AHC: Greece

Ambiguous title? Meant to be like that
Now the challenge here is to have more than 100 million Greek people live in the world until present day, and have Greek become a major language in the region

Rules:
Anatolia/Turkey must have a Greek majority
Greeks must be a sizeable minority in Egypt, the Levant, and Italia

Bonus points for:
A non-Alexander Greek Empire
Successful Greek colonies in Europe
Have Greek speakers all the way to Pakistan or India
Make a unified Greek state a major world power with much more territory
 
I think this is impossible. Even under the best circumstances, a super strong Seleucid/Antigonid (that wins the battle of Ipsus) empire that massively settles Greeks even more across the Middle East, the likely scenario is that Greek develops into different languages like Latin did into Spanish, French, etc and the Greeks become different peoples when the Seleucid/Antigonid empire falls apart.

Edit: Wait, does non-Alexander also mean no diadochi empires?
 
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If the Romans defeat the Arabs at Yarmouk and it is followed by a collapse of the early caliphate, Roman presence in the Middle East and thus a cultural Greek presence in the Middle East would continue. Aramaic would decline as IOTL but its speakers would shift to a Greek dialect instead of Arabic.
 
have the Byzantines conquer most of the middle east instead of failing and you get most of those objectives, hell they could conquer a good part of Euope.
 
During the Greek war for Independence Russia gets involved and with the help of Britain ,France and Russia the new Greek kingdom is far larger than OTL .Perhaps even getting Constantinople back .After the war the Ottomans suffer a severe famine with a follow on plague which leaves most of Antolia depopulated .
Greece cashes in on this and launches a war aimed at taking as much land as possible .Their offensive succeeds and by 1846 they hold most of the region .
Antolia becomes essentially a Greek colony and by 1900 the kingdom has a population of around thirty million people .
The nation participates in the naval arms race with the Ottoman empire as their main rival but they are also at odds with Austro-Hungary and Italy .By 1914 the nation as four predreadnought battleships and two Dreadnoughts with two more building in the UK .
The nation joins the Central powers in 1915 due mostly to the UK`s seizure of the Dreadnoughts but leaves in 1917 due to its inability to keep fighting .The peace treaty is light and does not really hurt Greece the same way as the German treaty did .
During the Russian civil war large numbers of white Russians flee to Greek Antolia after Lenin comes to power .
Greece stays out of WWII and joins NATO in 1955 as protection against the USSR .
Currently as of the 2010 census the nations population is slightly less than one hundred million but climbing fast .Cyprus asked to join the kingdom in 1967 and was admitted as a Duchy under control of the island nations last president and his offspring .
The nation is a member of the EU and uses the Euro as its currency .It has had to bail out poor nations like Germany to keep the Euro stable at a number of occasions .
 
Lol, my TL leads to this and more, although I cheated by starting in 976-when Anatolia was arguably more Greek than Greece itself.

Honestly just averting Manzikert, or confining Turks to East Anatolia while keeping the coasts under Byzantine control might be sufficient to achieving this partially. With Turkey, Cyprus, OTL Greece, some more of the Balkans+maybe some of Crimea, Apulia, Calabria or East Sicily (which had considerable Greek populations) and we can hit 100 mill by 2015-assuming tech evolves roughly similarly.

The real challenge is Egypt. A Byzantine state reaching up to Cilicia will be expanding into the Levant if it can, and will probably be successful in Hellenizing it. Egypt is a tougher nut to crack and will be extremely hard beyond the 11th Century or so, when Copts became a minority. Even then it will probably require a mega-Crusade or a particularly brutal invasion by a gunpowder Byzantine Empire.

An exclave of Alexandria however will be easier to achieve than that, and *might meet the challenge.

For TLs that can/will lead to this, I think the Age of Miracles is the obvious choice (although the Egypt bit is in doubt). I'll also sell my own TL (in sig) but it has a long way to go still.
 

