The current prime minister of Canada recently asserted: “If the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.” While the prime minister clearly means “lead” in the sense of setting an example while pursuing new alliances, it does raise the amusing prospect of a global Pax Canada, under which every human is provided all the peace, order, good government, and poutine that they could want.
Canada has about half a percent of the global population and, while it does well economically on a per capita basis, that tiny population means Canada accounts for a bit over one percent of the global GDP. Those aren’t numbers that suggest world domination is in the cards1.
That said, a quick glance at history shows a number of polities that have leveraged some asset (a slight technological edge, convenient location, organizational prowess2) to bat well out of their league. The Mongol Empire, which at its height might have had a hundred million subjects—a quarter or a third of the human race!—started from a base of one or two million people, proportionally the same fraction of world population in the 13th century as Canada has in the 21st. It’s not unreasonable to think that circumstance and cunning could deliver similar success to a comparatively low-population polity3.
Of course, science fiction authors have realized this. Thus, some comparatively low-population regions have enjoyed disproportionate influence in fiction, thanks to luck, cunning, and the fact the author was on their side. Consider these five examples.
Texas
In Fritz Leiber’s 1969 A Specter Is Haunting Texas, perfidious Texans used their control of the US government to provide the petite state of Texas4 with a disproportionate fraction of America’s bomb shelters. Thus, Texas emerged from the Atomic War in far better shape the rest of the United States—a state of affairs they were happy to exploit.
By the time woefully misinformed space beatnik Christopher Crockett La Cruz descends from the lunar colonies to secure ownership of the Lost Crazy-Russian Pitchblende Mine, bombastic, smugly ignorant, hormone-enhanced, cowboy-cosplaying Texans rule almost all of North America. This is in fact less than entirely ideal, especially from the perspective of the Mexicans enslaved by Texas, and no doubt would be undesirable from the Canadian perspective as well… if any Canadians had survived, which it does not appear they did.
The key thing to understand about Leiber’s hate letter to Lyndon Baines Johnson is that it’s a hate letter to the Lyndon Baines Johnson who sent kids off to Vietnam, not the Lyndon Baines Johnson responsible for rural electrification, electoral reform, and the Great Society. The first LBJ seems to have entirely eclipsed the second, at least for the duration of this novel.

Denmark
In Harry Harrison’s 1970 In Our Hands, The Stars (AKA The Daleth Effect) plucky little Denmark is literally handed the keys to the stars by defecting Israeli scientist Arnie Klein. Having discovered a novel phenomenon (the Daleth Effect of the title), Klein is terrified by its destructive potential. Only a government of particularly sterling character, preferably one not perpetually on the brink of war with its neighbors, can be trusted with the secret of the Daleth Effect. For Klein, Denmark is the obvious candidate.
Thus, Denmark finds itself the guardian of a secret that can deliver everything from cheap space flight to weapons of mass destruction. Also, it already possesses the research and industrial base needed to turn theory into technology. For a brief, shining moment, Denmark is poised to become a great power not merely on Earth, but in space as well.
The flaw that Klein and his allies overlooked (but author Harrison did not) is that the great secret was not in the details of the Daleth Effect, but that the Daleth Effect existed at all. Denmark’s era of dominance in the field of Daleth Effect applications proves exceptionally short-lived.

New Zealand and Polynesia
In Poul Anderson’s Maurai sequence—“The Sky People” (1959), “Progress” (1962), “Windmill” (1973), and the novels There Will Be Time (1972) and Orion Shall Rise (1983)—our current civilization violently collapsed, leaving a depopulated, primitive world. New Zealand and Polynesia formed a core of redevelopment, giving rise to the Maurai Federation.
I don’t think Anderson ever gave economic or population figures for the Federation, but the land area available and the skeptical views held by the Maurai regarding population and industrial development would have imposed a firm cap. Nevertheless, the Maurai enjoy a long period of ascendency, which they use to provide other nations with prudent guidance of the sort the other nations would have wanted, if only those nations were sensible.
Yes, eventually the Pax Maurai collapses. This is Poul Anderson. Everything dies. Also, while the Maurai no doubt think of themselves as splendid fellows, and the limits they impose on others as manifestly reasonable, there are exchanges like the following one from “Progress”:
Breathless, Alisabeta reached for her glass. Lorn rubbed his chin. “Mmm… Maybe,” he said. “If industrialism can feed and clothe people better, doesn’t it deserve to win out?”
“Who says it can?” she argued. It can feed and clothe more people, yes. But not necessarily better. And are sheer numbers any measure of quality, Lorn?”
…which cannot have endeared the Maurai to the legions of impoverished people kept on the brink of starvation by Maurai foreign policy.

