Hadrian's Consolidation - reboot
- Thread starter Hecatee
- Start date
Yah there no way they are getting as far as the cape of good hope on first try the absolute best they could possibly hope for is upper west Africa
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Hecatee
Donor
1 million, for logistical reasons, but Ostia is bigger than OTL and could almost be seen as an extension of the capital (although it's 25km or a good 5h walk from the walls of Rome to Ostia Antica and there is no full connurbation, but the area between the two is densely populated and about to get even more densely populated thanks to the train line and some other public works I plan on doing)
I can't quite recall, but were there any walls connecting Ostia to imperial Rome as there were between Piraeus and classical Athens?
Unless they discover the volta do mar like a user was saying some pages back then wouldn't they get stuck in Africa? Then again didn't a Carthaginian guy go all the way to Nigeria supposedly?
Not really. If this succeeds and trade missions become common it is only a matter of time before someone gets blown off course to South America.
@Hecatee How close is the advent of modern journalism in Rome? I am guessing it would only take one clever man with connections to the state to buy his way into abusing the telegraph network to do it. And it would be a huge hit, people would be fascinated to be able to know things that happened on the other side of the Empire yesterday in their newspapers. Things like this amazing mission and possible status updates/conclusion.
excpet their are major difference than otl
1. they have worst ships
2. they aren't in total exploraers mode they don't have the movations the portugease had otl to explore explore, they are just here to see what south while exploring but they aren't gonna go on giant expedtions these are treasure ships like zheng in china, they have no motivation to beyond west africa most likely they will establish some trade connections and get to trading
3 they are not here to colonze as well
4 since no one directly going west that highly unlikely and the porutgueas took 40 years to reach cape of good hope which will slower than otl cause of the ship durning that time they never got blown to the americas sure eventully they would have but they didn't
so I think we are getting ahead of ourselve
I was so excited on the first read-through that I hadn't realized it was heading West into the Atlantic! The odds of getting blown off course are quite high, but they'd have the (slight) advantage of getting stranded far away from home with at least the supplies for such a situation. It wouldn't shock me if the first European settlement in the Americas is an accidental and precarious landing on the tip of Brazil opposite West Africa; but that's a pretty remote possibility still (there's still about a 95% chance that if they get stranded they will die without being able to tell anyone in Rome what happened).
I think there are two big things that could make it happen: IIRC they've already discovered the compass, so the chances of getting lost or blown so far off course they can't get back is much, much lower; they're embarking with considerable supplies for surviving any accidents of that type.
I think there are two big things that could make it happen: IIRC they've already discovered the compass, so the chances of getting lost or blown so far off course they can't get back is much, much lower; they're embarking with considerable supplies for surviving any accidents of that type.
Maybe they create a small make-shift settlement after being stranded only to rebuild somewhat until being refound in a hundred years or so.
Though maybe only a few years until they could build entirely new ships from scratch and head home.
I'm not saying your wrong but you are making some assumptions as well. Considering the experience they've gained traveling to and from China as well as just in general their ships are probably fairly high quality so there is little evidence they're worse off than the Portuguese or Columbus. While exploration isn't a huge driving force that's kinda the whole point of this expedition if i'm not mistaken, if it's successful why wouldn't they send more farther afield? further south and possibly eventually west, either by mistake or purposefully? Colonization wasn't the original drive for Europeans during the age of exploration, trade was, seems to me like that's what the Romans want too. As for your last point that's up to our Author, who knows how ambitious people might get after a successful expedition to west Africa or further south? As for the Americas, storms in the Atlantic can get crazy, who's to say if one of these expeditions gets caught in a hurricane and ends up in Brazil? I for one am looking forward to see where this is going even more now.
