AHC Western roman empire triumphs

Hello my fellow members of AH.com, I'm creating this challenge, the objective is simple: To make the western roman empire survives and replaces the eastern roman empire in the medieval age, the idea is not to have them take over europe or live until modern age, just to make them survive until +- the XV century or beyond

The two main objectives are:

The Western roman empire must not be germanized as it was
and
The western roman empire must reform it's government

The point of divergence is 286 AD, a year after the roman empire was divided

To make things easier, I remember reading many years ago that the romans came close to creating a primitive steam machine¹, so you are allowed to use steam in this scenario to give a buff to the WRE

¹If anyone have more info on that, please send me a PM, I never found any other source or info about that

begin

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Just throwing some ideas:

-Proper integration of the senatorial élite in the government, which means that instead of using the empire of their own purposes, they have to sustain it with their resources. This happened in the early empire with the provincial élites who looked for citizenship, but in the late empire the system wasn't replaced. I think that, in a period of string government, expand politically in Germany by offering opportunities to the germanic élites (this would imply a restriction to their access to the Roman Empire, which would be difficult to do given the importance of barbarian manpower for the empire since the III century) and placing them under roman authority. This would require a new expansionist ideology, instead of just the development of a defense in depth doctrine.

-As i said, instead of bringing the fight at home, the empire could fight outside its frontiers. Again, this would require more resources and didn't happen for a reason (money)

-Fix corruption and the fiscal system, two nearly impossible task since it would require changing the core of roman culture.

-An earlier adoption of Christianity could help, or the development of a proper roman religion for the new centralizing empire of Constantine (Neoplatonism could have had a chance, read some Peter Brown's books), Anyway, this would result in a scenario similar to the emperor-bishops relation that there was inhe East in the V-VI century.

-Make the Church tied to romanity and the political authority of Rome, so that adopting christianity means being a subject of Rome, or that it produces a desire to restore it. Something like that.

-A better understanding of barbarian identity and the abandonment of the disdain towards barbarian status. I believe one of the reasons of the WRE fall was a mismanagement of identity, both roman (provincial) and barbarian. I'm still working on it. basically, the empire was not adequate to the developing sense of ethnic identity, both outside and inside the empire.

-If you want and earlier POD, you could make roman presence in the Black Sea stronger: this would be an incentive to the expansion in Germania (one of the reasons why Germany was abandoned was logistics: the Rhine a less expensive border to manage). I think that an Elbe-Danube frontier could be manageable, but this would require an empire based around the Balkans or Northern Italy/Pannonia. Assuming the Vikings don't wake up earlier. Too many butterflies.
 
Septimius Severus takes proper advantage of the civil war in Persia and ravages and balkanises the place. He then acts more forcefully in Germany and conquers it up to the Elbe - at the time, the German were similar to the Gauls in that they were advanced enough to be worth Romanizing (unlike during the time of Augustus), yet weak enough to be beaten by Roman forces (which hadn't yet suffered from the IIIrd century crisis).

This delays or perhaps mostly averts the IIIrd century crisis entirely as well.

Conquering and enslaving Scotland and Ireland removes the need for keeping rebelliously-inclined Legions in Britain and is thus a cost-saving measure in the long run.

When the Great Migrations period comes, there are no (or at least far fewer) barbarian tribes on Rome's frontier who grew advanced from trade and contact with the Empire.
 
I always felt one of the major problems the Romans faced was the regular military coups, and the corresponding danger when stationing large numbers of troops together. If the Roman Army was somehow more loyal I think the empire would have been far more enduring and stable. I am not sure how this would have been possible though.
 
The point of divergence is 286 AD, a year after the roman empire was divided

The roman empire was never divided. And something like the WRE never existed. This is an artifical construct of early modern historians.

To stabilize the roman empire, I would strongly adivise to start much earlier. Augustus is a good time to start in order to avoid the most critical fundamental mistakes.
 
I actually think the POD can be much later and simpler.

The Western Roman empire just has to recover North Africa from the Vandals or keep form losing it in the first place. And it could be as late as the East Romans taking it and then handing it back to the West Romans in the 470s.

