Gorgeous! This will be super helpful for deciding where to put reasonable borders when making maps.
Map Thread XVII
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Gorgeous! This will be super helpful for deciding where to put reasonable borders when making maps.
fashbasher
Banned
The largest semi-plausible Madagascar I could come up with (I don't think Australia is feasible unless Malagasy circumnavigate the earth because Austronesian seafaring)
I mean, semi feasible in what terms, over what time scale, with what POD?
The largest semi-plausible Madagascar I could come up with (I don't think Australia is feasible unless Malagasy circumnavigate the earth because Austronesian seafaring)
@BryanIII I spotted a little typo/error in the French. It should be the Zone d'Occupation Anglo-Flamande en Picardie. Also, maybe it should be de Picardie instead of en? Unless you want it as the Zone in Picardie imstead of thr Zone of Picardie.
Otherwise, god, I love that style of map.
Otherwise, god, I love that style of map.
Ha, you're right.. good eye there! And yes, it's 'en Picardie' because the Thiérarche is the other part of Picardy which is still controlled by France
Glad you asked!, well originally the French were muscling up against the siamese people when they were colonizing indochina, which gave them a slump in progress in the eastern part, however the British, having a more successful conquest of Burma would be in a great position to team up with the french, at the time the British would be able to weigh the dividing of thailand into their favor, giving them all of modern day thailand, however previous siamese territories which make up parts of modern day vietnam, laos and cambodia would be given to the French.
For Iran, due to the victory in the second anglo afghan war, the british are no longer forced to play the great game and can focus much more of their resources on increasing their influence in Iran, they, much like our timeline, easily gain influence in the southern 2/3rds of the country over time, however earlier than IOTL, then after a series of persian gulf conflicts and pressure of land invasions through afghanistan, the British eventually manage to take Iran over time,
Turkey, mind you the year is 1920, at this time IOTL Ataturk's republic had not been established, and if we were to say that the British had now by this point in time a greater amount of leverage over the French, they could leave the dividing up of the Ottoman empire to themselves, thus allowing them to take what would've been french syria, and southern turkey which was mostly french occupied, the western parts of turkey were Italian occupied at the time, basically the British manage to muscle out the coasts of Turkey before the Italians could being occupying the western coast, and they were able to keep the french out of the middle east, furthermore, due to the fact that the British were the sole border developers of the former ottoman empire, they chose to expand and take up much more of turkey purely for places such as Istanbul, and the armenian region, so that fortifications could be established in the caucasuses to move the great game there and slow down Russia Expansion interests.
How do you figure that Australia is flat-out impossible , when that requires almost entirely just coast-hugging or narrow strait crossing, while South America is plausible, which requires a trans-oceanic crossing?
Perhaps he means western Australia is mostly desert, discouraging any traveler getting there by coast-hugging. (The north is greener, but I have been informed has terrible soil for growing anything not adapted to local conditions).
The west coast is essentially tropical rainforest and Mangrove, perfectly adapted to South Western India. But the highlands (which strike me as the most likely location for state-formation) are certainly quite unique.
I can't see Madagascar dominating a straight empire. The environment is too diverse, and people get there too late in the game.
What I could see is a more thalassocratic-type deal.
The Malays are, after all, some of the best sailors in the world, second only to the Polynesians. They managed to survive the transit across the Indian Ocean, after all. When they arrived in Madagascar, though, they seem to have abandoned maritime practice - not entirely, but it certainly became a more marginal activity. This was likely due to the opportunities presented by the interior - after all, it's a vast, unspoiled wilderness full of game and land. Why stick to the limited coastline when you could be a king out in the woods?
It seems to me, therefore, that the secret to keeping the Malagasy maritime will somewhat counter-intuitively be to get Madagascar already inhabited. If there's a Bushman population crowding up the interior, it won't be so unspoiled nor so easy to strike off on your own.
The coastlines are what you know, what your cultural package is optimized to deal with. You have the know-how to outcompete whatever Bushman fishermen may have set up shot, and make the whole coast yours. The interior, on the other hand? You don't have a toolkit for that, you don't know the paths, you don't know how to negotiate with the hunter-gatherers. The safest option is to live off the fat of the sea.
Now, of course, fishing isn't going to provide everything. Just as in OTL people would have used their desire to expand and enrich themselves to settle the interior, here you have people sailing arther and farther afield.
The Comoros get settled pretty quickly, a big settlement boom. From there, some ships are going to get swept away by the Alguhas Current, taking them straight to the Cape. Eventually, due to how great of sailors the Malays are, they're going to find their way back. Depending on how they do that, it may be a straight shot to Madagascar, or it could be a trip that leads to the discovery of the Prince Edward Islands, Bouvet Island, the Mascarene Isles, Australia, maybe even Antarctica.
