eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 16:10:41 GMT
It is 1650 AD or 2403 AUC; both year-numbering systems are used in Europe. In socio-economic, cultural, and technological terms, however, it feels and looks rather more 1750/2503. Five vast empires (the Holy Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the North Sea Empire, the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth, and Muscovy) have carved out Europe and the Mediterranean region since the Middle Ages. Three of them (the HRE, the ERE, and the NSE) have been busy since the Age of Exploration doing the same to the rest of the world, or at least anywhere Europeans can settle and live comfortably without having to fear neither climate nor disease. Christianity has all but won its millennial war against Islam, which only survives in its last Central Asian and West African strongholds. The European empires have turned their continent into a global hegemon and brought it to the forefront of the world in terms of wealth, military power, and technological progress. Only the South and East Asian sophisticated civilizations and vast empires (India, China, Japan-Korea) seem able to stand up to the Europeans as equals. How did this world come to pass ?
Historians agree the most important turning point occurred when St. Charles I the Great and his successors re-established the Western Roman Empire in Western Europe, stabilized and kept it together, and expanded it to absorb Central Europe, southern Italy, Iberia, and North Africa. From a trans-temporal perspective, there seem to be two main historical paths that could have produced this outcome. In one of them, the Carolingians just got lucky since only one heir per generation survived and no dynastic crisis occurred among Charlemagne's sons, great-sons, and great-great sons, starting with the founder’s talented eldest son. The strong precedent this created made the eventual transition to de jure unitary succession at the beginning of the 10th century look natural in the eyes of the aristocracy and the Church.
The Carolingian emperors as a rule were strong enough to stand up to their external enemies (Norse, Slavs, Arabs, and Hungarians) when they were on a rampage and take the offensive whenever the circumstances allowed it. The latter got more and more feasible over time as the empire gradually grew stronger than its enemies thanks to military reforms and internal stabilization. They pursued a policy of gradual but steady administrative centralization as well as southward and eastward expansion of the Empire. The latter kept the nobility sufficiently busy and content with division of the spoils to stay loyal to the throne.
The second path involved the Ottonians enjoying the same kind of boon, a long streak of steady success and good luck with no serious succession crisis. A longer-lived Otto II won the succession war of West Francia, but instead of putting his own candidate on the throne, he picked the crown himself, re-uniting the Carolingian Empire. He reaped just as decisive successes in the Battle of Stilo, bringing mainland South Italy in the HRE, and in the suppression of the Great Slav Uprising, ensuring a steady pace of the Ostsiedlung in the next few centuries. His just as long-lived son Otto III turned the Dukedoms of Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary into vassals, making them subordinate to the HRE in ecclesiastic matters, conquered Sicily, and achieved a detente with the ERE after marrying Byzantine princess Zoe. He stabilized the empire with a series of administrative and military reforms on the Roman model that sent the HRE down a path of gradual but steady centralization.
The outcomes of both paths would completely converge over time as the Empire gradually consolidated its Carolingian core with southern Italy and absorbed Christianized Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Romania as constituent principalities. The HRE took the lead of the Reconquista, which was carried to a successful conclusion fairly quickly thanks to its vast resources. The Empire absorbed all of Iberia and expanded the Reconquista to North Africa from Andalusia and Sicily. That region, too, was eventually conquered and forcibly assimilated. The HRE evolved into a solid multi-ethnic nation-state that was based on the pillars of a neo-Roman universalist identity, Latin as a lingua franca, and Christianity. It spanned continental Western Europe, Central Europe, Southern Europe, and a re-Christianized North Africa as its core territories.
The Eastern Roman Empire was able to enjoy a fairly similar path of revitalization and continued success thanks to its successful assimilation of the Bulgarians and the Serbs, who were absorbed by the Byzantines after their conquest of the Bulgarian Empire, and the Armenians, who chose to align and cooperate with the ERE to resist the Arab onslaught. The resulting Greek-Bulgarian-Armenian union that spanned Southeastern Europe, Anatolia, and the Caucasus proved strong enough to resist the assaults of Islam and gradually reverse its conquests, also thanks to the help of the HRE.
Despite their inevitable imperial rivalry and occasional military clashes, the HRE and the ERE were able to recognize each other as peers and sister empires, and achieve a sufficient degree of military cooperation against the common Muslim enemy. This allowed Christianity to win back all the areas it had lost to Islam during Arab expansion and conquer even more in the Middle East. This outcome was favored by the evolution of the Western Church, which developed a decentralized structure and stayed subservient to Imperial authority much like the Eastern Church in the Byzantine lands.
A strong HRE quashed the theocratic ambitions of the Popes for political autonomy, temporal power, and papal supremacy. The Pope was forced to accept the status of Patriarch of Rome with the same power and prestige as several other highest-ranking bishops in the East and the West. The Church developed a decentralized, polycentric structure that allowed the Latin and Greek areas and the various European states to co-exist in religious communion and loose ecclesiastic union. It also allowed an eventual reconciliation of the Latin-Greek and Oriental Churches during the Christian re-conquest of the Middle East. The resolution of the Chalcedonian schism considerably eased Christian re-conquest of the Middle East as well as military cooperation and eventual fusion between the ERE and the Ethiopian Empire.
