
Your statement confuses
As it rightly should, its the American within me associating all of the 13 colonies as one entity.
Push who around now?
Sounds more like a Chinese tributary system than any actual European colonial system OTL...I'll note that the colonies OTL rebelled against taxes and duties actually lower than people in England proper did...the most likely result of so feeble a home country is the breakup of the American colonies into a number of smaller self-governing states very nominally under British rule...
I know, it was something like 1/6th of what the English paid. I would, however, remark that taxes were far from the only thing that caused the rebellion and that even with all those factors that it still couldn't have been prevented.
So Sweden was able to take over and dominate the area for the same reason the Muscovite Russians were unable to? Logical problem here.
The Muscovite excursion was by a weaker force (at the time) and there were far better and easier spots to expand to, such as the steppe. Sweden was partaking in the Polish Crusades, something vaguely analogous to Polish-Muscovite Wars only with a more blatant attempt at conquest as well as catholicizing and with significant backing from the Church and Austria.
Ah, ok, you might want to add a line on the effects of "but as the Khanate grew relatively weaker, it regretted its alliance, as the Christians penetrated ever deeper into the Muslim heartlands, even into Arabia proper.." to clarify.
True, I probably should have. That being said it was the Christians that just stopped enforcing the alliance, rendering it worthless because it was against a very tolerant muslim state.
Yes, though it was by the Manchurians.
Its kind of unfair to use that as a counterargument, however. After the Jin Dynasty there were only really three major important dynasties that didn't die out in four or five years: Yuan, Ming, and Qing/Jin. The Song itself was contemporary to the Jin. Two of those dynasties were foreign, leaving only the Ming. If there was a greater amount of time, or a greater amount of internal discord to be in a position to propagate dynasties, then it would be better.
Russia is pretty darn flat and threaded with navigable rivers, and the eastern bits are almost uninhabited before modern times. It is not split up by impenentrable jungle and one of the world's greatest mountain ranges.
I am thinking about the Ural Mountains, harsh climates, and sheer distance.
The western and eastern halves of New Aragon can be fit together fairly well, and there is always the sea to make things navigable.
None of it far from the navigable mediterranean and Black Seas, aside from the outlier of Britain (the first bit to be abandoned). Also, much smaller than South America, and no Andes and no Amazon jungle, either.
No Andes, but there are the Pyranies, the Alps, the Balkans, and numerous rivers that were unpassable without development, not to mention parts of the various deserts. The only thing I was trying to say with that statement is the sheer size and magnitude with that level of technological development.
For very brief periods, and almost the entire population was in the Chinese core
True, but a few ten thousand soldiers in Afghanistan was a very major thing outside China, but inside it that may barely qualify as a border guard. Whenever China was united it always made its presence felt in the steppe. When it wasn't it was either fighting against itself or foreigners that lost themselves to chinese culture.
Closer, but it was divided among Genghis's sons before it reached its full size, and what brief unity it had was driven by a Steppe unified and quickly crossable by an at-the-time unstoppable cavalry arm.
It would take more than a year for someone to travel from one end of the empire to another. Its far less than that here.
Color me unconvinced. What sort of communications do the elites in the Andes have with those in coastal Brazil in the early 1800s? There can be no tightly-bound group of "founding fathers" under these circumstances. If OTL Spanish America fell apart right away upon independence, this monster isn't going to hold together through the 19th century.
Largely the communication would be through ocean traffic, but I think you overlooked something big: If Spanish America was ruled largely united by a crown in Madrid for centuries with far worse communication then, why do you think that any state with a capital and ruling authority much closer to the region would make it inevitably collapse?
The neat division of African coasts into huge one-nation stretches is unlikely in of itself...west Africa OTL goes France/Britain/France/Portugal/France/Britain/former USA/France/Britain, etc. - and it was more diverse before WWI - you have instead Aragon Aragon Aragon Aragon etc...