Quebec
Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice’s 1989 Light Raid is short on backstory details. However, what is clear is that North American borders have been redrawn and that the Western States and the Commonwealth are (reluctant) allies. Why are they allies? Because Quebec.
Despite having (at present) about two percent of the North American population, Willis and Felice’s Quebec is an aggressive military powerhouse, able to conduct an intermittent but sustained war with the Anglophone nations sufficiently ferocious to induce the other nations to ally against Quebec. Elbows up!
As the events are told from the perspective of an Anglophone, it’s not entirely clear what Quebec thinks is going on. Is it trying to conquer the rest of North America in a bid to expand the Canadiens’ fanbase? or is it simply preventing a repeat of the Plains of Abraham?

The Canary Islands (or possibly the Azores)
Olympus, featured in Masamune Shirow’s manga Appleseed (1985 to 1989), owes its superpower status to three factors. First, the artificial island nation (located somewhere near the Canary Islands and the Azores) sat out many of the exciting events of the 21st and 22nd century, which ranged from nation-depopulating wars to a giant meteor impact in China. Second, the island nation’s technological base (and its willingness to apply it) is unparalleled. Third, Olympus’ ruling class is as pragmatic as it is visionary.
The only tiny fruit fly on this particular quasi-utopian sundae is that while Olympus seems mercifully free of corruption5, and while all of the major players in Olympus are rational, various factions favour distinctly different public policies. As violence is one of the tools used by the ever so practical Olympians, it is possible that had Shirow continued the manga series, Olympus would have been brought down by its internal contradictions.

Yes, I could have mentioned Tau Zero’s Swedish world empire or The Mouse That Roared’s Grand Fenwick or Arslan’s Turkmenistan… but I’ve mentioned all of them here before. No doubt there are some other worthy examples I’ve overlooked—feel free to mention them in comments below.
- Not that Canadians would want to dominate, of course—not when we could serve in a leadership role supported by a freely given global consensus. None of us want to carve our way to the Gulf of Mexico or even dictate the creation of the territories of Greater Franklin (former North Dakota, and named for Sir John, not Ben) and Lesser Franklin (the rest of the US).
- As Carlos Yu once quipped, the Celts managed to conquer lands from the Atlantic to the Black Sea using nothing but meanness and porridge. Tragically, that no longer works. Sad news for Quaker Oats.
- Of course, the Mongol Empire wasn’t sustainable. As previously discussed, I am not sure world empires are all that stable and the Mongol Empire is among the closest humans have ever gotten to a unitary world government.
- If Texas were a Canadian province, it would be smaller than Quebec, British Columbia, and Ontario. If it were a Canadian territory, it would be smaller than the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. I, for one, am impressed by how the diminutive size of Texas has in no way inspired Texans to overcompensate with, I don’t know, ludicrous gun collections and outsized pickup trucks.
- Internal corruption, anyway. I am sure Olympus sees nothing wrong with getting a French, British, or Imperial American politician onside with a steamer truck full of hundred-dollar bills.
See also L. Sprague de Camp’s “Viagens Interplanetarias” novels and stories, which are set in a future where World War III had left the USA weakened and the USSR destroyed resulted in Brazil becoming the dominant world power, taking the lead in interstellar travel and colonization as well.
In John Wyndham’s The Outward Urge (1959), Brazil, which claims “space is a province of Brazil”, and Australia contend for world and solar system dominance after the Great Northern War destroys the northern hemisphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outward_Urge#Plot_summary
Brazil has long been an obvious contender for world power. As the joke goes, he said in the tone of someone jotting down an essay idea, Brazil is the nation of tomorrow and always will be.
In Piper’s TerroHuman Future History the future world government is primarily controlled by Brazil, South Africa, and Australia, the northern hemisphere having blown itself back to the stone age in World War 3.
The Lord Darcy series by Randall Garrett imagines an alternate universe in which the 2 major global powers are the Anglo-French empire (no surprise) and Poland (that’s a new idea).
Poland is a dominant power in Alan Dean Foster’s “Polonaise.”
The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a pretty impressive state back in the day, particularly given how it was hobbled by certain details of governance.
Voting?
It was very easy for aristocrats to obstruct the central government, a power they did not always use responsibly.
A detail of the Lord Darcy stories I never considered before is that if the Poland that opposes the Angevin Empire is supposed to be a continuation of Poland-Lithuania, and if there have not been significant political reforms in the Angevin Empire, then the Poles are far more democratic than the Angevins. Ten percent of the Commonwealth enjoyed the Golden Liberty.
Speaking of Canada stepping up, there’s always Elizabeth Bear’s Jenny Casey trilogy.