The outcome proved devastating for Islam and the Caliphate, which in a few centuries lost Iberia and Northwest Africa to the HRE as well as the Levant, Mesopotamia, Egypt-Nubia, and central-western Persia to the ERE. The joint Imperial-Byzantine Crusade against Islam eventually culminated in the conquest of Arabia and the destruction of Mecca and Medina. The loss of its holy cities and all its core lands delivered Islam a shock, humiliation, and existential challenge it was ultimately unable to overcome. In its weakened state, it was unable to keep a significant presence in East Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. All the inroads it had made in these regions during its Golden Age were eventually reversed and lost to Christian conquest or resurgence of Hinduism and Buddhism. In the end, Islam was only able to survive in the Persian and Turkic states of eastern Greater Persia and southern Central Asia, where Shia became the dominant branch, and in the Sahelian kingdoms of West Africa.
The third European empire arose in Northern Europe since the growing strength of the HRE forced the Norse to divert their ambitions to the British Isles and the Russian lands. Moreover, the HRE lacked much interest for the North Sea and Baltic areas due to its focus on southward and eastward expansion. These factors favored the rise and consolidation of the North Sea Empire, an Anglo-Norse state that eventually came to absorb the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the Baltic lands. The NSE never showed much interest for expansion in Western Europe due to the superior strength of the HRE. Denmark was at times the only seriously contested land between the two states but the NSE eventually assimilated it.
Kievan Rus arose in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine from the fusion of most East Slavic tribes with Viking traders, raiders, and conquerors. It stood for a few centuries as the fourth European empire, only to collapse to invasion of a massive confederation of Asian steppe nomads. The nomad invasion and the plague which followed it a century later dealt serious blows to the European powers, respectively causing devastation of Eastern Europe and the Near East, and a sharp population loss. However the HRE and the ERE were able to keep the nomadic invaders away from their core areas and eventually repel them.
The damage caused by these events ultimately proved entirely recoverable for the European empires and in a few ways it even spurred the continent’s rise to global hegemony. The nomadic onslaught and the subsequent settler repopulation accelerated the collapse of the Islamic Caliphate as well as the HRE’s and the ERE’s assimilation of Central Europe, Southeastern Europe, and the Near East. Much the same way, the plague’s demographic loss ultimately enhanced Europe’s transition to a urbanized market economy. In the wake of the nomadic empire’s decline the Russian lands reasserted their independence, although they got split between the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth and Muscovy.
The two Eastern European states gradually absorbed all the Russian lands between them and got trapped in a constant, inconclusive struggle for hegemony in the region ever since. The substantial stalemate only got indirectly broken in perspective once development of firearms by the Europeans since the 14th century allowed Muscovy to break the power of the steppe nomads for good and expand in Asia. Muscovite conquest of Siberia and northern Central Asia provided the empire with more land and resources, although they were often of limited value for a pre-modern economy, except as it concerned the fur trade. It also ensured the Christianization of these regions. The superior strength of the HRE and the ERE ultimately prevented any westward and southward expansion by the LRC and Muscovy, forcing the two states to focus on their contest for domination of the Russian lands and eastward expansion for the Muscovites.
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 16:11:24 GMT
Imperial unity, peace, and stability was established in Europe under the tripartite rule of the HRE, the NSE, and the ERE since the High Middle Ages; it was only marginally disturbed by occasional military clashes between the empires in border areas and not really disrupted for long neither by the nomad onslaught nor by plague. These conditions brought a renaissance to Europe since the 11th century, with the beginning of a steady and robust process of rebirth and transformation, revitalization of the cities, trade-based prosperity, and intellectual flourishing. Gradual European conquest and assimilation of North Africa and the Middle East substantially strengthened the process, allowing the rebirth of the united Mediterranean urbanized trade area which had existed in Roman times, only expanded to a fully integrated and thriving Northern and Central Europe.
In the end it grew into a vast Pan-European-Mediterranean trade network that spanned from the North Sea and the Baltic to the Eastern Med, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. Trade-based prosperity greatly fuelled the social, economic, scientific, and technological evolution of the continent into Renaissance and Age of Exploration standards by the 13th-14th centuries. European development of ocean-worthy naval technology allowed discovery and colonization of the New World through exploration of the Northern Europe-Iceland-Greenland-North America route as well as control of the Indian Ocean trade routes to southern and eastern Asia through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Trade competition between the European empires and greed for new land and resources pushed European exploration of the world and relentless colonization of all the regions where conditions of climate and disease allowed the mass settlement of Europeans. These regions included the Americas, Australasia, eastern Africa, and southern Africa.
European settler colonization of these areas was still an ongoing, incomplete process by the 17th century, but its fulfillment appeared to be unstoppable and inevitable in a century or so at most. Steady prosperity and peace in Europe caused the continent to develop a fairly substantial demographic surplus of people eager to better their lot in life by colonizing virgin lands; they formed a sizable source of settlers for the American, African, and Australasian colonies. In contrast, West Africa and Central Africa remained largely immune to direct European colonization due to climate and disease conditions, although a good degree of ‘informal imperialism’ penetration and influence took place.