But the most important discovery is the Cape. For most of its history, the Cape was practically empty. It became somewhat full around 100 AD when a Hottentot people settled it, but they were spread quite thin, and are not going to be able to put up much resistance. The cape is mild country, large, ideal for agriculture. Once word gets back to Madagascar, there's going to be a colonization craze.
By this point, extensive contact has no doubt been made with the proto-Swahili. Trade of Malagasy luxury goods and slaves occurs, and Malayan traders could well be sailing into the Persian Gulf and to Ceylon. They probably get a reputation as some of the best pilots around. The immigration of Persians to the Swahili coast is likely butterflied entirely - if anything, you see a significant Malagasy immigration onto the Swahili coast and the Horn.
Barring something weird happening (like the development of a strong indigenous religion or the adoption of Zoroastrianism or Christianity (Prester John, anyone?)) , the spread of Islam around the 10th-12th century is likely inevitable. By this point, Malagasian emirates are probably some of the big boys on the block when it comes to trade. ITTL, Great Zimbabwe and the Great Lakes states are Malagasy satellites, their economies based around gathering slaves and luxury goods to trade off to coastal merchants, who in turn sell them up north.
Sailors out of the Cape will sail around the Cape. They'll find little of interest on the way, probably plopping down colonies up and down the Namib coast. They probably get pretty freaked out by the Skeleton Coast, but if they press on, they're going to reach the real goldmine: the Congo.
No trade has been established with Europe, nor have any the advanced kingdoms of the region we know and love. Kongo, Anziku, Loango - none of them exist. Instead, we got some excellent sites for ports and forts that are relatively uninhabited. Luanda, Cabinda, Boma, and Leopoldville will end up forming the nexus for Malagasy-dominated emirates. They likely realize that this river is one that they're traders have seen on the other side of the continent. The realization that water transport down the Zaire and round the cape is faster than overland transport could really fuck with the economy of the region. Maybe some guy pulls a Stanley and crosses the Continent, from Boma to Zanzibar.
Now, at this point, we begin to run into trouble thanks to the tyranny of time and space. The Gabon Coast is similarly settled itrading outposts, but then the Malagasy run into Benin, and the other kingdoms of the Pepper Coast.They remain important traders, maybe even get trading concessions, but these well-organized states and chiefdoms will prove too much for what amounts to merchant adventurers. By the 15th century, they will have reached their limit.
If the Malagasy do indeed choose to press on beyond the Cape, they will almost certainly end up being swept away to Brazil, and they'll probably get back too. Whether or not this really matters is a different matter: this will occur relatively late in the age of Malagasy exploration (around the 13th-15th century), a fairly brief window before the Europeans arrive and mess stuff up. Brazil wood trading is possible, and so is a settler colony of Afro-Malagasy.
So, in review, we have Malagasy derived states in Madagascar itself (likely eventually subsuming the Bushmen), up and down the Swahili Coast all the way to the Horn, a Cape dominated by a settler colony, trading kingdoms and elite colonies up to Libreville, maybe with concessions in the kingdoms of Guinea. They certainly settled the Seychelles, the Mascarenes, and the Chagos. Less certainly, Australia (at least the West coast), St. Helena and the other South Atlantic Isles, Brazil, perhaps Ceylon and Deccan through marriage or conquest.
Not too shabby for a boat full of Barito castaways.
What I could see is a more thalassocratic-type deal.
The Malays are, after all, some of the best sailors in the world, second only to the Polynesians. They managed to survive the transit across the Indian Ocean, after all. When they arrived in Madagascar, though, they seem to have abandoned maritime practice - not entirely, but it certainly became a more marginal activity. This was likely due to the opportunities presented by the interior - after all, it's a vast, unspoiled wilderness full of game and land. Why stick to the limited coastline when you could be a king out in the woods?
It seems to me, therefore, that the secret to keeping the Malagasy maritime will somewhat counter-intuitively be to get Madagascar already inhabited. If there's a Bushman population crowding up the interior, it won't be so unspoiled nor so easy to strike off on your own.
The coastlines are what you know, what your cultural package is optimized to deal with. You have the know-how to outcompete whatever Bushman fishermen may have set up shot, and make the whole coast yours. The interior, on the other hand? You don't have a toolkit for that, you don't know the paths, you don't know how to negotiate with the hunter-gatherers. The safest option is to live off the fat of the sea.