Don Quijote

Banned
During the Greek war for Independence Russia gets involved and with the help of Britain ,France and Russia the new Greek kingdom is far larger than OTL .Perhaps even getting Constantinople back .After the war the Ottomans suffer a severe famine with a follow on plague which leaves most of Antolia depopulated .
Greece cashes in on this and launches a war aimed at taking as much land as possible .Their offensive succeeds and by 1846 they hold most of the region .
Antolia becomes essentially a Greek colony and by 1900 the kingdom has a population of around thirty million people .
The nation participates in the naval arms race with the Ottoman empire as their main rival but they are also at odds with Austro-Hungary and Italy .By 1914 the nation as four predreadnought battleships and two Dreadnoughts with two more building in the UK .
The nation joins the Central powers in 1915 due mostly to the UK`s seizure of the Dreadnoughts but leaves in 1917 due to its inability to keep fighting .The peace treaty is light and does not really hurt Greece the same way as the German treaty did .
During the Russian civil war large numbers of white Russians flee to Greek Antolia after Lenin comes to power .
Greece stays out of WWII and joins NATO in 1955 as protection against the USSR .
Currently as of the 2010 census the nations population is slightly less than one hundred million but climbing fast .Cyprus asked to join the kingdom in 1967 and was admitted as a Duchy under control of the island nations last president and his offspring .
The nation is a member of the EU and uses the Euro as its currency .It has had to bail out poor nations like Germany to keep the Euro stable at a number of occasions .

If Istanbul and Anatolia fall to the Greeks, especially as early as 1846, I don't see the Ottomans surviving until WW1.
 
As an alternative to the Byzantines (who are your best bet) you could have Anatolia+the Balkans conquered by the Caliphate, then have a Greek Muslim Power arise from the ashes there and proceed to conquer much of the Middle East. Greek becomes a language of prestige along with Arabic, and even Persia and the Indus could have some Greek speaking communities among the Nobility.
 
I think the minimal thing you're asking for (where "minimal" means "latest POD" and "smallest change from OTL") is a surviving Byzantine Empire. Greece and Turkey have nearly 100 million people between them, and with a strong Byzantine Empire projecting Greek culture, Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christians might well maintain the Greek language and not Arabize. Byzantion would look much like OTL's Istanbul; the capital might be shifted back to Athens, in which case *Athens would look like OTL's Athens, or it might stay there, in which case Athens would be a small town.
 
the capital might be shifted back to Athens, in which case *Athens would look like OTL's Athens, or it might stay there, in which case Athens would be a small town.

Why on Earth would the Capital shift to Athens of all places? Under the Byzantines it was a small town, and even if it was revived nothing will beat Constantinople. I also suspect Constantinople may be a fair bit bigger than OTL under a larger nation, or at least more prestigious.
 
I think the minimal thing you're asking for (where "minimal" means "latest POD" and "smallest change from OTL") is a surviving Byzantine Empire. Greece and Turkey have nearly 100 million people between them, and with a strong Byzantine Empire projecting Greek culture, Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christians might well maintain the Greek language and not Arabize. Byzantion would look much like OTL's Istanbul; the capital might be shifted back to Athens, in which case *Athens would look like OTL's Athens, or it might stay there, in which case Athens would be a small town.

Athens is only as large as it is because of the influx of Turkish Christians and Anatolian Greeks in the 1920s. It was a glorified village in the medieval era. The capital would be in Constantinople.
 
An Islam-screw or Arab-screw might achieve this. Greek was still a growing language before the Arab migrations, and if the invasions that allowed arab tribes to spread, bringing with them Arabic and Islam, are aborted it could allow a Byzantine resurgance. If Islam and Arabic never make it the Egypt, there will still be Greeks, and Coptic will either continue to exist while being more influenced by Greek, or be replaced Greek like it was Arabic otl.

Honestly, even though it's not what the challenge is, I really like the idea of multiple Greek-descended languages existing in the old Byzantine empire. Would the languages look like the Romance languages, as in they have a large amount of similarities but are too divergent to be considered dialects, or would the relarionship look more like the Swedish-Danish-Norwegian continuum, or other mutually understandable languages like Russian and Ukrainian or Serbian and Croatian? I would imagine that it could look more like otl Arabic, where the same language is used from Morocco to Iraq, but with staunch differences, but this seems most likely with a Byzantine-wank.

