WI the Romans expanded into Germania.

sebeck · Sep 7, 2008

WI the Romans didn't stop after a few unsuccessful campaigns to cross the Rhine for conquest and they succeeded?

What would be the effects of this on the future of the Empire? Would the Empire split into two or three halves or not at all? How would this effect Hunnic movements in the area?

rcduggan · Sep 8, 2008

Rome couldn't last forever. If they subdued Germania, there would still be the Burgundians coming from Bornholm, the Goths from Sweden, and the Jutes, Saxons, etc from Jutland. The empire would eventually get a lot more manpower from the Romanized population of Germania, but would face attacks from the north (Jutes, Saxons) and east (Goths). There would also be a larger frontier that would have to deal with Sarmatian attacks, which were pretty devastating until ~300.

If the Huns are not butterflied away, the empire would probably be in a better position to fight them. But as the Romans would presumably still be using infantry, the Hunnish cavalry would defeat them AIOTl, and a Hunnic empire could still emerge.

But once the Roman empire inevitably collapses, it will be much more interesting. A group of Romanized states that speak Romance languages extending through most of Europe, wit a Germanic eastern Europe down to Ukraine.

Kvasir · Sep 8, 2008

Perhaps a POD around Marcus Aurelius could be used? Either way it could spark off a desire for conquest and fresh slaves which would be a short term boost for the Empire. Perhaps with greater priorities the Romans could come up with ways to keep the large Empire together longer. A Roman Mesopotamia and Armenia would produce another stable border but the Roman Empire almost certainly cannot last forever. However it's end game would be very different.

Snake Featherston · Sep 8, 2008

sebeck said:
WI the Romans didn't stop after a few unsuccessful campaigns to cross the Rhine for conquest and they succeeded?

What would be the effects of this on the future of the Empire? Would the Empire split into two or three halves or not at all? How would this effect Hunnic movements in the area?

A Roman conquest of the area that is today's Germany wouldn't save the empire forever, pre-Industrial civilizations could only grow so large without killing themselves and had limited lifespans. Considering the final frontier was supposed to be the Elbe, that only creates more problems for future Augusti of Rome. Longer frontiers mean more opportunity for generals to make a name for themselves and possibly take over the Empire as Augustus of Rome. That changes Roman dynasties possibly even more, and the nature of Roman civilization means that means more instability.

That POD quite likely butterflies away Attila, and maybe even the Huns, but Rome would collapse under overstretch after some point, with the Germania region being "freed" in the manner of Britain under Honorius. At that point, you might have a larger sphere of Latin than OTL. In the long run, that will have immense results, but I can't consider them without knowing the manner of how Rome subdues the Germans.

Susano · Sep 8, 2008

Actually, Im not so sure it would be all bad. Going to the Elbe is even a reduction of border length, and even though there ar estill enough potenntially aggressive peoples outside the borders, it would bring a good lot of them under Roman control...

General Zod · Sep 8, 2008

rcduggan said:
Rome couldn't last forever. If they subdued Germania, there would still be the Burgundians coming from Bornholm, the Goths from Sweden, and the Jutes, Saxons, etc from Jutland. The empire would eventually get a lot more manpower from the Romanized population of Germania, but would face attacks from the north (Jutes, Saxons) and east (Goths). There would also be a larger frontier that would have to deal with Sarmatian attacks, which were pretty devastating until ~300.

Conquering Germania can easily make the frontier shorter, not longer. If Rome successfully moves the frontier of the Empire to the Vistula-Dnestr rivers, the border will be much shorter than the Rhine-Danube one and rather more defensible. Combined with the rather expanded manpower that a successfully Romanized Germania can provide, this ought to provde Rome the resources she needs to contain the attacks from other Germanic peoples from Scandinavia and the Sarmatians. This border has good potential to remain stable until and unless the Empire collapses by other causes. The Germanic-Sarmatian pressure will no more be a relevant concause of the collapse.

But once the Roman empire inevitably collapses, it will be much more interesting. A group of Romanized states that speak Romance languages extending through most of Europe, wit a Germanic eastern Europe down to Ukraine.

Indeed. A Romanized Germania could considerably dampen the duration and severity of the Dark Ages economic and cultural collapse.

bill_mchale · Sep 8, 2008

Well, whether Rome or not reached the natural limits of a pre-modern state is, of course, up for debate. If it could have however, it might have saved itself provided it expanded in the right way. Certainly any examination of Rome's borders show that the European borders were almost impossibly long. As others have pointed out, expanding might have actually eased the later defense of the Empire from foreign invaders. If Rome's borders could have traced a line between the Black Sea and the Baltic, the western part of the Empire would have been spared the ravages of the 5th century.

