Brunaburh
Banned
You would get tonnes of dual cities like the ones you see on the river borders in South American Mesopotamia. Which would be ace.
You would get tonnes of dual cities like the ones you see on the river borders in South American Mesopotamia. Which would be ace.
The problem is the Mississippi River's often severe floods, which were noted as a problem as soon as Europeans arrived--obviously American Indians noticed it earlier, since the largest Mississippian and earlier sites have their centers in whatever places were least vulnerable to flooding. That acts as a constraint to city growth. I'm not sure if the Uruguay and Paraná have as bad of flooding issues as the Mississippi has had.
But looking at the Mississippi and potential pairs of cities, we have quite a few cities of note. Tallulah, Louisiana would be larger due to cross-border trade with Vicksburg, Mississippi. Vidalia, Louisiana would benefit thanks to Natchez, Mississippi. Maybe Lake Village or Monticello in Arkansas would be larger thanks to Greenville, Mississippi. I've gone on at length about *Arkansas-Tennessee border cities/close enough to the border. We can definitely assume Cairo, Illinois will be larger and more important than OTL, even though it's a very poor site for a major city thanks to the massive flood risk. It might have a counterpart in Charleston, Missouri. Somewhere around East Cape Girardeau might be larger than OTL, and north of Baton Rouge, although smaller than *Cape Girardeau proper which would be the first city on the west bank of the Mississippi which is larger than its counterpart on the east bank. There would be a lot of other city pairs, although the biggest would be St. Louis/East St. Louis, the Quad Cities area, and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Also long as we're discussing this hypothetical nation with its eastern border at the Mississippi, it would also make sense that the treaties which establish its borders give it access to Lake Superior. This would leave the site of Duluth, Minnesota within the country's borders, and probably lead to Duluth being much larger than OTL being that it's an outlet to the Atlantic.
I don't know if it has already been mentioned, but what about Lyon, France?
It's built in a confluence, and is in a nice spot connecting France and Italy.
It's built in a confluence, and is in a nice spot connecting France and Italy.
Oh, and seeming that many are mentioning US cities around here, let me ask:
In a scenario wherea advanced native american civilizations are more widespread, to the point of reaching the territory of the OTL USA (maybe a PoD in more north american creatures surviving the quaternary extinction process, with some becoming beasts of burden), which places do you think would be practical as capitals or entrepôts?
In a scenario wherea advanced native american civilizations are more widespread, to the point of reaching the territory of the OTL USA (maybe a PoD in more north american creatures surviving the quaternary extinction process, with some becoming beasts of burden), which places do you think would be practical as capitals or entrepôts?
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Anchorage is only as big as it is because Alaska isn't connected to Canada. Anchorage was nothing until the Alaska Railroad was built. I'm not even sure why Anchorage was chosen as the railroad headquarters, the terminus was Seward and Anchorage was just a convenient place to house the tie hacks and so on. It's not an exceptional harbor or anything like that.
If you want to access the Yukon-Tanana goldfields, why not just do it by river barge from Whitehorse? It's sensible to have a decent-sized port somewhere on the Alaska coast to access the Yukon drainage, but I think that Skagway (going over the Chilkoot) makes the most sense. Valdez or Cordova are as good of candidates as Anchorage, and would make as good of airports.
Anchorage has only grown as much as it has since the gold rush because of U.S. defense spending and its strategic location for air transport, plus Alaska needs somewhere for administrative and business headquarters (Juneau is only nominally the capitol, there are more State offices in Anchorage).
A Canadian-Alaskan power that was looking to develop the North more could build a railroad to the Yukon from the south, which would obviate the need for a medium city on the Alaska coast. Anchorage is on the bigger end of ATL Alaska cities.
The best place to access the Mat-Su from the sea is...Anchorage. Palmer and Wasilla are only as significant as they are because they're suburbs/exurbs of Anchorage. The Mat-Su is a fairly marginal agricultural area and there's very limited agricultural potential in the interior. There is some farming on the Tanana around Fairbanks and Delta Junction, but it's basically on state-supported life support and it would be hard to imagine scenarios in which there would be more.
There's nothing of value on the Yukon below the junction with the Tanana and you have a long hazardous way to go from the river mouth to the Tanana. Accessing the Yukon overland is much more sensible, plus ships have a long way to go out of their way into the Bering Sea to get at it.