Much the same way, the European empires also came to prefer control of trade on profitable terms over direct conquest in its dealings with the South Asian and East Asian civilizations, due to their perceived strength and value. Early contact with Europe, establishment of steady Pan-Eurasian trade and cultural exchanges, and the potential threat of European colonization drove India, China, and Japan-Korea to contain political fragmentation and shake off isolationist stagnation and complacence. Notable effects included the rise of a fairly strong and stable Indian empire that unified the northern two-thirds of the Indian subcontinent and seemed to be going to absorb the rest over time as well as the fusion of Japan and Korea into an expansionist hybrid empire that colonized Manchuria and the Philippines.
This allowed the Asian empires to avoid colonization and deal with the European ones as equals. However in global terms European civilization developed a strong advantage on the Asian ones and consolidated its global hegemony thanks to control of world trade routes and colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Australasia. Much like the Amerindian and southern-eastern African cultures, the polities of the Malay Archipelago proved far too weak, disorganized, and disunited to resist European economic colonization. European conquerors overrun the region, even if European settlement did not take place in significant numbers. Indochina stood as an imperiled buffer area with an uncertain future due to its persistent political fragmentation.
Due to the combination of a dominant neo-Roman attitude which was pursued by the European states to consolidate their imperial unity and political legitimacy, early achievement of global hegemony, and early establishment of steady exchanges with the sophisticated Asian civilizations, Europe became strongly imperialist but avoided the development of ethnic racism. It established an attitude towards other peoples and civilizations broadly similar to the one of its Roman model. The Europeans were strongly prejudiced against less advanced cultures and intolerant of other religions they perceived as ‘barbaric’ or ‘pagan’. Such prejudice typically involved the Amerindian and African cultures and religions, which were seen as essentially devoid of value and ruthlessly suppressed during colonization. Due to extreme antagonism between Europe and the Muslim world during the Middle Ages, Islam too was perceived as a dangerous monotheist heresy and an existential threat. The Europeans ruthlessly suppressed it in all the lands they conquered, to its ultimate near-extinction outside its last east Persian, Central Asian, and West African strongholds.
To a lesser degree, the Europeans were also prejudiced against Shinto and Chinese folk religion due to their animist character. However the Europeans were usually willing to treat respectfully the other sophisticated civilizations they perceived as equals. This typically included India, China, and Japan-Korea and helped ensure a more tolerant attitude towards Eastern religions and philosophies. Such tolerance especially involved Buddhism and Confucianism which the Europeans mostly regarded as secular philosophies potentially compatible with Christianity. European attitude towards Hinduism and Taoism was mixed: they loathed the polytheistic elements and the caste system but appreciated the monist aspects and the sophisticated philosophical speculation. The Europeans also did not have any strong prejudices towards non-Whites and mixed-bloods that adopted Christianity and European culture.
Since the Middle Ages, Christianity developed its Church into a decentralized structure of several ‘national’ Churches that were largely autonomous in administrative and ecclesiastic matters and subservient to their respective state’s authority. This allowed the European empires to co-exist in ecumenical communion, safeguard their political independence, avoid any permanent division of Christianity, and even heal pre-existing ones such as the Chalcedonian schism. Ecumenical councils co-chaired by the European monarchs or their representatives were infrequently used as the supreme authority of the Church to preserve doctrinal unity. Heretical movements that typically acted as a front for radical social reform occasionally arose and flared for a while thanks to their potential of rallying flags for dissatisfied lower classes. Just as invariably, however, they were ruthlessly suppressed by state persecution for the same reason. As a rule conditions in Europe always remained sufficiently stable and prosperous to prevent any of these radical movements from gaining enough support among the elites and the middle classes to achieve critical mass.
Ongoing European colonization of the Americas, Australasia, East Africa, Southern Africa, and the Malay Archipelago largely followed a fairly uniform pattern that combined extensive settler colonialism (except in Southeast Asia) with conquest and forced cultural assimilation of 'backward' and 'pagan' natives. The Europeans typically preferred forced assimilation to genocide but ruthlessly used all the violence necessary to subjugate the natives and force them to concede control of all the valuable land and resources to colonialists. The high degree of political unity, absence of religious divisions, and relatively stable balance of power between the empires made wars in Europe relatively infrequent and not so destructive. This and fairly steady prosperity due to control of global trade networks barring the occasional plague allowed the continent to develop a sizable population surplus that in good measure immigrated to the colonies as settlers.
As a consequence, the European colonies typically developed a demographic pattern based on a mix of White settlers, mixed-bloods, and Europeanized natives. This pattern got rather more favorable to European settlers in the Americas and Australasia since their Native population was limited because of Stone Age levels of development and the demographic catastrophe caused by lack of immunity to Old World diseases. The Europeans shunned the establishment of chattel slavery and basically replaced it with indentured servitude which variously involved socio-economically disadvantaged European, African, and Asian immigrants.
