Ok, I've bought the game finally, so I can answer the question myself.
From what I observed, time speed can be changed by the host, but also the players. It then changes it for everyone (note that I tried this only with 2 human players).
Anyone can pause the game. Other players can't unpause the game for the next 30 seconds.
Nationalism
Nationalism is a modifier that applies to all conquered provinces once conquered.
What does it do?
In Europa Universalis IV, every province in your country has a "most likely" rebel type if the revolt risk in the province is above 0, you can see what type by hovering the mouse over the revolt risk window and reading the tool-tip.
These rebel factions will surface at a percentage chance per month according to their revolt risk.
Once conquered a province gets +14.00 revolt risk from Nationalism.
How long does this last?
Nationalism last for 10 years after being conquered, as the tool-tip states
What happens?
Well, apart from giving an increased revolt risk by virtue of being affected by nationalism. Not much, it just makes it increasing likely that you will suffer the spawning of a nationalist rebel stack/army.
Is this bad or good?
Well, rebels are annoying, Nationalist rebels have a few specific goals, and they can achieve those by successfully negotiating demands from their overlords when they control at least one province.
Nationalist rebels scoring a victory by their overlord negotiating therefore confers the following penalties and benefits titled local autonomy:
Province modifier:
However
The one advantage of allowing the rebels to succeed in their war goal, at least to the point of negotiation is that you gain
to the province, which may help you maintain order in your empire if at a particularly low stability or prestige/weak geo-political standpoint.
If you let them enforce their demands however, by letting the war-score tick over and not dealing with the irritating rebellion, you will find yourself acquiescing to the nationalistic rebel's demands, which has the following effect:
Best Answer
Ack, finally found it by thrashing. Maybe some of you guys already knew this, but I did not... As it turns out, EU IV provides a different, entirely separate way of changing your government type to Western for the first time. It's on the new Native Ideas page all the way at the bottom after completing all of the native ideas, a new button stating, "Reform Government" - Once you press that your government reforms.
It also looks like @Nix was correct both in noting that the nation to the North was actually French-Canada, a colonial nation, and that this fact did not matter. Once I finally found the correct button I went back and replayed the game from an earlier point where I was only connected to French Canada, and not the Netherlands, and I was still given the option to Reform Government.
Click image for larger version.