AHC: Swap the fortunes of Eastern and Western Europe

Your Challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to create a reasonably plausible scenario where the geographical area of eastern Europe is one of the best educated, wealthiest, powerful (at least for a good amount of time) regions in the world. I accept essentially any tool in the kit. A military genius like Alexander or Napoleon, some kind of religious/ideological movement uniting people, literally anything you can think of. The states themselves don't even have to vaguely resemble present day, what i'm looking for is more a wanking of the region. Do whatever you must to language, culture, identity.

The other half, though, is that Western Europe must be impoverished, or at the very least seen as "backwards". Population decline, intervention by outside powers, etc. Marginalized. I'm not particularly concerned with what this aspect of it would like, its just to avoid "Poland-Lithuanian doesn't split up, participates in colonization, wins WWII" type answers.

(Slavic influence in Japan? A Muslim Khanate greeting the Native Americans? It's whatever. I am all about strange answers and creative methods. )

You'd need to really counterbalance the mediterranean continuity there. It helped the developpment of south-western Europe and Western in a really important way when Eastern Europe was barely explored, and that formed a great part of the relative backwarness of Eastern Europe compared to the western part.

Having Scythians not adopting a full pastoral way of life may help, forming agricultural entities along Black Sea up to the Danube. Eventually more or less hellenized/persianized, it could be the first step to a ground developpment; with Baltic forests and marshs having a similar development to IOTL Gaul.

Butterflies would be huge, of course, but there, you have at least something to make Eastern Europe having more chances to counterbalance natural economical expension from east to west.

Isn't the current situation more because of the U.S.S.R ?

Yeah, this is really difficult just due to geography.

What about a mongol invasion which hits the Atlantic, then collapses immediately? Then you have all the great cities of the West in ruins like Baghdad, and the East has had time to grow and benefit from ideas and information from China? The steppes become a great source of the Renaissance - the new Renaissance man being the nomadic horseman who brings ideas from afar.

I think what could really help here is an orthodox wank. Lemme deposit a scenario:

Byzantium stays together, avoids/overcomes Manzikert. After they and some Russian principalities clear our some tribes in the Volga region, trade and innovation between the Northern and Southern orthodox powers grows exponentially. In the mean time, Hungary has gone from Tengri to Orthodox (Instead of Catholic), and splits up the Balkans with Byzantium with Serbia as something of a buffer state.

The Mongol Invasions do not occur. This means the muslim world is significantly better off, but so is the Orthodox one, as major trade and growth continues. Rich Russian principalities arise, with strong ties to a resurgent Byzantium and a powerful Hungary. Of course, wars will happen here or there, but overall trade and sharing of ideas between themselves and the Muslim world is huge.

Western Europe is still able to colonize the New World, but industrialization begins around the Black Sea and spreads quickly over Eastern Europe. This allows them to rapidly start dominating the muslim, african, and eventually east asian worlds. Western Europe fades in relevancy, as Catholicism has long since caused stagnation and though they can industrialize, they're still behind the times. Eventually, they do Westernize, but most of the wealth and power remains in the hands of Eastern Europe and the Americas, who trade with these stronger powers.

Eventually, you have a situation where Western Europe is roughly on par with the Middle East in terms of power and wealth, with Eastern Europe being the center of it. Constantinople, Budapest, and Russian (who are not a unified nation, but rather three or four medium sized ones) cities like Novgorod, Vladimir, Kiev and Moscow dominate the world's markets.

Arcvalons said:

Isn't the current situation more because of the U.S.S.R ?

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The USSR was a symptom, not a cause.

LSCatilina said:

You'd need to really counterbalance the mediterranean continuity there. It helped the developpment of south-western Europe and Western in a really important way when Eastern Europe was barely explored, and that formed a great part of the relative backwarness of Eastern Europe compared to the western part.

Having Scythians not adopting a full pastoral way of life may help, forming agricultural entities along Black Sea up to the Danube. Eventually more or less hellenized/persianized, it could be the first step to a ground developpment; with Baltic forests and marshs having a similar development to IOTL Gaul.

Butterflies would be huge, of course, but there, you have at least something to make Eastern Europe having more chances to counterbalance natural economical expension from east to west.