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 16:12:01 GMT
Victory over Islam caused Europe to develop a notion of its own geographical extent that encompassed North Africa and the Near East, more or less as in Roman times. Its established borders included the Atlantic, the Sahara, and the Persian deserts. The northeastern and southeastern borders were more vaguely and controversially defined, but the Urals Mountains for the former and the Sudd-Bale Mountains line for the latter were the prevalent convention. By the 17th century, Europe stood at the threshold of industrialization and had mastered OTL 18th century levels of technological and cultural development. It developed a high degree of cultural unity since the European empires invariably picked the path of choosing a lingua franca or developing a ‘national’ language (typically the one of the capital or court) and making everyone of import use it. Reasons for this choice included a prevalent neo-Roman attitude, early formation, large extension, high level of ethnic diversity, influence of a united Church, early establishment of a continental trade network, and mutual imitation.
Such imperial languages included Latin for the HRE, Greek for the ERE, and Anglo-Norse for the NSE. Modern Latin and Greek did not differ radically from their Classical forms, but were distinguished by a few lexical and pronunciation variations, an expanded vocabulary, and a simplified syntax. Standard Anglo-Norse was a Germanic language with a sizable amount of Latin borrowings. These languages were initially used by the landed, ecclesiastic, and trading elites. With the invention and diffusion of mobile print, they spread to the middle classes and pretty much everyone wishing to get basic education and rise above the station of peasant or laborer. The process considerably improved literacy rate and mobile print allowed stable standardization of the European languages in their written form. Oral linguistic variation did exist, but typically never drifted to the point of impairing mutual intelligibility.
Countless other Romance, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Semite, Berber, and more ethnic languages did exist across Christianity and were spoken by the lower classes in their respective areas, but they had no prestige and close to zero literary representation. So they were trapped in the status of despised peasant dialects, appeared in decline, and in all likelihood were bound to extinction or radical marginalization once industrialization caused the establishment of universal public education. In the ERE, cert Middle Eastern languages such as Coptic, Aramaic, and Farsi kept some important cultural and religious relevance and regional prevalence, but they too appeared in decline and being gradually replaced by Greek.
The LRC and Muscovy developed two different (and competing) variations of East Slavic with a sizable amount of Germanic and Greek borrowings as their respective national languages. Due to the limited number, high diffusion, and vast prestige of its standard imperial languages, Europe enjoyed a remarkable degree of cultural-linguistic cohesion, at least among the upper and middle classes. Educated Europeans could travel, trade, socialize, and exchange ideas with relative ease anyplace their empires ruled, even more so if they were fluent in multiple standard languages. This greatly favored commerce and cultural exchanges and was another important reason for the rise of the continent to global hegemony.
By no surprise the sophisticated Asian civilizations and advanced empires that were able to withstand the onslaught of European colonization had mastered more or less the same trick of linguistic unity for their elites. China developed Mandarin, united northern India came to recognize the importance of a Hindi lingua franca as a necessary component of national cohesion, and the early fusion of Japan and Korea allowed a good degree of cultural merger, including the development of a standard hybrid language. Farsi stood as the national language of the Persian Empire.
The world stood at the threshold of industrialization with a relatively limited degree of linguistic division since the vast majority of the elites in the dominant empires and advanced civilizations fluently used at least one of a small group of globally-important and regionally-dominant languages (Latin, Greek, Anglo-Norse, two different and competing versions of imperial East Slavic, Hindi, Mandarin, Japanese-Korean). All of them were in the same league of importance and diffusion; no one was yet dominant enough on the others to be guaranteed the status of sole international lingua franca; however Latin came the closest to the level.
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 16:13:12 GMT
All the European states developed into centralized absolute monarchies, although in practice the monarchy was always counterbalanced by political groups from among the aristocracy, clergy, and middle class and could not exercise arbitrary power with impunity. Such checks to the monarch’s power often found expression in proto-parliamentary institutions, although in normal circumstances these bodies had a subordinate or consultative role, except perhaps in case of major changes to taxation or the fundamental laws of the realm.
The HRE and the ERE in a parallel development evolved a rule of succession that was vaguely elective in theory but in practice based on appointment of the heir by the ruling monarch and his crowning during his predecessor’s lifetime. By their combined example, this succession system became the standard across Europe. The designated successor was usually one of the monarch’s sons or close relatives, but the case of a monarch ignoring genealogy to pick his preferred successor for reasons of talent, loyalty, political support, or favoritism occurred often enough a strict rule of hereditary succession never developed. Another reason for this development was the not so infrequent case of a childless monarch picking a trusted member of his family or the high nobility as his successor.