Rome's biggest failing though was the lack of a truly stable government. In the later empire, few emperors held power for very long if a more capable general happened to be ambitious. The constant civil wars certainly played a large role in weakening the empire.

--
Bill

Snake Featherston · Sep 8, 2008

Susano said:
Actually, Im not so sure it would be all bad. Going to the Elbe is even a reduction of border length, and even though there ar estill enough potenntially aggressive peoples outside the borders, it would bring a good lot of them under Roman control...

Remember that under Augustus Trajan, the Romans annexed parts of the Near East...and lost them under Augustus Hadrian.

Nothing to stop a conquest of Germania, even if it reaches the Elbe from being lost under future incompetent Augusti.

Valdemar II · Sep 8, 2008

Let us not forget that Rome kept some of the Transrhine territories to the 3th century and when it was conquered by the the Allemanic it became a base for continued conquest and was total germanised*. I think something like that would happen at the same time for the entire territorium, and the result will be stronger, but also more civilised Germanic tribes.

*It it was ever Latinised in the first place.

bill_mchale · Sep 8, 2008

Snake Featherston said:
Remember that under Augustus Trajan, the Romans annexed parts of the Near East...and lost them under Augustus Hadrian.

Nothing to stop a conquest of Germania, even if it reaches the Elbe from being lost under future incompetent Augusti.

Yeah, but I think we need to keep in mind that the parts of the Near East that Rome conquered were, by and large, much harder to defend than most European territories. Mesopotamia had been conquered from the Persians (specifically the Parthians)... while they might have held the territory for longer, short of conquering Persia, I see little chance of them holding the Persians back for long.

Germany on the other hand was not nearly as sophisticated militarily or as organized as a state. It would have been a difficult fight, and had little immediate reward (which probably had big part in the reason the Romans never moved in) but it would have been much easier to hold.

--
Bill

Snake Featherston · Sep 8, 2008

bill_mchale said:
Yeah, but I think we need to keep in mind that the parts of the Near East that Rome conquered were, by and large, much harder to defend than most European territories. Mesopotamia had been conquered from the Persians (specifically the Parthians)... while they might have held the territory for longer, short of conquering Persia, I see little chance of them holding the Persians back for long.

Germany on the other hand was not nearly as sophisticated militarily or as organized as a state. It would have been a difficult fight, and had little immediate reward (which probably had big part in the reason the Romans never moved in) but it would have been much easier to hold.

--
Bill

OK, so let's assume that Rome builds an Elbe frontier.

Along comes one of the OTL incompetents that barely held onto these territories of the OTL frontier, and this territory is far away and remote from Rome to begin with. How is this not going to result in a loss of Germania?

More territory to rule means more strains on the autocrats that rule it in a pre-Industrial context. It's why the Umayyads stopped in Western Europe after a relatively minor defeat like Tours. It's also why the Mongol empire collapsed within 50 years of its establishment. A pre-Industrial state cannot expand indefinitely, even in the abscences of external threats, the sheer stress of maintaining an empire of that size is going to break people.

And sophistication has nothing to do with easiness of retention, as the troubles the US is experiencing in Afghanistan despite years of civil war having turned it into a suburb of Hell should tell you.

General Zod · Sep 8, 2008

I insist on suggesting the Vistula border instead of the Elbe one. It is the best defensible border for the Roman Empire in Europe, and once they make the strategic committment to Romanize Germania, they may (and ought) as well get all of it. And once we get to specualte on the case of Romanized Germania, it is simplest to assume all of that (just like all of Gallia) gets included.

I will not give it for sure that Romanization of Germania, by itself, would have prevented the final collapse of the Roman Empire. However, it changes the geopolitical equation for the Empire almost as radically as the conquest of Gallia did. From the spawning pool of hostile invaders, Germania is changed to an additional very important source of abundant manpower and, to lesser degree, revenue. Even if Roman agriculture was not so adaptable to Central European climate, adding new provinces spanning from Rhine to Vistula still provide a significant amount of extra taxes.

I think and hope we may all agree that in order to be really worthy of discussion, the PoD must assume that Germania is successfuly conquered and assimilated in the Empire for good, as thoroughly Romanized as Gallia or Hispania were.