The POD is so far back, you could really work toward multiple possibilities, but I'd have to imagine in the most realistic scenario the Byzantine empire falls eventually into multiple successor kingdoms, which could codify the language, either to enhance linguistical-cultural ties by keeping the inevitable dialects as close as possible, or make as many arbitrary differences to separate their identity. Or, maybe a mix of the two across history.

And as for the Turks, I could be wrong but it seems likely to me that without Islam, the Turks would either be assimilated, or when they do found a new nation/empire it wouldn't so much be "new". If the Turks still conquer modern day Iraq, perhaps they become Nestorian instead of sunni, and move on to create a Nestorian Turkish dynasty of Rūm on the ashes of the Byzantine core. If I remember correctly, DNA studies of the Turkish populace show a remarkably high genetic component of people's native to Anatolia compared to a relatively small Asian component, so without Islam to differentiate identity, do the Turks bother trying to keep their old language, or just use Greek which is already widespread for trade, military, administration, etc? I'm sure there is dispute on that, but I'm interested on opinions, and personally I think it would be more like the Visigoths in Spain; different variety of Christian, different language, and they assimilate for convenience as rulers. I imagine the comparison wouldn't end there either, as I could see the Turks being disliked by the Orthodox Greek majority, the how the Copts would feel about the whole thing eludes me. Would Copts prefer Orthodox or Nestorian Constantinople?
 
Why on Earth would the Capital shift to Athens of all places? Under the Byzantines it was a small town, and even if it was revived nothing will beat Constantinople. I also suspect Constantinople may be a fair bit bigger than OTL under a larger nation, or at least more prestigious.

Athens was the historic center of Classical Greece. That's why the Greeks turned it into their capital when they got independence.

As for Byzantion vs. OTL's Istanbul, the size difference isn't too large, and Istanbul's role as Turkey's economic capital is so ingrained that it could not have been much larger if it remained the capital. The prestige factor is limited - Rome, for all its religious prestige, is not a huge city. Hell, Paris and London, which have enormous cultural capital and are several times richer, are only about as big as Istanbul (and are capitals of countries that aren't much smaller than Turkey).
 
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Athens was the historic center of Classical Greece. That's why the Greeks turned it into their capital when they got independence.
That's not at all important to a Greece under this scenario, though.
As for Byzantion vs. OTL's Istanbul, the size difference isn't too large, and Istanbul's role as Turkey's economic capital is so ingrained that it could not have been much larger if it remained the capital. The prestige factor is limited - Rome, for all its religious prestige, is not a huge city. Hell, Paris and London, which have enormous cultural capital and are several times richer, are only about as big as Istanbul (and are capitals of countries that aren't much smaller than Turkey).

I was thinking more along the lines that it would require a bigger administration to run everything, and thus a bigger capital. Istanbul doesn't even run Turkey IOTL.
 
I was thinking more along the lines that it would require a bigger administration to run everything, and thus a bigger capital. Istanbul doesn't even run Turkey IOTL.

And yet, Ankara is decidedly the second city. Even the primate capitals of the big European countries, London and Paris, are around 20% of their respective national populations. Istanbul is around 17%; it's not a big difference.
 
I think the best way would be having Athens winning the Peloponessian war, then of course, slowly conquering its way outwards in an Athenian empire governed similarly to Rome's original Republic. Abiet, more democratic, (for Greek Citizens).
 
Easy. Have the Arabs get defeated, and the Byzantine Empire survive. It probably will decline over the years, though, and you'll likely see independent Syrian and Greek states pop up over the centuries. These will have strong Greek minorities. Hopefully a Griko-speaking state in southern Italy as well.

This will get you over 100 million total Greek speakers by 2015 assuming population trends are comparable to OTL. Greek communities will exist all over the former Byzantine Empire in urban areas.

If the Romans defeat the Arabs at Yarmouk and it is followed by a collapse of the early caliphate, Roman presence in the Middle East and thus a cultural Greek presence in the Middle East would continue. Aramaic would decline as IOTL but its speakers would shift to a Greek dialect instead of Arabic.

Why would Aramaic (or Coptic for that matter) shift to Greek in this case? The Armenian language and culture survived centuries of Greek domination, after all. Arabisation occurred because of Islam, no new religions are being introduced in this scenario.
 
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