Now, of course, fishing isn't going to provide everything. Just as in OTL people would have used their desire to expand and enrich themselves to settle the interior, here you have people sailing arther and farther afield.
The Comoros get settled pretty quickly, a big settlement boom. From there, some ships are going to get swept away by the Alguhas Current, taking them straight to the Cape. Eventually, due to how great of sailors the Malays are, they're going to find their way back. Depending on how they do that, it may be a straight shot to Madagascar, or it could be a trip that leads to the discovery of the Prince Edward Islands, Bouvet Island, the Mascarene Isles, Australia, maybe even Antarctica.
But the most important discovery is the Cape. For most of its history, the Cape was practically empty. It became somewhat full around 100 AD when a Hottentot people settled it, but they were spread quite thin, and are not going to be able to put up much resistance. The cape is mild country, large, ideal for agriculture. Once word gets back to Madagascar, there's going to be a colonization craze.
By this point, extensive contact has no doubt been made with the proto-Swahili. Trade of Malagasy luxury goods and slaves occurs, and Malayan traders could well be sailing into the Persian Gulf and to Ceylon. They probably get a reputation as some of the best pilots around. The immigration of Persians to the Swahili coast is likely butterflied entirely - if anything, you see a significant Malagasy immigration onto the Swahili coast and the Horn.
Barring something weird happening (like the development of a strong indigenous religion or the adoption of Zoroastrianism or Christianity (Prester John, anyone?)) , the spread of Islam around the 10th-12th century is likely inevitable. By this point, Malagasian emirates are probably some of the big boys on the block when it comes to trade. ITTL, Great Zimbabwe and the Great Lakes states are Malagasy satellites, their economies based around gathering slaves and luxury goods to trade off to coastal merchants, who in turn sell them up north.
Sailors out of the Cape will sail around the Cape. They'll find little of interest on the way, probably plopping down colonies up and down the Namib coast. They probably get pretty freaked out by the Skeleton Coast, but if they press on, they're going to reach the real goldmine: the Congo.
No trade has been established with Europe, nor have any the advanced kingdoms of the region we know and love. Kongo, Anziku, Loango - none of them exist. Instead, we got some excellent sites for ports and forts that are relatively uninhabited. Luanda, Cabinda, Boma, and Leopoldville will end up forming the nexus for Malagasy-dominated emirates. They likely realize that this river is one that they're traders have seen on the other side of the continent. The realization that water transport down the Zaire and round the cape is faster than overland transport could really fuck with the economy of the region. Maybe some guy pulls a Stanley and crosses the Continent, from Boma to Zanzibar.
Now, at this point, we begin to run into trouble thanks to the tyranny of time and space. The Gabon Coast is similarly settled itrading outposts, but then the Malagasy run into Benin, and the other kingdoms of the Pepper Coast.They remain important traders, maybe even get trading concessions, but these well-organized states and chiefdoms will prove too much for what amounts to merchant adventurers. By the 15th century, they will have reached their limit.
If the Malagasy do indeed choose to press on beyond the Cape, they will almost certainly end up being swept away to Brazil, and they'll probably get back too. Whether or not this really matters is a different matter: this will occur relatively late in the age of Malagasy exploration (around the 13th-15th century), a fairly brief window before the Europeans arrive and mess stuff up. Brazil wood trading is possible, and so is a settler colony of Afro-Malagasy.
So, in review, we have Malagasy derived states in Madagascar itself (likely eventually subsuming the Bushmen), up and down the Swahili Coast all the way to the Horn, a Cape dominated by a settler colony, trading kingdoms and elite colonies up to Libreville, maybe with concessions in the kingdoms of Guinea. They certainly settled the Seychelles, the Mascarenes, and the Chagos. Less certainly, Australia (at least the West coast), St. Helena and the other South Atlantic Isles, Brazil, perhaps Ceylon and Deccan through marriage or conquest.
Not too shabby for a boat full of Barito castaways.
fashbasher
Banned
Because it would no longer be part of Madagascar as it would be in completely the opposite direction from the Barito homeland in Borneo. An Austronesian settlement there is likely, but an Austronesian settlement with a Malagasy character? Improbable. It almost certainly would fall under the rule of a local Indonesian polity unless the Barito conquer Java too.
Next instalment of my Christendom-screw circa 1250.
