AH Challenge: Have a power other than Muscovy/Russia colonize Siberia

Basically what it says on the tin. Rules and conditions of the challenge:

1. POD must be after 1000 AD.
2. No ASB or improbable technological advances.
3. Be reasonable in terms of luck allotment (eg: a horde avoiding an OTL succession crisis is fine, avoiding 10 succession crises is ridiculous).
4. Siberian steppe states or aboriginal tribes grossly controlling Siberia will fulfill this challenge IF said polities are integrated into the Eurasian international system (as opposed to being isolated and/or undiscovered).
5. The chosen power or culture must be able to plausibly survive beyond 1900. Endogenous successor states (eg Revolutionary France out of the French Kingdom), will fulfill this condition. Exogenous successor states (eg the Mughal Empire) will fulfill this condition if the progenitor is not Russia.
 
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The most obvious seems to be China, particularly an industrialized Qing Dynasty that continues the Chuang Guandong settlement into Manchuria into Outer Manchuria and Siberia.

Other than that, a long lasting Golden Horde could -- while it probably wouldn't colonize Siberia -- delay the expansion into Siberia such that the Sibir Khanate, which already colonized Siberia would survive.

Some European kingdoms could have steadily vassalized or conquered Russia and renamed it. The earlier, the more plausible. It would be almost the same Russia but the difference being something like the Holy Roman Empire versus Germany, or Burgundy versus the Netherlands. If Sweden, Poland, or the Byzantine Empire, slowly increased their influence in Kievan Rus' or the post-Mongol Russian states, fiefdom by fiefdom then they could reorganize it under a different system. Add Mongol conquest and a few centuries and you can get a pretty different country, more like Ukraine, to colonize Siberia.
 
If you butterfly the rise of Muscovy (no Mongol invasion?), then Novgorod would be the prime candidate for expansion eastward. Keep them politically disconnected from the Kievan Rus and you might even avoid a unified "Russian" identity.
 
In either of the TLs mentioned its likely that Japan would colonize the (OTL) Russian Far East which is often lumped in with Siberia in Anglophone discourse. Otherwise Manchuria/Qing is the right answer unless you want to walk Korea.
 
Basically what it says on the tin. Rules and conditions of the challenge:

1. POD must be after 1000 AD.
2. No ASB or improbable technological advances.
3. Be reasonable in terms of luck allotment (eg: a horde avoiding an OTL succession crisis is fine, avoiding 10 succession crises is ridiculous).
4. Siberian steppe states or aboriginal tribes grossly controlling Siberia will fulfill this challenge IF said polities are integrated into the Eurasian international system (as opposed to being isolated and/or undiscovered).
The Mongols did it: there was White Horde and later Khanate of Siberia.
 
If you butterfly the rise of Muscovy (no Mongol invasion?), then Novgorod would be the prime candidate for expansion eastward. Keep them politically disconnected from the Kievan Rus and you might even avoid a unified "Russian" identity.
Kieran Rus ceased to exist in the late XII century.
 
The Mongols did it: there was White Horde and later Khanate of Siberia.

Khanate of Sibir like the one conquered in the 16th c. was sort of a much later and quite separate entity. But there were also lots of other 15th-17th c. hordes that certainly contested Russian domination at times (Oirats, Taibughins, Bukharans, Kazakhs etc. as well as smaller local statelets).

I generally like the idea of the Dutch or perhaps the English just bypassing Moscow and starting exploitation down the Ob basin instead, that's certainly doable by the 17th c. and the Russia-screw doesn't have to happen too early for it.

I am extremely skeptical of any western neighbour having much luck in conquering European Russia itself. I am especially skeptical of Sweden which is frequently named as a candidate: any weakness that Muscovy had in terms of finances and manpower was the same fivefold for the Swedish state; they also had no practice in dealing with the yasak diplomacy, and their only possible advantage was an Atlantic-style navy. Which, frankly, they weren't particularly good at either.
 
I am extremely skeptical of any western neighbour having much luck in conquering European Russia itself. I am especially skeptical of Sweden which is frequently named as a candidate: any weakness that Muscovy had in terms of finances and manpower was the same fivefold for the Swedish state; they also had no practice in dealing with the yasak diplomacy, and their only possible advantage was an Atlantic-style navy. Which, frankly, they weren't particularly good at either.

