What happens to world history if ASBs teleport the Gallic Empire & Palmyrene empires to the mid-Paci
Jan 26, 2024 22:02:46 GMT
Max Sinister likes this
Post by raharris1973 on Jan 26, 2024 22:02:46 GMT
What happens to world history if ASBs teleport the Gallic Empire & Palmyrene (sans Egypt) empires to the mid-Pacific, during the 3rd Century Crisis?
Here is a map. It dulls the clarity and color more than I'd like and required cropping to get down to a small enough file size to attach, but it illustrates what is removed from Roman Europe and deposited in the Central Pacific.
What is removed is the Gallic Empire, at its height, when it controlled all Roman Gaul, plus all Roman Britain, plus all Roman Spain. I wanted to land it elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, as far as possible from its original location, to wreck chances of contact in any near or medium term, and to minimize chances of this teleported Britain-Gaul-Spain landmass from being within feasible sailing distance of any other landmass, especially Asia (including Japan) or North America. It may be somewhat closer to parts of Polynesia or Micronesia, but is still far, even from them. To prevent easy connection with North America's Alaska via a hop from Britain to the Aleutians, or from the Kommandorski islands to Kamchatka and the Kuriles to Japan, I also placed Britannia-Gallia-Hispania several degrees south of its original latitude. You get the picture of how it lines up with Japan/Korea, China and Taiwan. This should also keep the landmasses warm to mild across the board as well.
Finally, it can be viewed on both sides of this map display. The full view of it on the far eastern edge, and eastern Gallia and Hispania on the far western edge. To make "room" for this landmass and avoid over-writing land that would have been in the space, the ASBs also just vertically "flipped" the Hawaiian archipelago from the big island of Hawaii to Midway island along its original longitudes but down to the southern hemisphere.
The other geographic teleportation detail however is that I also had the ASB take the Palmyrene Empire, dominated by the rebellion/conquest of Zenobia, and teleported her lands from the Mediterranean to the Pacific as well. I kept their position relative to Western Europe constant, so these lands are also rendered more southern, hotter, and "tropical" in literal definition. These teleported lands include southeastern Anatolia, Syria, Lebanon/Phoenicia, Palestine/Petra/Jordan, northwest Arabia, and Sinai. I deliberately excluded Egypt, which she ruled for a period, because I did not want to screw over the flows of the Nile, nor this important Roman Empire food supply. You only see the teleported Levantine Empire of Palmyra on the western side of the global map, west of Mexico. However you interpret the shapes, let's just say the teleportation leaves behind any land necessary to contain the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris in its original location. The rivers of Mesopotamia will still work. The eastern Mediterranean is now wide open to the Red Sea, unobstructed. That is conducive to Roman trade with Ethiopia and Yemen and India. The Bab El-Mandeb is an unobstructed, natural passage way to the Indian Ocean, so quite a game change for human trade, and marine life, despite it being narrow. The Bab El-Mandeb will certainly be seen as a highly strategic chokepoint in the centuries ahead.
Meanwhile, the western Mediterranean is now directly open to the Atlantic, although for Italy, and the regions of Carthage, Tunis and Algier, the Balearics, Corsica, and Sardinia function somewhat like barrier islands.
How does history proceed from 250 AD-ish globally with the new continental and oceanic formations?
Rome (central) lost a lot of legions, albeit rebellious ones, with the Gallic Empire, but I imagine it should still be able to recover and reintegrate the eastern lands temporarily lost to the Palmyrene empire. It seems to me like Rome should have every chance to make a 4th century recovery, and while Spain and Gaul likely provided break even or surplus value, with the Italian core and North Africa, plus the most valuable eastern territories, the Roman Empire has a solidly restored tax base. It no longer has Britain as a defensive liability either.
As I noted, Rome luckily keeps the Egyptian breadbasket. It does lose some Western Asian lands, productive in grain, cedar, horses, other products and crafts with the loss of Levant and Syria, in addition to losing some desert. There is a bit of a mercantile and revenue hit, and a loss in Legions stationed there. But this is largely offset by a drastic shortening of the land border with Persia, which is now shorter, more mountainous, more easily defensible terrain where eastern Anatolia and Armenia meet.
