AHC: ATL "Chinas"

The Germanic barbarians didn't supposedly want to mess up the political system, but they still wound up doing so.
 
The Germanic barbarians didn't supposedly want to mess up the political system, but they still wound up doing so.

There was less of a gap in regards to population size and what the Germans could natively produce when the Western Empire fell though. Everything that could be produced in Rome could be produced by the German lands.

The Mongolians, on the other hand, lived in a land that was not suitable to produce most of the goods produced in China, and the population gap was much wider.

The Germans were closer to being an economic equal to Rome than the Nomads to China's north. Also, the invaders of China were unified enough to keep China in one piece, the Germans were not.

So it would seem to me that the thing that kept China stable during the conquests was the large discrepancy between the native economies of conquer and conquered, and the fact that the conquerers had a different mindset towards China than conquers in other parts of the world.

One could say that the conquers weren't just after material wealth, they were actually after the concept of China itself. The Germans were at the end of the day going after the wealth of Rome, and they only had a passing interest in the concept of Rome. When the Ottomans conquered the eastern half of the empire the leaders liked the concept of Rome, but the common Turk still viewed themselves as a Turk. When the Nomads who conquered China did so, the commoners among their ethnic groups started to view themselves as part of China, and not China as part of them.

What regions of the world do you think a similar mindset could develop?
 
There was less of a gap in regards to population size and what the Germans could natively produce when the Western Empire fell though. Everything that could be produced in Rome could be produced by the German lands.

I'm not entirely sure about "everything". The lack of repair of say, Rome's aqueducts suggests some gaps.

The Germans were closer to being an economic equal to Rome than the Nomads to China's north. Also, the invaders of China were unified enough to keep China in one piece, the Germans were not.

The Jinn didn't keep China in one piece, but it didn't turn into not-China either.

One could say that the conquers weren't just after material wealth, they were actually after the concept of China itself. The Germans were at the end of the day going after the wealth of Rome, and they only had a passing interest in the concept of Rome. When the Ottomans conquered the eastern half of the empire the leaders liked the concept of Rome, but the common Turk still viewed themselves as a Turk. When the Nomads who conquered China did so, the commoners among their ethnic groups started to view themselves as part of China, and not China as part of them.

What regions of the world do you think a similar mindset could develop?

I'm not actually sure (I differ to the experts, but the Mongols at least seem to have found Kubulai's sinophilia odd) that they were seeing themselves as part of China - they were just such a minority that they could not stamp their mold on China.

Iran has generally done a pretty good job converting its conquerors into Iranians, not sure why (although the nomad-settled gap is probably involved).
 
I'm not actually sure (I differ to the experts, but the Mongols at least seem to have found Kubulai's sinophilia odd) that they were seeing themselves as part of China - they were just such a minority that they could not stamp their mold on China.

Iran has generally done a pretty good job converting its conquerors into Iranians, not sure why (although the nomad-settled gap is probably involved).

So you feel that the strength of the Chinese (and Iranian) national identity has more to do with the nomad-settled gap than other factors?

And this brings us to another question then. Are their any other regions of the world that are conductive to one massive settled state, to the point that neighboring settled people are a non-threat, and the Nomads would never achieve the population to threaten the massive settled states identity?
 
So you feel that the strength of the Chinese (and Iranian) national identity has more to do with the nomad-settled gap than other factors?

I don't know about China, I think it did have something to do with how Iran was able to Persianize its conquerors.

And this brings us to another question then. Are their any other regions of the world that are conductive to one massive settled state, to the point that neighboring settled people are a non-threat, and the Nomads would never achieve the population to threaten the massive settled states identity?

The problem isn't so much one massive settled state - Rome was massive and settled - as the "identity" part.

Rome in Gaul and Rome in Italy, let alone Syria or Thrace are different places to a point that arguably "Roman" is a relatively thin layer - I don't know enough about China to know what's up with it, but it seems to have meant more there.
 
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