As a Canadian born person, I have to disagree with some of your tropes of Canada. We have always been a colonial and imperialist nation (our banks were operating in the Caribbean in the early 1800s). Nevertheless, since the early twentieth century while a junior partner of US imperialism and the US informal empire, we have stepped up in various ways, including in Haiti, in Venezuela, in our different mining interests throughout the world, etc. We are not some “nice” country “under which every human is provided all the peace, order, good government.” Our health care system was built to fail, we have increasing numbers of poor people, people with mental health issues, etc., and our rich are getting richer.
As an immigrant to Canada (albeit in my childhood years), I must disagree. Our health care system is 59 years strong and going well — my mother needed a course of five surgeries last year, at the end of which she’s doing well, and she had to wait for none of them. Our level of income inequality is vastly below that of our neighbour to the south. In fact, in terms of income inequality, we’re in the better half of the G20 nations (but admittedly a little below Japan, Germany, and France). While mental health sees to be getting worse, the same is true pretty widely beyond Canada.
The whole false “Canada is broken” trope is why the Conservatives are tanking in the polls right now. Not because it’s false, unfortunately, but rather because it’s newly unpopular in the Trump2 era. It was always false.
Hey folks, please avoid bringing present day politics into this discussion and instead focus on SFF. Thanks!
That’s fair. Will do. Thanks for the course correction.
In Minna Sundberg’s Stand Still, Stay Silent, the Scandinavian nations (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden) together are the unquestioned global power because the quarter million people who live in those nations are the few who survived the horrifying Rash, a contagion that turned all of the other regions on Earth into horrifying hellscapes.
Stand Still, Stay Silent was frequently brilliant in its depictions of post-apocalyptic life despite the, uh, controversial ending.
In our nonfiction universe’s history, Vikings from that area had some pretty big global impacts as well.
I was about to mention the Duchy of Grand Fenwick and especially ‘The Mouse on the Moon’ since that has some SF content, but you name-checked it. Still, I love a small country that attempts to lose a war with the US and inadvertently wins it (in ‘The Mouse That Roared’). Also, if you haven’t seen the 1959 movie version, Peter Sellers plays three roles: the Grand Duchess, the Prime Minister, and the leading foot soldier in the ‘invasion’ of New York. A delight!
Are you trying to insinuate that The Mouse That Roared doesn’t have stfnal content? Or have you forgotten Dr Kokintz and the world-dominating Quadmium Bomb, which enabled Fenwick to start the League of Little Nations?
No, our host is continuing his practice of not using a work in more than one column
No global superpowers here, but if we’re restricting it to North America, in the novella Buffalo Soldier Maurice Broaddus has that continent divided such that Texas is independent, everything east of the Mississippi is an Anglo slave-owning nation not independent from Britain but apparently in a partial “home rule” arrangement with the crown, and everything (but Texas) west of the Mississippi is a native American and escaped slave technological superpower. Oh, and Canada is still Canada, meaning a place of uncertain history and undefinably better than everyone else. Like now. It’s a little hard to pin down when this is supposed to exist, but mid-20th century or slightly later is my best guess.
When I have all the poutine that I want, I become quite lethargic as my body struggles to digest all that starch and fat and yummy yummy yummy cheese curds.
Universal poutine would perforce have to come with universal healthcare or Canada would be leading the world towards obesity and heart disease.
Would I trade my sovereignty for poutine?
Depends on whether the poutine comes with pulled pork or perhaps curried chicken, or heaven forbid, smoked meat, the soma of Montreal.
O, brave new world
That has such patates in ’t!
Ken’s House of Pancakes, strategically located near Hilo, offers an abundance of heart-attack-on-a-plate meals but not poutine. I did try to convince them to add poutine to their repertoire but they were skeptical. Perhaps it’s too hard to get proper curds on Hawaii.
Outside of Canada, “poutine” tends to be made with non-curd cheese; the best I’ve ever found in my case is made with pre-grated pizza cheese. It’s just not the same.
My brilliant marketing idea is poutine made with Japanese curry sauce, which is delicious, and IMHO truer to the concept of poutine than fancying it up with stuff like lobster.
As an aside, you’re the first non-astronomer, non Hilo resident I’ve ever seen reference Ken’s House of Pancakes.
A couple of examples of SFF futures where equatorial and/or Southern Hemisphere locations have become dominant:
Some of Vernor Vinge’s early stories are set in a world where the Northern Hemisphere has been devastated by nuclear war, and the surviving powers are Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.
Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth series features an alliance between humans and an extraterrestrial insectoid species, the Thranx; since the Thranx are adapted to tropical climates, the scientific, religious, and political centers of Earth are Mexico City, Denpasar on Bali in Indonesia, and Brisbane, Australia.
Joe Haldeman’s Confederación series of novels and short stories has an interstellar organization run by African and South American nations, mostly, after the US and the Soviets started slugging it out and basically took the Global North down with them.