The conquest of Germania eases the military pressure on the northern border of the Empire a lot. Beyond the Vistula there were no organized state of comparable miliary potential to the Romans as there was Parthia beyond the Euphrates. So Germanic provinces shall be as easy to keep as Gallia was, once the initial thorough committment to Romanization is done. Much like Gallia or Britannia, those provinces, once kept for some decades, shall not be lost until and unless the Empire is facing the final stages of its collapse. Culturally aqnd militarly, Germania was quite similar to Celtia, most of which (Gallia, Britannia) Rome was very successfully able to hold for centuries and assimilate, once sufficient initial miliary committment was done. The PoD assumes they did.

By itself, this may be insufficient to save the Empire. But surely it will slow its collapse considerably, and diminish the economic and cultural impact of said collapse by a a great degree.

Snake Featherston · Sep 8, 2008

General Zod said:
I insist on suggesting the Vistula border instead of the Elbe one. It is the best defensible border for the Roman Empire in Europe, and once they make the strategic committment to Romanize Germania, they may (and ought) as well get all of it.

Big Empires tend to be trouble, even when perfectly defensible. It's arguable that sheer strain from running an empire of that size will bring down Rome anyway, after all, even in a world where the Industrial Revolution never happens, the Ottomans were nearing a similar end of a (mostly) pre-Industrial state. The Ottomans lasted a helluva long time, but the lifespan of pre-Industrial states, especially vulnerably-placed ones like the Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire, is limited, especially when you've got hostile neighbors like the Sassanids and in the future, Huns and Bulgars and Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the case of the Romans, or the Western powers and Russia in the case of the Ottomans.

This wouldn't remove those issues, especially the Sassanids. It also presumes an unbroken chain of highly skilled, intelligent Roman leaders, and that the tendency of generals to rebel to create their own empires doesn't exist. It also presumes that a Vistula frontier would have ultimately been sustainable, even if it were a shorter border.

General Zod · Sep 8, 2008

Snake Featherston said:
Big Empires tend to be trouble, even when perfectly defensible. It's arguable that sheer strain from running an empire of that size will bring down Rome anyway, after all, even in a world where the Industrial Revolution never happens, the Ottomans were nearing a similar end of a (mostly) pre-Industrial state. The Ottomans lasted a helluva long time, but the lifespan of pre-Industrial states, especially vulnerably-placed ones like the Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire, is limited, especially when you've got hostile neighbors like the Sassanids and in the future, Huns and Bulgars and Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the case of the Romans, or the Western powers and Russia in the case of the Ottomans.

This wouldn't remove those issues, especially the Sassanids. It also presumes an unbroken chain of highly skilled, intelligent Roman leaders, and that the tendency of generals to rebel to create their own empires doesn't exist. It also presumes that a Vistula frontier would have ultimately been sustainable, even if it were a shorter border.

As I said above (but I edited my post and epxanded it considerably while you were answering, so please see upthread, you may have missed the edit), Romanized Germania may have not, by itself, saved the Empire, as it only removed one cause of its collapse, and not the main one. It betters the demographic, military, and economic equation of the Empire enough that its collpase will be significantly slowed, and the cultural and economic regression of the Dark Ages be diminished quite a lot. It may not save Rome, but it will surely anticipate the Renaissance by several centuries. Surely at the very least by 200-300 years, potentially it could make the Dark Ages as short as any of the Chinese Empire periodic collapses, 1-2 centuries.

Muhc of what you say is true, except a Romanized Germania will make the pressure of the residual non-Romanized Germanic and Slav peoples from Scandinavia and Sarmatia quite easy to contain, unless the Empire is already very far in its collapse by other reasons, much in the same way they abandoned Britannia OTL. Bulgars, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc. will be a trivial military problem. Only the Sassanids and later the Huns will be a serious problem.

If they could hold the Rhine-Danube border for four centuries, surely they can hold the Vistula-Dnestr border for at least as much. The border is ratrher shorter, Germania will be Romanized just the same way Gallia, Britannia, or Hispania was. All those countries gave the Romans much militayr grief to be subdued in the first decades, but once they could be held for a generation or two, they become completely integrated in Roman economy and culture, became the source of abundant extra manpower and revenue, and required no significant military committment to be held besides the troops to gurad their borders against the barbarians beyond. There is no reason to assume that what worked in Celtia will not work in Germania, once the initial thorough committment is done. if they could hold the Rhine for four centuries, they can at least hold the Vistula for at least as much. And it is quite probable they will not begin experience serious problems on that border until the Huns show up.

carlton_bach · Sep 9, 2008

While I am, convinced that Rome could hasve taken Germania proper, there are a few problems with the reasoning why and how.

