Ah challenge: Hanseatic and Venetian wank.

?Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the Hanseatic League and Venice as powerful as possible, ideally so that they survive as modern nation-states. POD between 1300 and 1500. Bonus points if you ditto that for Novgorod.
 

Redbeard

Banned
?Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the Hanseatic League and Venice as powerful as possible, ideally so that they survive as modern nation-states. POD between 1300 and 1500. Bonus points if you ditto that for Novgorod.

I'm actually working on a North Sea/Baltic ATL. It starts in 1042 but include the Hansa later "buying" the Royal power, resulting in what you could call a "commercial monarchy" ruling both the North Sea and the Baltic. But I still need quite a lot of research and details and is far from posting.

But concerning the Hansa, the basic idea is, that the Hansa bet on the right "horse" in a royal dynastic stride and understand to stay in the saddle. The result being the landowning aristocracy to a large degree loosing its place as society cornerstones to a trading oligarchy - but still in a royal context as before absolute monarchy was implemented in many European countries. In many ways it would not be unlike English parliamentarism, but with merchants having a more prominent and direct role, but expanded into a North Sea - Baltic Empire. How much you would call that the Hansa is a matter of taste - de gustibus non est disputantum - but at least it is big! :)

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
For Venice, you could start with the wars against Milan in the early 15th century. If the Republic of Venice does even better ITTL, they could capture Milan and annex it. That could be a steppingstone to uniting northern and central Italy. This would give Venice a huge population base for expansion, against the Ottomans maybe. Plus they would dominate Mediterranean trade, making the republic extremely rich and the city a superpower.

Does that work?
 
, making the republic extremely rich and the city a superpower.

I would love to read a version of that worked up. In addition to say a time line with an enlarged and powered H. League as well. If they both survived and thrived I wonder when they eventually would have ran into each other?
 
I'm actually working on a North Sea/Baltic ATL. It starts in 1042 but include the Hansa later "buying" the Royal power, resulting in what you could call a "commercial monarchy" ruling both the North Sea and the Baltic. But I still need quite a lot of research and details and is far from posting.

But concerning the Hansa, the basic idea is, that the Hansa bet on the right "horse" in a royal dynastic stride and understand to stay in the saddle. The result being the landowning aristocracy to a large degree loosing its place as society cornerstones to a trading oligarchy - but still in a royal context as before absolute monarchy was implemented in many European countries. In many ways it would not be unlike English parliamentarism, but with merchants having a more prominent and direct role, but expanded into a North Sea - Baltic Empire. How much you would call that the Hansa is a matter of taste - de gustibus non est disputantum - but at least it is big! :)

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

That sounds awesome. Please PM me when you get it posted; would like to read it.
 
I would love to read a version of that worked up. In addition to say a time line with an enlarged and powered H. League as well. If they both survived and thrived I wonder when they eventually would have ran into each other?



As would I. Add in Novgorod replacing Moscow as sort of the first city of Russia...and you'd have a mercantile republican Europe wank. Which I venture to guess has not yet been done on this board.
 
As would I. Add in Novgorod replacing Moscow as sort of the first city of Russia...and you'd have a mercantile republican Europe wank. Which I venture to guess has not yet been done on this board.

The only problem is that Novgorod does not have the population base or strength to conquer the Rus' interior. But Novgorod was in the Hanseatic League, so them being stronger could add to the Hansawank.
 
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