Skip to content
ControglobeThe Global Swap encyclopedia
العربية

An open-source worldbuilding encyclopedia

Controglobe

From 500 BCE the Global North and the Global South trade histories. The rivers, deserts and sea lanes stay exactly where they are; who industrialises, who colonises and who writes the textbooks does not. Everything that follows is written up the way an encyclopedia would write it.

Read the featured articleWalk the timeline

Articles

Eight articles, every one a single self-contained page. Hover over or tap a link to read its summary card; every map and drawing is part of the page.

United States of Arabia

The federal republic of al-Mashriq: twenty-four states from the Levant to Qumur, the Custodianship of the Two Holy Mosques, the eighty-eight years of khidmah that ended with the Thirty-First Amendment, and all forty-seven presidents.

Featured article

Timeline of the Global Swap

Twenty-five centuries on one page, from the divergence of 500 BCE to the reapportionment fight of 2026, with the world mapped at its turning points.

Chronology

History of the United States of Arabia

From the Nabataean unification and the caliphal trade in Europeans to the Civil War, the eighty-eight years of khidmah, and the present.

History

Kingdom of Solms-America

North America carries the Middle East: the oil monarchy of the southern plains, the House of Solms and the Plain Rule, the Two Sanctuaries of Paquimé and Chukson, and the embargo of 1973, with maps traced on the ground.

North America

Nabataean Unification

The kingdom of Petra and Hegra, the Covenant of the Wells, the Well Rolls, and how written Arabic began in a royal chancery.

Antiquity

Motor vehicles

Invented in the Kongo, mass-produced at Mosul, remade by Hindustan after the oil shocks and electrified from Nusantara — with drawings of what the vehicles of each region actually look like.

Technology

Africa — the European swap

Every African nation and its Global-North counterpart, with a map drawn on non-colonial borders.

Reference atlas

Europe — the African swap

Every European nation and its Global-South counterpart, the African partition of the continent, and the mirror rule that holds the two atlases together.

Reference atlas

The premise

One change, applied consistently: the historical trajectories of the Global North and the Global South are transposed, beginning around 500 BCE. Everything else — geography, climate, rivers, mountains, the sea lanes — stays exactly where it is.

North Americacarries the Middle EastThe Mashriqcarries North AmericaAfricacarries EuropeEuropecarries AfricaSouth Asiacarries Britain,Japan and ChinaNusantaracarries ChinaSouth Americacarries mainland South AsiaCentral Asiacarries Central AmericaCentral Americacarries Central AsiaCaucasusCaribbeanGreenlandIcelandMasrIndian Ocean islandsEast AsiaNorthern AsiaAustraliaThe Middle East and North America exchange trajectoriesAfrica and Europe exchange trajectoriesThe Caucasus and the Caribbean exchange trajectoriesCentral Asia and Central America exchange trajectoriesSouth Asia carries Britain, Japan and ChinaMaritime South-East Asia carries ChinaSouth America carries mainland South AsiaThe Indian Ocean islands carry the PacificGeography is fixed: only the trajectories move. Iceland carries Morocco and Greenland Cyprus; grey regions have no counterpart assigned yet.
The Global Swap. The Middle East and North America exchange historical trajectories, as do Africa and Europe, the Caucasus and the Caribbean, and Central Asia and Central America; South Asia carries the history of Britain, Japan and China, maritime South-East Asia that of China, and South America that of mainland South Asia. Afghanistan and Siberia trade trajectories one for one, and are not yet coloured here. East Asia, the rest of northern Asia and Australia (in grey) have no counterpart assigned yet — an open question for the issue tracker. Coastlines after Natural Earth; relief and sea depths from ETOPO 2022 (NOAA NCEI).

The point of divergence is not a battle or a birth but a long reversal of who industrialises, who colonises, who is colonised, and who writes the textbooks. The setting's own historians give two proximate causes for the European half of it: the European lion survived across a far larger range, which kept settlement dispersed and defensive, and the late-antique empires of Europe collapsed without successors, which left the continent tribal and sectional. European confederations began migrating to North America in the 1400s and carried that pattern with them; it was the Mashriq, not North America, that resolved it into a continental federation.

RegionCarries the history ofNotes
The Middle EastNorth Americaal-Mashriq is Arabia = the United States, Zagrosia = Canada (Anatolia is its Quebec) and Qubrus = Greenland, a self-governing dependency of Ifriqiya, which carries Denmark; Masr = Mexico is the neighbour outside it
AfricaEuropeWene wa Kongo = Germany; Jolof = Spain; Manden = Italy, on the ground of Mali, because in Africa the swap follows civilisation before geography and Rome belongs in the Latin west; the Derg Union = Russia
EuropeAfricaAnglia = Nigeria; Rhenia = the Congo; tribal, sectional, developing, and the source of the European tribes that migrated to North America from the 1400s
North AmericaThe Middle EastSolms-America = Saudi Arabia, on the ground of Texas; Mississippi = Iraq; Atlantica = Iran; Aztlan = Israel. Germanic and Latin-named states of the Crossing, tribal and sectarian, over the native nations whose prophets they adopted; the Timeline has the whole key
South AsiaBritain, Japan and ChinaHindustan, the colonial power of the Arabian coasts
Maritime South-East AsiaChinaNusantara, the rising competitor
South AmericaMainland South Asia
The CaucasusThe Caribbean
Central AsiaCentral America
Indian Ocean islands, Macaronesia, South AtlanticThe PacificExcept Iceland = Morocco and Greenland = Cyprus

Twenty-five centuries at a glance

The whole chronology, from the divergence to the present, is in the Timeline of the Global Swap. These are its hinges.

  1. c. 500 BCEThe divergence. Lions and fallen empires keep Europe tribal.
  2. 262 BCEThe Covenant of the Wells: one alphabet before one king.
  3. 869The Saqaliba Revolt: European captives hold the Basra marshes.
  4. 1497Mansa Jata of Kaabu rounds the Horn; the crowns reach Arabia.
  5. 1776Thirteen princely colonies declare independence from Hindustan.
  6. 1902The African partition of Europe is complete.
  7. 1945Arabia and the Derg Union divide the world between them.
  8. 2026Arabia and Nusantara; the reapportionment fight.

Rules of the setting

  1. Geography is fixed.Only history moves. Deserts stay deserts; the Nile still flows north.
  2. Borders are internal.No frontier in this world descends from a partition conference. They follow rivers, escarpments, watersheds and the settlements of internal wars.
  3. Roles, not costumes.A nation carries another's historical role, not its names, language or religion. Congo is Germany's role in Kikongo.
  4. Custom entities are allowedwhere nothing maps cleanly — Aïr and Kanem exist because the Alps and Sápmi have no single counterpart.
  5. Contradiction is expected.This is open source. Forks and competing canon are the point.

Where it came from

Controglobe branched off from A More Fractured Union (2023), a map by Bemon and Body25 in which the United States and the Middle East trade places. Its North America is still the ground of this one, and both of them helped to shape the first drafts of the timeline before contact with them was lost. Thank you both.

Contributing

Corrections, arguments and whole new articles are welcome. To talk maps and canon, or just to say hello, come to the Controglobe Discord. Open an issue for a disagreement about canon, or a pull request for a new article. CONTRIBUTING.md has the house style, the conventions for maps and figures, and the rules for preview cards.

Join the DiscordOpen an issue