A H Challenged- contact with the New World not a castrophe for people living there

I had a TL about this at one point.

In essence (and with a massive handwave) some Roman soldiers and Roman colonists get blown accross the Atlantic in about 100 AD, and settle in OTLs NYC. They are unable to get back, and settle there, intermingling with the native Americans - and introducing metal working, horses, and written language.

After several wars, civil wars, and bad contacts with the MesoAmericans, and they settle down into an Empire that is OTL East Coast with trading posts as far as the Rockies. They do have a centralized government, and do have institutional memories of Rome, so eventually they sail back - in about 1000 AD. They have very limited contact with Ireland and Britain, and what they see of Dark Ages Europe convinces them to keep that contact limited. They do bring back diseases, which does wallop their society, but to the point of collapse, and does inoculate them somewhat.

Over the next couple hundred years, they do set up a clandestine network of spies to keep an eye on Europe. They are both intrigued and repelled by European society, and particularly Christianity, which they liken (not unreasonably) to the blood cults of MesoAmerica. They do infiltrate the church heirachy enough (some of them have enough European genes in them to pass themselves off as Spanish) to delay some of the earlier explorations to America. However, when the Aztecs launch an invasion of OTL Texas, the AmeriRomans decide they need help, and fund a Spanish voyage to the Caribbean...

Mike Turcotte
 
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