Post by eurofed on Nov 15, 2019 17:21:14 GMT
Let's assume a TL (such as my own Roma Aeterna, which I am henceforth going to use as reference) where Rome overcame all the OTL causes of its decline and grew (barring the occasional China-style period of division and strife) into a multicontinental industrialized superpower. It gradually absorbed all of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and later colonized Russia, East and Southern Africa, and most of the Americas. Avoidance of 'Dark Ages' collapse and a mix of early cultural exchanges and late imperial competition with the sophisticated Asian civilizations enabled Roman Europe to be as dynamic as OTL and progress all the way to Information Age on edge of transition to postcyberpunk-interplanetary several centuries earlier than our schedule. Much the same way and for similar reasons, China and India were able to avoid their own OTL pitfalls and grow into the worthwhile sister civilizations and imperial counterparts of Rome. By modern times, the three empires have grown to include the vast majority of world land area, population, and economy, and are gearing up for large-scale space colonization. A few independent regions (mostly in Subsaharan Africa) exist but they largely negligible in terms of global importance, and tend to form the world's most backward and least developed areas.
The topic at hand is, how these differences in history are going to influence historical pandemics?
For my own TL, I have assumed the plague of Justinian in all likelihood occurs more or less on schedule. Its effects on the Byzantine Empire are known and can probably be used as a fitting template for a strong Pan-European Rome in this context. The entire continent keeps enjoying the benefits of Roman civilization, including better sanitation, but this is likely balanced out by greater population. According to my analysis of the divergence's effects on technological progress (more or less equivalent to a half-millennium acceleration on OTL schedule), Rome at the time is blossoming into its High Middle Ages/Islamic Golden Age stage, and that was potentially quite vulnerable to pandemics.
Much the same way, I surely assume the contact pandemics that felled the vast majority of the Precolombian population occur much the same way once Rome enters its Renaissance stage and its explorers reach the shores of the New World in the 10th Century AD. Barring very contrived circumstances that need not apply here, there was no saving the Amerindians from their sheer lack of immunity to Old World diseases.
About a possible equivalent of the Black Death, however, I am more uncertain. Would it happen on its usual 14th century time, or some element of TTL divergence is likely to cause a significant change of schedule, such as moving it to the technological-social equivalent at the end of the first millennium? If the schedule does not change, at the time the Eurasian empires are going to be more or less in their early (19th century equivalent) Industrial Age. OTL evidence (e.g. the third plague pandemic) indicates Western society at that stage was already much less vulnerable to plague than pre-industrial ones. That pandemic typically caused only a few hundred victims in a major Western city like San Francisco. Most of the OTL body count occurred in non-European, pre-industrial areas such as China and India, which ITTL are going to share the Western/Roman development level. Since IOTL the third pandemic reached the Americas, ITTL it is going to touch the Roman Americas as well, but of course they are going to share the same level of protection. A world where Europe never loses 25-30% of its population to plague is going to be significantly different; e.g. by having a much bigger population pool to colonize the rest of the world, on top of the similar demographic effect caused by Pax Romana.
As it concerns the various cholera pandemics that swept the world during our 19th century, similar issues of uncertainty occur about whether they are going to occur at the OTL schedule (when this world would in all likelihood be advanced enough to be immune) or at the earlier technologically-equivalent stage (when they would cause similar damage, except perhaps the long-standing care of Roman civilization for good sanitation would limit it). Similar concerns apply as it concerns the Spanish flu and HIV/AIDS. About the latter, I may point out that ITTL West and Central Africa in all likelihood avoid intercontinental slave trade and direct colonization. The Eurasian seafaring empires start global exploration and colonization early enough to earmark the area as wholly inhospitable and of limited value to non-Africans, and the notion sticks up to modern times. They restrict themselves to trading with the African polities through coastal outposts and projecting indirect influence. Independent Africa avoids colonialism but is kept marginalized in terms of global trade patterns and cultural exchanges, and hence stays the most backward and least developed area of the world. Rome has been restricting slavery to its modern use of main punishment for serious non-capital crimes, and hence never really gets mass dimensions when the Empire colonizes the America. To the degree the Romans feel necessary to use unfree labor in the colonies, they mostly end up using indentured laborers. I am wondering if limited contact between Central Africa and the rest of the world due to lack of colonialism may substantially change epidemiology of HIV/AIDS and dradtically restrict its global spread.
The topic at hand is, how these differences in history are going to influence historical pandemics?
For my own TL, I have assumed the plague of Justinian in all likelihood occurs more or less on schedule. Its effects on the Byzantine Empire are known and can probably be used as a fitting template for a strong Pan-European Rome in this context. The entire continent keeps enjoying the benefits of Roman civilization, including better sanitation, but this is likely balanced out by greater population. According to my analysis of the divergence's effects on technological progress (more or less equivalent to a half-millennium acceleration on OTL schedule), Rome at the time is blossoming into its High Middle Ages/Islamic Golden Age stage, and that was potentially quite vulnerable to pandemics.
Much the same way, I surely assume the contact pandemics that felled the vast majority of the Precolombian population occur much the same way once Rome enters its Renaissance stage and its explorers reach the shores of the New World in the 10th Century AD. Barring very contrived circumstances that need not apply here, there was no saving the Amerindians from their sheer lack of immunity to Old World diseases.
About a possible equivalent of the Black Death, however, I am more uncertain. Would it happen on its usual 14th century time, or some element of TTL divergence is likely to cause a significant change of schedule, such as moving it to the technological-social equivalent at the end of the first millennium? If the schedule does not change, at the time the Eurasian empires are going to be more or less in their early (19th century equivalent) Industrial Age. OTL evidence (e.g. the third plague pandemic) indicates Western society at that stage was already much less vulnerable to plague than pre-industrial ones. That pandemic typically caused only a few hundred victims in a major Western city like San Francisco. Most of the OTL body count occurred in non-European, pre-industrial areas such as China and India, which ITTL are going to share the Western/Roman development level. Since IOTL the third pandemic reached the Americas, ITTL it is going to touch the Roman Americas as well, but of course they are going to share the same level of protection. A world where Europe never loses 25-30% of its population to plague is going to be significantly different; e.g. by having a much bigger population pool to colonize the rest of the world, on top of the similar demographic effect caused by Pax Romana.
As it concerns the various cholera pandemics that swept the world during our 19th century, similar issues of uncertainty occur about whether they are going to occur at the OTL schedule (when this world would in all likelihood be advanced enough to be immune) or at the earlier technologically-equivalent stage (when they would cause similar damage, except perhaps the long-standing care of Roman civilization for good sanitation would limit it). Similar concerns apply as it concerns the Spanish flu and HIV/AIDS. About the latter, I may point out that ITTL West and Central Africa in all likelihood avoid intercontinental slave trade and direct colonization. The Eurasian seafaring empires start global exploration and colonization early enough to earmark the area as wholly inhospitable and of limited value to non-Africans, and the notion sticks up to modern times. They restrict themselves to trading with the African polities through coastal outposts and projecting indirect influence. Independent Africa avoids colonialism but is kept marginalized in terms of global trade patterns and cultural exchanges, and hence stays the most backward and least developed area of the world. Rome has been restricting slavery to its modern use of main punishment for serious non-capital crimes, and hence never really gets mass dimensions when the Empire colonizes the America. To the degree the Romans feel necessary to use unfree labor in the colonies, they mostly end up using indentured laborers. I am wondering if limited contact between Central Africa and the rest of the world due to lack of colonialism may substantially change epidemiology of HIV/AIDS and dradtically restrict its global spread.