In Our Timeline, the Netherlands is usually seen as a second-rate colonial power, holding a handful of Caribbean islands, Suriname, and Indonesia. It lost what could have been hugely profitable holdings in multiple wars with its neighbors, most famously New Amsterdam (New York) and the Cape Colony (South Africa). But what if the Netherlands didn’t lose all their claims in Africa and Eurasia?

At the conclusion of the Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1674, having been soundly beaten for a third time by the English, the Dutch signed away their claims to the North American Mainland and restructured their trading relationship with the English. There is no world in which the British would abandon their claim to what is now New York, not after winning it during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and the Dutch recapturing it in 1673. However, in the trade negotiations of the Treaty, the English left open a loophole in its definition of contraband, allowing naval stores to be used by the Dutch in smuggling operations. While not particularly important at the time, during the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch earned the ire of the British by using that loophole to violate trade embargos. Britain unilaterally declared these goods contraband in OTL, sparking a backlash from Dutch Merchants, who then pressured the States General and Stadtholder William V, leading to the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.

The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War effectively ended a 100 year alliance between the Dutch and British, and during the Napoleonic Wars, the British conquered most of the Dutch colonial possessions following the overthrow of William V in the Batavian Revolution and France’s annexation of the Netherlands. Near the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Coalition restored the Netherlands as a Kingdom, but only returned Indonesia to the Dutch. In OTL, Britain and the Coalition wanted the Netherlands to remain a strong power so they could be an effective buffer state between France and Prussia. Initially the British had planned to return the Dutch colonies intact to the Netherlands, but the Royal Navy wanted to maintain control of shipping lanes around the Horn of Africa in part because of the bad blood between the Dutch and British.

With no loophole in the Treaty of Westminster to encourage smuggling, the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War never happens, and the Netherlands remains a nominal ally of Britain. After France conquers the Netherlands in the Second Franco-Dutch War in 1795 and William V flees to London, the British still takeover and administer the Dutch Empire, but in 1814 they return most of the colonies to the Netherlands.

With trade with their British and Portuguese allies, the Kingdom of the Netherlands grows wealthy and expands their empire. They consolidate their hold over Ceylon, the southern tip of India and maintain a number of ports and outposts around the world. The Dutch presence in the Cape Colony progressively grows to encompass most of southern Africa. As a consequence of not holding South Africa, the Scottish physician, missionary, and explorer David Livingstone and his partner John Clafton launch an expedition up the Congo River rather than the Zambezi, establishing a British interest in the Congo basin.

By the Berlin Conference, the situation in Africa has greatly changed from OTL. Dutch claims to southern Africa are secured, but what would have been Rhodesia is split between the Dutch and the Portuguese, creating a link between Angola and Mozambique via Barotseland and Nyasaland, while the Dutch portion forms the Dominion of Bechuanaland. The Congo is divided between England, France, and a tiny outpost controlled by the Dutch. Britain's ambitions are now to build rail links between East Africa and the Congo to improve access and exploitation of the Tin and Gold mines of the Great Rift Valley. As the Rubber trade expanded in the Congo the British also worked to heavily develop the region much as they did to India in OTL.

With their increased wealth, the Netherlands was able to delay the Belgian Revolution until the 1870s. The newly freed Belgians only colonial possession would be the former Dutch Congo trade port, mostly due to it being peopled heavily with Flemish colonists. By the First World War, the Germans briefly laid claim to the Dutch African holdings, but post-war were made to return these territories while the British gained Tanzania.

With railroads and a network of locks enabling trans-oceanic trade between the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic, the British gradually began to integrate the Congo and their East African possessions into a single confederation, forming the Dominion of Central Africa in 1923. Exploitation of Central Africa’s natural resources and its huge labor pool ramped up during the early 20th century, and in turn the colony became a cauldron of political turmoil as its local populations chaffed against the British yoke in an all too familiar quest for independence.