If a succession crisis occurred due to the incumbent monarch and the designated heir dying at the same time or close to, the issue typically got settled by civil war, election of the new monarch by an assembly of leading men, or a mix of both. As a rule, succession crises and civil wars in Europe were rare and limited enough not to disrupt the development and unity of the empires in a permanent way. Nevertheless, succession by appointment or election and the not so rare case of a successful usurper wishing to legitimize his rule drove the Europeans to develop a notion of the divine rights of monarchs that was in certain ways broadly similar to the Chinese ‘Mandate of Heaven’. A monarch that was appointed or elected in a proper way and ruled sufficiently well and fairly was subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly by the will of God. However, legitimacy of a ruler did not require him to be of royal blood or even noble birth, and in extreme circumstances an incompetent or unjust ruler could be deposed by rebellion. A successful rebellion was interpreted as evidence that divine approval had passed on the successive ruler or dynasty. The Biblical precedent of David replacing Saul with God’s blessing was often quoted in these cases.
European society was definitely hierarchical; however down the centuries the opportunities of upward social mobility provided by trade, colonization, and military conquest had been relatively common and easy for the talented and the ambitious. Many gifted and lucky commoners had amassed vast riches, risen to high ranks in the army, civil service, or the clergy, or were ennobled thanks to their wealth, accomplishments in the service of the state as civil or military officials, scholars, or artists, or a successful career managing a business. Due to the fairly high degree of social mobility and neo-Roman ideals allowing for rise in one's station in life thanks to merit, the European elites acknowledged and cherished the notion of an hereditary nobility but kept its ranks open to worthy new members. For the same reasons there was fairly good acceptance of marriages between members of different social classes not too distant in rank and wealth.
The European states over time increasingly emphasized their political continuity with the Roman Empire to boost their legitimacy according to the 'translatio imperii' theory and adopted its legacy and its universalist ideals as a model. This primarily concerned the ERE, which could claim a factual continuity with Rome with good reason, and the HRE. The Western emperors thanks to their vast power and prestige were soon able to get universal acceptance for their claims the HRE was the WRE reborn after a period of abeyance and anarchy. European scholars modified the theory of 'translatio imperii' to account for the permanent division of the two Roman empires. They assumed that although Christianity and the Roman Empire were theoretically united, due to their growing size and complexity Providence allowed their administrative division into separate areas ruled by different imperial courts, ideally bonded into fraternal collaboration. This theory initially only meant to justify the separate existence of the HRE and the ERE, which acknowledged each other as sister empires but regarded the other European states as lesser entities of dubious legitimacy.
The long-standing efforts of the other European states to claim equal dignity got eventually fulfilled by the Age of Exploration, when the NSE was at last able to affirm its equal status to the senior empires. The 'translatio imperii' theory was then modified to acknowledge the existence of four legitimate successor states to Rome of equal standing within Christianity: the HRE, the ERE, the NSE, and Rus. The fact Rus was in practice split between two rival states of similar power for an indefinite time was recognized as an anomaly. It was a good pretext for the other empires to snub the LRE or Muscovy, and put their legitimacy into question, whenever the diplomatic situation called for it. European scholars found justification for the fourfold division in the usual argument of Christianity growing too much in size and complexity (made more compelling by colonial expansion) and the Roman precedent of Diocletian's Tetrarchy.
This political theory fit rather well with the overwhelming sense of cultural superiority the Europeans developed with their overwhelming success in the Crusades and colonial expansion. They came to deem themselves superior to most other ‘barbarian’ and ‘pagan’ cultures they met during the Age of Exploration – although with a noticeable lack of ethnic prejudice. They thought their empires were destined to rule the world and dominate other peoples in order to bring them the benefits of true religion, a just and efficient government, and a proper way of life. They deemed most non-European polities rogue entities in a state of rebellion against legitimate authority and typically beset by barbarism, paganism, and a degenerate form of government. However they recognized in certain cases it might be convenient to keep a state of truce and trade peacefully with them.
The main exception they acknowledged to this supremacist mindset and claim of universal dominion were the South and East Asian empires and sophisticated civilizations. Many Europeans deemed them worthy equals and legitimate empires in their own right – although made flawed by their regrettable adherence to pagan superstitions. As a matter of fact, several European scholars came to propose an extension of the imperial political theory that acknowledged the existence of seven ‘true’, legitimate empires to account for the existence, stability, power, and antiquity of the Asian states. This typically included the HRE, the ERE, the NSE, (divided) Rus, (united) India, China, and Japan-Korea.
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 16:15:33 GMT
These maps represent Europe and the world in the 17th century CE (ca. 1650 AD/2403 AUC).   |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Sept 18, 2016 16:19:02 GMT
So Europe only consist of 5 Empires.
