How much longer would the byzantine & sassanid empires have lasted without the arab conquests?

Regarding the age of exploration, ship building technology and navigation techniques will advance in the next millennium Islam or no Islam.

How the Byzantines fair in alt 15th-16th century world is really dependant on what that world is actually like, how strong the Byzantines are, what the geopolitical situation in the Mediterranean is, etc...

I could see the Byzantines trying for an Indian Ocean policy-getting into the money spigot that is India and its surrounding locations.

I wonder, considering that the Byzantines would probably be more tightly bound economically with the Med, whether we'd see a Med-Northern Europe Divide, rather than a Europe-Middle East Divide, and as a result it isn't the Spanish/Italians interested in going west - but instead the Northern Europeans, effectively revisiting Norse Saga rather than hunting for China.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
Assuming no civilizational divide between the Middle East, North Africa and Europe the whole notion of these places as cultural entities might change entirely.

Assuming we have a Byzantine wank-control of Italy, all or parts of Iberia, all of North Africa, and let's add southern gaul(or France) while we're at it.

We have a near Roman lake-and in the era of faster ships, and population growth we could see the boundaries between Europe and the Middle East fading entirely.

Even if the Byzantines are half as successful as above then we could still see that.

At the same time a divide could easily emerge from north Europe/south Europe.

Either a different theology of Christianity is established or there is long running cultural tension.

But I do like the idea of an alt mediaval world(11th-15th centuries) with a unified mediterrean.
 
The "Byzantines" were the Romans, and their Empire was the Roman Empire, the whole eastern half, with possesing in Africa and Italy when the arab conquests happened. Probably without Arabs, and Turks later as a consequence the Eastern Roman Empire could last to this day, even severely crippled, weaked and abused this lasted to 15th century. The only bigger problems for them is, I could see, in the Balkans, which they de facto lost even before the Arabs came, but later under the Macedonian Dynasty they were able to reconquer it and hold for two centuries. For Sassanians, I don't know, probably to the time when some steppe barbarians managed to do "full Chingis Khan" rampage.

The Byzantines, if they had stayed strong through the Renaissance and into the 17th century, might have played an important role in technological developments leading to the industrial revolution. Their civilization, surrounded by a similar form of Christianity in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, might have survived, even if the Empire as a political structure did not. Just as Western Europe ended up as a network of Christian states surrounding France, so the Byzantine East might have ended up as a network of Christian states, surrounding Anatolia and the Bosporus, in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the northern rim of the Black Sea, the Levant, along the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, in a Coptic Egypt, and in northern East Africa (esp. Ethiopia) where Christianity had taken root quite early. These states might have developed strong ties and colonial possessions in India, Indonesia, and on the mainland of the Far East before the nations of Western Europe could do so. Byzantine type states might have spawned settler regimes in Australia and New Zealand a century or more before the British got around to it (in OTL) at the beginning of the 19th century. Also, the growth of a Russian state would not have taken place under conditions of isolation...

Two questions: Could the Byzantines and their neighbors have fended off the Mongol hordes? Or even if not entirely successful in doing so, could they have economically survived the inevitable savaging by the hordes? Would the walls of Constantinople have held, as they did OTL in the 7th and 8th centuries against the Muslim jihad?
 
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ar-pharazon

Banned
I think the Mongol invasions aren't guaranteed in this scenario but an invasion from an alt Mongol empire is still quite possible.

I could see the Byzantines being thrashed and paying tribute and then eventually winning when the Mongols leave or assimilate(assuming Mongols as invaders still happens).

Also the political structure of the empire was remarkably durable surviving as it did arguably to 1461-the fall of Trebizond.

Without it being crushed I could see the emperor and the imperial court and everything else about Byzantine politics enduring for another millennium or two.

Assuming the Byzantines hold the eastern mediterrean into the age of exploration this could hurt them but if they get into India than riches might abound and the fact they are a Christian empire might make the other Europeans more willing to trade with them and go through them to get to the east.

