China without steppe nomads

IIRC Turchin also said that states on a major civilisational boundary ("meta-ethnic frontier", as he calls them) are more likely to form empires, because they have a clearer "them" against which to define their "us" and are therefore more cohesive. Since the steppes were unsuitable for most agriculture you'd still have a meta-ethnic frontier between the settled Chinese and the nomadic steppe peoples, although with less threatening northern neighbours there might be less incentive to unite compared to OTL.

Yeah, I think that's one of his ideas. IRC it wasn't important / mentioned in the imperiogenesis paper I remember reading from him though, which just used a simple model of agricultural expansion (centered on the old world centers of domestication and based around their [slightly questionable] models of how those spread) +"Miltech" expansion (centered on where those centers meet the steppe).

Intuitively "meta-ethnic frontier" seems like a plausible idea to me, but it also seems plausible that populations on frontier might have a more fluid and less definite idea of who they are as well (adopting customs from other people they encounter, switching subsistence strategy with climatic shifts and available land). Especially if it's not as much of a militarized frontier.

And the other difference with OTL might be change in the Chinese mentality. China might become less 'closed', more inclined towards expanding into the outer world.

I mean in OTL sending fleets somewhere far away and spending finances for similar purposes was kind of reckless. Everybody knows that this money and efforts would be much better used on maintaining the Northern border against the nomads - because just wait and in no time the hordes of mounted warriors would gather and storm China. And then your overseas lunatic ventures won't help you.

In the alternative "world without horses" there's less need to keep an eye on the North and that Chinese attitude might change...

Although if they did, I wonder what they would find. In a horseless / steppe nomad free world, the butterflies for the development of early civilization in West Asia / South Asia / Europe are enormous. Even if it's all the same until Rome, you would butterfly out the Hunnic population movements, later expansions by Arabs, etc. Alternatively, even earlier might avoid the Late Bronze Age collapse. The whole Western world that seemed millennia ahead until the Iron Age and still hundreds of years ahead (roughly) by the time of quite late Rome might have survived. Maybe the ATL's China would see merchant fleets from Indus Valley successors or Mediterranean states turning up early in whatever their equivalent time of the Han Dynasty or earlier (their own outgoing overseas ventures or no).
 
Although if they did, I wonder what they would find. In a horseless / steppe nomad free world, the butterflies for the development of early civilization in West Asia / South Asia / Europe are enormous. ..
Yes, it is impossible to say what the world would have looked like without horses / steppe nomads.

Only in extremely wide strokes, give or take a few centuries, a few thousand square miles.
Something like that. Educated guess.

Maybe the ATL's China would see merchant fleets from Indus Valley successors
I guess the first huge elephant-sized butterfly is surviving Indus-Harrappan civilization (and it's possible expansion, I mean why not). If with China we might guess that it would form an Empire like in OTL, with India we have no idea, not a slightest clue. One thing for sure it is supposed to be one of the most developed prosperous regions of the world.

The whole Western world that seemed millennia ahead until the Iron Age and still hundreds of years ahead (roughly) by the time of quite late Rome might have survived.
I am not sure what you mean by the "whole Western world".
And you lost me when you said it was "millennia ahead" or "centuries ahead".
But in OTL the Western Europe had a clear advantage over other 'old' civilizations as it was farther from the steppe nomads and consequently suffered less.
In the "no horse / no steppe nomads" ATL Europe looses this advantage and might be bypassed by others in the technological, scientific and industrial race.

There's a famous saying of the Iranian historians that if there had not been Mongol invasion the Iranians would have landed on the Moon in the XIX-th century.
If there had not been any nomad invasions the Akkadians might have landed on the Moon in the XVIII-th century... if the Chinese or the Indians hadn't done that before in the XVII-th century ))
 
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Ah "whole Western world" = meaning all old world civilizations and general Mediterranean+West-Central Asia "ekumene" earlier and west to China, not Western Europe.
 
Yes, it is impossible to say what the world would have looked like without horses / steppe nomads.

Only in extremely wide strokes, give or take a few centuries, a few thousand square miles.
Something like that. Educated guess.


I guess the first huge elephant-sized butterfly is surviving Indus-Harrappan civilization (and it's possible expansion, I mean why not). If with China we might guess that it would form an Empire like in OTL, with India we have no idea, not a slightest clue. One thing for sure it is supposed to be one of the most developed prosperous regions of the world.


