Yes, or even sooner. Traditional Chinese economy always fell into deflationary cycles that destroyed its rural economies, leading to mass poverty/famines and subsequent revolts. The lack of drive for commercial innovations like fractional reserve banking meant Chinese dynasties were always on doom timers, ones that only got reset once mass depopulation solved the whole poverty/famine issue.
An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
Evilprodigy
Donor
Probably not.
Ultimately any theorizing that far in the future is a pointless exercise. Too much is up in the air still.
But my guess is it's more likely the 1900s. The Qing limped a long a great deal after their prime and they had it ROUGH. There's no reason to suppose that TTL China could have it worse and die earlier, given B444's preferred multi-polar world setting. But I can't reasonably see the Zeng Dynasty surviving into the 20th century if it has it better or the same as the OTL Qing. It's just too long for a Chinese dynasty to last.
Chinese dynasties since the earliest days are as follows: Han 400ish years, Jin 150, then lots of short lived dynasties which rarely unified China, then the Sui for like 40, Tang for almost 300, then a century of various unstable dynasties and kingdoms, then a good 300 odd years of Song, a century of Yuan, nearly 300 years of Ming, then another nearly 300 years of Qing.
It's like clockwork. The most successful dynasties rarely make it to 300, and tend to collapse under administrative pressure, corruption, and complacency before ever reaching that point. The Zeng unified China only recently, so unless they are like one of the short lived dynasties and only last a few decades (unlikely given they are far older than that as a dynasty of Southern China), they should last until about 1900 or a bit beyond now that they have the breathing room to get fat and lazy like every other preceding dynasty.
A stray thought I had is that both the Romans and the Chinese both had rather low opinions of commerce, at least by the elite. Yet it seems that the Romans here have embraced it, at least as a way to keep the nobility weak, while the Chinese here still look down on it, weird how things work out.
Evilprodigy
Donor
This is true of every European state not just Rhome. Europe only shook off those attitudes by the renaissance and they tended to persist well into the 19th century.
It's been a while since a Roman update, there's a bit of disconnection with the main story. IIRC after the Korean war is wrapped up we'll be going back to D3 and co!
Gotta ask guys, I was going around the net and trying to read other alternate history besides this obvious masterpiece of a timeline. And while I was surfing around, I seem to not see this timeline on those list. Can we do anything to increase the viewership of this timeline? I've always reread everything from the start whenever its a new month so I'm a little perplexed when I didn't see it among the best.
Unless mistaken most of the dedicated sites with published TLs date back to my era if they still exist at all?
Evilprodigy
Donor
You guys do realize that no TL on this site has anything even remotely what you're suggesting right?
Yeah, this site is probably the biggest hub already for alternate history works and discussion, and AAOM is one of the most well-known works on it. The only work I can think of with its own trailers or hype videos is probably 'What Madness is This?', and those are all produced by the author on their personal YouTube channel.
Unlikely they'll ever venture into alt history. The material is promising though. That said, if a Kaiserreich-esque tv show can succeed, maybe there's hope for AAOM. Good lord knows we are in need of the Eastern Romans being represented in media.
Also I'm hyped for the coming conflict ahead and though I don't know much on the OTL equivalent of this I'm still looking forward to it, especially since this is the first time I'm seeing the Koreans and the Japanese join forces.
This story would require several orders of magnitude more popularity before trying that wouldn't get one laughed at.
Generally with the idea of it being a TV-show, I'm entirely supportive, but I'm pretty sure that
1) Ian owns all content on this forum - though I won't speak to whether he'd oppose it.
2) Maybe we let B444 make that sort of call?
1) Ian owns all content on this forum - though I won't speak to whether he'd oppose it.
2) Maybe we let B444 make that sort of call?
My immediate thought with this war is that the Koreans better be careful. Obviously Chinese domination is a danger, but they also just invited in a massive army from Japan. They may be allies for now, but 'inviting foreigners over to help' has been the prelude to invasion many, many times in history.
A win-win scenario does exist: the Japanese army helps to repel the Chinese invasion, but the heavy losses it takes in the process both decimates the Shimazu's internal opposition and cripples a potential invading army for the Koreans.