Rome SURVIVES (Imperium Romanorum)

The ultimate alternate history variation,but I know it's been done a lot. I've actually talked with some of the people I know,yes..we can give some reasons as to how the Roman Empire could have survived..but how would the rest of the world be? That..is where we tend to argue..

I've heard some say that if Rome survives,then Egypt would have to also..to provide balance. Unless Rome is just going to rule all of Europe to the Ural part of Russia and all of Africa if Egypt is not there to stop them. No doubt a Chinese or Mongol or Manchu empire would rule most or all of Asia.

But..the most interesting thing may be how the New World comes about..would Rome colonize it like the British,Spanish,Portuguese and French did? Or would Rome,Egypt and China ignore it..focusing on their own issues..leaving the Aborginies of the New World to develop on their own?

A super Aztec Empire covering all of Central America,northern South America and the American west? A Maya or Inca Empire over all of South America? What about Australia and New Zealand? A Hawaiian or Maori Empire?

Talk about Rome..as well as what the world would be like..again..
 
I've heard some say that if Rome survives,then Egypt would have to also..to provide balance. Unless Rome is just going to rule all of Europe to the Ural part of Russia and all of Africa if Egypt is not there to stop them. No doubt a Chinese or Mongol or Manchu empire would rule most or all of Asia.

Erm... Egypt was a backwater for its entire history bar a single short period around 1500-1200 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was moderately strong early on but by the time the Romans came around it was a paralyzed wreck. It was a Roman Ally/Protectorate/Tributary pretty much from the moment Rome looked East.

So why Egypt? Parthia or Persia strikes me as a much better (not to mention more historically accurate) counterbalance to Rome.

And you're also forgetting India; even the Mongols never conquered it, let alone the Chinese. (Well, yes, the Mughals did, but that was long after the Mongols everywhere else had crumbled to dust and in any event the Mughals turned into an Indian dynasty pretty quick anyhow.)
 
Erm... Egypt was a backwater for its entire history bar a single short period around 1500-1200 BC.

What?! The Nile was the center of one of the richest, most developed states on the planet from the 3rd millennium BC until the 1st, and remained a center of regional power right through today. There's a reason the Fatamids based themselves in Egypt.
 
What?! The Nile was the center of one of the richest, most developed states on the planet from the 3rd millennium BC until the 1st, and remained a center of regional power right through today. There's a reason the Fatamids based themselves in Egypt.

Yes, but politically Ancient Egypt was always kicked around from state to state. It didn't get out of the Bronze Age until the Assyrians took it over, for pete's sake, and after that it was just a prize to capture from whoever held it last.

Yes, the Fatimids were powerful. But they took the place over from outside, and in any event were long after the Classical period was over (I will admit I forgot the qualifier "Ancient Egypt". :eek:)

Putting Egypt in opposition to Rome is pretty laughable. Putting the Ptolemies in opposition to Rome is tough, and they weren't even Egyptian!
 
Problem - the Empire did survive, but in Istanbul. If you can find a way for Constantine to NOT build his capital in Byzantium, it would be interesting.
 
Problem - the Empire did survive, but in Istanbul. If you can find a way for Constantine to NOT build his capital in Byzantium, it would be interesting.

Constantine acted logically when he turned Byzantium to Constantinople. I agree that he might have done better going a bit inland, but I think that by 1453 the Byzantine Empire was about to crumble under its own weight anyway. In my view, there had always been a linguistic tension between the Latin west and Greek east (remember that there were many Greek-speakers in Rome, even in the Republic.) The Hellenistic part of the Empire was bound to rise over Rome at one point or another, given the very large number of native Greek speakers and the pervasive Hellenistic influence. It's fair to say that the Western Empire would still have fallen, but the Byzantines were the logical, and stronger, successors to Rome.
 
Yes, but politically Ancient Egypt was always kicked around from state to state. It didn't get out of the Bronze Age until the Assyrians took it over, for pete's sake, and after that it was just a prize to capture from whoever held it last.

Yes, the Fatimids were powerful. But they took the place over from outside, and in any event were long after the Classical period was over (I will admit I forgot the qualifier "Ancient Egypt". :eek:)

Putting Egypt in opposition to Rome is pretty laughable. Putting the Ptolemies in opposition to Rome is tough, and they weren't even Egyptian!

Always? The First Invasion occured at the end of the Middle Kingdom, the Thirteenth Dynasty. There wasn't another invasion then until 945BCE. After that there was another 200 years until the nation became a mere prize to be captured (though it never was just that). You can't base your assesment of a nation on the last 700 years of a 3,000 year old nation.
 
Always? The First Invasion occured at the end of the Middle Kingdom, the Thirteenth Dynasty. There wasn't another invasion then until 945BCE. After that there was another 200 years until the nation became a mere prize to be captured (though it never was just that). You can't base your assesment of a nation on the last 700 years of a 3,000 year old nation.

Well, sure; like I said, it didn't leave the bronze age until the Assyrians conquered it and never really picked up urbanism (Memphis et all were really palace-complexes and even then were small by Mesopotamian standards). Egypt just wasn't a progressive state and by 1000 BC that was seriously weakening it.
 
I agree, Egypt for most of its history has been a tiny backwater, one of the major reasons that we trump up Ancient Egypt so much is the fact that so much of it has been preserved. I think the Sassanid Persians or even the Parthians would be a better enemy to Rome.
 
Yes, but politically Ancient Egypt was always kicked around from state to state. It didn't get out of the Bronze Age until the Assyrians took it over, for pete's sake, and after that it was just a prize to capture from whoever held it last.

