Discussion: Prolonged Middle Ages

What this has to do with what you wrote about the potential Mongolian invasion of Europe (I assume that you are talking about the Central/Western Europe)? Can you please explain what exactly are you trying to say?
The mongols invasion devastated the areas they came into causing a vast amount of damage and setting the areas back by a large amount and killing huge amount of the pop
 
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"Middle Ages" is a very Eurocentric concept. It implies that there was something else before (the Roman Empire) and after (the Renaissance).

But for much of the rest of the world, the concept doesn't really work. In the Islamic world for instance the historical time periods of relevance were the age of jahiliyya (before the hijra), then the subsequent age of the Caliphate, followed by the Abbasid Revolution. This was followed by a period of fragmentation, rivalry between the Shia and Sunni for control (the Fatimids in Egypt were Shia until they were overthrown by Saladin), the rise of the Seljuk Turks and their empire, the Mongol invasion and destuction of Baghdad, the rise of the Ottomans, and the age of the three gunpowder empires (Ottoman Empire, Safavid Persia and the Mughals in India).

Point being it's hard to make the "middle ages" longer outside Europe when the "middle ages" never existed in the land of Persians, Arabs, Berbers and Turks in the first place.

One could no doubt extend this to China and India as well, which wouldn't fit the "middle ages" concept either.
If we use the exaggerated definition of the Middle Ages as used by Renaissance writers or 19th century Romanticists then yes.

However, if we're talking about the reality of the Middle Ages in Europe, and we describe that as medieval, then a similar reality was also the case in the Islamic world.

Europe and the Islamic world both saw the settlement of new land, long distance trade, the rise of feudalism and tax farming, the rise of mounted nobility, an increase in urbanization, the development of institutions like hospitals and universities, fragmentation, holy wars, catastrophic Mongol invasions, the black plague, and many other shared phenomena.

The Middle Ages in Europe also coincides with the Islamic Golden Age. A Golden age of science, long-distance trade, and development, yet also suffering extreme political fragmentation, social stratification, and war. Which is really what the Middle Ages in Europe also were, when archaeology is used to supplement the written record.

A more intentionally neutral term for Middle Ages would be "Post-Classical History". Though they have become practically synonymous because modern historians have eschewed the term "Dark Ages".
 
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I would like the definition of High Medieval here if you please, I mean the Spaniards discovered the Americas wearing plate armor and the Norwegians did it in chainmail so...
 
Thanks for clarifying. That is very helpful. Then I would posit, how would keep Europe in an extended Early Middle Ages?
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- prolonged Endemic Disease (Europe population is stagnant or declining during 500 - 700)
- no Medieval Warm Period
- Church tradition to give children breastmilk until 4years old

The Key is preventing population growth. With wildernesses abound, people would settle wild lands instead of making tech innovation. With declining population, barbarians will make move causing more instability. With zero population growth, people don't feel need to change tradition.
 
I would think the Black Death as a disease dying out before it spread throughout Europe might allow Europe to stay in the High Middle Ages, but another plague could easily do the same or worse to Eurasia.
If High Medieval Europe's unsustainably high population somehow remains (difficult since its collapse wasn't just down to avoidable things like plagues), then there's going to be pretty significant spillover into Europe's peripheries (Greenland, Atlantic Islands, European Russia, likely more Crusades to act as a release valve for pent up knightly violence), and even then Western/Central Europe is still set to have a population more akin to India or the Far East than it does now.

In addition, the Byzantines need to still be in control of Anatolia to prevent Europeans from circumventing the Ottomans by trying to travel the seas.
Iberian exploration of the Atlantic predates the fall of Constantinople by well over a century. I'd rate advances in sailing over the exact ownership of the Golden Horn any day.

Also technologically/socially things can't be frozen for 1000 years, we're talking about prolonging the society that invented the modern university after all. Advancement will come, possibly even sooner than OTL.
 
Kill Genghis Khan.

No Mongol invasions, global development drastically slows and the black death makes its way more slowly, hitting the middle east and asia as a whole long before Europe.
 
The mongols invasion devastated the areas they came into causing a vast amount of problems and setting the areas back by a large amount since the stick view destroyed huge amount of cities where the Middle Ages started to end in the future
Yeah, they were so far back that their succesor states were the gunpowder empires that were the most advanced empires in the worls for their time /s
 
No Gutenberg book print.

Gutenberg "just" added movable letters, the concept was there. But since you had to carve a whole page from wood to print it, it was very impractical for texts.

And this concept is based on the printing of fabric. Do we have to get rid of that too?
 
The title is fairly self-explanatory. How do you create a Europe and for that matter a world stuck in the High Middle Ages for another 1000 years?



I would think the Black Death as a disease dying out before it spread throughout Europe might allow Europe to stay in the High Middle Ages, but another plague could easily do the same or worse to Eurasia.


In addition, the Byzantines need to still be in control of Anatolia to prevent Europeans from circumventing the Ottomans by trying to travel the seas.

The black death doesn't kill nearly as many people. That if I recall was something that helped push us into the renaissance after all if you asked god to save you and still everybody you know and love drop dead it's time to start looking for other possible ways to save yourself.

So a later black death or just a less less severe black death may help keep us in the middle ages for another 1,000 years.
 
The mongols invasion devastated the areas they came into causing a vast amount of problems and setting the areas back by a large amount since the stick view destroyed huge amount of cities where the Middle Ages started to end in the future

Sorry, but my English is clearly not adequate for figuring out the meaning of the above. Especially the part "since the stick view destroyed huge amount of cities where the Middle Ages started to end in the future". Can you, please, try to express your idea in more comprehensive way?

The Mongolian conquests happened in the XIII century withing "High Middle Ages" and they did not touch the Western Europe (area in which terminology makes at least some sense). So how continuation of that period would change anything? The "Middle Ages" in Europe continued until mid-XV century, well after these conquests were over (and after the Mongolian Empire disintegrated) so what exactly are you trying to say? Keep in mind that you started with talking about the Mongols in Europe and try to keep to the subject.
 
No reconquista. The Iberians reading Islamic world geographics was one of the reason they tried so hard to go to India and China.
And yeah, the High Medieval Age was caused by the Medieval Warm Period. If you remove that (ASB), you'll get a less... explosive growth in the North hemisphere, I think.
 
Ye, but the age of exploration is delayed.
Doubtful, Iberians had been exploring the Atlantic and coast of Africa since at least the mid 1300s. By the time of the fall of Constantinople the Portugese had already settled as far west as the Azores and as far south as the Bay of Arguin. Circumnavigation of Africa and discovery of the Americas can't possibly be delayed all that long by something as simple as the Golden Horn not changing hands.
 
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