Challenge- Roman Empire in 2009

After the sacking of Rome, the Emperor decides to reverse his decision to abandon Britain. He flees to Londinium, brings the army with him, and within twenty years his troops have driven the barbarians away, conquered the east coast of Ireland and built forts there. He intends to conquer the entire island of Eire, defeat the Celts and stop piracy in its nest. He is pushing gradually north as well, back up towards the Antonine Wall, with the intention of pacifying Caledonia. Having done so, and secured his own home against attack as best he can, he or subsequent emperors will turn their attention to the reconquest of Europe, which is gradually falling under barbarian rule.

So it's possible that the Hundred Years War could begin in the early 5th Century, as Rome rebuilds its empire in Europe. Alternately, Roman power is re-established in western France and north-western Spain. The ultimate intention is to win back at least the western half of the empire, and with luck, reconquer Italy. It depends how successful they are against the Goths, who have taken over the Italian peninsula.

The eastern part of the old Empire is a write-off; the Greeks now control it, with their capital at Constantinople. However, the Emperor of the Eastern Romans (as he calls himself) is also determined to reconquer Italy; so maybe the east and west will meet--probably in competition over the remnants of Gothic Italy.

Assuming that Gothic Italy survives, it could be a useful buffer state between eastern and western Roman Empire...
 
Last edited:

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Sure. The end result wouldn't change. :D



Very true, but you could easily have say a united Roman colonies state that occupy 2/3 of North America, and the Northeastern half of South America, and the breakaway Chinese colonies make up the rest of the two continents. Heck, both "American" states could be top-class great powers in the global directory. Say Rome, China, India, Rus, "Indonesia", Atlantis, and Chinese name for New Sun.

Can we please have some kind of Sarmathian Empire instead of Russia???
 

Eurofed

Banned
Can we please have some kind of Sarmathian Empire instead of Russia???

Sure, however, I would assume that it is actually more likely that the Russian space gets settled and developed into a successful Empire by, say, Norse settlers than by native Sarmatians. The latter were a hodgepodge of thinly-spread-out Slavic, Finnish, Iranian, and Central Asian msotly nomad tribes, that mostly resembled the Central Asian steppe noamds in lifestyle. And the steppe nomads showed a consistent attitude to build empires that flared mightly and expanded massively for a while, then collapsed misrably, with no attitude to become a stable and lasting cultural-political unity. So I would rather assume that Sarmatia gets built in an lasting empire by civilizations that showed consistent attitude to do so, like the Norse or the Persians. In both cases, we can assume that Roman expansion may cause large numbers of such people to settle in Sarmatia and build up the place. As it concerns the Norse, "Rus" seems to be the correct name for such an empire, since the Kievan Rus was created by Scandinavian settlers. As for the Persians, I admit I have no good idea of how they would call their Sarmatian Empire. It may be still Sarmatia, or something completely different in Persian.

However, when I spoke of Rus, I meant the ATL equivalent of Kievan Rus, not the post-Mongol, Orthodox, Muscovite Russia, which would be totally butterflied out. However, It is still quite likely that Roman influence would shape this Sarmatian Empire, even more so than Byzantium shaped our Russia. Of course, it would be the original Latin-Greek Rome, without Christianity, and with the effects of the PoDs that determine its success, so many facets would be different. But most prorably they would build themselves up in a mix of imitation and rivalry to Rome.
 
Is there a possible way for the Roman Empire to continue to exist into the 21st Century, even if reduced, but still the same general government.
Continued,not,refunded yes.
1809:Napoleon and the Tzar reach an agreement.
Napoleon refund the west roman empire and Tzar the east roman empire.
Napoleon provides aid to Russian for conquer Constantinople.
In subsequent decades the "west romans" defeat UK with aides from United States that takes Canada (less Quebec).
Now in 2009 are the West and East Roman Empire.
 

Eurofed

Banned
That is why I'd take the Byzantium route.

Yup, ensuring Byzantium success is rather easier than the Carolingian one, since there is an helluva less of state-building to do, but ensuring Rome's success is easier still, since the further back you go, the easier it is to butterfly the domestic causes of decay away, the Empire is at the apex of its strength, and a few well-chosen annexations can butterfly away whole chunks of external enemies (Germanics, Arabs, Persians) that become terrible problems down the road.
 

Eurofed

Banned
No. This is debatable in the case of china,

I was arguing about China.

A gross oversimplification, at the very least. The state that Qin Shi Huangdi created fell apart within a few decades of his rule. ever since, successive dynasties have risen, and then been thrown down by foreign invasion or collapsed into civil war, with some other ruler coming along eventually to pick up the pieces. There is cultural continuity, but to say that the chinese state has had a continuous existence for all this time is misleading, to say the least.

Given the proper PoDs and butterflies, there is nothing to stop Rome from developing a dynastic cycle of union and disunion wholly similar to the Chinese one, which never goes into permanent political fragmentation. In all likelihood, recurring division would be along the West-East axis, between Latin Western-Central Europe and Greek Levant-Middle East, instead of the Chinese North-South axis. In some TLs, they may become a permanent division. However, if the Germans, Arabs, and Persians are assimilated, and the Empire develops a strong sense of cultural unity (guaranteed if it survives its OTL crisis), OTL political Balkanization of Romasphere would be ASB, and in some TLs the two halves are going to pull back always, and for every cycle, the universalist cultural self-consciousness and pull to unity would only grow stronger.

Debatable. I would personally argue that if the dynastic war is simply an internal power struggle, the state continues to exist. But if the war in question means the collapse of the state, to be reformed by a surviving claimant or ambitious general, the state has died and been replaced.

Your concept of continuity for a pre-modern state is odd, to say the least, and to be sound it would at least require the notion that the sense of cultural-political continuity between the precedent state and the following has been broken in the elites.

Examples from English history. The wars of the roses were a dynastic power struggle, which (depending on who you ask) saw major damage to england and the structure of the english state. but when Henry Tudor triumphs, and beats off the last pretenders, the core of the english nation is still intact, and he governs over it. By comparison, the Norman invasion in 1066 is also a form of dynastic struggle. But after William triumphs at Hastings, he imposes a very different form of government upon england. Norman england is the direct successor of anglo-saxon england, but to claim that the two are the same is silly.

But everybody still identified it as the kingdom of England. It is an evolution of the same cultural-political unity. What you say requires a radical substitition of the elites, like Byzantium becoming the Ottoman Empire. Anyway, what you say doesn't apply to Chinese dynastic struggles.

Conversly, one could look at the same events and declare that China has always been fragmented, and is occasionally pulled together for however long before imploding into disunity.

False. The periods of unity utterly dwarf the ones of disunity.

However, by seeing at your rather bizarre concept of national continuity, where the ACW creates two separate USA :eek:, and the SCW two separate Spains, I can understand why you deem the survival of Rome impossible, because you set an impossibly high standard. I assume, however, that mainstream historical opinion holds that the Chinese standard represents continuity, and that standard is fully achievable for Rome.
 
Top