The Copper isn't navigable, Kennecott was accessed by rail from Cordova when the mines were active, though Valdez would have been equally possible. There is limited cattle ranching on the Copper, but agriculture isn't really possible.
I don't think you fully appreciate the climate and terrain challenges in Alaska. There are not virgin prairies out there in the permafrost awaiting eager pioneers. Alaska is very populous and developed compared to how things could have gone.
Anchorage is a great air port because of the great circle route, but it's mediocre as a sea port for a host of reasons. Japanese rule would be one way in which Alaska could possibly be more developed than OTL, but I have no idea how you'd go about coming up with a Japanese Alaska in any kind of plausible way.
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But Palmer and Wasilla are further inland than Anchorage along/near the Knik Arm, which means less transportation to the sea. Could a port further inland take the place of Anchorage?
What I'm visualising for Alaska is a scenario with an entirely different sort of colonisation than OTL. Parts of Russia (like Arkhangelsk, Transbaikalia), Sweden (Norrland), and Finland (Pohjanmaa) which have significant amounts of people have similar climates. Maybe medieval colonisation by a highly divergent Japan causes a more populous and different Alaska? Hardy Japanese peasants could eke out a living in certain areas growing barley and buckwheat (in later eras potato or even quinoa), with the economy later becoming much like Siberia's with extensive mining and fossil fuel extraction. Of course, aside from the problem of how Japan gets to that position, there's the problem that our Japanese explorers would inevitably find the much nicer lands of the Pacific Northwest leaving Alaska as simply a stop on a place to somewhere else. And a later 19th century Japan obtaining Alaska (which would be quite an achievement in diplomacy) probably wouldn't get the same results medieval colonisation might, although would result in a more populous Alaska earlier assuming an even harder US stance against Japanese immigration, eager Japanese efforts for colonisation (Karafuto and Nan'you gained a very large amount of Japanese relatively quickly, so in theory might Alaska amount to such, especially since it would have even more time?), and of course a Japanese government not willing to go for suicidal wars against the United States or British Empire. Essentially, Alaska would be Japan's Siberia in this case, and really in most any scenario of Japanese colonisation.
The Dalles, Oregon, was the site of one of the major trading centers for American Indians for thousands of years thanks to its place on a portage on the Columbia River. So it seems inevitable that it might be the site of considerable importance.
The historic outlets of the Mississippi are interesting. If you have an early enough civilisation which would need to include far-reaching maritime trade with Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, you might get a sizable center (an equivalent to New Orleans) along the Bayou Teche. After around 800 BC or so, the course of the Mississippi might stil change leaving the city along the Bayou Teche a village surrounded by impressive ruins as a new center along the Bayou Lafourche rises to replace it. Around 1,000 AD, the current course of the Mississippi will likely become established (barring some insane river control systems and some serious luck with floods, note that even the US can't stop the Mississippi from changing course without luck with flooding as we've had and very expensive modern engineering efforts), ensuring the quick decay of the civilisation in that area and the rise of a new major center around New Orleans/Baton Rouge.
A lot of major cities in the Eastern US are natural sites for major centers to build, since the same thing that made them so attractive to white settlers made them attractive to the American Indians before them. St. Louis is an obvious example, considering Cahokia and other mound complexes on the site. Nashville, Tennessee is another example, since the area had significant Indian settlement since there were Indians to begin with, as well as having a large population into the Mississippian period. The area has fertile land, is well watered, and has good river transportation links along the Cumberland and its tributaries. It would thus make for a suitable capital for a regional empire.
In general, the easiest way to discern potential major centers for more developed Native American civilisations is to look for areas where the archaeological record is extensive and archaeological sites are extensively clustered. Now, I don't think a Native American empire the size of the United States (even without Alaska) is possible unless we're talking about some sort of "North American Union" or something, since the region is simply too diverse (multiple centers of civilisation, just like the Old World) and too big for that too happen, unless you have it all be colonised by one power India/Indonesia style. Although IMO, I'd put the capital around St. Louis if we needed a capital of North America, since it's centrally located, especially if you have extensive improvements on the Missouri River to allow for navigation for large boats as far inland as Great Falls, Montana. The main problem with St. Louis is that it's right on the Great Plains, where as OTL demonstrates, is prime territory for a horse nomad culture which means it's in a similar position as Moscow or other centers of medieval Russia.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
You can't really build anything substantial on the north/west of Knik Arm because it's about 2 inches above sea level and the whole MatSu delta is a swamp, which is why there's nothing there now. The only port site on the Arm is Anchorage. Maybe Eagle River, which is an even smaller bowl than Anchorage, and I'm not sure if it's as suitable a port site. You could make the MatSu more accessible by building the Knik ferry or bridge, but those are pointless boondoggles in our timeline.
