CHALLENGE: a unified earth

your challenge is starting from the Conversion of Constantine, make a series of events that would make the earth have the least amount of countries in the present day.

you can place a POD anywhere up until the start of the industrial revolution, but not before Constantine's
conversion.

good luck and I would like to see your maps!

person with the least amount of countries will get +rep.
 
your challenge is starting from the Conversion of Constantine, make a series of events that would make the earth have the least amount of countries in the present day.

you can place a POD anywhere up until the start of the industrial revolution, but not before Constantine's
conversion.

good luck and I would like to see your maps!

person with the least amount of countries will get +rep.

A couple of scenarios:
1. The Romans win at the battle of Adrianople and build a global empire
2. Arabs aren't defeated at the battle of Tours and form a world-wide caliphate
3. The Mongols conquer the whole world
4. There is no American Revolution and a global British empire rules the world in 2008
 
Nuclear war erupts after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Humanity is unable to rebuild and goes extinct.

Zero countries, I win.
 
you win the prize for being the best at reading!

Not exactly, you essentially said that PODs had to be before the Industrial Revolution. If we assume that you include All possible Industrial Revolutions, then Nukes are off the table.

Instead, we have a Global Plague that kills every human being after the contact between the Old and New Worlds.

So, I win instead!:p
 
POD: The Swedish Empire under Charles XII forces Tsar Peter the Great to surrender after the Russians' crushing defeat at Narva.

Sweden goes on to control most of eastern Russia, the German states, and makes an alliance with the Ottomans. The Austrian Empire is sandwiched and crushed by the two powers in the early 20th Century. You can picture what happens as time progresses.
 
The Papacy is able to make the Donation of Constantine a reality, and the entire Western Roman Empire eventually becomes a Papal theocracy. Islam still arises ITTL, and spreads across the globe. It goes through a fractious period after the Abbasids collapse in the 10th century. Later an Arab named Muhammad al-Din of the Banu Obligat tribe reunites the Caliphate from Transoxiana to the Maghreb. They also conquer the Byzantine Empire.

The Song Dynasty has an industrial revolution, and uses new technology to conquer Manchuria, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, South-east Asia, etc.

Dunno about India. Maybe the Chola get some technlogy from China and build a talassocracy from East Africa to Indonesia?

There we go, very few countries and a few ASBish empires.
 
A couple of scenarios:
1. The Romans win at the battle of Adrianople and build a global empire
2. Arabs aren't defeated at the battle of Tours and form a world-wide caliphate
3. The Mongols conquer the whole world
4. There is no American Revolution and a global British empire rules the world in 2008

I agree that 1, 2, and 4 are perhaps the best long-term prospects: countries excellent at both conquest and administration that for a significant period had no serious rivals. Adrianople is a little late for Rome, but up until Justinian it's still conceivable.

But 3? Conquest and lack of rivals, I grant you, but administration? I can't see a Mongol empire really lasting. In entirely different contexts, the Golden Horde, the Timurids, and the Yuan, were all without serious rivals in their respective regions and still eventually were expelled by natives, butchered each other, and faded to obscurity. A global Khanate is doubly problematic. The one exception to a surviving Mongol Khanate out of context, of course, is the Mughals... and I suppose you could have a better adapted alt-Yuan like the Jin or Qing. But by this point, it's just a new dynasty.
 
Just as a matter of interest, at what point was there the least amount of countries? Perhaps when the Carolingian empire, Byzantium and the Caliphate ruled most of Europe and the near east and china most of the Far east? Or the Mongols at their peak? Does the term countries include tribal areas, or only states/empires on the Eurasian pattern and mirrored in Meso/Andean America?
 
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