I have been trying to think of ways to reframe the scenario to get it to be able to be published on the Before 1900 forum. What if, in 400 A.D., a large fleet of soldiers, settlers, and their wives and children is sent from Gades or some other Roman port to Britannia in order to reinforce the Roman presence in the province and to help maintain control over it. I don't know how many people such a fleet would contain, but I would like it if they had between 1,000 and 10,000 people. Whatever number is more realistic will have to do. They get blown off course by a storm that is strong enough to blow them into a current that takes them across the Atlantic, but not strong enough to sink the entire fleet. Maybe a couple ships get sunk, but nothing too dramatic (such as the entire food supply of the fleet being lost). I could change the time period if that is necessary, to a date such as 200 A.D. or 300 A.D. Anyways, if they left from a port in Iberia I am pretty sure they will be blown Southwest by the winds and currents and then across the Atlantic. If they sail North by looking at the stars and thinking that if they sail North they should reach Britannia, we might be able to have them land in the Eastern US. I would prefer if they landed somewhere in the North or Mid-Atlantic, so that mosquitos and swamp diseases aren't an issue.
Another scenario could be that, at any time between the first and fourth centuries AD, the Romans send out a series of expeditions for a reason that can be decided on later. They take the route that goes from the Canaries to Cape Verde to the Lesser Antilles and finally North to the Eastern US. I say a series of expeditions because if, for some reason, the Emperor at the time decides to send out a few expeditions, I can have them land in different parts of the East Coast so that different subcultures emerge. This would be interesting, and I might be able to make use of some sort of conflict between colonies in the Carolinas fighting colonies in Georgia and in New England, or something like that. It would help to make the timeline much more interesting when I write it, instead of it being a 1,000-year tale of a unified empire gradually pushing West to the Mississippi and possibly the Rocky Mountains.
I tried to write a prologue and the first three chapters of the timeline yesterday, and that was when I realized that I don't exactly have any of this figured out yet. So I will continue to use this thread to ask questions concerning the TL. This being said, I had a question about how long it would take to settle certain areas of land. When the Romans land, depending on whether they land as one large group or as several smaller expeditions of a few hundred people each over the course of a couple years or so, they will probably be forced to stay in cities this, with different house designs of course, instead of the large cities they were used to.
We might see the development of fortifications and fortified cities due to the very real threat of being annihilated by Native American attacks. I doubt this will be anything like the castles seen in Europe, but that is a possibility if the the Romans slip up and allow the knowledge of metallurgy and other advanced concepts to spread to the fledgling Mississippian civilizations when they develop in 800 AD. If that were to happen, the Romans would face a formidable opponent and would likely see their expansion halted. With these smaller settlements being established rather than massive cities like in Europe, I began to think how the pace of settlement would be affected. Assuming the Romans for whatever reason are forced to have these boundaries for a few centuries, how long would it be until their lands became thoroughly developed and settled?
English settlement began in 1607 and, from what I have heard, the lands East of the Proclamation line were mostly settled by the time the American Revolution ended. At first, I assumed that this meant that after 170 years or so the Americo-Romans would have settled these lands. However, since circumstances are different, it may take longer. How long would it be until you couldn't just walk around and see miles of endless wilderness, but instead almost every available acre of suitable land has a farm, orchard, vineyard, or ranch on it, and roads are everywhere? This is referring to the darker shade of persimmon on the map above, not the lighter shade that shows lands that were acquired by the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris.
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