Might it be possible for Sweden to bypass the Russian heartland and not try to conquer it, but to instead expand in the northern sparsely-populated areas, and from there into Siberia? Maybe with an earlier expansion of settlements by the Forest Finns.

like this map
sweden.png
 
Might it be possible for Sweden to bypass the Russian heartland and not try to conquer it, but to instead expand in the northern sparsely-populated areas, and from there into Siberia? Maybe with an earlier expansion of settlements by the Forest Finns.

like this map
View attachment 436262

The trouble with all that is that in OTL late 1600s, Russia was fighting the Qing and settling the Pacific seaboard, and Sweden was still trying to people Finland. And your map shows the bulk of Russian expansion towards the Cold Sea as being sparsely populated - relatively speaking it was, of course, but relatively to Moscow, not Sweden. That area wasn't Novgorodian but in fact Muscovite-settled since the very late 1300s and seriously in the early 1500s. That map for example contains all the Ural factories, saltworks, iron mines and the very core of the area that kickstarted the colonization down the Kama/Chusovaya with the Storganovs and the others that followed.

Nothing's impossible in alternate history of course and a lot depends on when the POD/s is/are, but in my mind Russia conquering all of Sweden directly (as unlikely as that is) is a lot more likely than that.

When I mentioned "bypassing Moscow" I meant much farther to the East, bypassing Perm and Yugra altogether.
 
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Khanate of Sibir like the one conquered in the 16th c. was sort of a much later and quite separate entity. But there were also lots of other 15th-17th c. hordes that certainly contested Russian domination at times (Oirats, Taibughins, Bukharans, Kazakhs etc. as well as smaller local statelets).

I generally like the idea of the Dutch or perhaps the English just bypassing Moscow and starting exploitation down the Ob basin instead, that's certainly doable by the 17th c. and the Russia-screw doesn't have to happen too early for it.

I am extremely skeptical of any western neighbour having much luck in conquering European Russia itself. I am especially skeptical of Sweden which is frequently named as a candidate: any weakness that Muscovy had in terms of finances and manpower was the same fivefold for the Swedish state; they also had no practice in dealing with the yasak diplomacy, and their only possible advantage was an Atlantic-style navy. Which, frankly, they weren't particularly good at either.
I’m somewhat skeptical about the Western schema: conquest of Siberia started from a well-developed infrastructure of Stroganov “empire” which would close to impossible to create for the contemporary Brits and Dutch. IIRC they were conducting some coastal explorations but this is a far cry from a big scale conquest
 
The only people I can think off the top of my head who were sufficiently advanced, expansionistic and geographically poised to attempt such a thing would be the Jurchen/Manchus. It would however, take quite a bit longer for them to conquer and colonize Siberia than it would take for Russia to do so.
 

krieger

Banned
It's simple. Have Poland conquered Muscovy/Kievan Rus (for example during the Time of Troubles or during Kievan adventure of Boleslav the Brave) and than Poland could colonize Siberia in it's own right.
 
Reformed Golden Horde turned into a "gunpowder empire" of sorts which carves out a state in Siberia. Tatars and others are sent beyond the Urals to extract tribute and later end up making settlements. International relations are mostly focused on dealing with the Russian states/Lithuania, other post-Mongol states, and later China.

If no Mongols then I'd love to see Volga Bulgaria do this.

The most obvious seems to be China, particularly an industrialized Qing Dynasty that continues the Chuang Guandong settlement into Manchuria into Outer Manchuria and Siberia.

Other than that, a long lasting Golden Horde could -- while it probably wouldn't colonize Siberia -- delay the expansion into Siberia such that the Sibir Khanate, which already colonized Siberia would survive.

Sibir Khanate was basically a splinter from the Golden Horde, so a longer-lasting and reformed Horde would mean Sibir never exists or if does gets absorbed quickly.
 
I could see the Manchu pulling it off in the east- for one thing the language barrier wouldn't be as bad as between the tribes there and the Russians since a lot of them would still be speaking Tungusic languages. It would almost certainly require a Manchu state that doesn't conquer China though, since otherwise all of their attention is going to be in the south.
 
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