However, the Roman Empire will still be vulnerable to climate change (cooling) - although the Gulf Stream may increase the warming of areas around the North Sea a bit relative to where they were OTL, exchange of Eurasian pandemics, and pressure from invaders on long borders like the Danube and the Persian.
I think the Western, or European, portion of the empire has a high likelihood of being undermined with Barbarian Foederati moving in, breaking away from Roman political control, and taking over supreme political control for themselves in many, many areas. The Goths and Huns should still be coming, and other Germanic groups, and Alans, and the Danube does not seem like much of a barrier to me.
Conditions may be less conducive to the spread, or at least domination, of Christianity in rump Rome/Europe, with such primary Christian centers as the Levant and southeastern Asia Minor absent. The disappearance of the Biblical Holy Cities will certainly have to be interpreted. At the same time, there were active, robust communities of Christians by this point in Egypt, other parts of Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, and they may be up for some adaptable prophetic interpretation. Post-collapse of the WRE, although the Atlantic waters corridoring/funnelling into the Mediterranean Sea will be rough waters requiring hardy boats and sailors, it seems logical that seaborne trade between Italy, North Africa, Greece, and coastal Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark/Jutland should be easier in this TL than with the OTL "obstructions" of West European land. Some of this extra sea commerce may develop in medieval/"dark ages" times at the expense of Alpine trading routes. Going from the Mediterranean or Europe all the way to Hibernia/Ireland, or Alba/Pictland, will be a much further, more dangerous, and rarer journey, likely to leave those islands more culturally isolated from European developments for longer. If, as I assume, the Christianization trend overtakes Rome and its neighborhood, it may be delayed several centuries for these now distant islands.
Going over to the cast-off, exiled Gallic Empire, it will have a surplus of military manpower, and a deficit of external military threat, that will make for painful demobilization, and probably result in several rounds of civil wars, internal splits, and coups, before a military system is appropriately rationalized to the geography and economy of the land. Despite the presence of some Jews and Christians, especially in Hispania, Christian domination of this empire becomes far less likely in the absence of continued outside influences in the new religion's favor. Much of the land should remain fertile, with weather in most parts mild, if not warm.
Unlike the main body of the Roman Empire, the Gallic Empire, mid-Pacific edition, will be separated from the Eurasian disease pool for centuries and quite possibly a millenium or more. So it will miss multiple Old World plagues like the plague of Justinian. It can have some smaller homegrown variants perhaps of some harsh diseases making leaps from insects, rodents, or livestock like chickens, pigs, cattle or sheep, but it simply won't compare with Eurasia.
However, as disease generally fails to check population growth, and fertility and increased fishing support it, overpopulation will become an issue in centuries ahead, and other Malthusian checks, notably famine and human strife at least, will inevitably come into play to bring population back in to balance. The longer the Gallic Empire's recontact with Eurasian peoples is delayed, the more "naive" their immune systems will be to more highly developed Eurasian diseases, which will be a major weakness in any encounter.
The cast-off Palmyrene Empire will be isolated from many trade partners, forcing economic simplification. About as much of it should remain fertile as was fertile in real life in the centuries ahead. It will likely face a reprieve from Eurasian disease burdens while out of contact, but suffer the same growing immune naivety, and it will be highly vulnerable however to other Malthusian pressure from overpopulation and related deforestation and overgrazing. Christianity is poised to become hegemonic in this landmass rather soon. If there is a fortuitous religiously sanctified adaptation to environmental change, the Christian Church may luck and adopt some semi-Hindu, pro-vegetarian rules to discourage consumption of meat or excessive herds of animals particularly deleterious to precious topsoil, to help preserve grain land.
