalinga, Sinhala, Indochinese states, Hong Kong) but with more little states around, possibly without as much Indian colonies in Indonesia... Well, it'll be interesting. That might be rather like OTL's Mediterranean, actually.
So then the discovery of the New World would certainly come via the Pacific...but Mesoamerican civs will also have an advanced feudal/caste society in place.