I am not sure what you mean by the "whole Western world".
And you lost me when you said it was "millennia ahead" or "centuries ahead".
But in OTL the Western Europe had a clear advantage over other 'old' civilizations as it was farther from the steppe nomads and consequently suffered less.
In the "no horse / no steppe nomads" ATL Europe looses this advantage and might be bypassed by others in the technological, scientific and industrial race.

There's a famous saying of the Iranian historians that if there had not been Mongol invasion the Iranians would have landed on the Moon in the XIX-th century.
If there had not been any nomad invasions the Akkadians might have landed on the Moon in the XVIII-th century... if the Chinese or the Indians hadn't done that before in the XVII-th century ))
Europe was well behind technologically speaking for a long time. The lack of the steppe nomads will lead to significant increases of power for (the) Persia(s), India(s), and China(s).
 
Agree Western Europe would probably be well behind the leading edge of sedentary culture. But I think if the Near Eastern civilizations avoid the Bronze Age collapse, and are more advanced, then I think you could have seen a chain of more advanced Western Europe earlier in history than in OTL, as the technological transfer from the Near East -> Greece -> Italy -> Rest of Western Europe chain could still exist. If the Near East stayed as far ahead of the rest of the world as it was before the Bronze Age collapse, even a backwater to that could be pretty advanced settled culture on the world scale.

(IRC - In OTL, you had Western Europe as the seat of the megalithic phenomenon (Skara Brae, henges, mounds) fairly early on in prehistory, which indicates a certain level of political and social complexity and advance in sedentary culture that was rare in the world of its time. Then you get a shift to more mobile and nomadic herding based strategies with the introduction of the early Indo-Europeans expansions, and the region as a whole is far from the leading edge of sedentary and agricultural culture until the Roman period. Similarly in Southeast Europe you see the move away from the huge proto-cities of Cucuteni-Tripolye ("Old Europe") with the introduction of herding strategies from steppe Indo-Europeans.)
 
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I don't know...
There's no substitute to horses in warfare, that's true.
But in all other spheres people can use donkeys, oxen and camels. And no need for millennium to breed, they are good as they are.
Instead of one horse to pull a cart, you can harness two donkeys, something like that, no big deal.
Speed is crucial for warfare, for real life economic purposes it's not that essential.

IIRC the first chariots were pulled by onagers.

I don't know, may be you are right...
But ask yourself: "What nomad threats did the Roman Empire face?"
There were threats, but no more, no less than any other polity faced, for example any of the warring Chinese states.
But the Roman Empire was born and it lasted for more than half a millennia as a huge 'China like' Empire.
So, from my point of view, the external (Barbarian) threat as a main factor for the empire-building is overrated as well.

Rome did face barbarian threats in the form of the Gauls and Germans, although they were more sedentary than the steppe nomads.

Intuitively "meta-ethnic frontier" seems like a plausible idea to me, but it also seems plausible that populations on frontier might have a more fluid and less definite idea of who they are as well (adopting customs from other people they encounter, switching subsistence strategy with climatic shifts and available land). Especially if it's not as much of a militarized frontier.

Well the point of a meta-ethnic frontier is that the two cultures are very different in terms of some key factor like lifestyle (settled vs. nomad etc.) or religion which is unlikely to change.
 
Rome did face barbarian threats in the form of the Gauls and Germans, although they were more sedentary than the steppe nomads.
Actually they were not 'more' sedentary.
They were just sedentary, pure and simple, settled people(s).
They were on the move, during migration; that's different.
You can look at it like the clash between two Chinese Warring States, in essence they belonged to the same civilization pattern; it's not like nomads vs settled.

But again thank you for spotting my bad wording. Of course I did not mean "barbarian", I meant "nomadic" here.
 
OK, how about cultural divergences?
A much more extroverted foreign policy has been alluded to before.
What else?
If divergences are already very strong in the 1st millennium BCE, which I believe they must be, then neither of the philosophical schools we associate with China would exist the way they did IOTL. Also, no Qin unification and no burning of books and burying of scholars - so whatever philosophies might arise instead may well exist separately or in competition.
How much of what we tend to call Daoism is going to still exist?
Since Buddha has been butterflied away, what does the lack of Buddhist influences possibly entail?
 

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I don't know...

