Eurofed
Banned
I offer you the following map and TL sketch, CE 1500:
PoD is the survival of both Frederick I Barbarossa and his son Henry VI Hohenstaufen to the completion of the Third Crusade and a successful long reign respectively. This creates a strong basis for the gradual centralization of the HRE and sees it turned into a hereditary monarchy at the very end of the 12nd century. Their talented scion Frederick II is educated to complete the basic job of empire-building, which he does over his own decades-long equally successful reign. Some intermittent civil wars in Germany and Italy see the resistance of particularist nobles and city-states crushed and gradually snuffed out, and the the decisive defeat of the theocratic Papacy. Another long reign by his son Conrad IV, in a dynasty notable for the longevity of its talented rulers, sees the Western Roman/Carolingian Empire definitely being reborn in the eyes of its subjects as a centralized monarchy spanning Germany, Italy, Austria, Bohemia-Moravia, the Low Countries, Burgundy, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Dalmatia, its armies swelled by the manpower of Germany and Italy and its coffers filled by the taxation flowing from the trade centers of Flanders, northern Germany, Franconia and Palatinate, Bohemia, northern Italy, and Sicily. A couple of powerful new monarchical states, however, arise in Western Europe and an ancient one is reborn in the East that would question the imperial primacy of the HRE.
Butterflies arising from this change:
-The national unification of France is wrecked, and the fortunes of its neighbor states boosted, when the HRE interferes in the struggles between the Kings of France and the Angevin Empire on one side, and Aragon, France, and the Counts of Tolouse, on the other side. This results in the Plantagenet dynasty successfully uniting England and their feudal possessions and conquests in northern and western France into a unitary state. The Angevin Empire is also able to affirm its supremacy over Ireland and a Scotland that lacks strong backers on the other side of the English Channel.
-Aragon, not the Capetingian French monarchy, annexes Languedoc and Provence during the confused mess of suppressing the Cathar heresy. Aragon is able to capitalize this added power into gradually uniting the other Iberian Christian states under its control during the successful Reconquista, and to seize Corsica and Sardinia. Sicily and southern Italy, however, remain wholly outside its grasp, due to the strong grip of the HRE on Italy.
-The kingdom of France is shrunken down to an unhappy, landlocked buffer state (and occasional recurrent battlefield) between the imperial behemoths of the HRE, the Angevins, and Iberia. In the 14th century, it suffers a dynastic crisis, and after an inconclusive war between the three great powers at its borders, it is eventually partitioned between the Angevins and the HRE. Iberia swaps its share with Britain in exchange for southern Aquitaine.
-The kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are pushed into forming a real union (the so-called Kalmar Union) for mutual protection from their powerful neighbors.
-The strength of Britain, Iberia, and the HRE leads to a successful new round of Crusades, to a revitalization of the Byzantine Empire once the Islamic pressure is lifted off its back, and to an expansion of the Reconquista in North Africa. As a result, Iberia conquers North Africa. The HRE seizes Eygpt and Nubia. The Byzantine Empire recovers full control of Anatolia, Greece, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, and is later able to conquer the Levant, Armenia, and Mesopotamia. Serbia and Wallachia-Moldavia become vassal states of the Byzantine Empire.
-The strength of the HRE makes its expansion in Eastern Europe highly successful: besides the OTL achievements, Greater Poland, Masovia, Prussia, and western Hungary are assimilated and annexed to the HRE. The rest of Poland and Hungary are turned into vassal states of the HRE (Poland getting reunified in the process) and opened up for gradual assimilation by the Empire.
- Mongol invasion of Europe does not really reach further than Poland and Hungary, and the Tartar onslaught mostly ravages the Middle East for a while, further weakening Islamic states against the Crusader-Byzantine assault. After the Mongol Empire breaks apart, support by the HRE and the Byzantines allows Muscowy to swiftly oust the Golden Horde and build an empire in European Russia, which later expands to northern Caucasus, western Siberia, and most of Kazakhstan. By a parallel process, a Christianized Prussian tribe (TTL Lithuania equivalent) is able to expand and create a state spanning the Baltic lands, White Russia, Ukraine, and the former Khanate of Crimea.
