Real nation that otherwise would be ASB?

Napoleonrules

Banned
Is there a nation in history that if it had not existed, we at ah.com would declare its history to be NEAR-ASB if someone wrote it up in a history? I'm thinking the UK or the USA, and NAZI Germany are good post-1900 examples (who could come up NAZI regime with all that it entails?! Such a racist ATL might not sit well and be disturbing). But what about pre-1900 nations? Either their rise or their fall.
 

Youngmarshall

The Mongol empire is the obvious example of a country that expanded a lot quicker and over a much larger area than you would expect.

And I tend to think that nobody would write a china so explicitly considered one country in a timeline where it never united for the first time, given it's such a large area.

But it's a weird question, tbh. If the world went different then the sheer existence of countries as a thing could be seen as really bizarre.
 
Nyvis

Nyvis

Modern day India would be a ridiculous idea for people in a timeline without a Raj.
Japan being able to go from their isolation to a world power would be flagged as wanking pretty quickly.
 
Cheer

Cheer

Russia was pretty unlikely to ever even form, much less become a world power. It was, before the Mongols, an isolated backwater of disunited Slavic and Nordic states on the periphery of Europe. Then, they were kept backwards by Mongol rulership and taxation. It was only through enigmatic rulership on the behalf of both Ivan and Peter the Great that it was forced to first unify, then Westernize. Any slightly different timeline probably wouldn't have a single unified Russian state, much less one that stretches from beyond the Urals to the Pacific Ocean and all of Central Asia in between that eventually transforms into a radical dictatorship built upon the virtues of sharing. It all sounds pretty ridiculous.
 
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Ricard (i.e. Rdffigueira)

Ricard (i.e. Rdffigueira)

You are talking about large empires, and, indeed, I agree with all. But there are some tiny countries that provoke amazement by the sheer luck by which they remained sovereign through various centuries.

I guess some people won't agree, but I think Switzerland is fairly bizarre. If you pick an (historically) uneducated person, point that tiny country wedged between France, Germany and Italy, you'd already get a confused stare by the sheer disproportion. Even before Germany, there were France and Austria, and southern German principalities with a larger manpower base and wealth to tackle on this Alpine country. Now, the Swiss have a very defensive geography, of course, but the political history of the country is another thing that amazes me: it was amalgamation of former feudal provinces into a genuine confederation (in which every constituent part is a sovereign state) that formed a republic unlike the model of the Italian and Hanseatic merchant republics (a "modern" republic, it seems, like the Netherlands), with no common language. I mean, all it took would be a determined conqueror to wipe Switzerland off the map - like France did during the Revolution - or even to simply break it up for its neighbors to eat its cantons one by one - like what happened to Poland - but it still managed to survive and eventually grew to be one of the richest countries in the world by being peaceful and landlocked.

The same applies to San Marino, I suppose.
 
Tripledot

Tripledot

Khazaria- a Turkic Jewish khanate that ruled territory from the Crimea to the Caucasus.

The initial Muslim conquests would also be seen as ASB- a few desert tribes, in the course of a few decades toppling the Sassanids, and conquering a sizable chunk of the Byzantine empire, with an empire extending from Spanish Iberia to Caucasian Iberia? It seems pretty unbelievable even to us who know it happened.
 
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Kingfish

Ethiopia. A lone Christian nation in the heart of Africa that somehow managed to survive the spread of Islam is pretty unlikely at a first glance.
 

Lalli

San Marino - According legends existed since Roman Empire and never conquered and annexed by another nation.
Andorra - Odd dual-principality, which manages survive to 2017.
 
DanMcCollum

DanMcCollum

Austria-Hungary. The Habsburg Empire was largely knit together by generation, after generation, sleeping their way to power over territories. If anything, they are something someone would come up with if they were writing a timeline that was mocking European dynastic politics of the era!
 

James XI

Doesn't exist anymore, but as you say historically, I'll throw out Burgundy. Was destroyed/fell off the map several times, kept popping back up in another area a century or so later, and it's shape was often bizarre. Watching a chronological evolution of it's geographic boundaries might go well with an acid trip if you chose interesting colours. And that's all without knowing that it was doing this surrounded by very powerful states...just weird.

Other historical oddities are Brooke's Sarawak, modern Singapore and Israel.
 

funnyhat

The Netherlands holding out against the mighty Spanish Habsburg empire for 80 years - and finally winning - seems pretty ASB.

Paraguay, where an indigenous language (Guarani) not only has thrived but has large numbers of speakers who aren't of indigenous background, also seems hard to make up.
 
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thezerech

thezerech

Israel. After 2000 years in exile and speaking a dead language? Sounds pretty ASB.

Haiti considering it is the only "succesful" slave revolt in the last two thousand years.
 

John7755 يوحنا

Tripledot said:
Khazaria- a Turkic Jewish khanate that ruled territory from the Crimea to the Caucasus.

The initial Muslim conquests would also be seen as ASB- a few desert tribes, in the course of a few decades toppling the Sassanids, and conquering a sizable chunk of the Byzantine empire, with an empire extending from Spanish Iberia to Caucasian Iberia? It seems pretty unbelievable even to us who know it happened.
Click to expand...

It wasn't a few desert tribes. It was a large state with huge amounts of experienced battle hardened warriors. Millions resided in the Arab peninsula then.
 
Ilúphatar

Ilúphatar

Perhaps a non-Greek Anatolia could be considered ASB? Greeks were living in Asia Minor since before Alexander the Great, it's an historical anomaly for them not to be there now IOTL.
 
Cheer

Cheer

John7755 يوحنا said:
It wasn't a few desert tribes. It was a large state with huge amounts of experienced battle hardened warriors. Millions resided in the Arab peninsula then.
Click to expand...
I think he is referring to how the "large state" really wasn't a single unified state, and instead was a complex system of familial clans that would war with each other for very small reasons, meaning that on the global stage they were overshadowed by larger, more unified empires like Rome and Persia.
 
Heliogabalus

Heliogabalus

United States definitely. I imagine that any USA timeline would end up with people screaming about how America winning the war is ASB and, even if it did, it would fall apart in a few decades.
 
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