- An Elbe frontier, ore a Vistula frontier, would have been shorter, but the Romans did not know that. They did not pursue grand strategy over large maps but over diplomatic correspondence - the question who are friends, who are enemies, and who is easy to intimidate or worth plundering. The idea of creatoing an easily defensible border comes relatively late to Roman planning, and when it does, usually results in retrenchment, not conquest.

- Conquest to Principate Rome is an expensive and risky proposition. The Principate's ruling ideology is one of peace and stability. Where this is threatened, the Romans restore it. The Republican ethos of conquest, though, is gone, despite attempts to revive it periodically, and more importantly - the mechanism that drove Republican conquest is gone. There are no longer the bottomless manpower reserves that war leaders simply need to avail themselves of. The legions are standing, professional forces that need to be husbanded carefully. Trajan raising three legions is newsworthy - by the time of Caesar, three legions raised is part of the business of running a province. Similarly, the Augustan peace ethos does not allow the amount of plunder and extortion that made conquest so profitable. The troops can not be rewarded adequately for their suffering and the state may well come out with a loss. And finally, a military career that is too successful opens you up not to political greatness, but to suspicion and intrigue.

- And finally, there is precious little in Germania worth having. Many modern writers tend to think of Germania, Illyria, Moesia and Germania as more or less the same 'barbaric north', but if you know a bit about local archeology you will see that the differences are huge. Illyricum was practically hellenised, Moesia and Gaul had cities and infrastructure not very different in scale and ambition from those of 12th-century England. Germania was a howling wilderness by comparison. Just last year, archeologists in modern East Germany discovered a site where Germanic smiths mass-produced spearheads. This made the papers. Finding a specialised workshop of any kind in Gaul, Britain or even 'Celtic' Germany is filed with the other ones. Treasure finds in Germania during the first few centuries of contact invariably are from Roman sources, come north as diplomatic gifts, trade items or plunder, while those elsewhere are usually of local manufacture. The only thing to be had in Germania is glory, and glory is a dangerous thing to amass after Augustus.

The best options IMO are either a conquest in the initial attempt, under Augustus, when he still treated the army as a mobile, disposable force, or through Roman intervention in a Germanic war, piecemeal and through the absorbtion of client states. The problem is that the climate, military capabilities of the locals, extreme poverty and ill-defined borders make it an operation forever at risk of cancelling.

Advernt · Sep 9, 2008

carlton_bach said:
While I am, convinced that Rome could hasve taken Germania proper, there are a few problems with the reasoning why and how.

- An Elbe frontier, ore a Vistula frontier, would have been shorter, but the Romans did not know that. They did not pursue grand strategy over large maps but over diplomatic correspondence - the question who are friends, who are enemies, and who is easy to intimidate or worth plundering. The idea of creatoing an easily defensible border comes relatively late to Roman planning, and when it does, usually results in retrenchment, not conquest.

- Conquest to Principate Rome is an expensive and risky proposition. The Principate's ruling ideology is one of peace and stability. Where this is threatened, the Romans restore it. The Republican ethos of conquest, though, is gone, despite attempts to revive it periodically, and more importantly - the mechanism that drove Republican conquest is gone. There are no longer the bottomless manpower reserves that war leaders simply need to avail themselves of. The legions are standing, professional forces that need to be husbanded carefully. Trajan raising three legions is newsworthy - by the time of Caesar, three legions raised is part of the business of running a province. Similarly, the Augustan peace ethos does not allow the amount of plunder and extortion that made conquest so profitable. The troops can not be rewarded adequately for their suffering and the state may well come out with a loss. And finally, a military career that is too successful opens you up not to political greatness, but to suspicion and intrigue.

- And finally, there is precious little in Germania worth having. Many modern writers tend to think of Germania, Illyria, Moesia and Germania as more or less the same 'barbaric north', but if you know a bit about local archeology you will see that the differences are huge. Illyricum was practically hellenised, Moesia and Gaul had cities and infrastructure not very different in scale and ambition from those of 12th-century England. Germania was a howling wilderness by comparison. Just last year, archeologists in modern East Germany discovered a site where Germanic smiths mass-produced spearheads. This made the papers. Finding a specialised workshop of any kind in Gaul, Britain or even 'Celtic' Germany is filed with the other ones. Treasure finds in Germania during the first few centuries of contact invariably are from Roman sources, come north as diplomatic gifts, trade items or plunder, while those elsewhere are usually of local manufacture. The only thing to be had in Germania is glory, and glory is a dangerous thing to amass after Augustus.