The ancients didn't have our maps and really had a poor grasp of strategy if it involved geographical knowledge. Outside of Italy itself, North Africa was the key to the West Roman defense and economic system. Italy plus North Africa -and the Italian based Emperors and German Kings usually controlled adjacent parts of the Balkans and Central Europe- is a perfectly viable defense and economic system. The also maintained a presence in Gaul and Spain until the failure of the final attempt to retake North Africa lost them prestige.

In terms of internal reforms, you only need just enough to get this to happen. The governance of the East Roman Empire in the 5th century is really not all that impressive, it was just better than in the West and good enough for them to survive and get to good 5th century Emperors. The governance of the West has to be just good enough. Even a puppet Emperor and a German magistur equities who is the real run running things is fine, as long as the Emperor stays away from intrigue and the magistur equities is more competent than IOTL. Precisely this arrangement worked during the Shogunate in Japan for centuries. Competent Emperors are better. The Roman system just couldn't survive a long run of sub-par Emperors, as had been shown in the 3rd century AD.

Now if the AHC is them keeping the same boundaries as in 400 things get different. But the Western Roman Emperor was never in as bad a situation as is commonly assumed, and its not difficult to get a powerful empire based in Italy, controlling North Africa, and also controlling or influencing parts of the Balkans, Central Europe, Gaul, and Spain.
 
Agricola is partly correct. The Western and Eastern Emperors were colleagues, and both halves kept the same system of law.

In practice, pre-modern communications -its not like the Emperors could stay in contact by phone and email- and the creation of a bureaucratic hierarchy funneling into geographically based praetorian prefectorates and field army commands implied that the empire would diverge into different regional sub-empires, though the division didn't have to be where it wound up as.
 
On paper, the western roman empire is far more defensible. It has a series of natural and easily defensible borders-the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine, the Danube. The east, by contrast, does not. They have the Danube, but on the eastern frontier it's just open plains (of course that was rectified by massive fortifications everywhere). What the east had in the 5th century was a strong civil administration essentially controlling the empire (rather than the military administration, as in the west), and lots and lots of money (and grain). There's a good book, "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" that goes in depth on this, but basically the east was able to play their enemies off each other and pay anyone off when necessary. That was their strategy well into the middle ages, and it worked wonders. They also of course had the one major key defensible border, and that was the Propontis straits separating the Balkans from Asia, which came in handy to save them on more than one occasion.

So the key to keeping the west alive is, first, keeping Spain and North Africa untouched. Spain (quite literally) was one giant goldmine for the empire, and Africa was also quite wealthy and of course the empire's breadbasket. The west's finances will be in far better shape if these areas remain untouched. So that means keeping the fighting contained to northern and central Gaul, north Italy, and Pannonia. There's a relatively easy way to do this actually. Just delay Constantine III's crossing into Gaul-or better yet, have him killed by the British soldiers too as his immediate 2 predecessors were, and have the British legions continue to squabble among themselves. This means he does not cross into Gaul while the barbarians have crossed the Rhine and allow them into Spain. Stilicho, by extension, does not get offed and is able to deal with the invaders relatively easily (this shouldn't be a problem really. The Franks very nearly defeated them at the Rhine crossing, so they would presumably be weakened and be easy prey. Alternatively, this also means the Romans could peel them off piecemeal with bribes to fight for them, as Stilicho did with Radagaisus). Even if Stilicho is offed, they will likely contain themselves to raid Gaul, still making them easy to deal with.

There's no real reason why the barbarians should ever really be able to reach Spain (and even less chance of them getting to North Africa) without a set of extraordinary circumstances. Now, the second thing here is the Goths. Even if Stilicho goes, keeping the Goths out of southern Gaul should not be a difficult prospect. Not much has to change to prevent Alaric from sacking Rome, and then as Stilicho showed, even if has to come to a costly battle, the Roman armies are still strong enough to force Alaric back into the balkans, where hopefully the Goths will be contained (this is where greater cooperation with the east is necessary, and probably where replacing Stilicho would be helpful given his combative relationship with the east).

Now after Stilicho, have Constantius still be raised to the purple by Honorius at some point, and just not die. He'd do a good job at stabilizing what's left to need to be stabilized and, more importantly, he'll re-set a precedent for powerful general aspiring to be emperor themselves, rather than just trying to control a weak emperor. Which is, imo, an important distinction. Then there's more than enough capable late western empire generals from OTL who could fit the bill of competent emperors to guide Rome through the 5th century crisis. After that, you can't really predict anything, since all the butterflies, but you could craft a world where the west survives.
 
if the AHC is them keeping the same boundaries as in 400 things get different

Nope, the AHC is simple to make it survive longer than the ERE while keeping a more "roman" society (so no germanic army) and reforming it's government, just that, it by that it means losing everything outisde italy it must be
 
The Franks very nearly defeated them at the Rhine crossing, so they would presumably be weakened and be easy prey.