In fact I could see the discovery of the Americas being delayed for a few decades to up to maybe 200 years. If there is no Muslim middleman to circumvent-I could see the impetus that leads to the new world being contacted being done by the Norse or basque.

Or stray Portuguese ships landing on the coast of Brazil, etc...

But it would lead to an interesting timeline where the Americas aren't really conquered or even contacted to any large degree until 1600 or so. Perhaps even later.
 
I think the Mongol invasions aren't guaranteed in this scenario but an invasion from an alt Mongol empire is still quite possible.

I could see the Byzantines being thrashed and paying tribute and then eventually winning when the Mongols leave or assimilate(assuming Mongols as invaders still happens).

Also the political structure of the empire was remarkably durable surviving as it did arguably to 1461-the fall of Trebizond.

Without it being crushed I could see the emperor and the imperial court and everything else about Byzantine politics enduring for another millennium or two.

Assuming the Byzantines hold the eastern mediterrean into the age of exploration this could hurt them but if they get into India than riches might abound and the fact they are a Christian empire might make the other Europeans more willing to trade with them and go through them to get to the east.

In fact I could see the discovery of the Americas being delayed for a few decades to up to maybe 200 years. If there is no Muslim middleman to circumvent-I could see the impetus that leads to the new world being contacted being done by the Norse or basque.

Or stray Portuguese ships landing on the coast of Brazil, etc...

But it would lead to an interesting timeline where the Americas aren't really conquered or even contacted to any large degree until 1600 or so. Perhaps even later.

In the absence of the emergence of Islam or with it remaining a small religious movement in portions of the Arabian peninsula (which would possibly have been the case if the Byzantines and the Persians had not engaged in a ruinous "world war" in the 7th century prior to the dawn-Jihad eruption and if the emperor Heraclius had not been ill and dying at the time of that eruption), the Byzantines would not have been cut off from the Red Sea, the Arabian peninsula, the coast of East Africa and sea trade with India. Even if they had lost control of far-flung portions of their Empire over the centuries, those portions, e.g., Egypt, would be Christian and part of the Byzantine "commonwealth" culturally and politically. Thus, it is likely there would have been an expansion of the pre-Islam Byzantine world's trade with communities around the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, etc. as described by Cosmas Indicopleustes in his Christian Topography circa 550 AD. If the Byzantines and their neighboring Eastern Christian countries in this non-Islam dominated time line for the region, were to pick up on sailing innovations from Western Europe, they might indeed win the race for building commercial empires in the Indian Ocean and on the Pacific littoral of Asia.

However, would this delay the Western European settlement of the Americas? Possibly, but it might on the other hand speed up such settlement if Western mariners, finding themselves behind the loop in the East, accelerated their efforts in North and South America. For instance: more support for the English attempt to colonize Roanoke Island in the Elizabethan years, earlier year-round settlement of Newfoundland as a base for fishing fleets, and earlier Spanish and Portuguese conquest of South America.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
Indeed-there wouldn't be a Roanoke or Queen Elizabeth. A Mongol invasion or some alternate version thereof is still possible though not guaranteed.
 
Discussing stuff that happened in OTL over 500 years after the PoD is pretty pointless.
You are right about Roanoke Island, that would have been butterflied away. But greater Western Europe efforts to colonize the Americas rather than attempt to exert power in the Indian Ocean are general trends that might happen as a result of Greek dominance in the Indian Ocean. Settlements to support cod fisheries on the island we know as Newfoundland is something that would have happened once Europeans started fishing in that area regardless of any historical divergences.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
If the Greeks aren't overly onerous with being middlemen the incentive to go west will be less though I still suspect the Americas will be discovered by 1600 at the absolute latest.

Unless for some reason sailing technology doesn't advance as quickly.

But the Americas will be discovered by 1630 I think at the absolute latest,

Assuming reasonably OTL rates of sailing technology advancement then that is too long.

Assuming a delay of even a hundred or two hundred years I still think the Americas will be contacted.
 