Yes, the Fatimids were powerful. But they took the place over from outside, and in any event were long after the Classical period was over (I will admit I forgot the qualifier "Ancient Egypt". :eek:)

Putting Egypt in opposition to Rome is pretty laughable. Putting the Ptolemies in opposition to Rome is tough, and they weren't even Egyptian!

And you don't think that has anything to do with the endemic instability of the period, rather than being the product of some inherent 'backwardness' to Egypt? Egypt was a major center of civilization and remained that way right through the 2nd millennium of our era. It was one of the wealthiest areas on the planet until the rise of the north European powers after the Black Death. The lack of powerful, local dynasties has as much to do with Egypt's unfortunate position right near a multitude of other civilizational centers as it does to do with any other factor.

Had Egypt managed to put together something resembling an effective government that was capable of raising the taxes necessary to support a decent sized army, there would have been nothing Rome could have done about it. Unfortunately, by the time Rome entered the picture, the Ptolemaic dynasty was already inbred and corrupt beyond the point of redemption.

You see, Egypt was one of the ancient hydraulic civilizations, like Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, and China. The other two were so unlucky that they were in even worse positions than Egypt, but China had the good luck to be in an area ripe for conquest. Egypt followed its own version of China's dynastic cycle, where individual dynasties become worse and worse at ruling their country over time and this eventually builds up until the dynasty falls and another takes its place. Unfortunately, when you're not the single largest power and virtually the only settled, urbanized civilization in your cultural area, these periods of weakness and division can be fatal to native government.

Even today, the Nile is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet. With more effective governance, there's no reason it couldn't go back to being one of the richest.
 
The ultimate alternate history variation,but I know it's been done a lot. I've actually talked with some of the people I know,yes..we can give some reasons as to how the Roman Empire could have survived..but how would the rest of the world be? That..is where we tend to argue..

I've heard some say that if Rome survives,then Egypt would have to also..to provide balance. Unless Rome is just going to rule all of Europe to the Ural part of Russia and all of Africa if Egypt is not there to stop them.


Well, we've heard about Egypt from other posters. But why would it expand so much? OTL it remained pretty territorially stable from the reign of Augustus to the disasters of the 5th century: further expansion simply would be too much trouble, and would require the constant churning out of new armies and opportunities for ambitious generals that had brought so much strife to the Republic. As for Africa, again little to gain, plus a horrendous disease regime.

Of course, _something_ will have to be done about the Germans eventually, but expansion onto the Steppes or the boggy Russian woodlands seems unlikely before the invention of heavy plows and the development of the area enough for it to actually raise more in taxes than it takes to occupy. And then there's 800 years of horse-nomad invasions to deal with. And the Empire was so large it was hard to handle OTL: how much harder if it doubles in size?


No doubt a Chinese or Mongol or Manchu empire would rule most or all of Asia...

The Chinese empire lasted until 1911 in _our_ timeline, and they did no such thing. Why does the existence of Rome change this? Can't settle peasants in the desert or Siberia, south-east is jungles and Vietnamese, south-west is mountains followed by numerous and pugnacious Indians. West into central Asia is a possibility, if there aren't even more pugnacious Persians or Arabs or a Turkish Empire or the east end of the Roman empire. Until and unless it modernizes, I suspect the Manchu empire is about as large as a long-lasting Chinese empire gets. Now, _naval_ expansion is another kettle of fish - there's no reason why an alt-Chinese empire shouldn't be more grabby than OTL, especially if there are multiple Chinese colonizers and merchants softening things up to begin with.

But..the most interesting thing may be how the New World comes about..would Rome colonize it like the British,Spanish,Portuguese and French did? Or would Rome,Egypt and China ignore it..focusing on their own issues..leaving the Aborginies of the New World to develop on their own? ..


If Chinese or Roman navigation develops to the point where they reach the Americas, the Romans probably would: the native American civilizations are prosperous and weak targets, and whatever religion Rome has, they probably won't like the human sacrifice bit (memories of the Carthaginians and such). The Chinese might be a bit likelier to trade instead. In either case, the MesoAmericans and the Andean civilizations will be devastated by plague.

A super Aztec Empire covering all of Central America,northern South America and the American west?


The Aztec Empire was too ethnically confined to expand much- they didn't make their subject peoples into Aztecs the way the Romans did their conquests, AFAIK. They might last a while, but sans modern tech, they'll collapse and be replaced by some other MesoAmerican Empire.

A Maya or Inca Empire over all of South America?


Maya were already has-beens when the Europeans OTL showed up: the Inca might last quite a while sans Old World intervention, but they didn't penetrate the Jungle areas very much: too different from their normal environment.

You might get some interesting cultural hibrids from Chinese-Inca cross-Pacific contacts, if the Chinese decide that conquering these distant barbarians in their unlivable mountains [1] is too much trouble: Buddhist sun-worshippers sipping tea with just a touch of coca-leaf and writing in a pictographic language derived from the shapes of Quipu-knots...

What about Australia and New Zealand? A Hawaiian or Maori Empire?..


Maori might be interesting, but I'd suspect the area eventually falls under Chinese or Indonesian/Malay influence, unless the Romans play the role of "grab the backwards parts of the globe and exterminate their natives" that Europe did OTL.

And of course we're forgetting India, which in a Muslim-free world would take a quite distinctive path of their own. Perhaps the upper-caste Hindus never develop the phobia for sea travel they did OTL, and Australia, Indonesia, East Africa, and points east get colonized and Hinduized by the states of the subcontinent. Perhaps they even discover America from the west, after island-hopping eastward...

Bruce

[1] Seriously. During the first few generations, women from Spain had a great deal of trouble suriving childbirth at the high altitudes.
 
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