West Africa was so diverse because it was used as a focal point in travel from Europe and the Americas to the East. That wasn't the case here. Also, the division of the continent was initially by crusading rights. Basically a treaty of Berlin via the faithful. France, however, wanted to claim the continent for itself after largely having been shut out from the new world and already having a massive head start on everyone else. A checkerboard of interests, which was supposed to show that it was far worse than this, changed to only a few groups of interest as those with the capability to engage in the colonial process did so and those without that capability lost out. The reason why West Africa is all Aragon is that it mostly was before it was divided up into spheres of interest. Since Aragon controlled South America for the most part, Naples central America, and England north America, the only ones with a real vested interest in using west africa would be Naples and Aragon, and both got away with parts of it. All of those countries you referenced in the region there had a reason to be there.
Britain had the virgin isles and Guyana, it also had West African colonies in Nigeria and the region which served as starting points to the Cape, the East Coast of Africa, British Raj, and their other colonial interests. France had the French Virgin Islands, it had most of West Africa in its interests, it had its interests in India, and its colonial interests across the Indian Ocean. Portugal had used their colonies since the dawn of their colonial empire and their mercantile interests in Mozambique, Angola, Goa, Macao, Timor, etc. Those colonies had their purpose and reason for being, something that a variety of nations wouldn't have in a setting like this. Even so, initially all of Africa was divided into an initial division far more diverse than OTL as almost every Christian nation had a piece of the African pie.
You will also note that OTL there are a lot fewer straight-line borders...heck, some of the ones you have need to bend a bit to show the earth's curve
I know that, but I have no paint skills and what I had done reflected the arbitrary way that I wanted it to look.
By the time the regions start getting anywhere near effectively colonized the straight lines will fall apart. For instance the poles already have nearly complete control over their region. Do you think a colonial power will simply stop at an arbitrary line when it might be decades before any other power notices it because they only claim the land? I feel as though in the original Berlin conference it probably looked something similar to this. Preexisting colonies were recognized while the big powers played fill in the blanks with very straight and arbitrary borders. This became more organic as time went on and reality hit them.
Orthodox? How did that happen?
The big Muscovy in the region.
I don't really think we can say the Chagatai are still around under those circumstances, but that's a minor quibble.
Its not, no more than we can say there's a Korea or a China.
Egypt I'll buy, but this is geographical weirdness: a stretch of territory across an awesomely rugged land filled with grouchy muslims, and more hostile Muslims on both sides?
Give them the north coast and maybe some of the Caucuses, this won't work.
Often times they were invited in by the local leaders in the region to help them in their wars with their local rivals. The Poles came, helped, and once the conflict was over they stayed. If this was a head on conquest they may have held briefly before being kicked out, if at all. However they came in with invitation, much to the detriment of those that asked for help in their minor squabbles. This was at a time when the Il Khanate was fighting against the Chagatai and the Turks were having a free for all in Anatolia. Who had the time or the resources to kick them out, especially since they had the wealthy regions of Trebizond and others to support them?
The Cornwall Problem again rears its ugly head.
CORNWALL!!!!!
Never needed to divide and conquer to make the Viets tributaries OTL...
No, but they did it
alot in regards to the steppe peoples. Southern states always seemed much more prochinese. It wouldn't be impossible for them to apply this strategy everywhere. But, here's another way to look at it is this:
Say there's a Kingdom that has a bunch of subordinate rulers or governors. The King breaks away from the tributary state while some of the subordinate rulers do not. When the Chinese come after either the neighboring Kingdoms or governors go there to appeal for permission to invade or request assistance in defense, when the state if finally brought back into the tributary system those rulers that remained loyal are made official rulers of their holdings.
I have to say I appreciate the time you're taking out of your day/night to do this. So far the biggest problems are the independent duchies of in England, Muscovite nonexpansion northwards, the fact that New Aragon is still nominally the same entity, and Polish Eastern Anatolia?
Any part of those that I didn't address let me know and I'll do my best to provide explanations or fix, and if there are any major issues that we didn't cover I'll gladly go over that as well.
LeoXiao said:
Good job! My knowledge of pre-1900 history isnt too good but I like your scenario. What's the approximate tech level?
Pre World War I levels, though no one has ever heard of aviation and would call you mad if you told them about a plane or a blimp.