-The Papacy never really recovers from the crushing defeat it suffers in its power struggles with the HRE and the Angevin Empire, and its ill-starred alliance with France. Britain, Iberia, and the HRE keep fighting to assert their control over the Papal Curia, stalemating each other, but further wrecking Papal power in the process for good. The Holy See gets wholly expelled from Italy, and eventually becomes an ineffectual ceremonial shadow of itself and a puppet of Iberia, with an alternating residence in Avignon and Santiago de Compostela, mostly used by the Iberian kings as a minor propaganda prop for the Reconquista. The Western monarchies eventually turn to propping up the power of the national episcopates and keeping a tight leash over them, in order to affirm secular control over their respective national clergy. Latin Church becomes quite decentralized, with the clergy of each nation being governed by the local episcopates, subordinate to the secular governments. The Ecumenic Council once again becomes the only authoritative body for the whole Church. This allows an uneasy reconciliation between the Latin and Greek Churches, although a sizable deal of distrust lingers. The success of the Crusades, and the rebirth of the Byzantine Empire, has however narrowed the distance between West and East somewhat.
-It is currently CE 1500. Although Europe spent a remarkable degree of time ad effort recovering from the Black Death, as well as from the wars that redrew its map, it seems to have regained some degree of stability, under the hegemony of the great monarchies of the HRE, Britain, Iberia, and the Byzantine Empire in an uneasy equilibrium. Wealth is filling the coffers of the kings and emperors, from improved control of the trade routes with the East and the political stability of the centralized monarchies dispelling feudal chaos, which fosters the growth of the urban trading elites. The lore plundered from the conquest of the Middle East and improved cultural exchange with Asia are fueling a huge humanistic Renaissance of cultural, scientific, philosophical, literary, and technological knowledge, with a mix of classical Greco-Roman achievements rediscovered, wholly new European ones developed, and a spread of ideas and techniques from India and China.
Despite somewhat improved access to the trade routes with Asia, the surviving Islamic states still remain a substantial obstacle, the European elites apparently share an endless appetite for the goods of the East, and trade competition between the great powers is raging. All of that all drives the search for new and better trade routes with Asia, which is made possible by advances in European naval technology providing truly Ocean-worthy ships for long travels. Intrepid explorers have now circumnavigated Africa and found a route to India and China, while others have brought back amazing news of a new landmass to the west of immense size and wealth.
The European powers appear surely posed to unleash their conquest of the world. But which pattern shall the European colonial empires take in this TL ? It is open for discussion.
(Note: for the sake of discussion, the map comes with handy blank spaces to mark plausible European colonial empires in the Americas and Asia, as well as native Asian states besides China, Korea, and Japan).
PoD is the survival of both Frederick I Barbarossa and his son Henry VI Hohenstaufen to the completion of the Third Crusade and a successful long reign respectively. This creates a strong basis for the gradual centralization of the HRE and sees it turned into a hereditary monarchy at the very end of the 12nd century. Their talented scion Frederick II is educated to complete the basic job of empire-building, which he does over his own decades-long equally successful reign. Some intermittent civil wars in Germany and Italy see the resistance of particularist nobles and city-states crushed and gradually snuffed out, and the the decisive defeat of the theocratic Papacy. Another long reign by his son Conrad IV, in a dynasty notable for the longevity of its talented rulers, sees the Western Roman/Carolingian Empire definitely being reborn in the eyes of its subjects as a centralized monarchy spanning Germany, Italy, Austria, Bohemia-Moravia, the Low Countries, Burgundy, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Dalmatia, its armies swelled by the manpower of Germany and Italy and its coffers filled by the taxation flowing from the trade centers of Flanders, northern Germany, Franconia and Palatinate, Bohemia, northern Italy, and Sicily. A couple of powerful new monarchical states, however, arise in Western Europe and an ancient one is reborn in the East that would question the imperial primacy of the HRE.
Butterflies arising from this change:
-The national unification of France is wrecked, and the fortunes of its neighbor states boosted, when the HRE interferes in the struggles between the Kings of France and the Angevin Empire on one side, and Aragon, France, and the Counts of Tolouse, on the other side. This results in the Plantagenet dynasty successfully uniting England and their feudal possessions and conquests in northern and western France into a unitary state. The Angevin Empire is also able to affirm its supremacy over Ireland and a Scotland that lacks strong backers on the other side of the English Channel.
-Aragon, not the Capetingian French monarchy, annexes Languedoc and Provence during the confused mess of suppressing the Cathar heresy. Aragon is able to capitalize this added power into gradually uniting the other Iberian Christian states under its control during the successful Reconquista, and to seize Corsica and Sardinia. Sicily and southern Italy, however, remain wholly outside its grasp, due to the strong grip of the HRE on Italy.