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 17:23:53 GMT
So Europe only consist of 5 Empires. Yep (it says so in the very title  ), although they are not exactly the same in power and stature. The WRE/HRE and to a slightly lesser degree the ERE stand head and shoulders above the others. The settlement is very, very stable at least for them, since they are basically unconquerable by their peers, barring radical differences in industrialization, and they are rather solid politically and culturally. The NSE is just as solid, but it basically stays independent at the sufferance of the WRE/HRE, due to its lesser population and resources. Then again, the status quo between them is very likely to stand, unless one side makes itself much more of a nuisance for the other than it happened in the past. United Rus would certainly have the resource base to be a full peer of the WRE/HRE and the ERE, but so far the LRC and Muscovy have been locked in a perennial, inconclusive struggle for hegemony, with both sides failing to dominate and absorb the other. Muscovy would have the potential to break the stalemate by intensive colonization, settlement, and resource exploitation of Siberia and Central Asia, but it is not going to happen in the near future (it would take extensive industrialization at least). The stalemate in Eastern Europe lets the LRC exist as the fifth European state by default, even if in the grand geopolitical pattern, it looks like a super-sized buffer state between the HRE, the ERE, and Rus. Extra-European colonial expansion provided some much-needed imperial legitimation for the NSE and Muscovy, which raised their stature to be near-equals of the HRE and the ERE. ITTL Europe pretty much avoided any post-Roman entrenchment of ethnic nation-states; it more or less transitioned between Rome's downfall and the rise and stabilization of a few vast, multi-ethnic empires that base their political legitimacy on the Roman precedent and heritage. European political theory only had to adjust to acknowledge stable division of the continent and Christianity in two and later four (division of Rus is mostly thought of as an aberration, if one with an indefinite duration) neo-Roman Empires. The fourfold division is mostly justified as an adaptation to the ever-growing size of the European empires due to colonization. It also bears noting that due to their decisive victory over Islam, the Europeans acknowledge their continent to be considerably larger than OTL, and include North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa. The empires have been quite successful at building solid cultural-linguistic unity and civic national identities for themselves, and unchallenged political theory which hails all the way back to the rise of Rome sees them as the only legitimate form of state, which makes the threat of ethnic fragmentation pretty much non-existent. Everybody thinks of the Dark Ages period of division as a temporary, unnatural aberration rather like the Third Century Crisis. ITTL Europe was also able to avoid or repair any lasting division of Christianity, which further lessened the potential reasons for division. In the rest of the world, the Europeans largely acknowledge China, India, and Japan-Korea as other true, legitimate empires and sister civilizations of similar power and sophistication, barring the inevitable friction of religious and cultural differences. They basically regard all the other cultures and states as inferior, barbaric, illegitimate, and in need of being conquered and assimilated by their betters for the greater good - even it may be often expedient to keep a truce and trade peacefully with them for a while. It's White Man's Burden on steroids, although it developed in the absence of any notion of ethnic racism. A non-White (or mixed-blood) that is ruled by an European (or the right kind of Asian) empire, adopts European (or the right kind of Asian) culture, and optimally converts to Christianity is mostly regarded as the equal of any White of similar social status. Indentured servitude of Europeans, Asians, Amerindians, and Africans alike took the place of chattel slavery in the colonies. |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Sept 18, 2016 17:25:27 GMT
So Europe only consist of 5 Empires. Yep (it says so in the very title ), although they are not exactly the same in power and stature. The WRE/HRE and to a slightly lesser degree the ERE stand head and shoulders above the others. The settlement is very stable at least for them, since they are basically unconquerable by their peers, barring radical differences in industrialization, and they are rather solid politically and culturally. The NSE is just as solid, but it basically stays independent at the sufferance of the WRE/HRE, due to its lesser population and resources. Then again, the status quo between them is very likely to stand, unless one side makes itself much more of a nuisance than it happened in the past. United Rus would certainly have the resource base to be a full peer of the WRE/HRE and the ERE, but so far the LRE and Muscovy have been locked in a perennial, inconclusive struggle for hegemony, with both sides failing to dominate and absorb the other. Muscovy would have the potential to break the stalemate by intensive colonization, settlement, and resource exploitation of Siberia and Central Asia, but it is not going to happen in the near future (it would take extensive industrialization at least). The stalemate in Eastern Europe lets the LRE exist as the fifth European state by default, even if in the grand geopolitical pattern, it looks like a super-sized buffer state between the HRE, the ERE, and Rus. Extra-European colonial expansion provided some much-needed imperial legitimation for the NSE and and Muscovy, which raised their stature to be near-equals of the HRE and the ERE. ITTL Europe pretty much avoided any post-Roman entrenchment of ethnic nation-states; it more or less transitioned between Rome's downfall and the rise and stabilization of a few vast, multi-ethnic empires that base their political legitimacy on the Roman precedent and heritage. European political theory only had to adjust to acknowledge stable division of the continent and Christianity in 2, and later 4 (division of Rus is mostly thought of as an aberration, if one with an indefinite duration) neo-Roman Empires. The division is mostly justified as an adaptation to the ever-growing size of the European empires due to colonization. It also bears noting that due to their decisive victory over Islam, the Europeans universally acknowledge their continent to be considerably larger than OTL, and include North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa. The empires have been quite successful at building solid cultural-linguistic unity and civic national identities for themselves, and unchallenged political theory which hails all the way back to the rise of Rome sees them as the only legitimate form of state, which makes the threat of ethnic fragmentation pretty much non-existent. Everybody thinks of the Dark Ages period of division as a temporary, unnatural aberration rather like the Third Century Crisis. In the rest of the world, the Europeans largely acknowledge China, India, and Japan-Korea as other true, legitimate empires and sister civilizations of similar power and sophistication, barring the inevitable friction of religious and cultural differences. They basically regard all the other cultures and states as inferior, barbaric, illegitimate, and in need of being conquered and assimilated by their betters for the greater good - even it may be often expedient to keep a truce and trade peacefully with them for a while. It's White Man's Burden on steroids, although it developed in the absence of any notion of ethnic racism. A non-White (or mixed-blood) that is ruled by an European (or the right kind of Asian) empire, adopts European (or the right kind of Asian) culture, and optimally converts to Christianity is mostly regarded as the equal of any White of similar social status. Indentured servitude of Europeans, Asians, Amerindians, and Africans alike took the place of chattel slavery in the colonies. So who has the most power of those 5 empires. |
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eurofed
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 18:16:49 GMT
The WRE/HRE certainly is the most powerful of all, and it stands to become even more so in a century or so once it finishes colonization and basic development of North America, Southern Africa, the Southern Cone, and Australasia. The ERE is its closest peer, surely within reach if not its exact equal, and shall be ever more so once it is done absorbing East Africa. Muscowy may grow into their full peer once it properly develops Siberia and Central Asia, and/or if ever manages to conquer and absorb Ukraine for good. The NSE is the plucky junior among the European empires, strong, lucky, and clever enough to carve itself a good place in the colonial game despite its inferior resources. The LRC is trapped by circumstances in the bottom place and existential empirelment, barring its successful assimilation of its Eastern rival.