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I feel like these states would be stomped Steppe Nomads for centuries, assuming they survive succumbing to invasion or collapse from desecration.

Biden&Ceaser'12 said:

Western Europe is still able to colonize the New World, but industrialization begins around the Black Sea and spreads quickly over Eastern Europe. This allows them to rapidly start dominating the muslim, african, and eventually east asian worlds. Western Europe fades in relevancy, as Catholicism has long since caused stagnation and though they can industrialize, they're still behind the times. Eventually, they do Westernize, but most of the wealth and power remains in the hands of Eastern Europe and the Americas, who trade with these stronger powers.

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Please, enlighten me as to how the Catholic Church causes stagnation...

dreadnought jenkins said:

Please, enlighten me as to how the Catholic Church causes stagnation...

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A different path then OTL, no reformation (meaning both no protestants and no desperately-needed reforms on the catholic side) and just generally getting stuck in the whole god>reason thing. It happened OTL with Islam, who were much more advanced than Western Europe, it can happen with Catholicism.

Biden&Ceaser'12 said:

A different path then OTL, no reformation (meaning both no protestants and no desperately-needed reforms on the catholic side) and just generally getting stuck in the whole god>reason thing. It happened OTL with Islam, who were much more advanced than Western Europe, it can happen with Catholicism.

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Im pretty sure that happened due to certain ideas within Islamic theology. Im not sure Catholicism ever had that bent.

dreadnought jenkins said:

Im pretty sure that happened due to certain ideas within Islamic theology. Im not sure Catholicism ever had that bent.

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Elaborate. What particular parts of original Islam led to this stagnation, and how does original Catholicism not have a parallel?

EDIT: If you'd rather not answer in favor of avoiding ignorance/offense, that's fine. But then you can't make this argument.

Biden&Ceaser'12 said:

Elaborate. What particular parts of original Islam led to this stagnation, and how does original Catholicism not have a parallel?

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I didnt say it lead to it. I said the theology of both religions is different.

Islam had quite the flourishing scientific thought before the God is better than reason school won out. It wasnt inevitable for Islam. It was one school out of many that won out.

Im just not aware of a similar school in Catholicism that ever developed. If you can point me to a Catholic theologian who thought of something like this, I will retract my statement.

Im simply tired of the `Catholicism is anti-science` and `Catholicism caused the dark ages` clap trap that gets bandied about so often.

dreadnought jenkins said:

I didnt say it lead to it. I said the theology of both religions is different.

Islam had quite the flourishing scientific thought before the God is better than reason school won out. It wasnt inevitable for Islam. It was one school out of many that won out.

Im just not aware of a similar school in Catholicism that ever developed. If you can point me to a Catholic theologian who thought of something like this, I will retract my statement.

Im simply tired of the `Catholicism is anti-science` and `Catholicism caused the dark ages` clap trap that gets bandied about so often.

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Fair enough. Catholicism didn't cause the Dark Ages. I never argued that.

However, if one reads the bible, you could definitely interpret it as being anti-science. I'm not saying this is the "right" way to interpret it, but it's easy to do so. And throughout the Medeival Ages, Catholicism was fairly anti-science. And for good reason, this benefited the church.

To argue that Catholicism could not evolve to be (or rather stay) anti-science is disputed by history.

Biden&Ceaser'12 said:

Fair enough. Catholicism didn't cause the Dark Ages. I never argued that.

However, if one reads the bible, you could definitely interpret it as being anti-science. I'm not saying this is the "right" way to interpret it, but it's easy to do so. And throughout the Medeival Ages, Catholicism was fairly anti-science. And for good reason, this benefited the church.

To argue that Catholicism could not evolve to be (or rather stay) anti-science is disputed by history.

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Now Im actually curious. Where do you see the Church being anti-science?

Because there is a difference for being anti-science and anti-heresy.

A lot of people the Church came down on werent brought down because of their scientific work, but because they made assertions about theology that the Church disagreed with. The nature of God, Hell, Christ, and what have you were common pitfalls.

The problem with the bible being interpreted as anti-science is that the Church has never solely relied on the Bible. It relies on a massive corpus of theologians and philosophers to help make it up.