In the Temeraire series Peru is a major global power due to their dragons. Africa also unites against colonialism, and during the American Revolution Native Americans are just as important as the white revolutionaries (Tecumseh is the US President during the story).
Wasn’t Tecumseh also President in The Probability Broach?
I think about the power of New Zealand in Orion Shall Rise surprisingly often. As I recall they rose because no one cared enough to bomb them in the war. I always liked that point.
Is this why they nuke themselves by launching an Orion-drive spaceship?
They’re the ones trying to stop the Orion drive ship, it’s the PNW and elements of the European aerostat that launch it
That was the secret to France’s success in the interval between GDW’s Twilight 2000 and GDW’s 2300 AD. France decided participating in WWIII was a mug’s game and sat it out. This meant they were the industrialized nation least damaged by the war.
Peter George’s1965 Commander‑1 details a bold plan on the part of a Chinese officer to catapult China back to its proper position of global power by tricking the US and the SU into annihilating each other, leaving neutral China untouched. The plan almost worked except for the detail that rather than sparing neutral China, both the US and SU nuked the Chinese just in case. This left as the dominant nation on Earth a tiny island out in a comparatively low-fallout region.
Just reading the summary on Wikipedia and it sounds terrible on many levels.
You can read more than a summary of Commander-1 – you can read a review!
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/panic-bells
Dave Kellett’s Drive webcomic features the interstellar Second Spanish Empire (generally just the “Human Empire”), based in Madrid –which is now a megalopolis covering most of Spain.
Kingdom of the Netherlands
Robert Heinlein, *Double Star*. This was published in 1956, so post-Indonesia, so about the only sizeable colonial possession was Dutch Guiana (Suriname didn’t get independence until 1975). It was an interplanetary superpower, though Earth was massively dominant.
“The Mechanical” by Ian Tregillis depicts a Europe where The Netherlands have become the dominating empire through the invention of clockwork soldiers by Christiaan Huygens.
Also, I vaguely remember an Alternate History where European colonial powers (probably England and Spain, possibly including France) where secretly played out against each other so that The Netherlands would come out on top. Not sure if this was by Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson or a contemporary of them.
I remember reading Diana Wynne Jones A Tale of Time City as a child and being amused by the Icelandic Empire dominating a large portion of the timeline.
Now I want to create a setting where the Iceland that dominates is New Iceland.
Re: LBJ.
I suspect that for many, the LBJ who got the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts passed is far more hateful than the LBJ who was responsible for so many deaths in the Vietnam war.
For practical reasons, I would certainly agree that a country with a large population is far more likely to achieve world domination than a small one, but some small groups, like the Mongols, have demonstrated that they can become world-dominating, by replacing the governing elites of a much larger country, as happened with China. Co-opting or killing and replacing the ruling elites was the method largely used by the imperial powers, such as the UK’s conquest of India, and the Netherlands’ of Indonesia.
As for some of the other countries?
Brazil isn’t a small country — its population is about 220,000,000, placing it seventh in the world (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population/country-comparison/). In Tau Zero, Sweden achieved world domination because they were trusted by everybody not to be jerks.
In Ballroom of the Skies, India is Top Dog and the US has regressed to being an impoverished destination where visitors can goggle at and abuse the natives. This is a borderline case as the reversal is the result of outside manipulation; I also suspect that MacDonald thought China was more likely to come out on top but didn’t try to sell that idea in the middle 20th century for political reasons.
Patagonia becomes the dominant world power at one point in Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men.
Does The Mouse that Roared count? Tiny European duchy declares war on the US in order to collect aid and then somehow wins? I never read the novel, but the movie is fascinating!
What about Bruce Sterling? Was it a collection of stories of his that featured small nations using information technology to become economic superpowers? Yes? No?
Kind of a trope, of course; absent an actual extinction-level event (asteroid impact, runaway climate change, etc.) , and/or a global thermonuclear war that destroys the northern hemisphere in terms of livability/technological civilization but spares the southern hemisphere, the nation states that are going to come through any sort of global-scale catastrophe (pandemic, etc.) are going to be those resource-wealthy states that come close to autarky in terms of energy production, arable land, and water resources. Defensible frontiers would be helpful, as well.
Today, and absent self-inflicted wounds – that would be ultimately course-corrected – that’s the US and … ??
Maybe Australia.
Trying to avoid the obvious “we wouldn’t get our hair mussed” response, but geography (physical and political) is a thing.
Technically New Zealand does not control the Galaxy in Tamsin Muir’s Locked Tomb series – the country doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just that the Emperor and most of his Lyctors are New Zealanders. Even the anti-Imperial rebels seem to be New Zealanders.
Australia is a dominant part of the Earth in Cordwainer Smith’s amazing stories. Most obviously in the novel Norstrilia