AHC: Surviving Religions

Greetings,AH.Com.

Now,your challenge is to..well..

Preserve(and the minimal level of the religion itself is "Medium) the major Pagan religions such as:

-Suomenuskoism
-Norse
-Romuva
-Tengri
-Zoroastrian

Without taking out Islam,Jewish,Christianity..

By 1300's,they all must survive.
 
It's me or do we have a "Let's make my CK II games a TL" trend these times?

Anyway, it's really hard to answer without more precise OP : let's try assuming that "not taking out Islam, Christianity" as "with a PoD on pagan religions directly".

(And while I don't know what you're referring to "medium" religion)

First, a mistake you're making is to consider all of rites quoted, apart Zoroastrism, as religion : they weren't unified, institutionalized and not clearly distinct from other social rites.

This was clearly a weakness before institutionalized and unified religions, and helped their adaptation to new social groups.

Then, let's focus on European paganism (as Zoroastrianism survived up to nowadays OTL).
You really need to lower the focus of Christian non-homeist kingdoms and empires in North.
The main contradiction is that for nerfing Frankish takeover of continental Northern Europe (and therefore their christianisation) you need to butterfly away the Islamic conquest of mediterranean basin (and even that wouldn't be enough, but it's a necessary part) while this butterfly would make Byzantium still powerful enough to "diplo-convert" northern Europe (trough commercial roads, by exemple).

Even by an Arab conquest of Constantinople that would lead to no Islamic conquest of North Africa, it would disrupt enough the mediterranean trade to reinforce the focus on North Sea trade by Franks (and therefore, crushing or converting Frisians and Saxons, leading to christiening of North and Central Europe).

That's simply not possible, not for all of them, while PoDs could delay religious expansion on some.
 
The main contradiction is that for nerfing Frankish takeover of continental Northern Europe (and therefore their christianisation) you need to butterfly away the Islamic conquest of mediterranean basin (and even that wouldn't be enough, but it's a necessary part) while this butterfly would make Byzantium still powerful enough to "diplo-convert" northern Europe (trough commercial roads, by exemple).

Even by an Arab conquest of Constantinople that would lead to no Islamic conquest of North Africa, it would disrupt enough the mediterranean trade to reinforce the focus on North Sea trade by Franks (and therefore, crushing or converting Frisians and Saxons, leading to christiening of North and Central Europe).

That's simply not possible, not for all of them, while PoDs could delay religious expansion on some.

I'm not sure that increased trade in the North Sea leads to the Carolingians by default. Also, I'm going to have to contest your claim that the Islamic conquest of the Mediterranean was responsible for increased trade in the North Sea. This is Pirenne's argument in "Mohammed and Charlemagne," isn't it? I recognize it by smell. It's kind of dusty and reminiscent of 1929.

Pirenne held that the economic situation in Europe and the Mediterranean was largely unchanged during the collapse of the Roman Empire and that the migrant groups largely adopted Roman civilization - "the coloni remained tied to the soil... but instead of paying a Roman, they paid a German master." (75) Through the opening of the 7th Century, the West was still dominated by Mediterranean trade. When Islam took over, its religion instantly converted those conquered to an Arabic culture distinct and hostile to Rome, basically resulting in an Iron Curtain scenario in the Mediterranean. "The Musulmans and the Christians were predominately at war. They had no notion of trading, but only of pillaging." (174) The Mediterranean economic collapse forced the start of Frankish civilization.

You see the problems? This assumes that capitalist market forces apply to 7th Century Europe. That was not a capitalist society. It relied mostly on gift-exchange, fealty, and warrior honour - more goods were transported through gift-exchange and tribute than trade. Also, the idea that the Islamic conquest cut off trade with Christian Europe has been proven false by archaeological and written records - the latter primarily of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, over 200 separate groups of which we have records of between 700 and 900 AD. We even have more than a few Islamic envoys to Charlemagne's court (they brought gifts).

Basically, Pirenne's argument doesn't work and I'm not willing to buy the idea that the Carolingians were triggered by Islam's conquest of the Mediterranean. I will concede that after Charlemagne, the tide is turned in favor of the Christians in Europe, even though they're still far from an indomitable force destined to crush all the pagans. So if we're looking for an AH scenario that nerfs Christianity, the easiest way is cutting him out.
 
I'm not sure that increased trade in the North Sea leads to the Carolingians by default. Also, I'm going to have to contest your claim that the Islamic conquest of the Mediterranean was responsible for increased trade in the North Sea. This is Pirenne's argument in "Mohammed and Charlemagne," isn't it? I recognize it by smell. It's kind of dusty and reminiscent of 1929.