An uncertainty is when the Palmyrene LEvant would come into contact with other landmasses. For instance, the Gallic landmass, which it is no further away from than before, but it is not aware of and now has open ocean without the same land and celestial navigation points in between. On the other side is Mexico. The Levant is closer to Mexico than Hawaii is, but still quite distant with only a few, extremely tiny, islands in between.
Here is a map. It dulls the clarity and color more than I'd like and required cropping to get down to a small enough file size to attach, but it illustrates what is removed from Roman Europe and deposited in the Central Pacific.
What is removed is the Gallic Empire, at its height, when it controlled all Roman Gaul, plus all Roman Britain, plus all Roman Spain. I wanted to land it elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, as far as possible from its original location, to wreck chances of contact in any near or medium term, and to minimize chances of this teleported Britain-Gaul-Spain landmass from being within feasible sailing distance of any other landmass, especially Asia (including Japan) or North America. It may be somewhat closer to parts of Polynesia or Micronesia, but is still far, even from them. To prevent easy connection with North America's Alaska via a hop from Britain to the Aleutians, or from the Kommandorski islands to Kamchatka and the Kuriles to Japan, I also placed Britannia-Gallia-Hispania several degrees south of its original latitude. You get the picture of how it lines up with Japan/Korea, China and Taiwan. This should also keep the landmasses warm to mild across the board as well.
Finally, it can be viewed on both sides of this map display. The full view of it on the far eastern edge, and eastern Gallia and Hispania on the far western edge. To make "room" for this landmass and avoid over-writing land that would have been in the space, the ASBs also just vertically "flipped" the Hawaiian archipelago from the big island of Hawaii to Midway island along its original longitudes but down to the southern hemisphere.
The other geographic teleportation detail however is that I also had the ASB take the Palmyrene Empire, dominated by the rebellion/conquest of Zenobia, and teleported her lands from the Mediterranean to the Pacific as well. I kept their position relative to Western Europe constant, so these lands are also rendered more southern, hotter, and "tropical" in literal definition. These teleported lands include southeastern Anatolia, Syria, Lebanon/Phoenicia, Palestine/Petra/Jordan, northwest Arabia, and Sinai. I deliberately excluded Egypt, which she ruled for a period, because I did not want to screw over the flows of the Nile, nor this important Roman Empire food supply. You only see the teleported Levantine Empire of Palmyra on the western side of the global map, west of Mexico. However you interpret the shapes, let's just say the teleportation leaves behind any land necessary to contain the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris in its original location. The rivers of Mesopotamia will still work. The eastern Mediterranean is now wide open to the Red Sea, unobstructed. That is conducive to Roman trade with Ethiopia and Yemen and India. The Bab El-Mandeb is an unobstructed, natural passage way to the Indian Ocean, so quite a game change for human trade, and marine life, despite it being narrow. The Bab El-Mandeb will certainly be seen as a highly strategic chokepoint in the centuries ahead.
Meanwhile, the western Mediterranean is now directly open to the Atlantic, although for Italy, and the regions of Carthage, Tunis and Algier, the Balearics, Corsica, and Sardinia function somewhat like barrier islands.
How does history proceed from 250 AD-ish globally with the new continental and oceanic formations?
Rome (central) lost a lot of legions, albeit rebellious ones, with the Gallic Empire, but I imagine it should still be able to recover and reintegrate the eastern lands temporarily lost to the Palmyrene empire. It seems to me like Rome should have every chance to make a 4th century recovery, and while Spain and Gaul likely provided break even or surplus value, with the Italian core and North Africa, plus the most valuable eastern territories, the Roman Empire has a solidly restored tax base. It no longer has Britain as a defensive liability either.
As I noted, Rome luckily keeps the Egyptian breadbasket. It does lose some Western Asian lands, productive in grain, cedar, horses, other products and crafts with the loss of Levant and Syria, in addition to losing some desert. There is a bit of a mercantile and revenue hit, and a loss in Legions stationed there. But this is largely offset by a drastic shortening of the land border with Persia, which is now shorter, more mountainous, more easily defensible terrain where eastern Anatolia and Armenia meet.
