Dark Earth Timeline

He is a descendant of the Napoleonic Hornblower; I included him as he is a character in a 1947 story I'm working on set in the Caribbean.

Looking ahead to the first half of the 1960s, Kennedy won't be assassinated and Reagan will rise to prominence in the 1964 election; Nixon being on the Supreme Court removes him from future calculations. I'm leaning towards a Barton Labour government coming to power in Britain in 1963 and a different Soviet leader rising to prominence, one who is young, dynamic and extremely efficient.

The Congo will continue to descend into chaos and problems, Vietnam is heating up, but with different leadership, ongoing French military aid and a broader level of Free World military support; as of 1961, there are 100 Australian, 100 Canadian, 1800 American and 480 British military advisors attached to the South Vietnamese Army. South America will be taking a different shift.

American military presence in Korea will end up being gradually scaled down, as there isn't the same need for US ground troops.

Yes and no. Katanga Province is part of Rhodesia, but there is the definite possibility of some other parts of the Congo developing separatist movements.

Indeed. Even without Katanga, the circumstances of the Congo are such that further conflict following independence is sadly quite probable. It is one of many Cold War battlefronts.

Africa as a whole is in for a mixed 1960s. Slower progress to independence on the one hand, but an accompanying absence of some of the post colonial coups and conflicts on the other. Idi Amin won't be coming to power in Uganda, for example.

The Belgians are reluctantly pulling the pin, the Portuguese are going to fight it out and the Swedes are working towards an orderly timetable for independence. France is at a crossroads regarding its West African holdings.

Britain is trying to work towards East and West African federations and is following a longer timetable, as envisaged in the 40s and 50s. Kenya's large white population is a complicating factor in plans for East Africa.

That is quite right. They have taken a very Swedish approach to their African holdings, which is the one part of their empire that is going to achieve independence anytime soon. The overwhelming majority of the Swedish Army and Royal Swedish Air Force is based on the defence of Scandinavia, but a certain number of vessels of the Royal Swedish Navy operate in support of their colonial holdings, typically one or two of their eight cruisers.

Given that their other colonies consist of some Pacific and Caribbean islands and one of the Guianas, not very likely.

The permanent presence amounts to a handful of small patrol boats. There are training cruises to the Caribbean every six months or so by one of the cruisers, combined with a Far Eastern cruise to the Pacific, which is building up assets in the Pacific for nuclear testing purposes.

The Swedish do not have any locally raised forces of note in the West Indies or South America. This was generally the rule for most smaller of the smaller colonial powers.

As of 1961, the Portuguese have a fully fledged Colonial Army, the British and French have highly developed colonial forces across the world and the Spanish have a small number of African troops. The KNIL is a largely Dutch force at this time.