Again, the MatSu is really the only farmland in Alaska and it only got settled because the US government dumped tons of money on it in the 1930's. I'm not disagreeing that a hypothetical Japanese Alaska would be more developed than OTL, but I doubt it would be that much more. Alaska already compares very favorably to comparable areas in Siberia like Kolyma and Kamchatka. Alaska is not some neglected frontier awaiting hardy settlers with plows. Alaska (outside the panhandle) is a subarctic landscape which is very inhospitable to agricultural civilization. OTL is pretty close to being a best case scenario for Alaska, as an overseas colony of a rich country that's invested in developing it to motherland standards.
If we go back 10,000 years and give native Alaskans potatos and domesticated reindeer, you'd have much larger fishing villages that possibly approach the level of Pacific Northwest state societies, not civilization.
Perhaps Passau (in the confluence of the Danube, Inn, and Ilz rivers), if Austria and Bavaria had become united?
Maybe Bruges? During it's golden age (1280-1480) it was a major trading hub and was almost metropolitan in character, lots of foreign traders and artisans residing in the city. Around this time the inner city had about 35.000 to 40.000 inhabitants. If the silting of it's connection to the sea could be stopped, it surely wouldn't have known such a decline
Soest, which had been a member of the Hansa, if it avoids the Soest feud against the prince archbishop of Cologne, in which it finally won its' independence but, due to being free, but surrounded by the archbishopric of Cologne and economically blockaded, lost its' markets to its' main regional competitor in the Hansa, Dortmund. Today we might otherwise have a BVB Soest competing in the Champions League.
Zachariah
Banned
For somewhere that's tiny and insignificant by the modern day IOTL, but which could have been far greater and more important, how about the Welsh village of Aberffraw on the Isle of Anglesey, capital of the Kingdom of Gwynedd (and later the entire kingdom of Wales) and ancestral residence of the Welsh Royal House of Aberffraw? What if it had remained Wales' capital, and Wales had remained independent- perhaps even with King John electing to grant his son-in-law Llywelyn the Great Lordship over Norman Ireland as well, with Aberffraw becoming the capital of a united Kingdom of Wales and Ireland, and ideally situated to fill this role?
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Butte was the biggest city between the Continental Divide and the Sierras in 1917, when copper production there peaked. Bigger than Salt Lake, Boise, Reno, or Phoenix. I don't know if you'd have a Denver-sized city anywhere in Montana or Wyoming, but a Reno- or Boise-sized city in Montana is plausible. Extraction industry isn't likely to be the POD that gives you a big city, though. Butte shrank as the mines shrank, and oil and gas boomtowns don't last long. A medium-sized corporation like Micron in Boise (which was founded by capital from Simplot potatoes) or the casinos in Reno could make a small Montana city like Great Falls or Billings a lot bigger. If you move your POD far enough back and adjust the US/Canada border north or south, a city in Montana could serve Alberta's hinterlands and be a Calgary equivalent.
How about Gloucester in an *England divided east-west somehow? Maybe a stalled Anglo-Saxon migration.
Viana do Castelo would be the main port for Galicia/northern Portugal if those areas had fallen under the control of one nation (be it a unified Iberia or a Portugal which also includes Galicia). The city has a great port, and would draw off some (although not all) of the growth of Porto, Vigo, etc. to become a major city in the region.
Skallagrim
Banned
I'd like to express my agreement here. It's the first thing that came to my head (so I did a quick search, and saw someone else had already mentioned it). This was Charlemagne's royal/imperial city, after all. This us where his throne was. In any "surviving Carolinginan Empire" worth its salt, Aachen is the imperial capital and one of the most prominent cities in Europe. That fact that such an Empire would cover the better parts of France and Germany, and Aachen is in a nicely central location for that, would certainly help!