AH Probability

If you're going to present OTL events, can you at least present them in full, rather than taking out crucial parts?

Who is to say which parts are crucial, when changing any part at all produces a different outcome? I grant that some changes result in greater departures from OTL than others, but where do you draw the line?

BTW, I think that trying to present these events in full would result in Ian kicking me for overloading the server; I chose those examples for their seeming improbability at first glance, not because they were actually less probable than other possible outcomes. As I said above, all outcomes of human history are improbable.
 
Others have touched on this, but ultimately both your examples are based on flawed perspectives. Your question is quite valid, certainly, but both Rome and Temujin were highly predictable outcomes of the existing situation.

In the case of Rome, the Mediterranean had shrunk. Not literally of course, but increasing technology, trade, and sophistication of governance had reduced the effective distance from one point in the Mediterranean to any other. This is why you had Rome and Carthage appearing as powers in the same period and what was (for the period) a rapid succession of wars between them and the Greek states. All the major players had started out small from one perspective or another and they were too logistically close for no one to win. With that in mind the rise of Rome was no more than a mild surprise - the most politically stable player won out.

Nor were the Mongols to be unexpected. The Mongol, Turkic, and Tartar peoples had a military advantage over pretty much everyone in Eurasia in terms of tactics, technology that had no easy answer, and (when within a few hundred miles of the steppes) logistics. I mean, there were Turks of western-Mongolian origin running Egypt at the time. Clearly there was something significant going on. It wasn't inevitable that a competent leader with excellent organizational skills would show up to unify the whole steppe corridor, but neither was it very unlikely - the pressure was in that direction.

As to all the rest, meh.
 
Who is to say which parts are crucial, when changing any part at all produces a different outcome? I grant that some changes result in greater departures from OTL than others, but where do you draw the line?

BTW, I think that trying to present these events in full would result in Ian kicking me for overloading the server; I chose those examples for their seeming improbability at first glance, not because they were actually less probable than other possible outcomes. As I said above, all outcomes of human history are improbable.

The point is, saying "See this event, stripped of circumstances." is presenting a distorted picture - Islam succeeded at overrunning so much precisely because it was in favorable circumstances, not in defiance of Two Great Empires at the height of their strength, for instance.
 
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