China, India, and Japan-Korea have the potential to grow into full peers of the strongest European empires, although the Europeans have a solid advantage on them thanks to control of global trade and technological superiority. But early contact with Europe drove China, India, and Japan-Korea to overcome political fragmentation and avoid isolationist complacence and Confucian stagnation. This makes the three of them pulling a Meiji fairly likely. The Indochinese, Central Asian, and West African polities stand in a much more unfavorable and dangerous position; they only have kept their independence so far because of circumstances, such as geographical marginality, perceived lesser profitability of conquest, issues of climate and disease, and the Europeans being busy elsewhere.
The ERE assimilated Mesopotamia and western Iran in its core, which means Persia's time as a major empire and civilization, glorious as it was, has come to an end. Much the same way, Islam has been wiped out as a major empire, civilization, and religion, and Europe absorbed its core into its own. It only survives in its Central Asian and West African peripheral last strongholds b/c the Europeans did not find their conquest worth the effort, and/or were kept at bay by geography, climate, and disease. Complete and permanent loss of its core and holy cities caused it a radical collapse of power, prestige, and morale that favored its disappearance in India, East Africa, and Southeast Asia as the Eastern religions or Christianity expanded to fill the void. It also accelerated assimilation of North Africa and the Middle East into Europe as many natives decided God was on the Crusaders' side. For the areas the Europeans may settle comfortably even before industrialization (the Americans, Australasia, Eastern and Southern Africa) complete settler colonization and cultural-political assimilation into the European empires is only a question of time.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Sept 18, 2016 18:19:13 GMT
The WRE/HRE certainly is the most powerful of all, Both military and financially. |
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 18:32:17 GMT
The WRE/HRE certainly is the most powerful of all, Both military and financially. Yes, although the ERE controls an equal share of, and the most direct route for, the very profitable trade with the Asian empires, and suffers much less cultural and religious division than the Ottoman Empire, which helps it narrow the power divide with the HRE considerably. The two states are both the most powerful European empires into military and economic terms, and less importantly but not insignificantly the most direct, truest successors of the Roman ur-archetype, which makes them the undisputed co-leaders of Christianity. |
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Post by lordroel on Sept 18, 2016 18:41:49 GMT
Both military and financially. Yes, although the ERE controls an equal share of, and the most direct route for, the very profitable trade with the Asian empires, and suffers much less cultural and religious division than the Ottoman Empire, which helps it narrow the power divide with the HRE considerably. The two states are both the most powerful European empires into military and economic terms, and less importantly but not insignificantly the most direct, truest successors of the Roman ur-archetype, which makes them the undisputed co-leaders of Christianity. Any of thr 5 empires have a large colony in the Americans. |
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 19:04:03 GMT
Yes, although the ERE controls an equal share of, and the most direct route for, the very profitable trade with the Asian empires, and suffers much less cultural and religious division than the Ottoman Empire, which helps it narrow the power divide with the HRE considerably. The two states are both the most powerful European empires into military and economic terms, and less importantly but not insignificantly the most direct, truest successors of the Roman ur-archetype, which makes them the undisputed co-leaders of Christianity. Any of thr 5 empires have a large colony in the Americans. The Europeans certainly got most greedy for colonization of the New World soon after they discovered it by exploring the Northern route. However because of geographical projection issues, only the HRE and the NSE were able to claim a colonial empire in the Americas. The ERE and Muscowy were cut off by geography and lack of access to the warm seas, the Byzantines historically had a prevalent eastward focus, and the Muscovites were forced into it by the strength of its rivals, so they focused on different areas of the world (Siberia, Central Asia, East Africa, and Southeast Asia). The LRC did not bother since its only access to the sea, the Baltic, was controlled by the HRE and the NSE. The prize was large and rich enough the Imperials did not bother cutting the Anglo-Norse off from having a substantial share of it, although they did claim most of the most valuable parts, and the NSE was not strong or foolhardy enough to contest the HRE getting the lion's share to the bitter end (which would have in all likelihood ended quite badly for them). As a consequence, the HRE got Mexico, Central America, northern South America, the Greater Antilles, Texas, eastern mainland North America up to the Mississippi, the West Coast, and the Rio de la Plata basin. The NSE got Newfoundland, the Lesser Antilles, northern-central Brazil, and the Andes region. You may certainly expect the rest of the Western Hemisphere being colonized by these two empires according to these coordinates in the next century or so as they project from their established colonies into the interior and subdue the independent tribes. Potentially speaking, Japan-Korea might have had a geographical window into colonization of the West Coast, but the HRE pre-empted them thanks to projection from Mexico and superior power and resources. The Japanese-Koreans instead got busy colonizing Manchuria, the Philippines, Kamchatcka, Taiwan, Hainan, and Micronesia. |
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Post by lordroel on Sept 18, 2016 19:12:04 GMT
Would you make a list of the 5 empires, it is easy to know who they are with out having to look true all of the post here if you can.
