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How early can you feasibly dig a Canal at the site of TTL's Suez Canal? Assumptions: I don't care about the politics of it, presume that a technologically oriented, affluent culture has total control of a relatively prosperous and very stable Egypt and Levant and hence politics are...

What kills external combustion isn't boiler explosions. What kills external combustion is the fact that, given early 20th century manufacturing technology, you could make a far more powerful small gasoline internal combustion engine than a coal-fired external combustion engine. External...

The assumption of "steampunk" genre is that relatively small steam engines could, with further development, become equivalent in efficiency to gasoline and diesel engines OTL, at least WWII era ones. In Real Life, NO. But most other "steampunk" tropes gleefully violate the laws of...

Noted. It will come in the revision. Perhaps Konstandinos, for max irony. . .

Tentatively, yes. Your above post is giving me ideas of the direction I want to go with this. However, my normal life is a little bit crazy at the moment, and I'm shifting emphasis to a writing project with somewhat less strict rules than I've given myself for this project -- and very much...

Inside, possible. If someone was stupid enough to hire a LOT of Bulgarians and there weren't very many other troops in the City. And the people didn't drop rocks on their heads. I don't think you could hold the City at that point in history without some modicum of support.

Not sure the Venetian fleet could handle it in the 11th century. However, that is a possible scenario.

You are not mistaken in what you said, but in what I said. The 4th Crusade in 1204 occured at a time when the Roman Navy had been more or less disbanded and the field army was also at a nadir. In other words, they met my SECOND set of criteria for a successful attack on Constantinople, which...

Cite source. Cite ANY source, even Wikipedia that says there are cannon in the 11th century anywhere. Please. Or pull your head out of your ass. Trebuchets will not breach the Land Walls of Constantinople.

To address the initial question about a Roman/Bulgarian Emperor being acceptable to the Greeks. It's hard to convey how far superior the Greeks believed they were -- but this was a CULTURAL thing, not an ETHNIC thing. Modern ideas about race and ethnicity are really relatively recent. What...

No, they aren't. By 1375, yes. But there are no cannon at Hastings or immediately after. No cannon, no breach of the City walls. No breach, no successful siege of The City without a fleet capable of shutting down the Roman fleet AND any army capable of sealing off the land side. This must...

Egypt is, I think, a possibility. The reconcilliation with the Syriac Church in Antioch sets the stage, as does the (coming) crack-down on the Black Sea slave trade, as well as Roman and Georgian control of the Caucasus, the other primary source of slaves. This is going to weaken the...

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=169430 Pimp mah thread with a similiar POD. . . It will be interesting to see what other directions you can go from here.

Part of the difference, I think, is that you would have no motivation for the constant warfare in the Balkans. The Empire has no reason to go after Hungary. I think, perhaps, that in the 15th century, the Mamlukes might fall to the Romans. But that would be the extent of the wars of conquest...

OK, this is as far as I got it plotted out before starting to post. It took a hell of a lot of research to get it this far. Is there any interest in either looking 'left and right' at impacts outside the immediate area of the Empire, or further down the road at longer term impacts?

They would have to be better off than serfs - definitionally. Otherwise they wouldn't be much of a middle class. There are degrees and gradiations in social/economic/political structures. And early cannon-making did get going best in places where the cities had greater political liberties...

Actually, the middle class and cannon foundries start to become important about the same time. Roughly speaking, of course.

And it also helped that the military system of the day did not require extensive formal education (as opposed to the modern era, where a PFC is fixing your radio, and better understand electronics), rewarded iron discipline, and everything could be made by a simple smith in his shop with a...

Let me be a little bit of a stinker at the party. Sparta specifically disenfranchised and de facto enslaved the entire non-military population. It discouraged foreign trade, and produced nothing but soldiers, the basic bronze weapons to arm them, and the food for them to eat. The last two...

To be fair, while Tamerlane did kill a lot of Eastern Christians (and Orthodox Christians too) he also murdered thousands of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Ismaili Shia, and Twelver Shia for religious reasons. In addition to the hundreds of thousands he killed for purely political reasons, or...