-The kingdom of France is shrunken down to an unhappy, landlocked buffer state (and occasional recurrent battlefield) between the imperial behemoths of the HRE, the Angevins, and Iberia. In the 14th century, it suffers a dynastic crisis, and after an inconclusive war between the three great powers at its borders, it is eventually partitioned between the Angevins and the HRE. Iberia swaps its share with Britain in exchange for southern Aquitaine.
-The kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are pushed into forming a real union (the so-called Kalmar Union) for mutual protection from their powerful neighbors.
-The strength of Britain, Iberia, and the HRE leads to a successful new round of Crusades, to a revitalization of the Byzantine Empire once the Islamic pressure is lifted off its back, and to an expansion of the Reconquista in North Africa. As a result, Iberia conquers North Africa. The HRE seizes Eygpt and Nubia. The Byzantine Empire recovers full control of Anatolia, Greece, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, and is later able to conquer the Levant, Armenia, and Mesopotamia. Serbia and Wallachia-Moldavia become vassal states of the Byzantine Empire.
-The strength of the HRE makes its expansion in Eastern Europe highly successful: besides the OTL achievements, Greater Poland, Masovia, Prussia, and western Hungary are assimilated and annexed to the HRE. The rest of Poland and Hungary are turned into vassal states of the HRE (Poland getting reunified in the process) and opened up for gradual assimilation by the Empire.
- Mongol invasion of Europe does not really reach further than Poland and Hungary, and the Tartar onslaught mostly ravages the Middle East for a while, further weakening Islamic states against the Crusader-Byzantine assault. After the Mongol Empire breaks apart, support by the HRE and the Byzantines allows Muscowy to swiftly oust the Golden Horde and build an empire in European Russia, which later expands to northern Caucasus, western Siberia, and most of Kazakhstan. By a parallel process, a Christianized Prussian tribe (TTL Lithuania equivalent) is able to expand and create a state spanning the Baltic lands, White Russia, Ukraine, and the former Khanate of Crimea.
-The Papacy never really recovers from the crushing defeat it suffers in its power struggles with the HRE and the Angevin Empire, and its ill-starred alliance with France. Britain, Iberia, and the HRE keep fighting to assert their control over the Papal Curia, stalemating each other, but further wrecking Papal power in the process for good. The Holy See gets wholly expelled from Italy, and eventually becomes an ineffectual ceremonial shadow of itself and a puppet of Iberia, with an alternating residence in Avignon and Santiago de Compostela, mostly used by the Iberian kings as a minor propaganda prop for the Reconquista. The Western monarchies eventually turn to propping up the power of the national episcopates and keeping a tight leash over them, in order to affirm secular control over their respective national clergy. Latin Church becomes quite decentralized, with the clergy of each nation being governed by the local episcopates, subordinate to the secular governments. The Ecumenic Council once again becomes the only authoritative body for the whole Church. This allows an uneasy reconciliation between the Latin and Greek Churches, although a sizable deal of distrust lingers. The success of the Crusades, and the rebirth of the Byzantine Empire, has however narrowed the distance between West and East somewhat.
-It is currently CE 1500. Although Europe spent a remarkable degree of time ad effort recovering from the Black Death, as well as from the wars that redrew its map, it seems to have regained some degree of stability, under the hegemony of the great monarchies of the HRE, Britain, Iberia, and the Byzantine Empire in an uneasy equilibrium. Wealth is filling the coffers of the kings and emperors, from improved control of the trade routes with the East and the political stability of the centralized monarchies dispelling feudal chaos, which fosters the growth of the urban trading elites. The lore plundered from the conquest of the Middle East and improved cultural exchange with Asia are fueling a huge humanistic Renaissance of cultural, scientific, philosophical, literary, and technological knowledge, with a mix of classical Greco-Roman achievements rediscovered, wholly new European ones developed, and a spread of ideas and techniques from India and China.
Despite somewhat improved access to the trade routes with Asia, the surviving Islamic states still remain a substantial obstacle, the European elites apparently share an endless appetite for the goods of the East, and trade competition between the great powers is raging. All of that all drives the search for new and better trade routes with Asia, which is made possible by advances in European naval technology providing truly Ocean-worthy ships for long travels. Intrepid explorers have now circumnavigated Africa and found a route to India and China, while others have brought back amazing news of a new landmass to the west of immense size and wealth.
The European powers appear surely posed to unleash their conquest of the world. But which pattern shall the European colonial empires take in this TL ? It is open for discussion.
(Note: for the sake of discussion, the map comes with handy blank spaces to mark plausible European colonial empires in the Americas and Asia, as well as native Asian states besides China, Korea, and Japan).
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New France, however, could just as easily go to Britain or the HRE.