And the other difference with OTL might be change in the Chinese mentality. China might become less 'closed', more inclined towards expanding into the outer world.
otoh without horse nomads you get rid of the major form of contact China had otl with the outside world: namely the silk road and long distance trading with India and the Roman Empire. Without it Chinese silk doesn't go to Europe/India and China doesn't get luxury items like red corals from Rome.
 
otoh without horse nomads you get rid of the major form of contact China had otl with the outside world: namely the silk road and long distance trading with India and the Roman Empire. Without it Chinese silk doesn't go to Europe/India and China doesn't get luxury items like red corals from Rome.
Not really, though. Leaving aside sea contact, which certainly existed at some times, the steppe peoples will still have (Bactrian) camels and donkeys. Not enough to give them a decisive advantage over the Chinese, perhaps, but more than enough to transport luxury goods like silk and coral. In fact, that's what they did OTL; they didn't use horses to cross the Taklamakan, after all.
 
(Pipped to it by Workable Goblin but as I have the post prepped anyway...) Yeah, that depends on whether the place of those horse nomads in the trading system might just get taken by pastoralists who use ox drawn wagons, or camels. Not having horse nomads alone doesn't necessary seem to do away with the oasis cities of Central Asia and the Silk Road. If the same oasis cities of Central Asia resulted, they could have a good lot of trade with China and whoever held power in what is OTL's Persia.

(IRC without the horse, the Iranian peoples of OTL as such would be butterflied away (I think the historical model is that at seem like they're from later Indo-European migrations, even if only by an elite who spread their culture, and made possible in large part by the horse drawn chariot?), and they were responsible for much of that culture of the Central Asian cities, but someone would take their place).

They might even thrive a bit more than in OTL, if the people who rule the more sedentary cities have a more favourable military balance against the nomads, if the nomads are restricted to camels and wagons, without chariots or horse archery, and they so avoid the big disaster where the Mongol Empire destroyed a lot of settled cities.

(Eventually the Silk Road would face the same problems as in OTL with competition with sea freight going direct between their end "customers" in well watered China, South Asia and Europe where the biggest agricultural populations will inevitably be (transport by ship on water is eventually going to be more effective for bulk trade), but plenty of time for prospering in the meantime.)
 
otoh without horse nomads you get rid of the major form of contact China had otl with the outside world: namely the silk road and long distance trading with India and the Roman Empire. Without it Chinese silk doesn't go to Europe/India and China doesn't get luxury items like red corals from Rome.
As I guessed earlier in this thread without need building and manning the Great Wall the Chinese might spend their efforts on expansion. And the most natural for them would be the desire to cut the middlemen in their silk trade along the Silk Road. I presume in ATL most of the time China would control much bigger part of the Silk Road than in OTL - that would be a heavily fortified projecting part from the "Western Regions" deep into the Central Asia. If there is no empire there (on place of the Achaemenid Persian Empire) that might be truly big protrusion. If there is a strong polity controlling modern Persia and Central Asia, it would control the rest of the Silk Road from the Chinese part to the Mediterranean or so.
I am afraid for most of the time the nomads would not have anything to do with the Silk Road, that's an alternative world, that's a different world, the world where the nomads lost their advantage in warfare and consequently in commerce.

But the Silk Road might loose some importance in ATL. The Indian Harrapan civilization is saved ATL and it is supposed to influence Indochina (by trading, colonizing or conquest or else); and China has more resources to conquer more of Indochina (not necessarily keeping it). So the territories between the most prosperous and flourishing civilizations of the Earth, in Indochina are pretty doomed to develop earlier than in OTL. My point here is that sea trade 'China-Indochina-India-the Red Sea' is supposed to work smoothly and might compete with the Silk Road from time to time.

OK, how about cultural divergences?
A much more extroverted foreign policy has been alluded to before.
What else?
If divergences are already very strong in the 1st millennium BCE, which I believe they must be, then neither of the philosophical schools we associate with China would exist the way they did IOTL. Also, no Qin unification and no burning of books and burying of scholars - so whatever philosophies might arise instead may well exist separately or in competition.
How much of what we tend to call Daoism is going to still exist?
Since Buddha has been butterflied away, what does the lack of Buddhist influences possibly entail?
I don't know, other cultural divergences are unpredictable, too hard to tell.
The Indian philosophical and scientific achievements were astonishing in OTL, in this ATL these might be even greater. The earlier development and inevitable contact of the Indian and the Chinese civilizations might result into fascinating syncretism and cross-fertilization.

On the one hand China in ATL would have more grounds to feel 'the chosen people', salt of the Earth (as they are less humiliated by the nomads as they often were in OTL).
But on the other hand having come to close contact with the ATL Indian civilization (may be even more sophisticated than the Chinese one) and the successors of the Mesopotamian and Elamite cultures, China might be not so sure of it's exceptionalism as it was in OTL.