Regarding Byzantium, this is just one of those PoDs that's basically whatever you want to make of it. Maybe the Byzantines fall to the Bolghars (or an analogous Turkic-nomadic group, or even Iranian), or maybe not. Maybe they get stomped by some *Catholic state to the West, maybe they hold their own, or maybe there's nothing even resembling the Schism - and therefore the OTL distinction between "East" and "West" - at all.

Islam threw such a wrench in the Mediterranean world that it's pretty much impossible to fit the pieces together without it.


Yet even in the face of Islam, Eastern and Western Christendom weren't really reconciled. W/O it, presumably the split comes even earlier.
 
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Byzantine type states might have spawned settler regimes in Australia and New Zealand a century or more before the British got at, China ound to it (in OTL) at the beginning of the 19th century. ...

Why? Neither India, China nor Japan ever did so, and they are closer to Australasia than Byzantium is. Nor of course did the Ottoman Empire, which is, geographically, pretty much a revived ERE under new management.
 
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ar-pharazon

Banned
The geopolitics of the Indian Ocean region and the balance of power really will impact if Byzantium can have a successful Indian Ocean policy,

The ottomans tried and had as I understand it rather mixed success and were largely defeated in the region by the Portuguese.
 
"General Western European trends"? I don't think so. By the 7th century, these trends were the disappearance of functional statehood, decreasing long-distance trade, entrenchment of parallel church power...
The economic revival and technological Progress of the high Middle Ages and the Portuguese maritime adventurism are by far no General W European Trends, not with a POD in the 7th c.
 
The Byzantines, if they had stayed strong through the Renaissance and into the 17th century, might have played an important role in technological developments leading to the industrial revolution.

Is there any particular reason to expect that? Spain and other Mediterranean countries played little part in the early IR, nor did the OE which was similar to Byzantium geographically.
 
I think it's pretty naive to assume the Age of Exploration even happens in this timeline. Pretty much everything in the modern era is potentially butterflied here. Let alone that if it still happens, the Romans and Persians don't get involved.

No. There are certain things that are going to happen and can't be avoided, then there are things that could happen. That Byzantine surviving to present day is something that that could happen.

The discovery of the Americas is something that is going to happen regardless, therefor the weakening of the major trade route these two Empires thrive off of is also going to happen.

Nationalism and liberalism are also things that are going to happen. As education increases and the standard of living improves throughout the world, Nationalistic movements and Liberalism are going to be consequences of it. You can redefine aspects of them, but they will still come regardless.
 
No. There are certain things that are going to happen and can't be avoided, then there are things that could happen. That Byzantine surviving to present day is something that that could happen.

The discovery of the Americas is something that is going to happen regardless, therefor the weakening of the major trade route these two Empires thrive off of is also going to happen.

Nationalism and liberalism are also things that are going to happen. As education increases and the standard of living improves throughout the world, Nationalistic movements and Liberalism are going to be consequences of it. You can redefine aspects of them, but they will still come regardless.

I think your thinking is too deterministic. With a Pod in 630 you think that nationalism, an idea that was born around 1800 cant be avoided? There are a lot of prerequisits for it to ever appear. It could come sooner, later or not at all. But saying it will come 100% is nonsense. Same for liberalism.
 
I think your thinking is too deterministic. With a Pod in 630 you think that nationalism, an idea that was born around 1800 cant be avoided? There are a lot of prerequisits for it to ever appear. It could come sooner, later or not at all. But saying it will come 100% is nonsense. Same for liberalism.

I thought Scotland was getting kinda nationalistic by c1300 if not earlier.
 

Deleted member 97083

I think your thinking is too deterministic. With a Pod in 630 you think that nationalism, an idea that was born around 1800 cant be avoided? There are a lot of prerequisits for it to ever appear. It could come sooner, later or not at all. But saying it will come 100% is nonsense. Same for liberalism.
Well the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire were basically nationalist in many ways in their devotion to Rome and willingness to ignore the customs of other polities in favor of Rome's which they thought was the only legitimate one. Not to mention their view of barbarians, or the extreme mobilization of the resources of the state that occurred as early as the Second Punic War.

While the late Roman Empire had the concept of Romanitas quite similar to the concept of a nation.
 
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