@Wolttaire As RomanCenturion said their ships are not so bad, they are bigger than the ones Columbus used though inferior (and superior) in other ways. Lets call it wash and say they are about as good as the ones used in the 15th century. Clearly these Romans are not as afraid of open seas as the OTL ones, they will sail farther from the coast and can be blown to Brazil which is how it was discovered OTL. Admittedly it is less likely than for the Portuguese since they would sail from westernmost Africa straight towards the Cape, making Brazil closer and the odds of going off-course greater. Romans will obviously not go so far afield as that in their trips to West Africa. But it could still happen and they may go further than West Africa in time. This emperor won't be the last looking for a publicity stunt to start off his reign.
As trade increases, provided West African gold is a thing yet (and if not, ivory and other things) then this greater volume of ships will mean eventually one gets to Brazil. And while there is a risk they die there or are stranded (allowing for an early introduction to European diseases) some will come home eventually and then the fun starts.
Discovery of America is pretty much inevitable and it will probably happen in this way. If not it will be one of the other likely corridors. That is island hopping either via Iceland and Greenland or the mid-Atlantic islands, in both cases probably due to fishing. Or just for a desire to explore, some people ITTL have wondered what is to the west and expressed desire to go.
As trade increases, provided West African gold is a thing yet (and if not, ivory and other things) then this greater volume of ships will mean eventually one gets to Brazil. And while there is a risk they die there or are stranded (allowing for an early introduction to European diseases) some will come home eventually and then the fun starts.
Discovery of America is pretty much inevitable and it will probably happen in this way. If not it will be one of the other likely corridors. That is island hopping either via Iceland and Greenland or the mid-Atlantic islands, in both cases probably due to fishing. Or just for a desire to explore, some people ITTL have wondered what is to the west and expressed desire to go.
I agree for the most part. There is nothing inevitable about this. The Romans have no reason to take big risks. Their mission is to venture down the coast and they will probably stick to it - they'd rather row than brave the ocean. Especially in bad weather.
Once they find the first West African states and trade with them they will rightfully consider this a success. It might take a couple of follow-up trade expeditions to even explore the West African coast fully (why go further when you have already established the trade links you were after?), let alone reach all the way to the Congo.
It is also always a possibility that an expedition like this ends in failure - although it does not look like it will thanks to the expert crews.
Derek Pullem
Donor
They should find the Cape Verde islands which would make a useful secure base for trade with Africa. Once these are found then the prevailing currents (North Equatorial Current) make the accidental discovery of South America possible if not likely.
Hecatee
Donor
No, there has never been and in the late Republic pirates kidnapping people on the road between the two cities were a factor in launching Pompey's famous cleanup operation
I will not answer everything that has been said, but to clarify :
- The ships are clearly superior in many ways to anything the Portughese or the Spanish had in the XVth and even early XVIth century : they are larger, better prepared for many contingences, travel as a fleet of five ships, and have better founded navigation theories and navigation tools. But their construction technique is reaching its limits in size and might prove weaker than those in use for Gallions or Caravelle...
- While they might still have difficulties defining how far east or west they are, they are still at least 17th century navigation technology advanced. But their ships do not have deep keels, instead they have those ungainly side-paddles to act as leeboards and they are not as confident on the high seas as the Portugese and Spanish, so they'll try to remain as close to the coast as possible. Only a storm would, in the current situation, send them to the Americas.
- The mission is for exploration and light trade, nothing more, the prestige expected to derive from the fact that Romans had never gone there before
Not currently on the scope. You do have some town criers who shout what authorities want them to shout, you have some news delivered at the theatre before a spectacle, you have messages pinned to the forum's walls or a temple's door, you have the rumor mill, and you have private letters, that's it for now.
I think that it certainly could have been problematic if the emperors that reigned directly after Hadrian had biological heirs, however since Antoninus Pius didn't have sons, and considering that what Hadrian did was less introducing an entirely new concept and more institutionalizing something previous emperors had already did IOTL, I believe it's plausible that by the time we reach Marcus Aurelius and Comodus the rules of succesion have acumulated enough institutional inertia for it to work.
Femto
Banned
The republican system had more inertia than this sucession institution and Caesar and Augustus ended it.
The republican system had so much inertia that it survived formally well into the imperial era, and Augustus especially was careful to pay lip service to the system precisely to avoid Ceaser's fate.