That would have been a great shift in the Chinese mentality...
 
(Pipped to it by Workable Goblin but as I have the post prepped anyway...) Yeah, that depends on whether the place of those horse nomads in the trading system might just get taken by pastoralists who use ox drawn wagons, or camels. Not having horse nomads alone doesn't necessary seem to do away with the oasis cities of Central Asia and the Silk Road. If the same oasis cities of Central Asia resulted, they could have a good lot of trade with China and whoever held power in what is OTL's Persia.

(IRC without the horse, the Iranian peoples of OTL as such would be butterflied away (I think the historical model is that at seem like they're from later Indo-European migrations, even if only by an elite who spread their culture, and made possible in large part by the horse drawn chariot?), and they were responsible for much of that culture of the Central Asian cities, but someone would take their place).

They might even thrive a bit more than in OTL, if the people who rule the more sedentary cities have a more favourable military balance against the nomads, if the nomads are restricted to camels and wagons, without chariots or horse archery, and they so avoid the big disaster where the Mongol Empire destroyed a lot of settled cities.

(Eventually the Silk Road would face the same problems as in OTL with competition with sea freight going direct between their end "customers" in well watered China, South Asia and Europe where the biggest agricultural populations will inevitably be (transport by ship on water is eventually going to be more effective for bulk trade), but plenty of time for prospering in the meantime.)
As I guessed earlier in this thread without need building and manning the Great Wall the Chinese might spend their efforts on expansion. And the most natural for them would be the desire to cut the middlemen in their silk trade along the Silk Road. I presume in ATL most of the time China would control much bigger part of the Silk Road than in OTL - that would be a heavily fortified projecting part from the "Western Regions" deep into the Central Asia. If there is no empire there (on place of the Achaemenid Persian Empire) that might be truly big protrusion. If there is a strong polity controlling modern Persia and Central Asia, it would control the rest of the Silk Road from the Chinese part to the Mediterranean or so.
I am afraid for most of the time the nomads would not have anything to do with the Silk Road, that's an alternative world, that's a different world, the world where the nomads lost their advantage in warfare and consequently in commerce.

But the Silk Road might loose some importance in ATL. The Indian Harrapan civilization is saved ATL and it is supposed to influence Indochina (by trading, colonizing or conquest or else); and China has more resources to conquer more of Indochina (not necessarily keeping it). So the territories between the most prosperous and flourishing civilizations of the Earth, in Indochina are pretty doomed to develop earlier than in OTL. My point here is that sea trade 'China-Indochina-India-the Red Sea' is supposed to work smoothly and might compete with the Silk Road from time to time.


I don't know, other cultural divergences are unpredictable, too hard to tell.
The Indian philosophical and scientific achievements were astonishing in OTL, in this ATL these might be even greater. The earlier development and inevitable contact of the Indian and the Chinese civilizations might result into fascinating syncretism and cross-fertilization.

On the one hand China in ATL would have more grounds to feel 'the chosen people', salt of the Earth (as they are less humiliated by the nomads as they often were in OTL).
But on the other hand having come to close contact with the ATL Indian civilization (may be even more sophisticated than the Chinese one) and the successors of the Mesopotamian and Elamite cultures, China might be not so sure of it's exceptionalism as it was in OTL.

That would have been a great shift in the Chinese mentality...
Hmmm, I´m just imagining a scenario where an alt-Oxus civilization covers (in the sense of: various of its city states controlling it politically at different times) the portion of the Silk Road West of alt-Kashgar, possibly battling with alt-Chinese or alt-Tibetan polities, with occasional (ethnically predominantly Dravidian) Indus-Ganges Empires throwing in their lot in the struggle for control over the mountain passes, too.
And alt-Indochina developing much faster, too. After all, no horses is no disadvantage here at all, and more trade will make the region important. Not necessarily good for its independence, but certainly placing them on a highway of technological development. Analogies to classical Greece there anyone?

Sea trade would certainly let the notion of a unique superiority evaporate, but it might, instead, enhance the notion of a common superiority of the "civilized", trading, agricultural, state-building, literate etc. societies over the indigenous fringes even more than IOTL. You had such tendencies from Egypt over Mesopotamia and India to China - if they get fused into some cosmopolitan synthesis of the civilised people, that could get both nasty and awesome.
 
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