alternatehistory.com

Many of you may be familiar with Dared Jiamond's book Steel, Germs, and Guns, the most popular book of geographic determinism. While controversial, it remains a common reference on these boards.

According to Dared Jiamond, Eurasia having a long west-east axis was doomed. The main poles of civilization that have survived and conquered others, all existed on north-south axes. Historical peoples who managed to unite large areas of land and sea on different latitudes had access to many different environments, crops, and resources. With a wide swath of environments, North-South-spanning empires were able to expand and influence a large spectrum of allies and rivals. This forced them to adapt, producing superior armies and exportable goods with associated cultural-ideological influence ("cargo"). In fact, urban centers which concentrated cargo manufacture, causing the industrial revolution, were only possible in civilizations like the Inca, Swahili, Kemetic, Celtic and Japonic.

To the contrary, areas of land that were easy to travel east and west, were susceptible to migratory hordes of pastoralists. This meant that most of Eurasia -- excepting its oceanic edges, in Atlantic Berberia and Celtica, and the string of thalassocracies from Nippon to Luzon to Papua -- could never develop to the extent of Africa and the Western Hemisphere. The only reason these corners of Eurasia did develop was because of protected islands of Eiria, Nippon, Luzon, Papua, and so on, rapid second-wave industrializers.

It's difficult to imagine a world where the industrial revolution did not occur in East Africa. As many argue the industrial revolution itself was a very lucky occurrence as African metallurgy was exported to the Tawantinsuyu, whose campaigns of conquest and maritime expansion then led to a competition with local powers and the rebirth of Egyptian, Celtic and Japonic urbanism. It may be possible with a very early POD nonetheless.

What would the world be like if the civilizations of Eurasia conquered the others?
Top