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An encyclopedia of Robert Sobel's alternate history For Want of a Nail that anyone can edit!

For Want of a Nail

For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga is one of the classic works of alternate history. In it, business historian Robert Sobel wrote about an alternate world where the American Revolution was unsuccessful. However, instead of writing a novel set in an alternate timeline, Sobel chose to write a history book from an alternate timeline. The result is a history of an alternate North American continent from 1763 to 1971, including all the scholarly apparatus of an academic work: footnotes, a bibliography, three appendices, a map, an index, a preface by the author (an alternate Robert Sobel), and a critique by Professor Frank Dana, a hostile historian.

The book's point of divergence from our own history is a British victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, leading to defeat for the American colonists in the American Revolutionary War, which is known in the alternate history as the North American Rebellion. Afterwards, the defeated colonies are reorganized into the Confederation of North America, a dominion of the British Empire that gradually gains complete autonomy over the next sixty years. Meanwhile, the defeated rebels leave the colonies to settle in northern Mexico, where they found the State of Jefferson. In 1820, Jefferson and Mexico merge to form the United States of Mexico. For Want of a Nail then follows the histories of these two North American nations as they interact with each other and with the rest of a changed world, down to the time of the book's publication in the early 1970s.

Like any history book, For Want of a Nail references thousands of people, places, events, and organizations, most of which are unique to the alternate history it describes. The Sobel Wiki exists to serve as an encyclopedia of this richly-detailed alternate world.

Although most of the articles are written from an in-universe point of view, they can also contain italicised information from the point of view of someone in our world (IOW).

For All Nails

In 2001, a number of alternate history enthusiasts at the soc.history.what-if Usenet newsgroup (including Sobel Wiki creator Johnny Pez) joined together in the For All Nails project: to extend the Sobel Timeline past its original 1971 terminus, and to correct the various errors, contradictions, and improbabilities that For Want of a Nail suffers from. The result was a series of over 350 Usenet posts, mostly narrative vignettes of life in the Sobel Timeline, but also including newpaper and magazine articles, letters, and vitavision transcripts. Dan McDonald, one of the participants, began archiving the posts at his website, but real life intervened, as it so often does, and the kebe.com archive remains incomplete. In order to remedy this deficiency, the Sobel Wiki includes a second archive of For All Nails posts here.

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Featured Article

The Panic of 1936 was an economic crisis that struck the world in 1936. Although the global economy had been overheating for years, with rising inflation and interest rates, the immediate cause was an announcement made on Monday, 24 February by John Jackson, the President of Kramer Associates.

Jackson announced that he was moving the firm's headquarters from San Francisco, California, which had been the company's center of operations since its founding in 1865, to Luzon in the Philippines. Jackson explained that the purpose of the move was "to be closer to our Asian interests." After Jackson's announcement, it was discovered that K.A. had spent weeks selling off shares in its subsidiaries on the world stock exchanges and using the funds obtained to purchase gold. The subsequent spike in gold prices caused a panic on the world's security markets, which closed one by one on the 25th for fear of causing a liquidity crisis. (read more)

@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 {{w:SciFiAlliance}}<br />
 ==[[Featured Article]]==
-[[File:Mercator1.jpg|thumb|150px|Vincent Mercator.]]
+[[File:John_Jackson.jpg|thumb|140px|K.A. President John Jackson.]]
+The '''Panic of 1936''' was an economic crisis that struck the world in 1936. Although the global economy had been overheating for years, with rising inflation and interest rates, the immediate cause was an announcement made on Monday, 24 February by [[John Jackson]], the [[President (K.A.)|President]] of [[Kramer Associates]].
-The '''Offensive of the Dove''' was a global peace initiative announced by [[USM|Mexican]] [[President (U.S.M.)|President]] [[Vincent Mercator]] on 20 November 1962, five months after [[Kramer Associates]] detonated the world's first [[atomic bomb]].
+Jackson announced that he was moving the firm's headquarters from [[San Francisco]], [[California]], which had been the company's center of operations since its founding in 1865, to [[Luzon]] in the [[Philippines]]. Jackson explained that the purpose of the move was "to be closer to our Asian interests." After Jackson's announcement, it was discovered that K.A. had spent weeks selling off shares in its subsidiaries on the world stock exchanges and using the funds obtained to purchase [[gold]]. The subsequent spike in gold prices caused a panic on the world's security markets, which closed one by one on the 25th for fear of causing a liquidity crisis.  '''([[Panic of 1936|read more]])'''
-In announcing his initiative, Mercator called upon the world's nations to sign a non-aggression pact which would also guarantee the neutrality of those countries that had not been involved in the [[Global War]]. He also called for a world conference of the belligerent nations (all of whom were technically still at war with each other, since no formal armistice had ever been negotiated between any nations) to meet in [[Geneva]] the following summer to sign treaties ending the war. Mercator ended by vowing never to "start a war, and to destroy all offensive weapons after the treaties are signed."  '''([[Offensive of the Dove|read more]])'''
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