The King Vladimir of Lechia inherited the Saxon-Bohemian throne establishing the Great Baltic Empire (A.K.A. The Great Heathen Empire, the Neo-Hunnic Empire, the Lechian-Saxon Empire and the Dar al-Haram). After consolidating his rule he then proceeded to flex his new-found power in a series of conquests seeking to emulate and rebuild the old Saxon Empire at its height annexing the Geats, long-serving vassals of the Saxons, and the Magyars, as well as pushing the Romano-Bulgarians back to the Danube and making deep incursions into the Rus'. Despite their victories they are not invincible. The Baltic armies are significantly overextended and their expansion has been halted in a series of crushing defeats, the Baltic navy has been all but destroyed due to attempting to wars with the Thalassocratic Livonians and a disastrous attempted invasion of Britain and their rapid expansion has alienated all of their neighbours who are uniting against them.
In Volga Bulgaria intermarriage between the ruling Khans and the Abbasid exiles has resulted in the title of Khan and Caliph effectively merging and the Volga Caliphate has emerged as the chief power and self-proclaimed leaders of Islam on the steppe.
In the East the once mighty Khazar Empire has dissolved into several kingdoms due to a messy succession crisis exacerbated by a growing cultural rift within Khazar society, between the more urbanised Khazars around the coast of the Black Sea and the more traditional semi-nomadic Khazars in the east, as well as several subject peoples taking the opportunity to assert their independence.
The Romano-Bulgarians have experienced a bit of a mixed bag. Although they have lost ground in Europe and have been unable to successfully make incursions into pagan Illyria they have been able to solidify their position in Asia Minor and the Levant, the reestablished Kingdom of Judea ultimately being de jure absorbed into the Empire, and with the collapse of the Khazars they are the undisputed political leaders of Eurasian Jewry.
Facing incursions from the East and West the Rus', Livonians and remnants of Prussia have united into a Commonwealth. Combining the sea power of the Livonians with the military strength of the Rus', along with their close relations with the Sveas, the Russo-Livonian Commonwealth is the undisputed master of the Northern Baltic and chief barrier to Lechia-Saxony's eastern expansion.
The Ruman Caliphate are beginning to face setbacks on their periphery losing territory in Italy, Africa and Greece whilst their previously warm relations with Romano-Bulgarians have broken down.
The King Vladimir of Lechia inherited the Saxon-Bohemian throne establishing the Great Baltic Empire (A.K.A. The Great Heathen Empire, the Neo-Hunnic Empire, the Lechian-Saxon Empire and the Dar al-Haram). After consolidating his rule he then proceeded to flex his new-found power in a series of conquests seeking to emulate and rebuild the old Saxon Empire at its height annexing the Geats, long-serving vassals of the Saxons, and the Magyars, as well as pushing the Romano-Bulgarians back to the Danube and making deep incursions into the Rus'. Despite their victories they are not invincible. The Baltic armies are significantly overextended and their expansion has been halted in a series of crushing defeats, the Baltic navy has been all but destroyed due to attempting to wars with the Thalassocratic Livonians and a disastrous attempted invasion of Britain and their rapid expansion has alienated all of their neighbours who are uniting against them.
In Volga Bulgaria intermarriage between the ruling Khans and the Abbasid exiles has resulted in the title of Khan and Caliph effectively merging and the Volga Caliphate has emerged as the chief power and self-proclaimed leaders of Islam on the steppe.
In the East the once mighty Khazar Empire has dissolved into several kingdoms due to a messy succession crisis exacerbated by a growing cultural rift within Khazar society, between the more urbanised Khazars around the coast of the Black Sea and the more traditional semi-nomadic Khazars in the east, as well as several subject peoples taking the opportunity to assert their independence.
The Romano-Bulgarians have experienced a bit of a mixed bag. Although they have lost ground in Europe and have been unable to successfully make incursions into pagan Illyria they have been able to solidify their position in Asia Minor and the Levant, the reestablished Kingdom of Judea ultimately being de jure absorbed into the Empire, and with the collapse of the Khazars they are the undisputed political leaders of Eurasian Jewry.
Facing incursions from the East and West the Rus', Livonians and remnants of Prussia have united into a Commonwealth. Combining the sea power of the Livonians with the military strength of the Rus', along with their close relations with the Sveas, the Russo-Livonian Commonwealth is the undisputed master of the Northern Baltic and chief barrier to Lechia-Saxony's eastern expansion.
The Ruman Caliphate are beginning to face setbacks on their periphery losing territory in Italy, Africa and Greece whilst their previously warm relations with Romano-Bulgarians have broken down.
See my post above yours. Malagasy regularly getting swept away en-route to the Cape is basically an inevitability thanks to the currents. Once they get the hang of it (which I have no doubt they eventually will with stars and dead reckoning), sailing from Madagascar to the Cape to Australia and back again will be a cake wlak.
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