You posted that already in this other thread. I never heard about this. Your statement is based on what sources?

But I agree. Without the usurpator Constantine responsible for Gaul, Stilicho would intercept the german invaders in Gaul. And he would rescue the WRE this way. For how long? 1 year? 10 years? The WRE is in a terrible shape these times: politically, economically, socially. With or without Spain and Africa.

Of course, if you believe in Peter Heather's theory, everything is fine, if just these germans never reach Spain. I like to disagree. This state is already almost desintegrated. Rome is doomed to Fall, since decades, if not since centuries.
 
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Rome is doomed to Fall

Because they abandoned Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the true faith, right? Read Zosimos, man.

The WRE is in a terrible shape these times: politically, economically, socially.

Roman history is more or less cyclical. Rome had a problem, there was a crisis, the Romans developed a remedy, the crisis ended.

Conflict of the orders: settlement between patricians and plebeians
Crisis of the late republic: establishment of the Principate
Crisis of the third century: establishment of the Dominate
Barbarian invasions: well, the Romans were trying to find a solution, but they hadn't enough time. Bad luck. But it coul have been easy: simply disarm every German wanting to become a citizen and settle him there where you need peasants to cultivate deserted land.
There were no invasions, simply hundred of thousands of persons wanting land. And Rome had land, tons of it.
 
Who disarms the Germans?

The army. Imagine 100,000 Germans of one tribe wanting to become citizens. Build a brigde over the Rhine and send one after the other over the bridge. Disarm them, and send each time 100 of them in a region were you need them.

And once the Germans are disarmed, who serves in the army?

I speak of the Germans outside the borders. The Germans who are Roman citizen can obviously become soldiers.
 
The army. Imagine 100,000 Germans of one tribe wanting to become citizens. Build a brigde over the Rhine and send one after the other over the bridge. Disarm them, and send each time 100 of them in a region were you need them.



I speak of the Germans outside the borders. The Germans who are Roman citizen can obviously become soldiers.

If you're dealing with a tribe of 100,000 Germans and you're asking for them to disarm, that sounds like something that would require a war.
 
On paper, the western roman empire is far more defensible. It has a series of natural and easily defensible borders-the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine, the Danube. The east, by contrast, does not. They have the Danube, but on the eastern frontier it's just open plains (of course that was rectified by massive fortifications everywhere). What the east had in the 5th century was a strong civil administration essentially controlling the empire (rather than the military administration, as in the west), and lots and lots of money (and grain). There's a good book, "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" that goes in depth on this, but basically the east was able to play their enemies off each other and pay anyone off when necessary. That was their strategy well into the middle ages, and it worked wonders. They also of course had the one major key defensible border, and that was the Propontis straits separating the Balkans from Asia, which came in handy to save them on more than one occasion.

The Eastern Roman Empire had plenty of defensible borders, perhaps better than the Western Empire. The Balkans and Armenia are covered in mountains and forests, and the area from Syria to Palestine had vast stretches of desert.
 
If you're dealing with a tribe of 100,000 Germans and you're asking for them to disarm, that sounds like something that would require a war.

Actually it worked many times. Not sure if with 100.000 (Sugambri?). But surely not in the 5th century.
 
If you're dealing with a tribe of 100,000 Germans and you're asking for them to disarm, that sounds like something that would require a war.

So if they don't want to disarm they are not let into the Empire. Very simple. And if the Empire isn't able to prevent that they cross the Rhine armed ... well, in this case the empire is doomed.
 
The Eastern Roman Empire had plenty of defensible borders, perhaps better than the Western Empire. The Balkans and Armenia are covered in mountains and forests, and the area from Syria to Palestine had vast stretches of desert.
Yes, there are some nice bottlenecks entering Anatolia. The romans crushed some persian armies this way.
And of course Constantinople and the roman fleet blocking the Bosporus played a major role in rescueing Anatolia and the ressources of the ERE.
 
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