Pre 1900 non Confederate cliches

Status
Not open for further replies.

samcster94

Banned
We all know that the Confederacy is the most troped pre 1900 subjected on this site. What are the most common cliches about other pre 1900 subjects, whether Islam, China, or even Ancient Greece???
 
Lithuania the Fusion Partner. Happens more often in WI discussions than actual timelines (mostly for the simple fact that you could count the number of Late Medieval timelines where Eastern Europe is even mentioned on the hand of an amputee), but whenever discussion steers about Medieval Lithuania, someone eventually either brings up the Union of Krewo, or assumes that Lithuania will enter a personal union with Poland even with a POD before 1385.

The reality is that the Polish-Lithuanian union was one of the most coincidental events in the history of Eastern Europe, it had exactly zero precedent or buildup before it happened and it required so many events and situations to align that it can easily be butterflied away with a POD less than a decade before Krewo.

An another common cliche is that once the Union of Krewo is signed, Lithuania is completely content with being a junior partner to Poland and the Commonwealth will be founded as OTL.

In reality, the Lithuanians resented the union with Poland, and searched for any possible opportunity to break it - and they did, twice.
 
There was 30% Christians in the Roman Empire around 300 and Christian triumph was somehow magically "inevitable".

(Actual historians peg it at 5-10 percent and it probably would have gone no where/ been wiped out once Roman stability collapsed without Constantine)

There are other variations of this but this is the most common.
 
There was 30% Christians in the Roman Empire around 300 and Christian triumph was somehow magically "inevitable".

(Actual historians peg it at 5-10 percent and it probably would have gone no where/ been wiped out once Roman stability collapsed without Constantine)

There are other variations of this but this is the most common.

Let's look at the city of Byzantium after Constatine... yup Christianity triumph is inevitable.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Here are some I've noticed:

-- "Inevitable revanchism!" The idea that any country that loses a conflict and has to pay an indemnity or surrender contested territory will then hate the opposing nation for all time. In reality, countries lost - and won - conflicts all throughout history, and revanchism wasn't a central factor in a lot of cases. Mostly, actual geopolitical interests decided who was to be the enemy in a future conflict, and who had been the enemy a generation back was typically of far less importance.

-- "Switzerland can't be invaded!" In reality, Switzerland was successfully invaded repeatedly. Like when the French set up the Helvetic Republic. It just managed to reassert its independence afterwards.

-- "White people in South Africa are always evil racists!" No. Just no. Apartheid was a relatively recent invention, and a perversion of a well-intentioned scheme to turn all of Southern Africa into a federal league of national homelands for all cultural/ethnic groups. There are about a million ways in which South African history could have gone way, way better than it unfortunately did in OTL.

-- "Zheng He discovers America!" It's not actually that plausible, but it just keeps showing up.
 
Britain always colonizing India.

The colonization of India was a very close-run thing. It took a lot of luck, from the Mughals suddenly collapsing, to Siraj-ud-Daulah losing a close war, to Tipu Sultan losing a couple close wars, the Marathas suffering civil wars, and then finally the Sikhs facing chronic instability right when the British set their eyes towards them. Suffice to say, a bunch of nonsensical coincidences.
 
Here are some I've noticed:

-- "Inevitable revanchism!" The idea that any country that loses a conflict and has to pay an indemnity or surrender contested territory will then hate the opposing nation for all time. In reality, countries lost - and won - conflicts all throughout history, and revanchism wasn't a central factor in a lot of cases. Mostly, actual geopolitical interests decided who was to be the enemy in a future conflict, and who had been the enemy a generation back was typically of far less importance.

This is often part of the big AH trope of portraying nations as people with human feelings. Nations don't always develop eternal rivalries à la Venice and Genoa.

-- "Zheng He discovers America!" It's not actually that plausible, but it just keeps showing up.

It's near ASB IMO. It's one of those ridiculous scenarios that got popular and now people think of it as a standard AH scenario when it really shouldn't be.
 
Top
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top