First my point isn"t that North Sea lead to Carolingians, rather than without Islamic conquests, and achievement of Late Antiquity trade continuum, Franks could have likely tried to obtain oriental goods and gold by Mediterranean flux rather than Baltic (who wouldn't be reached that easily by an equivalent of Arabic/Baltic long-range trade).

I never said Muslim takeover led to the appearance of North Sea trade while it certainly helped to make it growth : the presence of trade directed to Arabo-Muslim economical continuum definitly helped it and the presence of an North Europe/Mediterranean trade is well attested and the influence of Islamic coinage there as well (imitation of dinar, and close relationship with carolingian denarius)
My point is without a Muslim takeover of Mediterranean basin, the North Sea trade would have probably not that easily taken by Franks, and representated less of a focus.
While Pirenne assumptions were proven wrong, the intuition of the link between Islamic takeover of Mediterranea and Frankish growth was good, and still used in a "post-pirennan" consensus.

Pirenne held that the economic situation in Europe and the Mediterranean was largely unchanged during the collapse of the Roman Empire
Rather than unchanged, we can still argue that Mediterranean trade was in the same continuity during all the Late Antiquity. While McCormic argues that it was already declining (basing himself on non-economical sources), it was still enough to provides Franks and Visigoths oriental production and gold, something that really declined with the VII century (and, if you allow me this point, probably helped the conflicts that popped up then, leading to unification of Francia and "gothic disease" in Spain).

Basically, Pirenne's argument doesn't work and I'm not willing to buy the idea that the Carolingians were triggered by Islam's conquest of the Mediterranean
It basically is, nevertheless : without the appearance of a Muslim takeover of southern and western mediterranean basin (with the destruction of the only worth of mention fleet in the region during the capture of Byzantine North Africa and Spain), favouring a long-range trade passing no longer trough Rhine (favouring the passing of a sliver-based trade) or Provence loosing its intermediary position that it acquired in the VII century, trade flux passing from Italy, and Torcello.
Richard Hodges links that with a shortage of gold and decay of Byzantine economical continuum, but estimates that the regional trade must have helped to regain a balance.

"One in no way contigent upon the Arabs in the sense Pirenne suggested, but instead a consequence of Byzantine military and economical failure".
That, I think, is the keypoint : while Pirenne assumption was proven wrong, the core of its argument : such as the Islamic conquest created a new trade network in Mediterranea, leading to compensate (rather than create as Pirenne originally tought) the growing North Sea trade (the conquest of Frisia and Saxony being part of it)

That the issues of mediterranean trade, as underlined by McCormik, began earlier than Islamic conquest is possible but it didn't break the old trade networks and flux outright. A double Arabo-Islamic flux (one from Al-Andalus, and one from Abassids) did that, and helped the growth of Northern Europe trade (something that backfired, eventually).

I think that without Islamic takeover, and the maintain of a slowly declining Byzantine economical continuum, you could still end with a Frankish dynamism more focused on Mediterranea due to the absence of a need of baltic trade for recieving oriental exportation goods. I would say more focused on Italy and Bavaria/Venice/Central Europe (OTL, the Rhine/Alps/Venice flux was enough important for Carolingians to try taking the region and while failing at, having Venetians coining Carolingian denier)

Of course, we can't explain Carolingia expansion only by *one* perfect thesis, a frankish takeover of continental North Sea would only be more delayed and limited rather than butterflied.

I would eventually point the importance of the fight against Arabs in the Peppinid/Carolingian political takeover of Frankish kingship : without them, no easy pretext and situation for conquering Aquitaine and Provence (that acted more or less independently then and were weakened by Muslims raids), no good "ideological" fundation of their prevalance over Merovingians.
It won't be enough all by itself, but the peppinid struggle for hegemony would take longer without Islam.

Which likely means, back to the OP, more delayed christianisation of Northern Europe.
 
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Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine, but there is no "Suomenuskoism". Suomenusko is a neo-pagan movement (one of many). It is not the name of the ancient religion. What that was called, if anything, is not known.
 
Yeha, lots of them. People seem to thinkt hat Norse Paganism is somethign you can just 'reform' and bam, a major world player.

Meh, it would pass eventually, like they all do. I actually wonder what would be the next one :D
 
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I think for Zoroastrianism to have survived on a large scale, the Arab invasion of Persia would have had to have been prevented or at least diverted around it. Of course, this likely would have meant that the current largest Zoroastrian center[the Parsee community in Mumbai] would have been much smaller if not nonexistent had there been no need for adherents to have fled their homeland to maintain their faith.
 
For Zoroastrianism it would be more straightforward.. simply prevent the Sassanid-Byzantine war which crippled both empires and as a result they were unable to resist the Islamic invasions.
 
The Finnic pagans survive in the form of the Mari, which form about half of the population of Mari El and are about 40% pagan.
 
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