Right from its very inception (the Catholic Churches, not Christianity`s), the Church never held the Bible as literal truth. Much of it was understood to be metaphor, though what was metaphor and what was literal were obviously up for debate.

This debate necessitated logical debates and uses of other sources. Notably, the Greek philosophers.

Meanwhile, in Islam, the Koran is understood to be the literal word of God. The Angel Gabriel dictated the whole thing to Muhammed (pbuh), and he wrote it down. In heaven, the Koran is also inscribed.

There is also the nature of how the two faiths are organized. Islam is much more decentralized, and there certainly is no need for an intervening priest. Every person can find salvation through the Koran alone. No special intervention is needed, not like Catholicism. The Imam is much similar to Rabbi in that he is a wise and learned guy, then some mystical intercessor.

The decentralized nature of Islam also allowed for various rather radical spiritual movements, such as the Sufis, to gain prominence.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is a very top down organization that relies on a large corpus of tradition to sustain itself. It does not like dissent, and it has often frowned on mysticism that denies its authority.

Mysticism in Catholicism has always tread a thin line between acceptability and anti-authoritarianism. Anything that denied the authority of the Church was stamped on, and the Church relied on (its) logic to sustain itself.

There is also the matter of Gnosticism, and Orthodox opposition to it. From near the beginning, Catholicism associated certain ideas with Gnosticism and viewed it as a dire threat/heresy. One of the more prominent ideas of Gnostic thought was that the material world was either evil or not really there. A spiritual trap. Thus orthodoxy often took a rather dim view of those ideas.

Biden&Ceaser'12 said:

However, if one reads the bible, you could definitely interpret it as being anti-science.

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And if I interpret Quran, I could definitely interpret it as being a "terrorist religion"; or if I interpret Aztec religion I could definitely interpret it as a savage and bloody satanic cult; etc.

Good thing that we have historical facts to debunk the "well, I can see it this way".

And throughout the Medeival Ages, Catholicism was fairly anti-science. And for good reason, this benefited the church.

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I don't know where to begin.
That simply goes again everything (and that's not an exageration) we know about scholarship in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages.

To argue that Catholicism could not evolve to be (or rather stay) anti-science is disputed by history.

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I don't know if you're being sarcastical there, as no reputable historian on the period would ever say something like this.

But...I'll bite. Give me some exemples that doesn't fall into the "D0rk Ages when where people eat poo because Church told them so", because I simply don't see one going in this way.

Delvestius said:

I feel like these states would be stomped Steppe Nomads for centuries, assuming they survive succumbing to invasion or collapse from desecration.

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Western European first states didn't, while they knew their own migrating waves. Or greek realms and polities on the region, while being surrounded by steppe people.

I think you dramatically underestimate the degree of cooperations and symbiose between nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples from one hand and state entities. A bit like breeders and farmers never went on an endless struggle; the opposition was far more diluted (to say nothing of mutual acculturation).

It doesn't mean that these Scythians entities wouldn't know such crisis, but...that was the lot of a good part of Mediterranean and Middle-East entities. At worst, the newcomers will fit in the shoes of the previous landowners rather than "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women"-mode.

Best way to do this is go way back and screw the WRE even harder and then wank the ERE. With strong Byzentines allied with a *Kievan Rus and dominating the Balkans you've got a shot at *Russia developing as a bread basket for a wanked ERE and a lot of riverine trade. Then screw the *Mongols and you've got it.

Daztur said:

Best way to do this is go way back and screw the WRE even harder and then wank the ERE. With strong Byzentines allied with a *Kievan Rus and dominating the Balkans you've got a shot at *Russia developing as a bread basket for a wanked ERE and a lot of riverine trade. Then screw the *Mongols and you've got it.

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I'm not sure you can screw a country any harder than destroying it.

dreadnought jenkins said:

I'm not sure you can screw a country any harder than destroying it.

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Well destroy it earlier or screw the people living there harder. Increase the size and power of the peasant revolts? Have the church hierarchy break down? Earlier *Vikings? Worse Magyars?

Also with the Byzentines what you need is not so much massive conquests as some peace and stability, which should be possible if you avoid crazy stuff like trying to grab Spain.

If you can develop the Rus more then Constantinople is in an excellent position for trade.