However, the Roman Empire will still be vulnerable to climate change (cooling) - although the Gulf Stream may increase the warming of areas around the North Sea a bit relative to where they were OTL, exchange of Eurasian pandemics, and pressure from invaders on long borders like the Danube and the Persian.
I think the Western, or European, portion of the empire has a high likelihood of being undermined with Barbarian Foederati moving in, breaking away from Roman political control, and taking over supreme political control for themselves in many, many areas. The Goths and Huns should still be coming, and other Germanic groups, and Alans, and the Danube does not seem like much of a barrier to me.
Conditions may be less conducive to the spread, or at least domination, of Christianity in rump Rome/Europe, with such primary Christian centers as the Levant and southeastern Asia Minor absent. The disappearance of the Biblical Holy Cities will certainly have to be interpreted. At the same time, there were active, robust communities of Christians by this point in Egypt, other parts of Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, and they may be up for some adaptable prophetic interpretation. Post-collapse of the WRE, although the Atlantic waters corridoring/funnelling into the Mediterranean Sea will be rough waters requiring hardy boats and sailors, it seems logical that seaborne trade between Italy, North Africa, Greece, and coastal Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark/Jutland should be easier in this TL than with the OTL "obstructions" of West European land. Some of this extra sea commerce may develop in medieval/"dark ages" times at the expense of Alpine trading routes. Going from the Mediterranean or Europe all the way to Hibernia/Ireland, or Alba/Pictland, will be a much further, more dangerous, and rarer journey, likely to leave those islands more culturally isolated from European developments for longer. If, as I assume, the Christianization trend overtakes Rome and its neighborhood, it may be delayed several centuries for these now distant islands.
Going over to the cast-off, exiled Gallic Empire, it will have a surplus of military manpower, and a deficit of external military threat, that will make for painful demobilization, and probably result in several rounds of civil wars, internal splits, and coups, before a military system is appropriately rationalized to the geography and economy of the land. Despite the presence of some Jews and Christians, especially in Hispania, Christian domination of this empire becomes far less likely in the absence of continued outside influences in the new religion's favor. Much of the land should remain fertile, with weather in most parts mild, if not warm.
Unlike the main body of the Roman Empire, the Gallic Empire, mid-Pacific edition, will be separated from the Eurasian disease pool for centuries and quite possibly a millenium or more. So it will miss multiple Old World plagues like the plague of Justinian. It can have some smaller homegrown variants perhaps of some harsh diseases making leaps from insects, rodents, or livestock like chickens, pigs, cattle or sheep, but it simply won't compare with Eurasia.
However, as disease generally fails to check population growth, and fertility and increased fishing support it, overpopulation will become an issue in centuries ahead, and other Malthusian checks, notably famine and human strife at least, will inevitably come into play to bring population back in to balance. The longer the Gallic Empire's recontact with Eurasian peoples is delayed, the more "naive" their immune systems will be to more highly developed Eurasian diseases, which will be a major weakness in any encounter.
The cast-off Palmyrene Empire will be isolated from many trade partners, forcing economic simplification. About as much of it should remain fertile as was fertile in real life in the centuries ahead. It will likely face a reprieve from Eurasian disease burdens while out of contact, but suffer the same growing immune naivety, and it will be highly vulnerable however to other Malthusian pressure from overpopulation and related deforestation and overgrazing. Christianity is poised to become hegemonic in this landmass rather soon. If there is a fortuitous religiously sanctified adaptation to environmental change, the Christian Church may luck and adopt some semi-Hindu, pro-vegetarian rules to discourage consumption of meat or excessive herds of animals particularly deleterious to precious topsoil, to help preserve grain land.
An uncertainty is when the Palmyrene LEvant would come into contact with other landmasses. For instance, the Gallic landmass, which it is no further away from than before, but it is not aware of and now has open ocean without the same land and celestial navigation points in between. On the other side is Mexico. The Levant is closer to Mexico than Hawaii is, but still quite distant with only a few, extremely tiny, islands in between.