By the outbreak of WWII, Central Africa and India were commonly called, “the Twin Jewels of the British Crown.” Their combined economic output contributed heavily to Britain's wealth and military might. However, despite the Royal Navy being around 20% larger than in OTL, German U-Boats remain a game changing technology, and still bottle up Britain for much of the Early War. Meanwhile, Central Africa's rebel leaders and pro-independence politicians educated in Britain begin a serious push to decouple themselves from the Empire. Dutch South Africa is once again annexed by the Germans and plans are laid for turning it into a beachhead for Aryan colonization and a second Holocaust. Fortunately those plans never got anywhere, as the Free Dutch forces effectively resisted the Germans at every turn in Africa.

Post-war decolonization kicks off much as it did in OTL, but two centuries of alternate colonization leads to alternate partition. Dutch India manages to stay united as the Dravidian Federation and leaves Dutch control after 1945. This causes problems for Indian Unification because the neighboring Telugu and Kamnada peoples, along with other Dravidian Speakers are split on joining a united northern Indian state. Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel try to unify the subcontinent, but Hyderabad manages to remain independent as a buffer state between Dravidia and the Bharat Republic, a literal wedge that kicks off decades of ethno-religious war on the subcontinent.

The Congo and East Africa amazingly manage to hold together as the Federation of Central Africa, a modern, partially industrialized multi-religious, English-speaking (officially) Bantu state. South Africa fails to unite, remaining the Cape Republic, Bechuanaland, and the apartheid state of Transvaal. During the Cold War the Cape becomes a wealthy Dutch speaking 1st world country, but Bechuanaland quickly devolves into civil war that pulls in the Cape, Central Africa, Transvaal, and Mozambique along with covert aid from the USSR and USA. Central Africa remains firmly Neutral in most Cold War geopolitical drama, the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement by most accounts. India's civil war eventually leads to the creation of a somewhat Larger Pakistan (supported by the US), Hyderabad, an expanded Dravidia and Bengal, an Independent Assam, and a Soviet-backed United Workers Republic of Bhārata.

When the Cold War finally ends, nobody's seriously entertaining the notion of Indian Reunification. Bhārata remains Communist, but unlike China is slow to adopt a State Capitalist economic model, and becomes a kind of Hermit Kingdom for most of the 1990s and 2000s. Pakistan slowly becomes the corrupt internally divided power we know in OTL. Dravidia’s strategic position and Soviet-backed northern neighbor leads to a sizable US military presence that in turn contributes to an economic boom in the 1980s. In the post-Cold War era Dravidia becomes an diversified economic powerhouse similar to OTL South Korea, with a dynamic tech sector.

Central Africa grows to become the world's 4th Largest Economy, having transitioned from being a raw material exporter and manufacturer to a mixed-economy like OTL India. Bantu immigrants to the US and UK are some of the wealthiest people in the world, and an essential component of the labor pool for the tech sector. In the 1990s and 2000s this creates a bit of an internal division between the decedents of West African slaves and Bantu Immigrants in the US. The term "African American" is eventually dropped from the Census in favor of "Black" and "African." The political blowback from this decision contributes to the rise of the Intersectional Movement, in which 2nd and 3rd generation decedents from Central African immigrants sought to pull their communities together in the face of institutional racism.

British-style colonization in the Congo saw the same cycle of cultural colonialism and language erosion that we know from OTL, but it also led to greater deforestation in the Congo basin. Deforestation of the Congo Rainforest is as bad a problem in this Timeline as the Deforestation of the Amazon, costing the world an important carbon sink to support Congolese agriculture and the booming Coltan mining industry. The loss of such a huge carbon sink has also accelerated Climate Change, leading to a super-calving event in Greenland in 2020 that raised sea levels by 60cm. This has kicked off a global effort to put a stop to deforestation and put real money behind the Great Green Wall, a multinational program to build new carbon sinks/restore old ones, and sequester CO2. Central Africa is also backing a plan to sequester seawater in the Sahara, which is set to begin in 2025.

The story for this scenario was first drafted for Charles Randall on Patreon.