The best options IMO are either a conquest in the initial attempt, under Augustus, when he still treated the army as a mobile, disposable force, or through Roman intervention in a Germanic war, piecemeal and through the absorbtion of client states. The problem is that the climate, military capabilities of the locals, extreme poverty and ill-defined borders make it an operation forever at risk of cancelling.

Well, perhaps a decisive victory at Teutoburge Wald http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
and the maintainance of a strong Roman Presence in Germania under the First few Emperors would be a good start. From there , it is not unconcievable that the Roman Empire would advance to the Vistula before halting. Even better would be an establishment of a Carpathian Frontier too along with a Vistula frontier.

Add that to a satisfactory method of Imperial Sucession , perhaps like the one developed during the 2nd Century till Commodous, and you might be able to preserve the Roman Empire for centuries more , and might lead to a much shorter Dark Age and earlier Rennaisance. Ofcourse , the effects is that Islam is probably butterflied away, and if the Romans can survive the Hunnic Invasions, the almost inevitable Arab Erruption, more centuries of Persia, few civil wars and maybe even the Mongols if it can hold on that long.....

sebeck · Sep 12, 2008

I've noticed that most of you seem to feel that there is lack of a real reason for Rome to invade Germania. I have an idea to fix that. In 120 C.E. one of the rivals of Hadrian has gathered together various Germanic tribes including the Franks to raid northern Gaul. Hadrian is greatly angered and sends in the Legions to put down the raids and stop all future raids. The Legions beat the Germanic tribesmen but the Rival is not with them. They get information that he is still in Germania and living among the Germanic tribes. The Legions decide that the only way to truly insure that no more revolts would happen would be to bring the Germanic tribes under the power of Rome. This is done but the most brutal of means. The chiefs are killed and their heads mounted on pikes and carried on to the next tribe. Eventually, the tribes simply immediately surrender and fall under the power of Rome.

Red- Rome at time of Trajan's crowning.
Yellow- Roman expansion in Germania.

Advernt · Sep 12, 2008

sebeck said:
I've noticed that most of you seem to feel that there is lack of a real reason for Rome to invade Germania. I have an idea to fix that. In 120 C.E. one of the rivals of Hadrian has gathered together various Germanic tribes including the Franks to raid northern Gaul. Hadrian is greatly angered and sends in the Legions to put down the raids and stop all future raids. The Legions beat the Germanic tribesmen but the Rival is not with them. They get information that he is still in Germania and living among the Germanic tribes. The Legions decide that the only way to truly insure that no more revolts would happen would be to bring the Germanic tribes under the power of Rome. This is done but the most brutal of means. The chiefs are killed and their heads mounted on pikes and carried on to the next tribe. Eventually, the tribes simply immediately surrender and fall under the power of Rome.

Red- Rome at time of Trajan's crowning.
Yellow- Roman expansion in Germania.

Would'nt it be better to extend it into the Vistula and Deniper?

Typo · Sep 12, 2008

If you believe Toynbee's theory, then the Roman empire signed it's own death warrant when it did not reach it's "natural" frontier.

Toynbee proposed that the Romans have only reached one of their "natural" frontiers: that of the Atlantic to the west, he proposed that the Romans needed to completely occupy Britain, and set their borders in the east in Iranian plateau.

In Eastern Europe, he thought the best frontier was roughly the same one the Prussians had with imperial Russia.

Due to the shorter nature of those lines, he believed that the Romans would have decisively strengthened it's defense against the barbarians. He argued that incorporating those territories would have strengthened rather than weakened the empire. Remember that emperors like Diocletian and Marcus Aurelius were Illyrian and Spanish respectively. With new additions you would see great emperors of German and Arab origins, not to mention the manpower those regions would bring.

The Professor · Sep 12, 2008

Assuming an ATL Crisis of the 3rd Century still results would this lead to a successful Gallic Empire?
Could successful partitions a la Tetrarchy be maintained?
I'd like to think a *Gallic or *Northern Roman Empire based in northern Gaul or Britannia may survive to rival the *Eastern Roman one.