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Post by eurofed on Sept 18, 2016 20:12:30 GMT
Would you make a list of the 5 empires, it is easy to know who they are with out having to look true all of the post here if you can. The Western/Holy Roman Empire: Charlemagne's life work gone more successful under his successors than the man himself could hope. France, Iberia, the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Croatia-Bosnia, and Northwest Africa bound into indissoluble union by neo-Roman imperial identity, Latin as a common language, and united Latin Christianity. Surely it calls itself a Roman Empire, it may use the 'Western' label or the 'Holy' one depending on circumstances. The Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire: Justinian's heritage reborn on steroids after the Muslim onslaught it vanquished. Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, western Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia bound into indissoluble union by Eastern Roman imperial identity, Greek as a common language, total victory over Islam, and united Greek/Eastern/Oriental Christianity. Surely it calls itself the ERE. The North Sea Empire: Cnut the Great's dream fulfilled. An Anglo-Norse political and cultural fusion of England and the Nordic kingdoms that absorbed the rest of the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the Baltic lands. In all likelihood it uses some combination of 'Northern' and 'Empire' in its name, quite possibly 'Roman' too, for prestige reasons. Culturally it is a Anglo-Scandinavian merger and the main standard-bearer of Germanic culture in the world once the Germans were absorbed by the HRE and Latinized. The Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth. Think of the PLC, only with Ruthenia/Ukraine in the place of Poland, which became an integral component of the HRE. One half of the East Slav successor to Kievan Rus, which split because of the steppe nomad invasion. No good idea about how they would call themselves in order to be taken seriously. In TTL neo-Roman, universalist political atmosphere, an ethnic definition for your state is bad news, an admission of being barbarian, backward, and of dubious legitimacy. Unless of course you are strong enough to overturn a millennial standard, and neither *Ukraine nor *Russia are yet any close to important enough for that. The combined impact of the NSE, LRE, Muscovy, and global colonization was just enough to make the notion acceptable of 4 (provisionally 5) 'true' European empires. TTL Europeans care a lot about the notion of them being a united, overarching Roman-Christian civilization that is ruled by multiple imperial courts out of convenience. Nonetheless, the existence, senior status, and superior power of the ERE makes it unfeasible for a Russia or Ukraine equivalent the otherwise natural claim of being the 'Eastern' empire, and of course the East Slav political split makes things worse. Muscovy. Not much different from OTL Russia, apart from being forced into a greater eastward projection. The other half of the East Slav successor to Kievan Rus and the other standard-bearer of Slavic culture in the world, once the West and South Slavs were politically and culturally assimilated by the HRE and the ERE. No good idea about how they would call themselves; they face the same difficulty as the LRC. |
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), although they are not exactly the same in power and stature. The WRE/HRE and to a slightly lesser degree the ERE stand head and shoulders above the others. The settlement is very, very stable at least for them, since they are basically unconquerable by their peers, barring radical differences in industrialization, and they are rather solid politically and culturally. The NSE is just as solid, but it basically stays independent at the sufferance of the WRE/HRE, due to its lesser population and resources. Then again, the status quo between them is very likely to stand, unless one side makes itself much more of a nuisance for the other than it happened in the past. United Rus would certainly have the resource base to be a full peer of the WRE/HRE and the ERE, but so far the LRC and Muscovy have been locked in a perennial, inconclusive struggle for hegemony, with both sides failing to dominate and absorb the other. Muscovy would have the potential to break the stalemate by intensive colonization, settlement, and resource exploitation of Siberia and Central Asia, but it is not going to happen in the near future (it would take extensive industrialization at least). The stalemate in Eastern Europe lets the LRC exist as the fifth European state by default, even if in the grand geopolitical pattern, it looks like a super-sized buffer state between the HRE, the ERE, and Rus. Extra-European colonial expansion provided some much-needed imperial legitimation for the NSE and Muscovy, which raised their stature to be near-equals of the HRE and the ERE.